d,
were Jews.

All that these men knew of Christianity was, that it was a religion
of fire and sword, and that one of its first duties was to avenge some
mysterious and inexplicable crime which had been committed ages ago by
some unheard of ancestors of theirs in an unknown land. The inquisitors
addressed themselves to the Spanish Jews in the same abrupt and
ferocious manner in which the monks saluted the Mexicans and the
Peruvians. All those of the Spanish Jews, who did not conform after
the fall of the Mohammedan kingdoms, were expatriated by the victorious
Goths, and these refugees were the main source of the Italian Jews, and
of the most respectable portion of the Jews of Holland. These exiles
found refuge in two republics; Venice and the United Provinces. The
Portuguese Jews, it is well known, came from Spain, and their ultimate
expulsion from Portugal was attended by the same results as the Spanish
expatriation.

The other great division of Jews in Europe are the Sarmatian Jews, and
they are very numerous. They amount to nearly three millions. These
unquestionably entered Europe with the other Sarmatian nations,
descending the Borysthenes and ascending the Danube, and are according
to all probability the progeny of the expatriations of the times of
Tiglath-Pileser and Nebuchadnezzar. They are the posterity of those
'devout men,' Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, who were attending the
festivals at Jerusalem at the time of the descent of the Holy Spirit.
Living among barbarous pagans, who never molested them, these people
went on very well, until suddenly the barbarous pagans, under the
influence of an Italian priesthood, were converted to the Jewish
religion, and then as a necessary consequence the converts began to
harass, persecute, and massacre the Jews.

These people had never heard of Christ. Had the Romans not destroyed
Jerusalem, these Sarmatian Jews would have had a fair chance of
obtaining from civilized beings some clear and coherent account of the
great events which had occurred. They and their fathers before them
would have gone up in customary pilgrimage to the central sacred place,
both for purposes of devotion and purposes of trade, and they might have
heard from Semitic lips that there were good tidings for Israel. What
they heard from their savage companions, and the Italian priesthood
which acted on them, was, that there were good tidings for all the world
except Israel, and that Israel, for th