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Jerusalem Bishop must be an ordained minister of the English Episcopal Church; and Gobat was eligible in this respect, too, having received episcopal ordination, not indeed as a missionary, but in order to qualify him for his important office as Superintendent of the Maltese Seminary, already alluded to. An extensive and familiar knowledge of Oriental habits and languages, more especially with those of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Abyssinia, as well as his acquintance and connexion with the newly-formed Maltese Institution, were distinguished advantages recommendatory of Gobat, above most others, who might have been thought eligible to the bishopric ; and his final election, despite the published protest of the Bishop of Exeter, and the more private one of Dr. Pusey and others of his school, is the more honorable to the leaders of the English Episcopacy, inasmuch as they were well aware that Gobat, far from recognising the Church of England as the sole, Scriptural Church upon earth, long declined receiving her ordination; declaring openly, I respect it, and will accept it, so soon as it will promote and further the success of my labours, but not before.' Nor should a similar tribute of approbation be withholden from Chevalier Bunsen. For this enlightened statesman well knew Gobat to be no sanguine admirer of the new bishopric; that he expected little from it as a mere institution; and that, so far from regarding it in the narrow spirit, cherished in some quarters, he would assuredly employ the high post, if intrusted to him, to assist and protect the Gospel labourers, of whatever communion, within his diocese.-Indeed, such enlarged and Christian views can alone

render the Jerusalem Episcopate that which it ought to be,-a Protestant Patriarchate.

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"On passing through to his high and difficult sphere of future duty, Bishop Gobat spent a short time in Berlin; where, on the evening of Sunday, the 26th July, he preached a sermon, in the Hall of the Jewish Mission House, from Isaiah xii. 1-6. The discourse was animated and hopefraught; becoming one imbued with the spirit of the truth, If God be for us, who can be against us? If God have promised, who can annul it?' At the conclusion, he gave a slight sketch of his life and education. Respecting the latter, his words were at once memorable and characteristic. He said, that he felt himself, by the call which God had given him, through the instrumentality of the Prussian monarch, placed in special relationship with the German Evangelical Church, and particularly with all in it who feel a lively interest for the cause of God, and desired therefore to direct their attention to that Divine Providence, which had, unknown to himself, trained him, in various ways, for his new vocation. My education did not,' said he, take place in universities, but in caves of robbers; in the desert, and among wild beasts of the earth; and the means chosen and blessed by God were not books, but sicknesses, by which I was brought to recognise His grace, His power, and His wisdom.'

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"Protestant Switzerland has been highly honoured in having given birth to one who, without relinquishing, or even compromising, his Evangelical liberty of thought, has been placed by the free choice of England and Prussia, amongst Ecclesiastical Princes, and elevated as a Pharos of Divine guidance in the midst of the

idolatries of that once hallowed, but now apostate and forsaken, land."

STONING JEWS IN LENT.

THE season called LENT has just passed away, and the Church of Christ has been commemorating the suffering unto death, and the triumph of her great Lord.

On Good-Friday, the day when the forefathers of the Jews, caused the death of Jesus, our Church prays for the conversion of that people, and in so doing teaches us, her children, to look forward to the fulfilment of the Divine promises, in their being brought into the true fold, under the One True Shepherd, JESUS CHRIST.

Our forefathers were accustomed to treat them very differently, and one of their amusements was, to throw stones at the Jews in Lent. We copy the following account from the "EveryDay Book:"

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From the Sabbath before Palm-Sunday, to the last hour of Tuesday after Easter, the Christians were accustomed to stone and beat the Jews,' and all Jews who desired to exempt themselves from the infliction of this cruelty commuted for a payment in money. It was likewise ordained in one of the Catholic services, during Lent, that all orders of men should be prayed for, except the Jews. These usages were instituted and justified by a dreadful perversion of Scripture, when rite and ceremony triumphed over truth and mercy. Humanity was dead, for superstition had Molechized the heart.

"From the dispersion of the Jews, they had

lived peaceably in all nations towards all, and in all nations had been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and put to death, or massacred by mobs. In England, kings conspired with their subjects to oppress them. To say nothing of the well-known persecutions they endured under King John, the walls of London were repaired with the stones of their dwellings, which his Barons had pillaged and destroyed. Until the reign of Henry II., a spot of ground near Red Cross-street, in London,* was the only place in all England wherein they were allowed to bury their dead.

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In 1262, after the citizens of London broke into their houses, plundered their property, and murdered seven hundred of them in cold blood; King Henry III. gave their ruined synagogue, in Lothbury, to the Friars, called The Fathers of the Sackcloth.'

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"The church of St. Olave, in the Old Jewry, was another of their synagogues, till they were dispossessed of it. Were the sufferings they endured to be recounted we should shudder. Our old English ancestors would have laughed any one to derision, who urged in aJew's behalf, that he had eyes,' or 'hands,' organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;' or that he was fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heated by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is.' They would have deemed a man mad, had one been found with a desire to prove that

The poor Jew,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a Christian dies.

* Jewin Street stands there now.

"To say nothing of their more obvious sufferings for many centuries, the tide of public opinion raged against the Jews vehemently, and incessantly. They were addressed with sneers and contumely; the finger of vulgar scorn was pointed at them; they were hunted through the streets in open day, and when protected from the extremity of violence, it was with tones and looks denoting that only a little lower hate sanctuaried their persons. In conversation and in books they were a by-word, and a jest.”

"Thank God," should we not say?"that we live in better days." Yet, still how little of earnestness is manifested in the highest good of the Jews, compared with the once general aversion and active hatred of that people. If God has cast our lot in better days, he has also laid upon us greater responsibilities; and if He has shewn us a more excellent way, it is that we should walk therein.

BIBLE HISTORY OF THE JEWS.

CHAPTER LII.

THE kingdom had long been afflicted by a famine, in consequence of their rejection of the true religion, but when they saw the priests of Baal destroyed by the Prophet of Jehovah, they consented to put away their idolatry, and therefore the Lord intimated that He would remove the calamity with which He had visited them. He had deprived them of rain, and consequently afflicted them with a famine on account of their disobedience, for the Lord our God is a jealous God, and they who refuse to serve Him in the

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