no vice, no cruelty, he is incapable of. His appetite for vengeance is only whetted by its gratification; and like the tiger, after tasting blood, becomes more fierce and ungovernable ! swallowed up in That the Jewish nation was a proud nation, vanity, their own literature abundantly proves; that they were and are the dupes of appearances, shadowy, aerial conceptions, having their source in national pride, no enlightened Jew will deny; and it must be admitted that their shamefully credulous ignorance, love of the marvellous, and all that flattered or soothed their fatal and most fallacious hope of universal dominion, has only been surpassed by the still more fatally credulous ignorance of the Christian world. The terms Jew and credulous man have been for ages synonymous, convertible terms, in the nations called civilized; yet have those who stigmatized them thus, as far outstripped them in credulity and the love of persecution, as the light wing of the swallow outstrips the dull and heavy plumage of the raven. That it is better to do even good with a reason than without one, has passed into a proverb; but bigots set this and all other wise maxims at defiance; and therefore it is that nine-tenths of the Christian world hate the Jews, without a reason, or caring to search for one,-unless hating a Jew because he is a Jew, can be considered a reason; for, though it is evident the prime cause why the Jews are stigmatized as an accursed race, an abomination, and a pest upon God's earth," is, their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, and the idle tale about the supposed crucifixion of the Christ; yet this harsh spirit has not been displayed towards them after an examination of their reasons for their faith, but in obedience to bigot passion. The stern and uncompromising manner in which, from the first, they rejected the fictional history of the Nazarene, was called, as all disbelief is, obstinacy and stiffneckedness; the generally credulous, but in this particular, firmly incredulous Jews, were by Christian accusers hunted over the face of the earth; treated like wild boars, held at bay by the spears of their pursuers. Their traditions were scorned; the voice of prophecy, which they believed was contained in their sacred histories, was despised and set at nought; whilst, scattered abroad by lawless authority-carried before the breath of persecution, like sand in the desert blast; despised of the nations; their name a bye-word; their untold sufferings the theme of demoniac laughter and derision-this people furnished the world's choi, cest memorial-its best proof of superstition's horrors Foul superstition! howsoever disguised— Who from true worship's gold can separate thy dross ? The Jewish writings, do not furnish finer examples of philosophy than many others called profane; but no others contain such numerous examples of humanity, seen in its various phases, and under every variety of aspect. We may regret, with Volney, that the mind of man should be enclosed within such narrow boundaries, and be obliged to content itself with what, in a universal sense, must be considered as the mere scrap of knowledge, contained in Jewish literature; but the fact, however it may be lamented, is yet a fact, that we have no histories of nations, but merely detached isolated accouuts of this or that people; which paucity of information, as regards the universal condition of humanity, fosters local and most pernicious prejudices, which a more enlarged view would speedily destroy. Hennel remarks, "It is not surprising to find in the poetic writings of the Old Testament, extravagant descriptions of a kingdom of Israel, which should cover the earth-and of a great prince, who should restore the throne of David. The beautiful anticipations which, under various forms, have existed in nearly all the nations, of the future perfection of the earth, were in the minds of the Jews blended in a peculiar manner with the hopes and fortunes of Israel; on this subject each prophet or poet indulged in his own fancies— but one prevalent notion seems to have been, that this kingdom would be established, and their final triumph over the nations effec ted-not so much by military means, in which they were obviously deficient, as by some special intervention of their protector, the God of Israel." Now, it is certainly not surprising, that a people with such strong passions, and poetically religious temperament, after ruling many nations-tasting the sweets of an almost unresisted authority for more than 800 years, should, in their decline, or after their fall, sigh for the fallen glories of Israel, and long for the "yet a little while," when the Lord of Hosts would (Haggai 2, v. 6, 7,) "shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and shake all the nations, and the desire of all nations should come, and fill the house of Israel with his glory;"-" When (Zech. 14, v. 3) the Lord should go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle;" for the vanity of nations is no less strong and inveterate, than the vanity of individuals, which is generally in the ratio of ignorance; and though it may be humiliated, it cannot be destroyed; nay, it seems to gather strength from its very weakness, and, like the struggling gladiator, whose blood flows from no mortal part, will gain a new energy with each succeeding wound, as we commonly see nations and individuals increase in pride, amid the wreck of their fortunes. It cannot, therefore, be matter of surprise, that the Jews should have cherished the hope of a Saviour, a political Messiah, who should reign over Israel, and restore their nation to its wonted lustre-which delusive idea pervades all their writings from the era of the Babylonish captivity and, as remarked by Hennell-great were their transports "when Cyrus permitted the small remnant of pure Jews to re-occupy their own land, and to re-build their temple and city, as their most extravagant hopes seemed about to be realized. A new era opened upon them, and they were in the way to take rank among the nations; and if this could be attained, out of a state of general servitude, a patriotic Jew might easily believe his nation destined in the end, to eclipse Egypt and Assyria.” The idea which to-day would seem preposterous and absurd to the nations of Europe-if fallen under the yoke of slavery—of a deliverer coming in power and glory "to (Isaiah 14, v. 2) take them captive, whose captives they were," to the Jews, who lived after the captivity, was both soothing and credible; it outraged not their idea of the possible; for with them, all things were possible to Jehovah, who could miraculously deliver his chosen people out of the hands of their enemies, and pluck them by his divine will from the furnace of affliction-a brand not consumed by the fire; for, as observed by Strauss,* " the Hebrew people, during the whole course of their political existence, never had a clear idea of history; their historic books, the most recent, those of Maccabees, for example, and even the works of Josephus, are not free from marvellous and most extravagant recitals. In fact, there are no ideas clearly historic among a people who comprehend not the indissolubility of the chain of finite causes, and the impossibility of miracles." Now, we know that all the Jewish books abound in recitals, which, if strictly true, were clearly miraculous, thus breaking to pieces the chain of finite causes; which impossible things were firmly believed in, before and after the decline of Jewish authority; but * Introduction to The Life of Jesus. such crude and idle tales were never so anxiously welcomed, or devoured with such avidity, as after the captivity; for then, as it was natural with a vainglorious, credulous, and superstitious multitude, everything that strengthened the prevailing idea that the temple should be re-built with more than its ancient splendor, by the appearance of an earthly king, who should make (Haggai 1, v. 9) "the glory of the latter house greater than of the former," was held as true by a people who had "no ideas clearly historic ;' whose limited intelligence permitted them not to see "the impossibility of miracles." The Jews seem rather to have been corrupted than improved by their bondage in Babylon; for, before their intercourse with the Mother of Harlots, they seem to have held much juster notions of things, than after; for, before the captivity, we hear nothing about the nature of Gods, nor the idea of the immortality of the soul; which dogmas the Jews evidently picked up in Babylon, without fully comprehending them, that is, they did not grasp the precise ideas held on such subjects by the ancient philosophers and mystics of the East. The Bible wears evident marks of the liberties taken with it subsequent to that era; for the posterior Jews, infected with Gnosticism, wished, and did not fail to incorporate their mystical jargon with the anterior history. The devil is the property of the modern Jews; for those who lived prior to the captivity, believed neither in a devil, nor have we reason to believe they had any conception that the soul was immortal. The soul was supposed to perish with the body; or, rather, the soul or vital manifestations were supposed to be matter, in the performance of its functions; or, viewed in its various relations and conditions, merely a modification of the eternally active power inherent in matter. Their opinions upon matter and spirit seemed, in fact, the exact counterpart of those held by the learned among the ancient Egyptians, who, according to Aristotle, thought matter the first principle of all things, and that the present forms arose out of an eternal chaos, which, prior to creation, contained in a state of darkness, all the materials of future beings; which is not a hairsbreadth from the opinions of the famous Spinosa, who held that the soul, or thinking principle, in man and brutes, was but an attribute of the sole substance called matter, which eternally produces endless combinations of itself; while the more modern and hardly less famous Dr. Priestly, in his work on Matter and Spirit, shews that the last line of the text (Gen. 2, v. 19) " And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them, and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof;" should run thus, " And whatsoever Adam called every living soul," &c. : the Hebrew, interpreted by textual doctors, creature, really meaning soul, that is, substance performing its functions: hence the expressions, "and man became a living soul; they slew a hundred thousand souls; they left not a soul to breathe," &c.; and it is only after the captivity we hear of devils, angels, and souls, distinct from substance. It is true, we find in 1st Chron. 21, v. 1, that "Satan stood up. against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel;" which is the first time the name Satan appears in the Old Testament. As justly observed by a modern writer,* "The absence of this personage from the writings prior to the captivity, seems to prove that the Jews, in their intercourse with the Babylonians, imbibed a part of their theology, which inculcated the existence of two principles, under the names of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes. It is evident that the author of the Chronicles attributes to the bad spirit the act which the author of Samuel attributes to the good; for, in 2nd Sam. 24, v. 1, we read, 'And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.' The writer in the Chronicles was doubtless scandalised at the Deity punishing a sin which he had just before provoked David to commit." The same writer adds, “The word in Psalm 9, v. 6, need not be interpreted of any malignant spirit, but it may stand for adversary generally. The date of Job, where the word occurs three or four times, is unknown." With their knowledge of the dogma of immortal souls, the Jews got the first glimpse of the Devil; so, taking the two together, it is exceedingly doubtful whether they were much the gainers thereby; but the fact is established, that the old Jews had no notion either of the Devil or the immortality of the soul, till the mystical philosophers, called Gnostics, taught them their sublime dreamery and devilry, some five or six hundred years before the Christian era; and it appears from Mosheim, that their mystical philosophy created much evil about the time that it, to him, appeared most probable the Saviour appeared; for he observes, "no philosophy was so de • See article Old Testament, in Christian Reformer, No. 44. 1837. |