coalesced. He holds, deservedly, so high a place among the students of the Jewish controversy, in this country, that we consider it due to his name to quote his own words on this subject. In a sermon preached last year before the University of Dublin, on the Conversion and Restoration of the Jews, he says, "I confess that, when I look upon the Jews, and see how exactly their state corresponds with that described, (here he refers to Hosea iii. 4, 5,) and how difficult if not impossible it is to find another nation whose political and religious state is similar, I feel strongly inclined to the opinion that the ten tribes are now found mingled with the other two. I do not mean that the ten tribes returned from Babylon, for in Ezra and Nehemiah we are told particularly who did return, but that the main body of the Jews, who were dispersed in Egypt and other countries, and who never returned, naturally mingled with their brethren of the other tribes, and that this intermixture increased after the destruction of the second temple." On this supposition, he thinks that a more easy and natural interpretation may be given to Paul's words, "Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come," and that we may account for James addressing his epistle to the twelve tribes rather than to the Jews.

We could wish we had space left suited to our inclination to speak of the Rechabites, who were little in the time of Jewish greatness, but who were destined to flourish when the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem should be stripped of their glory. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before me for ever."'* They were discovered near Mecca by Benjamin de Tudela; and since that time his testimony has been confirmed by Wolff. The latter, in asking some Jews, who were wandering in the desert, respecting them, received the following reply: "See, there is one of them;" and turning his eyes where he was directed, he saw a Jerem. xxxv. 19.

man standing by his horse's head, dressed like an Arab, but having a more lively countenance than the Arabs; and who accepted courteously the whole Bible in Arabic and Hebrew, reading in both, but answered all questions in a voice of thunder. When asked who he was, he read aloud the whole of the thirty-fifth chapter of Jeremiah, saying at the close of it, "I am a son of Rechab." They inhabit three oases in the desert, amount to about sixty thousand, and, according to the words of the prophecy, neither build houses nor plant vineyards, nor sow seed, but all their days. dwell in tents, that they may live many days in the land where they are strangers.* They possess the greater part of the Old Testament writings; and not the least interesting fact connected with this subject is, that the Jews are calculating on valuable assistance from the sons of Rechab, when the former shall be restored to the beloved land of Israel.

We would speak too of the Samaritans, who still keep up the ancient feud, and have no dealings with the Jews, but obstinately maintain the pretensions of Gerizim to greater sacredness than Zion. At the foot of their long-loved mountain, Wolff found fifty of their families adhering scrupulously to their own Pentateuch, and looking for the promised Messiah; and besides, we believe they have been met with on the site of the ancient Tiberias, and other places. Nor, if we had time, would we omit the descendants of Ishmael, the wild man, whose hand was to be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and we should not fail to see another proof of the divinity of Scripture, analogous to that furnished by Jewish history, in the miraculous preservation of the Arabs as a distinct people, a people who, in some respects, resemble the other branch proceeding from their common father Abraham. Moreover, as we find the Arabs wandering from place to place without any fixed abode, "from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates," we cannot help regarding them as just so many tenants at will, who may * Jerem. xxxv. 7,

be dispossessed at a moment's warning, to make room for the returning seed of Isaac, with whom the covenant was made-to whom the land is promised, a seed numerous as the sand on the sea-shore, as the drops of the dew on Hermon, and as the stars of heaven.

We have now reached the second branch of our subject, where it is proposed briefly to state the endeavours which have been made by Christians on behalf of the Jews; and here our minds go back naturally to the first ages of Christianity.

Immediately before his final departure to glory, our blessed Redeemer gave this command to his disciples, that "repentance and remission of sins should be preached to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem;" and the very first message, a message of consolation, which came from Jesus after his ascension, was addressed to the Jews. "Ye men of Galilee," said the heavenly messenger, "why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." We have it recorded in the second chapter of the Acts, that the apostles proclaimed the gospel first of all at Jerusalem, "to Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." The discourse, or part of it, delivered on that occasion by Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, is the only one handed down to us; and his mode of address, "Ye men of Judea," "Ye men of Israel," leaves no room for doubt, that priority of consideration, in the order of time, was given to their kinsmen according to the flesh, by Jesus and his immediate followers. Then was held the first great missionary meeting which we read of as having taken place since the commencement of the Christian era; the speakers were the early disciples of our Lord, perhaps the hundred and twenty of whom mention is made in the preceding chapter; the object was the conversion of the Jews; and the result was, that the truth as it is in Jesus came home, in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, to three thousand Jewish souls,

Since the apostolic age, little has been attempted by Christians on behalf of the ancient people of God, "whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came." It is related by one writer on ecclesiastical history, that in the fifth century, a considerable number of Jews in the island of Crete threw off the religion of their fathers; and the cause assigned for their doing so is, that, finding themselves grossly deluded by the impious pretensions of an impostor, called Moses Cretensis, who gave himself out to be the Messiah, they opened their eyes on the truth. In narrating this event, however, the historian makes use of an expression which is peculiarly significant: he says that the Jews, on that occasion, spontaneously embraced the Christian faith; whence we are led to conclude that the conversions from Judaism, which took place during the reign of Antichrist, were not generally of a voluntary character. On the contrary, we read that great numbers of the blinded nation received the Gospel during the famous pontificate of Grégory the Great, in consequence of the bribery and zeal of the French and Spanish kings, who employed the favour and the frown of power to beckon them towards Christianity on the one hand, and to frighten them away from Judaism on the other. In the seventh century, the miserable Jews of Spain, Italy, and France, from the insinuations of the Christian doctors, were persecuted in every way which cruelty could suggest, and humanity disown; multitudes of them were ordered to be inhumanly dragged into the Christian churches, that they might be baptized, by violence and compulsion, with the sign of the cross. In the fourteenth century, many outward conversions took place among the Jews. But, in a single sentence, which we must characterize as, in some measure, a cold-hearted one, Mosheim reveals the secret of the change: "The cruel persecutions," says he, "which they suffered in several parts of Europe, particularly in France and Germany, vanquished their obstinacy, and bent their untractable spirits under the yoke of the Gospel." It is really

due to the Popes of those times, Benedict XII. and Clement VII., to say, that they denounced the calumnies which were propagated against the Jews; at the same time, we cannot forget that that was the century when, banished from Spain, the sons of Israel took refuge on the shores of Italy, fatigued and famished, and that the Romish priests came to them with a piece of bread in the one hand, and a crucifix in the other. Is it unnatural that, in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger, the poor Jews, in multitudes, should have submitted to the ceremony of baptism at the hands of Popery?

It is needless to dwell on the conduct of the Church of Rome when viewed in reference to the conversion of the Jews. Its object has, on all occasions, been to aggrandize itself; and acting on its favourite principle, that the end justifies the means, it has resorted, for the accomplishment of its purposes, to every species of violence and bribery. There occurs still the annual exhibition of a Jew baptized at Rome; which ceremony I was privileged lately to witness. It took place in one of the most splendid churches, called St. John Lateran; the office was performed by a bishop; the convert put off the Jewish profession only for the time, and that too for a bribe; and, as I was informed by a Roman Catholic on the spot, the same individual had been known to come forward year after year, and to have been baptized several times!

We are afraid that no systematic efforts were made by any body of professing Christians, in order to carry the glad tidings of salvation to the ancient people of God, from the apostolic age till the beginning of the eighteenth century. We believe, that at no reforming period of the history of the church was the cause of the Jews entirely forgotten; for it is a remarkable truth, borne out by facts, that whenever any revival did take place in the church of Christ, the ancient people of God were sure to come forth from the dark corner in which they lay neglected, and to occupy a prominent place in the hearts and exertions of the pious. None prayed more fervently, or spoke more