EDITORIAL NOTICE.

If the Old Testament prepared the way for the New, and if the Jewish religion is the foundation of Christianity, a knowledge of the Jewish people ought to precede the enumeration of the proofs of the Christian religion.

For this reason, we place this chapter upon the Jews before those which treat of the Miracles, Figures, Prophecies, &c. This is also the order which Pascal himself assigned to his remarks upon the Jewish people, in that conversation, the account of which was preserved by Stephen Perier.

After carrying his auditory through the systems of the philosophers, Pascal led them to the consideration of the various religions which had prevailed throughout the world, and directed their notice especially to that of the Jews. "Lastly," says Stephen Perier, "he called their attention to the Jewish nation, and fixed their view on the extraordinary circumstances of their history. After describing all the singularities of this people, he paused to remark particularly the rule exercised over them by the means of a single book, comprehending alike, their history, their law, and their religion." (French Editor.)

* Miscellaneous Writings of Pascal, p. 395.

OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE.

I. I SEE that the Christian religion must have been founded on some religious system that preceded it; and this was actually the fact.

I do not here refer to the miracles of Moses, of Christ, and of the Apostles; because at the first they failed of convincing men's minds: and I intend now only to bring forward those broad foundations of the Christian system, which are in themselves indubitable, and which no one can question.

It is certain that we see scattered throughout the world a peculiar race, separated from every other people, bearing the name of Jews.

- Now, I find a multitude of religious systems prevailing in various lands, and throughout all periods of time. But they neither possess a morality which satisfies my conscience, nor offer proof to convince my judgment; and I should therefore equally have rejected the religions of Mahomet and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for this sole reason, that the one carrying no stronger marks of truth. than the other, and none exhibiting any preponderating evidence of authenticity, reason is compelled to refuse submission to them all alike.

But, while surveying these diversified and extravagant

systems of morals and belief in successive ages, I find, in a remote corner of the world, a peculiar people, separated from every other nation of the earth, the most ancient of them all; and possessing historical records, extending by many centuries beyond those of the most ancient of which we have any account. I learn that these people were powerful and numerous; sprung from a single progenitor; worshippers of one God; and governed by a law, which they affirm to have been received by them from His own hand. They maintain, that they are the only people on earth to whom the Deity has thus revealed his mysteries; that all men have corrupted themselves, and forfeited the divine favour; that they have all been abandoned to the evil propensities of their passions and their understandings; whence have sprung those diversified extravagances both of worship and morals which prevail among them; while they, on the other hand, have remained unshaken and unchanged. But they hold, also, that God does not intend to leave the world perpetually in this state of darkness; that a universal Liberator is destined to appear; that their own vocation in the world is to announce his advent; and they are expressly designed to be the forerunners and heralds of this great event, and to summon all the inhabitants of the world to unite with them in awaiting his august approach.

II. + Falsehood of other Religions.

+ They have no evidences; the Jewish possess them in abundance. God defies the professors of other religions to produce similar proofs. Is. xliii. 9; xliv. 8.

III. + Advantages of the Jewish People.

In this enquiry the Jewish nation attracts my attention by numerous and remarkable characteristics.

First, I find this people wholly composed of brethren; and while every other nation is formed out of a collection. of infinite numbers of families, this one, although extraordinarily populous, is sprung entirely from one man; and thus, being all of one blood, and members one of another, they constitute a mighty state, yet a single family. This is unexampled.

This family, or people, is the most ancient within the memory of man;-a circumstance entitling them to peculiar veneration, and especially with reference to our present enquiry: because, if God has from the remotest times revealed himself to man, it is to them we must have recourse, to gather the earliest of his revelations.

Nor is this people remarkable only for its antiquity, but for its duration also;—having subsisted without interruption from its earliest origin to the present time. While the nations of Greece and Italy, of Lacedemon, Athens, Rome, and many others, which had their rise ages after them, have long since become extinct, these people have continued to subsist; and in spite of the repeated efforts of so many powerful states to destroy them, as we find recorded by their historians, and as may be supposed to have been the case in the natural order of things,―still has their existence been preserved, century after century; and thus, preserved from the remotest antiquity to the present day, their annals comprise, in their mighty duration, the history of every successive age.

The law by which this singular people is governed is, taken altogether, the most ancient in the world; it is also the most perfect in itself, and the only one that in any state has been preserved unimpaired from its first institution. This is what Josephus admirably maintains against Appion, as also the Jew Philo, in various places; -showing it to be of such antiquity, that the very name of law was not known by the most ancient nations till more than a thousand years after; in proof of which, Homer, who has treated of the history of so many states, has never made any reference to it. The perfection of these laws may be judged of from a simple perusal; which will show every enactment to have been made with such wisdom, equity, and judgment, that the most ancient lawgivers, both Greek and Roman, having received some faint traditions of their enactments, have borrowed from them their most important laws;-as is apparent from what was entitled their "Twelve Tables," and other proofs adduced by Josephus.

Yet is this law one of the severest and most stringent character, in all matters appertaining to their religious ceremonials; enforcing upon the nation, in order to retain it in allegiance to their God, a multitude of most exact and painful observances, and that under the penalty of life. Whence, it is a most surprising fact, that the code should have been constantly maintained during so many ages by a people of a most rebellious and untoward spirit; while, in every other state, the laws, though of a lenient and facile character, have been subjected to perpetual fluctuation and change.

+ And be it observed, the Book which contains this