enthusiastically on behalf of the Jews than did Luther, and other right-hearted men, who flourished at the period of the Reformation from Popery. We are not, however, speaking of the disconnected individual endeavours of devoted Christians to persuade individual Jews to receive the doctrines of the cross; what we affirm is, that during sixteen hundred years, no society of Christians appeared to go heart and hand with the Gospel to the Jews, and thus to blot out the ingratitude and injustice with which they alone have been treated, whom our Redeemer "would have gathered together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but they would not." Laying Christianity aside-when we think of the innumerable associations of surpassing interest which attach to the history of the Jews; that wherever we have a Jew on the surface of the earth, there we have a man whose testimony and conduct connect the present with the beginning of all time; forgetting, for a moment, the claim put forth by Christianity on behalf of the Jews, and viewing them merely as the most interesting people in the world-there does appear to be a charge of bad taste, in a literary point of view, not to say of worse principle in a religious one, due to those centuries by which they were neglected; and one is almost disposed to wonder what else could be expected in the reign of the Goth.

Germany, the mother of the Reformation from Popery, was the first in modern days to espouse the cause of the Jews. A society, called the Callenberg Institution, from the name of its founder, was established at Halle, in Prussian-Saxony, in 1728. Its original and chief object was the conversion of the Jewish people, although it also embraced that of the Mahometans. The means which it employed to accomplish the end proposed were the circulation of tracts, the translation of several portions of the New Testament into Hebrew for the use of the Jews, and the sending forth of Christian missionaries among them, one of whom was the celebrated Schultze, who travelled over Europe, Asia, and part of Africa.

There is good reason to believe that the endeavours of this society were blessed. Books printed and circulated by it made their appearance lately in Poland and Aleppo; and even at Bombay there was found, some years ago, in the hands of an unconverted Jew, a copy of the gospel by Luke, published by the Callenberg Institution in 1738, which he refused magnanimously to exchange for any consideration short of a copy of the whole Hebrew Bible. This interesting German society, having taken its rise in the zeal and piety of the Protestant clergy, and depending for its prosperity on their sanctified exertions, and for its very existence on voluntary contribution, flourished only about sixty years; it drooped, and faded, and died under the blast of a cold and withering infidelity, to which the parent stock was exposed at the out-breaking of the French revolution.

It is due to the Moravian brethren to say, that during a part of the last century, namely, from 1738 to 1764, several individuals of their number were zealously engaged as missionaries among the Jews. Leonard Dober was the first to devote himself to the conversion of Israel; after him, Count Zinzendorf, Samuel Lieberkuhn, and David Kirchhof, a converted Jew, in fellowship with the Brethren's church, espoused the cause of God's ancient people. On the anniversary of the great Jewish festival, the day of atonement, a discourse was wont to be delivered by Count Zinzendorf to his congregation, when the Jews were particularly recommended in prayer to the mercy of our Saviour. He did not, indeed, believe that the hour of Israel's visitation was then arrived; but he continued to keep alive among his brethren a desire for their salvation, and introduced a prayer to that effect into the Litany of the Moravian Church. The petition as originally inserted was as follows: "Deliver the ten tribes of Israel from their blindness and estrangement, and make us acquainted with their sealed ones. Bring in the tribe of Judah in its time, and bless its first fruits among us, until the fulness of the gentiles be come in, and so all Israel be saved."

Although the hope of forming congregations of believing Jews remained unfulfilled in the experience of the Brethren, their testimony in favour of the truths of Christianity was blessed to the conversion of not a few of the stock of Israel, who became successively members of the Moravian church, both in Holland and Germany.

In 1809, a society was formed in London by some of the most pious members of the Church of England, denominated, "The Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews." It is a curious fact, that it should have existed for several years before its founders became aware of the noble stand which the Callenberg Institution had previously made in this high and holy cause. Since its institution, various auxiliary and independent societies, with the same object in view, have sprung up throughout Britain and Ireland; and on the continent, there exist flourishing ones at Basle, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Berlin, Posen, and Breslau. Although the London Society had for years to contend against objections and difficulties, the chord in the Christian heart of this country, which had not vibrated for many a century, would now seem to have been awakened into unison with the apostle's feelings when he said, "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved."

The contributions during 1837, as stated in the Thirtieth Report, which was read last year, amount to upwards of nineteen thousand pounds, being an increase of four thousand five hundred pounds on the receipts of the preceding year; and it is most satisfactory to be told by the committee of the Society, that the decided increase which the funds exhibit "has been effected, not by any exciting appeal, called forth by a pressing emergency, but under the influence of a deep and growing sense of the Scriptural importance of the claims of the Jewish people, and of a more serious attention to the prophetic declarations of the word of God regarding them." The Society now possesses the stereotype plates of two valuable

editions of the Hebrew Scriptures; the translation of the New Testament has undergone a careful revision, and is actually in print as far as the end of the four gospels; the Judeo-Polish version of the Old Testament has been completed for several years, but want of funds has prevented the printing of more than the Pentateuch, and the Prophecy of Isaiah; and the same lack of money is the only reason why a translation of the Scriptures into Judeo-Spanish has not yet been prepared, and that large field of Jewish enterprise remains to this day uncultivated. It is most cheering not only to read of the thousands of Hebrew Bibles, and Pentateuchs, and Tracts, which have already issued from London to the Jews in different parts of the world, but also to know that they are thankfully received and eagerly sought after by the blinded nation. In Poland and Jerusalem the missionaries can dispose of all that are sent; and the Report of the Society informs us, that a less additional number than twenty thousand copies would be utterly inadequate to the frequent demands of the Israelites in all parts of the world. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures," is still the secret of Jewish ignorance. They have been always found by the missionaries, when addressed on the striking prediction of New Testament times contained in the fiftythird chapter of Isaiah, to have never read or heard of it.

Besides ten schools which belong to the Society, two in London, at Bethnal Green, and eight in the Duchy of Posen, an Episcopal chapel has been built in the metropolis, in which the liturgy of the Church of England, translated into Hebrew, is used by the worshippers. Although the attendance of Jewish converts is not great, the Hebrew service forms a strong point of union among the Christian Israelites of the immediate neighbourhood, as well as one of attraction to foreign Jews; and there can be no doubt, that it excites attention generally among the sons of Abraham.

But the most important feature in the character of

the London Society is its missionary enterprise. It employs forty-nine missionaries and agents in Europe and the East, of whom twenty-four are Jewish converts; and they labour in four fields, in each of which the circumstances and habits of the Jews are considerably different. First, the mission to the Jews in England is a very important one. Their numbers are certainly small in comparison of those in Germany and Poland, but their position shares largely in the prominence which belongs to the commercial transactions of London throughout the civilized world; and it is well known that many foreign Jews are constantly visiting England for the sake of profit and pleasure, and that they must return to the countries where they severally dwell with accounts of the condition of their brethren in Christian Britain. Besides, it is the metropolis to which we are to look for revised editions of the Scriptures, and for the publication of tracts, and other works that may be usefully circulated among the Jewish people. The second division of the missionary field is the mission to the German Jews. This sphere of labour comprises the whole of Germany, France, Holland, and the northern countries adjacent to them. The Jews are much scattered in this district, have thrown off their avowed adherence to the Talmud, and are in many places lapsing into infidelity. The third mission is that to the Polish Jews, and includes the countries constituting the ancient kingdom of Poland, now under the dominion of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. In this division the Jews are far more numerous than in the last, occupying the country as well as the towns and villages, clinging scrupulously to the Talmud, and expressing abhorrence of the ways of their German brethren. The fourth and last mission is that to the Oriental and Spanish Jews. It embraces those residing on the shores of the Mediterranean, whether in Europe, Asia, or Africa; they constitute a distinct and a most interesting class among the Jews, and speak the Jewish-Spanish, a dialect originally Spanish, but modified by the introduction of Hebrew idioms