Record of Christian Effort for the Salvation of Israel.

"For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth."-Is. Ixii. 1.

"Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth."-Is. lxii. 6, 7. "Publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel."-Jer. xxxi. 7.

THE BRITISH SOCIETY'S

Christian Home and Orphanage for Jews,

LEYTON, ESSEX,

SUPERINTENDENT, DR. KOPPEL, WILL BE OPENED (D.V.) BY A PUBLIC DEVOTIONAL SERVICE,

AT THREE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON OF

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th,

Instead of the day announced in the last number of this Journal. TEA will be provided, after the Meeting, at half-past Four, and it is earnestly hoped that all the friends of the Society, who can make it convenient, will be present on the occasion.

CONTRIBUTIONS of money, clothes, and books, will be most thankfully received at the Rooms of the British Society, 96, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London.

NO. XIV.

JOHN GILL, Secretary.

D

34

THE JEWISH HERALD.

1870.

3 Sermon in the Jewish Oxford.

"FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO," we heard uttered in the presence of two hundred sons of the circumcision, who were listening with deep emotion to this prayer on their behalf from the dying agonies of Him whom their fathers nailed to the tree. It was in their Oxford, in the city of Prague, once famed for its Rabbinical lore, and still boasting nine synagogues. The Jews shrink from Rome with her idols; they dislike the cross, and still more the crucifix; but the Book and the Cup seemed not to scare them from the house of God; and of all ranks and ages, mostly men, they gathered to hear one of their own brethren preach to them Jesus as the only "name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” The preacher, Abraham (brother to the late well-known Ridley) Herschell, addressed them from the words "My brethren, my kinsmen, whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." He spoke of Israel the most privileged of all nations, not for their own sake, for they were both few in number and hard in heart, but for the world's sake, that in the seed of Abraham "all the families of the earth might be blessed"; and of this promise having been fulfilled in no sense except though the gospel, and in no man except in Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest both of all Jews and of all men, whose brief ministry of three years and a-half had changed the whole history of the world.

Throughout the sermon the congregation were riveted, not in anger, not in sorrow, not in conviction, but with their whole faculties absorbed, and in some of them with an interest so intense as if their eyes would literally leap from their sockets to pierce the preacher's inmost thoughts. But when he passed from the life of Jesus to his death, from Galilee to Calvary, the tenderness of deep feeling filled the assembly; and when, with much fervour, he repeated Christ's dying prayer, "FATHER FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO, a thrill of emotion ran throughout those sons of Judah; and we could have thought for the moment that they would choose their Messiah's blessing instead of their fathers' curse.

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One view more the preacher in closing ventured briefly to open. Life is precious to the Jew; suicide is seldom known among them; the dread of death is deep and universal. To this fear he tenderly appealed, shewed them how triumphantly it was taken away in Christ, and ended with the words, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law: but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Many of them had stood during the whole sermon; none had left; and now a loud murmur of earnest remark ran from mouth to mouth, remind

ing us vividly of the scene at Rome after Paul's discourse, when the Jews departed and had great reasoning among themselves."

L

That sermon alone seemed an ample reward for all the distance we had travelled, and more than confirmed what we had both heard and seen elsewhere, that the Jews will readily come to hear a stranger. When we were in Pesth, twenty-five Jews (unconverted) came to hear an English sermon. In Bohemia we saw several times the readiness of the Jews to mingle with our little congregations; in one assembly of fifty, nearly all were Roman Catholics, two were Protestants, and four were Jews. The Rabbi of a Jewish village had given the synagogue to the Prussian soldiers for Protestant worship; we were told that if we asked he would probably give the use of it again; and we now hear that the Jews are shewing favour to a new Protestant place of meeting. A hall for worship recently opened in one of the towns was specially interesting as the scene of the brief labours of Mr Spoudill, who had studied here for a year. There are 800 Jews in the town, and his mingled tenderness and zeal were singularly fitted to win them; but it has rather pleased the Lord to take him home into Abraham's bosom, to be succeeded, we trust, by another, who may reap where he had just begun to sow. In the town where Mr Dusek, another of our students in Scotland, has been labouring for a year, there are 2,000 Jews, a number of whom come to listen when they expect the text to be taken from the Old Testament.

From what we saw for ourselves, we were thoroughly satisfied that, however far the Jews may be from conversion to Christ, they are at present in many places not hard of access for the preaching of the gospel. There are two requisites for conversion and no more, the Word and the Spirit. When they have the gospel and hear it, these two are reduced to one; the Spirit alone is needed, and the Spirit is promised to prayer. A preacher sent to our various stations from time to time for one or two Sabbaths would be sure to attract a large congregation of Jews, and would, by the blessing of God, communicate an impulse to be followed by our stated missionaries. If we had the means, the men are not wanting for such a work. In Prague we need also schools as in Pesth, and converted Jews as assistant missionaries. Will our church withhold the means?

At Constantinople, along with suffering for the sake of Jesus, there is now a song of joy and salvation, because, before this notice is printed, three Israelites, in whom our Missionary has the fullest confidence, will have been baptized on one Sabbath in the name of Jesus.

At Pesth the new Mission buildings are now opened, and every visitor only wishes that our whole church could see with their own eyes the hundreds of children, boys and girls, so singularly intelligent in the gospel, and so ready to drink in its spirit as well as to learn its letter. Bohemia is a land of martyrs, and a land full of Jews. The souls of Christ's slaughtered witnesses for five hundred years are now rising from the dead, from the scaffolds, from the mines, from the battle-fields; and why

should not the Jews at such a time share in the national blessing, and awake also out of their long sleep? On the other hand, the last drops of the blood that has rested on Israel for eighteen hundred years are hasting to be conveyed from Jerusalem to Rome. The downfall of Antichrist and the ingathering of Israel have always been expected as events nearly synchronous. Rome is now "exalting her gate," and so "seeking destruction;" the blood of all the saints from Abel to our blessed Lord came down upon Jerusalem: but when "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, in her will be found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." When Rome shall have finally crucified Christ afresh, and taken his blood upon herself, the blood of sprinkling will speak for Zion better things than that of Abel, and her sins and iniquities will be remembered no more. Let us arise and prepare her people to meet their God returning to her in mercy, and betrothing her again in everlasting loving kindness.

Our church is anew requested to pray for the Jews on their Sabbath, on Friday evening or Saturday Morning: a prayer which gathers force year by year with the increasing number who have some New Testament light in reading the Old.

A. MOODY STUART,
Convener.

P. S.-Before finishing these lines a gentleman, who declined to give his name, has placed £20 in my hands for the Jews, a fair first-fruit of our collection.—Missionary Notice of the Free Church of Scotland.

North Africa.

THE Rev. A. Benoliel, for many years a devoted Missionary of the British Society in Oran, having accepted an appointment in Spain, under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church in Scotland, the Committee of the British Society commend him, with cordial esteem, to the gracious care and blessing of the God of Israel.

They are glad, at the same time, to announce that the work of evangelization among the Jews in Oran will be carried on by the Rev. J. Lowitz, who will visit that city at frequent intervals, from his present station in Algiers,

1870.

Antiquarian Discovery in Moab.

A letter from Jerusalem, published in the Journal Officiel, gives the following account of a remarkable archaeological discovery, made by M. Clermont Ganneau, dragoman to the consulate of France, in that city. The object is a great block of basalt, found to the eastward of the Dead Sea, in the territory of the Ancient Moabites. Upon this block is engraven an inscription some thirty lines in length, in Phoenician characters, commencing with these words "I, Mesa, son of Chamos.” Mesa was a Moabitish king, who is mentioned in the Bible as contemporary with the prophet Elisha, with Jehoshaphat, king of Judea, and Ahab, Ahaziah, and Jehoram, kings of Israel. The third and fourth chapters of the second book of Kings give a detailed recital of the campaign undertaken in concert by Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, against Mesa, king of Moab. The inscription upon the stone also refers to the struggle of Mesa against the king of Israel, and enumerates the towns built and the temples erected by Mesa, and dedicated by him to the national deity of the Moabites-Chamos. The age of this monument is determined by the agreement of its statements with Jewish History; it dates nine centuries before the Christian era, and is nearly a century later than the reign of Solomon. It is nearly two centuries earlier than the famous Sarcophagus of Ashmanezer, king of Sidon.* The Phoenician characters of the inscription present some archaic features not to be found, in the same degree, in any of the Phoenician monuments hitherto known. The inscription, however, is decipherable with almost absolute certainty, as each word is separated by a point, and all the sentences are divided by vertical lines. The language is, with some slight orthographic variations, pure Hebrew. This valuable inscription, which enables us to bring a document contemporary with the events to which it refers into relation with the historical recitals of the Bible, has been forwarded by M. Clermont Ganneau to the Académie des Inscriptions, together with a dissertation which will be immediately published.-The Times.

*The following account of this Sarcophagus is given in Dr. Alexander's Edition of Kitto's Biblical Cyclopædia:-"On the 19th of January, 1855, one of the many sepulchral caves near the city (Saida) was opened by chance, and there was discovered in it a sarcophagus of black syenite, the lid of which represented the form of a mummy with the uncovered face of a man: evidently of Egyptian workmanship. Twenty-two lines of Phoenician writing were found engraved upon the chest of the royal personageKing Ashmanezer II.—whom it represents. A smaller, abbreviated, inscription runs round the neck. The age of this monument, now in the Louvre, has variously been conjectured as of the 11th century B.C. (Ewald)—which is unquestionably wrong— further as of the 7th, 6th, or 4th respectively, by Hitzig, the Duc de Luynes, Levy, and others. The inscriptions contain principally a solemn injunction, or rather an adjuration, not to disturb the Royal remains. Besides this there is an enumeration of the temples erected by the defunct in honour of the gods."-ED. J. H.