Grecian games for an illustration of the energy and self-denial which the believer is to use in the mortification and subjugation of the flesh. Of those who entered upon these contests for earthly glory, the poet tells us :

"Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam

Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit,

Abstinuit venere et vino."-Horat. ad Pisonem, 412.

Of himself, as striving for the holiness of those who shall dwell with Christ in glory, he says, "Know ye not that they which run in a race, run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now, they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one who beateth the air; but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjectionὑπωπιάζω καὶ δουλαγωγώ-lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away." In all, then, that are like-minded with the apostle, and desire to be in this respect "perfect," we look for an ever-increasing victory over every evil temper, disposition, and affection which has to be "brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." We look also for a similar progress in the cultivation of the graces of the Christian life. We remember the exhortation upon this head,-"Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Thus the intellectual and moral parts of our nature are both brought into exercise in the service of God; practice springs from knowledge, and knowledge is barren and unfruitful, if it lead not on to practice. From this results an entireness and completeness in the spiritual man as in the natural; it would be monstrosity, and not symmetry, if a human body had no legs, and in the place of them. two gigantic and disproportioned arms; we expect to see each member in its place, and each ready and qualified to discharge its own functions. And so believers must aim at a like symmetry and completeness in their spiritual state; every grace which the Word of God and the model of our perfect Exemplar puts before us must be cultivated in its due proportion; we must not be content with the development of some one grace, which probably our natural temperament renders easy, whilst others are disregarded; but we must propose to ourselves, through the Spirit that dwelleth in us, the attainment of every grace that will enable us to adorn the doctrine of God our

Saviour; and having been taught "how we ought to walk and to please God, we must abound more and more." Under the misgivings which the vastness of our work may well suggest, we shall find support in the thought, that as we set ourselves to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling, God will work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure ;" and we may be "confident that He who hath begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."

There is another view of perfection which may not be omitted. To what extent it was attained by Abram, when God said to the patriarch, "Walk before me and be thou perfect," we cannot determine. We know that the Spirit of Christ was in the prophets of the Old Testament; "that the Gospel was preached before unto Abraham;" and that of this favoured patriarch our Lord says, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad." In whatever measure Abraham saw the fulness of Gospel privilege which distinguishes the day of Christ, there can be no doubt as to our position in this respect; and so in our case perfection must be considered in a further respect.

3. The believer is taught to look for perfection in its highest sense by virtue of his union with the Lord Jesus Christ. God having "chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, accepts us in his beloved Son;" all the Redeemer's work upon earth was for the benefit, glory, and perfection of His people. For them He laid aside His glory, and entered upon His course of humiliation; and as for them He poured out His soul unto death, so for their benefit He passed His earthly life in the fulfilment of all righteousness; He magnified God's law and made it honourable, and thus solved the problem upon which the destiny of mankind depended; God, through His finished work, could be "just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." Thus the life of the Lord Jesus, and the perfect righteousness which that life universally exhibited, is needful for our acceptance with God, no less than the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross. Men's views of the ground upon which, and the state in which they shall enter God's presence as redeemed sinners, are altogether too low, and selfish, and earthly. With many, all that is looked for is a bare pardon, just the removal of the guilt which separates between them and God, and no more; but this is very far from being an adequate conception of the full salvation which God has provided for His servants. When Zechariah in vision saw Joshua the high priest standing before the Lord in filthy garments, it was not enough that those defiled rags should be torn from him, and he be left bare and uncovered. The command went forth respecting him, "Take away the filthy garments from him; and unto him he

said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass away, and I have clothed thee with change of raiment... So they set a fair mitre upon his head and clothed him with garments." The same lesson is imparted in the parable of the guest that joined the marriage feast without a wedding garment. The great result which the Lord hath accomplished in respect of His church is, "That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish." God is too high and too righteous to be satisfied with the negative side only of justification, namely, the absence of actual sin. He requires the positive side also, namely, the existence in each redeemed one of a perfect righteousness. In either respect, man in himself is absolutely and equally helpless; he can neither atone for sin, nor can he fulfil the law. God in his own dear Son meets our necessities in both ways. As He is "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," so is He "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." Hence every believer is represented as "complete in Christ;" this perfection of the soul, in its close union with its adorable and all-sufficient Redeemer, the apostle presented to his mind as the crowning end of his ministerial work; and from this consideration he derived energy and encouragement to labour therein more abundantly than others. "Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus; whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily."

None can doubt the duty of walking before God in the highest degree of perfection which, through the teaching and power of the Holy Spirit, man can reach. Experience will prove that this is our happiness as well as our duty. If in past years we have endured discomfort and distress in our spiritual life, may we not trace it in a great degree to want of decision in serving God? We have shrunk from the conflict with self; we have not had the courage to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye; we have thought it hard to forsake all and take up the Cross in order to follow Christ; we have attempted to retain more or less of worldliness whilst we professed to have our treasure above; and in our very service of God, self has had its place, leading us to court popularity, to indulge vanity, and to seek for ourselves high places and great things. When it is so with us, the conscience cannot rest, nor the soul be at peace; we are not walking before God, nor striving to perfect holiness in the fear of Him. Gracious and long-suffering is our God, who spares the unfruitful tree a while longer; tender and loving is the Saviour, who is even now digging about its roots and dunging it. What shall be the result in this year also is known

to God alone; but we must feel that in the Almighty Power of our Heavenly Father, the grace of our Redeemer, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, there is all that the weakest amongst us can need or desire for the health and strength of his inner man.

W. C.

THE JEWS IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
CHAP. II.-THE JEWS IN SPAIN.

WITHOUT pretending to give even a skeleton of the complete history of the Jews in Spain and Portugal, we may remark that Tarshish was always the favourite resort of the Jew when forced from Palestine; and that Morijont says, that after 70 A.D. "the families of the greatest consideration came into Spain, among whom were the remnants of Benjamin and Judah, descendants of the house of David." This may account for the superiority assumed by, and granted to, the Hispanian and Lusitanian Jews (" Sepharaim ") over their brethren in the dispersion. A Hebrew root to this day supplies to the Spanish language its common title of honour; § and it is well known that many of the present grandees and nobles of the Peninsular kingdoms are of Jewish extraction. The canons of the Council of Elvira ¶ (A.D. 304.) prove that the Jews were already to a great extent cultivators and possessors of the soil; and the many edicts in vain made against them by the Gothic kings up to the time of the Moorish invasion, show that they had become numerous enough to be formidable, and formidable enough to resist with success. Indeed, the aid which the Moslem obtained in Spain from the Jew against the Christian was doubtless one great secret of the rapid victory of the Crescent over the Cross.** For the Jew who hated the Goth, as the Anglo-Saxon of England did the Norman, because an oppressor and a stranger, hailed the advent of a conqueror who accepted submission by tribute, instead of giving only the alternatives, commonly offered by the Christian, of conversion or death.

From the wise government of Mohammedan Spain by the

Ommiade Caliphs of Cordova dates the first burst into life of the plant of Jewish literature, which afterwards blossomed so abundantly, and bore such rich fruit in the soil of the Peninsula. Under it were founded the schools of Cordova, Toledo, Granada, and Barcelona: and when the great eastern colleges, which had hitherto been the centres of Jewish law and learning, were closed by the king of Persia, the Jews made the free cities of the west the focus of the arts and sciences, of civilization and literature. And if they declined for a time, as the divided Moslem power fell with the rise and progress of the kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, Castile, Leon, and Portugal, it was only to revive to new life and activity under the toleration or even encouragement shown them by many of the earlier monarchs of these states; who, finding they took no part in the struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, respected them as useful and peaceable subjects. The Jewish annals, from 1100 to 1300 A.D., show us a catalogue of men of mind which may rank fairly in comparison with any list which can be drawn up for an equal period from the history of any nation. Then arose the mighty men, who for the most part contended against the tyrannical sway exercised over the Jewish mind by oral tradition and the Midrash, and who all devoted their powerful intellects to cultivate art, philosophy, and learning, while Christian Europe was exclusively occupied in war. Such men were, R. Abraham ben Ezra,*"the Sage," to whom the world is indebted for the Equator to the celestial globe,† and the house of Jacob for their best Hebrew commentary on the Old Testament; R. Abraham a Levi ben Daon, the renowned Talmudist; R. Jonah ben Ganath, the great physician and master of language; R. Judah a Levi, poet and philosopher, some of whose hymns are still used in the service of the synagogue for the New Year and Day of Atonement; R. Moses ben Maimon,‡ whose talents eclipsed those of the long line of sages from whom he was descended, and who, by his studies of Aristotle under Averroes, and almost universal knowledge as a mathematician and astronomer, linguist and physician, caused himself to be considered the greatest man, not only of his nation since Moses the Lawgiver, but of his age, by Christians and Jews. alike; so that the one acknowledges that "the memory of Maimonides will flourish for ever," and the others say, that "from Moses till Moses there was not a Moses;" R. Benjamin of Tudela, the Oriental traveller; R. David Kimchi," the prince of grammarians;" and R. Moses ben Nachman, "the father of knowledge." These, with the lesser names of R.

"Princeps eorum qui literalem sensum studuerunt." S. Luzzati, vide inf. + Bartolocci, Bibl. Rabbinica, p. 36. "Averrois fere æqualis." Simeon

Luzzati Comment. de Stat. Judæorum. ("Liber hodie rarissimus.") Wolf, Bibleothec. iv. p. 1116.

§ Bishop Clavering, of Peterborough.