"In either case the designation given to Jesus, from His residence in Nazareth, might properly be said to be in fulfilment of prophetic declarations. On the one hand, the appellation given to Him as an inhabitant of the separate and remote city,* marked Him out as the Lord's righteous servant, separate from sinners, and holy unto God while rejected by men; and as the great Antitype, first of him who was separated from his brethren,' whether as more excellent than they, or as rejected and sold by them-then of Samson, who was to be a Nazarite to God from the womb, and who was bound by his brethren and delivered into the hands of the Philistines,†—and, finally, of all those who, according to the law of Moses, consecrated themselves by the Nazaritic vow to be holy to the Lord.‡ On the other hand, as an inhabitant of the city of low bushes,' a weak twig in comparison with its neighbours, Jesus the Nazarene was signalised as not only the promised Branch, but as, in His beginnings, the lowly sprout, the tender plant, the root out of a dry ground.§

"But without attaching any other meaning to the appellation Nazarene ' than simply that of 'an inhabitant of Nazareth,' the designation has been justly thought sufficient to warrant the language of the evangelist. Nazareth was a place of so little consideration that its name is found neither in the Old Testament nor in the pages of Josephus; and of so low a character, that the question could be asked, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

* "Nazareth has been described as 'lying in a deep concealed hollow place on the top of a hill, and removed from all public thoroughfares.'”—Journal of Sac. Lit., July 1850.

"Samson, who, according to the Greek version, was to be a Nazir (Nağıp), or Naziræus (Nateipatos), was regarded by the ancient Jews as a type of the Messiah, as appears from the Targum of Jonathan (so-called) on Gen. xlix. 18 Not for the salvation of Gideon do I look, nor for the salvation of Samson do I hope; for the salvation which they wrought was but for an hour: but for thy salvation do I wait and hope.' It is added in a gloss,—' For the salvation of Messiah, the Son of David, who shall save the children of Israel, and for the great salvation of my soul.'

"Jerome says on the passage :-' Nazaræus sanctus interpretatur. Sanctum autem Dominum futurum, omnis scriptura commemorat.""

§ "Hengstenberg (Christology) thinks the place received its name from the smallness of its size,-a weak twig in contrast with a stately tree; and that it might be the more likely to do so from the people having had the symbol before their eyes in the low bushes which covered the chalk-hills in the environs; Nazareth, when compared with other cities, being just what these bushes were when compared with the stately trees which adorned other parts of the country.-Jerome, following the LXX., renders (netser) in Isa. xi. 1, by 'flos,' a flower, but says that Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, translated it a sprout, 'to shew that long after the Babylonish captivity, when none of the family of David was possessing the glory of the ancient kingdom, Mary should arise as it were from the stump, and from Mary Christ.' That Father, however, would identify the word with Nazarene. In eo loco,' he says in his Epistle to Pammachius, ubi nos legimus atque transtulimus,-Exiet virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice ejus ascendet -in Hebræo, juxta linguæ illius idioma ita scriptum est,-Exiet virga de radice Jesse, et Nazaræus de radice ejus crescet.' And in his commentary on the passage in Matthew, he adds, after what was quoted in a preceding note,-Possumus et aliter dicere, quod etiam eisdem verbis juxta Hebraicam veritatem in Esaia scriptum sit, Exiet virga de radice Jesse, et Nazaræus, de radice ejus conscendet.'

The term Nazarene' has long been used as expressive of scorn and contempt, both by Jews and Mohammedans. The Messiah, like many of His types, and more especially David, was to be at the first despised and rejected of men,'' a reproach of men and despised of the people' (Isa. liii., Ps. xxii.). Jesus was not only thus scorned and despised, but the very place appointed in the providence of God for His residence, has afforded a constant occasion of contempt; so that His enemies, while scornfully designating Him 'the Nazarene,' have been unconsciously verifying the predictions concerning Him, and thus supplying an additional evidence of His being the Christ of God. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach."

Ertracts.

Decline of Judaism.

"The observations I made during this visit were instructive and interesting in several respects. I have had occasion to make myself acquainted with the advantages the Jews in Belgium and France have derived from having been entirely emancipated. In a worldly point of view, they are great. The Jew, in these two countries, is no more shut up in a separate quarter; in the eye of the law he is not a Jew, but a Belgian, or a Frenchman; he may devote himself to any career, and may rise to the highest office in the State. In fact, that which is lawful to the Gentile is also lawful to the Jew; and I believe they are, with very few exceptions, in easy circumstances. But emancipation has well-nigh annihilated Judaism. The synagogues are empty; the rabbis without influence and without congregations; and thousands of Jews, denying their origin, have lost all nationality and love for their own country and Jerusalem. They have Gentilised their names and their manners; and, in a few years, when the census is again taken in Belgium, there will perhaps not be one who declares himself a Jew. In France, if possible, it is even worse. A Jewish French periodical says of the majority of the Jews in France, that they do not visit the synagogues, that they send their children to Gentile schools, do not have their sons circumcised, and are rarely present at any real Jewish ceremonies.' They might have added, they have their children baptized soon after they come into the world, like Adolph Cremieux, who had his son and daughter baptized by a Romish priest the morning after their birth; but he himself continues to be a Jew."-Notes of a recent Tour on the Continent, by a Jew.

The Jews in America.

"In a lecture delivered by Dr Morris J. Franklin, in Providence, on Sunday evening, and reported in the Providence Press, the speaker

"The Jews in this country now number about two hundred thousand. In New York city alone there are forty thousand. The attention of the Jews in Europe is turned towards America, on account of the persecution to which they are subjected in some countries on the Continent, and a rapid increase of their numbers here may be expected by immigration. Many Jews in this country are occupying prominent and influential positions in politics and business. Messrs Yulee and Benjamin, of the U.S. Senate, and Messrs Zollicoffer, Oliver, and Phillips, and Hart, of the National House of Representatives, are numbered among the children of Abraham. Instead of reading the Scriptures in the Hebrew tongue, understood only as the Rabbi interprets it, many now use the English version. This class have introduced many reforms into their mode of worship—they now have their choirs, their organs, and their Sabbath-schools. The Hebrew Christians, the converted Jews, in this country, number three or four hundred, and of this number nearly one hundred are engaged in preaching the gospel of Christianity, or in a course of study preparatory to doing so.'

Dr Cureton's Syriac Gospels.

"The manuscript from which the present text has been printed was obtained in the year 1842 by Archdeacon Tattam, from the Syrian monastery dedicated to St Mary Deipara, or Mother of God, in the valley of the Natron Lakes. Bound together so as to form a volume of the Four Gospels, it consisted of three ancient copies, rather confusedly arranged, with a few leaves added in a more recent hand to make up the deficiencies. The volume ends with a request that the reader will pray for the soul of the sinner who transcribed these additions, and with a statement to the effect that the whole was put together in the year of the Greeks 1533, which is equivalent to the year 1221 of the Christian era. The volume thus arranged and bound was soon found to consist of several manuscripts selected almost at hazard, and pieced together chiefly by considerations of size, so as to form a complete copy of the Four Gospels. Several other volumes from the same library were made up in a precisely similar fashion.

"The person who arranged them seems to have had no idea of collecting the scattered parts of the same original volume, which had fallen to pieces, but merely to have taken the first leaves that came to his hand, mixing in the most absurd way parts of three or four manuscripts with parts of three or four others written at different times and by different scribes.

"In rebinding the volumes after they had been deposited in the British Museum, this injury has, of course, been repaired, and the work which has now been printed consists of eighty-two leaves and a-half belonging to the original manuscript, and five others added, as it would seem, when in the year 1221 the Syrian monks indulged in their curious style of book-binding. These eighty-two leaves are of large quarto, written in a bold hand in two columns, and the learned editor who now publishes an English translation, as well as the Syriac

original, suggests that they were transcribed about the middle of the fifth century.

"When the volume first came into his hands, he says that he laid it aside among the other earliest manuscripts of the Gospels without further examination, concluding that it could not be other than an early copy of the Peshito, the Peshito version of the Syriac Gospels bearing in every part very strong evidence of translation from the Greek. On subsequently looking at the volume, however, Dr Cureton was struck by observing several erasures in the Gospel of St Matthew, and on examining the matter more closely, it appeared that the corrections supplied were taken from the Peshito, and that the passages erased, therefore, were passages in which this Syriac version differed from the Peshito. A little further examination shewed that the text of this Gospel according to St Matthew, as, indeed, of all the Gospels, is very different from that of the Peshito. Here, in short, is a Syriac version of the Gospels hitherto quite unknown in Europe.

"Many persons,' says the Times, will wonder what there can be in the least remarkable about this, and as far as the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John are concerned, perhaps the discovery is of no great importance. The great importance of the discovery depends on the fact that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written, not in Greek, but in Syriac. The Greek version, which is the basis of every translation, is itself a translation. Matthew wrote his history in that Hebrew dialect which our Saviour used. No fact relating to the history of the Gospels is more fully or satisfactorily established.'

"This evangelist wrote his Gospel for the benefit of the Jews, not in the ancient Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written, but in that Syriac or Chaldaic dialect which had been adopted after the captivity in Babylon. What has become of this original version of the Gospel according to St Matthew? That particular Syriac version which has been published under the name of the Peshito has evident reference to the Greek translation, if it is not directly rendered from it. And the question is, Have we here the original Gospel of St Matthew, or anything which we can accept as an approximation to it? The very title of it, as it appears in the manuscript, is, 'The distinct Gospel of St Matthew;' at least that is the translation which Dr Cureton gives to the Syriac title. Professor Bernstein, of Breslau, the father of Syriac scholars of the present day, asserts that the words thus translated by Dr Cureton really mean the Gospel divided into lections—that is, portions appointed to be read on certain days throughout the year— an interpretation which seems to be inapplicable to a copy where there is no such division.

"Perhaps it would be dangerous to lay too much stress on the title of the Gospel, and the learned editor chiefly calls attention to the facts regarding the formation of the Syriac canon, and the internal structure of the Syriac Gospels. He brings forward evidence to shew that the Gospels of St Mark and St Luke were translated into Syriac even before the present canonical Greek version of Matthew was in existence, and that in any case, the Syriac canon of the New Testament

cannot be referred to a later age than the second century of the Christian era,—at a time, therefore, when the original Aramaic or Hebrew Gospel of St Matthew was still to be found, and when it would have been absurd to produce a Syriac translation of the Greek version— itself translated from the Syriac.

"How the original Syriac of St Matthew came to be lost sight of is a question which must be rather puzzling to the critics, but taking into consideration the fact of the probable existence of the original Gospel of Matthew down to a very late period-down, perhaps, to the time of Jerome and comparing the version of St Matthew, which we have in the present manuscript, with the versions of the other Gospels, which are very different, and bear marks of translation not to be found in the first of the Gospels, Dr Cureton arrives at the conclusion, that in the manuscript of the Natron monastery he has discovered what we may accept as being very nearly the Aramaic original. After summing up the evidence, he says:

"Whatever conviction these arguments may bring to the mind of others, I have no hesitation in saying that they have fully satisfied my own, that this Syriac text of the Gospel of St Matthew which I now publish has to a great extent retained the identical terms and expressions which the apostle himself employed; and that we have here, in our Lord's discourses, to a great extent, the very same words as the Divine Author of our holy religion himself uttered in proclaiming the glad tidings of salvation in Hebrew dialect to those who were listening to him, and, through them, to all the world.'

The Mines of the Sinaitic Desert.

"I will now detail my proceedings since I last wrote, and I am most happy to inform you that since then I have made most interesting and important discoveries, and am able to answer all the questions contained in your letters. I have at length discovered the ancient fortress where the miners dwelt-and a most wonderful place it is, absolutely impregnable. I have made a plan of it for you, with all particulars. It is upon the mountain, exactly opposite the Caves of Magharah, the hill being almost insulated, and formed of a series of precipitous terraces, one above the other, and receding like the steps of the Pyramids. It is about 1000 feet high. My attention was first directed to the mountain by observing a long line of loose stones running down the entire slope of the hill, which I always imagined were washed down by the winter torrents, and left in that state, but upon a close examination I found it to be the remains of a gigantic wall, about twelve feet thick, the top stones of which, in the course of centuries, had fallen down and left it like a loose heap of stones. On following its course to the summit I found a flat table-land and a small hill, about seventy feet high in the centre, having also a small flat top. You may imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered the gigantic wall went all round the edge of the precipice of the first level-and on this flat surface I counted the remains of 140 houses, each about ten feet square. I discovered the remains of ancient