Christian profession can be established to have been a lie, is a blur upon his people, and must naturally reflect shame upon all. It confirms former suspicions, however unjust we know them to be; it undermines confidence in the race, and instead of being matter for triumphant exultation and parade before the public, it should, we might expect, be cause of sorrow and shame to all. My brother may be mistaken-I may lament and seek to prevent his fall; but to blazon abroad and to try to convince the world that a large number of the members of my family are ready to sell their conscience, and for the sake of the filthiest of lucre to make merchandise of what is highest and holiest, is surely, if not utter heartlessness, at least a fatal blindness to my own honour and that of my family. But enough of this; we shall have again briefly to revert to it before we lay down our pen.

*

The positions which our readers will remember we not long ago attempted to establish, may be summed up in two statements: Modern Judaism is an anachronism and an impossibility; Christianity is the only legitimate development of the Old Testament religion. These two conclusions are established by history, and capable of abundant proof. We have attentively, repeatedly, and we hope calmly, perused the reply offered to our remarks by the able editor of the Jewish Chronicle. But, however readily we acknowledge the candour and courtesy of his tone and the general ability of his articles, the great questions, which we had raised, have-at least, in our opinion— been as yet left untouched. We shall not deviate from the path which we had originally marked out for ourselves, nor, however tempting the occasion, be betrayed into discussion. In the course of our remarks on Miss Aguilar's writings abundant opportunity will occur for expressing our views. Meantime to resume the thread of our last article, we may in a few sentences run over the points to which the Jewish Chronicle has adverted. Modern Judaism has not vitality, it has not a mission. Who that has read the sentence pronounced on it by the last eighteen centuries can doubt it? We have never asserted that the Jews, as a nation, have no mission in the future; on the contrary, we have attempted to distinguish between the effeet system of Judaism and the living people, preserved, we believe, for a high and holy purpose. What in the Synagogue lives and operates on the world is not Jewish, and what is Jewish does not live nor operate. To say that it is the mission of Judaism to follow Christianity and Mohammedanism in their course through the world, in order to testify against the heathen

Art. "Modern Judaism."-ECLECTIC REVIEW, October, 1857.

elements in these creeds, to bear witness by suffering, and to preserve the Hebrew language, is not to reply to our inquiry. The preservation of the Hebrew language has no necessary or immediate conuexion with the system of traditionalism; nor was suffering for conscience' sake specially reserved for the Synagogue. Indeed, in the early ages of Christianity, the relation as between the Church and the Synagogue was in this respect reversed. As for the "heathen elements" in Christianity, we are at a loss to know what is meant by that expression. Nothing seems more plain than that Christianity, as a system of beliefwe do not now speak of the claims of Jesus of Nazaretheither deserves our implicit belief or is neither more nor less then absolute blasphemy. To compare the claims of the Gospel with those of the Koran, or even with the absurdities of Mormonism, as the Jewish Chronicle does, is almost to trifle with the subject. Time and the fruits which they have borne have long since condemned these forms of misbelief. We are, however, willing to place the alternative as to the claims set up by the founders of these systems on the same basis with those of the Saviour. Granted, that the founders of these systems were divinely commissioned prophets, whom to resist were equally erroneous and sinful, or else miserable impostors and self-deceivers, and their systems a tissue of mistake and presumption. What then? We are willing to abide the issue of the question-experience and history have ere this decided it. How different stands it with Christianity, deepening, widening, strengthening, as it proceeds, until we can already in the distance discern the period when its sway shall be paramount. But, besides, the mission of Judaism, if it has any, cannot be purely negative. It is not a protest; it is an exceedingly complicated and cumbrous system, containing a great many posi tive injunctions, extending to every possible and even impossible circumstance of life. It will not do for modern Judaism to disguise itself as Unitarianism-the difference between them is most marked and obvious. Manifestly Rabbinism must either uphold every injunction of the fathers, however little support it may derive from the Bible, or else give up traditionalism as of Divine authority. Each and all these injunctions claim to be from God, and to dismiss one is to renounce the authority of all, as all rest on exactly the same basis. Thenceforth Rabbinism loses its Divine sanction and becomes merely matter of human choice and convenience. The genuine representative of Judaism is not he who picks and chooses from traditionalism, but who closely adheres to its every injunction as being of Divine authority and in proportion as he adheres to it. In the same manner, the genuine representative of Christianity is not

necessarily one that is learned or wise, but he who, whatever his station or education, submits most implicitly to the authority of Christ, and carries out most faithfully and lovingly the precepts of our statute book, the Gospel. And herein lies one of the main practical evidences of Christianity. If the Gospel is often "hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed to babes"-we desire no better than to have its reality tested by the spiritual transformation which it effects; not in those who call themselves Christians, but, in those who really receive it into their hearts. We are willing to take the humblest Christian, (in any country), if genuine in his obedience to the Gospel as the exponent of our religion, and to place him by the side of an equally devout and genuine representative of Rabbinical Judaism. We ask where lies spirituality, whose is the religion of truth, and to which must success belong?

If Judaism, as such, has a mission, it must be its aim to entice all mankind into the pale, not of Unitarianism, but of Rabbinism. For, if the latter be the truthful exponent of the Old Testament, it must apply to all, and if not, it wants Divine authority. In the Synagogue what was merely typical has not only been fully developed, but enlarged, and become petrified; the Old Testament dispensation-in opposition to its doctrines, which are eternal-has lost its preparatory, and hence its spiritual, character, and degenerated from types full of meaning into ceremonies full of externalism. But can any one who knows Rabbinical Judaism, and has studied history, or thought on the subject, expect that the world is to become one vast synagogue! Going no further than this, and leaving out of view the special expectations of Rabbinism, were it possible to conceive a greater retrogression? Happily on this point we are not left to fight alone. Modern educated but orthodox Jews have not only quietly dropped much, and are preparing to drop more, but by far the most lofty of modern Jewish writers in Britain, Miss Aguilar, had bent the combined energies of a life of love and hope towards disassociating the synagogue from tradition, and leading it back to the Old Testament. How far she succeeded we shall by-and-bye learn.

One point only still claims our attention the singular attempt to ascribe the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the nation to other causes than the judgment of the God of Israel. Certain we are, whatever the Jewish Chronicle may say, that the Rabbins, the Prayer-Book, and the Bible, in almost innumerable passages, ascribe these calamities to a great national apostasy. What else mean the threatenings in Deuteronomy? Indeed the whole course of their history, the express statements of the Word, and the consciousness of

the people themselves, show beyond controversy that great national sins were always visited by the God of Israel with great national judgments, and that the certain consequences of national apostasy were banishment from Palestine and consequent persecutions at the hands of wicked men. The Babylonish captivity was the punishment of national sins. It lasted only seventy years, and was in so far different from the present dispersion that the Jewish commonwealth was not wholly extinguished, that speedily the temple rose again, and its typical services and sacrifices, bearing relation to, and shared in, by all the people-by the extra-Palestinian Jews through representatives-were soon to be restored. But this complete desolation of eighteen centuries, this shutting of the temple and rendering Mosaism impossible-what meaneth it? What fearful, yet unrepented sin, rests on the nation as a whole, and why has God rendered it, for eighteen centuries, absolutely impossible to observe the ordinances of the Pentateuch? Has not Judaism ceased as of Divine authority-are not the calamities of Israel of Divine judgment-and does not the complete cessation of Mosaism, now replaced by Rabbinism, indicate that the promised turning unto God in the lands of Israel's dispersion shall no longer be connected with sacrificial types, but with "looking to Him whom we had pierced, and mourning over Him?"

On one point, at least, both parties are agreed. The Synagogue and the Church both regard the Old Testament as a preparatory dispensation. It lays down eternal principles, it does not carry them into details; it exhibits the unchanging basis, it does not rear the building itself. Both the Church and the Synagogue have each attempted to expound and to develope the fundamental principles which both have found in the Old Testament, and which both have declared capable of, and requiring, development. Christianity is the Old Testament development, furnished by the Church; Rabbinism that by the Synagogue. And here we come upon the fundamental mistake which underlies all Miss Aguilar's attempts, and which we suspect must be extensively shared by others likeminded with that noble woman. Utterly renouncing and condemning traditionalism, she would have stopped short at the Old Testament itself, forgetful of its preparatory characterforgetful, also, that the Church and the Synagogue offer only different solutions of one and the same question, as to the mode of developing and carrying out the fundamental truths laid down in the Old Testament. That this problem was necessary, that the Old Testament dispensation was only preparatory, though meant under other forms to become universal, needs no

proof. To Jew and Christian the existence of Rabbinical ordinances, or of the New Testament, is in itself sufficient evidence.

But before proceeding further we must introduce to our readers Miss Aguilar, both as an individual and as an author.

To

The descendant of one of those exiled families which had found in England a resting place from the fearful persecutions of Spain, GRACE AGUILAR was born at Hackney in 1816. From her infancy she was delicate; but, in proportion to her feebleness of body was her mental energy. From her seventh year she kept a journal, and at twelve she wrote a little drama called "Gustavus Vasa." Soon her faculties expanded, and she appeared in public as an authoress. Her education, with the exception of eighteen months at school, was conducted entirely by her parents, and especially by her mother, to whose affection, worth, and character, if other evidence than Grace Aguilar herself were required, ample testimony is borne in the volumes before us. Music, poetry, and the study of history, were her favourite employments. Highly imaginative and deeply sensitive, she clung with enthusiasm to the history of her race, which she surrounded with the halo of her associations of Sinai, of prophets, kings, and martyrs. From early youth, the English Bible was her religious text-book. it she clung, and from it she drew that spiritualistic inspiration which constitutes the essence of her religion and the peculiar charm of her writings. Unlike the coarse vulgarism of those who endeavour to decry and ridicule whatever they cannot understand, Grace Aguilar loved all that was holy, good, and noble. Deeply did she sympathize with all that is spiritual, even though to the end she disowned the doctrinal parts of Christianity; forgetting that if spiritualism is not to be merely enthusiasm, or to degenerate into sentimentalism, it must rest on an underground of religious truth. Frequently does she refer in language of warm praise to the writings and preaching of Christians. Indeed, her own religious system was not that of Rabbinical Judaism, but an attempt so to modify Christianity as to render it compatible with remaining a Jewess. And, no doubt, she was honestly convinced of the possibility of disencumbering, on the one hand, Judaism from its burden of traditionalism, and on the other, of separating it from Christianity, and thereby restoring the religion of the Old Testament. Nurtured and trained by the English Bible, she sought to combine the spirituality of the Old Testament with an antagonism to the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. That therein she failed, and must have failed, needs no comment. But it is more sad to find how little, apparently, her co-religionists have