A late traveller into various countries of Africa has given a representation of the state of the Jews, in the empire of Morocco, perfectly corresponding with the state of that people in Asia. He tells us, that there are places which they dare not enter, unless they take off their sandals and come barefoot. However respectable any Jew may be for his possessions, he must address every Mussulman by the name of Seedy, or Signor, else he is in danger of being knocked down. All Jews are required to appear in such a dress as will at first sight distinguish them from all other human beings.*

66

They should become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among all nations."-Deut. xxviii. 37. And do we not hear and see this prophecy fulfilled almost every day? Are not the avarice, usury, and hard-heartedness of a Jew grown proverbial? and are not their persons generally odious among all sorts of people? Mohammedans, Heathens, and Christians, however they may disagree in other points, yet generally agree in vilifying, abusing, and persecuting the Jews. In most places where they are tole. rated, they are obliged to live in a separate quarter by themselves, (as they did here in the Old Jewry) and to wear some badge of distinction. Their very countenances commonly distinguish them from the rest of mankind. They are in all respects treated as if they were of another species. And when a great master of nature would draw the portrait of a Jew, how detestable a character hath he represented in the person of his Jew of Venice!

Finally, "Their plagues should be wonderful, even great plagues and of long continuance."-v. 59. And

• An Account of the Empire of Morocco, &c. by J. Gray Jackson, Esq.

In

have not their plagues continued now these 1700 years? Their former captivities were very short in comparison: and Ezekiel and Daniel prophesied in the land of the Chaldeans: but now they have no true prophet to foretel an end of their calamities; they have only false Messiahs to delude them, and to aggravate their misfortunes. their former captivities they had the comfort of being conveyed to the same place; they dwelt together in the land of Goshen, they were carried together to Babylon; but now they are dispersed all over the face of the earth. What nation hath suffered so much, and yet endureth so long?

What nation hath subsisted as a distinct people in their own country, so long as these have done, in their dispersion into all countries? And what a standing miracle is this, exhibited to the view and observation of the whole world?

"Here are instances of prophecies, prophecies delivered above three thousand years ago, and yet, as we see, fulfilling in the world at this very time; and what stronger proof can we desire of the Divine Legation of Moses? How these instances may affect others, I know not; but for myself I must acknowledge, they not only convince, but amaze and astonish me beyond expression. They are truly, as Moses foretold they should be, a sign and a wonder for ever.""*

The same prophet also announces the preservation of the Jews in their dispersion, as a separate people, and their future conversion to the Christian faith; for Moses prophesied, that the Lord their God would raise up to them, of their brethren, another prophet who like him

• Bishop Newton's Dissertations, Diss. vII, ad finem,

should be a Lawgiver, to whom they should hearken. "And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him."-Deut. xviii. 19. Their sufferings which were to be great, and of long continuance, were to end in mercy, and not in their destruction. "And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. But I will, for their sakes, remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the Lord."Levit. xxvi. 44, 45. What a wonderful, yet incontestable evidence of the inspiration of Moses, does the history of that people present to our consideration! Where shall we be able to find the posterity of those conquerors of the world, the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans? They are long since lost in the undistinguished mass of common men, and mingled with those to whom they gave laws, and taught the arts of civilization. But those people upon whom they all often trampled, have survived the fate of all the other nations of antiquity, and even in their dispersion, have preserved their religion, with the laws and customs of their progenitors.

One of the finest geniuses that this, or any other country has produced, has, in one of his essays considered the condition of this people, with his usual accuracy and beauty of illustration, and concludes thus:-"If, in the last place, we consider what providential reasons may be assigned for these three particulars, (their number, their dispersion, and their adherence to their religion,) we shall find that their numbers, dispersion, and adherence to their

religion, have furnished every age, and every nation of the world, with the strongest arguments for the Christian faith; not only as these very particulars are foretold of them, but as they themselves are the depositaries of these and all the other prophecies, which tend to their own confusion. Their number furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses, that attest the Old Bible. Their dispersion spreads these witnesses through all parts of the world. Their adherence to their religion makes their testimony unquestionable. Had the whole body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the coming and history of our blessed Saviour, forged by Christians; and should have looked upon them, with the prophecies of the Sibyls, as made many years after the events they pretended to foretel." Even some of our most hardened infidels have acknowledged, that of the arguments for Christianity, "there was one invincible, and not to be got over by the wit of man, viz. the present state of the Jews."t

There is one point of view, in which it is highly proper for us to consider the long and dreadful sufferings of the Jews. What can be the reason of the inexpressible calamities which have followed and oppressed that people for the last seventeen hundred years? God is slow to anger, and never punishes men beyond their demerits. Their former captivity in Babylon was brought on by their idolatry, and their other violations of their law. It continued only seventy years, at the end of which period they

• Addison's Spectator, No. 495.

+ Lord Chesterfield's observation to Lady Fanny Sherley.-Life of Bishop Horne, by Mr. Jones, p. 352.

were restored to their native land, and saw a new temple rise, if not with all the grandeur and magnificence of the former, yet with splendour sufficient to preserve the memory, and to be a representation of that sacred and noble edifice. Ever since their captivity in Babylon, they have been zealots for their law, and with the exception of their persecutions in Roman Catholic countries, they have stood aloof from idolatry. Is there any thing that can possibly account for their afflictions, unexampled in the history of mankind, but that most horrible of crimes with which the Gospel charges them, the shedding of the blood of God's Son, and fulfilment of their own imprecation, registered in the court of Heaven, "His blood be on us, and on our children." But had the Saviour of the world been merely a man, the shedding of his blood had been a crime of no greater magnitude, than many others of which their ancestors had been guilty. For which of the prophets did not their fathers persecute? But their being the betrayers and murderers of God's own Son, of the Prince of Life, was a crime of which it is impossible to ascertain the guilt. The Jews ought, therefore, seriously to reflect, whether the greatness and the length of their punishment be not a Demonstrative Evidence of the truth of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, which they, with the Mohammedans, and with those who appropriate to themselves the name of Unitarians, obstinately reject. Dr. Priestley, with several other writers of the same principles, has suggested that the general expulsion of the deity of Christ, and of the doctrine of atonement by his death, from the creed of Christians, would have a mighty effect in conciliating the Jews to Christianity, and in removing their prejudices against the Christian faith. In other words, he proposes that to reconcile the Jews to the