OUR MISSIONS.

for inferior penalties. It was confessedly an attempt at extermi

nation.

In March, 1492, the well-known edict for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was signed under the walls of Granada. Very various are the accounts of the numbers of Jews expelled in consequence. If we put it down at 200,000, we shall be near the truth.* That this was a fair exposition of the mind of Christendom in the fifteenth century, we need not doubt. "That it was conformable," says Prescott, "to the opinions of the most enlightened contemporaries, may be gathered from the encomiums lavished on its authors from more than one quarter.”

This edict was indeed of singular influence. The scattered Jews, wherever they went, and there were few places to which they did not penetrate, carried with them the memory of their wrongs, and a deeply-rooted aversion to the Christian name.

The period of the great Reformation followed close upon the establishment of the Inquisition; and though Protestant annals are not stained with those fearful records which darken the pages of antecedent history, yet there are not wanting instances of injury and wrong: prejudice remained but little altered, and even the writings of Luther are sometimes disfigured with harsh and bitter invectives. Habits of thought, the growth of centuries, could not be at once uprooted. Light only dawned by degrees on even great and good men, who at first, like the blind man in the Gospel, saw men as trees walking." It need not then be matter of surprise, that the Scriptural position of the Jew, and his real relationship to the Gospel, was not at once recognized; and that, even in works intended to convince him of his errors, the blessed precept to "speak the truth in love" was too frequently lost sight of. Luther's bitterness may perhaps have arisen from disappointment. When he burned the Pope's bull, and thus publicly renounced idolatry, he seems to have anticipated the conversion of the Jews in considerable numbers. The event we know did not correspond to such an expectation; and then, running into

*For full particulars, we must refer our readers to Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," Vol. I., chaps. vii. and xvii.

extremes, he deemed their obduracy insurmountable, and that it was hopeless to attempt to bring them to the truth,-a sentiment we too frequently meet with in our own more enlightened days.

We have now endeavoured to give a sketch of the main events of Jewish story; the intervals between these landmark periods, as we may call them, are all of the same character. That which was seen by the prophet inscribed upon the roll, the Jewish historian might well take for his motto, "Lamentations and mourning and woe.

We do not mean to say that there were no bright exceptions. As there has always been a believing remnant amongst that people, even in the days of their greatest unbelief, so have there always been among Christians those, however few, who knew something of God's revealed purposes, and who could enter into the spirit of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Thus, even in the days of the Crusades, there was not wanting the voice of a St. Bernard to testify concerning them; but such as he were isolated, they stood alone, and met with little sympathy. The hatred to the Jew was deeply rooted, and almost universal.

What could we hope to find the Jew after all this? What could we reasonably expect his opinion of the Gospel to be?

"Christians," says Dr. M.Caul, f "have not only neglected, but actually driven them further from the truth than they were before. It is well known to all who have conversed with Jews, that those passages which are quoted by the Apostles as decisive testimony to the Messiahship of Jesus, are now as much a subject of dispute as the Messiahship itself....... How then was this change effected? When did the Jew depart from the system of exposition received in the days of the Apostles? I answer, that this determined opposition, even to Christian exposition, was wrought by Christian persecution, and that it first appears as a system about the time of the Crusades.

In sup

port of Christian doctrine, some help may be obtained from the Rabbinic books which precede that period; but from R. Sol-Jarchi,

* It is curious to read the long list of Decrees of Councils and Princes against the Jews, given by Basnage, Book VII., chap. 128.

+ Sermon preached before the Society in 1833.

(a contemporary of the first Crusades,) we find, with but few exceptions, a determined spirit of opposition to Christianity. The injuries inflicted by those who assumed the cross, were calculated to inflame the hatred and opposition of the Jews to the very utmost. Accordingly, since that time most of the Jewish polemical works against Christianity have been written."

But let us now glance at the period when our Society arose. And we cannot fail to perceive the hand of an overruling Providence. In the closing quarter of the eighteenth century, so marked in the history of European nations, a signal change begins in the social and political position of the Jew. He is regarded under an aspect entirely new. The blood-stained demon, Persecution, now quits the scene, and her sister, Prejudice, prepares to follow.

"To the Jews," says Da Costa, "as well as to all the nations of Europe, is the year 1789 the commencement of an entirely new epoch -an epoch of improvement according to the views of one party, and of revolution and anarchy according to those of another; but certainly, in the eyes of true Christians, a period of striking signs and movements in which they cannot fail to recognize the hand of God." The principles which had their origin in France influenced every European state, and though there have been checks and counter-movements,* they have been steadily at work ever since, and the social ban which had lain on the Jew for ages, has been almost entirely removed. Who can fail to see in this the hand of God? The same God who wondrously swayed the heart of Cyrus, and at a later period prepared the Roman

At this very time, the correspondent of the "Times thus writes:Although the Imperial authorities assert that the Court Decree of 1817, relative to the Jews, has not been revived, I have positive proof that it has. In Lemberg, Dr. Blumenthal, a barrister, has received notice that he must dismiss his Christian servants unless he gets a licence from the civil authorities to keep them.' The passage quoted is in strict accordance with Paragraph II. of the Decree of 1817. About a fortnight ago a Christian nurse was ordered to leave the house of a Jew, whose child she had nursed during four months. Here, in Vienna, three Christian servants have quitted Hebrew masters, whom they had long served, because their Jesuit confessors had refused to give them absolution if they remained in Jewish families.

world for the preaching of the Gospel, seems in these our days to have so turned the hearts of Gentiles towards His ancient people, as to adjust the circumstances of the age to the attempt, now for the first time, since the days of Constantine, systematically made to proclaim to them that Gospel which knows no difference between Jew and Greek, but publishes to both, equally sinners as they are, the glad tidings of God reconciling us in Christ, who is "rich in mercy to all them that call upon Him."

CHAPTER II.

The subject resumed-Causes of Jewish unbelief in our Lord's day-The Oral Law-Committed to writing by Judah the Holy-The Talmud-Jewish estimation of it-Its effects-The stationary character of Judaism in past ages-Maimonides--Mendelsohn-The effect of their teaching in preparing the way of the Gospel-Extracts from late Bishop of Calcutta's Sermon, and from Rev. Lewis Way's Letter from Berlin-Conclusion.

IN our last chapter we endeavoured to give a brief outline of the leading events that have occurred in Israel's history since the commencement of the Christian era. We pointed out the fact, that, whilst in all preceding times, from the age of Constantine downwards, that history had presented one uniform character of oppression and of wrong, in our days it had assumed a different aspect, a fact which a Christian could not contemplate without feeling that God's overruling providence was evidently at work, preparing the way for the preaching of the everlasting Gospel to His ancient people.

We shall now turn from the external history of the Jew, to the internal history of Judaism, and endeavour to show that when we regard the great changes which took place just prior to the commencement of the present century, and which are still going on in our own day, we are compelled to come to the same conclusion concerning the preparatory workings of Divine providence.

It is often a matter of surprise to those who are accustomed to look on Scripture with simple faith, that, with so many striking prophecies

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before them, the Jews, in our Lord's days upon earth, should have so completely mistaken Messiah's character, and disallowed His claim. The solution of the mystery is to be found in two sentences, uttered by our Lord Himself. One occurs in John v. 44, How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and regard not the honour that cometh from God only?" the other in Matt. xv. 6, “Ye have made the commandments of God of none effect by your traditions." These embody the two great sources of Jewish unbelief, viz.,—Rabbinic pride, and Rabbinic teaching,—both acting and reacting upon each other. The system of those who "taught for doctrines the commandments of men," distorted Scripture truth, blinded the eyes, and put a vail upon the heart.

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are persuaded that God gave

One that Moses wrote down;

Basnage briefly gives us the opinion of the Jews concerning tradition: "The Jews," he says, two sorts of laws on Mount Sinai. and another that He trusted to his memory, which was transmitted to posterity by the ministry of doctors and prophets. By the help of this distinction, they make God say what they please, and give a divine authority to their imaginations. It was in their doctors' power to multiply the commandments, and vary them according to their caprice; and the people could not disobey them guiltless, from the moment they were persuaded that their heads were the secret depositaries of the will of the Almighty."

This Oral Law was, as its name imports, an unwritten code; it was so in our Saviour's day, and such it continued until the close of the second century of the Christian era, when there arose one Rabbi Judah, or, Judah the holy, as he is styled, "who, seeing the dispersion of the people, feared that the traditions would be lost, wherefore he made that collection of them which is called the Mishna."† accomplished at Tiberias.

This was

Judah's compilation, however, was found not only to be obscure and confused, but also to leave undecided, by reason of its brevity, many important cases; hence, two of his disciples wrote a commen

Book III., c. 5, s. 1. † Basnage III., c. 5, s. 14.