THE JEWS: Their Past, Present, and Future.

CHAPTER I.

The Names Hebrew, Israelite, Jew.-Study of Jewish History.Abraham, the Father of the Hebrew Nation.-The National Existence.-Israel led out of Egypt.-Allotting of Palestine to the Tribes. The Judges.-The Jews desire to have a King.—Saul.— David, the real Founder of the Hebrew Monarchy.--The Psalms, a universal Fountain of Peace and Solace.-The Kingdom Divided.—Israel led Captive by Shalmaneser.

THE nation to whose history I wish to draw attention is variously known as the "Hebrews," the "Israelites," and the "Jews." HebrewIsraelite Jew, these three names indicate almost the whole history of the nation. The name Hebrew is first attributed to Abraham in Gen. xiv. 13; and without stopping to inquire whether it is derived from the Hebrew preposition, eber, "on the other side," and therefore given to Abraham by the inhabitants

of Canaan because he had come from the other side of the Euphrates, or whether it is a patronymic derived from "Eber," the ancestor of Abraham, mentioned in Gen. x. 25-I say, without inquiring into this controversial point, I note the fact that the name Hebrew carries us back nearly 4,000 years, and remains to this day a name of honour, as it was in the days of the Apostle Paul, who in a well-known passage exclaims, "Are they Hebrews, so am I.” Yes, more than thirty-seven centuries have elapsed since Abraham, the father of the Hebrew race, was commanded by God to leave his home and his kindred in order to settle in the land of Canaan, the promised land granted to Abraham and his descendants as an everlasting possession by their Covenant-God. How different from all other nations is that of

the Hebrews! The genealogies of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, etc., lose themselves among their deities, and we cannot discern where fable ends and historic truth begins; even of the original inhabitants of these islands we have little if any authentic knowledge. The Hebrew record alone, with its simplicity and transparent truthfulness, stands out as a marked

The Time of the Patriarchs.

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exception, enabling us to trace the migrations of Abraham and his clan from place to place. as if they had happened but yesterday.

We come next to the word "Israelite.' This is derived from the name of Jacob, or "Israel," to whom, as well as to Abraham's son Isaac, God renewed the promise that his descendants should become a great nation, and possess the land of Canaan.

The name calls

to our minds the scene of Jacob's mysterious wrestling with the angel (Israel signifying "prevailing with God"), of which the prophet Hosea sings (xii. 4), "Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him.”

Proceeding lastly to the third name, "Jew," we have to pass over a period of some 1,200 years, and to find in the time of the Babylonian captivity the origin of the same. At that time the nation, though containing individuals of all the twelve tribes, consisted chiefly of the descendants of Judah, and was appropriately called the Jewish nation. As such it has been known during the last 2,400 years down to these our own days.

But we must now look somewhat more closely

at the history of this nation, and attempt to follow, in a rapid survey, the rise and progress, as well as the decline and fall, of the children of Abraham. To contemplate the successive stages in the history of any nation is profitable to the Christian, for it will teach him that before the God in whom he trusts "the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and counted as the small dust of the balance," and it will also show him that the same God "bringeth the princes to nothing, he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity." But not only these lessons may we learn from studying the Jewish history—that history which to the Christian is not merely instructive, but actually indispensable, if so be that he wishes to fully comprehend the history of Christianity. Other teachings of equal importance are to be derived from it. "For," says a modern historian (Dr. Stanley), "the history of the Christian Church can never be separated from the life of its divine founder, and that life cannot be separated from the previous history of which it was the culmination, the explanation, the fulfilment."

And not less truly remarks the same writer : "The sons of Israel are literally our spiritual

Israel in Egypt.

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ancestors; their imagery, their poetry, their very names, have descended to us; their hopes, their prayers, their psalms, are ours; in the gradual, painful, yet sure unfolding of divine truth to them, we see the likeness of the same light dawning slowly on the Christian Church."

I need not dwell minutely on that part of the Jewish history which the Bible presents to us, that being, on the whole, well known in this country of Bibles, but for the sake of completeness I must glance at the different periods. The lives of the patriarchs are full of interest as descriptions of ancient Eastern life, but it is not until the descent of Jacob into Egypt that we see anything like a foundation being laid for a later national existence. At the instance of Joseph,

his father's whole house were allowed to settle among the fertile pastures of Goshen, where they prospered and multiplied. In the course of time, however, a king ascended the Egyptian throne, who ignored the debt of gratitude the nation owed to Joseph, and began to oppress the then numerous descendants of Jacob. At last he even went so far as to try a system of extermination. But at this time of greatest