These are not hostile forces that it accepts or submits to, merely from a spirit of toleration or policy, in order to save the remains of its power by a compromise. They are old friendly voices which it recognizes and salutes with joy, for it has heard them resound for centuries already in the axioms of free thought, and in the cry of the suffering heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that has elapsed since their enfranchisement.

JAMES DARMStetter.

How great is knowledge! behold, the Scriptures place it between the two holy names of the Everlasting in the versicle: For a God of knowledge is the Eternal.-The Pharisees.

Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not; for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the water I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.-Isaiah xliii. 1, 2.

THE HE history of the Jewish people comprises and implies that of the entire Mediterranean world, from beginning to end, rarely entering, and only by accident, into the political and material aspects of history, but concerned with the ideas, with the religious, the social factors, in short, with the living forces of humanity. The history of all other nations, even of those exercising the longest and most remote influence, covers only a single epoch and a single place. Each one appears and disappears; its part was played in a single period; its history is exclusively its own. The Jewish people, enduring through all times, has helped to shape all great events that have had their day; it is a perpetual and universal witness of all these dramas, and by no means an inactive or mute witness, but closely identified with them in action or in suffering.

XXVI.

JAMES DARMstetter.

Faith in their Destiny.

I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened me sore, but He hath not given me over to death.-Psalm cxviii. 17, 18.

HE oldest of races-that one whose history as a separate people goes farther back into the dim

recesses of antiquity, than the record of any existing tribes of man, whose singular fate it is in these days to be found everywhere, and to achieve eminence in all countries has this distinction, among many others, that year by year it keeps anniversaries of humiliation. The children of Israel are not afraid to commemorate the afflictions that have befallen their ancestors in olden times, the visitations that left their cities desolate, and sent their inhabitants wandering through the world; it is, perhaps, because they dare to do this that they have been able to withstand every influence which might induce them to abandon the traditions that keep them separate among men. They are capable of a faith in the destinies of their people that rises superior to the worst disasters and looks forward to a restoration of glory, while commemorating the sharpest sufferings. LONDON TIMES.

With our hands unto the God in heaven.—From Lamentations, chap. iii.

XXVII.

Mystery, but no Secrecy.

I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I said not unto the children of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. I, the Lord, speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.-Isaiah xlv. 19.

JN

N the religion instituted by Moses, the only record of which we have in the Holy Scriptures, there is no scope for a distribution of revelations into public and private. There is no "aside" in that drama. It has been remarked, that, if the religious idea of the antique Pagan world may be aptly represented by the figure of Harpocrates, the silent god of Egypt, holding one of his fingers on his lips, the religion of Israel is best described by the word: Memra, i. e., speech, verbum, logos. The Mosaic system did not countenance one law and faith for the high, and another for the low; there was no mystery for any section of the community.

T. THEODORES.

For this commandment which I command thee this day, is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.— Deut. xxx. 11, 14.

LL the earth I'd wandered over
Seeking still the Beacon light,

Never tarried in the day-time,
Never sought repose at night;
Till I heard a reverend preacher
All the mystery declare,

Then I looked within my bosom

And 'twas shining brightly there.

XXVIII.

Faith in the Hereafter.

Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep; O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.-Psalm xxxvi. 6.

HE Hebrew people, we are told, had not a faith vigorous enough to accept assurances to be realized in a world totally distinct from that under the observation of their bodily senses. There might be some weight in this argument, if it were but certain that a belief in rewards and punishments to be adjudged in heaven taxes the faculty of faith more heavily than does the belief in the triumph of virtue and the discomfiture of vice on earth. But is that so? The reverse seems to be true. No antagonistic experience, no stubborn facts avail to weaken the credentials which testify in favor of a reign of perfect justice in the region of heaven; while the experience of every day's life unmercifully destroys every inchoate hope of seeing the differences between right and wrong, good and bad,