natural claims, it was not unreasonable to think, that underneath the ruins of their civil and religious Polity, were hid treasures both of wisdom and knowledge, which would amply reward the labour bestowed on their investigation. The peculiar character of the people, their separate and distinct existence, the firmness with which they had always clung to every national usage, and the obstinacy with which they had resisted the influence of the world: all these facts might have justified the expectation that traditional knowledge would have preserved among the Jews, many memorials of early history, many important moral truths, many valuable illustrations of Scripture; and might have led men to anticipate the opening of a new stream of light for themselves in free and confidential intercourse with the Jewish people.

We must perhaps admit that experience does not prove that these anticipations were just. The labour that has been bestowed on the theology of Judaism; the diligence with which the rabbinical writings have been explored and investigated, has been, to speak generally, in vain. Little has been found where much was expected; and the little that has been found, has been so entangled by the perverse ingenuity of their minds, that its application is neither easy nor certain. The readers of Lightfoot, whose efforts in this line are the most obvious, are dazzled by discoveries which are more specious than real. Illustrations are suggested which on trial disappoint expectation; and the chief satisfaction derived from the study of Lightfoot's volumes, is the assurance, that much cannot be learnt, where so much industry has brought to light so little that is useful.

The present volume will probably strengthen the conviction which had been previously formed. The man who approaches these records of modern Judaism, with the hope that he shall discover the gold or the silver of the tabernacle, buried in the ruins of the Temple, or built into the fabric

of the Synagogue, will be grievously disappointed. The mantle of the Prophets has not fallen on their countrymen ; and the withdrawal of the gift of inspiration is signalized and made more manifest, by the change of all that used to command respect and veneration in their written records. Sampson when shorne of that in which his great strength lay, when blinded and set to grind in the mill, did not differ so much from the Sampson who wrought wonders in Israel, and turned to flight the armies of aliens, as the writings of the later Jews differ from those of their inspired fathers. If any resemblance can be traced, it is that which is caused by servile imitation; or if there are passages which bear the mark of Jewish intellect, and seem capable of proving its identity with that which we have studied and admired in the Old Testament Scriptures, we are compelled to feel, that we only meet with the Jewish mind in dotage, when we study it in Judaism.

But though the present volume offers little to reward the reader in the way of direct instruction; and is calculated rather to satisfy curiosity by information, than to add to the knowledge of truth; there is an indirect lesson to be derived from it of the highest importance; and truths may be learnt from the disappointment of expectation, which under God's blessing will be most beneficial to the Christian reader. The object of this little volume is to exhibit Judaism in its present aspect; to shew us what are the reliances of the modern Jews; the grounds on which they hope for present favour and future mercy; and the views they entertain of the divine will towards man. To us, who know what their former hopes and confidences were; who are familiar with those Scriptures which were originally revealed for their instruction; and who know the use and purpose to which they were applied; the first impression which the book produces must be wonder at the degradation which the people has undergone, and at the debasement of their mind and feelings.

We stand lost in astonishment at the blindness which has happened to Israel; and are led to ask ourselves, how it was possible, that a nation which possessed the Scriptures, and recognized the authority of Scripture, could have wandered so far from the plain meaning of Scripture, or sunk so far below the tone and the standard of truth.

A fact of such importance ought not to be passed over without attention, or to be dismissed without reflection, and as it seems possible to deduce from this humiliating and painful picture of the Jewish mind, inferences that may be profitable to the Christian world at present, a few words may be given to the consideration of the causes which have produced this state of things, and led to this general prostration of moral and intellectual power.

At the period when we last catch sight of the Jewish people in the Gospel narrative, their character seems in a special degree to have been carnal mindedness. The dulness of their minds, the grossness of their views, their inaptitude for all spiritual representations, and their proneness to admit all low and fleshly explanations that could be imagined, are the continued subjects of reproof from our Lord and His apostles. Their dislike of all the peculiar blessedness of the Gospel scheme, led to that bitter hatred with which they rejected His offers, and those of the first evangelists; and the Scripture narrative offers no hope that any change had been effected on the people by the evidence of power and of truth which followed His ascension.

If we separate the Jewish character from the circumstances by which the nation was surrounded, and speculate on the manner in which such a mind would act on such means as were possessed by them, the event does not seem to differ widely from that which we might have expected; nor are the errors of Judaism anything more than the natural growth of minds and tempers such as theirs, when placed in similar circumstances. It seems possible therefore, ar

guing from what we see in them; it seems possible that the Scriptures may be possessed and read; and still may be read in such a manner, and turned to such a purpose by the reader, that the mind instead of being enlightened by what is read, and made wise unto salvation by what is learnt, shall be perplexed and lost in the intricacy of a way which needs a guide in order to be properly understood; and which, clear as daylight itself to some, shall be darkness visible to others. "The light of the body," said our blessed Lord, "is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness !" Mat. vi. 22, 23.

Nor is this example inapplicable to the state of things among ourselves at present, and to the error which prevails where acquaintance with Scripture language is often mistaken for religion; and men assume as certain that they know the truth, without having considered in what sense, or in what degree the truth has made them free.

But a still more affecting remark is forced upon us, when we see the tendency that there is in man to draw from Scripture, comments or conclusions of his own, and to substitute these for the simpler original; teaching for doctrines the traditions of men. In no case has this been more remarkably instanced than in the Jews, and in none has the effect of the practice been more pernicious. The isolated character of the people which shut them out from any indirect or collateral illumination, left them to suffer the full consequences of their error, when they thus began to deal deceitfully with the written word; and the state, to which they have been reduced, the mental bondage under which they have been groaning, and which has held all their powers in subjection, proves the magnitude as well as the pernicious character of the influence which has been exercised upon them by tradition.

There was a period in the History of the Christian Church, when the Schoolmen exercised the same species of dominion in Europe, which the Talmudists have possessed on Judaism; and corresponding effects were at that time produced. The gracious providence of God ordained a check for this delusion in our case: and the collision of mind which grew out of the state of Society, and the political divisions of Christendom, became the means of a general awakening and eventually led to the Reformation.-But with the Jews there was no remedial process of this sort in existence.— Separated from intercourse with other nations; shut up within the limits of their own prejudices, they had no means of escaping from the bondage which the Talmudical writers had imposed; and every year that passed rivetted the chains by which they were held in slavery. But the mind itself suffers by the restraint which is imposed on its operations, just as the body is stinted of its fair proportions, if not allowed to expand itself freely, and to yield to the tendency of growth; and the intellect of a people may be so affected by the arbitrary limits placed on public education, that it shall either sink into weakness, or else shall be found to waste its strength in laborious triflings and unprofitable acuteness.

The Volume before us exhibits a painful but instructive instance of this sort of effect. We see here the wisdom of that people, which was once the source of light to mankind, occupied about such observances as that of Phylacteries, and accumulating such a mass of trifles as the Six Hundred and Thirteen Precepts. We may say, in contemplating such a spectacle, Lord, what is man! and we must turn away humbled and confounded by this exhibition of human weakness; but we must not neglect to mark the cause which has produced this degradation, and to watch against its operation on ourselves. It would indeed appear as if the Jewish people was ordained under every dispensation to offer examples to others; exhibitions of the goodness of God or