spent. I left the widow and her children, with a broken heart, not being able to help them out of their misery. Mr. M- meeting me as I returned, came to my lodgings. My room was soon filled with Jews, some of them inquisitive, others desirous of news, and some inquiring for the truth. The Lord strengthened me to confess His name with joyfulness and zeal. One Jew came and declared he would go with me to Warsaw. Now, dear David, I must finish this letter, as my room is full of Jews, amongst whom I perceive five of our old friends. Remember me to the brethren and sisters in the Lord. I am sure that you all remember me before the Saviour Jesus Christ, whose grace be with us all. Amen.'

Amen! "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me," and though to tender and sensitive minds, which count domestic happiness among the greatest of their earthly goods, this may seem among the "hard sayings," of their Lord, yet, for His sake, they will learn to "hear it: "Strive only to say in the hour of affliction, "not my will, but thine be done," and doubtless, some ministering angel,* shall be commissioned to strengthen thee: if we follow our Lord in patience and holiness, we shall likewise be partakers of his peace and joy. His kingdom is not of this world: "in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

The narrative of this pious Israelite, thirsting from the early days of youth, for pardon and acceptance with God, earnestly desiring His favour, yet cast * Luke xxii. 42, 43.

down with despair by the sense of sin, and the vain struggle to escape from the corrupt nature of humanity, finding all efforts ineffectual, until he learned to follow the Son of Man in the Regeneration, is a powerful illustration of man's need of an Atonement, and of the blessed effects of that Atonement, when rightly received and understood. Justification by faith, is indeed a most precious assurance. 'What

•

I here say,' observes Luther in his commentary on the Galatians, from St. Paul's words, I have learned by experience, my own and that of others, in the monastery. I have seen many, who with the utmost diligence and scrupulosity, have omitted nothing which might pacify conscience: have worn hair-cloth, fasted, prayed, afflicted and exhausted their bodies by various severities, so that, even if they had been made of iron, they must at length have been destroyed; yet the more they laboured, the more fearful they became. And, especially as the hour of death drew nigh, they were so full of trepidation, that I have seen many murderers, condemned to die for their crimes, meet death with more confidence, than these persons who had lived so strictly.'* Happy are they who stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free, only that it be, from the love of sin, as well as from the fear of condemnation.

When we see the Jewish convert received every where with joy as a brother, Christian ministers his friends, and Christian princes his sponsors, we cannot help reflecting upon the extraordinary change, which throughout all christendom has taken place in the

* See Scott's Continuation of Milner's Church History.

feelings of mankind towards the Israelitish nation: which surely marks, as has been before observed at the commencement of this narrative, that the "time to favour Zion is come." We look back upon the tremendous sufferings of the Jews in former ages; we see that neither wealth, rank, or learning, or to have been the friend and counsellor of princes, avails the Jew; for Abarbanel flies before the storm of the same persecution, which overwhelms the meanest of his nation; we see kingdom after kingdom, through a succession of centuries, alternately closed against them; we see these unhappy fugitives from their adopted country and their rightful home, threatened with murder on board the very vessels in which they fled, by the ignorant sailors, delighted with an opportunity of avenging on them the death of their Lord, when their pathetic representations that Christ did not "desire the death, but the salvation of the sinner," little availed them ; and not to follow them through the long course of their misery, aggravated by the cruel falsehoods which blackened their name, and rendered them as odious, as they were wretched, so little, in the full light of learning, refinement and civilization, was the true character and merit of the Jewish convert acknowledged, that we find so late as the year 1800, the Danish Missionary Society, when choosing some Missionaries from the Seminary at Berlin, excluding Mr. Frey from the number to be examined, as they did not wish for him, on account of his having been a Jew.'

*

* See the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella.

May the time soon come, in which the Lord will "turn again the captivity of Zion;" and perhaps it may be permitted to us to hope, that "the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia," if indeed that prophecy points to the British shores, may be the instrument of the Lord in assisting in that restoration: the Jews are scattered to every nation under heaven; and what part of the world is there, where the English language is unheard, the English name unknown, the English power unfelt?

O'er whose wide-spread dominions

The sun never sets.

May it please the Lord to use the power He has given for His glory! Meanwhile, though it is not for us to "know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power," though still the "holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation," and, "neither is there among us any that knoweth how long," yet we know the days shall come when "the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured, nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Then shall the children of Judah, and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land for great shall be the day of Jezreel."

:

MEMOIR OF JOSHUA BEN ABRAHAM

ESEHEL.

CHAPTER V.

HIS BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION-UNDERTAKES A PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM-DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES-HIS SUFFERINGS IN THE EAST-HIS RETURN TO POLAND-HIS STUDIESSETS OUT ON AN EUROPEAN TOUR-DELAY AT HALBERSTADT.

In the year 1691, there resided at Frankfort on the Oder, a wealthy and learned Israelite; he had married a lady of the celebrated family of Pinto from Portugal, and had one son, Joshua Ben Abraham Esehel. Upon this only and beloved child was lavished a tenderness, the remembrance of which dwelt in his heart through the length of an adventurous and long protracted life. Happily also for its object it was a wise tenderness; their riches did not tempt them to indulge him in habits of luxury, nor their affection to loosen the restraints of good discipline and obedience. Temperance,' says Lord Bacon, 'like a cold air, braces the nerves of the soul.' Extreme indulgence in childhood, and selfindulgence in maturity in ease of any kind, weakens both the moral and intellectual faculties, injures both