There mine ear some organ tranceth, Rippling streamlets murmur'd round me, Thence methought I saw the ocean, Lo! the eagle's path outvying, Whose these barks, thus gaily speeding ?- O'er the deep blue sea they ride. Who are these, their course arraying?— Then methought, that scene excelling, Stately grove, and statelier dwelling, ད་ There, too, many a cross-crown'd steeple, Tells of Eucharistic rite ; Tells where Israel's band outpoureth Grief's sad tears, now evanescent. While bright Hope with inspiration Streweth roses thro' the dale. Dropping down the vine-clad mountains Fall thou Sun from high, confounded For the Mighty Lord of Heaven, W. W. W. LONDON: Printed at the Operative Jewish Converts' Institution - Palestine Place, Bethnal Green. THE JEWISH ADVOCATE. OCTOBER, 1854. SHORT SERMONS ON JEWISH SUBJECTS. No. V. "As I prophesied there was a noise, and, behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone."-EZEKIEL XXxvii. 7. THE scattered and dry bones in the valley of vision were a striking representation of the national and spiritual condition of the Jewish nation. Scattered over the whole world, they might well exclaim, "Our bones are dry, our hope is lost." Century after century passed away, and they seemed to be still the same. They found no home, no resting-place amongst the nations, and their minds ever occupied with their sorrows, and necessarily devoted to the acquisition of wealth, as a means of purchasing some relief from the cruelty of their oppressors, they remained, as a body, without mental life, and without any movement, as it regards religion. The traditions of their fathers, and the maxims and precepts of their learned rabbies, were received and submitted to without enquiry. The Caraites alone rejected these, and held to the Word of God; but they were not numerous, and the great majority of the nation continued as their fathers had been, without enquiry, and destitute of mental and spiritual life. The present state of the Jews forms a contrast to this. We find them moved by some powerful influence, and shaking off the death of ages, taking their part side by side with their Gentile brethren in the general mental progress of our times, and, even in religious matters, showing a restless, unsatisfied, enquiring spirit, which illustrates the prophet's expression: Behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone." 66 It is not our purpose now to dwell upon the altered condition of the Jews as a nation, either in respect to their social freedom, or their mental progress. We rejoice to hear of, its vast improvement, but we have other higher and more solemn and touching themes. We have to speak of their religious state, of the shaking amongst the dry bones, which we hope is the forerunner of a bright day of life and gladness to the long dead and scattered remnant of this wonderful people. In the religious movement to which we are about to refer, there is much to lament. It shews us one of the deadly evils of superstition, and of submission to human traditions, as if their teaching were divine. When the mind is convinced of the falsehood of these, and throws them away, it often, because not taught to distinguish between God's Word and man's inventions, rejects truth as well as error, and refuses to receive anything under the name of religion, but that which reason discovers, and the unsanctified intellect of unregenerate men approves. Thus it has happened that many of the Jews have become infidels, rejecting Moses and the prophets, as well as the traditions of the rabbies; yet we hope and believe that by far the greater number of those amongst whom this movement is taking place, whilst they cast away that which is merely human and opposed to God's revelation, hold fast the profession of their faith in Moses and the Prophets. The representation which we gave, on a former occasion, of the religion of the Jews, and of their acknowledgment of the divine origin of the oral law, was true of them almost universally; but now, almost everywhere, there is a great change. In Germany great numbers have become Reformers. They pray in German, not in Hebrew; they cast away the oral law, and too many amongst them, in effect, deny the written law. They seek to destroy Judaism, yet offer nothing better in its place, but a cold, withering scepticism, for the long cherished, though in many respects erroneous, hopes of their nation. These Reformers omit in their prayers all reference to a Messiah, and all hopes of national restoration. They are to the Old Testament what the men of "new light" in Germany are to the New, cankerworms, eating out all life, and setting aside, in their exaltation of the human understanding, all that distinguishes the Bible as God's Word, and reducing its writers to the rank of uninspired, though sagacious, men. This evil is, we fear, spreading. The pride of the heart favours it, and the unbridled freedom of thought which it gives, leads us to fear that much evil will follow, and that many of the sons of Israel, laying aside the hopes of ages as things belonging to the past, will be ready to say, "We |