e commission of a great crime
of which they had never heard and could not comprehend, was to be
plundered, massacred, hewn to pieces, and burnt alive in the name of
Christ and for the sake of Christianity.

The Eastern Jews, who are very numerous, are in general the descendants
of those who in the course of repeated captivities settled in the great
Eastern monarchies, and which they never quitted. They live in the same
cities and follow the same customs as they did in the days of Cyrus.
They are to be found in Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor; at Bagdad,
at Hamadan, at Smyrna. We know from the Jewish books how very scant was
the following which accompanied Esdras and Nehemiah back to Jerusalem.
A fortress city, built on a ravine, surrounded by stony mountains and
watered by a scanty stream, had no temptations after the gardens of
Babylon and the broad waters of the Euphrates. But Babylon has vanished
and Jerusalem remains, and what are the waters of Euphrates to the brook
of Kedron! It is another name than that of Jesus of Nazareth with which
these Jews have been placed in collision, and the Ishmaelites have not
forgotten the wrongs of Hagar in their conduct to the descendants of
Sarah.

Is it therefore wonderful that a great portion of the Jewish race should
not believe in the most important portion of the Jewish religion? As,
however, the converted races become more humane in their behaviour to
the Jews, and the latter have opportunity fully to comprehend and deeply
to ponder over true Christianity, it is difficult to suppose that the
result will not be very different. Whether presented by a Roman or
Anglo-Catholic or Genevese divine, by pope, bishop, or presbyter, there
is nothing, one would suppose, very repugnant to the feelings of a Jew
when he learns that the redemption of the human race has been effected
by the mediatorial agency of a child of Israel: if the ineffable mystery
of the Incarnation be developed to him, he will remember that the
blood of Jacob is a chosen and peculiar blood; and if so transcendent a
consummation is to occur, he will scarcely deny that only one race could
be deemed worthy of accomplishing it. There may be points of doctrine
on which the northern and western races may perhaps never agree. The
Jew like them may follow that path in those respects which reason and
feeling alike dictate; but nevertheless it can hardly be maintained that
there is anything revolting to a Jew to learn tha