exposition of a text appropriate for the day. I read Jer. xxxi. 31-35; and explained to them the nature and design of the Law, how all the sacrifices were a type of the Messiah, who gave His life as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. In the whole company there was only one foreign Jew who spoke disrespectfully of the Gospel; the others listened very attentively; some assured me that they thought Christianity very reasonable, a religion that commends itself not only to the head, but also to the heart; and if they had time to give their minds to religion, and lead a religious life, they would prefer Christianity to Judaism; but at present they had enough to think how to get through the world respectably, and leave something behind for their children. This, alas! is but too often the case with the French Jew: he lives as though there were no God, no heaven to gain, no soul to be saved; and when death summons him to appear before his God, he rushes into eternity thought. lessly, and without hope. They claim our pity and our earnest prayers. Since the baptism of the two L-, the rabbi has been paying great attention to the religious condition of the young and rising generation: some rabbies in Alsace have severely censured him in the Jewish papers for his neglect of duty in this respect. As a last resort, he has tried the experiment of establishing a Jewish sehool for the rich, where religion will form part of the educationthe school is to open next week. I have spoken with a great many Jews on the subject, and they all think that it will not stand many months, as there are very few families who are at all disposed to send their children to a school exclusively Jewish; and the children themselves would be ashamed of telling their Gentile companions that they received their education in such an establishment. Mr. Wpromised to introduce me to-morrow to the head-master and the other teachers; and I have great hopes, not only of selling him the Old Testament Scriptures, but also of introducing some Christian books, and perhaps some copies of the New Testament. Mr. LowITZ, after a visit to his friends in England, has been cordially welcomed on his arrival in GIBRALTAR, by those amongst whom he had been previously engaged, and where, as well as on the NORTH-AFRICAN COAST, he hopes to employ all his energies in making known to his brethren the great salvation. Mr. WILLIAM BRUNNER, educated in the Society's College, and subsequently a very successful Missionary among respectable Jews in London, has just proceeded to the kingdom of HANOVER, in the hope of there disseminating the Word of saving truth among those who have hitherto neglected Him of whom Moses in the law and the Prophets testified, and in whose foreshadowed day Abraham, their father, rejoiced. ALGIERS. (Scottish Society for the Conversion of Israel.) The Rev. B. WEISS thus writes:If the variety of individuals with whom I have met since I wrote you last could be supposed to possess the same interest, as does often a variety in controversy, and always the happy tidings of a change of heart, then I should have written you ere this; for some new Jews visited me, and I visited or saw in the streets, and spoke of Christ to a number of Jews hitherto strangers to me. But, alas! the subject is always the same; the missionary argues from the Holy Scriptures, and proves that Jesus was and is the chosen of the Lord for the salvation of sinners, but the blinded Jew argues from invented traditions, and rejects with all ce the only source of his salvation. Among all the number of Jews with whom 1 came in contact of late, there was scarcely one who was not armed with the weapon of wind which the rabbies now put into their hands; young and old, ignorant and instructed, all say that these are now the last times; that according to their traditions, great wars, diseases, and deartlı must precede the coming of the Messiah and the last day, (true enough for Christians, but false in the mouth of an unbelieving Jew, for known reasons,) so they twist together the Russian war, the cholera in the Crimea and Italy, and the dearth, and their (the Jewish) consequent destitution that exists here now, and thus make out their signs of the times, the approach of the last day, and the coming of their Messiah-a fine invention of the blind leaders of the blind to keep their victims in suspense. Finding myself the other day surrounded by a number of Jews, and having tried to humble them by convincing them of their besetting sins, and of the multiplicity of their national and individual iniquities, a crafty Talmudist who joined us tried to raise their spirits by quoting a passage of the Talmud, which says, "The Messiah, the Son of David, will not come until all Israel will be either all just or all guilty;" then he added, "Well, we acknowledge that we are now all guilty, and therefore Messiah must soon come." When I asked him, supposing this fable to be true, what can a guilty and rebellious nation expect of a holy and righteous judge? he said that their Messiah would not come to judge, nor as such, for he will only be a man; but that he will proclaim a general amnesty to all sinners for the past, and convert them to God for the future. Oh, what a mixture of truth and error, of reality and perverted dream! I said not a word to this, but opened the Bible and made another Israelite read the first two and the 18th verses of the third chapter of Malachi, and verses 1, 2 of the next chapter; and having explained it to the other Jews in Arabic, I asked them if this agreed with the strange character which their daring rabbis gave to the Messiah. The only answer I received from the silenced rabbi was a 66 saem alakem," and he went calmly his way, and so did the others. Ah! poor Israel has still a great reverence for the Word of God, but being blinded in part, they cannot approach its dazzling light without pain, and thus try to avoid it. Unless their darkness be dispersed by the light of Him who said "Let there be light, and there was light," they cannot appreciate the light, adopt it, or walk in it. When the happy time will come that Israel shall see that Jesus is the fountain of life, they will also say with David," in thy light we shall see light." HAMBURGH. The following account of a Jewish colporteur (extracted from "Report of Irish Presbyterian Church Mission") is deeply interesting. Would that our funds allowed the extensive employment of such an agency! We have met with a serious loss in the decease of our colporteur, Martens, who has laboured for us now above eight years-& faithful man such as we have seldom seen. The love he bore to the Bible knew no bounds. He read nothing else, spoke of nothing else, would distribute nothing else. At all times, and in all places, he knew but one theme, which filled his whole soul, and that was the unspeakable riches of the love of God in Jesus Christ. On his first entering our service, I promised him a weekly salary, but he could not bear the idea of being paid for distributing the Word of God, so we made an agreement that he should use as much of the money he happened to have in hands as he required, and should pay me the remainder. In this way has he laboured for above seven years, and has cost us very little, though he sold some thousands of copies of the Holy Scriptures every year. His stock of Bibles used to be sometimes confiscated by the authorities; so, leaving them at the police-office, he would return home, and pray that God would not suffer His own Word to be dishonoured and confiscated like contraband wares. He never gave over praying till he had his books all returned, and I never knew a case of his eventually losing a single Bible. When the magistrate sometimes sentenced him to be fined for selling Bibles, he would ask very simply whether the magistrate had a Bible himself, and whether he read it, and whether he knew anything of the constraining influences of the love of God? When making an appeal to his conscience, in the homely patois of the country, the impression was irresistible. No one who ever heard poor dear Martens make an appeal for his King and his God-Jesus Christ, the crucified One-and for the Word, which spoke of pardon and reconciliation to the chief of sinners, making them children of God, could at all wonder that the fine was seldom enforced, and that the magistrate often, with tearful eye, bought a Bible and a couple of Testaments. magistrate who had threatened with the stocks and the prison in the morning, might often have been seen in the afternoon grasping the proffered hand of the rough, but honest and worthy old man, and promising to read his Bible. The During the wars with Holstein, poor Martens came one day in great distress to tell me that he could get no passport to enable him to travel with his Bibles. The Government was so often changing, that he did not know, and no one could tell him, who had a right to give a passport. "Well Martens," I said, "one thing appears clear, the people want to have Bibles, and we have Bibles to give them; so we must contrive some means of giving them the Word of God." He could see no way of carrying on the work without to some extent infringing on the rights of the civil magistrate. The end of the matter was, that I wrote him a passport myself, signed and sealed in due form, calling on all civil and military authorities to allow Martens to pass and return, for he was selling Bibles for me, and promising to do them all as much again if they stood in need. With this document he passed unhindered through camps and villages, selling Bibles and Testaments in all directions, till peace was again restored after a period of nearly two years. From "the Missionary Record of the Church of Scotland," we extract the following by Mr. SUTTER, and are sorry to find appended to it a notice of the death of one whom we had once the pleasure of greeting, and whom we highly esteemed as a brother in the Lord : Some time afterwards I visited Rheinbishofsheim and Bodersweir on the Rhine. At the former place, it happened, in a remarkable way, that on a week-day evening, I could address a larger number of Jews together. I was quietly talking with an old Jew in his house, when the Jewish religious teacher of the place came in, and began to utter a most angry and fulminating speech against me,-"What business had I to go about disturbing people in their religion? I had disturbed their peace of mind, how could I answer for this? Christians had no business to teach the Jews; the Jewish religion was the mother, Christianity the daughter; how could we venture to teach them? it was a shameful proceeding of the daughter thus to act," &c. I kept silent, allowing the storm to pass over me, only observing that I would answer him as soon as his excitement had subsided. After a time he grew calm, and now began to raise questions, and to make attacks upon Christianity. Meanwhile, a good many Jews had been collected, partly within the room, partly outside the windows, having been attracted by the angry vociferations of the teacher. In offering my defence against the unprovoked attacks of the teacher, I had now the welcome opportunity to testify of the truth, and to deliver a witness of Jesus in the presence of a numerous audience, such as I could not have expected to find in this place. One or two, besides the teacher, advanced also opposition, and not always in becoming terms. I spoke meekly, yet with much boldness, the Lord enabling me to bear witness of His name, and I trust that the sword of God's own Word, which I wielded, pierced many a heart. When we parted, the teacher said:-"I'll tell you what you have accomplished this night -you have only caused additional labour for me. It will take me half-a-year to knock out again from the heads of these people what you have brought into them. The next Sabbath I shall speak against you." Last week I visited the two towns of Bruchsal and Mannheim. At the former place I visted the teacher, a naturally welldisposed man, and the new rabbi, who has been lately appointed as the spiritual leader for the Jews of this town, and district. I knew him at Mosbach, where he held the office of a rabbi before. He is not a bigoted man, and of a respectable information. He received me in a very friendly way. As a rarity, I may mention, that while I was with him, an old Jew, just one hundred years of age, came in to ask for some support. The former rabbi of Bruchsal is now at Mannheim, where they have got a new and most splendid synagogue, in which the rabbi, who is one of the "progressive party," has introduced some changes into the form of worship,also singing and an organ; and wherein, delivering the shallow doctrines of a vulgar rationalism, he is gaining the applauses of his hearers,-for most of the Jews of Mannheim are now rejoicing in the borrowed and flickering light of a paltry Deism, by which they mean to keep pace with the spirit of the age." Mannheim also, in regard to the Christian population, is a place of fearful religious destitution, which is now also propagated and nourished by the "German Catholics," (originated by the John Ronge movement, scme eight years ago), who form a congregation in this town, and whose creed consists of a bundle of blasphemics. Many of those,large numbers indeed, I was told,-who stand not on the German Catholic list, are holding the same doctrines. A communication has been received by the convenor, intimating the fatal termination of Mr. Lehner's indisposition on Thursday night, the 11th of October. This very painful intellegence cannot fail, we are persuaded, to awaken in the minds of all the friends of our mission, feelings of the deepest concern. Mr. Lehner was, in an eminent degree, a faithful, devoted missionary. His letters uniformly bore witness that the cause of Israel was very near his heart. Amid many discouragements, and with few tokens of spiritual blessing on his labours to animate him, he was unwearied in his Master's service; his grand desire was to spend and to be spent in the work of the Lord. It has seemed meet to Him who ordereth all events to say to him, "It is enough; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Let us bow in humble submisssion to His sovereign appointment, and let us learn the lesson of holy diligence and faithfulness in the work of the Lord while it is called to-day, seeing the night cometh wherein no man can work. Mr. Lehner has left a widow and two daughters, yet very young. May the God of all mercies be unto her the husband of the widow, and unto them the Father of the fatherless ! Golumn for the Young. CONVERSION AMONG JEWISH CHILDREN IN FORMER DAYS. THE eldest of the three Sprintz, told Mr. The minister now agreed to take them into his house; and then sat down and wrote an account of the matter to the king, who was in the city, asking him if the parents should be allowed to interfere with their children. He had scarcely done this, when the parents, missing their children, began a search for them all over the town. After some time they were directed to Mr. Kahman's house. No sooner did they enter than they demanded their children. But he calmly told them what had happened, and what he had done; and, while the parents were still with him, there arrived, from the king, four ministers, whom he had sent to inquire into the whole matter. It was next arranged that the children should be examined by these four com missioners, but that the parents should be so near as to hear every word without being seen. The three little girls were then brought in, and again told their desire not to go home, but to become Christians and children of eternal salvation. But what did they know of this salvation? They could not read; they never had been at any such school as our young people are privileged to attend; how could they know about salvation? They were asked, and in reply repeated very solemnly the Lord's Prayer, many hymns, and many passages out of the New Testament. The youngest of them, little Esther, repeated the chief articles of the Christian faith. They said they had learned most of these things when at play with the children of Christians. Yes, He who shall teach savingly the boys and girls that shall play in the streets of Jerusalem (Zech viii. 5), had taught them in the midst of their recreations. They were then told that they would meet very much to try them if they became Christians: nay, that even Christians might despise and forsake them, and they would have to work very hard to procure a livelihood. Upon this, they all said, that "they would work till the very blood spurted out of their nails, if only they might be made children of eternal salvation: and if they were not happy in this world, they would be so in the world to come." They were asked, "But would you not rather live comfortably? Your father and mother will take you home, and they have fine clothes got ready for each of you?" They replied, "The clothes must remain in the world, but we wish to be children of salvation." Thus far they had stood unmoved. But now their parents were brought in. Their parents spoke to them with tears, kissed them tenderly, and asked them to return back. The children were amazed, and wept much; but still they were steadfast. Above all, Guttel, whom her mother pressed very much to go home with her, answered, "No; but rather you, mother, ought to become a Christian too." They then sought to hide themselves behind the ministers; but the ministers, in order the more effectually to prove them, pushed them back, saying, "they did very ill to be unkind to their parents who felt such love for them." Still they were not moved, though they showed great bashfulness before their parents. Their mother used other means; she showed them her breasts which they had sucked, and implored them to remember the duty they owed to her and to their father. Their father, too, on his part, began to sigh and weep, and lift up his hands to heaven, upbraiding them with undutiful conduct. But the Lord, who has commanded obedience to parents "in the Lord" (Eph. vi. 1), and who has said, that if we love even father or mother more than Him, we are not His disciples (Matt. x. 37)-that same Lord was all this while, by His Holy Spirit, keeping the hearts of these little ones. The mother, who was a very talkative woman, at length gave way to anger, threatening them with punishment for obstinacy and disobedience, summing up all by pouring out her curse upon them. All this was very terrible to the helpless children. They continued to say that they still loved their parents, and were sensible of their duty to them; only they could not give up Christ by returning home with them. Blessed children of faithful Abraham! ye "endured as seeing Him who is invisible." (Heb. xi. 27.) Your names are now on the same roll with the elders who have "obtained a good report by faith." The parents being removed, this question was put-" If your father and mother would turn Christians, would you be content to go back with them?' At this question their countenances all of a sudden changed, not unlike the sun when it shines on after the clouds are dispelled. They replied, with uncommon satisfaction, that "then they would go home with all their hearts, and suffer any tribulation." But they added, "that they would not otherwise go home, for they loved Jesus above all other things, and would follow Him." They said, too, "You may put us in a spinhouse; we will be quite willing to labour there." And the child Esther added-"And if you will give me nothing, let me die of hunger, or cut off my very head; I would rather lose Were not these true successors of the blessed crowd of little ones that followed Jesus in the temple, and cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David?" However, the parents were once more allowed, for some hours, to deal with the children alone. But no sooner did these three witnesses for Christ come back to the room where the ministers were, than they ran to them again, threw themselves at their feet, and entreated to be allowed to remain. The parents then went away. When the King of Prussia had heard the whole matter, he gave orders that the children should be protected, and instructed as they desired. Accordingly the kind pastor, Mr. Kalman, kept them in his house, and began to show them the way of God more perfectly. At this time none of them could read; but they knew the word "Jesus" when they saw it in a book, and often they would turn over a whole book in order to come upon that name. To them "His name was as ointment poured forth." (Song i. 2), for they were true daughters of Jerusalem. They one day told Mr. Kahman that they knew of some other Jewish children who felt as they did, but who could not escape from their friends. Their parents were allowed to come and see them whenever they pleased; but we do not know whether or not there ever was any change on the parents. Some years after this, the three sisters were baptised at Berlin. Their baptism had been delayed a long time, in order that all might have proof that their faith in Jesus was genuine and intelligent. We have no further accounts of them after this. No doubt the Lord thought it best to hide them from the gaze of men, that they might not grow proud; while, at the same time, He preserved the record of their faith and love. Let us not disdain to be followers of them, as they followed their father Abraham's faith-that faith which he showed when he left Urr of the Chaldees at the call of God; and so we, too, shall inherit the promises. If any one who reads this narrative shall, in like manner, give up, " for Christ's sake and the Gospel's house, or brethren, or sister, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands " (Mark x. 29), that person, whether he be a Jew or Gentile, shall be a hundred times happier in this world, even if persecuted, and in the world to come shall find eternal life when the Lord Jesus returns and causes the "meek to inherit the earth. |