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and as education, founded upon the true knowledge of God, progresses, all vices that now deface human society will be removed from both Jew and Gentile.

ADDENDUM.

SOURCES OF MODERN JUDAISM.

[WE have avoided in this little volume, for several reasons, the attempt to discuss the sources, the various duties, ceremonies, &c., of Judaism, so that we might insert the following Essay by Professor Hurwitz, on the character and merit of the uninspired Ancient Hebrew Literature generally; which contains the ablest, as well as the most charitable review of the subject with which we are acquainted.]

That the accents of truth lose their effect from the lips of indigence—that the poor man, "charm he ever so wisely," is destined to find his wisdom unnoticed and his counsels disregarded, or else accredited to some minion of fortune, in all but rank and wealth immeasurably his inferior-is a complaint repeated like an echo from generation to generation by poets, moralists, and biographers, of every age and country. Nevertheless, could the complaint be said to have proceeded exclusively from the unprosperous votaries of

science and literature, if the needy and unfortunate were our only authorities for its justice, it might perhaps not unplausibly be attributed to the natural querulousness of distress, aggravated by the impatience that is believed to characterise the "genus irritabile vatum." But what when a monarch, scarcely less renowned for his' prosperity than for his pre-eminent learning and wisdom, vouches for the truth of the charge? Under what pretext can we reject it as groundless, when we have it recorded as a fact, and generalised as a maxim, by one whose intellect an especial ray from heaven had enlightened and enlarged? by the man who, having sought for wisdom, received it in full measure, with all the glories of this world as its unsolicited accompaniments? So, however, it is. The wisest of men, who to the more precious treasures of knowledge added wealth, empire, and tranquillity-the highly-favoured king and sage, to whom alone among the children of men were vouchsafed glory without danger, honour without conflict, and fame for which no tear was shed-he it is who, still speaking to us in the Sacred Scriptures, says :-" This advantage of wisdom have I also observed under the sun, and found it of great importance. Against a small city, the inhabitants of which were but few, there came a great king who besieged it, and surrounded it with bulwarks. Now there happened to be in it a poor wise man, who alone, by his wisdom, delivered the city, yet no one ever remembered that poor man. I hence concluded that wisdom is better than strength, notwithstanding that the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard; whereas the words of the

wise, so mild, ought rather to be attended to than the loud noise of him who rules over fools ” (Eccles. ix).

The same truth, and a similar lesson, grounded on facts of the same import, are not obscurely intimated even in pagan mythology. Minerva, the emblem of influencive and commanding wisdom, is still represented with a golden belt, to show that they who would instruct mankind must commence by attracting them; or that wisdom, in its own form and essence, is but a feeble magnet for the sensualised many, and needs the lure of outward embellishment to bring them within the sphere of its influence. In the like spirit, the mythologists bestowed on her a shield and a spear, as not less necessary for her own defence, than useful for the protection of her votaries; and thus to indicate that even celestial truth can make but few and scanty conquests, if it have not worldly power and dominion for its pioneer and ally.

For it is not in the instance of individuals only that merit is obscured by adversity. The same prejudice equally affects the collective wisdom of nations, which is admitted and admired no longer than the respective states flourish. Sages may still arise to tend the sacred lamps of knowledge and science, but their light shines in a cavern, no longer beheld from afar. The literary celebrity of a people perishes, or at least closes, with the power and independence of the state: and in no nation has this truth been more strongly exemplified than in the unhappy descendants of Israel.

This nation, by universal admission, one of the most ancient on the face of the globe, that amidst the most dreadful calamities, and under the most grinding oppressions, has still preserved its nationality—a nation which

was already in possession of some of the most useful arts and sciences, when those to whom their invention is generally ascribed were either immersed in barbarity, or just emerging from it—a nation that can boast of so many valiant kings, so many heroes, so many learned men, and of so noble an origin-and, above all, a nation whose sacred writings have conferred such solid and lasting benefits on all those that have perused them with due attention, and which writings still continue to give consolation to millions of the human race-this nation was no sooner vanquished and driven from the land of its forefathers, than its wisdom and learning became equally despised.

True it is, that by one of those mysterious ways of Providence which the human mind cannot fathom, it was so ordained, that notwithstanding the injusticenay, I might say, the ingratitude-of Israel's oppressors, those transcendant truths which the most important of their records contain should not be lost, nor remain unknown to the most civilised parts of the world. The sacred volumes were translated, read, and admired. As for the rest of Jewish learning, much of it was involved in the general ruin; and that portion of it which is still locked up in their ancient books, known by the names of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, Tosephtos, Siphri, Medrashim, and in many other works of equal antiquity, was for ages solely confined to the Jews, who not only held, as it was fit and natural they should, these writings-"the stars of the evening twilight of their race "-in reverential esteem, but regarded them with a veneration bordering upon superstition. To them this uninspired portion of their ancient literature became

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