before long, after each successive wave had passed over his head, the Israelite, who had bent, like a lowly shrub before the storm, raised it again unscathed when the fury of the blast was past; while the loftier trees of the forest, his Christian neighbours, more deeply-rooted in the soil, had, in their more stubborn resistance, been finally overthrown. For the Jew, on the whole, must have suffered far less than the territorial holders in those evil days. The want of a fixed residence, of local ties, of landed property, and of immovable effects, so keenly felt under ordinary circumstances, seemed thus to render him less obnoxious to the prevailing desolation. He was always prepared to change his abode with the composure of a citizen of the world, and to carry with him all his more valuable property; often he only fled, to return when the flood had subsided or retired, to enjoy the waifs left behind by it, and triumph in the spoils of the uncircumcised. The exile from Jerusalem and the Temple on Mount Zion could see the cities of the Gentiles and the churches of Christendom kindled in flames and levelled to the ground, without a sigh or a tear. His own humble dwelling, and hardly more pretentious synagogue, he was content to leave behind him in the hour of danger; for he had no peculiar attachment to any spot in the strange land of his captivity. Like the founders of his race, he dwelt a wanderer in habitations as shifting as Nomadic tents; looking for the time when he should either return to the land which his soul longed for, or be carried by the angels to join his brethren of every age in Abraham's bosom.

We are now standing at the portals of the History of the Middle Ages. They frown upon us almost as darkly, and seem to lead us to the sight and recital of well nigh as much misery and torment, as did the gate which Dante saw in the Inferno, bearing above it the inscription,*

"Lasciate ogue Speranza voi che'ntrate."

But before we pass through these gates of darkness, to behold Europe and its many tribes fast bound in misery and iron during a thousand years of cloudy night, with only now and then a solitary star, like Charlemagne, Alfred, and St. Louis, made to gleam suddenly forth upon the darkened world, and, after shining for a while with singular brightness, as suddenly to disappear, we may be allowed to pause.

The chronicles of the middle ages, at all times hard to decipher from the scanty means and few supporters of literature, are even more illegible than their wont when they refer to the annals of the lone house of Jacob. Not only have the details of its woes been oftentimes well nigh washed away by the streams of blood which flow down every page; other causes

*Dante. Inferno. Canto iii. 9.

have co-operated to increase the difficulty of arriving at the true tale of their doings and sufferings in the medieval period. It was not till the press came to convey to distant ages the sighs of the oppressed, that Jewish historians arose to relate the revolutions of Israel through an entire millenium. The "tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast" may have been too much occupied in transplanting themselves to foreign soils, or in exercising their industrial talents with their proverbial success; may have been too negligent, or perhaps too indignant, to record their own story. That story could but have worn a melancholy sameness. The scanty tithe of suffering, which has been recorded, serves but as a sample of those which have been "blotted out by the sponge of Lethe”—a harder fate, says the Greek poet, than the suffering itself. The Jews of the middle ages had no faithful Eginhard, loving Joinville, picturesque Froissart, or acute De Comines, to tell the tale of their isolated race. It was left to the genial influences of advanced civilization and reformed Christianity to call forth the effusions of Jewish feeling, as well as to enlarge the genius of Judaism. Then, and not till then, learned Jews, not always mere Rabbins, but often physicians, military men, merchants, and scholars in other literature than that of the Talmud,* came forward (chiefly in Holland) to preserve the remembrance of the rankling animosity between the stubborn Judaism and the barbarized Christianity of preceding ages; and to perpetuate the traditions of the relentless persecution of the believers in the old revelation by the followers of the new; detailing woes scarcely surpassed at the fall of Jerusalem, and tortures exceeding those of the Front de Bœuf of fiction, or the Earl of Cassilis of real history. From these later writers we must draw as our chief sources of information; filling in the picture with such side lights from cotemporary Christian chroniclers as may happen to spare a few touches to darken the character, or paint the enduring constancy, of this anomalous people. Should, therefore, at the end, our results appear scanty, it must be remembered that our materials have been scanty also.

Milman says that "the history of the modern Jews may be comprehended under three heads: 1. Their literature; 2. Their persecutions; 3. Their industry." In taking up, from time to time, these three "threads," as they run throughout the web of medieval Jewish history, we shall find the first, though most difficult to follow, very deserving of our attention, from its

* "Hebræi in præsente rerum conditione nihil integrum habent relictum, nisi quod animum ad studia et scientias appellere possunt," is the statement of Simeon Luzzati, a Jew of Venice in the

17th century, and one of the first of these later writers. Comment. "De Stat. Judæorum." xvi.

History of the Jews, vol. iii.

close and consistent union with the character of the nation; the second, from its sanguinary dye, can be traced but too easily by a more superficial observation; while the third, besides its intrinsic interest as the link between the ancient and the modern systems of international commerce, suggests in itself, to the political enquirer, problems the most curious, and speculations the most profound. We shall find, also, in using this three-fold clue to arrive at the real condition of the Jews in the middle ages, that we shall often be able, from the more distinct thread of evidence visible in one country, to fill up our deficient information in another; assuming, as Müller did in his History of the Dorians, that whatever we can predicate of one family of European Jews we can predicate of the rest. For we have the most competent authority (Leo Juda) for asserting that in the middle ages of Europe, as at the present time, "there is scarce any difference between any nation of Jews, how far soever removed one from another." *

C. E. O.

ENCOURAGEMENT AND DIRECTION FOR THE

COMING YEAR.

THEY who trace God's wisdom and goodness in the order and arrangement of everything connected with our earthly life will see a beautiful evidence of it in the recurrence of stated seasons, which call to reflection, and afford opportunity for self-examination and close approach to God. All must feel the need of this. The necessary tendency of our earthly life is to dim and deaden our perception of spiritual things; the claims of home-relationships absorb our affections; recurring anxieties fill the mind with overwhelming care; and the pressure of each day so engages the thoughts and occupies time, that no leisure is left for the deeper concerns of the soul and God. In this point of view, the weekly recurrence of the Lord's-day is found a source of inestimable good; the strings of our souls go down by contact with the world; and the services of the sanctuary, and the peaceful meditations of a Christian Sabbath, bring them up again to a higher tone of spiritual harmony and communion with God. Thus much is felt even by the watchful Christian, whilst those less careful know that they owe even more to the regular return of Sabbath ordinances, and that spiritual life would long since have died out in their souls, had they not been thus summoned, one day in seven, to turn their backs upon the world and its pursuits, and enter into the pre

"Distinctio tribuum Judaicarum hodie periit, fatentibus ipsis Judæis."Wolfius, Observat. Miscell. de Jud. Bib. ii. p. 1101.

sence of God. In a similar way, the seasons as they come round, and the very alternations of day and night, are voices calling the thoughtful to realize God; for these are the fulfilment of His promise: "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." But in a special degree do we feel the power of those warnings, which speak to us of longer periods of time passing away, and which suggest the solemn thought, that they have taken with them errors which cannot be corrected, and opportunities which cannot be recalled. Few are insensible to the reflections thus suggested by the departure of the Old Year and the commencement of a New one. Hearts which have been untouched by the appeals of the preacher during the past twelve months, respond in some degree to the warnings and exhortations which he draws from the irrecoverable past or the unknown future; whilst the most spiritual and peaceful mind acknowledges the fitness of the season for serious review and holy resolutions. Instead of banishing thought, by dance or revelry, at the very moment which seals up the Old Year and brings in the New, the believer, in the retirement of his closet, reviews God's dealings and his own short-comings during another year of long-suffering mercy, and thus prepares himself to enter, with strengthened faith and higher aspirations, upon whatever may remain to him of his earthly pilgrimage.

Let us suppose ourselves thus in our closets at the point of time of which we have been speaking; God reveals Himself to our souls, and we hear, as it were, spoken over again the words which possibly, when engaged in birth-day meditations, God spake of old to the great father of the faithful: "When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before Me and be thou perfect." Here is ENCOURAGEMENT and DIRECTION for the coming year.

1. ENCOURAGEMENT. This we need at every stage of life and in every respect; for if there be one lesson which more than another multiplied years and increased experience serve to teach us, it is that of our own weakness and dependance upon divine support. Man sets forth upon his earthly course with sanguine hopes, and elastic step, and firm reliance upon his own powers; the day-dreams of early manhood are full of successes to be accomplished, victories to be won, and posts of honour to be occupied; and if difficulties present themselves, it is only that they may be surmounted, and render the triumph more glorious. But the stern realities of life, its struggles and its conflicts, dispel such visions, and man learns to feel that there is a higher will to which his own will must be submitted, a profounder wisdom by which he must be directed, a mightier Vol. 61.-No. 289.

C

strength by which he must be supported. He perceives that this earthly course is full of vicissitudes and dangers, and his only safety is to breathe forth the prayer, "That which I see not, teach Thou me:" "Hold Thou up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not."*

Especially, in setting out upon a fresh stage of life, is it necessary thus to exercise and strengthen faith. We know not what a day may bring forth. The political horizon is dark and lowering, and events seem to be hastening onwards with rapid strides to the great final crisis. Within our own family circles there may occur separations and bereavements which will rend the heart, and make home desolate; and each one may have before him forms of temptation and assaults of Satan, of which even they who know something of the plague of their own hearts, and of the power of indwelling sin, can scarcely anticipate the overwhelming power and agony. There is one,

and one only, remedy for man's ignorance, man's weakness, man's misgivings and fears; and that is an assured faith in the almighty power of God. Let God be viewed not merely as the great God of the universe, but as the reconciled and covenant God and Father of His children in Christ Jesus. That is, let. the attributes of love and wisdom and all grace be combined with that of Omnipotence, and a foundation is laid upon which we may fearlessly and securely build our hopes for time and eternity. No grander instance of Christian heroism can be conceived than that recorded of two ladies who, when the Kent East Indiaman was in flames, and every hope abandoned, stood calm in the noble confidence of faith, and encouraged their trembling companions by reading Psalm xlvi.: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. . . . . . The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.'

We may inquire, however, more particularly in what respects the revelation of God as an almighty God is a ground of encouragement.

First, In relation to temporal things. It gives support and assurance with respect to the supply of our wants and the removal of our difficulties. In the case of the patriarch Abraham, a promise had been given of temporal happiness through the birth of Isaac. Sarah failed to connect with this promise the almighty power of Him who made it, and the reproof of her unbelief pointed to this as the ground of it: "Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son."

*Job xxxiv. 32; Psalm xvii. 5.