THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 J") 
 
 The Library 
 University of California, Los Angek 
 
 . Cummings 
 and Judaica
 
 THE 
 
 JEWISH FAITH; 
 
 ITS SPIRITUAL CONSOLATION, MORAL GUIDANCE, 
 AND IMMORTAL HOPE. 
 
 WITH 
 
 A IJIIIKF NOTICE OF THE REASONS FOR MANY OF 
 ITS ORDINANCES AND PROHIBITIONS. 
 
 of Uctters 
 
 ANSWERING THK INQUIRIES OF YOUTH. 
 
 GRACE AGUILAR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE VOMEtf OF TRa\EI,." "SPIRIT OF JUDAISM," 
 ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 RICHARD GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, 
 
 I'ATKKNOSTER ROW. 
 
 56071846.
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY J. WERTilEIMER ANI> CO., 
 
 Cllll'US FMCK, FINSBURV CIKCUS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 114 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Retrospective sympathy. Comfort of an assured religious 
 hope. Causes of trial ; the best mode of regarding and 
 enduring it. r Heavy sorrows do not deaden us to smaller 
 ones. Apathy and indifference, not resignation - 15 20 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Painful effect of circumstances on natural character. 
 Erroneous sentiments refuted. Necessity of a religion 
 of love. Religion does not exempt us from suffering, 
 and why? Its importance in the petty sorrows of daily 
 life, as great, if not greater, than in heavy trial. Youth, 
 a new existence. Importance of an early spiritual 
 life 2026 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Painfulness of separation. Miserable doubts and unrest 
 on the subject of religion. Natural to youth. Dif- 
 ferent impressions on the same subject. Hebrews and 
 Christians ; differences and agreement ; difficult position 
 of the Jewish youth. Necessity for being well-grounded 
 in our own faith. Advance of spirituality. Distinction 
 between the spiritualist and the formalist, greater than 
 between opposing creeds - 26 32 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Superior advantages and more visible consoling religion 
 of the Christian. The Bible open to both faiths, and 
 bringing spirituality and peace. Causes of non-religious 
 instruction amongst the Hebrews of former years. 
 Wrong to judge of the whole nation by a few. Benefit 
 
 1551631
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 and danger of Christian books. How to avert the 
 danger. The Bible and its privileges given to us first. 
 
 Its consequences on the nations. Causes of non- 
 spirituality in the German Hebrews of former times. 
 Appeal for our own .._.-. 32 44 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Charge of non- spirituality, promulgated both by Christian 
 and Hebrew against the Jewish religion. Whether 
 founded on truth, or on error. Ancient and modern 
 Judaism. An assertion, not a fact. Causes of human 
 additions, and their abuse. Distinction between ancient 
 and modern Jews. Superstitious observances of some 
 Jews, not belonging to, or a part of Judaism. Strange 
 notions concerning spirituality. Examination of its real 
 meaning. Mingled nature of man. Opinion of the 
 ancient sages. Four elements ; their respective incite- 
 ments. Necessity of strict adherence to the word of 
 God. Superiority of simple truth over imaginative 
 speculation. Use of the latter. Intention of Reve- 
 lation 4558 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Further doubts. Charity towards every creed. Examin- 
 ation of the nature of the sin we commit in leaving one 
 faith for another without examination. Error of believing 
 the word Bible synonymous with the Pentateuch. The 
 latter not sufficient of itself to prove the spirituality of 
 Judaism. First command of Judaism, and its first 
 doctrine of belief, compared with the opinions of co- 
 temporary nations. Its simplicity, and yet inconceivable 
 vastness. Ground-work of Judaism essentially spiritual ; 
 its vast importance in the first ages, difficulty of acquire- 
 ment. Hebrews at the period of the Exodus, not a 
 spiritual people. Intention of the law. Workings and 
 intent of Christianity and Mahomedanism. Review of 
 the progress of natural religion. How far it was possible 
 to advance without Revelation. Fearful effect of in- 
 difference. Alledged absence of prejudice of the purely 
 Divine authority for, and acknowledged necessity of, the 
 doctrine of unity - - - - - - - 59 71 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Powers of comprehension increase by exercise. Uses of 
 sorrow. Second grand principle of Judaism equally 
 spiritual as the first. Love, even for a fellow-mortal, a 
 spiritual feeling. Adoration the highest grade of love. 
 
 Its definition. liffects of the law, if fully obeyed.
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 Gradual preparation for the command to love God. 
 Its disobedience causing sin. Love of God and love of 
 man, proved to have the same spiritual origin. Love 
 for the absent. A link between spirit and spirit. Vast 
 importance of obedience to the command " thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God." Its comfort as a sustaining prin- 
 ciple, especially to woman - 71 85 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Doubts as to the Divinity of the Bible. Natural when 
 youth first begins to enquire for itself. How regarded 
 by various characters. Impossible to prove any truth, 
 without granting some imaginary laws. Laws of nature, 
 what are they ? Miracles of nature. Imperfection of 
 the results of reason compared with those of faith. 
 Superiority of a firm religious belief above every other 
 blessing. Personal evidence of Sir Humphrey Davy dis- 
 proving the idea that faith is merely superstition. 
 Faith and intellect, both needed in the study of the 
 Bible. Summary of proofs of its divinity. Existence 
 of the Jews. Universal acknowledgment of the Bible. 
 Perfect agreement of all its parts. Belief of the Deist, 
 why adopted ? Mere Deism proved impossible. 
 Moral laws of the Bible followed and obeyed, however 
 unacknowledged. Conscience, how formed ? Per- 
 petuity of the Bible laws. Causes of the decrease of 
 persecution traced to the increased knowledge of the 
 Bible - - '- -,.,.-. -,..- - - 8597 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Every ordinance of the Bible bears the stamp of the same 
 beneficent Deity, who is revealed in creation. We 
 bear within ourselves, proof that God is a Deity of in- 
 finite love and goodness. Superiority of the good over 
 the bad in producing happiness. God's word to be 
 proved Divine must agree with His attributes, as re- 
 vealed in nature, and in man's organisation. Conviction 
 that virtue is superior to vice, does not constitute con. 
 science. Various ideas of right and wrong. The 
 Israelites when they quitted Egypt could not have framed 
 their law. What the law inculcates. Human laws 
 merely temporal ; lasting only as founded on revelation. 
 Are modern Jews the people of whom the Bible speaks ? 
 examined and proved. Prophecy of Moses. Promise 
 to Abraham. Prophecy of Psalm xliv. Prophecy of 
 Isaiah xliii. The Bible without the Jews, a record, not 
 a witnessed truth. Jews bear witness to the farthest 
 boundary of the past - - - - ' *"' - 97 111 
 b
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Evidences in the ancient nations of the creation and deluge. 
 The narrative of Moses does not deny the theory of 
 the geologist and astronomer. Difficult for the finite to 
 comprehend the infinite. Man as powerless to compre- 
 hend the wisdom of God, as an unborn babe to under- 
 stand perfected manhood. Birth to the one arid death 
 to the other, likely to produce the same marvellous and 
 graduating change. Comparison of the career of man 
 and of the angel. Man can attain some knowledge of 
 God in this world. Comfort of faith to the truly wise. 
 
 The superficial pursuers of science alone deny the 
 Mosaic record. The mixed multitudes could not have 
 understood Moses had he entered into astronomical 
 definitions. Mischief of surperficial science. Con- 
 trary effect of true philosophy. Creation the mere act 
 of volition in the Almighty mind. Magnitude of the 
 moral mission of Moses must have prevented philo- 
 sophical disquisitions. The sun, moon, and stars, are 
 the same to earth now, as at the period of their creation 
 
 The record of Moses sufficient for us on earth. 
 Difficulty of expressing that which we feel deeply. 
 Science does not contradict revelation. They are in- 
 separably twined. Pride, the origin of unbelief - 111 123 
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 Discoveries of science likely to lead to despair, save for 
 the revelation of a father's love. Beautiful unity between 
 His word and works. Reason must convince the mind, 
 as well as love the heart. The leal existence of the 
 characters of the Bible proved by reference to them, by 
 the Arabs and Mahometans. Mahomet must have had 
 some strong reason to refer to them. Palestine equally 
 holy to the Mahomedan, as to the Christian and Jew. 
 Witness of nature to the truth of the Bible. Fulfilment 
 of prophecy. Superstition and prejudice. Many 
 things in the Bible to startle us. Innumerable mysteries 
 of daily life. Faith acceptable to God. How to read 
 the Bible. God has given us perfect liberty of will. 
 Ditterent impressions of His word on different readers. 
 Fault of man, not coming from God. Denunciation of 
 the prophet on the despiscrs of the law. Necessity of 
 Bible laws to youth. VVhy should religion and the Bible 
 be the only part of education to be received or rejected 
 without study and examination- - ... 124 139
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Impossible at first to realise pleasure in the perusal of 
 the Bible. Necessity of perseverance. Pentateuch not 
 sufficient in itself to give spiritual comfort, and indivi- 
 dual guidance Prophets explain the spirit of the law. 
 
 Use of the Psalms. David an inspired writer. 
 How to take pleasure in the Bible. An easy method 
 of perusing it. How to make even narration, comfort, 
 and example. Valuable auxiliaries in its perusal found 
 in various explanatory works. Paucity of Anglo-Jewish 
 works. Plenty of material in the old writers. Effect 
 of Keith's Evidence of Prophecy. The perusal of 
 spiritual works assists us to derive the full comfort of 
 religion . ' - - - '-' - - 139 145 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Selection of the Israelites incompatible with the Divine 
 justice towards the other nations. A common objection 
 easily removed. Man's perfect freedom of choice. 
 Narrative of Cain. Man a responsible being from his 
 creation. Off-spring of Cain; and of Seth. Causes 
 of the flood. Noah; his righteousness. Renewed work- 
 ings of evil. Rise of idolatry. Origin of the promise 
 of the law. Abraham, scriptural account of his selec- 
 tion, his descent. Some knowledge of God preserved 
 among the descendants of Shem. Distinction between 
 the descendants of Shem and of Canaan. How man 
 may obtain the grace of God. Belief in pre-election a 
 fearful mistake. Causes of the variety in character and 
 inclination. All men equally responsible. Ancient 
 parable. The man who resists temptation more worthy 
 than he who is not tempted. Canaanite not wicked 
 from destiny, but inclination. God will not strengthen 
 good inclinations, unless sought for by effort and prayer. 
 
 Causes of the extermination of the Canaanites. 
 Israel's selection increased their responsibility. Why 
 selected ? The gift of eternal life not vouchsafed to 
 them alone. Extract from Joseph Albo. Law of 
 the Noachidae. Divinity of the Mosaic code acknow- 
 ledged by both Christian and Mahomedan. Why the 
 Jews do not make converts. Heathen and savage 
 nations, how saved. All systems of religion working 
 God's will. Responsibility increased with greater spiri- 
 tual privileges. Grateful feelings ought to attend the 
 Hebrews' observance of the law. Spiritual joy very 
 different to narrow-minded exclusiveness. Selection of 
 Israel perfectly reconcileable with the attributes of 
 
 God 146164
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Imperfection of the characters of Scripture. How to 
 reconcile apparent contradictions Scriptural characters 
 merely human, and exposed to human frailties. Position 
 in the past unable to be judged by the present. Lia- 
 bility of all men to fail in faith. Error always followed 
 by suffering. Jacob's trials. Joseph's boyish charac- 
 ter, and effect of adversity. Proneness of human nature 
 to judge harshly of others. Charge against Moses 
 refuted. Consequences of his hasty deed. His cha- 
 racter so purified by forty years of exile, as to render him 
 a fit recipient of the Eternal's revelation. His natural 
 impulses. Consolation of his mingled character. Sins 
 of David. Why chosen in lieu of his brothers. Ap- 
 parent contradiction of his selection, and after-faults. 
 His selection exposed him to heavy temporal trials and 
 dangers. Fearful chastisement of his sin. Individual 
 responsibility. No such thing as fated evil. Recon- 
 ciliation of Nathan's seemingly contradictory words. 
 Death of David's infant, and why. Easy for the believer 
 to reconcile apparent contradictions in the Bible. Reli- 
 gion given to enable us to conquer sin. Greater reward 
 for the penitent than for the naturally righteous. Ex- 
 tract from the Fathers. Accordance of Scripture cha- 
 racters with the words of the Bible. What God requires 
 of us. No man utterly reprobate. - - - 164 183 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 Doctrine of evil inclinations essentially Jewish. Proved 
 such from the Word of God. Impossible to discuss the 
 subject without approaching controversy. Belief of the 
 Jews concerning the effects of the sin of Adam, and phy- 
 sical death. Belief of Christians on 'the same subject. 
 
 Why denied by the Hebrews. The soul a pure 
 emanation from God. Individual responsibility an 
 important principle of Judaism. Inculcated by the Law 
 and the Prophets. Possibility of attaining righteousness. 
 
 What needed to purify and render it acceptable. 
 Extract from Ezekiel. Christians' idea of infinite sin 
 and infinite atonement. Moses' self-sacrifice refused. 
 The principles of .Judaism reject vicarious atonement. 
 
 Explanation of David's and Solomon's verses concern- 
 ing man's inherent sinfulness. No contradiction to the 
 words of the Law. Allude to the penalty of sin in this 
 life. Those of Ezekiel to the individual judgment here- 
 after. Consequences of sin in this world on the family 
 of the sinner. The choice of man no ordinance of God. 
 
 - The Hebrews' immortal hope. Evil finite, good in-
 
 CONTENTS. IX 
 
 finite?* Extent of God's love illustrated. Man's right- 
 eousness not of itself sufficient for justification. Jewish 
 faith inculcates happy feelings. Awakening to the con- 
 sciousness of inclination to evil proof not of increased sin 
 but advanced spirituality. What characters deny the 
 natural inclination to sin. God and His service to be 
 associated with man's every thought and deed. - 183 200 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 The ordinance of Sacrifice regarded by Christians as pri- 
 mary, by the Jews as of secondary consequence. Origin 
 of this institution. Oblation an immemorial usage. 
 Sanctified to the Lord. Maimonides' definition of the 
 intention of sacrifices; their less importance than prayer. 
 Made of too much consequence by the people. All 
 Jewish writers agree in declaring the ceremonial secondary 
 to the spiritual institutions of the Law. Sacrifices out- 
 ward helps to inward devotion. Conditions for our ac- 
 ceptance in the time of our captivity. No mention of 
 atonement offering. Why the Jew cannot accept the 
 sacrifice of Jesus. Oblations condemned in the Psalms 
 and Prophets, because unaccompanied by inward devotion. 
 Reproof of Samuel. Views of David on oblation. 
 Of Isaiah. Jeremiah. Ezekiel. Hosea. Joel. 
 Amos Micah. Habakkuk. Zephaniah. Zecha- 
 riah. Malachi. Word of God confirms. Maimo- 
 nides 200 217 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 Law perused without the Prophets likely to mislead. 
 Could not be only a spiritual system. Ceremonial ordi- 
 nances absolutely necessary. Useless performed alone. 
 Mere form an abomination, not obedience. Mission of 
 the Prophets in life, and through their writings. Forms 
 of religion most important. Welcomed by the true 
 spiritualist. The sacrifices not annulled. Ezekiel's 
 last prophecy. Witness to the same of the other 
 Prophets. Grand distinction between the Christian and 
 Jewish ideas concerning the sacrifices. Objection of 
 their being a great waste of animal life considered. Spe - 
 cial intent of the Law peculiarly marked in the minute 
 detail concerning oblations. Prevented avarice. Pro- 
 vided food and drink for the poor. - Encouraged social 
 kindliness. Why only the best and purest were accept- 
 able. Why certain parts of the oblations were to be de- 
 stroyed. Reason of the severe chastisement for appa- 
 rently trifling disobedience. For the peculiar animals 
 selected. The general condition of mankind demand- 
 ing the greatest care to distinguish between the service of 
 God, and that offered to idols ... - 218 229 
 b 3
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 Reasons for certain ordinances and prohibitions. Diffi- 
 culty at the present time to realise the wickedness and 
 practices of other nations at the period of the Mosaic re- 
 velation. Why God did not miraculously change the 
 heart of Israel for the reception of His Law. The de- 
 scendants of Abraham never entirely lost their mental and 
 spiritual superiority. Two-fold intention of the Law. 
 Eradication of idolatry and faith in the one true God. 
 Explanation of certain prohibitions. Offering of first 
 fruits. Unlawful mixtures in cattle, seeds, and gar- 
 ments. Idolatrous practices. Prohibition of passing 
 the seed through the fire. Practice common to all na- 
 tions of antiquity, and traces of it discoverable even now. 
 prohibited amongst the early Christians. Law ex- 
 plains itself when carefully read. Part of the Shemang 
 refers to the same intent. Eradication of idola.try in 
 agricultural pursuits proves the divine mission of Moses. 
 
 Various reasons for the distinction between the clean 
 and the unclean beasts. Consequences of indiscriminate 
 eating in the East. Habits of some of the prohibited 
 animals. Reasons for some of the prohibitions so excel- 
 lent, as ought to satisfy us for the remainder. Examin- 
 ation into religion necessary and legal. Every ordi- 
 nance and prohibition accordant with the two-fold intention 
 of the Law How to realise the magnitude of this two- 
 fold intent. 230246 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 Alleged severity of the Mosaic system examined and refuted. 
 
 The first religion to teach " Thou shall not avenge." 
 State of human nature ; demanded a perfect code of jus- 
 tice, severe in theory, essentially merciful in practice. 
 Consideration of the verse " Eye for eye," etc. Its 
 real meaning. Necessity for the lex talionis at the period 
 of ordinance. the award of justice not the encourage- 
 ment of revenge. Great care in the Jewish Law to dis- 
 cover the guilt of the accused. Commands forgiveness of 
 injuries in individuals; as a state, it punishes assaults. 
 Sentence of death frequently threatened, and why. No 
 nation so impartially and so mercifully administered jus- 
 tice. Examination of the subject. Mr. Theodores' 
 article in the Hebrew Review. Publicity of trial. Li- 
 berty of defence. Security against false witness. Choice 
 of judges. Various tribunals. Liberty of appeal from the 
 lesser to the greater. No imprisonment or torture. 
 Great care in the examination of criminals accused of capital 
 crimes. Depositions of witnesses. Proceedings of the
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 court. Verdict in favour of the prisoner could not be 
 revoked. Cautious proceedings after passing the sen- 
 tence, lest the innocent should suffer. The word of God 
 commands this especial care. Extract from Deuteronomy 
 xvii. xviii. Minor offences receive equally careful inves- 
 tigation. Superiority of the Hebrew over the modern 
 criminal law. Its system in the infancy of the world 
 compared with the proceedings in the middle ages. 
 Law prohibits the taking bribes Intention of Hebrew 
 justice to prevent sin, not so to disgrace the criminal as to 
 drive him to its continuance. Pain of false charges. 
 Jews make no effort to disprove them. Prejudice from 
 ignorance. Absolute need of Jewish literature. 247 264 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 
 Immortality, whether or not its revelation forms part of the 
 religion of Moses. Belief in it more visible among Chris- 
 tians than Jew s. Doubts on the subject natural to youth, 
 should be answered, not evaded. Personal expe- 
 riences. Temptation to desert the Jewish faith. Re- 
 assured in its divinity and revelation of immortality. 
 Consideration of the subject of transmigration. How it 
 obtained admission amongst the Jews. Not a principle 
 of Judaism. Entirely disproved by the doctrine of resur- 
 rection. Ideas of man concerning the soul's fitness for 
 reward and punishment. Cannot pronounce judgment 
 on the ways and thoughts of God. Supposition as to 
 gradations of rank in the superior intelligences. Man's 
 work not completed on earth. Immortality the essence 
 of the Bible. - - - / .., r - - 265 278 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 
 Subject continued. Man created for immortality from the 
 beginning. Would have attained to the nature of the 
 angels, without death, if he had not sinned. Cherubim 
 with the flaming sword figurative of the trials and death 
 through which the soul attains everlasting life. Immor- 
 tality originally an instinct ; proved to be so, every 
 nation, ancient and modern, heathen or polytheist, having 
 some ideas of, and belief in, a future existence. Instinct 
 needs revelation to make it a principle of being. Instinct 
 stronger when man was in direct communion with his 
 Maker. Why it was not made a specified part of reve- 
 lation. Prayer and sacrifice common to the Israelites 
 before any law was given. Prayer never enjoined, but 
 always part of the Jewish system. Enjoined in direct 
 words in the New Testament, as is Immortality revealed, 
 and why Known to the descendants of Abraham long 
 before the Law was given. So referred to, and forming
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 the ground-work of the Law. Proved to have been the 
 heritage of the Hebrews by the proclaimed attributes of 
 God. Death of Abel proves the actual revelation, or 
 visible confirmation of the instinct of immortality ; illus- 
 trates the words of Malachi ; and the doom of Cain, 
 those of Ezekiel Humanity in its infancy taught more 
 by illustration than by precept. - 278 290 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 
 Subject continued. Charge against Moses' non-revelation 
 of Immortality proved false. How it has arisen. Pow- 
 erful evidences in Deuteronomy, of Moses' reference to the 
 life and death which are eternal. Causes why belief in 
 Immortality was not made an article of salvation in the 
 Exodus from Egypt Bestowal of the Law presupposes 
 a purer state of existence. Impossibility, from our social 
 position and the gift of free-will, for all the righteous being 
 rewarded, or the sinful visibly punished on earth . The 
 Law granted to prepare us for an Immortal existence. 
 Too spiritual a belief to influence the mass, either then, 
 or now. Obtained stronger ascendency as humanity and 
 intellect advanced. The writings of David, Solomon, 
 and the Prophets, prove Immortality the essence of their 
 laith. Moses' prayer. Extraordinary agreement of the 
 first and last prophets of Israel. Witness of Balaam to 
 Israel's destined Immortality. Distinction between 
 the sentence pronounced on crimes between man and 
 man, and between man and his Maker, proving the same 
 fact. Moses' last address suited to the comprehension 
 of the enlightened, and agreeing in its immortal meaning 
 with all the after- writers of the Bible. His revelation 
 of Immortality proved and illustrated by his own 
 death. - - - -' - - 291311 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 
 Subject continued. Importance of the conviction that Im- 
 mortality was inseparable from the gift of the law. Con- 
 stant reference to it in our prayers. Allusions to it in the 
 psalms and prophets. Impossible to <]uote all the pas- 
 sages relating to it. Term soul, when used, always 
 signifies an existence distinct from the body. The 
 existence and attributes of the Eternal must be granted, 
 or impossible to advance a step. Distinction between the 
 human and the brute creation. Immortality proved the 
 belief of the Hebrews by the life as well as words of David 
 His feelings and exclamations on the death of liin infant. 
 His resignation thus contrasted with his agony at thedcath 
 of Absalom, both proving the same truth. Choice "of 
 death by the hand of God" another witness, and received
 
 CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 as such by the people. David's peculiarly human and 
 loving character 311322 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 
 Subject continued. Extracts from the psalms of David and 
 remarks thereon evincing David's firm faith in a 
 world beyond the grave, the felicity laid up for the 
 righteous, and the punishing of the wicked. Explana- 
 tion of the term " land of the living" Objection that the 
 Psalms are the mere reflection of individual minds, no 
 proof of a revelation, refuted. Literature of the Jews com- 
 pared with that of cotemporary nations. Open to the 
 people ; understood by them. Immortality therefore 
 generally believediu. Sons of Korah and Asaph. Con- 
 sideration of the forty-ninth Psalm and of the seventy- 
 third. Powerful evidences of the general Jewish belief in 
 Immortality '-..-.' 323339 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 
 Subject continued. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes bear equally 
 powerful evidence of the received revelation. Character 
 of Solomon; his outward and inward experiences compared 
 with those of David. Extracts from Ecclesiastes, and 
 comments thereon. Ecclesiastes, a reflection of the inner 
 man, querulous soliloquy. How regarded by the infidel 
 and the believer. Proverbs, not individually tinged. A 
 book of instruction to the people. Extracts and notices 
 therefrom. Its constant references to life and death eter- 
 nal, and perfect agreement with the other portions of the 
 Bible. State of Judea during the monarchy. The peo- 
 ple too debased and corrupted for any spiritual incentive. 
 Illustrations of the received doctrines of Immortality, and 
 its practical revelation. Death of Jonathan's young son. 
 Sentence on Josiah Stoning of Naboth. Miraculous 
 translation of Elijah. Probable effects of this miracle on 
 the righteous, and the sinful. Its consolation now. The 
 word of God to be our guide by illustration as well as 
 precept. No precept without illustration. Historical 
 books add to the evidence of the Jewish belief in Immor- 
 tality - 339 361 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 
 Subject continued. Witness of the prophets to Immor- 
 tality and resurrection still more clear and powerful than 
 the previous writers, and why. State of the people. 
 Provision for a still more awful temporal future. Mission 
 of the prophets. Verses apparently alluding to temporal 
 restoration, equally applicable to Immortality. Meaning
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 of the expression " days of heaven on the earth." Doctrine 
 of resurrection of the body does not contradict the Im- 
 mortality of the soul ; .reconciliation of the two. Ideas 
 as to the repeopling of Judea. The effect of our restora- 
 tion ; erroneous suppositions thereon refuted Extracts 
 from Isaiah proving Immortality ; magnificent imagery of 
 the fourteenth chapter. Notice of the thirty -third. 
 First allusion to a specified punishment after death, con- 
 soling evidence of the destiny of the righteous, and union 
 of the two doctrines, resurrection, and immortality. 
 Notice of the forty-ninth chapter, fourth verse; of the forty- 
 fifth of the fi fty- seventh ; abounds in direct allusions to 
 our Immortality and the Hebrews' belief in it. Its deep 
 consolation. Its explanation and commentary on the 
 words of Moses. The fourth verse of the sixty-fourth 
 chapter ; its powerful witness of a future state In- 
 , dividual belief in Immortality not enough, should be 
 
 proved the heritage of Israel from the beginning 362 385 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 
 Subject continued. Character and position of Jeremiah 
 less spiritual than Isaiah and Ezekiel, and why. His 
 evidence equally important. Extracts from his book, 
 seventeenth chapter; agreement with David, chapter 
 twenty-second verse ten ; the dead less to be lamented 
 than the living. Commentary on the deaths of Abijah, of 
 Josiah, and the words of Isaiah. Powerful evidence of 
 Immortality in the twenty-second and twenty-third verses 
 of the twenty-third chapter, proved by the very ubiquity 
 of the Eternal. Notice of the twenty-third and twenty- 
 fourth verses of the ninth chapter ; incomprehensible to 
 all except believers in Immortality. Beautiful prophecy 
 of the thirty-first chapter, equally propheticof our immor- 
 tal as our future temporal destiny ; witnessed by the 
 whole history of persecuted Israel Jeremiah could 
 only have been written by a believer, and comprehended by 
 believers in Immortality. Ezekiel, third, eighteenth, and 
 thirty-third chapters ; notices thereon. Life and death 
 applied to the soul, not to the body ; how proved. 
 Ancient Hebrews rejected the idea of annihilation. Law 
 and prophets incomprehensible to materialists. - 386 398 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 
 Subject continued. Of Ezekiel's witness to our resurrection 
 and restoration. Daniel, a mysterious prophet. Pow- 
 erful witness to the Hebrew's belief in Immortality. 
 Notice of his twelfth chapter, connection of Immortality 
 and resurrection. Minor prophets, written for believers 
 in a future state, infused by the doctrine of Immmortality.
 
 CONTENTS. XV. 
 
 Extracts, Amos, verse five. Micah vii. agrees with 
 the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah, and contains the 
 same truths. Extracts from Habakkuk; power by faith to 
 win salvation. Immortality revealed in the necessity of 
 faith ; its merciful ordainment. Charge that faith forms 
 no part of Judaism refuted. Its position, necessity ; and 
 rejection of all worship without it. Malachi confirms 
 all the previous prophecies, and illustrates the law. Ex- 
 tract therefrom Needs no comment. Fallacy of the 
 charge against Judaism that it neither taught, nor be- 
 lieved in Immortality. How we should prove it. 
 Malachi impossible to be turned into the sense of the 
 materialist. Witness of the last prophet doubly im- 
 portant - - - 399 411 
 
 LETTER XXIX. 
 
 Subject continued. Evidence of the book of Job. Sup- 
 position as to its identity and authorship. Its intent. 
 Imbued with a belief in Immortality. The belief re- 
 ferred to in divers terms by Elihu ; agrees with the 
 witness of both law and prophets. 1 he multitudes 
 familiar with the subject. The truth witnessed by the 
 writing of our sages ; the thousands of our martyrs. 
 Not received from Christians. Hebrew literature entirely 
 distinct from the Christians. Immortality witnessed by 
 constancy in persecution, from the martyr-mother down- 
 wards. The basis and essence of all our writings 412 421 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 Subject concluded. Mendelssohn's Phaedon incomplete. 
 Suppositions as to the wherefore the destiny of soul 
 should be so veiled. No necessity for faith were it re- 
 vealed. Word of God enough. Impossibility for the 
 finite to understand the Infinite. Death no chastisement 
 were the soul's destiny revealed. Instinct, the incentive 
 to procure the good and depart from evil, not enough for 
 Immortal beings. Death of the soul. Opinions con- 
 cerning excision. Should be guided by scripture not 
 speculation. Opinion of Maimonides. Excision not an- 
 nihilation. No cessation of existence. Suppositions of 
 futurity allowable, if based on God's word. Ideas on 
 celestial beings. Whence founded. Gradations of 
 rank in the hosts of heaven. Individual suppositions ; 
 general Jewish ideas of Satan, hell, and evil angels ; 
 whence founded Reconciliation of the discoveries of t he 
 astronomers with the scriptual revelation of Immortality; 
 neither necessity nor basis for doubt. Idea of a previous 
 existence neither biblically nor internally proved ; of a 
 better and purer, proved by both. Impossibility to flee
 
 yvi CONTENTS. 
 
 from God. Imperative necessity to cultivate the spiri- 
 tual ; Belief in Immortality cannot be attained without 
 effort ; its vast importance in this life, and unspeakable 
 consolation - - - - - - - 421^441 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 
 Conclusion. Joyful anticipations of are-union. State of 
 modern Jews. All cannot be judged by those of England. 
 Necessity of a Jewish press, no intellectual advance- 
 ment without it. Much depends on individuals. 
 Wrong to judge by outward appearances. The Eternal's 
 rebuke to Elijah ought to guide and console us in all 
 ages. Faith necessary even here. Conclusion. 441 448
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 CHILDHOOD is the age of belief youth of inquiry. The 
 former is satisfied to receive, and believe in the inform- 
 ation imparted. It is very seldom (except in the case 
 of the childhood of genius), that the infant mind will 
 either examine or doubt the lessons of parents and 
 teachers, but will imbibe them almost unconsciously, and 
 act upon them instinctively, satisfied, that to obey is the 
 happiest course of acting, and that they cannot do 
 wrong, if they imitate those about them. Even in badly 
 regulated children, rebellion and defiance and disobe- 
 dience proceed, not from an idea of superior intelligence 
 and greater power, but simply from the supremacy, for 
 the time being, of those strong passions and evil inclina- 
 tions inherent in man's nature. We do not mean to as- 
 sert that childhood has neither character nor sensibilities 
 of its own; that heart and mind are both stagnant, and 
 therefore that its training is of little consequence. Far 
 from it. We believe most thoroughly, that childhood is 
 the germ of after-being, and that much, very much, depends 
 upon the guiding and cherishing of that germ, towards
 
 2 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the full and beautiful development of the perfect flower. 
 But the impressions, though lasting, are imbibed uncon- 
 sciously. That which causes the pai*ent, especially the 
 mother, so many wakeful nights and anxious days, her 
 child receives indeed, and rewards in after-years ; but at 
 the time, it can give no answer, either to itself or others, 
 if questioned as to why it thus acts and feels, except, 
 " Because mamma tells me, and she does it, or says it; 
 and therefore it must be right." If they do not say this 
 in words, so they feel ; and wisely and mercifully is it 
 thus ordained. The little human being, heir from the 
 first moment he draws breath, as ourselves, to the rich pos- 
 session of being a child of God, and destined for immor- 
 tality, is, in the period of childhood, too frail and weak a 
 thing, for more than the quick susceptibility to joy and sor- 
 row, the thoughtless fault and eager impulse, the lasting 
 love and momentary wrath, the necessity for and burden 
 of acquirements, peculiarly, and so touchingly its own. 
 The perplexing doubt, the desire to examine and to rea- 
 son, is entirely distinct from the ready observation, and 
 aptitude to question natural to some children. They 
 want to know all they can, but do not stop to doubt and 
 question the answers they receive. They go on from year 
 to year acquiring, some more, some less, according to na- 
 tural ability; but it is not till childhood has merged into 
 youth, that- the bright light of conscious intellect flashes 
 up; and the mind, awakened to a knowledge of itself, 
 gazes with a curious eye on the seeds there planted, and 
 in the first plenitude of power, desires to examine, and 
 to analyse, and reason, and so believes unquestiomngly 
 no more. 
 
 The period of this remarkable change varies from
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 fourteen to eighteen years, and often extends to five- 
 and-twenty, ere the mind once more finds rest on itself, 
 and can again calmly and thankfully believe. It is this 
 which so often occasions youth to be denominated for- 
 ward and self-sufficient, and so conceited, as to imagine 
 it knows more, and judges better, than the experience of 
 years. But this is a mistaken judgment, and much of 
 the heart-burning sometimes endured by parents and 
 old and affectionate relatives, from the incomprehensible 
 change and presumption of their youthful charge, might 
 be averted, if they would only regard it as the restless 
 consciousness of a new state of existence, and no longer 
 treat as children, those who are feeling with quivering in- 
 tensity in every nerve of mind and frame, that childhood 
 must be passed, for they have entered a new, strange, 
 and at first, even to themselves, incomprehensible state 
 of being. 
 
 If we would but recall our own youthful experiences, 
 this change would appear so natural, that we should be 
 prepared to soothe and endeavour to satisfy, instead of 
 regarding it as wilful presumption, which ought to be 
 checked and reproved. It seems, indeed, at first, dis- 
 appointing, that all our own example and instructions 
 during childhood have been of so little avail, that they 
 are now subject to doubt and question ; but if instead 
 of being disheartened, we calmly meet and discuss these 
 doubts, invite, and reply to, instead of eluding enquiries, 
 we shall find our early lessons instead of being lost, 
 sink at once, and for ever in the heart and mind ; and 
 influence the future, not from tacit acquiescence, but 
 from firm unalterable conviction of their truth. 
 
 Nothing is more wounding to the vividly susceptible
 
 4 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 emotions of youth, and nothing more injurious to our 
 own hope of influence, than the constantly repeated 
 reproof, how can they be so presumptuous as to think 
 and allege, what they can know nothing about ; obser- 
 vations tending to lower self-esteem, and so really 
 create its spurious likeness self-conceit; and throw an 
 insuperable barrier between our experience, and those 
 whom we think it ought to guide. 
 
 Nothing will give us so much influence as that 
 ready sympathy which raises self-esteem, and so per- 
 mits youth to feel, that its inward convictions are 
 correct, and it has attained another and higher state of 
 Being. We must, indeed, still guide but it can no 
 longer be, as in the case of childhood, by command. 
 We must meet reason with reason, permit the awaken- 
 ing mind to disclose itself fearlessly, and give its young 
 fresh thoughts, and often original, it may be at first 
 startling, hypotheses encouragement and love. We 
 must know, if we only look back on every half century, 
 that human nature is always advancing, each generation 
 is more forward, more mentally perfected than the last ; 
 and therefore, mortifying as to some it may be, we 
 often actually learn, from those, it is still our duty to 
 teach and guide. If this have been the case, and fear- 
 lessly we grant it, and give the sweet meed of approval 
 and encouragement to the new thought, instead of re- 
 proving its boldness ; we have gained an influence, 
 which no after-difference in opinion can remove; our 
 experience will henceforth be appreciated and valued, 
 and our councils sought with sentiments of respect and 
 love, which a contrary course of acting never would 
 obtain.
 
 INTRODUCTION. D 
 
 Far more than any period of life, does youth need 
 affection and forbearance. It is restless in itself, con- 
 scious of power, of yearning wishes, of a more intense 
 susceptibility to pleasure and to pain, than it has ever 
 experienced before; the joys of childhood no longer 
 either sought or felt, seeking and longing for something 
 higher, and deeper, and more lasting, yet unable to 
 define of what nature j if to these inward trials, we 
 add harshness of judgment, undue control, and an 
 absence of all sympathy, we not only increase incal- 
 culably the restlessness already theirs ; but by neg- 
 lecting the influence for good, which we might so very 
 easily obtain, have neither right, nor reason to be 
 astonished, if they .turn in disappointment and bitter- 
 ness from their natural guardians; and seek the 
 sympathy, and are guided by the influence of strangers, 
 who never having known them as children, are ready 
 and willing to love and regard them with interest, in 
 the new period of youth. 
 
 It is for this eventful, and most interesting era of 
 life, that the following letters are intended. In the new 
 and restless state of mind, which must follow the calm 
 belief of childhood; religion is the one subject of 
 intense inquiry. We do not, of course, allude to those 
 weak and contentedly unformed characters ; who are 
 satisfied to vegetate through life, ask no more than they 
 perceive, follow certain forms because others do, and 
 never dream, that as individuals they are responsible 
 and immortal beings, and will have to account for every 
 hour wasted, every talent unused. We allude to those 
 young aspiring tninds, who, beginning to be conscious of 
 thought and the powers of reason, turn restless and
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 dissatisfied from the religion of tacit belief, and cus- 
 tomary form, and demand and must have, if indeed we 
 would give them a ruling and consoling principle, a 
 religion of the understanding. They must know, what 
 they believe, and why. Even those who have been tenderly 
 and carefully brought up " in the way they should go," 
 who have been guided by anxious and loving parents to 
 the Fountain of living waters, who have had the bless- 
 ing of example as well as precept; yet, even these must 
 have a period of doubt and inquiry less painful indeed, 
 and less lasting, than is the case with those who in 
 youth must begin from the very beginning; but still 
 theirs, and we must expect, and provide for it, instead 
 of being saddened and dispirited, that so it is. Nay we 
 should rather invite inquiry. We must not be indo- 
 lently contented, if we see youth quietly satisfied, to 
 continue doing as they have done in childhood, and 
 merely religious, because their parents and friends- are. 
 This will never satisfy when trial comes, and active 
 faith is called for, instead of passive and almost un- 
 conscious obedience. 
 
 To assist in satisfying this craving in youth itself, and 
 to aid parents and teachers in their precious, but re- 
 sponsible task, there are aids innumerable in Christian 
 England. Powerful and spiritual minds of both sexes, 
 are constantly sending forth eloquent and appealing and 
 guiding works, both for heart and mind. The churches 
 (open each Sabbath day, with not merely learned, but 
 spiritual Divines, ready and willing to answer every 
 doubt and question of their youthful flock) would be in 
 themselves sufficient to inculcate the religion of the un- 
 derstanding, as well as of belief, and give to youth almost
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all they need. But for the Hebrews of England, we 
 look for such auxiliaries almost in vain. True, there 
 is (and we hail it with grateful rejoicing as the rising 
 sun for another generation) one Synagogue in the 
 metropolis, where every Sabbath there are sermons in 
 the vernacular idiom, tending to remove doubt, answer 
 enquiry, satisfy feeling, and confirm belief. There are 
 ministers in the Provinces and the Colonies (as also in 
 the Metropolis, if freedom of speech and liberty of 
 action would be allowed them), periodically to do the 
 same, rendering their Synagogues, as they were ever in- 
 tended, houses of instruction as well as of prayer. 
 There is a new spirit breathing through the " dry bones" 
 and scattered remnant of Israel, from north to south, 
 and east to west, even to the remotest isles of the sea, 
 a spirit that is of God, and will lead back to Him. 
 There is hope, more hope for the regeneration of 
 spiritual Israel, than there has been for many centuries. 
 Men are thinking and enquiring, and separating in their 
 holy religion the chaff from the wheat; and though the 
 fearful evils of contention, and party spirit, and indivi- 
 dual enmity, and general bitterness, alloy and darken 
 the Present, and render it in appearance far more 
 stormy than the Past, there is far, far more hope for the 
 Future, than in the apathy and indifference of former 
 years. Decided evil, nationally speaking, in some cases 
 is better than negative good. Men rise and strive 
 against the former, and work on and on, till it is 
 trampled under foot, and the fair bright light of the 
 distant horizon, which had been shrouded in the dense 
 masses of mental darkness, gleams before them "shining 
 more and more unto the perfect day.'' The Israelites
 
 8 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 were contented slaves to Pharaoh, while their burdens 
 were not sufficiently heavy as to be considered actual 
 evil, regarding their safety in all probability as a nega- 
 tive species of good, which might be lost if they sought 
 greater privileges. But when the evil was felt as evil, 
 when so terrible became their position, so intolerable 
 their burden, that it could no longer be endured, Israel 
 rose up and subdued it, and, from a band of cowed and 
 trembling slaves, became a great and holy nation. 
 Let us not then despair and doubt, because, in the 
 present state of the Hebrew nation, there is more storm 
 and contention, and their grievous accompaniments, 
 than in former years. It is the awakening into life ; 
 the bursting from the fearful grave of apathy and stag- 
 nation. The tempest clouds may alone be visible; 
 but there is endless joy and love and harmony beneath. 
 
 Such being the present condition of Israel, our youth 
 indeed need help and guidance, or they are likely to be 
 lost in the fearful vortex of contending opinions around 
 them. To rest indifferent and uner.quiring, always un- 
 natural to youth, would actually be impossible now; and 
 more than ever, books are needed on which the mind and 
 heart may rest: and more especially for our FEMALE 
 YOUTH. For them, there is literally no help in the way 
 of vernacular religious literature. For our young men, 
 there are the works of our ancient sages; there are mi- 
 nisters and teachers to instruct in their obsolete and dif- 
 ficult languages, and explain their often puzzling arid 
 metaphysical sense. There is a vast fund of Hebrew 
 learning and theology open to them. Their larger 
 intellect, deeper reasoning, greater intensity and power 
 of concentrating thought, will enable them to enter
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 into, and master them; but this to woman is utterly im- 
 possible. Destined for home and home duties ; to en- 
 liven and rejoice all the members of that home, be 
 they parents, brothers and sisters, husband and children; 
 to be ever ready to come out of self for others, and wil- 
 lingly sacrifice her leisure whenever called upon to do 
 so, even for such apparently trifling duties as entering 
 into arid sharing others' pleasures and amusements, as well 
 as smoothing their difficulties, and soothing their sorrows, 
 how could she (granting she has the requisite mental 
 powers, which we do not deny, if circumstances would 
 allow her to concentrate them) find the time requisite for 
 such absorbing employment, without neglecting duties 
 of infinitely more importance ? 
 
 But that our huge tomes of Hebrew wisdom and learn- 
 ing are inaccessible to woman, is no reason that she is to 
 have no aid in the acquirement of her religion no guide 
 as to spiritual aspirations, and no comfort in her need. 
 Metaphysics and speculative theories, indeed, are not for 
 her. All she requires, is to understand the unspeakable 
 comfort of her Bible, and the religion she follows, so as 
 to obey its dictates from the calm conviction of the 
 mind, as well as the impulse of the heart. Many sup- 
 pose that this comes intuitively, and requires neither in- 
 struction nor sympathy. It may be so with some : but 
 the generality of our youth demand it, yearn for it with 
 such an intensity of longing, that, finding no books of 
 their own, they are compelled to seek the works of 
 Christian writers and then we are astonished, if they 
 are more Christian than Jewish in their thoughts. A 
 charge, by the way, incomprehensible to us individually, 
 as we know not, and never could discover, the distinction 
 
 BO
 
 10 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 between Jewish and Christian spirituality^ on which some 
 good, but prejudiced persons, lay so great a stress. The 
 distinction of creeds is, indeed, very clearly to be under- 
 stood and defined, as also the difference in their re- 
 spective ordinances and modes of thought; but spirituality 
 is common to every creed and to every nation who ear- 
 nestly seek to know and love the Lord, according to the 
 dictates of the L/aws that each believe that He has given, 
 and so observe. And if this be the case with every 
 creed, how much more in common ought those to have, 
 who acknowledge the same Book, and the same found- 
 ation ? 
 
 But if the imbibing of Christian spirituality will do our 
 young sisters no harm whatever, for it is Jewish spiritual- 
 ity as well, the imbibing of the peculiar creed of the 
 Christian undoubtedly will, and this is the great evil to 
 be counteracted in the indiscriminate perusal of Christian 
 books. Liberal as their writers may be, they must in- 
 fuse their works with the doctrine in which they believe, 
 and, in fact, they would be little worth to their own if 
 they did not. Religion is the only subject in which pre- 
 judice in favour of one's own is a positive virtue ; for it 
 is a widely distinct sentiment to prejudice against an- 
 other, contradictory as the assertion may at first sight 
 appear. All who have at all studied human nature, will 
 allow, that the heart most honest, most faithful, and 
 most clearly comprehending its own, is endowed with 
 the greatest charity and liberality towards the religion of 
 another. 
 
 As an humble help in supplying the painful want of 
 Anglo-Jewish literature, to elucidate for our female 
 youth the tenets of their own, and so remove all danger
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 from the perusal of abler and better works by spiritual 
 Christians, not to attempt to vie with them, the present 
 work is undertaken. The familiar and appealing form 
 of letters is chosen, as more likely to touch the heart, 
 and to convince the understanding, than in the graver 
 form of essays or chapters. No learned dissertation is 
 attempted, the author merely wishing to reply as simply, 
 affectionately and concisely, as is compatible with the 
 weighty subject, to the doubts and questions which she 
 has observed to rise in the minds of youth; and, especially, 
 on the Jewish belief in Immortality. Youth, in its high 
 aspirations and eager thoughts, will never be satisfied 
 with the vague and fanciful belief in immortality, which 
 it has imbibed in childhood. It must have something 
 to rest on : something wherewith to guide its aspirings 
 and oh ! who would not aid in giving these, when we 
 look on the youthful being standing in such beauty and 
 joy and hope on the threshold of life, about to enter a 
 world, which, without the belief in and knowledge of 
 another, must too soon seem so dark and woe-fraught, 
 as to bewilder the mind with doubt and fear, and fling a 
 dense cloud between the aspiring heart, and the con- 
 soling attributes of its God ? Trials of sickness, or care, 
 or sorrow, or bereavement, must sooner or later be the 
 portion of our youthful charge, seeming, in their early 
 freshness, as if neither sorrow nor care could ever ap- 
 proach to sadden them. And shall we fail to provide 
 them with the strength and comfort which, for such 
 alternations, a God of Love has provided, when we can ? 
 Should we not think that parent strangely unwise and 
 cruel, who would send her child to a country of cold and 
 snow, provided only with summer clothing? And is it
 
 12 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 not the same, if our experience teaches us, that trials 
 must assail our cherished ones, and yet we provide 
 them with nothing which would soften its suffering, 
 strengthen to endure; and infuse a hope and faith in that 
 better life, which will last for ever ; and so shine, as even 
 in the darkest hours to invigorate and bless? 
 
 The trial supposed to have been encountered by the 
 young girl to whom the letters are addressed, is indeed 
 an extreme case, but unhappily, far from being one with- 
 out a parallel. Many of my young sisters may feel, and 
 with perfect justice, that they are infinitely more spi- 
 ritual, and must know a great deal more of their religion, 
 than she does, for they already know and feel the truth 
 of what she is doubting and questioning. But even to 
 them, we hope sympathy will not be wholly unaccept- 
 able, though we acknowledge our letters are intended 
 far more for those, whom circumstances have deprived 
 of a decidedly religious education ; who from the ages 
 of sixteen to twenty-one, are beginning to think for them- 
 selves; and whose peculiar disposition compels them to 
 seek, and find the Rock of Refuge and Shield of Salva- 
 tion, whose infinite love and exhaustless mercy is prof- 
 fered unto all His creatures, without any distinctions of 
 age or sex. 
 
 For those of my own faith the following pages are writ- 
 ten, and to them they are addressed. Young Christian 
 women have such advantages and privileges in following 
 the religion of the Land, in having teachers and guides 
 without number, male and female that it would be 
 indeed a presumptuous hope to interest them in the 
 subject under discussion ; yet even to them it may 
 not be entirely useless. Christianity in all, save its
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 actual doctrine of belief, is the offspring of Judaism ; 
 and as one of our most enlightened and purest feeling 
 Divines very lately said, " The differences between 
 Christianity and Judaism, however great and weighty in 
 their speculative doctrines, disappear in the moral truths 
 and principles alike upheld by both"* And the more we 
 know of each other's faith and practice, the more clear 
 and striking becomes this fact. Works then, tending to 
 elucidate the religion of another, must ever be welcome 
 to the candid and liberal mind ; and though to my young 
 Christian sisters the following letters may proffer nothing 
 in the way of religious instruction, they will at least 
 prove that the Hebrew faith is not one of spiritless 
 form, meaningless observances, and comfortless belief, 
 which some suppose it, not from wilful illiberality, but 
 from actual ignorance. They may perhaps discover, 
 that the foundation of all spiritual religion is the same 
 that from Judaism and the Bible all their privileges 
 spring and that if they deny the divinity of the one, 
 that of the other falls to the ground ; and then what 
 becomes of Christianity? These are, or ought to be, 
 important considerations to every Christian; and we 
 trust, therefore, in this age of advanced enlightenment, 
 and more especially in our own free, happy, sheltering 
 England, that no work tending to explain and elevate the 
 Jewish religion will be pronounced useless, or, if not re- 
 garded as controversial, merely considered as interesting 
 only to the Jews. Wehave beenchargedas havingexhibited 
 , n a former work an intolerant spirit a charge to a heart 
 rilled with love for all its kind, be their creed what it 
 
 * Rev. M. J. Raphall. See Jewish Chronicle of 9th January, 
 1846.
 
 14 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 may, more exquisitely painful than any other censure. It 
 may be, that in earnest defence of our own, we may not 
 have been as careful or as charitable in words, as God 
 knows we are in heart that the warmth of defence 
 may have merged into attack ; but if so, it was as unin- 
 tentional at the time, as deeply regretted when pointed 
 out afterwards. We shrink from all controversy. We 
 would give every man that liberty of conscience which we 
 ask for ourselves. We would simply instil the beauty, 
 the holiness, the comfort, and the eternal duration of the 
 religion God gave to Moses, into the inmost hearts of 
 our own ; and if, in the earnestness of this attempt, we 
 appear to judge harshly of others, it is wholly and utterly 
 opposed to the sentiments of either heart or mind. 
 
 We beg our readers of either denomination to remem- 
 ber, ere we proceed, that, written expressly for youth just 
 beginning to think and inquire for themselves, the 
 various subjects are more minutely examined, and 
 entered upon, than had we been writing for adults; and 
 this fact must therefore be our excuse, if we have 
 treated too much at length subjects of religion generally, 
 and the Jewish religion in particular, which are sup- 
 posed, and may be, universally known.
 
 15 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 INEZ V1LLENA TO ANNIE MONTAGUE. 
 
 1845. 
 
 GRIEVED, indeed, am I, my dearest Annie, at the intel- 
 ligence which greeted me on my return to England last 
 week. I have been so long residing where it was 
 difficult, almost impossible, for letters to reach me, that 
 for the last six months I have been in utter ignorance 
 of the health and welfare of my friends at home ; and 
 little did I anticipate the heavy trial, which ere we met 
 again, was to befall the youngest, and almost the dearest, 
 of all I had left behind. My own Annie, how can I 
 comfort you, when circumstances prevent my even 
 being with you, to supply in some measure the place of 
 the beloved ones you have lost? and even if I were, not 
 even the dearest and most affectionate sympathy could 
 as yet bring balm. The sufferings you witnessed in 
 your father's last illness three years ago, reconciled you 
 in some measure to his loss ; and you had then a mother, 
 for whose beloved sake you could exert your energy, 
 and in whose deep love find comfort. You had a sweet 
 young sister, whose heavenly mind and peculiar beauty, 
 while it called forth the deepest, and most yearning 
 affection, always made me tremble for her long resting 
 upon this uncongenial earth. And now both are gone ; 
 how, then, can human affection attempt consolation? 
 Many would say, I am opening the wound afresh by 
 thus referring to it when some months have past. 
 By some I am told that you are becoming reconciled
 
 16 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and happy ; and by others again, that you are sunk in 
 such despondency and apathy, that neither remonstrance 
 no.r affection is of any avail. I do not quite believe 
 either of these reports. You must be very much changed 
 in three years, the term of my absence, as in a few 
 months to become reconciled to such an awful bereave- 
 ment, and be happy as before; or still more changed, 
 to be careless of either remonstrance or affection. Write 
 to me, Annie, love, and write freely. Your mother, 
 as you have long known, was my dearest, best beloved 
 friend. My first heavy grief was our compelled separa- 
 tion, when she accompanied her husband to for 
 
 an indefinite period, and left you to the care of those 
 same aged and affectionate relatives, who had been the 
 only parents she had ever known. It was her only hope of 
 saving you ; for not only had she to encounter the hard- 
 ships of a long voyage in a stormy season, and the 
 miseries of a strange land, but she was told you could 
 riot bear the vogage, and that her only chance of rearing 
 you was to leave you to English air and English nursing. 
 When struggling with care and illness, and all the priva- 
 tions of a half-savage life, her unselfish heart, indeed, 
 rejoiced that you were spared it, and under affectionate 
 training, growing up into healthy and beautiful maturity. 
 And when after thirteen years she returned, and found 
 the ailing and fractious infant a sweet, amiable, af- 
 fectionate girl of fourteen, all her fond anticipations 
 were indeed realised ! To weak human reasoning it 
 does indeed seem hard and inscrutable, that only four 
 years of parental love and cherishing should be granted 
 you, when so many pass through life with all their 
 beloved around them. But, darling Annie, to those who
 
 LETTER I. 17 
 
 have an assured hope, as we have, in a world beyond 
 the grave, that when the young, and good, and lovely 
 go, it is because their God so loved them, He called 
 them to Himself, sparing them all farther trial, there 
 must be comfort even in* our deepest grief. The idea 
 that their lot is all joy ; that neither change nor sorrow 
 can ever cloud it; that they are not only with their 
 God, the infinite Source of all love, but have rejoined 
 those beloved ones who have gone before them, must 
 deprive their memory of all sting, however intensely, 
 however agonisingly we may and must feel our own 
 bereavement. 
 
 Do not think that I wish to prove to you that 
 your trial is less heavy than you must believe it. 
 There never yet was any sorrow soothed by an at- 
 tempt to lessen its magnitude. God does not send trial, 
 to be unfelt, or its pang to be conquered, even by the 
 idea, nay the conviction, that because He sent it, it 
 must have its source in love. We may feel this con- 
 viction to our heart's inmost core, and yet be suscep- 
 tible of intense mental suffering; and it is because His 
 unerring wisdom sees this suffering necessary to fit us 
 for eternal joy, that it is sent. We are sometimes called 
 upon, to endure the most agonising bodily pain, not for 
 present relief, because we may not be suffering at all 
 at the moment ; but because the skilful physician, in 
 whom, from his superior wisdom and learning, we place 
 implicit trust, assures us it is absolutely necessary for our 
 health and strength. We never dream of doubting his 
 judgment, or of resisting the remedy he proposes, even 
 though we ourselves, from the absence of all present 
 inconvenience, cannot imagine why he should thus decide.
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 We endure the pain as pain, and our friends would 
 certainly not think of trying to persuade us, that we are 
 not suffering much, and so urge us to exertion ; but 
 rather do all they can to alleviate the suffering, and by 
 sympathy to encourage us bravely to endure. Why then 
 should we not treat the wounds it may please God to 
 send in the same manner? Surely, we must feel Him to 
 be wiser and more merciful than the most skilful and 
 tenderest physician of earth, and that He would not so 
 afflict us, if He did not perceive it absolutely necessary 
 for our immortal health ? It is, indeed, hard to think so; 
 when we have tried so earnestly to do our duty to Him 
 and to man; and we see so many much less earnest, and 
 apparently without any religion, prosperous and happy. 
 It is hard, and yet, dearest Annie, the brief but thrilling 
 sentence, THE LORD LOVETH WHOM HE CORRECTETH, 
 and again " BLESSED BE HE WHOM THOTI CHASTENEST, 
 O LORD," contrasted with verses like these " When 
 the wicked spring up like grass, and the workers of ini- 
 quity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for 
 ever," would seem a clear and convincing answer ; and 
 satisfy us, that it is no proof of our heavenly Father's 
 love, to pass through this life, without any event occur- 
 ring, which would draw us nearer Him, and help us 
 to think more seriously than we might otherwise have 
 done. 
 
 Perhaps, even this consoling conviction, will read 
 harsh and irrelevant to such grief as yours : forgive me 
 if it does. I meant only to have expressed my deep 
 earnest sympathy, and to entreat you as I do again, to 
 write freely to me. It will not be the first time, by very 
 many, that you have permitted me to read your inmost
 
 LETTER I. 19 
 
 thoughts. In your childhood, we so often con- 
 versed of serious things, that though, for the last four 
 years, I have communicated with you only through your 
 mother, I do not believe you are so changed, that the 
 soothing voice of religious hope and consolation from 
 one who so dearly loves you for your own sake, as well as 
 for that of the departed, will be entirely unfelt. I fear ? 
 too, that your present situation is sufficiently uncongenial 
 to add to your burden ; for I am not one of those who 
 think, that great trials deaden us to the sting of small ones. 
 It is a trial to live with those, who though, perhaps, in- 
 trinsically kind and good, are yet so incapable of under- 
 standing us, that we have no subject in common, save 
 the most trifling and worldly topics, and to whom I fear 
 that soothing and strengthening spirit of religion, which 
 can be your only comfort now, is as unknown as un- 
 practised. I trust, however, that this is only a temporary 
 evil. I do not refer you to a brighter future, to bid you 
 not grieve now, for when was present pain ever soothed 
 by the thought of future relief? For your present feel- 
 ings there is but one source of consolation, there can 
 be but one healer. Seek Him, my beloved girl, trust 
 in Him, even while your tears flow, and ihe pain you 
 must endure will be sanctified and blessed. It is only 
 the fruitless effort to break from its chain and wile away 
 its pang, by frivolous amusement, that can render it too 
 hard to bear. I do not tell you to refrain from occu- 
 pation ; I would rather beseech you, to make some em- 
 ployment which would prevent the ascendancy of 
 apathy and indifference, so often supposed to be resig- 
 nation. But I will not write more now, though my 
 heart is so full of affection, that it is difficult to check its
 
 20 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 expression. My own darling Annie, seek, and may you 
 find the only consolation, the only strength, which in 
 such sorrow can be yours the peace " which passeth 
 all understanding" for it exists even in grief and pain, 
 and is the blessing of your God. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 I WILL not say your letter has not pained me, my dear- 
 est Annie, or that it was the answer 1 expected. I should 
 be a false friend, if, even at such a moment, when you 
 need all the indulgence, affection can bestow, I should 
 refrain from telling you, where I think you are in error, 
 or allow you, by rny silence, to suppose you are following 
 a right train of thought and feeling, when both judgment 
 and experience convince me, that the relief, you tell me, 
 that they give you, is not only of but temporary duration, 
 but intrinsically false, and will betray you, into increased 
 and more painful despondency, ere many weeks are over. 
 Do not throw my letter aside as a harsh and uncalled-for 
 reproof. Annie, dearest, if you are inclined to do so, pause 
 for a moment, and recall the days of your childhood, when, 
 even if 1 had the inclination or necessity to chide, far more 
 than I have now, you would fold your arms round rny neck, 
 and nestle your head on my shoulder, and tell me you 
 would listen to all I had to say, and try and profit, by it, 
 however severe it might be, if I would only call you my 
 Annie, and love you as before. Have four brief years of
 
 LETTER II. 21 
 
 separation so estranged me from you, that these fond 
 associations are all forgotten ; and the girl so altered 
 from the child, that the pleadings of truth and affection 
 will be unheeded? I do not believe it. Nor do I believe 
 the letter which has so grieved me, came from the depths 
 of your own fresh, true, and warm feeling heart. You 
 think it did, but you are under a delusion, brought about 
 by circumstances, but which, if you do not nerve your 
 every energy to break from, will make you very miser- 
 able. 
 
 You thanked me for my letter; you wrote, " It was 
 very very kind, and very good of me to think of you, but 
 that its subject was far too painful to dwell upon. You 
 resolved to banish it so entirely from your mind, as 
 never to recur to it even for a moment's thought. That 
 you could not enter into the spirit in which I wrote: it 
 might be very wicked of you, but you could not help it. 
 That you were living with those who never spoke or 
 thought of religion, more than the daily prayer, and cus- 
 tomary form, but who were always merry, and happier 
 than any family you knew. That they had lost some 
 near and very dear relations, but they found the very 
 best remedy for such grief was not to think about it, but 
 to plunge more and more in the vortex of pleasure and 
 amusement. That they seemed to think it almost folly 
 to allude to those they had lost, as, what could their me- 
 mory be but sources of pain when they were separated 
 for ever? That you must think the reasoning good, 
 from its effects upon them, and in the quiet, easy way in 
 which life flows on." 
 
 Four months is but a short interval to pronounce judg- 
 ment on the easy flow of a life, my dear Annie, but
 
 22 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 whether or not, this reasoning may appear to hold good 
 with them, trust my affection, and believe that yours, is 
 neither the character, nor disposition, to find either 
 strength or comfort from it. Your peculiarly woman- 
 heart must have something higher and better and purer 
 than earth to rest on. Your high aspirations, which, if 
 properly directed, will tend to both your temporal and 
 spiritual happiness, must become sources of wretched- 
 ness, if, seeking satisfaction and fulness in this world 
 alone ; your craving after the good and beautiful 
 must remain unsatisfied if you wilfully turn away 
 from Him, in whose light alone, the true and exquisite 
 beauty even of this world, is fully displayed. Your in- 
 quiring mind will be tossed in a chaos of doubt and 
 misery, from the dark and awful mystery, which, without 
 a firm belief in an ever-acting Providence of Love, 
 seems to surround the daily routine of life. Your very 
 affections, so warm, so clinging, will never be other than 
 sources of pain, if you do not love God first, and his 
 creatures in Him. Without faith in Him, all must seem 
 evil, which is, in reality creative of good ; and how are 
 you to bear it? Dearest Annie, you little knew your- 
 self, when you wrote the words I have quoted. There 
 maybe some who continue to pass through life happily and 
 contentedly without religion, though how they can, espe- 
 cially amongst our sex, is to me so incomprehensible a 
 mystery, that even to believe it, is almost impossible ; but 
 high characters such as yours ever promised to be, cannot, 
 try as they may, unless, indeed, they voluntarily and 
 consciously sentence themselves to misery, which no after- 
 effort may avert. 1 do not allude to great misfortunes. 
 Religion will not exempt us from suffering; if it did, we
 
 LETTER II. 23 
 
 should pursue it, not from love of God,Jbut from a self- 
 ish feeling of security, which would at once degrade it 
 from a high and pure aspiration, to the wages paid a 
 harsh, exacting master. This is not the character of our 
 Father in Heaven, who has in His mercy revealed to us, 
 that His love is so inexhaustible, neither Heaven nor 
 Earth can contain it ; that it never wearies, never changes, 
 and, like the glorious light of his beautiful orb, shines on 
 all alike, but is revealed in its depth and fulness only to 
 those who seek and trust in it, and try to render loving 
 service as the sole acknowledgment our Father asks. 
 But if- religion will not exempt us from suffering, you 
 will ask me, why do I lay so much stress on it, and say 
 that without it you must be miserable, when with it you 
 will also be called on to endure ? Because the suffering 
 borne with the filial spirit of devotedness and love, and 
 with a firm and unchanging trust, that our Parent in 
 Heaven knows far better what is good for us, than our 
 dearest, tenderest friends of earth can do ; and the suf- 
 ferings which have no such thought, are so utterly distinct, 
 and the latter so much the more terrible, that they ought 
 not to be classed under the same denomination. But 
 even were this not the case, and the religious and the 
 irreligious, subject to exactly the same amount of pain, 
 under the misfortunes of bereavement, sickness, 
 change of fortune, privation, and care, which may 
 befall us all, it is not so much to these great events 
 of life I allude, as to its daily temper, and the thousand 
 petty trials of home and heart; trials to which all are 
 subject, though some dispositions feel them, in an infi- 
 nitely greater degree than others. It is from these I 
 would save you, or rather conjure you to save yourself,
 
 24 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 because I know that your disposition is such, as to expose 
 you to them in all their unmitigated bitterness. You 
 tell me, or rather, I read it through your letter, that 
 you are now so perfectly indifferent, as to be insensible 
 to either pain or pleasure. I am not surprised. It is 
 the natural consequence of the intense mental suffering 
 you have lately endured, and far more physical than 
 mental ; but it will not last. As elasticity of frame re- 
 turns, so will your keen susceptibility of enjoyment, and 
 as keen, if not keener, sense of pain. You will not then 
 be satisfied with the easy current, of the existence of those 
 around you, nor will the pleasures and amusements to 
 which they may introduce you, satisfy your earnest crav- 
 ings after the holy and the good; intellectual enjoyment, 
 and perfect sympathy and love. Your quickness of feel- 
 ing exposes you to the charge of quickness of temper, 
 and I fear when you cease to be a novelty, the easy dis- 
 positions which you at present admire, will not bear with 
 it, as may be the case at present, and you will meet with 
 harshness and reproof; and how can you endure this, ac- 
 customed, as you have been from your earliest infancy, 
 to the tenderest and most indulgent love? Annie, my 
 own precious child, for such must I ever feel you do 
 not, I conjure you, turn wilfully from the only true 
 changeless Source of strength and comfort; do not cast 
 from you the infinite love a Father proffers and reite- 
 rates in every variety of tenderness and mercy, through 
 His Most Holy Book. Come to Him now that you are 
 of an age to give Him, not only the first freshness of 
 your young and guileless HEART, but the willing obe- 
 dience, which springs, from the conviction and acqui- 
 escence of the MIND. He has indeed stricken you, but
 
 LETTER II. 25 
 
 seek Him, and He will not only heal present grief, but 
 so strengthen, so spiritualise, that though the memo- 
 ries of your beloved ones must ever be a source of 
 tearful regret, you will become more quietly but more 
 intensely happy than you have yet been; and such 
 peace will become your own, that you need dread no trial, 
 petty or great, that He may please to send. You are 
 standing on the threshold of a new period of existence. 
 In addition to acute sorrow, you have to contend with 
 the doubts, and questions, and indefinable sensations^ 
 ever busy in the mind and heart of youth. The term of 
 your present mourning over, you will be called upon to 
 enter that world, which you are looking on now, as far 
 distant and unknown, and, from your present natural de- 
 pression, perhaps undesired ; but when once entered, 
 you will have no wish to draw back. It will be fraught 
 with pleasures and with pains, trials and temptations ; 
 petty ones perhaps, but not the less painful to endure, 
 and to resist, or the less deteriorating to the character, 
 unless influenced by some higher principle, than the mere 
 convenances of the world. You may, it is very probable 
 you will, marry; and when once a wife and mother, the 
 duties, anxieties, and responsibilities of life will so throng 
 around you, as to leave you little leisure and less inclin- 
 ation to cultivate that ever-acting and silently-infusing 
 piety, which, at your present age, and under your late 
 affliction, may, with an earnest wish and heartfelt prayer, 
 so easily be attained. I cannot bear to think of one so 
 dearly loved, so fondly cherished, and with a disposition 
 too likely to suffer, even from causes which more obtuse 
 natures would pass unfelt, exposed to the great and 
 petty trials of woman's life, without the shield of spiritual
 
 26 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 faith and love, which alone can strengthen her for Earth, 
 and purify for Heaven. 
 
 Dearest Annie, choose the better and the happier 
 path ; cast off the delusion concerning your own disposi- 
 tion which has so enchained you ; trust to the love of 
 one who has watched over you from infancy, and believe 
 that, if no woman can be truly and purely happy without 
 religion, you must be miserable, for your very nature 
 needs it, yearns for it, and must sink listlessly and sor- 
 rowfully to earth, unless it grasp the rock of refuge which 
 a Father proffers. 
 
 Do not throw my letter aside, as a grave sermon, fit 
 only for Sabbath reading. For your mother's sake, if 
 no longer for mine, read it in the spirit of your child- 
 hood, and, without fear of either grieving or surprising 
 me, write me unhesitatingly your own sentiments, not 
 those of the persons around you, in reply. Do not fear 
 harsh censure, or even hinted reproof; the religion our 
 Father desired Moses to teach, is a religion of love, 
 and in love only should be taught, as in love received. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 WHAT will you say to me, dearest Annie, when I tell 
 you, that your last, though it told me of physical suffering 
 and consequent return of mental despondency, has 
 grieved me much less than your former one ; and that 
 I trace, in the midst of this deep darkness, a brighter
 
 LETTER III. 27 
 
 hope for your returning and lasting happiness, than in 
 the sunless, starless twilight which preceded it ? Would 
 indeed, that I could have been with you in your illness, 
 my poor child ! Nay, would that I could be near you 
 at all times, or have you with me, as my whole heart 
 longs to do ! I could almost murmur at the imperative 
 circumstances, which so utterly prevent this; but it is 
 wrong to do so, and I must be grateful, not only that 
 time and space have no power on affection and sym- 
 pathy, but that you are willing to believe in, and rest 
 on my affection, even as in former years. You tell me, 
 that in your illness, things have appeared in a different 
 light; that what seemed happiness and mirth, proved 
 indifference and coldness ; that you thought, you were 
 really loved, but in the long hours of solitude, when 
 you were too weak to join the family, you seemed so 
 utterly forgotten, so little cared for, you could no longer 
 believe it ; your sufferings had no power to ruffle the 
 easy flow of life you had once admired, and you would 
 rather suffer pain itself than be so utterly indifferent to 
 others ; that you had already felt the truth of my warn- 
 ing words in the little kindness and forbearance, evinced 
 towards you, when from pure physical weakness you 
 gave way to the depression, the vain yearnings for your 
 beloved mother, which so over-powered you, that they 
 called it ill-temper and ingratitude, and reproved it ac- 
 cordingly. My poor girl, I did not think you would 
 have discovered this so soon; but, thank God, it has led 
 you to seek and pray for the only source of consolation. 
 You tell me, and you can perhaps hardly imagine the 
 happiness of such information, that my letters were your 
 greatest comfort ; you do not know how you could
 
 28 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 have written so coldly and ungratefully in answer to 
 my first, or how you can love me enough for forgiving 
 it, and writing again so fondly ; that you would, O 
 how willingly, follow my advice, and try and find in 
 religion all the strength and comfort, I assure you it will 
 bestow; but that your whole mind feels so tempest- 
 tossed, so utterly unable to satisfy itself, that you are 
 almost afraid to write to me, when you recollect all our 
 conversations in your childhood, and how easy then it 
 felt to believe all I said, and how delightful it was to 
 think of, and try and love God; that try all you can, 
 you cannot feel this now that you must be grown very 
 very wicked, for you cannot even think on religion, with- 
 out such painful doubts and bewildering fancies arising, 
 that, instead of finding repose, heart and mind are both 
 so fevered and restless, you are glad to fly to other em- 
 ployment. And these doubts, these questions, seem so 
 idle, if not so actually sinful, that you dare not confess 
 them even to me. 
 
 My darling Annie, dismiss this fear at once. I am 
 neither surprised, nor grieved, nor will I even accuse you 
 of either forgetting or undervaluing the lessons of your 
 childhood. Nay, I am actually glad that you are no 
 longer satisfied tacitly to believe, and go on from year 
 to year the mere formalist, which is unhappily the case 
 with many. All you have written, only convinces me, 
 that I am correct in my impressions, and that your mind 
 is of that enlarged, enquiring nature, which I believed 
 it to be, but which will never rest satisfied with the mere 
 habit of education, and general belief. Do not hesitate, 
 and I entreat you do not^ear, to write me every doubt 
 and every question. I cannot judge them harshly, for
 
 LETTER III. *29 
 
 I have not yet forgotten my own youth, when I ex- 
 perienced exactly the same feelings. Those who think 
 deeply and feel strongly, cannot exchange childhood fot 
 youth unconsciously. That many may pass through 
 life, without revealing or even thinking about the doubts 
 and bewildering sensations you describe, does not prove 
 their non-existence ; but that in very many dispositions, 
 they are not strong or loud enough, to over-balance the 
 pleasures, amusements, and freedom, also natural to 
 youth. Others, again, are of such naturally easy indo- 
 lent characters, that they are quite satisfied to do as 
 others do : if momentary doubts trouble them, they are 
 immediately dismissed as requiring too much exertion to 
 be solved, or perfectly satisfied, with being told, they 
 cannot understand such things, and it is folly to attempt 
 it. Others again, like yourself, fear to express what 
 feels to them a sinful falling off from the religion of their 
 childhood ; or if they do venture to reveal it, are perhaps 
 told it is wicked and blasphemous to doubt, or speak of 
 such things ; the eager enquiry is checked and chidden, 
 and so returns to the mind, to engender further doubts, 
 which become at last so engrossing and irksome, that 
 unbelief is almost sure to follow, simply, for the sake of 
 repose a false one indeed. Yet, how can we blame, 
 when it is the experienced answerer at fault, not the 
 enquiring youth? 
 
 Ask what you will; if I cannot answer you, I will 
 endeavour to find wiser ones who will. You have 
 not only to contend with sorrow, which has, perhaps, 
 advanced and increased the perplexing thoughts inhe- 
 rent to your age; but our very position, aliens in a land 
 whose religion is not ours and yours especially, in a
 
 30 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 small county town almost entirely surrounded by 
 Christians, and our Jewish brethren, I fear, but little 
 likely to elevate our holy faith in your mind must 
 increase the mental difficulties you are now enduring, 
 and render me more and more desirous to help you in 
 attaining rest and strength. Like my own early youth, 
 circumstances have thrown you almost entirely amongst 
 Protestants ; and from your peculiar disposition, long- 
 ing unconsciously for the high and pure, you have 
 always made those your intimate friends, who are serious 
 thinkers, and have infused even the mere pleasures and 
 amusements of their age with the spirit, which though 
 not of earth itself, makes all of earth so lovely. The 
 only Hebrews you have known are unhappily not of this 
 class. Not thinking very deeply, they imagine it quite 
 impossible for any serious Christian, to take an interest 
 in a young Jewess without desiring her conversion; and 
 that Hebrews and Christians may have much, very much 
 in common ; that the very link between them may be 
 religion, entirely and wholly distinct from doctrines of 
 creed, is so utterly incomprehensible, that they not 
 only disbelieve in its possibility, but are always looking 
 for some ulterior motive. I have no such feelings. No 
 true and enlightened Protestant, ever yet descended to 
 the petty and wicked meanness, of tampering with the 
 faith of a young and almost friendless girl as yourself. 
 Mistaken zealots there are, indeed, who deem the 
 attempt to convert the most meritorious act they can 
 perform ; but these are seldom found among cairn 
 enlightened Protestants. Know your own religion well, 
 observe it from mental as well as loving conviction, and 
 you will find yourself and your faith too truly respected,
 
 LETTER IfT. 31 
 
 ever to fear even an attempt at conversion. It is the 
 mere formalists amongst us, who have thrown such odium 
 on the Jewish faith ; but you must not judge the whole 
 nation by the few with whom you are thrown. Could 
 you visit London, which I hope you will one day, or 
 even Liverpool, or Birmingham, where there are large 
 communities of Jews, you would find very many to 
 respond to all your ardent and spiritual feelings. The 
 advance towards regaining that vital element of our 
 religion, spirituality, has been indeed most cheering the 
 last ten or twenty years, and inspires the hope and 
 belief of its spreading more and more. If we once 
 inculcate in the hearts of our youth, the spirituality and 
 the comfort of our holy religion, we shall have nothing 
 whatever to fear, in our closest intercourse with Christians. 
 We shall find so much on which to agree, that there 
 will be neither leisure nor inclination for allusion to 
 those points on which we differ; but then, of course, we 
 must know our own, or we are more than likely to 
 become mentally entangled and confused. The wider 
 the dissimilitude, the less danger for either the ignorant 
 or the unwary; but where there is so much alike, the 
 points of difference must be very distinctly and clearly 
 traced, or we may be liable to lose them altogether. I 
 am quite aware, that the assertion of similitude between 
 religions, whose doctrines of belief are so opposed, 
 would meet with violent opposition, from many who 
 term themselves orthodox Hebrews ; but opposition will 
 not alter truth, and I am ready to agree with them, 
 that between the formalist and the spiritualist, there is 
 indeed a barrier which can never be passed ; but this 
 holds as good between Jew and Jew, Christian and
 
 32 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Christian, as between Hebrew and Protestant. It is 
 not the doctrines, but the feelings which are so impassably 
 opposed. I would net check your intimacy with any 
 Christian friend. All 1 ask of you is to examine your 
 own religion thoroughly, ere you pronounce that the 
 Christian is the most spiritual, the most consoling. I 
 am not at all astonished at your fancying, so just now 
 that this very fancy should be one of the many causes, 
 creating such painful and bewildering doubts, of which 
 you complain, as removing all comfort from religion. 
 Have I guessed right ? 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 You are astonished at my penetration, dearest Annie, 
 astonished that I should so exactly have defined your 
 feelings regarding Christianity and Judaism, though you 
 did not write a word on the subject. I am truly happy 
 that I have done so, and that my sympathy has given 
 you courage to confess, what you are quite sflre must 
 otherwise have remained untold that when I wrote 
 to you in my first letter of the necessity, the strength 
 and peace of religion, you had felt that, if you were a 
 Christian, you might hope to experience all this, but 
 that as a Jewess it was impossible that there were so 
 many books not merely to explain the Christian religion, 
 but to give sympathy and comfort in every affliction 
 that there were churches to frequent, and so many home-
 
 LETTER IV. 33 
 
 speaking, heart-appealing prayers to help them to lift 
 up their thoughts to God, that could you but be a 
 Christian, you might be comforted, and even happy 
 that you had been tempted most strongly to adopt the 
 Christian faith, but that your promise to your dying 
 mother to keep true and faithful to the Hebrew religion 
 withheld you and, moreover, that whenever you asked 
 sny questions concerning religion, your friend had 
 entreated you to seek information from your own that 
 in her family, as in other of your Protestant friends, 
 religion was actually taught, made a rule of life, and 
 you could not recall any Jewish family in which this was 
 the case, even your own that I was the only person 
 who ever spoke to you on the subject. Why was this? 
 What caused the great difference? Even where you 
 are now, you had sometimes asked the meaning of certain 
 forms, and never could get a satisfactory answer. 
 
 You have, indeed, asked me most important ques- 
 tions, my dearest Annie, and I will endeavour to reply 
 to them. I agree with you in the many and far superior 
 advantages of the Christian over us. Religious books 
 adapted for our youth and sympathising in our feelings, 
 we have not indeed. With the sole exception of one 
 Synagogue in London, our houses of worship cannot be 
 to our youth as the Christians' are to theirs; but for 
 home-speaking, heart- appealing prayers, the BOOK which 
 gives these to Christians, gives them equally, ay, and 
 gave them first to us. The Bible is the source, the 
 foundation, the example of all prayer, and that is OURS. 
 It is from the study of and beliof in this, that the peace 
 which passeth all understanding, the peace to which 
 Isaiah alludes, when he says, in such trusting faith, 
 
 c5
 
 34 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
 stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee;" and then 
 appealing to his countrymen, conjures them, "Trust ye 
 in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlast- 
 ing strength ;" from the Bible this perfect peace is 
 found, for there, and there alone, we learn to know our 
 God, and knowing, to love Him ; there we find our 
 surest guide for conduct and feeling, strength for life on 
 Earth, and hope and belief in life in Heaven. There 
 we find the model of every prayer ; and things for which 
 wfe should pray to become acceptable to God, and reasons 
 for every form and ordinance to which we still adhere. 
 It is not the actual creed which marks the difference in in- 
 dividuals or families. It is the study or neglect Q{ the Bible. 
 The spiritual, the consoling and strengthening piety to 
 which you allude, as characterising your friend and her 
 family, does not proceed from the fact of her being 
 a Christian, but from her having made the Bible her 
 sole rule of action. If you were to see more of the 
 world, you would find that as there are unhappily many 
 nominal Jews, so there are very many nominal Chris- 
 tians; and both proceed from the same cause, indifference 
 to all serious things, and utter neglect of the Bible. Un- 
 fortunately, circumstances have so placed you, that the 
 only serious thinkers and spiritual minds among whom you 
 are thrown, are Christians, and therefore you very natu- 
 rally suppose the difference must lie in the superiority of 
 their creed. But, my dear Annie, how comes it, that if 
 the necessity, the strength, and purity of religion are only 
 taught amongst the Christians, that /should so earnestly 
 have besought you to make it your own, and from my 
 own experience written of comfort and strength ? I am
 
 LETTER IV. 35 
 
 no Christian . Nay, I have been, the last four years asso- 
 ciating with such unenlightened members of the Greek 
 and Roman churches, that, had I been narrow-minded 
 enough to judge only by them, the Christian would be to me 
 but a term for superstition, irreligion, and utter ignorance 
 of God's word, compared with which, the most ignorant 
 of my own faith would seem infinitely superior. I do not 
 write this from any feeling of prejudice ; but simply to 
 prove to you that we must judge effects by their real, not 
 their apparent causes ; that it is not being a Christian, 
 even a Protestant Christian, which will make us spiritual, 
 and teach us the true value of piety, but the earnest and 
 prayerful study of that Holy Book which was given to us 
 first, and which, therefore, ought to be treasured as a 
 mine of peace and hope peculiarly our own. 
 
 Dearest Annie, study this Holy Book with prayer and 
 love, before you decide on being a Christian. I am not 
 astonished at the strong temptation which assailed you; 
 but I am unspeakably thankful, that, even in death, your 
 beloved mother had power to withhold you, and deeply 
 grateful to Mrs. Balfour for referring you to a Jewish 
 friend. Your situation from childhood, with regard to 
 religion, has been a peculiar one. The kind, but very 
 aged relatives with whom you lived till fourteen, had 
 escaped from Portugal to the West Indies, and only 
 came to England, when already too advanced in years 
 for toleration and freedom to alter previous habits. In 
 Portugal, as you know, to be even suspected as a Jew, 
 exposed our ancestors to all the horrors of the Inquisi- 
 tion, sequestration, torture, and often, even death. The 
 religion of their fathers, therefore, was instilled with 
 such impenetrable secrecy, and so burdened with cau-
 
 36 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 tion and the constant dread of discovery, that, to do more 
 than attend to its mere elements, and keep the mind 
 faithful to the doctrine of the Divine Unity and the per- 
 petuity of the Jewish Faith, in contradistinction to the 
 bewildering dogmas of saints, martyrs, infallibility of the 
 Roman Church, masses, etc., was impossible. To be- 
 come spiritual was equally so, for the Bible was a for- 
 bidden book to the. Catholics, and therefore equally so 
 to the secret Jews. Those, therefore, who from some 
 imminent pressure of danger fled to other countries, 
 were unable to throw off the caution of centuries. They 
 could not realise that the yoke was so far removed from 
 their necks, as to permit the public practice, and open con- 
 fession of their faith. To speak of, or impart it, by means of 
 free reference to, and discussion on the Bible, had so 
 long been an utter impossibility, that it was scarcely un- 
 natural, they should suppose it impossible still, when in 
 reality no impossibility existed. This is the reason why 
 so many of our ancient Spanish and Portuguese families 
 when they came to England, adhered so very strictly to 
 the form, to the utter exclusion of the spirit of their reli- 
 gion ; and never spoke of nor attempted to teach it, ex- 
 cept by desiring a soulless obedience, which had no 
 power, when the youthful mind began to inquire for it- 
 self. We must regret this, but we can scarcely wonder 
 at it. They could not teach the spirit of their faith, for 
 they knew it not themselves. It requires long years of 
 rest, of freedom, of equality, of intellectual exercise, so 
 to raise and purify the mind, as to enable it to attain 
 spirituality itself, and teach it to others. We see this 
 truth borne out, m the present improved state of the 
 Jewish nation. They are beginning, nay, for some years
 
 LETTER IV. 37 
 
 have begun, to break from the stagnation, which was the 
 natural consequence, of their escape from dangerous po- 
 sitions in Portugal, to the rest and security of England; 
 and the mind and heart have so far awakened and ad- 
 vanced, as no longer to be satisfied with lifeless forms, but 
 are prepared and eager for the reception and inculcation 
 of that pure spirituality which, equally with the ordained 
 form, is inseparable from their fathers' faith. 
 
 The long years of concealment and persecution, from 
 the effects of which it requires almost as long an interval 
 effectually to break, is the real and only reason of the 
 grand distinction in the religious education of Protestants 
 and Hebrews I should say was the reason, for it no 
 longer exists, and the Bible is taught and treasured as 
 it ought to be, by Jews as well as Christians. Your 
 early years were not indeed thus privileged. Not that 
 your aged relatives were mere formalists : they venerated, 
 loved, and were supported individually by the spirit of 
 their faith ; but from never having been accustomed to 
 speak of it, even to each other, were entirely ignorant 
 how to impart it to so young a child, and perhaps shared 
 the opinion of their age, that it was a subject too weighty 
 and solemn for the comprehension of a childish mind. 
 Like many others even now, they very likely supposed, 
 that what was necessary for you to know would come 
 intuitively ; that to see, that you attended to, and obeyed 
 certain forms, and solemnised certain days, was all the 
 religious duty incumbent upon them, and this I know 
 they performed lovingly and well. You had their 
 example even in the daily perusal of the Bible ; but it 
 was a Hebrew or a Spanish one, and therefore utterly 
 incomprehensible to you. Your childhood, then, was
 
 38 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 not blessed with a religious education ; and from fourteen 
 to eighteen, an age when the impressions are strongest, 
 and the affections most intense, the too lowly spirit, and 
 trembling doubt in her own powers of your poor mother, 
 prevented your receiving those earnest lessons of piety, 
 which from her lips never would have been forgotten, 
 and which might have spared you much of your present 
 pain. Not that I would reproach her the decision 
 was mistaken, but it sprung from such a meek, fearful, 
 humble spirit, that while I contested with it, it only made 
 me love her more. You tell me, that almost her last 
 connected words, were to conjure you never to desert 
 your faith, the full comfort of which, she assured you, 
 she was feeling at that awful moment; to seek and love 
 God in your youth ; and to regret, with tears, she had 
 not spoken on the sacred subject more often with you, 
 in her days of health and strength. But she did not 
 tell you why she had thus refrained; and observing, as 
 I know you have, her earnest lowly heartfelt piety, you 
 will perhaps hardly credit me when I tell you, that it 
 was because she felt herself unworthy and incapable, 
 and believed her child a better Jewess than herself. 
 The island, in which so many years of her married life 
 had passed, admitted no Jews. She was literally com- 
 pelled to adopt the semblance of Unitarianisrn, and 
 even change her name. She could not adhere to a 
 single ordinance of Judaism, and how, then, could she 
 impart it even to the children who were with her? 
 Circumstances of a most imperative nature, and utterly 
 impossible to be controlled or altered, compelled your 
 father's residence in that island ; but the heart-break 
 to her was, not its privations and annoyances and
 
 LETTER IV. 39 
 
 unhealthiness, though these were all hard enough to 
 bear, but the circumstance above stated, which was known 
 only to me and to her God. She was too fond, too 
 true a wife to annoy her husband, with either regret or 
 murmuring, but I do believe, that inward and constant 
 suffering, shortened her life by many years. She returned 
 to England, and to all the ordinances of her venerated 
 faith, as far, at least, as lay in her power; but even the 
 deep delight of this obedience could not remove the 
 painful impressions of the past. On this subject alone 
 my remonstrances failed in effect. How could she 
 attempt, her letters would reiterate, to talk with, or 
 instruct her Annie in religion, when her whole past life 
 must deny her words? How could she teach her that 
 Judaism was all in all, when her own example had 
 taught the bitter lesson that it must give place to 
 circumstances? No, she would watch over, shield, 
 cherish, as only such deep love could, but she was 
 unworthy to speak to her of God. This was the reason 
 of your mother's silence ; but what her religion was to 
 her, how truly she lived and died a Jewess, her letters, 
 through eighteen years, will prove. Will you not, 
 then, examine the faith she so much loved, while advan- 
 tages and privileges are yours, the absence of which 
 gave her such intense suffering, though it could not 
 shake her faith ? 
 
 One thing let me entreat you; do not judge your 
 whole nation, by the few families whom you may know. 
 A small country town is the very place to engender 
 prejudice and narrow-mindedness, both in favour of, 
 and against certain points. It strengthens error, 
 because society is not extended enough to mark those
 
 40 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 diversities of character and opinion, which, if duly 
 considered, must enlarge the mind, and purify it from 
 all too selfish dross. From finding few, with whom 
 we can exchange thoughts and ideas, we imagine 
 our own opinions infallible, and even by what we read, may 
 be led unconsciously, to the same bias. From having 
 no serious books of our own, fitted for our females and 
 youth, those who are inclined to serious reflection, are 
 compelled to turn to works, by serious Christian authors. 
 There they will find sympathy and pleasure, but so 
 intimately mingled with the peculiar bearing of the 
 Christian faith, that unless fully and thoroughly versed 
 in our own, it is -next- to impossible not to share the 
 writer's belief in the excellence of his own religion, over 
 and above that of any other. In fact no religious work 
 would be worth reading, if this honest prejudice did not 
 infuse it, for to bring merely intellect and imagination 
 to bear upon a subject so solemn, to the exclusion of 
 heart and feeling, would render it a mere mockery 
 unfitted for the service of either God or man. I have 
 no doubt the indiscriminate reading of these books has 
 increased your idea, that spiritual peace and strength 
 and comfort are only to be found amongst Christians ; 
 but, dearest Annie, let the experience and the earnest 
 lessons of a Jewess convince you to the contrary. In 
 the constant study of the Word of God, you will be very 
 often startled to find that a similar style of promise, narra- 
 tive, and spiritual guidance, which you thought were only 
 revealed in the New Testament, were found in our's ages 
 and ages before; and that it is our utter neglect and dis- 
 regard of these precious things which has so concealed 
 them, as to cause the supposition that they were given
 
 JETTER IV. 41 
 
 to the stranger rather than to us. And is not this dread- 
 ful? Should we not do all we possibly can to remove 
 the dross which long, long ages of persecution, and its 
 concomitant mental darkness, have gathered round our 
 purely spiritual faith, and individually prove that it is 
 the study of, the belief in, and love for, the Word of our 
 God which will raise us in the scale of being, and give 
 us every privilege, temporal and eternal, which we are 
 told can only be found in the adoption of the Christian 
 creed? Ask any enlightened Protestant; and he will 
 tell you that the actual doctrines of belief are of little 
 moment, compared with the spirit which he supposes 
 that doctrine breathes, and which the preaching of Jesus 
 and his apoetles diffused over a benighted world. And 
 that spirit (but wholly and entirely distinct from doctrines, 
 on the precise nature of which, not two congregations could 
 be found to agree as early as the second century after 
 its propagation) had its origin, its influence, its infalli- 
 bility, in the wider spread and universal acknowledgment 
 of that blessed Word, which for centuries before, for our 
 especial benefit, God had inspired holy men to write. 
 
 This is a grave and important consideration, but one 
 to which the serious and enlightened thinker, be his actual 
 creed what it may, will unhesitatingly respond. Alluding 
 to that intense and purely spiritual love of nature, which 
 pervades the works of modern poets, and renders them 
 so infinitely superior in warmth and truth to the 
 ancients, one of my favourite authors* thus writes 
 " Yes ! the only difference between modern literature 
 and that of the ancients, lies in our grand advantage 
 over them in this particular. It is from the literature 
 * William Howitt, Rural Life in England, p. 323.
 
 4*2 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 of the BIBLE, and the heirship of immortality laid open 
 to us in it, that we owe our enlarged conceptions of 
 natural beauty, and our quickened affections towards 
 the handiworks of God. We walk about the world as 
 its true heirs, and heirs of far more than it has to give. 
 We walk about in confidence, in love, and in peaceful 
 hopes, for we know that we are the rightful sons of the 
 house ; and that neither death nor distance, can inter- 
 rupt our progress towards the home paradise of the 
 Divine Father." 
 
 Christianity must, indeed, be dear to those nations, 
 and those individuals, who can enter into the full beauty 
 and truth of this passage, for it has given them the 
 Bible. But who will deny, that the Hebrew had it 
 first, ay, and direct from that God who, when He 
 designated Israel as His son, His firstborn, proclaimed 
 himself our "FATHER;" and when he" passed before 
 Moses and proclaimed himself " Merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth 
 keeping mercy for thousands, and visiting iniquity only 
 to the third and fourth generation, forgiving iniquity 
 and transgression and sin, and only so chastising, as to 
 deter others from sin ;" and again, through David, as 
 one whose mercy is as immeasurable as the Heaven, is 
 high above the Earth, as a father who pities his children, 
 and as far as the East is from the West, removeth 
 our transgressions from us, surely taught us the 
 thrilling truth, that GOD is LOVE, ages before the 
 Apostles so simplified His glorious attributes to the 
 duller comprehension of the Heathen, as merely to 
 designate Him by those three words? I do not blame 
 the Christian for thinking that to him alone, the glorious
 
 LETTER IV. 43 
 
 privilege of Biblical revelation is accorded, if he sees 
 its rightful and original possessors, indifferent to, and 
 unhappily sometimes unconscious of, the gift. We can- 
 not wonder, if the Divine Spirit of the Bible appears 
 only known to, felt by, and acted on, by Christians, that 
 they should fancy a superior dispensation must have 
 been vouchsafed to them, of which we too are ignorant 
 as others; but O, the fault lies in us, not in them not, 
 indeed, now as it was, for the word of God is resuming 
 its destined and treasured place amongst us. 
 
 This brings me to the point I have touched on before, 
 but which you may perhaps think requires a little further 
 illustration. I have referred to the non-spirituality of 
 the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of a former genera- 
 tion; but you will think, perhaps, that this reason will not 
 hold good with the families, among whom you are at pre- 
 sent thrown, as they are not Spanish, and, consequently, 
 are not exposed to the danger surrounding the secret 
 Jews. No but the debased and miserable condition, to 
 which, the various, and enslaving restrictions of Germany, 
 and Prussia, subjected their ancestors, had the same de- 
 grading and darkening effect. How was it possible they 
 could obtain anything like elevation of mind, refinement 
 of sentiment, and spirituality, or in more familiar words, 
 poetry of feeling, when doomed to the very lowest and 
 most restricting occupations? The Hebrews of Ger- 
 many, as in many other countries, were debarred from 
 all intellectual, or even, so to speak, social pursuits ; con- 
 fined to certain quarters of certain towns, their sole 
 means of either subsistence or influence, that of amassing 
 and lending money; a pursuit of all others the most de- 
 trimental to the better part of our mingled nature, the
 
 44 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 tnost deadening to every energy and lofty impulse. 
 This, however, was the fault of circumstances, not of in- 
 dividual or national character; but they could not, even 
 in freedom, and unshackled by any social restrictions, 
 shake off in fifty, or a hundred years the habits and feel- 
 ings of ten or twelve centuries. It requires time; and 
 that gradual advancement, and enlightenment of the mind 
 and species which liberty and equality engender, to 
 regain the holiness and spirituality, which are so essen- 
 tially the breath of the religion of the Lord, but of which 
 His just anger at our awful iniquities in the past, has, 
 through the treatment of the nations, for a while de- 
 prived us. We must remember, too, and draw our con- 
 clusions accordingly, that it is only within the last half 
 century, we have enjoyed even some portion of equality in 
 England; 'and if we truthfully regard events, we shall 
 find that we, Hebrews of both denominations, Spanish 
 and German, have advanced in all the higher, holier, 
 and refining attributes of man, according as we have 
 been advanced in social consideration. We should re- 
 member this, dearest Annie, when we are inclined to 
 draw conclusions disparaging to our own, and in favour 
 of those who have never been exposed to the enslaving 
 restrictions and persecuting statutes under which we 
 have so long laboured ; not that I could wish you to ele- 
 vate your own, unduly above that of others, but only to 
 do it simple justice, and examine causes carefully ere you 
 condemn effects.
 
 45 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 I AM not at all surprised, my dearest Annie, at that 
 which you tell me, because I have heard it myself so 
 often, though how, or whence such a mistaken charge 
 originated, is indeed incomprehensible. I allude, as 
 you will of course perceive, to the accusation promul- 
 gated against us (and which you have heard repeated) 
 not by Christians alone, but actually by many amongst 
 ourselves, that the Jewish religion is not a spiritual reli- 
 gion ; and, therefore, that those with whom you are at 
 present domiciled should think and assert it, cannot as- 
 tonish me in the least. We will try if we can discover 
 whether it is founded on truth or error. I am the more 
 encouraged to do this, from the deep and thankful joy 
 which your answer to my last has given me: " That it 
 did not tire you in the least, but gave you so much to 
 think about, it seemed to draw you out of yourself, and 
 make you happier." My own darling Annie, if there be 
 a portion of peace in the words of an erring fellow-mortal, 
 how inexpressibly will it deepen and increase as your 
 impressions on the necessity and comfort of religion be- 
 come more fixed, and gradually lead you to that unerr- 
 ing Word which " never faileth, but giveth the waters of 
 eternal life to all who thirst."
 
 46 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Concerning this mistaken charge of non-spirituality in 
 a religion which proceeded from the mouth of God him- 
 self; that God whom we only know as a SPIRIT, without 
 form or substance, a pure essence pervading Heaven and 
 Earth, and whom we are expressly commanded to wor- 
 ship in spirit and in truth, it appears to me that Chris- 
 tians have adopted and asserted it, simply from the mis- 
 taken supposition that modern Judaism is distinct from 
 ancient Judaism, and that we now receive and follow 
 the ordinances and superstitions of man, in lieu of the 
 words of the living God. They suppose this partly from 
 observation, and partly from the received, but yet erro- 
 neous, assertions of books. Now, there is no such thing 
 <. as ancient and modern Judaism. Judaism is the religion 
 which God gave to his people Israel through Moses, and 
 which was to last through all ages, and for ever. It can 
 be neither altered nor abolished: modified nor improved. 
 When our opponents bring forward the constantly reite- 
 rated assertion, that the Hebrews have mingled all sorts 
 of petty and enslaving customs, and binding forms, which 
 we cannot find in the Word of God, I answer, It is quite 
 true; but human weakness and human error cannot tar- 
 nish the intrinsic beauty, nor interfere with the ordained 
 perpetuity of the Mosaic system. And if we examine 
 the origin of these human additions, we shall find they 
 proceed from the intense desire of our ancient sages, to 
 preserve the undying spark of religion alive within us 
 by means of outward ordinances, which, by their con- 
 stant occurrence, would bring our Creator to our thoughts, 
 when, from slavery and misery, we were debarred from 
 all more spiritual communion. At first, indeed, the 
 outward ordinance was sanctified, and vitalised, by the
 
 LETTER V. 47 
 
 inward aspiration ; but, as time rolled on, sinking us 
 deeper and deeper into the abyss of wretchedness, from 
 persecution and its natural consequences, ignorance 
 and superstition, the very word of our God being con- 
 stantly denied us, was it either strange or unnatural that 
 men, still ardently attached to the name of Israel, and 
 dying by thousands for their faithful adherence, to the 
 only spiritual truth, which they could enshrine and com- 
 prehend, the Unity of God, should cling to the forms in- 
 stituted by their sages, and at length surround them with 
 a divinity and glory not their own ; and, their being 
 able to obey and follow them alone, to the exclusion of 
 the more spiritual ordinances of the Lord, led them in 
 their mistaken, but very pardonable darkness, to place 
 them on an equality with, and then gradually before, 
 the changeless statutes of the living God ? It was com- 
 paratively easy to hurry over a Hebrew blessing at cer- 
 tain periods of the day, and to obey certain forms ; but 
 it was far more difficult to realise the innumerable 
 duties, feelings, and thoughts included in these thrilling 
 words, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might; *" "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ;f" "Thou shalt not 
 - avenge nor bear any grudge. J " It was barely possible, in 
 the debased state in which the mass were sunk, to com- 
 prehend the sublime truths and spiritual doctrines of 
 all the prophets ; and therefore is it that the religion is 
 charged with becoming a lifeless form, and mere human 
 will-worship, when, in fact, the semblance of such, for 
 semblance alone it was, originated in the effect of perse- 
 * Deut. vi. 5. f Levit. xix. 18. \ Levit. xix. 18.
 
 48 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 cution on the mind, not in the imperfect nature of our 
 creed. 
 
 All true Hebrews, and, in fact, all right-thinking 
 Christians must deny the assertion of an ancient and a 
 modern Judaism ; but,, my dear Annie, I quite allow- 
 that there is a distinction between ancient and modern 
 Jeics. That distinction has, indeed, been brought about 
 by the circumstances so often reverted to ; but it never- 
 theless does exist. To the ancient Israelites, our God 
 was revealed, face to face, if we may so speak without 
 irreverence. He brought them out of Egypt with a 
 mighty arm, and an outstretched hand ; displayed before 
 them miracles and wonders, which He only could per- 
 form ; gave them His law amidst such awful demon- 
 stration of His stupendous power, that all beheld and 
 believed ; spoke to them in all the varied epochs of 
 which we read in His holy word, spreading over some 
 3500 years, through men chosen and inspired for the 
 office ; so that we may say, they were in direct communi- 
 cation, through selected individuals, with their Father 
 in Heaven, even in times of the most awful national 
 iniquity. He had called them His own. For the sake of 
 His beloved servant Abraham, the faithful, He set 
 apart his descendants, to receive and propagate a reve- 
 lation, which was gradually to bring the whole world to 
 a knowledge of, and obedience to, the Lord. Their own 
 sins, constant unbelief, and repeated desertion of the 
 Divine Law could not interfere with the furtherance of 
 this gracious and unchanging purpose. They, indeed, 
 brought down on themselves, both individually and 
 nationally, the wrath of the Eternal, already and from
 
 LEJTER V. 49 
 
 the first delivery of the Law, threatened if they dis- 
 obeyed; but His promise to Abraham, that in his seed 
 all the nations of the Earth should be blessed, by a 
 knowledge of the Lord and His Commandments, was, 
 and is fulfilled, equally in their dispersion, as in their ex- 
 clusive election in the Holy Land. 
 
 The ancient Hebrews were the sole repositories of 
 Revelation. Fewer in actual number than any of the 
 Heathen nations; their only territory, a portion of the 
 world so small, that, compared with the dominions of 
 Heathen princes, it would be scarcely larger than the 
 smallest county of England, compared with the whole of 
 the British Isles; yet in that small spot of Earth, the 
 God of a thousand worlds had set up His one temple; 
 and was worshipped, according to the spirit and the 
 ordinances which His infinite mercy had instituted, and 
 which were to teach a knowledge of Himself (though 
 darkened and mystified, by the impossibility of men's 
 comprehending, of themselves, the purity arid the spiritual 
 doctrine of His Divine Unity), over the whole world. 
 Until national iniquity tempted the Eternal's wrath, we 
 find the Israelites quite undisturbed in the possession 
 of their Holy Land ; and preserved entirely distinct, and 
 secure from the revolutions and changes continually 
 occurring in the nations around them. The fame of their 
 revelation spread far and wide ; for the interference of 
 the Deity, both nationally and individually, was so strik- 
 ingly and wonderfully manifested, that even many of 
 the Heathens acknowledged His power, with awe and 
 reverence; and the word Hebrew or Israelite, was always 
 associated with a degree of holiness, and imagined power 
 distinct from anv other race.
 
 50 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Such were the ancient Jews. Men in direct com- 
 munion through their priests and prophets, with the 
 Lord. A selected nation like whom as the oracles of 
 Revelation as the witnesses and workers of wonders as 
 orators and poets, inspired not only by the inward spirit, 
 but the public proclamation of the Lord, to reveal His 
 will and guide His people, there has been, and there is 
 no other standing apart like a sun, whose rays were to 
 penetrate the darkness around, and transform it into day. 
 And those rays are emanating still, though the fear- 
 ful crimes and wickedness of the nation dissolved the 
 sun itself, and scattered its minute particles to the 
 North and to the South, to the East and to the West, 
 to the farthest isles of the sea, to the remotest climes of 
 the land. In every Hebrew, there dwells the undying 
 particle of that deathless light, at the end of days to re- 
 unite, and form again that Sun of Righteousness, under 
 which Israel shall dwell in safety, and the whole world 
 acknowledge the ONE sole God. 
 
 The grand distinction then, between the ancient and 
 the modern Jews, is that the former, were visibly, the 
 Holy People of the Lord the receivers and promul- 
 gators of the knowledge of Himself the latter, equally 
 His holy people, equally His witnesses, are yet the per- 
 secuted of a world ; and as such, tossed amongst and 
 mingled with the nations scarcely able to recognise 
 themselves, as the same people who were the chosen of 
 the Past; and regarded by every other Faith, as a 
 race abandoned and utterly cast off, and left by the 
 wrath of the Eternal so entirely to the imaginations of 
 their own evil hearts, as to have no claim whatever upon 
 Him, save by embracing another creed.
 
 LETTER V. 51 
 
 And this is the great error, which we must guard 
 against. There is not the difference they assert. The 
 Mosaic religion, as taught and revealed in God's word, 
 is as imperatively binding on the modern, as it ever was 
 on the ancient Jews. And that it appears not to be so, 
 is the fault of circumstances before alluded to, but which 
 can have no weight in our consideration of the question, 
 whether the Jewish religion be spiritual or not? I grant 
 (and with deep regret that there should be such a fact 
 to grant), that in many parts of the world, particularly 
 Poland, Gibraltar, Barbary, and Palestine itself, there 
 are Jews, whose religion is so tarnished with superstitious 
 notions, extraordinary forms and narrowing ordinances, 
 for whose existence or even foundation, we look through 
 the law of Moses entirely in vain, that it might give a 
 colouring to the idea, that there is no similitude between 
 ancient and modern Judaism. But such changes are 
 the simple effect of human error, and cannot bear upon 
 the question at issue. If we ask an enlightened Pro- 
 testant, whether he recognises, in the strange superstitions 
 of the Greek Church, or even in the apparent image- 
 worship of the Catholic, the pure religion of Jesus, he 
 would decidedly answer in the negative. Is it not then 
 quite as unfair and erroneous, to judge of the spiritu- 
 ality or non-spirituality of our religion, by the super- 
 stition of certain modern Jews, as it would be for us, to 
 judge the purity and spirituality of the Christian faith, 
 by the Christians of Russia and of Spain ? 
 
 I am quite certain, that were the subject placed 
 in this light before enlightened Christians, they 
 would unhesitatingly withdraw their charge, and agree 
 that human error cannot interfere with or change the
 
 52 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 spirit of a system organised by God Himself; that they 
 are not justified in burdening JUDAISM with the some- 
 time superstition, sometime indifference, and but too 
 often utter want of nationality, in the modern JEWS. 
 
 Christians would grant this : nay, the very charge is 
 excusable in them, drawing conclusions as they must do, 
 so often from appearances. But what can we say for 
 those who amongst ourselves can assert any thing so 
 absolutely arid scripturally, and even talmudically false, 
 as the non-spirituality of their thrice holy faith? It is 
 to me so marvellous, so incomprehensible, that any Jew 
 can read his Bible, and its commentaries by many of 
 our earliest sages, and yet believe this, that the only 
 possible way to explain it, is the supposition that he 
 actually cannot know the meaning of the word spiritu- 
 ality ; and, by a strange mystification of ideas, associates 
 it with the mere doctrines of the Christian creed, par- 
 ticularly that of the " Holy Ghost," and so rejects it as 
 anti-Jewish, and tending to mislead him. This is the 
 only tangible and rational reason I can find for this 
 extraordinary error, which I have known take possession 
 of some minds so strongly, that the very word " spirit," 
 or " spirit of God," even in only a poem, terrifies from 
 the perusal, or causes its condemnation as too Christian 
 for the approval of any Jewish mind. 
 
 Grieved indeed should I be, if any one were to at- 
 tempt to impregnate your mind with these mistaken 
 notions. Full of poetry and feeling as it is, the very 
 idea that the Jewish religion consisted only in obedience 
 to certain laws, would terrify you away from it to 
 another, where your high and earnest aspirations might 
 find vent. But I trust to prove to you how utterly
 
 "LETTER v. 53 
 
 unfounded is the charge, how completely every form and 
 ordinance of our holy faith, even those instituted since 
 our dispersion, to permit us to obey when the sacrifices 
 and temple-service ceased, must be infused with that 
 vital breath of piety, which is, in fact, the essence of 
 spirituality, to mark it as an accepted offering, or rejected 
 mockery in His sight, for whom it is observed. 
 
 We will first examine the real meaning of this often 
 quoted word. I need not remind you of the mingled 
 nature in which it pleased our Creator to form man 
 that we are expressly told in Holy Writ, " that the Lord 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life" And from this breath 
 man became a living soul, an utterly distinct creation 
 from all which had gone before ; for God merely spake 
 to the waters, and the earth, and the air, and on the 
 instant they teemed with life; but the gift of the LIVING 
 SOUL was for man alone, and imparted by the breath of 
 his Creator. It is this undying soul, or spirit, which 
 unites man with the Deity, and so utterly divides him 
 from all other animate creation. The existence of this 
 spirit would, were it separated entirely from its clayey 
 tabernacle, be an existence of love, and purity, and 
 adoration, similar to that of the angels and ministers of 
 Heaven. 
 
 The earthly body in which it is enclosed, our ancient 
 sages declare to be composed of the four elements which 
 are the component parts of this, our terrestrial world 
 fire, earth, air, and water " the nature and tendency of 
 which are opposed to each other ; but by the word of 
 God peace reigneth amongst them, and maintaineth 
 their existence. When, however, the termination of our
 
 54 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 earthly existence arrives, He withdraws that peace, the 
 various elements degenerate into their natural discord 
 and opposition, and soon destroy the body, which returns 
 to the earth, whilst the spirit leturns to the God who 
 placed it therein."* This is a curious and ingenious 
 commentary on the simple words of Scripture, telling 
 us that God made man of the dust of the earth, and 
 perhaps was needless for a simple explanation, but 
 knowing your discursive and imaginative mind, the idea 
 is more likely to do you good than harm. 
 
 The element of FIRE, they say, incites "pride, 
 overbearing, haughtiness, wrath, envy, jealousy, covet- 
 ousness and ambition," all those passions which, if en- 
 couraged, "burn as a continual fire within us," consume 
 every higher feeling, and embitter our whole inward life, 
 however the outer one may seem prosperous and happy. 
 The element of AIR tends to all those petty levities and 
 abuses of speech, which, though only ivords conveyed to 
 and fro by the BREATH or air, do so much mischief, not 
 merely in our social intercourse, but to our own souls, 
 in engendering many vices which God condemns. The 
 mischief produced by words is incalculable, and even 
 more dangerous than that of actions. The latter we 
 can guard against ; the former is invisible and impalpa- 
 ble, but most deadly. How much of discord is produced 
 in families who ought to be so united, how much of 
 angry feeling inflamed, how often coolness and separa- 
 tion between intimate friends engendered and widened, 
 how constantly enmity excited, all from WORDS, which 
 if we could but examine or enquire into their founda- 
 tion, would literally dissolve into nothing ! But once 
 * Four Sermons by Rabbi Abraham Bclash.
 
 LETTER V. 55 
 
 spoken, who can recall them, or remove the sting, which 
 sometimes, even simply an unguarded expression will 
 produce ? The slanderer, the calumniator, the liar, 
 even the prevaricator, characters the most despicable 
 and the most mischievous, are all produced by words 
 merely words ; and these, our ancient sages say, are the 
 offspring of air. FIRE excites the inward feeling of sin, 
 to which AIR gives words. 
 
 The third element is less satisfactory to my ideas than 
 the previous ones and the fourth, but I will record it 
 notwithstanding. WATER, they say, incites to mercenary 
 craving for worldly treasures and pleasures, which over- 
 whelm us by a torrent, and excite to innumerable mean- 
 nesses in money transactions, taking bribes, and oppress- 
 ing the poor and unprotected, necessarily causing the 
 transgression of such commands as " Thou shalt not 
 steal," " Thou shalt not covet," " Thou shalt not op- 
 press," "Thou shalt not take usury." What these 
 peculiar vices have to do with, or how they can originate 
 in, the element of water, our sages may perhaps satisfac- 
 torily for themselves explain, but to me the idea is 
 rather unfounded, even in an Eastern imagination, 
 which allows greater licence than any other. They are 
 much more likely to originate in the influence of the 
 fourth element EARTH, which, they say, incites to indo- 
 lence and laziness in work, a contented acquiescence 
 with merely an animal nature, and, as the natural con- 
 sequence, a distaste and indifference, if not actual 
 repugnance to the service of God, and the consideration 
 of all serious things; shrinking from prayer and thanks- 
 giving, considering attendance and offerings at the house 
 of God a burdensome and wearying task, and engender-
 
 56 THE JKWISH FAITH. 
 
 ing all the vices and miseries thence proceeding. This 
 is, indeed, the natural effect of a mere earthly nature. 
 The breath or spirit which God breathed into man, and 
 so made him a living soul, is the only distinction between 
 us and the beasts of the field. If that immortal spirit 
 be so deadened and silenced within us, as to have neither 
 voice nor power, it follows that we must become like the 
 mere animals, and utterly incapable of a lofty aspiration, 
 pure desire and heavenly thought. The less the spirit 
 works within us, the more do we give ourselves up to 
 those enervating indulgences and those animal pleasures, 
 which though perhaps not actual vice at first (if the 
 neglect of the precious gifts intrusted to us can ever be 
 any thing else), sink us deeper and deeper into the 
 vortex of dissipation; and sin must follow. The more 
 this earthly nature is allowed to pi-edominate, the less 
 inclination, and -the less power have we to exercise and 
 cultivate the intellect or mind ; and the cultivation of 
 the MIND, if united with the right government of the 
 HEART, is the surest and best method of the elevation of 
 the spirit above the body, as our God ordained. 
 
 The theory of the four elements, as combined in the 
 body of man, I do not at all fancy you will quarrel with, 
 my dear Annie, only remember, that the Scriptural 
 account of the creation, which must be received as the 
 only divine account, and therefore the only one demand- 
 ing our implicit belief, is " that God formed man out of 
 the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life." I am earnest on this point, because a 
 mind like yours, unless carefully regulated, and always 
 referred to the unchangeable Word of God Himself, is 
 likely sometimes so to wander in the alluring and pleasant
 
 LETTER V. 75 
 
 fields of . the imagination, as at length to lose itself 
 in the endless labyrinth of conjecture, and find neither 
 rest nor comfort in the simple record which the Bible 
 gives; and, believe rne, it is only TRUTH which will 
 support us in affliction, and guide us steadily forward in 
 prosperity and peace. 
 
 Speculation is well for health and leisure truth may 
 seem too stern and simple then ; but come sickness, 
 come sorrow, and O how gratefully we welcome her 
 angel form ! Not that I would either check or con- 
 demn imagination I value it too highly as a precious 
 gift from God Himself; and I think those thrice blessed 
 on whom it is bestowed. That it may be a dangerous 
 gift 1 grant ; so is beauty, so are riches, so is successful 
 ambition ; but we do not value these the less, nor 
 withhold our children from seeking their possession. 
 Blessings and gifts are dangerous, not in themselves, but 
 in their abuse. If we carefully train the heart, and urge 
 and guide the mind, to love truth yet more than fancy, 
 we need never fear the undue influence of the imagina-. 
 tion. It will, as it was intended, make us infinitely 
 happier, ay and better, but never lead us wrong. 
 
 The ancient sages, whose notions we have been con- 
 sidering, used both their capaciqus intellect, and their 
 peculiarly vivid imagination, in illustrating certain simple 
 texts, so as familiarly to instruct and delight the masses 
 of their countrymen. They never intended these various: 
 illustrations and commentaries to take the place of that 
 venerable Word, which was their foundation, but merely 
 as an intellectual exercise to amplify and define. 
 
 Whether or not we agree in the idea of the four 
 elements, this simple fact is evident, that we are com- 
 
 D 5
 
 58 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 posed of two natures, and that, would we seek to become 
 deserving of the love and favour of our Father, who 
 when He breathed His essence within us, destined us 
 for happiness, and virtue, and immortality, we must 
 give the spirit greater ascendancy than the earthly ; and 
 to do this is the intention of all Revelation ; the seeking 
 it is to be SPIRITUAL, and the peculiar frame of heart 
 and mind which it produces, is SPIRITUALITY. 
 
 Is it likely, then, that the very religion which God, 
 in His mercy, revealed to man, should be deficient in 
 the one important point which is the aim of all? Even 
 earthly lawgivers invent codes which will secure, or 
 which seek to secure, as far as their limited understand- 
 ings will go, the elevation and bettering in other words 
 the spiritualising of their species, by regarding and 
 punishing every earthly propensity, when it injures a 
 fellow-being, as a crime against the state. Would our 
 God do less; or reveal a law, obedience to which 
 deadened the spirit and vivified the animal? It is 
 almost impious to suppose it ; but my letter has grown 
 to such an unconscionable length, that we will leave 
 the further consideration of this momentous subject till 
 my next.
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 You tell me, dearest Annie, you are quite clear now 
 as to the real meaning and the real intent of spirituality, 
 and that my communications on that subject interested 
 you more deeply than you can express. You entreat 
 me to prove that our holy religion is spiritual, as I feel 
 it, and say that you have heard and read, that no book of 
 divinity can be spiritual, unless it explain the Old Tes- 
 tament by the light of the New, and that the revelation 
 on Mount Sinai was one of fire and blood, consisting 
 merely of types and shadows of the purer light to come, 
 not being perpetual, or a reality in itself: that such 
 thoughts will come, and you cannot answer them. Nor 
 am I at all astonished that they should come. Your 
 mind is at present in a state of restless inquiry, and 
 things, even sentences, you may have read, or even 
 merely heard, in a more quiescent temper, and have then 
 forgotten, return to perplex and unsettle you. You tell 
 me, too, that you were much struck with the verses I 
 have quoted at different times, they seemed so exactly 
 the comfort that you wanted ; but you always supposed 
 that they came from the New, not the Old Testament, 
 and were, especially, the privileged possession of Chris- 
 tians, as they were so frequently quoted in Christian 
 books, and those of your own people with whom you
 
 60 THE JEWISH FAITfl. 
 
 have ventured to speak on the subject, knew nothing 
 about them. Again let me warn you, my dear girl ; do 
 not judge of the Jewish religion, or of the Jewish people, 
 by the very few whom you happen to know ; but always 
 remember there are nominal members of every creed, 
 and that, were your circle wider, you would find nomi- 
 nal Christians exceeding the number of nominal Jews, 
 and so divided amongst themselves, that, were you really 
 bent upon deserting your faith, which I do not believe 
 you are, you would find it difficult to decide which of 
 these various thinkers and speculators it would be safest 
 and best to join. I do not write this from any feeling of 
 disrespect or uncharitableness : as conscience dictates, 
 so it is right to worship ; and if our Father in Heaven 
 looks with an eye of love and has compassion on all His 
 creatures, bearing with error itself in the mode of ser- 
 vice, for the sake of the love and zeal borne towards 
 Himself, how dare we, weak, finite mortals of a day, 
 judge harshly of one another? My only wish is to remove 
 a degree of prejudice which has arisen (from circum- 
 stances) in your mind against your own, and which, 
 therefore, inclines you to love another better. You will 
 veryprobably ask me, if I consider all religions alike in 
 the sight of our Father in Heaven, and the earnest wor- 
 shippers of each equally acceptable to Him, why am I 
 so desirous that you should remain a Jewess. Because, 
 dearest Annie, it is a widely different thing to be ear- 
 nest and faithful to the creed we have imbibed from 
 infancy, to deserting it, without examination, for another. 
 To assert that which in our own hearts which we disbe- 
 lieve, even before man's tribunal, is a fearful sacrilege ; 
 what must it be when such a false proceeding rests be-
 
 LETTER VI. 61 
 
 tween our own consciences and an [all-seeing, all-pene- 
 trating God ? He has told us in His Word such and 
 such things are truth, and must be observed perpetually. 
 If we neither know, nor desire to know, anything of these 
 solemn truths, how can we, without falsehood, say, we 
 disbelieve them, which, if we adopt and make public pro- 
 fession of belief, in a new revelation, we must do, though 
 we may not actually say so, in distinct words. To believe 
 or disbelieve a narrative, we certainly ought to know 
 every part of it. How foolish we should seem, to declare 
 that we do not believe one account, and adopt another, 
 without knowing anything of either. Even in the com- 
 mon occurrences of life, this proceeding would expose 
 us to laughter and contempt. How much more solemn 
 then it becomes, when it relates to our position with our 
 Heavenly Father, and our destiny through all Eternity ! 
 It is for this reason, arid feeling the heavy responsibility 
 devolved on me to watch and guard you, that I so ear- 
 nestly entreat you to examine your own. If, when you 
 have stated every doubt and prejudice, my answers fail 
 to make manifest the fulness, and the comfort, and the 
 beauty of our spiritual faith; if, after due and patient 
 examination, your heart and mind shall decide in favour 
 of the Christian, I will not keep you back, grievous as 
 it would be that so wide a barrier were flung between us. 
 Annie, darling, the peace of your conscience is more 
 unutterably precious, than my transitory joy. If, indeed, 
 the Jewish religion is not enough to satisfy your yearn- 
 ing affections, fill your aspiring mind with adoration, 
 comfort every sorrow, enhance every pleasure, and so 
 point with light-clad finger to the immortal spirit's eter- 
 nal home, that the very darkness of the grave becomes
 
 62 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 illumined, then, dearest, seek another and more satisfy- 
 ing creed; but oh ! do not decide on this, till you have 
 proved the revelations of your God to Moses imperfect, 
 His Word untrue. 
 
 The study of the Law alone, as distinct and wholly 
 unconnected with the Prophets, I acknowledge will not 
 satisfy our longings for a spiritual religion; because, 
 though even there, there are very many verses and sta- 
 tutes of a purely spiritual nature, we might be apt, in 
 the imperfection of our wisdom, to overlook them, in the 
 seemingly more important ordinances, which demanded, 
 if I may so speak, palpable and visible obedience. The 
 historical and prophetic books give us the real spirit of 
 the Law, instruct us as to the feeling and temper which 
 would render the sacrifices and other formal observances 
 acceptable to Him, who is a spirit in Himself, and 
 whose essence fills the universe. But then the Bible 
 must not be considered, as it unfortunately too often is, 
 synonymous only with the Pentateuch. The same Al- 
 mighty and Merciful Being who inspired Moses to write 
 those five books, inspired other holy men to write the 
 remainder, and, in consequence, one part is quite as 
 holy and quite as binding as the other. 
 
 The very first command in the Jewish ritual is belief 
 in the unity of God. His proclaiming himself to His 
 people as the one sole Deity, without division either in 
 form or essence ; as a Spirit filling Heaven and Earth ; 
 a jealous God, prohibiting the worship of any other; 
 marking the maker of idols as subject to His wrath and 
 the judgment of His law, was in itself a groundwork, or 
 frame, of spirituality, the extent of which can only be 
 realised, by a glance over the worship and belief of every
 
 LETTER VI. 63 
 
 other nation. Even Plato, one of the wisest and purest 
 thinkers, and Aristotle, a philosopher equally renowned, 
 could not arrive at such a pitch of exalted spirituality 
 as to embrace the pure doctrine of Unity, which 
 the most ignorant amongst the Hebrews grasped and 
 believed. It seems as if the idea of the Omniscience, 
 the Omnipotence, and the Ubiquity of the Deity were 
 beyond the range of even their extraordinary intellect ; 
 and they composed a theory of the Logos, and the spirit 
 thence proceeding, dividing and yet uniting the God- 
 head, in a manner remarkably, though not exactly, 
 similar to the Trinity of the Christians. It is impossible 
 to study their curious theory, without being struck by 
 the evident incapability for the human mind, however 
 richly gifted, to attain, without divine revelation, belief 
 in the purely spiritual doctrine of the Unity of God. 
 Here are men whose marvellous wisdom had raised them 
 so far above their age, that they believed in a Spirit, or 
 Godhead, far superior to the idols to whom the masses 
 bowed down; and beheld, faintly gleaming indeed, but 
 still distinct, the fact of our Immortality : yet the one 
 Omniscient and Ubiquitous God of the Hebrews was to 
 them incomprehensible ; and they, therefore, set up a 
 theory which, by dividing His essence, seemed to endow 
 Him with greater power than as One alone. 
 
 Accustomed from our infancy to repeat our belief 
 that "the Lord our God, the Lord he is ONE," we are 
 not in the very least aware how much of spirituality is 
 included in that brief sentence. Nor, in fact, can we 
 realise it, unless we look back on the extraordinary 
 worship of the Heathen nations, from whom we were 
 delivered; and the strange and varied religions (so to
 
 64 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 speak) which even at this present day characterise the 
 savage inhabitants of Asia, Africa, and America, on whom 
 the light of revelation has not yet dawned. Even in 
 those the spirit craves for something beyond itself, 
 and so they bow down to the sun, or moon, or stars, or 
 images embodying some aspirations of their own ima- 
 ginings. But the idea of the God of the Hebrews is too 
 sublime, too purely spiritual, to be received without 
 direct revelation. We do not regard it thus; because, 
 having been handed down from generation to generation 
 through the apparent instrumentality of man, we forget 
 WHENCE it originally proceeded from the mouth of 
 God Himself. In its simple truth, " there is but one 
 God;" a child can believe, and understand it. In the 
 vastness, the concentration of attributes, the marvellous 
 truths which the idea combines, it is a subject impossible 
 to be attained in all its fulness, save by the most spiritual, 
 the purest, the wisest, and yet the humblest of men. 
 Thought loses itself in the immensity of the contempla- 
 tion. The purest intellect, the most vivid imagination 
 cannot embrace all the perfections, all the combinations 
 of what we are apt to consider contradictory attributes, 
 such as unswerving justice and yet unfathomable mercy; 
 prescience in the Deity, yet free will in man ; omniscience, 
 not of this one little world, but of the hundred other 
 systems which roll round us, visible only as the lights of 
 night ; omnipotence, at one and the same moment, to 
 guide the hearts and actions of millions and millions of 
 human beings, each apparently following his own inclin- 
 ations and his own passions, to further God's own im- 
 mortal will; ubiquity, to fill heaven and earth, every 
 where at the same moment, yet with each individual, as
 
 LETTER VI. 65 
 
 caring for him alone; combining in Himself mercy, 
 wisdom, might, the perfection and concentration of 
 glory ; the pure light, in whose light alone we shall see 
 light ; the Spirit, from whose inspiration all our best 
 actions spring; the Fountain of Life, whence life shall 
 flow for us everlastingly ; salvation to all who look to 
 and believe in Him. 
 
 " A 'refuge ' for all in the tempest of life 
 A ' shadow from heat ' and a ' fortress in strife,' 
 The ' strong habitation ' where all may resort 
 The 'rock ' which for ages the faithful have sought." 
 
 The sole One who was, is,. and ever will be. In the 
 mere enumeration of these attributes, these varied de- 
 signations to bring down the incomprehensible majesty 
 of the Eternal to the feeble conceptions of man, thought 
 becomes bewildered, and the brain actually aches in the 
 vain desire to penetrate the infinite. How then could 
 the mere human nature of man comprehend the mighty 
 theme? How, even the immortal spirit, unless revealed ? 
 And how can any one deny, that, regarded thus, even the 
 doctrine of Unity, simple in its element as it is, becomes 
 inconceivable, even to the most spiritual nature ; and 
 therefore, that to believe in the Eternal, as He is re- 
 vealed in His word, demands the acquirement and en- 
 couragement of that peculiar temper of the mind, which 
 in my last letter I defined as spirituality? 
 
 You see, then, that the very groundwork of our re- 
 ligion, the acknowledgment of and belief in one God, 
 is essentially a spiritual principle. Its vast importance 
 is proved by the constant care of Moses, and all the suc- 
 ceeding prophets, to preserve the people from the
 
 66 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 infection of idolatry ; and the great difficulty of acquiring 
 it, is marked by the continual relapses of the nation 
 into the visible worship of images. Humanity had 
 not attained that perfection, which would enable 
 it to distinguish its two-fold nature, and deaden the 
 earthly by the superiority of the spiritual. For Abra- 
 ham's sake, God selected a people who would be 
 enabled to do this, by a Divine revelation ; but they 
 required time, prepared as they were by such startling 
 and awful manifestations of the still invisible Being, who 
 was henceforth to be their sole object of adoration. The 
 Jews who quitted Egypt were not a spiritual people : 
 they could not be ; for suffering and bodily misery had 
 deadened every purer aspiration, and made them long 
 for mere physical relief. But the law was given to make 
 them spiritual, and, through them, to extend the same 
 exalted feeling over the whole world; and this beneficent 
 intention is working even now. Christianity and Maho- 
 medanism are both labouring towards the same end ; 
 and both these great religious systems proceed from ours. 
 Yet, far advanced as they are, in bringing all nations 
 to a knowledge of the Lord, still, even they have not yet 
 attained to the pure spiritual doctrine of the Jew. 
 True, the disciples of Mahomet, believe in, and 
 three times each day, declare ''There is but one God;" 
 but that belief is so blended with a strange imagining 
 of Heaven, the spiritual idea of Immortality so 
 clothed with the peculiar delights of Eastern desires, 
 that it is impossible for the Hebrew to imagine 
 for a single moment the attributes of the one God of 
 Mahomet can be the same as those revealed by Moses, 
 even though we believe, from our inmost heart, that
 
 LETTER VI. 67 
 
 Mahomedanism, even as every other religion, is working 
 the will of the Eternal, in preparing all people for that 
 blessed day, when the veil shall be removed from all nations, 
 and the covering cast over all people shall be destroyed. 
 Christianity, again, approaching infinitely nearer to us, 
 in its spirit and its laws, and acknowledging the same 
 guiding book, and therefore the same God, far ad- 
 vanced as she is in spirituality and enlightenment, and 
 in holding forth many a bright example to us, of true 
 and beautiful piety still, even she cannot embrace 
 the doctrine of the one sole indivisible God, cannot 
 realise the perfection and unity of His attributes, with- 
 out the intervention of a mediator, and a holy spirit, 
 distinct from, yet united to Himself. It often appears 
 strange, that where we have so much, so very much in 
 common, the Christian idea of the Godhead should be so 
 distinct from that of the Hebrew; that where a religious 
 system has advanced so very near the sublimest truth, 
 it should yet pause, incomplete, and present a stumbling- 
 block, which the enlightened Jew can never over-leap. 
 It would appear still more strange, if I did not firmly 
 believe it ordained in fulfilment of that word, which has 
 declared, we should be a distinct people for ever, and 
 which (humanly speaking) would be still more difficult 
 of accomplishment, if the Christian idea of the Eternal 
 were in all points like our own. 
 
 This has been, I fear, but a grave, perhaps uninteresting 
 discussion, dearest Annie, but it is necessary in the exami- 
 nation of a question so important as the spirituality or non- 
 spirituality of a religion, to begin from the very beginning. 
 It would be an interesting task to trace the advance of 
 natural religion, from the savage who creates images,
 
 68 THE JEWISH FAITH." 1 
 
 bringing, as it were, his gods, or mental ideas, before his 
 sight. Then comes the worship of some species of 
 animal : witness the idols of Egypt. In both of these, we 
 see the supremacy of the senses, to the utter silencing 
 and deadening of the spirit, for this idol-worship was 
 always accompanied by rites and ceremonies of an ob- 
 scene and brutal nature. Then, a step in advance, came 
 the worship of the sun, and moon, and stars, far 
 more intellectual than the last, both in the actual 
 objects of adoration and the mode of worship. Then 
 came the belief of a great Spirit, an invisible but all- 
 pervading Deity, and objects of creation were worshipped 
 only as His emblems. Zoroaster taught the doctrine of 
 an infinite God, but unable to attain the sublime idea 
 revealed to the Hebrews, circumscribed and bounded 
 the Eternal power, by the introduction of two equally 
 great, but antagonistic principles Ormuz, the principle 
 of good, of which light was the type, and Ariman, the 
 lord of evil, whose emblem was darkness. Here we see 
 a very great advance towards a spiritual worship, that is, 
 the inculcation of principles to which the inward spirit, not 
 the outward senses, can respond ; but, from its being merely 
 the invention of man, seeing the light at a great distance, 
 but, from the infirmities and weakness of his finite 
 existence, unable to grasp it in its perfected fulness. 
 Very soon after Zoroaster's death, even this spiritual 
 advance merged into a species of idolatry. From being 
 taught to venerate light as the type of the Spirit of Good, 
 it became itself the object of worship ; and the adoration 
 of fire followed. The highest grade to which unrevealed 
 religion can attain, is the belief in an all-pervading 
 Spirit, and in His employing certain inferior spirits of
 
 LETTER VI. 69 
 
 good arid evil to embody His attributes and execute 
 His will. This was the worship of many of the Euro- 
 pean nations before the spreading of Christianity ; and it 
 is the religion now of many American Indian tribes. 
 This is demanding more from the spiritual and intellec- 
 tual part of man than the worship of certain portions of 
 creation, because, in the latter worship, its objects were 
 visible and palpable to bodily sense ; and in the former 
 imagination, the peculiar attribute of our spiritual nature 
 alone could give them life, and verify belief. This was 
 as far as man of himself could attain ; and we see the 
 wide distinction between such an idea of the Deity, and 
 that which He Himself revealed to Moses. I have 
 already called your attention to the principles of the 
 two great systems, Christianity and Mahomedanism, 
 which, grafted on the Mosaic revelation, have been per- 
 mitted so to spread over the earth, as to forget their 
 origin and believe in individual infallibility; and in the 
 utter rejection of that people and that law, without 
 whom both systems must fall meaningless to the ground. 
 And surely we Hebrews must feel and acknowledge, that 
 the Divine Unity revealed to Moses, clothed as it was 
 with such soul-speaking, consoling, encouraging attri- 
 butes as we have before quoted, and dilated upon with, 
 if possible, even still greater fulness by the later pro- 
 phets, is the sublimest, most purely spiritual, most truly 
 exalted notion of the Deity to which man, while on 
 earth, can attain; utterly inconceivable to him unless 
 Divinely revealed, and impossible to be realised in its 
 perfection of extent and glory, unless the spirit is elevated 
 above the outward senses, and the immortal soul is allowed 
 voice and commune with the Fountain of living waters
 
 70 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 whence it originally came, and which, by means of 
 Revelation, purifies it, or at least places in its power the 
 means of purifying, for return unto Himself. Of course, 
 Christians will say this is mere prejudice in favour of 
 my own, and it may be : but still what would my reli- 
 gion be worth, if it were not? Reverence towards, and 
 conviction of, the truth of our own, in -no way implies 
 disrespect towards others. Those who entertain the 
 same prejudice in favour of their own as I do towards 
 mine, believe me, dearest Annie, I respect and even 
 love ; for there is a bond of sympathy between us, 
 which the mere free-thinker never can attain. 
 
 Of all characters, the most dangerous associates for the 
 young, are those who declare themselves free from pre- 
 judice on any one topic, especially on matters of religion. 
 Specious and plausible, they may take our resting from 
 us, but they give us none on which to rest, in return ; 
 and instead of having no prejudices, they are more pre- 
 judiced than any, and for the most fearful of all 
 doctrines, that of unbelief. Indifferent to all, they 
 examine none, and what must follow, but their adopting 
 a religion (so to speak) of their own imaginings, and 
 plunging into all the miseries, contradictions, and per- 
 plexities of mere deism. That I am not prejudiced in 
 favour of the sublime doctrine of Unity, without reason, 
 is, however, proved by the very simple fact, that it is 
 considered so important an element of religion founded 
 on Revelation, that the Trinitarian himself believes in it, 
 and would feel it the greatest insult to assert that his 
 religion inculcates a plurality of Gods, or division in the 
 essence of the Holy ONE. The reconciliation of Trinity 
 and Unity is the grand mystery of the Christian faith,
 
 LETTER VII. 71 
 
 with which we have nothing to do. I only refer to it, 
 to prove to you, that the sublime idea of Divine Unity 
 revealed by Moses, is equally acknowledged by Chris- 
 tians, though, from the peculiar reading of the same 
 texts to which they are accustomed from earliest child- 
 hood, they cannot realise its fulness and completeness in 
 itself, as that ancient People to whom it was by God 
 Himself revealed. 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 I AM very much pleased with your letter, my dear 
 Annie. It is written with that open candid spirit, I so 
 loved in your childhood, blended with that advance of 
 mind and intellect, which I felt sure would be yours in 
 youth, I am not all astonished that you are surprised at 
 yourself, that your powers of comprehension and thought 
 seem so deepened and extended, and that the conscious- 
 ness of this change makes you so much happier. A 
 trial fearful as yours, and on such a disposition, could not 
 fail, at first, to stagnate every mental as well as physical 
 energy, and utterly disincline you for those lighter avo- 
 cations, and amusements, which you alone thought about 
 before. Without some powerful impulse, this disinclin- 
 ation would have sunk into listlessness and indifference; 
 your sweet disposition has saved you from this, by urging 
 you to listen to the voice of affection, even though at
 
 72 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 first, it seemed to speak harshly and uncongenially. You 
 have, indeed, begun to think (human love would say) too 
 soon by many many years ; and my heart is full of tears, 
 when I think how early your sweet flowers of youth have 
 faded ; but I know this is a wrong regret, my beloved 
 Annie. Deeply as I love you, earnestly, and by any 
 sacrifice, as I would have guarded you from all sorrow 
 or care ; yet our Father loves you more, and if He has 
 seen fit to try you thus, how may I repine ? Though 
 life may not be to you again, as it seems in the first 
 beautiful freshness of our earliest youth, it will have 
 deeper, purer, more lasting joys. Its very pleasures of 
 seemingly a trivial and social kind (for you will take 
 pleasure even in trifles again, though you now feel as if 
 you never could) will be enjoyed with more zest and 
 depth, though more quietly than in former years. The 
 principles, which, in a right mind and well regulated 
 heart, sorrow instils, will shed a light and beauty over 
 the simplest thought. The teacher is, indeed, sad and 
 stern, and in her actual presence we can but weep and 
 feel ; but when she has departed, leaving but the pres- 
 sure of her hand on our heart, the trace of her step 
 in the decreased buoyancy of ours, we acknowledge that it 
 was indeed an Angel friend, and bless the thoughts and 
 powers she has left. You are beginning to feel this, 
 dearest Annie, though but faintly, for her presence is 
 still with you ; and in the stern bestower of suffering how' 
 can we recognise the Angel of Mercy ? But let time 
 pass and the wound be healed, and you will regard her 
 as I do. 
 
 You tell me you never thought of the doctrine of 
 unity before, as I have brought it to your mind, and you
 
 LETTER VII. 73 
 
 are much struck with it ; that the idea of one God ap- 
 pears such a very simple and easily conceived belief; 
 but that the ideas which seemed to flash into being from 
 the perusal of my letter, almost bewildered you with 
 their vastness and comprehensiveness; and that you 
 quite felt, that the very first principle of Judaism adapted 
 itself to the spiritual and intellectual part of our nature, 
 and if studied and considered as it ought to be, must 
 check the too great indulgence of mere sensual pursuits. 
 The very next grand sustaining principle upholds the 
 first. We are first instructed in the pure spirituality of 
 the Divinity whom we are commanded to worship, and 
 then desired to love Him, with all our heart, and soul, and 
 might. And this is a command impossible to be obeyed 
 by a mere earthly nature. The very affection we bear to 
 a mortal has its seat in the soul. In its depth, its endur- 
 ance, its unselfishness, or rather in the self-abnegation 
 it inspires, in the mighty conquests, the earnest striving 
 after some perfection, for the sake of a beloved one, all 
 of which are included in the feeling of love, we read its 
 spiritual and immortal nature. It is utterly and wholly 
 distinct from mere sensuality. To realise love in its purity 
 and fulness, it must be excited towai'ds a being, either 
 actually higher, and purer, and better than ourselves, or 
 towards one whom our imagination has gifted with such 
 attributes, and round whom we have thrown a halo not 
 their own, but which dwells in our own souls, and more 
 spiritual nature, and so yearns to find a vent. We may- 
 caress beings lower than ourselves; we may like even 
 animate things, but we cannot love, in the real meaning of 
 the word, either one or the other. You will ask me, per- 
 haps, what then is the feeling we bear towards children 
 
 E
 
 74 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and young people? Love, undoubtedly; but love for the 
 immortal, and the intellectual, and the exquisite beauty 
 of sentiment and guileless truth, which, if love is called 
 towards them by other than their natural relations, we 
 may be sure they possess. Even here, it is still a spi- 
 ritual principle, acknowledging and loving the image of 
 God in His infant and youthful creation, unrecognised, 
 perhaps, indeed as such, but proved to be such by the fact, 
 that lower natures never experience such an emotion, 
 and children (except their own) are rather annoyances 
 than objects of love, and youth, with its pure, fresh, 
 springy feelings and inquiring mind, is entirely misunder- 
 stood. You may be sure, dearest Annie, when we do 
 really love children, and young people, there is some- 
 thing to reverence as well as to caress. The outward 
 form may call for the caress, but the internal spirit alone 
 can inspire reverence. In what are children our infe- 
 riors, except, in experience, the sad, stern teacher which 
 affection would avert from them as long as possible? 
 Have they not the same immortal souls, the same human 
 nature, the same capabilities of joy and -suffering, which 
 will produce the same results; and far, far more disin- 
 terestedness, and guilelessness that even thinketh no 
 evil, and lofty impulses and kindly actions, than those of 
 older and, in worldly parlance, wiser years ? Even in the 
 love warmly excited towards children and youth, then, it 
 is spirit attracted towards spirit; we trace and love some- 
 thing good and pure and holy, and these are attributes 
 of the divine Soul, not of the earthly shell. Of course, 
 the more clearly these attributes are defined, the more 
 perfection to which they have attained, the more in- 
 tensely we love ; and this is the reason why we feel the
 
 LETTER VII. 75 
 
 emotion much more strongly towards those higher, and 
 wiser, and purer in the scale of being than .ourselves, 
 than towards those who have still to attain the same po- 
 sition, though the essence of both feelings is the same. 
 There is no emotion so powerfully illustrative of our 
 mingled being, as that of adoration, the highest grade of 
 love. It is the immortal soul recognising qualities and 
 attributes in another, the faint likeness of which is im- 
 pressed on itself, but which is felt as if the earthly shell 
 so closely enshrining it, prevented it so fully attaining ; 
 but still it encourages the adoration or love, because, in 
 doing so, it seems to attain a portion of the purity and 
 goodness which it admires, and, imperceptibly at first, 
 but surely, advances towards the same. 
 
 In almost every nature there is this longing for some- 
 thing to worship, and if it have not legitimate, or re- 
 vealed, objects of adoration, it will create them. It was 
 this feeling which, in the mass, made Odin a God, 
 Mahomet a prophet, and allowed Luther his supremacy ; 
 invested Dante with a halo, gave Cromwell kingly 
 power, and Napoleon the empire almost of a world.* 
 In all these, it was the recognition of master minds. 
 Admiration was first excited, then reverence, then love ; 
 and once love, obedience was a matter of course. It 
 follows, then, that the strong feeling of admiration, 
 is not only purely delightful in itself, from its permitting 
 the ascendancy of the spirit over matter, but a feeling 
 which ought to be encouraged and inculcated, from its 
 leading up to reverence and adoration. It must be 
 
 * See Carlylc's " Hero Worship," where this principle is most 
 fully and forcibly worked out.
 
 76 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 something in the spirit which inspires it; either vast 
 superiority of the mind, or of the moral qualities, or of 
 holiness ; and to these the mere animal can never attain. 
 Our soul, or life, we are expressly told, is the breath of 
 God, which He breathed into us ; and, therefore, it is not 
 only divine, but reflects His attributes, as a tiny globule 
 of dew, the rays of the immeasurably distant, immeasur- 
 ably brilliant sun clogged and checked by the influence 
 of the grosser body, but still enabled to attain such per- 
 fection, even on earth, as will permit it distinctly to 
 realise the bliss awaiting it, when it returns unembodied 
 to its parent fount, and to conceive, with a vastness and 
 clearness perfectly incomprehensible to a less lofty nature, 
 the attributes, and the perfection, and even the economy 
 of God. 
 
 To obtain this perfection this triumph of the spirit 
 over its earthly weaknesses and animal propensities, 
 God, in His infinite mercy, revealed Himself, and insti- 
 tuted a worship, obedience to which could not fail to 
 obtain the end desired. We cannot, perhaps, realise 
 this now, because the law, in its various ^statutes, and 
 still more in its spiritual ordinances, never was fully 
 obeyed ; but we feel its truth, by noticing those whose 
 minds are embued with its pure spirit, and observing 
 how nearly they attain perfection, and how much more 
 open they are, to the perception of holiness and loveli- 
 ness and good, not only in the animate but the inani- 
 mate creation around them. Perceiving how strong 
 and purifying was the capability of worship, or adoration, 
 or love, in the spirit of man ; how it yearned towards 
 satisfying its higher nature, by contemplation of some- 
 thing still higher; and how that yearning led man into
 
 LETTER VII. 77 
 
 a thousand errors, both in the objects and mode of 
 adoration; the Lord God of Abraham first revealed 
 His stupendous might, proclaimed his consoling attri- 
 butes, His glorious perfections, for the very conception 
 of which it was necessary for man to give the spirit 
 ascendancy over the earthly: and then, when sight and 
 hearing* had added their witness to the internal convic- 
 tion of the mind ; and not till then, did the Lord, in His 
 infinite mercy, command His people to LOVE Him with 
 heart and soul and might; in that very command, 
 marking His religion spiritual above all others ; for what 
 mere animal could love that which it has not seen, and 
 that which it can only conceive by the power of the 
 mind ? Yet God knew it was in the power of man so to 
 love, or He would not have ordained it. 
 
 For comprehending all that is comprised in that em- 
 phatic sentence, I must refer you to other books, my 
 dear Annie. It would delay us too long to enter upon it 
 here. Your own vivid imagination and strong powers of 
 reflection, will also enable you to enter into its full force ; 
 scarcely requiring my feeble explanation to bring it home 
 to your heart, or my representations to bid you acknow- 
 ledge, that the Revelation which first spoke these words, 
 as man's guide in his aspirations towards his Maker, and 
 followed them with " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself," as his guide in his conduct towards his fellow- 
 man, must be all-sufficient in itself. 
 
 * By " sight," we allude, not to the similitude of God, but to the 
 various signs by which He revealed Himself before the Exodus 
 from Egypt, and the thunders and lightnings of Mount Sinai, in the 
 delivery of the law, and by " hearing" to the trumpet which sounded 
 long, and waxed louder and louder, and to the almighty voice of 
 God.
 
 78 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 I have heard many say, they cannot understand this 
 feeling as experienced towards our Creator that it 
 must be, such a totally distinct emotion from love towards 
 a fellow-creature, that it ought not to be classed under 
 the same denomination. I never could understand this 
 imaginary distinction ; and always regretted to hear it 
 brought forward, proving, as it does, that even real 
 earthly love, so to speak, must in that case be utterly 
 unknown. It is, indeed, the highest and purest kind of 
 love, mingled so intimately with reverence, that we are 
 sometimes apt to suppose it is all the latter, and none of 
 the former. But this is a very mistaken error. It is no 
 unknown deity, concealed in the dense veil of mystery 
 and darkness, with which some of the heathen nations 
 have robed their principal idol, that we, Hebrews, are 
 commanded to love. He has revealed Himself to us as 
 the concentration of all perfection, combining in Him- 
 self, and in His rule, every attribute and every quality 
 which, possessed in the faintest degree by a fellow- 
 mortal, all high and noble natures would at once reve- 
 rence and love. Power and wisdom and purity and 
 goodness in a mortal, sometimes create the feeling of 
 awe above that of love, because we fancy one so far 
 above us cannot enter into our weaknesses and faults, 
 or at least can give us no love in return. We cannot, 
 we dare not, feel this in our communings with our Father 
 in Heaven. Veiling His perfection, His might, which 
 in itself must appal us, He has not only called Himself 
 our Father, but proclaimed Himself to be LOVE 
 declared that our hearts are open to Him that He 
 can read their inmost throb, and will heal their most 
 secret wound that He has compassion on our weak-
 
 LETTER VII. 79 
 
 ness, ay, and will forgive again and again our sins, if we 
 will but turn again to Him and love Him that He 
 loves us better, bears with us more tenderly than our 
 dearest earthly friends : they cannot read the constant, 
 yet darkly hidden struggles of our own heart the cir- 
 cumstances, the temptations which may have caused us 
 to err, or the misery and pain which follows momentary 
 sin ; but our Father can : and yet He loves us, feels 
 with us, and will forgive. If a fellow-mortal could do 
 all this, should we not lavish on him our best and purest 
 affections ? feel that we could indeed rest on such deep 
 love; could tell him all our thoughts, wishes, joys, and 
 griefs; secure of such perfect sympathy, that there 
 would not be a throb unread; and of such compassionate 
 tenderness, that every pang will, by his influence, be 
 healed; or, if it be better for us that we should suffer 
 longer, his sympathy will strengthen to endure ? Who 
 will deny that they can feel all this; and why not towards 
 our God? We need not fear that such intimate com- 
 muning will engender undue familiarity, or irreverence 
 in His service. In loving and regarding Him thus, we 
 only obey His first command : and if it were to remove 
 or lessen the reverence we must also bear towards Him, 
 if love were incompatible with the awe called forth by 
 such perfection, would God Himself have commanded 
 it ? Dearest Annie, do not let such a mistaken notion 
 gain possession of your heart, so fitted as it is by nature, 
 or rather by God's grace, for such an exalted and purify- 
 ing emotion as the love He ordains. Do not be per- 
 suaded into the idea, that the love of God is so utterly 
 distinct from the love we bear a mortal, or that the con- 
 sciousness of His love towards us cannot have the same
 
 80 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 consolatory and strengthening influence as that of a 
 fellow-creature. I do not tell you that it will be attended 
 by the intense delight, the peculiar joyousness of earthly 
 affection, because, while on earth, we must cling to our 
 fellow-beings. Interchange of thought, of mutual in- 
 terests; expressed approbation, merited regard; all bring 
 a sensation of enjoyment unsurpassed by any other 
 feeling while our sojourn is on earth. Youth craves for 
 this cannot realise belief in any other kind of satisfac- 
 tion for the yearning heart, and, while it possesses it, 
 asks no more. Nor does Revelation prohibit this feeling; 
 nay, in commanding us to love God and our neigh- 
 bour, it deepens and spiritualises it till it becomes 
 immortal. Ask any one of any creed, who has really 
 sought with heart, soul, and might to love the Lord, and 
 they will tell you, the love they bear their own especially 
 beloved ones, and their fellow-creatures as a whole, is 
 deeper, more intense, more prayerful, than it ever was 
 before. 
 
 I think those who would throw so wide a barrier be- 
 tween the love we bear each other, and the love we are 
 commanded to bear towards God, only argue from the 
 sensations they experience when in constant intercourse 
 with those they love. But what is the feeling when 
 divided by the wide ocean, or opposing barriers of land ; 
 when year stretches on to year, and we change some- 
 times from youth to age ere we meet again ; what is it 
 then we love ? The eye may have lost the form on which 
 it may have loved to linger; the ear listens no more to 
 the encouraging voice ; hand no more clasps hand; we 
 have no longer a kindly bosom on which to lean ; the 
 fond caress, the spoken word, which, happily timed, have
 
 LETTER VII. 81 
 
 power to raise the depressed, strengthen the weak, en- 
 courage the suffering, forgive the erring, all have passed 
 from us; but do we cease to love? What is it that com- 
 pels us to make letters, winged messengers, bearing our 
 thoughts, feelings, joys, griefs to those far distant, so 
 powerfully secure of sympathy, encouragement, and 
 love ? Is this merely an animal sensation ? Or is it not 
 rather spirit, loving spirit, and by means of the immor- 
 tal MIND, traversing space and annihilating time itself, 
 in its enduring love for, and faithful commune with, the 
 object of regard? Those who feel absence to be the 
 grave of love, of course cannot understand this purity of 
 spiritual affection; and to them it might be difficult to 
 explain the love our religion ordains towards our God. 
 But to you, and I think to many others of an equally ar- 
 dent, equally feeling temperament, the argument stated 
 above will not be without weight. If the spirit within us 
 thus enables us to love and commune with a brother 
 spirit, through space and through time, why is it so 
 utterly impossible to feel the same, though, of course, in 
 a much higher and more reverential degree towards the 
 SPIRIT "OF ALL FLESH, our Father, Saviour, and God; 
 for under each of these appellatives He has revealed 
 Himself to Israel. We cannot say we do not know him ; 
 for, if we read and believe His book, we must know Him 
 better than we can any earthly friend, for He is Truth, 
 and His attributes are unchangeable and eternal. We 
 dare not say we are unworthy to love a Being of such 
 infinite holiness and transcendant perfection, for he has 
 commanded us to love Him : commanded all Israel, 
 without distinction of either sex, age, or rank, worthiness 
 or unworthiness ; and if we do not endeavour to love 
 
 E 5
 
 82 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 him, we not only deprive ourselves of most unspeakable 
 comfort and satisfying strength, but actually sin against 
 His word, and expose ourselves to His wrath by disobe- 
 dience. It is not, indeed, a disobedience which will bring 
 down on us His judgment through the instrumentality of 
 man, because it lies only between the heart and its God. 
 But, if we believe in the Bible as God's word, , we must 
 feel that to disregard and disobey the command " Thou 
 shaltlove the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, 
 and might," is as sinful a disobedience in His sight as 
 disregard or contempt of any other law. So important do 
 1 feel it, that I believe perfect obedience to it and faithful 
 adherence to the Divine Unity, will render us acceptable 
 as Israelites still, even when thrown Into positions un- 
 avoidable in our captivity, when obedience .to the more 
 palpable and visible ordinances of the Law is wholly un- 
 attainable. I am aware that this is a bold departure 
 from modern Jewish ideas, but I am borne out in it by 
 all the prophets, even Moses himself, in Levit. xxvi. 39> 
 to the end, and Deut. xxx. 6 ; and far from encouraging 
 laxity in obedience to the statutes and ordinances of the 
 Law, which it might be said to do, it urges arid impels 
 their strict observance, as the only means of manifesting 
 the love we feel, and so brings them to our minds, so 
 twines them with our affections, that every ordinance, 
 ay, every festival, is kept and hallowed in the heart, even 
 when the outward observance may be impossible. 
 
 It is only those who do not love God, who disobey 
 His law, and feel his ordinances a weight and annoy- 
 ance, and therefore it was, He commanded us to love 
 Him, that all His service might be one of thanksgiving 
 and joy, and twined with the strongest and purest feel-
 
 LETTER VII. 83 
 
 ings of our nature. The very essence of His revelation 
 is LOVE. His attributes, His compassionating tender- 
 ness towards us, the emotions with which He desires us 
 to regard Him, all are love, love alone and how 
 then can any one declare the Jewish religion is not a 
 spiritual creed, and that it addresses itself to mere 
 animal obedience, not to the spirit's aspirations, or the 
 heart's desires? I do not think you will continue to 
 believe thus; and, trust me, those who do assert it may 
 follow indeed the forms and ceremonies of their fathers, 
 and perhaps periodically read the Pentateuch ; but the 
 Psalms and Prophets must be to them utterly unknown, 
 and the spirit of the law a meaningless word. To 
 women especially, a religion in which love is the vital 
 essence, is imperatively needed. And, therefore, am I 
 so earnest in endeavouring to display its true spirit to 
 you. Were you even very happy, as is natural to your 
 age, and surrounded by kind and affectionate friends, 
 answering your every thought, and enhancing your every 
 pleasure, still, dearest, there would come a day when you 
 would need it, crave for it, as every woman must. The 
 female heart can scarcely ever find perfect sympathy on 
 earth. It has griefs, cares, even emotions, almost in- 
 comprehensible to itself, and which, if confessed even to 
 our dearest friend, frequently return unanswered to the 
 recesses of our own souls, as if the medium of words had 
 given it a grosser meaning, and the mere surface, not 
 the depth, were seen. But lift up such emotions, either 
 in a written or voicelessly breathed prayer, and how 
 fully are we answered, how blessedly consoled ! But how 
 could we do this, if it had not been revealed, that God 
 is love, loves us, and has commanded us to love Him ?
 
 84 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 We could never dare to bring up the seemingly petty 
 things, which form man's existence of either joy or 
 sorrow, before Him, unless commanded by revelation 
 so to do, and guided also in the way of obedience. All 
 creation, indeed, proclaims Him to be a God of infinite 
 beneficence and might ; but when we look on the work 
 of His hands, how trifling and unimportant must we 
 feel, and how could we suppose One so mighty would 
 care for us? Without revelation, we must be lost in an 
 abyss of doubt, error, and mystifying speculation, lead- 
 ing us farther and farther from the sole Rock of refuge, 
 the only strength and consolation which mortals can 
 have the consciousness that God has love and com- 
 passion, and care for all, even for the most insignificant 
 of His creation. It is for this reason, I am so very 
 anxious to make manifest to you, that the revelation 
 vouchsafed our fathers is a revelation of love, and so 
 display it, that your heart may feel, and respond to its 
 truths, as well as your understanding. I know that by 
 many Christian writers, the Mosaic system is always 
 alluded to as a law of fire and blood ; but this notion 
 proceeds from the popular error, that it is a law im- 
 possible to be obeyed in all its minutiae, and that it con- 
 sists of mere form and ceremony, heavy and burdensome, 
 without any appeal to the affections to give it life and 
 breath. My letter is already too long to enter upon this 
 subject now. It has been already proved erroneous, I 
 think, by the command we have been considering, and 
 will be answered still more clearly, as we proceed to 
 consider the reasons for many of the seemingly puzzling 
 ordinances, the intention of others, and the spirit 
 which must pervade them all, to render them acceptable
 
 LETTER VIII. 85 
 
 offerings to God. For the present, dearest Annie, I am 
 sure I have given you quite enough to think about ; so 
 farewell. 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 I HAD been expecting the contents of your last letter, 
 dearest Annie, from the very first of our correspondence, 
 though I would not touch upon it, till you brought it 
 forward yourself. You tell me you have shrunk from 
 doing so, feeling as if it were so very sinful, even to 
 think such a thought, much more to give it words. That 
 it is scarcely a defined feeling, more like a floating idea . 
 but that it will come to disturb you, when you would 
 gladly rest on the consoling doctrines, I have brought 
 forward. It is the miserably doubting questions, " How 
 do we know that the Bible is indeed the word of God?" 
 " How can we prove, that all which is written there is 
 Divine, and so ought to guide us in our knowledge of 
 Him, and our conduct towards each other?" "What 
 proof have we, that we are the people of whom Moses 
 wrote, or that all he recorded ever happened?" that 
 every time you take up your Bible to try to read it, and 
 feel its truth, these thoughts will come, and you find so 
 much in it to perplex and bewilder you, you have often 
 put it down in despair, and sometimes found yourself 
 longing to believe in the New Testament, parts of 
 which, seemed so much more simple and clear than the
 
 00 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 old. But that the new views I had given you of the 
 Jewish religion made you long, still more ardently, to feel 
 the same towards it as I do. Do I think, that with such 
 sinful doubts of a book I feel to be so holy and inspired, 
 you ever shall ? 
 
 I do indeed think so. The very resclessness of enquiry, 
 the desire to find the truth, the candour, yet humility, with 
 which you acknowledge every doubt, all make me very 
 hopeful, that our Father will in His cwn good time permit 
 " His light to shine upon you, and give you peace." Do 
 you think the doubts you have ventured to put into 
 words, have come to you alone ; that they are not 
 equally the trial of all, who are beginning seriously to 
 look into what they believe, and to know the foundation 
 and reason for the hope that is in them ? My dearest 
 Annie, few, very few, even amongst those placed in far 
 far more favourable circumstances for the growth, guid- 
 ance, and encouragement of religion, than you have 
 been, but have felt at the beginning of their indivi- 
 dually responsible career all that you describe. That 
 there may be hundreds, nay thousands, who have not, 
 is no proof to the contrary. 
 
 The nominal religionist never looks into the subject, 
 nor thinks a serious thought. The formalist is satisfied 
 to do as his fathers did before him, never enquiring 
 wherefore. The bold and daring, without being actually 
 impious or unbelieving, feels so strong in his own 
 strength, that he would imagine it cowardice to bow to 
 any guiding law, believing his principles and his con- 
 science are all-sufficient for his safe-guard, forgetting 
 that conscience is an effect not a cause, and that if there 
 were no Divine Laws governing the world, to mark the
 
 LETTER VIII. 87 
 
 distinction between right and wrong, there would be no 
 conscience, nor in fact any need for it. The pre- 
 sumptuous, and the superficial, declaring they will be- 
 lieve nothing without proof, that Faith is a folly and 
 superstition, unfit for any but women and fools ; who 
 deem their shallow wisdom so supreme, their intellect so 
 extensive, that it can penetrate even the wisdom of the 
 all-wise, must reject the Bible, for to such it must be 
 as utterly incomprehensible, as utterly useless. But it 
 is only the superficial, who thus sit in judgment, so to 
 speak, on the word and the attributes of the Most 
 High. 
 
 The profound thinker, the natural philosopher, ap- 
 proaching higher and higher the courts of wisdom, pene- 
 trating deeper and deeper into the secrets of nature, are 
 those who believe the most, feeling the utter impossibility 
 of understanding one fraction of the wonders and the mys- 
 teries which, even in this inferior world, are ever around 
 them. It is the extent of human weakness and igno- 
 rance to assert, as, unhappily, only too many do, that they 
 will believe nothing without proof, take nothing for 
 granted. There is not a science in which it is possible 
 to advance one step without granting some truth, with- 
 out some imaginary, or rather unproved, laws, on which 
 to build their after-theories. Whatever they may say 
 they prove, they prove nothing, without supposing cer- 
 tain laws or axioms, which it is impossible to prove. For 
 instance, the often repeated declaration that the miracle 
 of staying the course of the sun and moon at the word of 
 Joshua, lengthening the day by the pause in the earth's 
 career, was impossible, because it was contrary to, and 
 would have occasioned confusion in the laws of nature.
 
 88 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Now what are these laws of nature ? What human wis- 
 dom can explain or define them, further than what man's 
 senses have revealed to him in their daily action ; or his 
 imperfect wisdom may have penetrated as to their 
 course, and rule, and effect, and the apparent conse- 
 quences of their suspension? He cannot, he dare not, 
 declare that he can explain why nature's course should 
 be as it is, and not arranged differently. Say what he 
 pleases, assert his wisdom as he may, he must acknow- 
 ledge certain natural laws, though he cannot prove them 
 to be really such as he believes them, before he can 
 build a single theory, on the proofs of whose truth he lays 
 so much stress. Why then refuse to grant as much in 
 the science of religion ? Because, to do so, man's boasted 
 wisdom must be humbled; his pride, his strength, his 
 consciousness of power, must bow down to the same holy 
 guide which is open even to women and to children. He 
 must acknowledge there are simple assertions in that 
 Divine Book, which even his penetrative intellect 
 cannot attempt in this life either to explain, or to reconcile 
 with much that is passing around him ; and rather than 
 so humble himself, he will reject it altogether. It de- 
 mands childlike faith, and so, in his weak presumption, 
 he proclaims it unfitted for the intellect of man. 
 
 How different are the views of a philosopher. " In 
 my opinion profound minds are most likely to think 
 lightly of human reason. It is the pert superficial 
 thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbe- 
 lief. The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and 
 effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that 
 he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossi- 
 bility of any two series of events being independent of
 
 LETTER VIII. 89 
 
 each other; and in science so many natural miracles, as 
 it were, have been brought to light, such as the fall of 
 stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming a 
 thunder-cloud by a metallic point, the production of fire 
 from ice by a metal white as silver, and referring certain 
 laws of motion of the sea to the moon, that the philoso- 
 pher is seldom disposed to assert confidently on any ab- 
 stract things belonging to the order of natural things, 
 and still less so on those relating to the more mysterious 
 relations of moral events and intellectual matters." The 
 same deep philosopher asserts : "By intellectual supe- 
 riority I mean that of man's spiritual nature, for I do 
 not consider the results of reason as capable of being 
 compared with those of faith. Reason is often a dead 
 weight in life, destroying feeling, and substituting for 
 principle calculation and caution." Again: " I envy 
 no quality of the mind or intellect in others, be it genius, 
 power, wit, or fancy ; but if I could choose what would be 
 most delightful^ and I believe most useful to me, 1 should 
 prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing ; for 
 it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes 
 when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, 
 the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all 
 lights; awakens life even in death, and even from cor- 
 ruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity ; makes 
 an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of 
 ascent to Paradise, and, far above all combinations of 
 earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of 
 palms and amaranths, the security of everlasting joy, 
 where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, 
 decay, annihilation, and despair." * 
 
 * Sir Humphrey Davy's Salraonia.
 
 90 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 These, dearest Annie, are the views and opinions of 
 one of the profoundest thinkers, of the wisest philoso- 
 phers, of the most practical and penetrative chemists, 
 that ever existed. His extraordinary genius, not content 
 with following a beaten path, ventured deeper and more 
 dai'ingly into the secrets of the natural world, the com- 
 binations of apparently opposite natures, the marvellous 
 mysteries of effects from certain causes, linking the 
 cause with the effect in almost all his discoveries, and so 
 penetrating science as more than once to endanger his 
 life in its pursuit;* yet this great and wise man, whose 
 profound intellect very few in any age can vie with, or, 
 at least, surpass, above all weakness or superstition, yet 
 he tells us that the " results of reason cannot be com- 
 pared with those of faith," and places a firm religious 
 belief far above every other earthly blessing or heavenly 
 grace. Surely then, he is in himself a proof of the utter 
 falsity of the notion that faith is nothing worth, a mere 
 superstition, fitted only for weak and prejudiced minds. 
 If an intellect like Sir Humphrey Davy could pronounce 
 it superior to reason, surely we may so believe it, and 
 use every effort to make it our own. 
 
 You will wonder, perhaps, why I have chosen to 
 make this digression, instead of answering your ques- 
 tions at once? Because I wished to impress upon your 
 mind, that you must bring FAITH, as well as INTELLECT, 
 to the study of the Bible. Unless satisfied from the 
 first that there is much in the Holy Scriptures, which, 
 in this existence, we may not hope to understand, their 
 perusal will do more harm than good. You will be 
 constantly losing yourself in idle speculation, in the dark- 
 * By inhaling certain gases to discover their effects.
 
 LETTER VIII. 91 
 
 ness of error and mystifying doubts. And verses, hailed 
 by the believer as conviction strong of an infinite love 
 and infinite mercy, will be turned by the sceptic into 
 bearing upon his own spiritless unbelief. Not that I 
 wish you to adopt my views of the divinity of the whole 
 Bible upon faiih alone. Intellect and reason will both 
 help us here, though, to my own heart, the existence of 
 the Jewish nation, regarded in all its varied phases, is 
 the strongest, most unanswerable, if not all-satisfactory 
 proof that the Bible must be the Word of God. Man 
 of himself could not have written that of futurity, which 
 every passing century fulfils. 
 
 " How do we know the Bible is indeed the Word of 
 God?" you ask me. And in reading my reply, remem- 
 ber, I can but give you my individual opinion. Would 
 that there were any one book of our own to which I 
 could refer you instead; but whilst our teachers and 
 ministers, both of ancient and modern times, would pro- 
 nounce us unbelievers, and heretics, if we ventured to 
 question the reasons of our faith, they have left us 
 nothing, except in language and theory far loo abstruse 
 and weighty for woman's comprehension, to which we 
 can refer to satisfy the momentary doubt. 
 
 To me the Bible is proved to be the Word of God, 
 in the first place, from the proof already quoted the 
 undying existence of the Jewish nation, though they 
 have encountered misery upon misery been several 
 times, humanly speaking, on the brink of extermination 
 are fewer in number than any other religion in the 
 known world are scattered from north to south, east 
 to west, as witnesses of the Most High, exactly as written 
 by Moses and the later prophets and have endured
 
 92 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 trial, persecution, and dispersion, so exactly according 
 to the prophecy of Moses, that the account would seem 
 as if written after these events took place, not centuries 
 and centuries before. Secondly, From the universal 
 acknowledgment of the divinity and perpetuity of the 
 Book >y every nation who believe in Revelation, however 
 diverse and contradictory their doctrines or actual creed 
 may be. Thirdly, That the age and writers of the Old 
 Testament have never been made matters of either 
 question or dispute that even our persecutors them- 
 selves, and those more kindly, but equally dangerous 
 converters of the present day, though they believe the 
 Jews are rejected, never deny either the genuineness or 
 divinity of the Old Testament. Fourthly, It seems to 
 me clearly proved to be the Word of God, from its 
 extraordinary adaptation to the various characters and 
 diverse feelings of man, and from the perfect harmony and 
 agreement of all its varied parts. Pentateuch, historical 
 books and prophets, all are so perfectly one, so com- 
 pletely the reflection of one almighty and all-guiding 
 Mind, that though the individual character of some of 
 the writers may be discerned, the lessons they inculcate, 
 the attributes they give to God, the warnings with which 
 they threaten, the rewards they promise, the domestic 
 and social life they picture, are so exactly the same, that 
 not the smallest contradiction, even by the most pre- 
 judiced, can be discovered, while each book retains 
 sufficient individual peculiarity, as utterly to prevent 
 the supposition that they were all the work of one man. 
 Now, mere human opinions, and discussions or explana- 
 tions on the same thing, always differ so widely, that we 
 scarcely ever find two persons either to think or to
 
 LETTER VIII. 93 
 
 impress alike; and therefore we are justified in believ- 
 ing, that nothing but the Divine inspiration could have 
 caused the perfect agreement of the whole canon of 
 Scripture, so that not the slightest contradiction, either 
 in theory or practice, doctrine or spirit, can be dis- 
 cerned ; and yet not only were the writers of widely 
 different characters, but lived in different ages, and 
 were placed in positions utterly dissimilar. Again, what 
 mere human invention could have compiled laws, which, 
 even to this day, are guiding the whole civilised world ? 
 The ceremonial law, indeed, is peculiarly our's; but the 
 moral law given to us has extended wherever Revelation 
 is acknowledged. You may be, and no doubt have 
 often been told, that there are hundreds and hundreds, 
 who though they are withheld from some strange feeling 
 of shame (in itself a proof that their ideas are wrong) 
 from publicly denying the Bible, are yet complete deists 
 in heart. Yet these very men, in spite of themselves, 
 bear witness to the Divine inspiration of the moral law. 
 They acknowledge, they say, a God. Why? Because 
 all nature proclaims it; but as for priestcraft (for so they 
 denominate the Bible and its earnest commentators), 
 it is beneath their dignity as man, and so they scorn it. 
 
 But I would ask them, why it is they never steal, nor 
 bear false witness, nor do murder ? Why it is they 
 shrink from a dishonest or dishonourable act? Why 
 they are so earnest to protect the injured ? Why they re- 
 frain from maltreating even any enemy? Why they 
 keep so strong a guard upon their passions, lest they 
 should betray them into error or crime ? The law of 
 the country may act in some degree as a restraint; but 
 it would not make them regard their transgressions as
 
 94 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 sins to be avoided in their own heart. Conscience, they 
 will reply, conscience is enough for any man, to tell him 
 what is right or wrong. Alas for such deluders ! Their con- 
 science^ such as it is, has been formed by that very Divine Law 
 which they reject. The Spartans considered it no crime 
 to steal, and they were comparatively a civilised nation. 
 Human life was considered of so little moment, that the 
 weakly infant, and the helpless aged, were alike left by 
 their own nearest relatives to die, as useless any longer 
 to the State. Why, if conscience be so all-powerful, 
 were not these crimes prohibited in Lycurgus's otherwise 
 refining laws? But to leave the nations of remotest 
 antiquity, where the deist may say human nature had 
 not sufficiently advanced for conscience to distinguish 
 between right and wrong, let us glance over the savage 
 nations of the present day ; because, if conscience be 
 inherent, it must have voice and power with them equally 
 as with us. Is it not with them the. greatest virtue to 
 revenge an injury by murder, it matters not how in- 
 flicted? The laws of their state may prevent appro- 
 priation of a brother's property ; but they consider it no 
 sin, nay rather a triumph, to rob and defraud the 
 stranger. They will torture a fellow-creature without 
 the very smallest feeling of compunction, and would be 
 astonished if told, that in doing so, or in avenging, or 
 in slaying, or defrauding, they were committing a sin. 
 Then how is it, that conscience is so silent with them, 
 and so loud with us? If man had no need for a Divine 
 law, surely we should find the case of all nations the 
 same. 
 
 Again, if the laws and restrictions of the Bible were 
 of human compilation and invention, is it not a marvel-
 
 LETTER VIII. 95 
 
 lous fact, that they should have remained unaltered 
 through thousands of ages ? The Egyptians, the Greeks, 
 the Romans, all compiled laws ; but there is not a trace 
 of them remaining: they perished with the nations to 
 whom they belonged. Modern states have each their 
 individual code, liable to be altered or modified, increased 
 or annulled, according to the varying conditions, de- 
 mands, and necessities, of the people whom they govern. 
 The code of one nation, however civilised, will not do 
 for any other. We hear of the laws of France, and of 
 the laws of England ; of the statutes of Spain, and of 
 those of Italy; and we think of something as a distinct 
 possession peculiar to each country. But the laws of 
 the Bible extend over the whole world where a revealed 
 Deity is acknowledged. The Christians will tell you, 
 that their whole system will fall at once to the ground, 
 if the Old Testament be denied. The Mahometans 
 acknowledge and believe in the inspired mission of 
 Moses, and the sublime doctrine of the Unity which 
 he taught. The very means which Mahomet adopted 
 for the formation of a new religion, is to me proof of 
 his strong belief in the mission and legation of Moses. 
 He received all the laws of the Koran, he declares, from 
 the mouth of the angel Gabriel. Now why should he 
 have taken the trouble of asserting, and trying to prove 
 this, if he had thought, the laws and word of a man, 
 would be sufficient for him to obtain, fix, and transfer 
 spiritual authority? If he had believed that Moses, as 
 merely a man, acquired all the power, to create a nation 
 and entirely new religion, surely his ambition would have 
 prompted him to have accomplished his spiritual and 
 temporal schemes' by his own individual hand and
 
 96 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 mind, without any reference to a divine guide or help. 
 The Christians again assert, that Jesus united in him- 
 self God and man, otherwise he, as a man, could have 
 had no power to alter the Law of Moses, which pro- 
 ceeded from God. God, they say, might alter or 
 modify His will or law as He pleased ; but a mere man 
 could not. Now, is not this in itself convincing, in what 
 a divine light, the Word of God given through Moses, 
 and the Prophets, must have been, and must be con- 
 sidered, even by the two great systems, which are spread- 
 ing revelation over the world, and so constantly endea- 
 vouring, but always without success, to vilify and 
 exterminate the Jews? Of course there are exceptions 
 to this fearful treatment of a people, for whom those 
 moral laws were compiled, and to whom that pure know- 
 ledge of the Lord was given, from which all nations 
 and all people benefit. The more the Bible, the whole 
 Bible, is made the guiding star of the land, and the Old 
 as well as the New Testament studied, the more con- 
 sideration the Jews receive, the less we read of perse- 
 cution. It is where religion is a mere word; where the 
 fearful vices and passions of men set up a demon of 
 hate and cruelty and wrath, and call it an angel of light; 
 where men so bury the word of God from the eyes and 
 hearts of the mass, that they are scarcely aware of its 
 existence, much less of the sublime doctrines it inculcates, 
 and so are unable to discern that the demon their 
 superiors call religicn, is not such as the Bible teaches ; 
 it is in such lands that persecution rages, not merely 
 against the Jews, but Catholic against Protestant, Greek 
 against Catholic, sect against sect. But when once the 
 Bible is appealed to, and read by all, then peace and
 
 LETTER IX. 97 
 
 charity twine hand in hand, and persecution is stilled. 
 Will not this very fact prove, there must be something 
 superior in the spirit of that Holy Book, to the mere 
 device of the best and wisest man ? I will leave your 
 other questions till my next, dearest Annie. The sub- 
 ject is such a momentous one, that I would rather divide 
 it than weary, as a longer discussion at present, I fear, 
 may do. 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 " How can we prove, that all the laws which are written 
 in the Bible are Divine, and so ought to guide us in our 
 knowledge of God, and our conduct towards Him, and 
 towards each other?" is our next consideration, dearest 
 Annie. To my heart, the answer is very simple, " Be- 
 cause all which we are commanded therein to do and 
 to feel, tends to make us happier and better ; and so bears, 
 on every ordinance, the stamp of the loving and bene- 
 ficent Deity, which Creation reveals. Because, by 
 obedience to the spirit pervading the whole Bible, we 
 are purified from the grosser part of our mingled nature, 
 and are enabled to give the spirit, soul, or mind, higher 
 and higher ascendancy ; and, though still liable to the 
 imperfections, and trials, and pains of earth, we have 
 gained a position, which enables us to look on even 
 these things, in the light of Heaven; and so in the most 
 
 F
 
 98 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 troubled lot, to feel happier than the prosperous who 
 know not God. 
 
 We bear within ourselves, the proof that God is a 
 Deity of infinite love and goodness, in the fact, which 
 no one can gainsay, of the superiority of the good over 
 the bad, in producing happiness. Even a child, ay, 
 even an untutored savage after some self-conquest, some 
 act of kindness or forbearance, some courageously spoken 
 truth, is conscious of a very superior feeling of happiness 
 to that which is his when passion has been indulged, 
 safety obtained by a lie, cruelty committed, forbidden 
 pleasures secretly obtained, even though, perhaps, at 
 the moment, the satisfaction in the last may seem greater 
 than that which attends the pursuance of the first. It 
 is afterwards, when the mind is calmer, the soul alone 
 with itself and its invisible, and, perhaps, still unknown 
 God, that the vast superiority of a good action or feel- 
 ing over a bad, is made manifest. All will acknowledge 
 this. Even the man, who has run a successful career of 
 wickedness, will never confess himself, either in words 
 or by semblance, to be happy. The votary of pleasure 
 and excess, wearied and dispirited, craves for something 
 beyond what he has grasped. The indulgence of hate, 
 the gratification of revenge, how fearful is the troubled 
 storm within, which marks their progress ! Can we hesi- 
 tate a moment, in deciding which produces the greater 
 amount and purer quality of joy, the act of revenging 
 or of forgiving, of punishing or pardoning, of obedience 
 or disobedience? That there are natures too low and 
 degraded to understand these loftier emotions may be 
 true, but it will not bear upon the question of their 
 truth or falsehood. And that the better and purer we
 
 LETTER IX. 99 
 
 become, the happier we are, is an unanswerable evidence 
 that our Maker and God, He in whom we live, breathe, 
 and have our being, is a Deity of purity, and truth, and 
 goodness, loving and taking pleasure in all things that 
 tend to the same, and that enable His children to make 
 manifest the likeness in which they were made. Now, 
 had the Deity who made us been other than our purer 
 inward self reveals Him had He pleasure in evil, and 
 wrath, and falsehood were contention, and pride, and 
 rebellion pleasing in His sight, the practice of the EVIL 
 would give us infinitely greater enjoyment than the seek- 
 ing of the GOOD, enjoyment not only at the moment, 
 but in its retrospection through a life. But the evidence 
 of ages proves the utter falsity of such an idea, and 
 shows clearly, that where there is a predominance of sin' 
 there is an equal predominance of misery, alike in indi- 
 viduals as in nations : and therefore, if we only look 
 within ourselves, and examine the biography of others, 
 and trace how virtue engenders happiness, that its 
 pursuit will give us peace and tranquillity, even when 
 subject to, and suffering from the imperfection of earth, 
 
 and the faults of individuals ; that a career of vice never 
 
 
 
 yet has brought either peace or joy, though its feverish 
 excitement may seem like the latter we bear within 
 ourselves, in our own being, the proof unanswerable, that 
 He who made us is a God of infinite goodness as of 
 infinite love. 
 
 I hope I have made this clear to your mind, my dear 
 Annie; for it is an important item in the consideration 
 of your question, viz., " How do we know that the laws 
 in the Bible are divine?" ]f we grant, that from our 
 own inward feelings we know and acknowledge our
 
 100 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Maker to be all goodness, and love, arid truth, the proof 
 of the divinity of the law, professed to be of His ordain- 
 ing, must rest in its agreement or disagreement with 
 these attributes ; and the agreement is pre-eminently the 
 case with the law given through Moses. It would detain 
 us too long, to enter into a minute examination of the 
 grounds for this assertion. All that I wish you to do 
 now, is to read and think about the ordinances of our 
 pure and holy law ; and tell me if you do not perceive 
 that in all its commands, it reflects those attributes 
 which our own feelings apply to God. To do this fully, 
 you must consider the state of the world at the time 
 this law was given. You will say, perhaps, that what 
 I have written on our innate perception of right and 
 wrong, or rather the superiority of our virtuous to our 
 vicious inclinations in creating happiness, contradicts 
 my previous assertion, of the necessity of a Divine 
 Revelation to mark the boundaries of right and wrong, 
 and that without Revelation there would be no such 
 thing as conscience. This is still my firm belief; and I 
 ground it on the fact, of the fearful iniquity of almost 
 every nation at the time of the delivery of t^e law, and 
 of the very erroneous notions of right and wrong enter- 
 tained by the uncivilised nations of the present clay. 
 The conviction, that to follow virtue is superior happi- 
 ness to the indulgence of vice, I believe is natural to 
 every human being, be he savage or enlightened, 
 Heathen or Hebrew, and that this inward conviction is 
 the universal response to the attributes of the Deity. 
 But this does not constitute Conscience, for the Ideal, 
 which in fact virtue is, is variously clothed and variously 
 defined, according to j,he superior or inferior ideas of
 
 LETTER IX. 10 
 
 right and wrong entertained by different men ; and, 
 therefore, the consciences of minds enlightened by 
 Revelation, reject, as wrong and sinful, certain acts and 
 certain feelings, which the unenlightened perform and 
 encourage, without the least idea that they are in any 
 way committing sin; but these men have their own 
 ideal of virtue, which they follow up, and consider far 
 superior to vice. What, then, constitutes the differ- 
 ence? Simply, that Revelation has formed the con- 
 science in the one, and that the innate idea of virtue is 
 not enough to create it in the other. I do not tell you 
 that the Indians and other unenlightened nations are 
 not happy, and have not amongst themselves many a 
 bright example of virtue ; but we cannot compare either 
 their amount and quality of happiness, or their standard 
 of virtue, with those where the Divine Laws are 
 acknowledged and obeyed. 
 
 When we read the history of the various idolatries 
 and impure rites performed under the name of religion by 
 the ancient nations, and of their strange and fearful notions 
 of supreme powers, is it not impossible that a nation of 
 slaves, who, from their long bondage, had also become 
 impregnated with the awful notions of their task-masters, 
 could have attained such sublime ideas of the Deity, 
 and framed a law which the whole civilised world 
 acknowledges, even though thousands of ages have 
 passed since its delivery, without direct inspiration, 
 which springs from certain signs and evidences of Revela- 
 tion? Why, if man had power to do what Moses did, 
 does it so happen that such a law has never been given 
 before or since? Why, if man knows of himself, what is 
 pleasing in the sight of his Creator, and what not-
 
 102 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 should the descendants of Abraham, a mere handful 
 compared with the rest of the world, have been the 
 only people who compiled a law to that effect? It is 
 only the presumptuous, the ignorant, and the super- 
 ficial, who can attempt reply to these proofs, and they 
 may indeed satisfy themselves, but will convince none 
 else. Their wordy arguments may silence those who 
 feel faith and reverence for the Word of God so closely 
 twined with their being, that they shrink in anguish 
 from such irreverend and fearful unbelief, and cannot 
 continue to converse. But silence is not conviction, 
 when even the very groundwork of argument cannot be 
 the same. 
 
 The proof to me of the divinity of the law of Moses 
 (I am alluding now only to the spiritual and the moral, 
 not the ceremonial law, because, though equally of 
 divine origin, that is, and will be for ever peculiarly 
 ours), is simply its perfect agreement with the attributes 
 of the Deity, not only as He proclaimed Himself to 
 Moses, but as recognised by the moral and intellectual 
 nature of man ; that it inculcates, in its minute ordi- 
 nances, veneration, love to God and to man, charity in 
 the widest extension of the term, forgiveness of injuries, 
 benevolence, not only in act but in feeling, honour to 
 parents, respect to the aged, tenderness to the young ; 
 that it incites to the cultivation of wisdom, of intellect, 
 of every spiritual and ennobling feeling, all that can 
 tend to give the spirit ascendancy over the earthly, and 
 prepare us for life eternal. It prohibits, on the other 
 hand, all that can prevent our attaining this ; and, there- 
 fore, alike in its commands and prohibitions, guides to 
 the same end, and reveals the same all-good and all-
 
 LETTER IX. 103 
 
 loving God, who while He grants man perfect liberty of 
 choice and freedom of will while in the mortal clay, 
 places before him the means of shewing forth the like- 
 ness of God, in which he is made more and more 
 distinctly, and so securing his spiritual happiness in this 
 world, and. his eternal felicity in the next. No human 
 laws ever looked further than the temporal tranquillity 
 and well-doing of a state. Those which have been 
 formed since the dispersion of the Jews, and the universal 
 recognition of their moral law, are still human statutes 
 based on those which are divine. But of the far-famed 
 laws of Sparta, Athens, and even Rome, mistress of a 
 world, there is not a single trace remaining; and is it 
 not, then, a striking proof of the Divine Revelation of 
 our law, that it should outlive all others, and that the 
 perpetuity of human statutes should be only as they 
 agree, or disagree with the law of God ? 
 
 Your next question is, " How do we know that we are 
 the people of whom Moses wrote?" I answer, By the 
 recognition and evidence of a world ! By the exact 
 fulfilment, both in our past history and present destiny, 
 of prophecies only to be found in God's Holy Word, 
 and only fulfilled in ourselves. By our adherence, 
 wherever we may be scattered, to the ordinances, not 
 alone of the moral, but of the ceremonial law instituted 
 through Moses, and of which we are the selected and 
 faithful guardians. That neither through the swords and 
 fires of persecution, nor plague, nor the thousand evil 
 chances which have befallen us, have we been rooted 
 from the earth, or decreased in numbers, even for a 
 time that no human power can prevail against us, 
 however we may fall before it that while nations and
 
 104 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 dynasties have been encountering revolution on revolu- 
 tion, conquest, defeat, change, extermination, we have 
 remained in every land a mere handful, compared with 
 the nation who protects or enslaves us, but still existing 
 unchanged in one tittle either of our characteristics or 
 our law. Nations who were cotemporary with us in 
 antiquity have utterly passed away. The modern world 
 presents a series of shifting scenes, of which the only 
 changeless features are the Jews. Take the prophecy 
 of Moses, contained in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, 
 and compare it carefully with the history of the Jews, 
 beginning with the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, going 
 through our dispersion in those lands where we were 
 literally compelled, in semblance, to bow down before 
 the images of the Catholic, things of wood and stone 
 where, indeed, we found "no ease, neither did the 
 sole of our foot find rest, but where we had a trembling 
 heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and our 
 life hung in doubt before us, and we feared day and 
 night, and had none assurance of our life." To what 
 nation but to us have such things befallen, and how, 
 then, can we doubt, for a single moment, our identity 
 with the people whom Moses brought out of Egypt, 
 and of whom, in this sublime prophecy, he spoke ? 
 
 Zven by the most prejudiced of our opponents, it is 
 acknowledged, that Jesus was himself a Jew, and his 
 Apostles taught the Gentiles, in simpler words, the 
 knowledge of the Lord, and of the Moral Law, already 
 revealed to us. From us, then, the blessing of reve- 
 lation certainly came, whoever might be the ministers 
 to bear it, mingled with some human error permitted 
 for a time, over the known world. " In thy seed all the
 
 LETTER IX. J05 
 
 nations of the earth shall be blessed," God said to 
 Abraham centuries before the advent of Moses ; and in 
 our dispersion, in the wider spread of OUR Scriptures, in 
 the immortal hopes, and glorious future destiny they 
 reveal, in the ennobling aspirations they inspire, in 
 their very revelation of a Father, who has dearer and 
 tenderer, more enduring and more forbearing love, than 
 any earthly parent, is not this promise also fulfilled, 
 and, in the revelation vouchsafed to the seed of Abraham, 
 every nation blessed? 
 
 In Psalm xliv., we read, " Thou hast given us like 
 sheep for meat, and hast scattered us amongst the nations. 
 Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase 
 thy wealth by their price. Thou madest us a reproach 
 to our neighbours ; a scorn and derision to them that 
 are round about us. Thou madest us a byword amongst 
 the nations, a shaking of the head amongst the people." 
 Where shall we find this fearful prophecy fulfilled, save 
 in the past and present position of the Hebrews since 
 the destruction of Jerusalem ; and can we then doubt 
 our identity? The Psalm agrees so exactly with the 
 words of Moses, though written centuries afterwards, 
 that we must believe it equally inspired, and that it 
 relates to the same people ; for to none other, but the 
 Jews, can it apply ! It describes their position among 
 the modern nations so exactly, that we must feel it to be 
 a prophecy, though couched in the metre of a Psalm. 
 It will not bear upon the position of the Hebrews, at 
 the period when it was chaunted by the sons of Korah, 
 in the very least. Then, though a nation apart, they 
 were acknowledged and respected by the surrounding
 
 106 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 nations.* They were not considered either a reproach 
 or a derision ; their priests were acknowledged, even by 
 the Heathen, as oracles of the living God. Alexander, 
 in the plenitude of his power, knelt, and reverenced the 
 Hebrew's God, when the High Priest went forth to meet 
 him. Naaman, the Syrian general, went to consult the 
 Hebrew prophet, on the mere report of a little Israel- 
 itish maid. Benhadad, himself, the sovereign of Syria, 
 directly he heard the Jewish prophet was in Damascus, 
 sent to enquire " if he should recover from his disease." 
 Now this proves very clearly, that the Psalmist could 
 not have drawn his conclusions, of the reproach and 
 derision with which his brethren would be regarded, 
 from their present position in the sight of the nations, 
 for when he wrote, probably in David's time, though 
 few in number, they were considered one of the greatest, 
 most valiant, and most honoured nations of the Earth. 
 He must have penetrated futurity, and so correctly, that 
 only wilful unbelief, which I am sure is not your case, 
 dearest Annie, can refuse credence to the assertion, that 
 the Jews are the people of the Bible, alike in its narrative 
 and prophecy. 
 
 I do not think you will require more to prove to you, 
 that we have evidence of our being the people of whom 
 Moses and, after him, all the historians, psalmists, and 
 prophets of the Bible, wrote : but yet, I cannot resist 
 calling your attention to one or two verses of Isaiah, as 
 strongly confirmatory of what I have already brought 
 forward. In the forty-third chapter, at the eighth verse, 
 
 * I do not allude to the Philistine inhabitants of the same 
 land, but to the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc.
 
 LETTER IX. 107 
 
 we read, " Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, 
 and the deaf that have ears. Let all the nations be 
 gathered together, and let the people be assembled : 
 who among them % can declare this, and show us former 
 things? Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they 
 may be justified; and let them hear, and say it is truth. 
 Ye are MY witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant 
 whom I have chosen ; that ye may know and believe 
 me, and understand that I am He ; before me, there was 
 no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even 
 I am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour. I 
 have declared, and have saved, and have shewed when 
 there was no strange God among you; therefore ye are 
 my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God." 
 
 Here the prophet first calls upon the unbelievers and 
 sceptics, men who have unhappily had existence in all 
 ages, and who are, indeed, mentally blind and deaf, 
 though physically they have both eyes and ears; and 
 tells them to summon all the nations and people, and to 
 enquire who amongst them can declare this, and shew 
 us former things? The enquiry relates to the seven 
 previous verses of this chapter, which, you will perceive, 
 if you refer to them, describe both the creative and the 
 saving power of the Lord. He tells Israel, that even 
 when he goes through fire and water, his God will be 
 with him; that he shall pass unscathed; that He is the 
 Holy One, and the Saviour of Israel : and so precious, 
 and so beloved in the sight of God is Israel, that He 
 hath given nations for his ransom, and people for his 
 life. He bids them fear not, for "from all the quarters 
 of the globe, will He gather the people whom He hath 
 called by His name, and created for His glory." It is
 
 108 THE JEWISH FAlTfl. 
 
 this especial favour, these things, the prophet asks the 
 nations, if they too can declare, as shewn to them? If 
 they can shew those former things, which, by creation 
 and redemption, the Lord has revealed to Israel? So 
 closely twined is the belief of the modern nations, with 
 the Revelation vouchsafed to Israel, that they might 
 perhaps think it easy to answer, and might forget that 
 they are building up their structure on the Divine 
 ground-work originally ours. But how could the 
 ancient nations, to whom Isaiah appeals, reply? Did the 
 idols to whom they bowed form them? Could they pre- 
 serve them in the fire and the flood ? Did they know 
 the One sole God and Saviour, invisible, but ever pre- 
 sent in His works ? Had they been saved by a strong 
 hand and out-stretched arm, and ransomed by the 
 mighty power of a God ? Let them bring forth their 
 witnesses, that such things had been, or when they hear 
 of such things as revealed to them, let them, if they can, 
 say it is truth. They cannot : for the sin and wicked- 
 ness of these nations was too great, for the blessing of 
 Revelation to be vouchsafed to them, and therefore, all 
 was darkness around them. Not so Israel: of them the 
 prophet says, " Ye are my witnesses, and my especial 
 servant, my first-born son (see Exodus iv. 22) ; I have 
 revealed myself to you, that ye may know and believe 
 me, and understand the mysterious and mighty truth, 
 that I who spoke to you, am God ; before me there 
 was no other, and after me, there shall be none ; and I 
 alone am thy Saviour. / have declared my name and 
 attributes unto you. / have saved you from your 
 Egyptian task-masters and heathen foes. / have shewed 
 you my wonders and miracles. When there was no
 
 LETTER IX. 109 
 
 strange God amongst you, I manifested myself in the 
 cloud, and the fire, which guided you in the wilderness, 
 by a voice on Mount Sinai, before thousands and thou- 
 sands of my people : therefore, ye are my witnesses, that 
 I am God ; " and those witnesses, the evidence of a world 
 proclaims us to be still ! 
 
 Wherever we may be scattered, wherever a copy of 
 our Scriptures is found, there this sublime prophecy is 
 fulfilled ; and no effort of either sceptic or scorner can 
 prove it otherwise. However the modern Jew may be 
 considered as rejected and stiff-necked in unbelief 
 however the erroneous idea may be entertained, that 
 the Jews must all acknowledge Jesus, ere the redemption 
 of the world will be achieved, still not one will deny, 
 that TO us ALONE in ancient times was God revealed, 
 to us ALONE the Scriptures given. Degraded, sunk, 
 scattered, despised as we are, no other nation or people 
 has ever set themselves up as the chosen of the Lord. 
 However new religions, grafted on the Jewish root, may 
 have so extended as to conceal and forget their origin ; 
 yet wherever the Jew is, there stands the witness of the 
 Lord, there stands the living evidence of the Scriptures, 
 acknowledged to be the descendant of the people on 
 whom Revelation was first bestowed, and without whom 
 there could be no knowledge of a God, nor of His 
 Word. If there were no Jews, then, indeed, we might 
 doubt the Bible, for we should merely have a record 
 but no witness. We should look upon it as we do on 
 the ancient histories of Egypt, of Assyria, of Greece, or 
 of Home ; records that may indeed be true, but of 
 which there is no living trace. Nay, unless the Hebrew 
 still existed, in himself the evidence of the past, we
 
 110 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 should have less witness of the Bible's truth, than we 
 have of the histories above-named. They have their 
 monuments alike of architecture and sculpture, to mark 
 that however their records may be mingled with fable, 
 still that such nations must have existed. The Hebrews 
 have no such monuments. They were to be themselves 
 witnesses of a mighty, and stupendous, and purely 
 spiritual truth, and such they are. Their long disper- 
 sion, a chastisement for their iniquity, is working out 
 the Providence, as the Prophecy of God. He has 
 placed them in every corner of the Earth, even in the 
 most remote parts, that wherever knowledge of Him 
 may be conveyed, there should be His witnesses. Is 
 there one other people, one other nation, who can thus 
 bear witness to the farthest boundary of the past ? The 
 Christian, or the Mahometan, if they went no farther 
 than their founders, would still leave from three to four 
 thousand centuries in utter darkness. The creation of 
 the world, the institution of the Sabbath (for however 
 they may differ on the day, there is not a religion that 
 does not observe a Sabbath) the Ten Commandments, 
 comprising such a vast combination of spiritual and 
 moral, domestic and social, individual and general duties 
 all would have remained unknown. Both these 
 great systems have arisen on a previous Revelation, to 
 which they could bear no witness, and of which they 
 could bring no proof, had the people on whom it was 
 bestowed been utterly exterminated as so many other 
 cotemporary nations. But even those most prejudiced 
 point to us, and exclaim (little thinking that even in 
 such exclamation prophecy is fulfilled), " Behold the 
 WITNESSES of God's former mercy and present wrath !"
 
 LETTER X. Ill 
 
 Dearest Annie, have we not then all-sufficient proof 
 that we are the people of whom Moses and the after 
 prophets spoke ? Do we need more than the evidence 
 of our opponents, and the response of our own hearts 
 the history of the Past, and position of the Present? 
 Characteristics of feature alone would mark us a people 
 apart, while ordinances, Sabbaths, festivals, and fasts, 
 laws, customs, modified however by the effect of the 
 varying climate and character of the land in which we 
 are scattered, all so exactly accord with those written in 
 the Pentateuch, and given to the descendants of Abra- 
 ham, that to doubt our identity with the Israelites, 
 seems as impossible as to disbelieve in our present exist- 
 ence. If I have made it as clear to you as it is to me, 
 I shall, indeed, rejoice ; but where the heart is full of 
 the subject on which the mind is working, it is more 
 than ordinarily difficult to throw it into words. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 You tell me many, very many doubts are satisfied, my 
 Annie ; that on many points both mind and heart can 
 rest more calmly than they have done yet. Thankful, 
 indeed, am I that so it is, and still more at your pro- 
 mise to tell me all that puzzles you as you proceed. 
 I cannot hope to explain all, but 1 trust to give you 
 answers sufficiently reasonable to permit the calm and
 
 112 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 trusting acquiescence of faith, on the many, many things, 
 which in religion must, while on earth, remain unsolved. 
 You agree with me as to the convincing evidence of the 
 divinity of Revelation, and of our being the people 
 whom God redeemed and ordained His witnesses; and 
 ask me, if the history contained in the Book of Genesis, 
 and the narrative parts of the Pentateuch, are found 
 elsewhere than in the Bible? If they are not contra- 
 dicted by the discoveries of the geologist and the astro- 
 nomer? and other questions, which 1 will notice in due 
 order. 
 
 All the nations of remote antiquity, and even the 
 histories of their mythology, possess certain legends and 
 traditions, agreeing remarkably with the events of the 
 Book of Genesis, especially the creation of man and the 
 deluge. The aborigines of America, and the nume- 
 rous native inhabitants of India, have certain traditions 
 that tally so exactly with the Mosaic records, that we 
 cannot doubt they relate to the same events. In fact, 
 so curiously similar are the legends and some of the 
 rites of the American Indians, and of some of the 
 African tribes, to the narratives and observances of the 
 Jews, that strange hypotheses have been raised upon 
 them, pointing them out as the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. 
 To the truth of the deluge the whole face of the earth 
 bears witness. The discoveries of geologists do not do 
 away with the Mosaic account of creation, though some 
 minds, not wide enough to embrace the vast extent of 
 the question, may assert it. Moses describes the works 
 of God in language best fitted for the narrow, and, as 
 yet, unenlightened comprehensions of the people he 
 addressed. We cannot find a single word in his narra-
 
 LETTER X. 113 
 
 tive that will deny the theory of geologists, that the world 
 must have passed through many stages. The Hebrew 
 word translated " day," may equally signify any length 
 of time. Man was not yet on the earth to mark its 
 flight by any particular division ; and to the Eternal, we 
 are told, " a thousand years in His sight are but as 
 yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the 
 night." All those marvellous changes and revolutions, 
 seemingly so stupendous to the finite comprehension of 
 man, are the mere act of volition in the mind of the 
 Infinite; and what might be an era in man's bounded 
 reckoning, is but a minute in the reckoning of God. It 
 is difficult, perhaps, in the finite and the bounded, to 
 obtain just ideas of the infinite and boundless. Man is 
 apt to measure wisdom and power by his own, when in 
 reality he can compare them no more with those of his 
 Maker, than he] can the instincts of the worm that 
 crawleth at his feet, or of the fly that flieth round his 
 head, with the powers dwelling in himself. 
 
 Or (as a juster comparison, perhaps, for in the worm 
 and the fly, though their beneficent Maker has endowed 
 them with all things necessary for their safety and en- 
 joyment, He has not breathed into them a soul emana- 
 ting from Himself), let those who would circumscribe 
 the wisdom and the power of the Infinite by the reckon- 
 ing of the finite, look upon the new-born babe, in whose 
 infant limbs and infant mind dwell all the capabilities 
 which time has so perfected in themselves. Surely, when 
 compared with such, man might think himself a God ! 
 And as that child is utterly incapable of comprehend- 
 ing the wisdom of a philosopher, the power of the mind, 
 the strength of manhood's frame, so is man equally
 
 114 
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 unable to comprehend the wisdom, and the power, and 
 the might, and the will of God. The child will, indeed, 
 become the man, and so attain the powers to the new- 
 born babe so utterly unknown ; but, for man to under- 
 stand the infinite, death must be to him what birth is to 
 the child admission to a world. The death of man 
 gives birth unto an angel. Perchance, even as the child 
 progresses to the perfection which the finite may attain, 
 so may the new-born angel gradually advance, till the 
 ways as well as the works of the Infinite are to him re- 
 vealed, and he is made capable, in some degree, of 
 comprehending the perfection he has till then only 
 believed in and adored. The Babe is born to die; the 
 Angel born for life eternal. The Mortal circumscribes 
 the power of the former; the Immortal is before the 
 latter. The sphere of Man is bounded by Time ; the 
 sphere of the Angel is boundless through Eternity. The 
 Angel then may, and will, attain the perfect knowledge 
 of the wondrous workings, and mysterious ways of the 
 Most High, in whose revealed presence he stands from 
 the moment of his immortal birth ; but Man, though he 
 may do much towards the attainment of this thrice- 
 glorious knowledge, must ever be liable to the pains, 
 and imperfections, and chains of earth ; and, therefore, 
 to attempt to judge the wisdom, and power, and will of 
 his Maker, by the bounded nature of his own even 
 most aspiring thoughts, is a degree of presumption, 
 ignorance, and profanity, most fearfully opposed to any 
 true religious knowledge. 
 
 That man can attain some knowledge of his Father 
 and God, even in this world, is proved by the words of 
 the Almighty Himself; for " Thus saith the Lord, Let
 
 LETTER X. 115 
 
 not the wise man glory in his wisdom ; neither let the 
 mighty glory in his might; let not the rich glory in his 
 riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he 
 under standeth and knowetk me, that I am the Lord, which 
 exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness 
 in the earth, that in these things I delight, saith the 
 Lord" (Jer. ix. 23 and 24). Now, man can reach this 
 knowledge, not by measuring the Infinite by the Finite, 
 the Immortal by the Mortal, but by advancing farther 
 a^nd farther in the realms of wisdom ; for the more he 
 does so, the more will he feel how little he can attain, 
 and the less will he be inclined to set up his own judg- 
 ment, by which to understand the word and the ways 
 of God. The more he acquires, the more he grasps the 
 wealth of mind, the more thankfully will he rest on 
 those blessed words, "THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS 
 FAITH," for the more intensely will he feel, that if his 
 salvation depended on his wisdom, or might, or under- 
 standing, he is lost eternally. But, angel-tongued, those 
 words sink into his heart, giving him hope, and strength, 
 and comfort; for his deep researches and mighty wisdom 
 have only taught him " that the results of reason are 
 nothing worth compared to those of faith." 
 
 You will think, perhaps, that this is all a wide digres- 
 sion from the question we are now considering, as to 
 the truth or error of the Mosaic account of creation ; 
 but I want you to understand at the very outset of our 
 inquiries, that the discoveries of human wisdom, marvel- 
 lous as they may seem, ought not, and cannot, weigh one 
 tittle against the simple word of God. The geologist 
 and the astronomer, who deny or doubt the Mosaic 
 record, are standing merely on the threshold of science
 
 116 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and wisdom. They have not advanced far enough to 
 perceive the boundless sea of nature's mysteries, and 
 solveless causes -of certain visible effects, which must 
 drive human reason from her throne, had she not Faiih 
 to rest on ; that childlike faith tells them, there is no 
 denial of their discoveries in the canons of the scripture; 
 that Moses adapted his narrative, and Joshua his words 
 to the sun and moon, to suit the simple minds, long 
 crushed mental powers, and outward senses, of the 
 people whom they led; that though, as mind advances, 
 it penetrates more and more into the mysteries of 
 Creation, and discovers more than Moses taught, it is 
 enough for their Immortal hope, to take his book as their 
 guide to Eternity, satisfied if more were needed for their 
 salvation, God would have revealed it. How could the 
 mixed multitudes who had come out from Egypt have 
 understood or believed their leader, had he told them 
 the stars were suns, the planets larger worlds than our 
 Earth; or had they heard Joshua bid the " Earth stand 
 still," when before their very eyes the sun seemed moving? 
 Our Heavenly Father, infinitely more merciful than 
 man, demands no more than can be given. He spoke to 
 us through Moses, as we would to children, in the first 
 stage of education ; and such we are before Him still, 
 despite the wisdom we have gained. His loving mercy 
 has given us Creation, on which to use the mental 
 powers with which the same love has stored our minds ; 
 but when such exercise turns us from Him as He is 
 revealed in His word, bids us doubt Him, because our 
 finite and imperfect faculties cannot reconcile our dis- 
 coveries with His simple word, then indeed is knowledge 
 to us what the serpent was to Eve. Robes of light
 
 LETTER X. 117 
 
 clothe a form of darkness. Mist surrounds us, and on 
 our bed of death; we Vainly grope for some hold for 
 our struggling soul. What are mei'e earthly science and 
 earthly wisdom, then? The true philosopher who has 
 advanced farther, deeper still, before whose discoveries 
 those of the deist are as nothing, sees God gleaming 
 through them all ; and, as a little child rests upon His 
 Father's word ; and feels, that, though research and dis- 
 covery may bless this life, Faith alone of all his earthly 
 possessions remains beside his dying bed, reconciles his 
 Father's works with His word, and guides his released 
 soul to everlasting life. 
 
 Thus, I cannot consider, that the Mosaic records are 
 contradicted by the discovery of the geologist and 
 astronomer. God spake; and chaos gave place to order, 
 darkness to light; water and earth were divided one 
 from the other; grass, trees, herbs, flowers, rocks, moun- 
 tains, and valleys all that could beautify and fertilise, 
 and render the world fit for the residence of the new Crea- 
 tion took their appointed rests as we see them now, and 
 whether this creation burst into being at once, or 
 whether it was accomplished by various revolutions and 
 changes on the earth's surface, and whether other animals, 
 besides those with whom we are at present acquainted, 
 had their existence; all was equally the mere act of 
 volition in the Almighty mind, and took no more time 
 in His reckoning, than if we felt the wish for a certain 
 flower, and saw it on the instant spring up before us. 
 Time revolution change are words peculiar to 
 man. We cannot, we dare not, apply them to God. 
 We see the earth, divided from the waters, bearing the 
 grass, the trees, the flowers, the grain, each with seed 
 within itself, to produce its fellow, exactly as Moses told
 
 118 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 us, and even the very animals as named by him ; then 
 how dare we say his account is contradicted and rendered 
 null? Even if we grant (which I am quite disposed to 
 do) that various strata and gigantic fossil remains, seem 
 to tell of certain changes in the earth, of which his 
 narrative bears no trace, these changes may have 
 taken place in the period designated, for man's compre- 
 hension, as the " evening and the morning were the 
 third day." Ages in the reckoning of Time, are but as a 
 moment in the reckoning of Eternity ; incomprehensible 
 and stupendous in the magnitude of creation, if judged by 
 the powers and work of man, but a mere act of volition 
 in the Lord. 
 
 Again : of the sun, moon, and stars we are told, "And 
 God said, Let there be lights in the firmament, or expanse 
 of heaven, to divide the day from the night, and let them 
 be for signs and for seasons; and let them be for lights in 
 the expanse of heaven, to give light upon the earth, and 
 it was so; and God made two great lights, the greater 
 light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the 
 night. He made the stars also. And God set them in 
 the expanse of heaven to give light upon the earth and 
 to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide 
 the light from the darkness." Such is the narrative of 
 Moses, in words so simple, so proved by each revolving 
 day and night, to the senses of man, that a little child can 
 understand them. When that narrative was given, the 
 human mind, except in certain chosen individuals whose 
 commune with their Maker made them wise, was in its 
 earliest infancy. To have revealed to them the disco- 
 veries of modern science would have demanded from them 
 a stretch of faith not one could have possessed ; and un-
 
 LETTER X. 119 
 
 belief must have marked the very outset of the Mosaic 
 Revelation. Long ages after the period of Moses, the 
 discoveries of Galileo were deemed so impossible, so 
 heretical, that he was not only persecuted, but so bent 
 himself to the dark spirit of his age, as absolutely to pro- 
 fess publicly a recantation of his own glorious dis- 
 coveries. In the very infancy of the world, ay, and 
 amongst men who even actually saw with their own eyes, 
 heard with their own ears, and felt with their own senses 
 the stupendous manifestations of their God, and could yet 
 disbelieve and murmur, how could Moses, deputed for 
 a much higher mission, have entered upon the real na- 
 ture and more extended intent of those glorious lights 
 which he saw divided light from darkness, and ruled the 
 day and night ? He might not, even himself, have known 
 that which advance of mind has gradually revealed. 
 Surely, his mighty task, to preach the sublime doctrine of 
 the Unity of God, to make manifest His power and His 
 love, to lead a stiff-necked and constantly rebellious people 
 forty years in the wilderness, still hoping, still believing 
 in the promised end, the possession of the land of Judea; 
 the delivery of a Law like which there neither was then, 
 nor ever has been any other, adapted to the minute go- 
 vernment of a disorderly multitude, entering not merely 
 into social and general government, but into domestic 
 and individual life; surely this was sufficient demand 
 on any single mind, inspired by the direct spirit of the 
 Almighty as it was. If we reflect on all Moses had to 
 do, and did, we surely cannot be surprised if his relation 
 of the events which preceded the release from Egypt be 
 brief, and even, to some exacting minds, unsatisfactory. 
 He told enough for guidance, in connection with his own
 
 120 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 revealings, to prove the truth of God's previously spoken 
 word to Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. He 
 entered sufficiently into the work of Creation, for the 
 minds and senses of those whom he addressed, leaving to 
 after-ages, and more perfected intellects, those disco- 
 veries which, however they might increase our adoration 
 of the stupendous power and extended government of the 
 Eternal, however they might prove to us that our earth, 
 lovely, perfect as it is, is but an atom in the vast im" 
 mensity of works around us, cannot contradict His word, 
 while sun, moon, and stars remain as man beholds them. 
 
 Do not think that I am contradicting, or doubting, the 
 wonderful discoveries of astronomers, and that I would 
 confine man's ever-soaring mind to the child-like relation 
 of the first chapter of Genesis no: I would merely 
 prove to you that it is quite possible to unite the two, 
 and that the one does not contradict the other, as mere 
 superficial reasoners but too frequently assert. What is 
 it we are told ? That two great lights were placed in the 
 expanse of heaven to divide day and night, and to be for 
 signs and seasons, days and years; that the larger light 
 was to rule the day, and the lesser one the night. He 
 made the stars also. And after He had made these 
 lights, great and small, He set them in the expanse of 
 heaven to give liyht upon the earth, and mark day and 
 night. Can any one, dare any one, say this is no longer 
 the case, or has ever ceased to be so ? The planets may 
 be all worlds larger, more perfect, of more angelic nature 
 than our own ; the fixed stars may be all suns to other 
 and even invisible worlds; there may be (nay, there are) 
 myriads and myriads more stars and planets, with their 
 attendant satellites, than even the telescope discovers ;
 
 LETTER X. 121 
 
 our own moon may be a world ; our sun may be a star to 
 other worlds; but granting all this, how can it be said to 
 contradict the Mosaic 'account of creation, when before 
 our very eyes, before the eyes of our ancestors ages and 
 ages back ay, for six thousand, years, the sun, moon, 
 and stars have done their work, with reference to this 
 little earth, as their Creator and ours ordained; giving 
 light by day and giving light by night; ruling days, sea- 
 sons, years, and remaining in the expanse of Heaven, 
 where our Father placed them, from the beginning, to do 
 His work and bless His creatures. What their other pur- 
 poses may be, we shall know when our release by death 
 from this world gives us entrance to another. For that 
 life, whatever, wherever it may be, other laws and other 
 information will be provided, as much superior in the 
 amount of intelligence and revelation concerning the 
 works of our God, as the mind of the wisest philosopher is 
 superior to the dormant capabilities of the new-born babe. 
 While on earth the simple record of Moses is sufficient 
 for our belief, or more would have been given. If, in- 
 deed, that contradicted, or even circumscribed the disco- 
 veries of advancing human intellect, we might have some 
 slight excuse for refusing to believe it; but it actually 
 does neither. In its simple truthful relation, it appeals 
 to the outward senses and inward experience of man- 
 kind, from the youngest child to the wisest philosopher, 
 and founds its assertion on the evidence of thousands 
 of ages. 
 
 It does not say such and such things were not : then, 
 indeed, it might contradict modern discovery. It only 
 says, such things were, and not even that there were 
 only such ; and thus gives abundant room for all the 
 
 G
 
 122 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 exercise of mind, at the very same time, that it proves 
 its assertion by the natural laws, so to speak, of every 
 passing day and night. * 
 
 O that I could but make this sublime truth as clear to 
 you and other doubting minds, my beloved Annie, as I 
 feel it to be ; but when the heart is full to overflowing, 
 when the subject is felt to be so important, so entwined 
 with one's very being, as by all who seek to love 
 God, the justification of His Word, through His chosen 
 servant, must be, it is impossible to write with the calm, 
 cold, quiet reasoning, which perhaps it may demand. 
 But to describe to you the cold shudder which creeps 
 over me, when I hear, as I have sometimes heai'd, men 
 of wisdom, of research, of discovery, speak sneeringly of 
 God's Holy Word, and by a few words fling doubt and 
 contempt on the faith of thirsting youth, or of guileless 
 age, is equally impossible. So simple, so easy appears 
 to me the union of Revelation and all science, that how 
 any mind can reject the one as contradicting the other, 
 is as utterly incomprehensible as it is fearful. Such 
 minds have never been taught to believe in other than 
 themselves. The idea of a higher and ubiquitous Power, 
 which can unite seeming impossibilities; of a loving 
 mercy which can, at the same moment, so reveal His 
 mighty works, as to give scope to the full powers of the 
 human mind, and yet reach the comprehension of the 
 most ignorant, enabling a child and a savage to believe, 
 through the evidence of their senses, and the philosopher 
 to revel in the glorious triumphs of his mind the 
 infinite Love which commands, as the simple condition 
 of salvation, faith, equally attainable by every age and 
 every mind, instead of wisdom, or knowledge, or dis-
 
 LETTER X. 123 
 
 covery, of which, compared with the vast multitudes of 
 human beings, how very few can boast, and how few, 
 therefore, could be saved such ideas must be to the 
 deniers of Revelation utterly unknown. However wise, 
 however learned, still that wisdom is wanting which is 
 pronounced by God Himself superior to all the know- 
 ledge of the Lord. Pride, fearful pride it is, that but 
 too often originates unbelief, and turns the light of 
 science and discovery to darkness, and in the end 
 despair. O that I could feel I had provided you with a 
 shield of defence against those unhappy scoffers, who, 
 by a few words, have the power to shake and destroy 
 the guileless trust of years ; that to your aspiring 
 mind and loving heart, the simple record of Revelation, 
 and the vast immensity of the discoveries of Science, 
 may become as inseparably twined as they are to me ; 
 and that the further you advance in the study of reli- 
 gion, the more forcibly you may feel, that instead of 
 contradicting, each upholds and confirms the other. 
 Once having bathed in the Fountain of living waters, 
 however the mind may soar or dive in the wide regions 
 of discovery, it remains true to its resting, on the Word 
 of the Lord, as a bird to its home ; and every fresh 
 discovery but deepens faith. Alas, for those unhappy 
 ones who go forth in their own strength, and plumed in 
 their own pride ! Your other questions must remain 
 till my next, my dear Annie. My heart must throb 
 less quickly, ere I can attempt to write on any other 
 theme.
 
 124 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 THANKFUL, indeed, am I, my dearest Annie, that my 
 last letter has given you so much pleasure ; and that its 
 views have found so powerful a response in your own 
 warm heart and unsophisticated mind. It has, you tell 
 me, awakened so many new ideas, "that the infinite 
 love and tender forbearance of our Heavenly Father 
 towards the weakest and most ignorant of His children, 
 is so proved in the very order of His Revelation regard- 
 ing the work of Creation ; at the same time, that the 
 discoveries of modern Science so reveal the immensity 
 of His power, and wisdom, and glory, that the mind 
 almost loses itself in their contemplation that you 
 cannot understand now, how any one can deny the 
 necessity of a Divine Revelation, as the very vastness, 
 and sublimity, and inconceivable glory of the Deity, as 
 disclosed in the discoveries of science, must, it appears 
 to you, drive man almost to despair as to his own 
 acceptance in the sight of a Being so far above him, 
 had he not the Word of Truth to show him the path of 
 life, and to tell him, that transcendantly glorious as is 
 His God in the witness of His works, His WORD pro- 
 claims Him Father, whose love for the weakest and the 
 humblest is infinite as His power, everlasting as Him- 
 self."
 
 LETTER XI. 125 
 
 Yes, dearest Annie, it is indeed so; and I thank you 
 for the expression of such a thought. I knew, that 
 once awakened to the beautiful Unity, the complete 
 connection between our Father's WORD and WORKS, 
 you would acknowledge the necessity of, and delight in, 
 the study of the one equally with the other. But 
 though truly I rejoice that so it is, we must not only 
 rest on faith and feeling we must bring all the 
 evidences, and answer all the doubts we can, that 
 reason may convince the mind, as well as love affect 
 
 th heart. 
 
 Evidence of the existence of the characters in the 
 book of Genesis, and of Moses himself, is found, not 
 somuch in the belief of Jews and Christians; because in 
 the one, it would be heresy and blasphemy to contradict 
 it, and almost as much so in the other, as the Old Testa- 
 ment is of equal sanctity, and equal importance to the 
 Christian, as to the Hebrew ; but in the witness of the 
 Mahometans, ay and of the Arabs, centuries before 
 Mahomet himself appeared. From time immemorial, 
 they count their proud descent from Ishmael, the son of 
 Abraham, and (a striking proof of the truth of Moses' 
 record) adhere to the sacred covenant of Abraham, at 
 the age, when the Bible tells us Ishmael was received 
 into it, that of thirteen years. Mahomet confirmed 
 this rite ; and to this day it is part of the Mahometan 
 religion, and is in itself a striking proof of the truth of 
 
 Scripture. To the Arabs, the acknowledged descen- 
 dants of Ishmael, no divine revelation was vouchsafed. 
 
 All they retain and venerate, regarding Abraham and 
 
 Ishmael, and Moses, must have had its origin in tra-
 
 J2t> THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 dition, handed down from father to son, till Mahomet 
 collected and compiled them in a book of laws. 
 
 Now, from the despicable light in which the Jews were 
 regarded, at the time of Mahomet, it would appear, that 
 unless he had had some very strong reasons, for a refer- 
 ence to the characters of their books, it would have 
 been more to the glory and virtue of a new religion, 
 not to have had any thing to do with a people so de- 
 based. Whether Mahomet were acquainted with the 
 Hebrew Scriptures or not, his constant references to 
 Abraham and Jacob, Joseph and Moses, and even to 
 Job, are equally powerful evidence of the truth of the 
 Bible, and the existence of those characters. If his 
 knowledge came from the traditions of the Arabs, those 
 traditions must have had a very strong foundation in 
 Truth, to have outlasted so many centuries; and they agree 
 too remarkably with the Pentateuch, to permit a thought 
 of either springing from falsehood. Truth alone is en- 
 during and vnclianyeable. Falsehood varies with every 
 passing breath. If Mahomet were really acquainted 
 with the Hebrew Scriptures, he must have had inter- 
 nally a very strong conviction of their sacred truth ; or 
 he would not have allowed a book, which he declared 
 to have been given to his care by an angel from Heaven, 
 to contain reference to the characters of those Scrip- 
 tures, and so many strikingly similar laws. The first 
 grand doctrine, the Unity of the Eternal, and the con- 
 stant commune between man and his God; the covenant 
 of Abraham, the strict prohibition of certain meats, the 
 toleration towards strangers, (for that was the true 
 spirit of the Koran, though it made its way by fire and
 
 LETTER XI. 127 
 
 sword*), and various other minute ordinances, both 
 spiritual and ritual, are strikingly like those given to 
 the Jews. Again, the extreme veneration borne by the 
 Mahometans to the memory of Abraham, and Moses or 
 Moussa, surely is in itself evidence of the existence, 
 and the sanctity of both characters. Palestine is Holy 
 Land to the Mahometan, as to the Christian and the 
 Jew. Travellers relate, that the Mahometan will point 
 out the sites of those solemn scenes of Scripture, in 
 which Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses were actors, with 
 as much earnestness and veneration as the Jew himself. 
 Surely, this is a speaking witness of a most solemn 
 truth. Nay, is not Palestine itself, with its thrilling 
 associations, bearing on almost every rock, and mount, 
 and glen, and river, names and memories sacred not to 
 the Jew alone, but to every faith professing to be built 
 on revelation; Palestine, struggled for by Christian 
 and Mahometan, and still lying waste, as the Lord or- 
 dained, giving not to strangers the fruition, and the 
 beauty, and luxuriance, which were given, and will again 
 be given, to the Jews : Palestine, still regarded with an 
 eye of longing by the true Hebrew, as his only home ; 
 by the Christian as indissolubly linked with the Past, 
 is not Palestine itself, then an evidence of the truth of 
 Revelation, which no effort of the Sceptic can have 
 power to overthrow, while that small portion of the 
 earth exists? God has stamped His name, and the 
 name of all His faithful witnesses on that sacred Land 
 and till it be annihilated, its silent witness to the truth 
 of Revelation must endure. 
 
 * See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. ix. Hist, of Mahomet.
 
 128 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 The histories of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and 
 ancient Rome, written as they were by heathen and un- 
 enlightened historians, all bear witness to the truth of 
 the Bible, by perfect agreement with its historical rela- 
 tions, and frequent reference to the Jews as a holy and 
 singular people dwelling apart; and the early traditions of 
 each of these ancient kingdoms bear affinity, in a greater 
 or less degree, to the record of Creation and the deluge, 
 as described by Moses. 
 
 Prophecy fulfilled, not only in the matter of the Jews, 
 as we considered in a former letter, but in the kingdoms 
 of Egypt, Moab, Babylon, Idumea, Tyre, and some 
 others ; fulfilled so precisely, that the fox and the bittern, 
 exactly as foretold, are now the sole possessors of what 
 was once a mighty and populous city; the pool and the 
 desert covering the palaces of kings could this be, if 
 the mere mind of man had written it? As the mere 
 effect of chance, of a fixed necessity, a natural revolution of 
 earthly kingdoms, is it not a marvellous accordance with 
 the word of finite man, that, even in the minutest point, 
 it should not go beyond or stay within the line marked 
 out. That, even to the appearances of Nature, where, 
 when the prophetic word was written, man saw but thriv- 
 ing cities, palaces, and courts, thronged with their human 
 inmates, all should be fulfilled? If written after these 
 occurrences took place, is it not marvellous that in two 
 thousand years the fraud should never have been disco- 
 vered and exposed? If, indeed, the Bible be the work 
 of man, is it not strange that it should never have been 
 overthrown by man? that no other book has ever risen like 
 it ; that, despite the constant attacks which in every age
 
 LETTER xr. 129 
 
 it has undergone from ambition, presumption, malice, 
 infidelity despite the thousand daring spirits who either 
 publicly or privately deny its divinity, despite the still 
 larger number to whom it is unknown, that it has NEVER 
 FALLEN, never ceased to be either nominally acknow- 
 ledged or truly felt as the word of God, wherever Revela- 
 tion, it matters not under what denomination, has ex- 
 tended ? Superstition and prejudice, in favour of a con- 
 stantly inculcated theory are certainly strong ; but super- 
 stition will not fulfil prophecy, nor prejudice court inves- 
 tigation, as all true believers do. Nor is it likely that 
 superstition and prejudice, if on them alone belief in Re- 
 velation depended, could have so existed through a thou- 
 sand ages, and the varying revolutions of men and 
 states, as in every age, in every land, and every creed 
 which preaches God, to recognise the same volume as 
 the only divine one, or build their theories upon the same 
 truths of which that one same volume speaks. 
 
 I trust, dearest Annie, that these simple considerations 
 will prove to you, that we may certainly appeal to the 
 evidence of reason, as well as to the thrilling response of 
 faith and love, to prove the divinity of the Bible. That 
 there are many parts, which, on a first, or even third or 
 fifth perusal, will startle us, and excite the thought, 
 " Surely such and such things are contrary to the attri- 
 butes of our God, or contrary to our ideas of virtue in 
 those who were His chosen and beloved servants ;" cus- 
 toms that may seem revolting, rites that may appear use- 
 less that you will often feel this, must be at first. I 
 shall not be surprised at any objections you may bring ; 
 but when we come calmly to consider them, I have no 
 
 G 5
 
 130 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 fear, but that you will feel as I do, that they neither con- 
 tradict God's attributes, nor the consoling truth and 
 beauty of His word. 
 
 Our reason once satisfied that much which has been 
 brought against the divinity of our Holy Scriptures 
 (learned and wise as may be those who swell the ranks of 
 infidelity), still the Bible remains unchanged, unequalled, 
 recognised either as a whole, or by belief in the existence 
 of its characters, by all who acknowledge a God ; borne 
 witness to by the testimony of Nature and Science, as well 
 as by the heart of man proved that the Pentateuch 
 and Psalms, and some of the Historical Books, could not 
 have been written by the Jews after their captivity in 
 Babylon, because the pure Hebrew in which those books 
 were written became at that period so mangled and cor- 
 rupted by the introduction of Chaldaic phraseology, that 
 they bear, in their very language, intrinsic witness of their 
 previous existence. The Jews could no more have written 
 the laws of Moses after their return from Babylon, than 
 they could before, when their constant proneness to idolatry 
 must have deterred them from instituting such severe and 
 awful judgments upon it, had it been merely the work of 
 man. Our reason satisfied on this head, we must now 
 bring faith to aid us. As merely the word of man, man 
 would be justified in rejecting it, if there were any part 
 he could not by either reason, analogy, or reflection satis- 
 factorily understand. As the word of GOD he is not, and 
 never can be thus justified, because he must know and 
 feel that in the daily occurrences of life, the wonders of 
 Nature nay, the very beautiful mechanism of his own 
 frame the marvel of his birth and death the workings 
 of his mind and will, there are innumerable mysteries,
 
 LETTER XI. 131 
 
 which, to solve, are, in this present existence, utterly 
 impossible ; and therefore, if thus it may be with the re- 
 vealed work of the Eternal, so it may equally be with 
 the revealed word. Satisfied that we may go to the 
 Bible for guidance, because it is the voice of God, and 
 reading there that when Abraham believed in the Lord, 
 " his faith was counted unto him as righteousness;" and 
 that "the just shall live by his faith ;" "look unto me, 
 and be ye saved, all ye nations of the earth ;" we feel 
 at once that faith is acceptable unto the Lord : and, as 
 Abraham believed when God spake to him by a distinct 
 voice, though the Revelation was so mighty, and seem- 
 ingly so impossible to human reason in a childless, aged 
 man ; so must we, when we listen to the voice of God, as 
 recorded in His holy word. And if, when we have tried 
 all that puzzles us by the attributes of God, and by other 
 efforts of the understanding, still we are not satisfied ; all 
 we have to do, is to rest calmly on the belief that we 
 shall know it all hereafter, when our intelligence, bounded 
 by the finite and the mortal as it is now. shall have at- 
 tained that glorious perfection which will enable us to 
 perceive and adore the ways as well as the wcrks of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 It requires little faith to believe in the DIVINITY of the 
 Bible, because its proofs are so striking, so unanswer- 
 able, and so multiplied, but we must bring faith to its 
 perusal. If we come to its hallowed pages with a scorn- 
 ing and defying mind, judging human nature in the Past 
 by human nature in the Present : the customs and pas- 
 sions of the East by the habits and cool calculation of the 
 North ; circumscribing the power and love, the justice and 
 mercy, of the Omnipotent and Infinite, by the limitable
 
 132 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 faculties of the weak and finite; believing, that to be the 
 chosen and beloved of the Eternal, man must be the fault- 
 less and perfect emanation of Himself, not the frail child of 
 clay, utterly forgetting that God is Truth; and as Truth, 
 His ways cannot really contradict His attributes, however 
 they may appear to do so to short-sighted man ; if we 
 come with such a spirit to this sacred duty, better, far 
 better not to come there at all ! The perfect freedom 
 which our God has given us to choose the good, or choose 
 the evil ; the unchecked liberty of our own free will to 
 seek His love or tempt His wrath, is ours, even in the 
 simple matter of the perusal of the Bible. God will not 
 interfere by a miracle to display its divinity to him who 
 wilfully, and without examination, rejects it ; but to him 
 who seeks its ever-flowing fount of living waters by fervent 
 prayer and loving service, He will display its fulness 
 more and more. There must be always a disinclination 
 to His service, a presumptuous denial of the necessity of 
 divine guidance, an irritation against the pressure of obe- 
 dience to minute ordinances, a desire to follow the " in- 
 clinations of the heart and delight of the eyes," instead 
 of the commands of the Lord, in all who reject the 
 Bible ; and to such spirits, the Book must remain not 
 only sealed as to its real meaning, but as giving back the 
 reflection of their own mistaken fancies, and so leading 
 them farther and farther from the only path of safety, 
 even while it leads the believer through the thorny path 
 of Earth to the holy rest of Heaven. 
 
 But these widely contradictory impressions received 
 from the same volume spring not from God. They 
 come from man's free choice, and to himself alone we 
 must look for their original cause. Satisfied to retain
 
 LETTER XI. 133 
 
 the idea, that they cannot feel towards it as others do . 
 that where so many see beauty, and divinity, and fulness, 
 they see nothing but darkness, and mist, and imperfec- 
 tion. Where others see a divine unity, and harmony, and 
 connection throughout, they perceive only disunion and 
 discordancy and contradiction ; they make no effort either 
 by examination or persevering study to think otherwise ; 
 they never think of analysing the spirit with which they 
 approach the volume ; of discovering whether they are 
 anxious to believe or disbelieve; whether they are not 
 amongst those to whom the prophet says, " Woe unto 
 them that are wise in their own eyes, the prudent in 
 their own sight, who call evil good and good evil ; who 
 put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put 
 bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter; who justify the 
 wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of 
 the righteous from him ; therefore as the fire devoureth 
 the stubble, and the flarne consumeth the chaff, so their 
 root [or motives of action] shall become rottenness, and 
 their blossom [the actions themselves"] shall go up as dust; 
 because they have cast away the Law of the Lord of Hosts, 
 and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." 
 
 Can any language be clearer than this, to shew us the 
 fearful state which must await those who despise the 
 word ? But do not think, my dear Annie, 1 write this in 
 condemnation of any of my fellow-creatures. God knows, 
 my heart is so full of tenderness and compassion towards 
 all those, be their actual creed what it may, who are 
 standing on that fearful precipice of unbelief rejec- 
 tion of the Bible as the voice of God (and so our 
 unerring guide for every feeling), that with the energies 
 of my whole being I would work to save them. They
 
 134 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 can have no abiding principle, and so no rest. If they 
 have, it. is from that very Word which they despise, and 
 which, inciting them to all good and virtuous deeds, 
 saves them in spite of themselves. All that is good ; all 
 that is high and holy ; all that is self-denying, and for- 
 giving, and forbearing; all that incites to steadiness and 
 truth ; every pure and noble quality within us has its 
 origin in obedience to the laws laid down, and in admi- 
 ration of the attributes of God, proclaimed by His word, 
 the Bible. We may neither know nor recognise it as 
 such ; but such it is proved to be, by comparing the 
 morals of those lands where God is known, with those 
 where He is not. 
 
 By the young, especially, of either sex, this unerring 
 guide is imperatively needed ; and therefore is it, that I 
 am so anxious you should recognise and feel its fulness 
 and divinity. As long as we are children, the com- 
 mands and instructions of our parents are all-sufficient 
 guides, whether founded on a recognition of the word of 
 God or not: we never ask or seek for more; our con- 
 science is satisfied with obeying and trying to please 
 them, and we are happy or unhappy as they are satisfied 
 or not. As we leave childhood, and attain a completely 
 new existence (for such is youth), we become conscious of 
 a craving for something more. On one or more subjects, 
 our opinions may differ with those of our parents or older 
 friends. Startled at our own boldness, we hardly know 
 by what test to try them ; and unless we have been so 
 trained as to know what guide to refer to, must be tossed 
 on a sea of painfully conflicting feelings. The authority 
 of parents and guardians is diminished is become 
 merely nominal. We give them, indeed, the respect
 
 LETTER XI. 135 
 
 and love and deference due, but we have become, with 
 regard to our inward self, our own masters. 
 
 We mingle with the world we hear sentiments, and 
 perceive actions totally at variance, perhaps, with those 
 we have been taught are right; and yet those who may 
 thus speak, and thus do, may be amongst the most 
 influential, and apparently the most amiable, of those 
 with whom we associate. There must then have been 
 either error in the instructions of our childhood, or in 
 the companions of our youth. How, then, can we 
 distinguish which is the right and which the wrong, 
 unless we have some higher guide than that of man? 
 We see, perhaps, what is termed custom and habit, 
 not only permitting, but authorising, certain things 
 which we may inwardly feel are wrong. We are told, 
 perhaps, " O every body does it, or thinks it so, there 
 can be no harm in it :" and what is to save us from 
 doing the same, unless we can turn to an unerring 
 guide, and read " Thou shalt not follow a multitude to 
 do evil;" and at once we know our duty? We may 
 ardently desire some pleasure, some indulgence which 
 we see others enjoying, but which, from peculiar circum- 
 stances, or because our awakening conscience bids us 
 hesitate as to its real nature, is prohibited to us. How 
 ai'e we to acquiesce happily, or to be safely guai'ded from 
 the temptation, unless we feel that in His word God 
 has said, "Thou shalt not follow the inclinations of 
 thine, heart, nor the desire of thine eyes," if there is 
 even a doubt of their leading to evil ? We may witness 
 petty malice, envy, leading, even in polished societies, to 
 a desire of annoyance ; and so veiled, so seemingly 
 natural in the present state of things, that if we do not
 
 136 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 pause to think, we may do and feel exactly the same ; 
 but if we have sufficient faith to turn to our Bible for 
 guidance, even for this we read, " Thou shalt not go up 
 and down as a tale-bearer amongst, thy people : thou 
 shalt neither avenge, nor bear any grudge, but shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself." We may be laughed at 
 for a scrupulous adherence even in trifles to truth, for 
 refusing to join in the thoughtless amusements of youth, 
 who in their wild spirits make even age and infirmity a 
 theme for laughter. The principles imbibed in child- 
 hood will not be strong enough to guard us against 
 doing the same; but we are safe, if we believe that 
 GOD, not Moses, said, or rather says, for as long as the 
 Bible lasts, GOD SPEAKS, "Ye shall not deal falsely, 
 neither lie one to another. Ye shall not curse the deaf, 
 neither put a stumbling-block before the blind. Ye 
 shall rise up before the hoary head, and honour the 
 face of the old man. In all these things ye shall fear 
 (or have regard unto) thy God, that He is the Lord, 
 marking even these comparatively little things. In 
 youth, also, the very desire for the praise, and love, and 
 admiration of our fellow-creatures, might lead us into 
 error, unless we have that higher principle of action, 
 which, founded on God's word, tells us, that the praise 
 of man is nothing worth, if upon it we cannot ask His 
 blessing. It is in youth that conscience first stirs within 
 us, teaching us that there are two opponent principle s 
 ever at work in the world and in individuals, right and 
 wrong, or good and evil. We know it, we feel it throb- 
 bing in its newly awakened power through every nerve ; 
 but we cannot hope to define it, to mark clearly before 
 us, the boundary line which stretches between them,
 
 LETTER XI. 137 
 
 seemingly so narrow as almost to be invisible, but in 
 reality so wide, unless we recognise the Bible as the 
 voice of God, teaching us those things which are, or are 
 not acceptable to Him. We cannot, we dare not rest 
 on the word of man, because it is changing, shifting, 
 varying with every breath of that bugbear to so many 
 public opinion. We are told, no doubt often, that all 
 the high, pure, fresh feelings of dawning life are pure 
 romance ; that the customs of the world will not permit 
 the continuance of lofty and generous sentiments ; that 
 we must sometimes sacrifice truth and honour we 
 must think more of ourselves than others, and a long 
 etcetera of similar worldly maxims ; and how is the 
 young mind to retain its purity, how endure the loneli- 
 ness of such utter want of appreciation and sympathy, 
 unless he can turn belie vingly to his Bible, and feel 
 that as long as that book reveals the attributes of God, 
 and the attributes which in man God loves, he may rest 
 content and thankful that such sentiments are his own, 
 despite the scorn and misappreciation of a world ! 
 
 These are- but a few of the blessings, which faith in the 
 Bible, as God's own inspired word, will bring to us, 
 dearest Annie ; but they are enough to make manifest 
 my meaning, that without such belief, youth can have 
 no fixed principle of life, no sound motive of action, but 
 must be liable to be tossed to and fro with every new 
 opinion he hears be led into error and suffering before 
 he is even aware of their vicinity : and once urged to de- 
 spise the Word, its guidance, its beauty, and its conso- 
 lation, are lost to him for ever, unless, indeed, the grace 
 and love of God bring him back with a humbled and 
 enquiring spirit to its hallowed page. It is because I
 
 138 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 feel so very strongly, its deep importance, that I have 
 so earnestly endeavoured to convince your reason, as well 
 as to excite your affections to it, as DIVINE. Without 
 such belief, it can never be to you, what your character 
 so intensely needs. To look on some parts as Divine, 
 and some as human, never clearly comprehending which 
 is which, must lead deeper and deeper into confusion 
 and error. Very many do this, because they will not 
 give the subject the calm and steady examination, which 
 it demands, and which, moreover, they will gladly and 
 earnestly bestow on every other that may appeal to their 
 interest or inclination. It is strange, anxious as man 
 always is for the future of this world, how little he cares 
 for, or concerns himself about the future of hereafter. 
 Why should religion be the only part of education, on 
 which there is no need for instruction ? Why should the 
 Holy Scripture be the only Book to be received, or 
 condemned, without study and examination ? In general 
 when we wish to prove the truth or falsehood of an asser- 
 tion, we examine carefully and deliberately all the pros 
 and cons; we analyse, comment, compare, Weigh, reflect, 
 and only pronounce verdict on conviction. Why then 
 should not men do this on the important question, of 
 the divinity or non-divinity of their only guide to sal- 
 vation ? But who of the presumptuous deniers of the 
 Bible ever did so? Who ever took so much trouble on 
 a subject on which their happiness rests, and salvation 
 depends ; though for temporal concerns, it is done 
 almost daily? Dearest Annie, notwithstanding all I 
 have written, I know there must be still much in your 
 young mind to answer ere it can rest calmly. What- 
 ever they be, doubts, or merely quesiions for information,
 
 LETTER XII. 139 
 
 write them" as fully and freely as I have endeavoured, 
 and will still endeavour, to reply. 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 " You do, indeed, feel the necessity of some guide on which 
 to rest," you tell me, dearest Annie ; " you are satisfied 
 with the verses I have quoted, the proofs I have brought 
 forward ; but still, try as you may, you cannot realize 
 pleasure in the perusal of the Bible ;" nor do I expect, 
 you will as yet : but persevere in it as a duty, a daily 
 duty. Accustom yourself to corne to it, under diffi- 
 culties, and trial, and joy ; and its strength, and peace, 
 and consolation, all will come. Trust my experience, and 
 believe, that when I began to read, your present feelings 
 all were mine ; ay, and even now, many and many is 
 the time, when it is even as if it were sealed, when 
 I cannot realise either peace, or pleasure, or instruction, 
 and I persevere from duty not from love ; but these 
 are but intervals of weariness and pain in their darkest 
 and longest duration, but a grain in the balance, com- 
 pared to the fulness of peace and comfort I have at 
 other times experienced. You have only known the 
 Bible as a Sabbath Book, brought out on the Saturday, 
 to read a certain portion of the law, and put away again. 
 Now, though the Pentateuch is the most important, 
 as the foundation not only of the Jewish, but of all 
 Religions, and, as such, is a portion of Scripture with 
 which every Hebrew, male and female, ought to be as
 
 140 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 well acquainted, as with their own existence ; yet it will 
 not bring so much spiritual comfort and spiritual guid- 
 ance to individuals, as the Psalms and Prophets, 
 Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. We must not confine our- 
 selves to the Pentateuch only, if we would really be- 
 come " Israelites indeed." There is much, indeed, in 
 the Prophets, relating to the Future, which now, we 
 cannot hope fully to understand, and can only believe; 
 satisfied that as we see before our very eyes, the exact 
 fulfilment of some prophecy given at the same time ; so 
 we may rest assured of the fulfilment of the others. 
 But there is quite as much, addressed to us individually 
 even as the voice of God speaking to our own souls, 
 under every circumstance of life. There, too, by the 
 reproofs and threatenings addressed to the idolatrous 
 and rebellious inhabitants of Judea, we perceive the 
 real meaning, intent, and spirit of every ordinance, 
 and that, without love and willing service, even obedi- 
 ence itself was utterly worthless. 
 
 The Psalms, too, teach us the same thing, and should 
 be regarded not only as forms of prayer and thanks- 
 giving, but as guides, in our daily, moral, and spiritual 
 duty. It has been objected, that David was neither a 
 law-giver, nor a prophet, but merely a man like our- 
 selves; and his words and experiences, therefore, of no 
 more weight than those of any other man. But the 
 fallacy of this opinion is proved, not only from the 
 thousand and thousand years, during which those Psalms 
 have been acknowledged as inspired prayer and praise ; 
 but because there never has arisen any other man to 
 write the same, or sacred poems in any way resembling 
 them. What man of himself has done, man may do 
 again; if not exactly similarly, at least with so much re-
 
 LETTER XII. 141 
 
 semblance, as to trace some points of similitude between 
 them, and mark both to be the work of similarly gifted 
 minds. Since the time of David, and his instituted 
 choir of Levites, amongst whom were the sons of Korah 
 and Hernan, whose names we see at the head of some 
 of the Psalms, no such compositions have ever ap- 
 peared. Prayer and praise have been pronounced per- 
 fect or imperfect, as they borrow, or do not borrow, their 
 expressions from the Psalms. ALL the writers of the 
 Bible were inspired, and as such are the voice of God. 
 If we needed the power of prophecy to prove it, many 
 of the Psalms are prophecies, fulfilled since they were 
 written, and fulfilling now. 
 
 Do not imagine, dearest Annie, that when I say per- 
 severance will teach you the full beauty and comfort of 
 the Bible, I mean you to devote any length of time to 
 its daily study, as you would to any other difficult pur- 
 suit. Accustom yourself to feel that your morning and 
 evening prayer are not complete, unless you commence, 
 or conclude them, with one chapter of the Bible, or 
 two or three Psalms ; and you will so associate it with 
 the pure and holy thoughts of God, which must accom- 
 pany earnest prayer, that even as in times of difficulty 
 and distress, you fly to prayer, or in time of joy to 
 praise, so will you equally seek your Bible secure of aid, 
 sympathy, comfort, and love, which without it, you 
 dared not believe your God would give. 
 
 Remember, I do not tell you, that you will always 
 derive pleasure, or even instruction, from this daily 
 perusal. Many and many a time, you will read with 
 a wandering mind and wearied spirit : you will feel, as if 
 the task were utterly useless ; but it is not useless, only
 
 142 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 persevere, only trust and believe, even when you can 
 derive neither comfort nor enjoyment ; and both will 
 come again, the more soothing, the more reviving from 
 their late suspension. I could tell you of one, now deep 
 in the vale of years, to whom the Bible has been not 
 only a treasured companion in many a private hour, 
 but her sole stay, her sole hope, her sole enjoyment, 
 through a life of many and deep afflictions ; and now, 
 in her eighty-third year, she tells me, she never reads 
 the Bible, especially the Psalms and Prophets, without 
 finding something she had never noticed before, some- 
 thing yet more inexpressibly beautiful, and inexpress- 
 ibly consoling. What book of man's invention could 
 stand this test? And this is the evidence of a Jewess, 
 my dear Annie, and a Jewess of what is now termed 
 the old school, not of a Christian ; which, if at this 
 distance, I can guess your thoughts aright, you will have 
 fancied that it is. 
 
 But though I tell you fourteen or fifteen chapters 
 perused each week will open to you the inexhaustible 
 fulness of the Scriptures, arid that I would not have the 
 Bible made a task-book for long hours of tedious study, 
 I wish you very much to lay aside a brief half-hour in 
 the day, or devote a portion of your Sabbath to reading 
 the many valuable works written by good and learned 
 men relative to, and explanatory of it. You will find, 
 by doing so, your interest so much more excited. Sub- 
 jects apparently obscure, from our ignorance of the 
 times or customs to which they relate, will become 
 clear. Verses we may have read often without remark, 
 become suddenly fraught with matter for new thought; 
 characters which, from the disjointed verses which have
 
 LETTER XII. 143 
 
 related to them, we have not been of ourselves able to 
 combine under one life or picture, will become as 
 interesting as the characters of fiction, with the addition 
 of a sacred moral and living example, which may assist 
 us in our daily paths. I will explain my meaning by 
 an instance of my own experience. There was a time, 
 when more than usually suffering from ill health, united 
 with constantly pressing care, and many calls for exer- 
 tion, that all spiritual comfort seemed to have departed 
 from me. I could no longer realise what often before, 
 and very often since, sustained me under similar trials, 
 the conviction, that whom God loveth, He correcteth; 
 and that peace would come again. At that very 
 moment (I cannot remember now by what touch of 
 thought excited), the lives of many of our Father's 
 chosen and beloved servants came one by one before 
 me - Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah had they not all 
 suffered, ay suffered intensely; had they not all been 
 tried by sorrow ; had not they endured exactly the 
 same as is the lot of human nature now? They were 
 not exempt; and yet how earnestly, how fervently they 
 loved and served their God, and how deeply, how 
 tenderly was manifested His love for them. Human 
 trial was then no evidence that we were forsaken of 
 Him, that He had turned aside His face in wrath, and 
 left us to our own weakness and misery ; and even as if 
 an Angel had spoken sympathy, and bade me endure, for 
 my Father loved me still, so did that one thought, 
 created by a consideration of the characters, not merely 
 the verses of the Bible, brighten my path of gloom, and 
 strengthen me as none other could have done. Books, 
 then, that will bring before us the biographies of the
 
 144 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Bible, are valuable assistants in the study of the Scrip- 
 tures ; also such as produce evidences of prophecy fulfilled ; 
 and such as describe the customs of many of the present 
 Eastern nations, and the geographical associations of 
 biblical localities, all of which we may find in works not 
 heavier, or more uninteresting than the researches of 
 modern travellers. Would that I could mention any 
 Anglo- Jewish theological works would, as I have often 
 felt before, that our Hebrew students would select for 
 our females and youth, portions of those mighty tomes 
 of spirituality and learning which our ancient sages 
 have bequeathed us, and not drive us to the aid of the 
 stranger. Judging by what 1 have read in the " Hebrew 
 Review," and the " More Nevochim" of Maimonides, 
 much might be compiled, which would be invaluable to 
 our inquiring youth, and render their Bibles dearer 
 than ever, through commentators of their own nation. 
 Till that is obtained, if we would seek aid for serious 
 thought, we must go to Christian books, choosing, of 
 course, those which are more spiritual than doctrinal. 
 The spirit of the Christian religion is equally the spirit 
 of the Hebrew; for both owe their origin to the same 
 Book. We have but clearly to understand our own, and 
 a glance will divide our doctrinal points from theirs. 
 Nay, more, you will find, the more you study and 
 examine your own, that the very books which confirm 
 Christians in their faith, will confirm you in yours. 
 One especially, a very beautiful work, " Keith's Evi- 
 dences of Prophecy," was once lent me, not with any 
 wish for its religious doctrines to convert me (that I 
 well knew from the upright character of the lender), but 
 for the exquisite beauty of its language and sentiments.
 
 LETTER XII. 145 
 
 It is many years ago, for I was scarcely older than you 
 are now, and just beginning to think for myself. Well 
 do I remember the trembling with which I began its 
 perusal trembling lest my dawning hope and trust 
 should be shaken by this completely Christian book 
 But both were strengthened, dearest Annie. It was a 
 strange, an almost indefinable effect; but so it was 
 Every evidence of prophecy fulfilled, proved so convin- 
 cingly that others were still to be accomplished ; and 
 the truth, the perpetuity, the unchangeableness qf my 
 holy faith, the impossibility of its ever merging into 
 another, stood before me clearer and more convincingly 
 than they had ever done before. I have no fear, then, 
 of your perusing similar works. It is easier, much 
 easier, to divide your peculiar creed from that of the 
 writer, than to attempt, or hope, to think seriously, and 
 desire comfort from serious things, unless you accustom 
 yourself to read, and take pleasure in books of a spiritual 
 and meditative nature: not, ^ indeed, to take the place of 
 any other; I should be truly grieved if I saw you 
 devote your fine mind and vivid imagination to them 
 alone, and deserve that you should neglect my ad- 
 vice entirely if I desired you to do so. No, dearest, 
 make the Word of God and its explanations the ground- 
 work of every study; and from the lightest kind of 
 recreative reading you will gather flowers, where others 
 cull but dangerous weeds. This is a shorter letter than 
 usual; but just now I have no time for more.
 
 146 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 You tell me my last has given you so much comfort, 
 because I appear to have felt all that you are feeling, 
 and that I am not surprised or grieved at anything you 
 write. I have not quite forgotten that I was once young; 
 nor am I, my dearest Annie, so exacting as to ima- 
 gine, or even to wish, that the experience of long years 
 and heavy cares should be yours all at once. Do you 
 think a knowledge of religion comes by instinct, and 
 without inquiry or examination ? It is the error of many, 
 but an error nevertheless. I wish you to tell me exactly 
 every doubt or question that passes through your mind, 
 and therefore shall at once enter on the subject you have 
 alluded to with such evident hesitation in your last: 
 " The very selection of the Israelites appears to you incom- 
 patible with the uniform justice and impartiality of our 
 Heavenly Father. Why should one people have been 
 thus favoured, when all mankind are equally His children ? 
 Was it not permitting only a few to inherit eternal life, 
 and dooming all the rest to perdition and to sin?" You 
 must remember, that though, when Adam sinned, the 
 good in man succumbed to the evil, and his earthly 
 nature became more powerful than his spiritual, yet still 
 God left him perfect freedom of choice. It was quite in 
 his power to give the good sufficient ascendancy, as fb
 
 LETTER XIII. 147 
 
 attract towards him the favour of God, and so advance 
 more and more in the path of righteousness. We are 
 told this, first, by the words of the Eternal to Cain : 
 "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" Here 
 is a clear proof of the capability of human nature to do 
 sufficiently well for the mercy of God to purify and ac- 
 cept it ; " but if thou dost not well, sin lieth at thy 
 door." " Desire to do wrong may be thine (for such is 
 the real meaning of the sentence, 'and unto Thee shall 
 be his desire') but thou shalt rule over it." From 
 these words, we know that God had placed within man, 
 from his creation, a consciousness of right and wrong, 
 which made him a responsible being, and accountable 
 for certain actions which his spirit, or soul, silently con- 
 demned. There was, as yet, no given prohibition against 
 envy; but when Cain was wroth at his brother's offering 
 being accepted, either the voice of God distinctly heard, 
 or merely the whisperings of his soul, told him it was 
 sin, and warned him from its encouragement. Then fol- 
 lowed the murder of his brother, which the same inward 
 monitor must have told him was fearful sin; else why 
 did he seek to conceal it ? The offspring of Cain appear 
 to have inherited their father's evil propensities ; while 
 those of Seth chose the better path, and called on the 
 name of the Lord : in other words, worshipped and be- 
 lieved in Him. Of these, Enoch so walked with God 
 (that is, so permitted the spiritual part of his nature to 
 gain ascendancy), that God took him, even without the 
 pangs of death. Meanwhile men multiplied, and the 
 offspring of Cain formed unions with the purer offspring 
 of Seth ; and from these a still more degenerate race 
 descended, till the whole earth itself became corrupted,
 
 148 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and, according to the language of man, God repented 
 that He had made man, and ordained the fearful chas- 
 tisement of the flood. But still, even in this universal 
 wickedness, one good man was found ; therefore it is 
 clear that human nature still had the power to choose, and 
 was not sinful from a blind necessity, and because it knew 
 no better. Noah was a descendant of Seth ; and the 
 Bible tells us, * c a just man, and perfect in his genera- 
 tions ; " words which appear to me to signify that his 
 immediate ancestors, from Seth downwards, were all 
 those who had chosen the good in preference to the evil; 
 and he was acceptable in the sight of God, not only for 
 himself, but for the worth of his fathers; else why should it 
 be so emphatically said, he "was perfect in \nsgenerations"? 
 a supposition borne out by the deathless translation of 
 Enoch, his great grandfather. The righteousness of Noah 
 is proved not only by the fact, that his family was the 
 only one spared, but from his changeless constancy and 
 child-like belief in the words of God. The brief recital 
 of Scripture would sometimes occasion the idea, that the 
 ark was built in a very short time. Now, the very 
 shortest interval must have been one hundred years 
 of course, a shorter period in that age than it would be 
 now; but still, even supposing it five-and-twenty or 
 thirty years of labour, how invincible must have been the 
 faith and firmness to pursue the work, and, most proba- 
 bly in the midst of those who scoffed and scorned it. 
 The infirmity of human nature, we might almost sup- 
 pose, would occasio.n intervals of doubt and despondency, 
 and questions as to the necessity of the work, even with- 
 out actual unbelief. The course of nature went on the 
 same ; the bright sun shone, and the seasons revolved in
 
 LETTER XIII. 149 
 
 their course ; the mighty torrents remained chained in 
 their rocky beds; man went on in his career, sinful, flou- 
 rishing, and happy, without a sign or warning to reveal 
 the wrath of God, except the words and work of Noah, 
 which they were not likely to regard with more attention^ 
 than the heedless and erring of the present day would 
 believe it to be the word of God, if told that the Bible 
 condemned their evil course. 
 
 The flood took place, arid sin for a brief, a very brief 
 while, was exterminated from the earth. But once 
 more in security, the evil awoke again, even in the 
 family of Noah; and from Ham, and his son Canaan, 
 originated the fearful systems of idolatry and increased 
 crime, which spread far and wide over the world, and 
 rendered it more and more difficult for man of himself 
 to realise the good, and return unto the one sole God. 
 The omniscience of God saw this ; and when the sweet 
 savour of Noah's righteous offering ascended, He said 
 He would "no more destroy the earth for man's sake, 
 for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his 
 youth." He would no more smite every thing living as 
 He had done. He saw that even signal chastisement 
 would not destroy the propensity to evil, which, of 
 course, the more it was encouraged, the more power- 
 ful it would become. Yet still interfering not with man's 
 perfect liberty of choice^ He left them to their own 
 devices, foreseeing, in His omniscience, that glorious 
 day, when, after ages and ages of trial and purification 
 in human reckoning, the good would eventually triumph 
 over the evil, and a new and sinless existence dawn for 
 man. 
 
 Our ancient sages declare, that it was from Abram's
 
 150 THE JE\vrsn FAITH. 
 
 firm resistance to the idolatrous practices of his father 
 and countrymen, that God revealed Himself to him. 
 This may, or may not be ; but the Bible record simply 
 gives us to understand, that God selected him because 
 he saw his heart, like Noah's, was perfect towards Him ; 
 and his first call was a trial both of faith and obedience, 
 which he had perfect freedom of choice either to heed 
 or neglect. He descended in a direct line from Shem, 
 one of the two righteous sons of Noah ; and I have 
 always thought, that, in the descendants of Shem, a 
 faint and imperfect (but still some) knowledge of the 
 Almighty God was preserved, even though they wor- 
 shipped household gods or idols as visible deities, or as 
 emblems of the Invisible. My reason for this idea is, 
 that both in the case of Abraham's mission to Laban 
 for Rebecca, and Jacob's sojourn with his uncle, it is 
 evident from Scripture that the Supreme God was not 
 utterly unknown. " Come in, thou blessed of the 
 Lord," is the greeting of Laban's. -house to the steward ; 
 and, again, "The thing proccedetli from the Lord; we 
 cannot speak unto thee bad or good. Let her be thy 
 master's son's wife, as the Lord hath spoken." Now 
 the mere recital from the steward, would not have been 
 sufficient for such an immediate and hearty recognition 
 of Abraham's God, if there had not been some previous 
 knowledge of Him. " I have learned by experience," 
 says Laban, "that the Loan has blessed me for your 
 sake." The very fact of Abraham's, and after him 
 Isaac's, great anxiety that their sons should be saved 
 from a union with the Canaanitish nations, and marry 
 among their own kindred, equally the descendants of 
 Shem, is a proof in itself of the superiority, in point of
 
 LETTER XIII. 151 
 
 moral virtue and some knowledge of the true God, of 
 the latter over the former. The descendants of Ham 
 and Canaan had chosen the pursuance of the evil. A 
 review of the fearful idolatrous rites of those nations, 
 the immoral and demoniacal customs, would show you 
 how terrible is the extent to which human wickedness 
 can attain. The descendants of Shem, on the contrary, 
 though the imperfection of their mingled nature pre- 
 vented their attaining those just ideas of the Supreme 
 Deity, which would entirely prevent the worship of 
 idols, and inspire a pure heart-service, only to be fully 
 acquired by a Divine Revelation ; yet had none of those 
 obscene and polluting ceremonies which desecrated the 
 nations around. They were a pastoral innocent people; 
 unable, indeed, to refrain entirely from the worship of 
 images, but still believing in a God above them, and 
 obeying Him whenever His commands were revealed, 
 as we have already seen. 
 
 Amongst these, Abram was born and nurtured, 
 and, breaking from the trammels of image-worship, 
 seeking with the earnestness of unusual intellect and 
 purity, the One spiritual God to his countrymen so 
 faintly known that God, in His mercy, and exactly 
 in accordance with His afterwards revealed word, which 
 promised to answer all those who sought and called 
 upon Him, made Himself known to Abram ; and, to 
 try his obedience and his faith, desired him first to leave 
 his country and his kindred, and his father's house, ami 
 go to an unknown land : and that unknown land was 
 inhabited by the Canaanitish nations, a most impure 
 race, mighty and numerous. His very going amongst 
 them was a trial of his faith and constancy, which, in a
 
 152 THE JLWISH FAITH. 
 
 mere summary glance, we are liable to overlook. I 
 have not space in this letter to linger on the Patriarch's 
 numerous trials. All I wish to prove to you, is simply 
 that, in the case both of Noah and Abram, they were 
 righteous, not originally from any election or especial 
 favour of God, but because they exercised the freedom 
 of choice granted to all mankind, and pursued the good 
 in lieu of the evil, which latter, as decidedly the easier 
 course, was chosen by the multitudes. That they so 
 used their free-will, and against every obstacle struggled 
 to become righteous, gave them favour in the sight of 
 their Heavenly Father ; preserved Noah from the flood ; 
 and gave Abram the promise of a Revelation, which 
 was gradually to bless not only his immediate descend- 
 ants, but the whole world. Now every man had, and 
 has it, in his power to obtain the unspeakable blessing 
 of the love and grace of God. It is a great and a most 
 dangerous mistake, to imagine that the good are the 
 elected of the Lord that we are good or evil as He 
 creates us. The infirmity and imperfections of human 
 nature, the hereditary dispositions often engendered in 
 families, are causes of the wide diversity of character 
 which we so often trace even in children. Some have 
 more difficulty to resist evil propensities than others; 
 but that does not make them less responsible, or less 
 free agents in the sight of God, though their inward 
 struggles to give the good ascendancy render them 
 infinitely more acceptable than those who have no such 
 temptations to resist. Our ancient sages illustrate this 
 by a parable ; v iz. " That a king had once extensive 
 wine-cellars, over which he placed certain keepers, some 
 of whom inordinately loved wine and all intoxicating
 
 LETTER XIII. 153 
 
 drinks, and the others were habitually temperate, from 
 dislike to those liquors. When, after some time, the 
 cellars were examined, and all found correct, the king, 
 to the astonishment of his followers, rewarded the 
 keepers who were fond of liquor by a double amount of 
 wages to what he paid the naturally temperate." " Both, 
 indeed, have been equally honest," was his reply ; " but 
 I reward them according to the trouble it has cost them 
 to obey my commands. The one had little or no trouble, 
 from their dislike to wine; but how great must have 
 been the trial and difficulty to those fond of wine, and 
 habitually accustomed to strong drink." 
 
 And thus it is with the naturally disposed to good 
 and evil. Man sees but the outward conduct of his fel- 
 lows. God sees the inward principle, ay, and the cir- 
 cumstance which so often produces evil, and judges and 
 rewards accordingly. And, therefore, that our natural 
 disposition removes or lessens our responsibility before 
 Him, is a doctrine as mistaken as it is dangerous. 
 
 Now those nations whom God commanded His people 
 to exterminate, were not evil from necessity : equally 
 with the offspring of Shem, they had in themselves the 
 power to have become worthy of God's grace and for- 
 bearance, instead of which, they gave sin ascendancy, 
 and became more and more corrupt. You will say, 
 perhaps, that I have told you the hearts of all men are 
 in the hand of God, and He could, by a mere act of 
 volition, have turned them from their evil way. He 
 could : but, dearest Annie, he will not do this, unless 
 besought to do so, not only by prayer, but also by some 
 effort, however imperfect, to make manifest a wish 
 to puisue the good. Our Father only asks this, and 
 H 5
 
 154 THE JEWISH FAITH." 
 
 His infinite love and mercy will do the rest. But, if 
 nd prayer is breathed, no effort made, and the free 
 choice granted us, plunges us into the abyss of sin, how 
 dare we be so presumptuous as to imagine God will 
 stretch forth His hand to save? He had sworn never 
 more to destroy the earth and all mankind; but the 
 fearful wickedness of the descendants of Ham was such, 
 as, for the safety and purity of the other nations, to 
 demand their extermination. Still God gave them time 
 to repent and amend. The descendants of Abraham were 
 not to possess the land God had promised them, for 400 
 years, " because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet 
 full" In that period, had they repented, and become 
 like the descendants of Shem (remember, it was still 
 fully in their power to do so), we cannot doubt for a 
 single moment, that, though His word would have been 
 fulfilled, as to the possession of the land, by Abraham's 
 descendants; its original inhabitants, instead of being 
 exterminated, would have shared all the blessings given 
 to the Israelites, and, without being under the same 
 responsibility (for the law only rendered those re- 
 sponsible to whom it was given), might have become 
 equally acceptable in the sight of God. 
 
 The people of Israel were chosen as the receivers and 
 promulgators of the law, for Abraham's sake ; but that 
 selection, instead of decreasing their responsibility and 
 marking them righteous above every other, only made 
 them more responsible, and simply instruments in the 
 Eternal's hand in eventually blessing the whole earth, 
 "For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God; 
 the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people 
 unto Himself, above all the people on the face of the
 
 LETTER XIII. 155 
 
 earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor 
 choose you, because you were more in number than any 
 people, for ye were the fewest of all people : but be- 
 cause the Lord loved you, and because He icould keep the 
 oath which He had sworn unto your fathers, hath the 
 Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and re- 
 deemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the 
 hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, Know, therefore, that 
 the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, who 
 keepeth covenant and mercy with those that love Him, 
 and keep His Commandments unto a thousand gener- 
 ations" (Deut. vii. 6 9). And again, "Speak not 
 thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God has 
 cast them [the nations] out from before thee, saying, 
 For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to 
 possess this land ; but for the wickedness of those nations 
 the Lord doth drive them out before thee. Not for thy 
 righteousness, nor for the uprightness of thine heart, 
 dost thou go to possess this land; but for the wickedness 
 of these nations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out 
 from before thee, and that He might perform the icord 
 which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob. Understand, therefore, that the Lord thy 
 God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy 
 righteousness, because thou art a stiff-necked people" 
 (Deut. ix. 46). 
 
 Surely, dearest Annie, these verses are sufficient to 
 disprove the idea, that we were chosen for any especial 
 merit of our own ; but only from the promise made by 
 the Eternal to our father, who, from his goodness and 
 piety, had so attracted His loving-kindness that He pro- 
 mised favour and mercy even to his thousandth generation.
 
 156 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 This promise would equally have been made to any 
 other individual, who, like Abraham, had of his own 
 unbiased will chosen the path of good. It was no pre- 
 ordained election. We were, indeed, from Abraham's 
 time, an elected people ; but Abraham's goodness was 
 the effect of his own free choice. Nor did this selection 
 give us, as some might suppose, any temporal advantages 
 over other nations. If we compare our extent of terri- 
 tory and dominion with those of Babylon, Persia, Greece, 
 and Rome, we shall perceive that we were in truth, but 
 a handful, as well as a people apart. Through us, 
 indeed, Revelation was to extend over the whole world; 
 and with our spiritual privileges, no other nation could 
 vie : but these privileges, while they marked us as 
 favoured for Abraham's sake, so increased our responsi- 
 bilities, that it was no easy task to gain the immortal 
 goal which revelation placed before us. It is quite an 
 erroneous notion to suppose that the Jews alone were 
 permitted and enabled to inherit, eternal life. Joseph 
 Albo, an eminent rabbi of Soria, in Spain, who lived 
 in the fifteenth century, a period when the Jews were 
 subjected to the heaviest persecutions, wherever they 
 were scattered, and when, therefore, if there were any 
 exclusive notion of their immortal inheritance, we should 
 certainly find it, yet, in his celebrated Sepher ikarim, 
 or Book of Principles, enumerates, among the six 
 Articles of Faith, which he declares absolutely incumbent 
 on all professors of the Divine Law of Moses, the fol- 
 lowing remarkable passage: the fourth item of the 
 creed is " That the proper observance of any one of the 
 commandments of the Law, will lead man to perfection" : 
 and on this he writes, " If this were not so, the Law of
 
 LETTER XIII. 157 
 
 Moses would operate as a cause to deprive men of that 
 perfection, which our rabbles of blessed memory called 
 ' Eternal life in the world to come.' The purpose of 
 all the commandments of the Law of Moses, is to enable 
 all mankind to attain that perfection. And as the obser- 
 vance of all the commandments is obligatory only on 
 the Israelite, it would thence result, that if the absolute 
 condition of eternal life, be the observance of all these 
 commandments, the rest of mankind would become ex- 
 cluded, and the Law of Moses would be the cause of 
 their exclusion. But this would be an effect contrary 
 to the intention of that revelation. The truth, there- 
 fore, is, that the observance of any one of the command- 
 ments for God's sake, and with a perfect conviction of 
 their divine origin, will lead man to eternal life. Con- 
 sequently, the Noachidae [which is a term signifying the 
 whole human race] can, by means of their law, attain 
 eternal life. And accordingly, our rabbles of blessed 
 memory [that is, some of our very earliest, most pious, 
 and most ancient fathers] assert that THE RIGHTEOUS 
 
 AMONG ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD HAVE A SHARE 
 IN THE LIFE TO COME."* 
 
 Now, dearest Annie, is not this a triumphant refuta- 
 tion of the charge so often brought against us, that we 
 are a proud exclusive race, denying to all mankind the 
 spiritual promises given to us, and that, though we 
 believe the Hebrews alone are to be saved, we make no 
 effort to bring others over to our creed? As long as I 
 can remember myself, the belief of Rabbi Joseph Albo 
 was twined with my very being, and so enabled tr.e both 
 
 * Hebrew Review, vol. i. p. 06, translation from R. Joseph 
 Albo's " Book of Principles."
 
 158 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 to love and venerate the righteous of every other creed. 
 Still, I longed for some witness stronger than my 
 feelings, to prove that such was the vital spirit of the 
 Jewish creed ; and the joy, therefore, *with which I 
 perused the commentary of Albo, you will imagine, 
 when I found I was following and obeying, not the dic- 
 tates of the heart alone, but those of my religion. 
 
 The law of the Noachidae prohibits " idolatry, forni- 
 cation, bloodshed, robbery, blasphemy, and eating the flesh 
 cut from a living animal, and commands the propagation 
 of the species." Now, this law is obeyed as Divine, by 
 every religion throughout the universe to whom God is 
 revealed ; and from our law it originally came. Where- 
 ever God is known and acknowledged, the Law of Moses 
 is always declared Divine. It is clear, then, that if the 
 salvation of the righteous among the nations, depends 
 on their acknowledging any one of the commandments 
 of the Law of Moses, and obedience thereunto for 
 " God's sake, and with a perfect conviction of their 
 divine origin," we have no need to make converts. We 
 are, indeed, the first-born, first-beloved; but all who look 
 to Him, and love God, according to the law they follow, 
 are our brothers, and equally with us heirs of Immor- 
 tality ! You will ask me, perhaps, How will this hold 
 good, concerning the many Heathen nations at the time 
 of the delivery of the law, and the very many countries, 
 now, whose inhabitants are savage barbarians, utterly 
 ignorant of God, and who have not even the law of the 
 Noachidae to guide them. I answer, that I believe, and 
 the spirit of my religion authorises the belief, that as a 
 God of infinite love and justice would NEVER create any 
 being to be eternally destroyed, even they must have
 
 LETTER XIII. 159 
 
 had, and must have, powers within themselves to win Im- 
 mortality. The miracles, wonders, and public manifest- 
 ation of the God of Israel, at the Exodus from Egypt, 
 and His visible government of His people in Palestine, 
 extended over the whole world; and, as I have said in 
 a former letter, both people and law, even by the 
 Heathens, were acknowledged to be of God ; and many 
 of the commandments were unconsciously adopted and 
 followed. They were at liberty to seek the Holy Land, 
 and enquire of the Lord. Strangers, and even eunuchs, 
 were promised a place in His house, which, instead of 
 being exclusive, was open unto all men; and we know 
 that very many came, and took back to their error- 
 benighted homes, tidings of the God of Israel, which 
 gradually spread, faint and disfigured indeed, but still 
 sufficient, even in their darkness, to win Eternal life. 
 We are repeatedly told, both in the Law and Prophets, 
 to " love the stranger" that is to treat him with kindness, 
 and good-will, and set aside for him equal portions as 
 free- will gifts, as we did for our own widows and orphans. 
 This was not only to teach us benevolence from man 
 to man, but to spread the knowledge of the God 
 who had ordained these things, far and wide over the 
 world. 
 
 With regard to the many nations of the present day 
 where the revealed Word of God has never penetrated 
 where they appear to be left entirely to their own 
 imaginings, still, I say, that as our Father's creation, we 
 cannot, we dare not believe, that their destiny is to 
 linger on the earth for a few years of trouble, with feel- 
 ings as strong in them as in their more enlightened 
 brethren, and then to pass away for ever. The absurdi-
 
 160 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 ties and the more revolting parts of their religion alone 
 reach us. If we were to examine deeply into the inward 
 faith of the Indians of America, and the Hindoos of 
 Asia, we might find ideas that would startle us with 
 their sublimity and truth. Both have visible images of 
 worship; but the "Great Spirit" of the one, and the 
 " Brahma" of the other, are the undoubted acknow- 
 ledgment of the One Supreme God, and are worshipped 
 and contemplated inwardly as an IDEA far above the 
 minor deities, which are multiplied according to their 
 wants and fears. Even in those countries where we 
 cannot trace this, we may rest assured that God has 
 placed within every immortally created being, a power 
 to distinguish in some degree between right and wrong, 
 an impulse towards some virtue, and an opposition to 
 the pursuits of vice ; and that He demands no more 
 from them than He knows they can perform. 
 
 I do indeed rejoice, when I hear of the efforts of 
 those noble pure-spirited men, whom the worldly so 
 often deride and contemn, the missionaries, who seek to 
 preach even their gospel to benighted lands, and so win 
 them to some knowledge of the divine commands. I 
 know many would loudly condemn this as an entirely 
 anti-Jewish idea : but believing as I do, and as my 
 Bible authorises me to believe, that all the present 
 systems of Revealed Religion are working God's will, 
 and gradually bringing nearer that glorious day, when 
 all darkness, all error shall be removed, and when, our 
 chastisement being ended, we shall be restored to our 
 own land, and all nations flow unto us, and acknowledge 
 with us that God is One : and believing, too, that 
 unless the earth is brought in some degree to know
 
 LETTER XIII. 161 
 
 this will not be accomplished I. must rejoice at 
 every effort (be it of individuals or nations) to remove 
 ignorance and reveal the Bible, or (as in the case of 
 the Koran) some pmt at least of Revelation. 
 
 There is no greater or more deluding error, than that 
 into which some enthusiasts fall, of pluming themselves 
 on their superior religious enlightenment as an especial 
 election of the Lord. Where He gives more He 
 demands more ; and our increased responsibility, instead 
 of rendering our task easier, may make the path to 
 Heaven yet more difficult, than it is to those to whom 
 less has been revealed. I do not allude to the holy 
 pride and grateful joy with which every spiritually 
 minded Hebrew must, or ought to, look back on the 
 infinite love and mercy shewn unto his race from the 
 beginning that Revelation was given to him first, 
 that from him, from his Scriptures, all the comfort, the 
 fulness, the blessing of religion has proceeded, and is 
 still proceeding that, however low his estate, however 
 persecuted his condition, however denied the fact of his 
 being still the chosen of God yet nothing can remove 
 the holy truth of his being one of that seed of Abraham, 
 in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. 
 But this truly spiritual joy is a widely different feeling 
 from that narrow-minded and unscriptural exclusive- 
 ness, which is unhappily the fashion of too many in the 
 present day. The former recognises, in every man who 
 seeks to love and serve God according to the light his 
 guiding law bestows, a brother destined like himself for 
 immortality ; and seeks, by his own firm adherence and 
 faithful obedience to the law of Moses, to make its 
 divinity more and more acknowledged. The latter
 
 162 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 wraps himself up in imaginary righteousness, and would 
 deny Heaven and religion to all except those who think 
 exactly like himself; forgetting that, even if it be so 
 very righteous to think as he does, it is no credit to 
 himself; for if he had not been so instructed, so he 
 would not have thought : and if he be so superior in 
 religious knowledge, he may be, nay he is, more 
 responsible in the sight of his Father in heaven ; but not 
 more righteous than the followers of God and virtue, 
 among the less enlightened. 
 
 This has been a very long letter, dearest Annie, and 
 I fear less individually interesting than some others; 
 but your question combined subjects of such vast 
 importance to a clear comprehension of the very found- 
 ation of your religion, that I found it impossible to 
 treat them either briefly or lightly. 
 
 I want you clearly to understand, and fully to feel, 
 that the charge so often brought against our holy faith, 
 that of rigid excluslveness and uncharitableness, pre- 
 venting all efforts on our part to make converts, is an 
 entirely mistaken one. We never attempt the fearful 
 system of interfering with other religions, or seek to 
 turn man from his own faith ; because WE DO NOT 
 BELIEVE that the salvation of the nations is only to be 
 obtained by their becoming Jews. We do not believe 
 that God has mercy, and has opened the gates of His 
 Heaven to the Jews alone. You will, no doubt, often 
 be told by the nominal Jew, as well as by the nominal 
 Christian, that this is only an individual, not a Jewish 
 notion; but cio not let your faith be shaken by such 
 remarks. Our Bible tells us, that the law of Moses is 
 incumbent on the Jews alone, not on the nations ; and
 
 LETTER XI If. 163 
 
 our ancient fathers (men with whose deep learning and 
 profound wisdom, who of the present day can compare?) 
 have told us in clear simple words, "THE RIGHTEOUS 
 
 AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD HAVE A SHARE IN 
 THE LIFE TO COME." 
 
 You are satisfied, then, I hope, that the selection of 
 the descendants of Abraham is perfectly reconcileable 
 with the attributes of justice and mercy in our Heavenly 
 Father ; that instead of " permitting only a few to in- 
 herit eternal life, and dooming the rest of mankind to 
 perdition and sin," it was to be the seed in ichich every 
 nation of the world should be blessed, a promise fulfilled and 
 still FULFILLING ; that, though it revealed more, it de- 
 manded more ; and therefore, instead of unduly elevating 
 ns in our own estimation above every other, it ought to 
 make us more humble, more lovingly obedient to our 
 God, and more universally forbearing and charitable 
 towards man, than any other people in the world. 
 
 Consider well these important truths; and, above 
 all things, remember, dearest Annie, that man is not 
 originally righteous or evil from the favour or disfavour 
 of his God, but from his own free choice; that our 
 Father has placed within all His children the power to 
 resist evil and pursue the good; and that, therefore, 
 we dare not plead hereditary disposition or untoward 
 circumstances, as an excuse for persistency in wrong, 
 when once we know the right. That some have much 
 more difficulty in overcoming evil inclinations than 
 others : that some are good almost unconsciously, simply 
 from disposition, I allow: but we must never forget that 
 GOD reads the heart and reins, man only the outward 
 conduct ; and therefore the righteousness that man per-
 
 164 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 ceives and reverences, may be less acceptable to God, 
 and reap less reward in Heaven, than the worth obtained 
 by the mighty conquest of the evil which so fiercely 
 struggled for ascendancy within, and whose reflection, 
 perhaps, has alone been visible. The various dispo- 
 sitions found in man are of earth, and often heredi- 
 tary ; the free-will to choose is the voice of God, speak- 
 ing through the emanation of Himself the immortal 
 soul. 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 " THE characters of Scripture sometimes appear to you 
 scarcely deserving of the high estimation in which all 
 believers in the Bible hold them," you tell rne, dearest 
 Annie; "that even Abraham was twice guilty of deception; 
 and from a feeling [as it appears to you] almost like 
 cowardice, Isaac did the same; Jacob was certainly even 
 more guilty ; Joseph, in his youth, reported evil of his 
 brethren; Moses slew a man and hid him in the sand; 
 and David was guilty of two most fearful crimes" facts 
 that appear like objections certainly; but which rather 
 ought to comfort than disturb us. Did God shew favour 
 only to the perfect, we must despair; for we could never 
 hope to become like them : and, in fact, from a consider- 
 ation of human nature now, we should be inclined to 
 believe, that the characters of the Bible must have been
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 165 
 
 a completely different race of beings, and elected by the 
 Almighty as recipients of his favour, and not as being 
 (which in my last I endeavoured to prove to you) equally 
 free-will agents with ourselves. If we acknowledge 
 the Bible ta be divine, a revelation vouchsafed to 
 guide us, now that the immediate interference of 
 the Eternal is removed from us, we shall easily be 
 enabled to reconcile these apparent difficulties by the 
 simple fact, that God would not have shewn such especial 
 favour to those characters, and proclaimed them through 
 all succeeding generations as His servants, elect, and even 
 friends, if they had not been deserving. We read the 
 outward frailties; God saw the inward heart. We judge 
 the Past by the thoughts of the Present: a very mistaken 
 thing to do ; because, though the emotions and feelings 
 of humanity are through all ages the same, human na- 
 ture is always advancing, and what we consider even a 
 crime now might have been merely a failing then. All 
 the characters to which you refer were human, liable to 
 suggestions of the evil, equally with the impulses of the 
 good. 
 
 It is true, Abraham and Isaac failed in faith ; but at 
 this distance of time, and from the brief record of the 
 Bible, we cannot tell the extent of the danger which 
 menaced them, and so tempted a departure from the 
 exact truth. You think they ought not to have doubted 
 the power of the God who had so revealed Himself to 
 them ; but it appears to me, that it is this very failure of 
 faith, where our path does not lie clearly before us, to 
 which this imperfect existence is so very liable. In great 
 things, or in lesser ones, if it be clear that only God can 
 help us, we go to Him directly, but seldom where we
 
 166 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 fancy the aid of man, or our own efforts will do. We 
 ought to remember, too, that Abraham and Isaac were 
 surrounded by nations who knew not God, nor his com- 
 mandments, and therefore had no restraint upon their 
 passions or inclinations. It was far more natural, that 
 they should resort to stratagem to elude the impending 
 evil, than believe, without a direct promise to that effect, 
 that God Himself would interfere in such a seeming 
 trifle. But that it was wrong, both they and we are 
 taught by the issue. Their stratagem produced the very 
 evil which they had hoped it would avert. 
 
 If, dearest Annie, the faults and failings of these 
 great men had passed with a mere record, and no notice 
 had been taken of them, by some chastisement evinced, 
 we should, perhaps, be justified in believing it was 
 scarcely compatible with the attributes of the Eternal to 
 choose such men for His favoured servants : but there 
 never was a fault committed^ that did not bring some 
 suffering, which then, as now, is the constant accom- 
 paniment of error. God did not permit any evil to 
 happen to Sarah, because He had promised Abraham to 
 be with him wherever he went : but, during the time 
 that he was ignorant of her fate, he must have endured 
 the bitterest human emotions of anxiety and dread, with- 
 out even the power of appealing for God's help, for he 
 had trusted in his own strength and wisdom, and had 
 failed. Jacob's deceit was followed by a series of suffer- 
 ings, which we very often over-look, when we speak of 
 him, as merely the favoured ancestor of Israel. First 
 came the dread of his injured brother's vengeance ; then 
 his hasty flight from his father's house, and painfully 
 weary journey. Laban's constant deceptions the
 
 LETTER XIV. 167 
 
 renewed dread of his brother the deceit practised 
 by Simeon and Levi on the Shechemites, troubling the 
 temporary quiet of his household, and exposing him to 
 very great danger. The early death of his beloved 
 Rachel ; and his last and most fearful trial, the effect of 
 deceit again on the part of his own sons the supposed 
 death of his darling Joseph, and long separation from 
 him. When we think of all these trials, must we not 
 intensely feel, that, however spiritually blessed, because, 
 in the main, his heart was right with God, his human 
 error met with human retribution : and though the 
 revelations vouchsafed to him must have inexpressibly 
 comforted and sustained him, still his earthly life was 
 one of constant trial) equal in severity and continuance 
 to any of the present day. Did we perceive, that the 
 men whom God especially favoured, were carried through 
 this life without one of the sorrows and cares, which are 
 the heritage of all men; we might then, with some of 
 show of justice, object to the faults which their history 
 records, and assert that to our imperfect vision, it seemed 
 like injustice so temporally and corporally, as well as 
 spiritually, to bless individuals who had just the same 
 faults and imperfections as those for whom there is now 
 no visible interference. But, when we look attentively 
 into the inner and outer life of these scriptural charac- 
 ters, we must acknowledge their life on earth was just 
 the same blending of joys and sorrows, cares and anxieties, 
 dangers and oppressions, as human life is now. 
 
 It seems a somewhat harsh judgment, to bring for- 
 ward as an alloy to the beautiful character of Joseph, 
 the petty failing of his early youth, that of " bringing to 
 his father his brothers' evil report." To me, it is a still
 
 168 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 more perfect illustration of human nature, than had he 
 been depictured without one fault. What is more 
 natural than that the over-indulged and petted favourite 
 of a then weak old man, should sometimes complain of 
 the unkind treatment, and the ill-conduct of his elder 
 brothers? That it was wrong, all must allow; but it 
 was human nature. Favouritism and over-indulgence 
 might have had the same evil influence on Joseph, as 
 they always have, even to the present day, in families. 
 We do not see the true beauty of his character until 
 adversity developes it. Had he remained with his father, 
 his character might have deteriorated, not advanced. 
 His very dreams would, perhaps, have increased the 
 evil of individual presumption, already engendered by 
 indiscreet favouritism, had not the Lord, in His ever- 
 acting mercy, over-ruled the cruel enmity of his brothers, 
 for Joseph's individual benefit ; not only in his temporal 
 elevation, which, remember, did not take place, till he 
 had been some years in servitude, and in prison, but in 
 the improvement and perfection of his character. It 
 is a mistaken idea (but produced, I think, from the stories 
 written from the Bible for children), to suppose that it 
 was on account of any striking virtue in the early youth 
 of Joseph, that he was made the favourite of his father. 
 The Bible expressly tells us, " Now Israel loved Joseph 
 more than all his children, because he was the son of his 
 old age." He was also the son of his beloved Rachel, 
 and very fair to look upon ; and no doubt, he possessed 
 many of those sweet and attractive qualities, which are 
 so engaging in early youth, but which might never have 
 reached such exalted virtue as his after-years displayed, 
 had it not been for the sad but beneficial lessons of
 
 LETTER XIV. 169 
 
 adversity. When torn by cruel task-masters from the 
 doating love of his father, compelled to serve in the 
 house of Potiphar, falsely accused, and flung into prison 
 without even being heard in his defence, the thought of 
 his early home must then have returned to his mind ; 
 and how bitterly might he have felt that he had, perhaps, 
 increased the irritation of his brothers by the too pre- 
 sumptuous relation of his dreams, which must, in his 
 imprisonment, have seemed so impossible to be fulfilled^ 
 That Joseph's natural disposition was peculiarly sweet 
 and noble, is proved by the effect of adversity upon him- 
 But we have no right to quarrel with the failing of his 
 early youth, unless we saw that his life had been one 
 continued stream of prosperity, from beginning to end ; 
 or could point out one individual in the past, present, or 
 the future, who, formed of dust as well as spirit, did not 
 inherit the imperfection of the one, as well as the per- 
 fection of the other, and so be subject not only "to the 
 ills which flesh is heir to," but to its weakness and its 
 faults. 
 
 How sad it would be for us, dearest Annie, if God 
 judged us as we judge each other; if He took note 
 of those little things, with which even the most righteous 
 have to contend, as to let them over-balance all the 
 good of deed, and thought and feeling, to which our 
 mingled nature can attain ! It is not only with the 
 characters of Scripture, we sometimes cavil ; but if we 
 look well into our own hearts, we shall be startled to 
 find, how often we are striving to discover some petty 
 fault, or failing, in those who bear the character of un- 
 usual goodness ; something which would bring them down 
 to us, and so lessen the uncomfortably re? fl ~=s feeling, 
 
 i
 
 170 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 which would urge us to rise to them a sensation which, 
 however undefined and unconscious, always attends the 
 contemplation of superior goodness. With regard to the 
 grave fault said to tarnish the character of Moses, and 
 to raise the objection, that God should select one guilty 
 of murder for the giver of His Law, we reply, that God 
 saw the circumstance ; we see but the deed. God read the 
 heart, the whole train of feeling before and after; we 
 read but of the fearful glance and upraised arm. If 
 we believe in God as a being of unalterable truth and 
 perfect justice, as His word reveals Him, we must rest 
 content, that, evil as the actual action was, the heart was 
 perfect with Him ; that no sin towards God entered his 
 heart no previously encouraged envious or angry 
 thought, as in the case of Cain. It was simply an irre- 
 pressible burst of natural indignation, a passionate 
 impulse, at seeing a countryman, probably a bond- 
 slave, utterly unable to protect himself, smitten by an 
 Egyptian. 
 
 Understand me, dearest Annie, I am not defending 
 the deed; for though, in the time of Moses, the laws 
 against murder were not accurately defined, yet " who- 
 soever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be 
 shed," had been said and acknowledged as a prohibition 
 against murder ever since the time of Noah. It was a 
 bin in itself; but its origin was a noble feeling of saving 
 an injured brother from a cruel oppressor : and the 
 spirit of the words, " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, 
 and I will repay it," had not yet entered the mind and 
 heart of man. Had Moses escaped without any notice 
 of his sin, and directly afterwards been favoured with 
 an especial Revelation from the Lord, we might be
 
 LETTER XIV. 171 
 
 startled; but flight alone saved him from the conse- 
 quences of his mistaken deed. The wrath of Pharaoh 
 was excited against him, as it would have been against 
 Any other man. Even his countrymen, for whom he 
 had interfered, reproached him with cutting words: 
 u Who made thee a prince and a judge over us; intend- 
 est thou to kill me as thou didst the Egyptian ? And 
 Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. 
 And when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay 
 Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh to 
 the land of Midian." And there he dwelt, forgotten 
 alike by the Egyptians, his countrymen, and, it would 
 seem even by his family, for forty years,* performing all 
 the lowly duties, and sharing all the toils and cares of a 
 shepherd to his father-in-law he who had been brought 
 up in all the enervating luxury of an Egyptian court. 
 Who can say, then, that if he sinned he was not 
 punished? And who may declare the purifying thoughts 
 and meditations, which in those long years of exile 
 might occupy his heart, and so render him a fit messen- 
 ger for the word of the Eternal? Forty years was a 
 long period of exile for an involuntary sin, but not too 
 long for his character to attain that purity and elevation, 
 and great self-control, which was necessary for his 
 important mission. The natural character of Moses 
 was evidently impetuous ; perhaps, even of passionate 
 impulses. We see this, not only in his slaying the 
 
 * The chronologists of the Bible differ so remarkably, that it is 
 scarcely possible to obtain clear dates and length of periods ; but 
 that Moses was forty when he slew the Egyptian, eighty when he 
 saw the burning bush, and a hundred and twenty when he died, 
 they all agree ; and, in that case, forty years must have elapsed in 
 his exile.
 
 172 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Egyptian, but when he flung down the two tables o\ 
 stone, in his fierce anger at the idolatry of the people 
 (enough, certainly, to rouse his wrath), and when he 
 struck the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had 
 commanded. Natural irritability, in this last instance, 
 had even power to drown the whisper of faith. " Must 
 we fetch you water out of the rock," he angrily said; 
 instead of reproving them for tempting the anger of the 
 Lord, as in the previous instance he had done : and 
 God said, " Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me 
 in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall 
 not bring this congregation into the land which I have 
 given them" thus proving, that even in His favoured 
 servant Moses, the faithful of his house, a prophet like 
 whom there never was, or will be another, disobedience 
 and unbelief, even in one solitary instance, might not 
 pass unnoticed. Yet the Bible tells us, " Now the man 
 Moses was very meek, above all the men which were 
 upon the face of the earth;" and this is no contradiction 
 whatever to his being naturally impetuous. The one 
 was the irnperfectio'n of his human nature ; the other 
 was the effect of the spirit's ascendancy over the 
 earthly, and obtained by prayer and struggle, probably 
 in that long forty years' exile to which I have before 
 alluded. That he was, indeed, the very meekest of all 
 men, we cannot glance on his various trials, provoca- 
 tions, and insults, even from his own family, without 
 feeling; and that two or three times natural impetuosity 
 should break forth, is to me such consolatory proof 
 of his being human like ourselves, that I hail them with 
 gratitude instead of objection, and love to contemplate 
 his character the more, from the fact that its beauty
 
 LETTER XIV. 173 
 
 and consistency are those to which all men can aspire. 
 He does not stand before us freed from all human 
 feelings, impulses, and affections: his heart is full of 
 them, and so we hail him brother, even while we feel the 
 deepest reverence for that spiritual worth, which marked 
 him chosen and beloved of God. 
 
 The sins of David were of deeper dye, but surely we 
 cannot read his agonised repentance without feeling that, 
 if he sinned as mortal, he repented as only those can 
 whose hearts are right with God. When Samuel called 
 the family of Jesse to the sacrifice, struck by the impos- 
 ing appearance of Eliab, Jesse's eldest son, he said in his 
 heart, " Surely the Lord's anointed is before me." God 
 answered " Look not on his countenance, or on the 
 height of his stature, for I have refused him ; for the 
 LORD seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh on the 
 outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." 
 This, perhaps you will say, is exactly that which you find 
 it so difficult to understand. There must have been 
 some imperfection in David to tempt the committal of 
 such heavy faults. We do not hear anything of the kind 
 in Eliab, and yet he was rejected, and David chosen. 
 Eliab was in a private station, and his errors and faults 
 were only of consequence to himself in his individual 
 responsibility before God ; but if we believe that God's 
 word is TRUTH, we must be satisfied that David's heart 
 was more perfect with God than his brothers', or he 
 would not have been chosen. His being chosen, in no 
 way distinguished him by the bestowal of temporal hap- 
 piness and honours, as the epithet "anointed king " so 
 often, but so erroneously supposes. Nay, from that very 
 hour, his life became one of trials and dangers, which, 
 had he remained the lowly shepherd boy, he would pro-
 
 174 THE JLWISH FAITH. 
 
 bably never have known. If you carefully read over his 
 life, you will find it one series of sorrow and disaster, 
 even after his elevation to the throne. You will say, 
 perhaps, " What has that to do with his faults ? '' Only 
 so far, that as his being spiritually favoured by God did 
 not exempt him from human suffering, so we have .no 
 right to imagine that because he was more holy, in 
 some respects, than the generality of his fellows, he 
 was to be entirely exempt from human imperfection. 
 His piety, his faithfulness, his unwavering trust in 
 the loving mercy of his God, however severely tried, 
 were displayed throughout, a long life. His sin was 
 the ascendancy, for the time being, of the mortal 
 over the Immortal, the clay over the Spirit. Of 
 the fearful extent of the temptation, we, of less impas- 
 sioned and colder calculating climes, cannot have the 
 least conception. Excuses, indeed, there are none; 
 and, though God, in His untiring mercy and in accord- 
 ance with His promise that for the truly repentant there 
 is forgiveness, pardoned, yet He chastised not only 
 David, but the partner of his crime, in the bereavement 
 of their first-born. The suffering endured by David and 
 his wife on this occasion is touchingly narrated by the 
 sacred historian (2 Sam. xii. 14 25); and his intense 
 repentance and anguish are seen in the fifty-first Psalm ; 
 like which, for remorse, prayer, and self-abnegation, there 
 is not, and never will be, another. 
 
 Nor was the death of Bathsheba's infant his only chas- 
 tisement. We are expressly told " But the thing that 
 David had done displeased the Lord ; " and when Na- 
 than's exquisite parable of the ewe-lamb had opened 
 David's eyes to the enormity of the crime, and, in great 
 wrath he exclaimed, little thinking he was passing sen-
 
 LETTER XIV. 175 
 
 tence on himself, " As the Lord liveth, the man that hath 
 done this thing shall surely die ; and he shall restore the 
 lamb four-fold, because he did this thing, and had no 
 pity ;" Nathan, after emphatically declaring, " THOU art 
 the man," proceeds to pass a sentence upon him from 
 the Lord, which was fulfilled to the very letter. Read 
 the whole of the twelfth chapter of 2 Samuel, and parti- 
 cularly notice from the seventh to the thirteenth verse. 
 Every denunciation there contained was awfully accom- 
 plished. First came a repetition of the many favours 
 which he had received from God ; and that, had they 
 been too few or too trifling, He would have added to 
 them yet more words which, to a feeling and affectionate 
 heart, must have been fraught with absolute agony. And 
 then came the denunciations of the tenth, eleventh and 
 twelfth verses, whose exact fulfilment, because divided by 
 two or three pages from the sentence, we are sometimes 
 apt to overlook. " The sword " did ** not depart from his 
 house," and "evil was," indeed, "raised up against him 
 in his own family." In the very next chapter, we have 
 the account of Amnon's horrible sin, and Absalom's 
 fearful, but perhaps natural, revenge. Imagine the va* 
 riety and combination of suffering to a father, and one 
 affectionate as David; the ruin of his daughter, the mur- 
 der of one son by another's hand, and the banishment 
 of that other, who had been from his very birth his dar- 
 ling. Nor was this all. In his banishment, Absalom 
 harboured those rebellious and ambitious thoughts, 
 which ended in his stealing the hearts of the people from 
 his father, and setting up the standard of revolt. David, 
 aged and oppressed by many sorrows, none greater than 
 this conduct of his child, was compelled to fly from Jeru-
 
 17t) THE JEWJSH FAITH. 
 
 salem, and exposed to all the evils and anxieties of war 
 and flight; which did not end, till his darling, his beauti- 
 ful Absalom, between whom and his father's heart not 
 even revolt and sin could come, paid the forfeit of his 
 rebellion by an early and most painful death. Was not, 
 indeed, the sword then unsheathed from his own home, 
 and evil raised up against him in his own family? And 
 still more read the latter part of the eleventh, and the 
 the twelfth verse of chapter xii, and then go to the 
 twenty-first and twenty-second verses of the sixteenth 
 chapter of the same book, and you will, I think, be almost 
 as much startled as I was, by the perfect agreement of 
 Nathan's prophetic threatening and its fulfilment. In 
 the mere reading of the history of David, this accordance 
 is likely to pass quite unnoticed. We regard the detail 
 merely as painful afflictions, perhaps strange, in the life 
 of one whose piety and general goodness ought, we think, 
 to exempt him from human trial. But how different 
 does it appear, when we see it in connection with his sin. 
 Amnon and Absalom were each, indeed, individually 
 responsible for their individual sins. We must not fall 
 into the unfortunate error of supposing, that because 
 God ordained that David should suffer from the sins of 
 his house, that these young men ware fated to act as they 
 did, and so were not free-will agents. They had equally 
 free-will to choose the good, and conquer the evil, as any 
 other person. You will say to this, perhaps, that whether 
 David had sinned or not, their evil inclinations would 
 equally have gained ascendancy; and he must, therefore, 
 have suffered just the same. But this is an objection 
 easily obviated. Their evil inclinations might have been 
 the same ; but if David had not so sinned as to need signal
 
 LETTER XIV. 177 
 
 chastisement, they would have been turned aside from 
 touching him, recoiled upon themselves alone, and even 
 this prevented, for David's sake, till he was removed to 
 another and better world. But, as a punishment for hi s 
 great sin, God permitted the evil already chosen by Arn- 
 non and Absalom to be the instrument of wrath in His 
 hand against their father; causing him the same intensity 
 of suffering as he had caused to others, and infinitely 
 more, than if his sin had been punished by instant death. 
 In that case, indeed, justice would have demanded an 
 instant account of the trespass before that awful tribunal 
 whose sentence is for everlasting. But the good found in 
 David, the quick remorse and instant confession, " I have 
 sinned against the Lord/' in those brief words acknowledg- 
 ing not only the magnitude of his offence, but his perfect 
 conviction of the justice of his sentence, were acceptable 
 to the Merciful Reader of all hearts ; and therefore Na- 
 than said, " The Lord also hath put away thy sin : thou 
 shalt not die ; " words that allude entirely to the sin and 
 its consequences in a future state, not that it was to bring 
 no painful consequences in this world. In the latter 
 case, it would seem like' a contradiction, to assert that a 
 sin was forgiven, and yet to punish for it. David's re- 
 morseful confession did not annul the previous sentence 
 pronounced against him. That remained in full force, 
 and was, as we have seen, fully accomplished. It merely 
 gave him hope and confidence, that the mercy of God 
 had so far forgiven him, that his sin would not be visited 
 upon him after death, by the punishment of excision. 
 
 How truly the prophet read human nature, when 
 he said, " Because by this deed, thou hast given the 
 enemies of the Lord great occasion to blaspheme," not 
 
 i 5
 
 178 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 only in his own time, but through all ages, in the very 
 remark, that the sinfulness of his chosen servants casts a 
 reproach upon the judgment of Him, who we are 
 told is all righteous and all just. 
 
 I have regarded this subject at great length, my dear 
 Annie, because I consider it such a very important 
 one. As I have told you before, if we commence the 
 perusal of the Bible, with a determination to disbelieve 
 and cavil at all that does not accord with our finite 
 understanding, we had better at once close the sacred 
 volume, and not attempt to read it, until the grace of 
 God grants us a better temper. If, on the contrary, 
 we acknowledge it divine, and, therefore, that God 
 is that transcendantly holy, true, just, long- forbearing, 
 and infinitely loving Being which His Word records 
 Him, we shall find it as easy to reconcile apparent 
 contradictions, as sceptics do to bring them forward. 
 Concerning the failings of His favoured servants, how- 
 ever, there is neither real nor apparent contradiction. 
 Human nature cannot be so wholly spiritualised, as 
 while on earth not to inherit and display some of the 
 imperfections of man. Our religion was formed for, 
 and given to beings of a mingled nature ; and, aware 
 of the fearful temptations to sin, the natural passions 
 and evil imaginings of His children, God, in His 
 infinite mercy, promised even greater favour to the 
 repentant, than to those whose natural dispositions were 
 sufficient to guard them in a greater measure from sin. 
 " There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth, than over ninety and nine who have not 
 sinned," is a sentiment found in the Gospel ; and there- 
 fore supposed to be the spirit of the Christian religion,
 
 LETTER XIV. 179 
 
 in centra-distinction to that of the Jew. But this, 
 like many other similar assertions, is a great mistake. 
 It was the essence of the Jewish religion ftrst> and 
 thence, and by Jews, was preached to the Christians. 
 " In reference to the purity of thought, our sages give 
 the preference to him who has led a righteous life through- 
 out; but in reference to the reward which Revelation 
 promises, the Rabbinical commentators allow more reward 
 to the penitent, commensurate with his continued 
 struggle to escape from sin and adhere to the good." 
 " Therefore, our sages say, the position which the truly 
 repentant occupy, the naturally righteous cannot reach ; 
 since by mastering their habitual vicious passions, their 
 struggle with the evil imagination of man's heart is 
 greater, and the victory more glorious."* Is not this 
 the exact spirit of the verse of the Gospel quoted above? 
 And how, then, may we see it is peculiar to the 
 Christian religion alone? If we would but look for 
 it, how much we should find in both faiths upon which 
 to agree, instead of those petty differences which, when 
 brought forward, do but shut man's heart against his 
 brother, and puff it up with self-righteousness and 
 unholy pride. 
 
 In accordance with this Divine compassion for the 
 natural frailties of man, God's chosen servants were, in 
 all points, like ourselves, a mingling of the spiritual and 
 the earthly, or, in plainer words, of good and evil. The 
 spirit, indeed, with them gained an ascendancy, which 
 it is difficult to attain, now that the direct interposition 
 of the Almighty in man's affairs is no longer visible ; but 
 
 * Biblical Expositions, by Rabbi Abraham Belaish, compiled 
 from the ancient fathers. Pages 44 and 88.
 
 180 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the earthly part of man was in hsjirst stage, in its actual 
 infancy, and subject to yet greater weaknesses and stronger 
 temptations, than ought to be the case now, that human 
 nature has had so many centuries, in which to advance. 
 God Himself says, " The imagination of man is evil from 
 his youth." David says, " Enter not into judgment 
 with thy servant, O Lord; for in thy sight shall no man 
 living be justified:" and Solomon, whose wisdom was a 
 direct gift from God, repeats " There is no man that 
 sinneth not." If, then, the men whom God selected for 
 His especial service had been perfectly righteous, they 
 must either have contradicted the words, declaring all 
 men are naturally inclined to evil, or have been chosen 
 from a superior and differently constituted race of beings ; 
 and so be to us, neither comfort nor example. Instead 
 of which, they were in all things like ourselves; and we 
 are not justified in refusing reverence and admiration 
 for their spiritual worth, and other high and beautiful 
 characteristics, because they had imperfections like every 
 other man. In common with their brethren, they suf- 
 fered the consequences of sin every time they were 
 led astray. God did not interfere supernaturally to 
 protect them, or to forgive, without some chastisement 
 marking His displeasure. The descendants or seed of 
 Abraham, He promised, for Abraham's sake, to bless ; 
 but He did not mark them from their birth, as men 
 whose righteousness was to procure His favour. His 
 blessing consisted in instruction in the right, that they 
 might be aided in conquering the evil, and helped for- 
 ward in the pursuit of good; but not exemption from 
 those temporal ills, which man, while he remains man, 
 must encounter. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, all
 
 LETTER XIV. 131 
 
 were of mature age, had had experiences of life and 
 time, to prove that they had either repented and atoned 
 for evil, or had naturally chosen the good, before a direct 
 revelation marked them as especial instruments of God. 
 David, though anointed by Samuel in early youth (a 
 ceremony which does not appear to have been regarded 
 by his father or brethren, as anything more than an 
 especial blessing of the prophet, earned by his early 
 piety, and endowing him with the prophetic spirit; but 
 which was not considered as marking him out for their 
 future king*), encountered even more temporal trials, 
 than either of the characters above-mentioned; but even 
 in his faults, his spirit of piety never failed. In every 
 circumstance of his life, sorrow or joy, failing or thanks- 
 giving, prayer or repentance, his treasury of Psalms 
 shows how the spirit obtained ascendancy, and devoted 
 his whole heart to God: and that is what God requires 
 of us. For the attainment of this spiritual blessing love 
 and devotion towards our God, He gave us His law, 
 and showed us how to subdue the evil and adhere to the 
 good. He does not demand, for the attaiment of His 
 favour, that faultless righteousness which man demands* 
 He knows that, while of earth and on earth, we must in 
 some degree be earthly, in individual liability to error, 
 
 * The account of Samuel's visit to Jesse, does not give me the 
 idea that he publicly proclaimed its intention. The words he is 
 recorded to have said, as each of Jesse's sons passed before him, 
 were evidently spoken in his heart, even as he had heard the voice 
 of the Lord addressing himself. Had David been then elected as 
 future king, Eliab would hardly have so roughly addressed him 
 when he came to the camp ; nor in fact was he safe from Saul's 
 persecution, nor would he have been so completely the unknown 
 youth and lowly shepherd, as he was considered, till the acclama- 
 tion, " David hath slain his tens of thousands, and Saul his 
 thousands !" excited the jealousy of the king.
 
 182 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and its individual suffering, as also to trials, brought about 
 by GENERAL as well as individual imperfection. He de- 
 mands the heart., " My son, give me thy heart," He 
 says, by the mouth of Solomon ; because He knew, that 
 if that, indeed, were given, the very failings of humanity 
 would tend to draw the soul yet closer to Him, and 
 gradually, yet surely, to subdue the propensities to evil. 
 The law was revealed to help us to give Him our hearts. 
 The prophets show us how to do so still more. The 
 characters of the Bible give us example, as well as pre- 
 cept, to prove, that if the spirit be right with God, im- 
 perfection will bring repentance, and repentance, pardon. 
 The spirit of our religion teaches us, that the penitent 
 and regenerate, are yet even more acceptable to their 
 Father, than the more naturally disposed to righteous- 
 ness, because they will cling yet more lovingly and faith- 
 fully to the beneficent Parent, whose unfathomable love 
 has so forgiven. Do we then need more, to explain 
 away the apparent objection of imperfection in the 
 characters favoured of God ? Dearest Annie, look not 
 either in yourself or others, for perfect righteousness. 
 If you do, you must despair, and fall farther and farther 
 from your only hope, and never-failing trust. Seek to 
 know God, and so to love Him, as to give Him your 
 whole heart. 
 
 This we can do, or He would not have desired it ; 
 though we must not think that it will guard us entirely 
 from occasional failures of duty, and even from graver 
 faults. Yet, if we do so love Him, the misery and re- 
 pentance we shall feel, when earth's imperfections have 
 for the time gained ascendancy, will not only give us 
 humble hope for forgiveness, but render us more and more
 
 LETTER XV. 183 
 
 circumspect, and desirous of conquering the evil, than 
 if we had never felt the inclination to do wrong. Be 
 assured of this, that as there is no character, however 
 perfectly righteous in the eyes of his fellow man, that 
 does not feel within himself the evil inclinations and 
 imperfections of his earthly nature; so there is no man, 
 however seemingly plunged in sin, that has not some re- 
 deeming quality in the sight of God, some generous 
 impulse, some noble affection, some spiritual aspiration, 
 which, had it not been crushed by the tyrant Circum- 
 stance, proceeding from general imperfection, would 
 have led to good. Hidden from man, but known to, 
 and cherished as the latent seed of salvation by, the 
 universal God. " There is, indeed, no man that sin- 
 neth not :" but, believe me, there is no such thing, ex- 
 cept in instances very " few and far between," as 
 utter irremediable, death-consigning depravity before 
 God. 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 " Is not the doctrine of the universal prevalence of evil, 
 or perhaps you should say, inclination to sin, more Chris- 
 tian than Jewish?" you ask me, dearest Annie, after 
 acknowledging the comfort you derive from the views 
 contained in my last. The doctrine, as there enlarged 
 upon, is undoubtedly, undeniably, and scripturally JEW- 
 ISH. If the earthly nature of man did not incline him
 
 184 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 more to the evil than to the good, we should not have 
 such verses recorded, as those I have quoted as spoken 
 by God Himself, and by David and Solomon ; implied 
 by every other holy man; and so commented upon by 
 our ancient sages, as for them to declare there is even 
 greater reward laid up for the penitent than for the na- 
 turally disinclined to sin; because of the greater difficulty 
 the former has to subdue himself than the latter. Now, 
 if inclination to evil were not inherent ; that is to say, if 
 man were so constituted that every wrong thought and 
 deed were difficult to realise ; that his nature was such 
 as always and unwaveringly to pursue the good; and that 
 the evil was chosen from pure contradiction, and wicked- 
 ness encouraged even as we now seek to strengthen and 
 encourage the good, there could need no promises of 
 mercy to the penitent, because there would be no min- 
 gled nature to bring forward. There would be no occa- 
 sion for those innumerable gracious promises towards 
 sinners; because, if man's nature were all spirit, or an- 
 gelic, there could be no such thing as sin. There would 
 have been no need for a law, and instruction in the way 
 of salvation, because man would have had all the elements 
 for obtaining it in himself. 
 
 It is difficult to enter upon the full consideration of 
 your question, my dear Annie, without approaching 
 points of difference which I would rather have avoided. 
 Controversy is peculiarly painful to me. Once clear on 
 my own faith, my great wish is always to find matters of 
 agreement instead of difference, the one tending to enlarge 
 the heart with universal love, as much as the other closes 
 it with the fearful armour of self-righteousness, and exclu- 
 sive appropriateness of Heaven. Yet to young inquirers
 
 LETTER XV. 185 
 
 like yourself, it is absolutely necessary that you should 
 be clear on the ground-work of your belief, and on the 
 distinction between it, and that of the religions among 
 which we are so indiscriminately thrown. The more 
 closely they approach in essentials, the more important 
 must it be to distinguish the dividing line. Of course, 
 as a Jewess, as I have told you before, there is no help 
 for it, I must be prejudiced in favour of my own, and 
 perhaps rnay not give you the correct rendering of the 
 Christian belief, not from wilful error, but from positive 
 ignorance. Besides which, there are many variations 
 of the same thing, even in religion, and individuals may 
 deny my general assertions from individual ideas. All I 
 can attempt is, to endeavour to mark the dividing lines 
 between the Jewish and Christian ideas of man's natural 
 inclination to sin, by a general view of what I have 
 always understood to be the vital principles of the latter 
 faith. 
 
 The Jews believe that the sin of Adam so far changed 
 man's nature, as to give the earthly the dominion 
 over the spiritual ; that the pleasures, the desires, the 
 various inclinations of the body would thenceforward 
 always be stronger than the voice of the soul ; that to 
 love God, to truly believe in, and so to worship Him as to 
 conquer every earthly temptation for his sake and be- 
 come pure on earth, as we believe our souls will be in 
 Heaven, would never be fully obtained ; and even to be 
 attained in any degree, would involve a task of pain and 
 struggle, and constant relapses into weakness and infir- 
 mity ; that this change would descend to Adam's race, 
 and mark all men as being subject to the same ascen- 
 dancy of the evil, and therefore the punishment of death
 
 186 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 was the destined portion of all humanity. Had the 
 consequences of Adam's sin been confined only to him- 
 self, he alone would have been chastised ; but the im- 
 perfections and evil inclinations extending unto all 
 generations, justly subjected them to the same close of 
 this existence. You will be very likely to suggest that, 
 if we believe in immortality, death is not a punishment; 
 but this is more an enthusiast's, than a rational idea. 
 While in this world, life is so dear, that we find it pre- 
 served even in the most destitute and painful positions. 
 Very few can so realise the joys of Heaven, as to welcome 
 the dark, terrible, and unknown passage to those pro- 
 mised joys. Even the most truly pious, the most sin- 
 cerely righteous, have been known to regard death with 
 awe and trembling, if not with actual dread ; and it is 
 quite a mistake to imagine these feelings either cowardly 
 or erroneous. They are the natural and intended emo- 
 tions with which the dictates of God's unerring justice 
 should be regarded. All men sin more or less; and to all 
 men comes the same purifier, robed as an angel of light, or 
 spectre of horror and darkness, according to the disposi- 
 tion of the soul; but still a dispenser of suffering physi- 
 cally, as in the parting of soul and body in the dying ; and 
 mentally, as in the anguish of bereavement to the survivors. 
 The Christian creed is, that not only did Adam's 
 sin bring death into the world, but condemned his own 
 soul and that of all his unborn descendants, even the 
 spotless babe, to everlasting perdition ; that man has 
 no power whatever in himself to pursue the good and 
 strive for Heaven ; that unless baptised, and so, through 
 his sponsors, receiving Jesus, he is lost eternally ; that 
 only the acknowledgment of the Infinite Atonement can
 
 LETTER XV. 187 
 
 bring salvation ; and without such acknowledgment, every 
 effort after righteousness is futile, and the most earnestly 
 pious lover of God and man condemned, without hope 
 of redemption or escape ; while the greatest and most 
 impious sinner may be saved, if he only declare his be- 
 lief in Jesus. I do not tell you this is the belief of all 
 Christians. I know many who would shrink from it ; but 
 it is undoubtedly the general doctrine of Christianity, 
 and so accounts for their anxious desire to convert all 
 people to the same saving creed. 
 
 The Hebrews deny that the soul is touched by Adam's 
 sin. As a pure emanation from God, sin cannot touch it, 
 except that of its companion, the body. God breathes 
 the breath of life into every new-born babe; the soul is 
 from Him ; it does not descend as heritage, like the 
 body, from one being to another. The whole of our 
 guiding books inculcate and reiterate the sublime theory 
 
 that " EVERY MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OWN ACTS J " 
 
 that he has the power within himself to subdue the evil, 
 sufficiently to attract towards him Gods grace, 'and aid 
 in giving the good sufficient ascendancy, as, purified and 
 accepted by the infinite mercy of his Father in Hea- 
 ven, who does not demand more from His children than 
 His wisdom and goodness knows they can bestow, to ob- 
 tain salvation and acceptance before God. The whole 
 intent of our Jaw was to teach man what is acceptable 
 to, and would make him a worthy servant of, the Lord, 
 and what is evil and displeasing in His sight. If man 
 had no power to keep this law, would the all-just and all- 
 loving God have desired him so to do ? I have read and 
 heard, that " being under the law " exposes the Jews to 
 even greater and more appalling perdition, than those who
 
 188 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 do not recognise it, as it is, and was always, quite impossible 
 for them to observe it as God commands. Does not this 
 appear a very fearful thing to assert? As if our ever- 
 loving Father would command that which all the while 
 He knew His children could not obei/> and leave them in 
 utter darkness, without ever expressing it in words, as to 
 the sole condition of their acceptance. 
 
 It is impossible to read the book of Deuteronomy, and 
 the Prophets, particularly the eighteenth and thirty-third 
 chapters of Ezekiel, without being convinced that to 
 walk in the paths of righteousness, and turn from the 
 evil, is in every human being's power, and that we do 
 not need anything more than the promised love and 
 mercy of our God, to purify our feeble efforts, so as to 
 obtain forgiveness and salvation. "Therefore I will judge 
 you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, 
 saith the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your 
 transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast 
 away from you all your transgressions, whereby you 
 have transgressed, and make you a new heart and a 
 new spirit : for why will ye die, O House of Israel ? For 
 I have no pleasure in the death of the dead, saith the Lord 
 God, therefore turn and live ye" Now, if we could not turn 
 from our transgressions, and seek a new heart and spirit, 
 would the God of Truth and Justice make our so doing 
 the SOLE condition of our salvation ? We of course feel 
 it can be only education and habit, the reading of the 
 Old Testament by a different light, and the rending of the 
 veil which God Himself has thrown over the nations, that 
 prevents all men from acknowledging the clear and sim- 
 ple truths, encouragement, and comfort which this chap- 
 ter reveals. While they no doubt imagine and regard us
 
 LETTER XV. 189 
 
 as equally blind, not to see and feel the absolute neces- 
 sity of the condition of salvation, so important unto them. 
 I would neither seek to shake their belief, nor condemn, 
 nor even interfere with it. All I wish to do, is to 
 enable you, as a Jewess, clearly to understand your own. 
 
 I have been told, that without the infinite atonement, 
 God could certainly have forgiven the sin of man, but 
 would have failed in justice. Now it appears to me, 
 that there is more justice in the Jewish belief, of every 
 man being made responsible for his own acts, than his 
 receiving it through the sacrifice of another; and for 
 this reason. In Exodus xxxii. there are these remark- 
 able verses: "Moses said unto the people, ye have 
 sinned a great sin [the making and worshipping the 
 golden calf], and now I will go up unto the Lord, 
 peradventure I shall make atonement for your sin. And 
 Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, O this people 
 have sinned a great sin, and made them gods of gold. 
 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, 
 blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast 
 written. And the Lord said, Whosoever hath sinned 
 against me 4 him will I blot out of my book." 
 
 Now here is a complete offering of the self-sacrifice 
 of the innocent, body and soul (for " blot me out of thy 
 book," meant utter annihilation), as an atonement for 
 the guilty ; and its as complete rejection, couched in 
 words which most forcibly illustrate the Jewish doctrine 
 of belief, that every soul is responsible for its own acts, 
 and cannot release itself from individual responsibility 
 by the atonement of another, though that other be said 
 to unite God and man. As Jews, we dare not accept 
 belief in vicarious atonement, without forswearing our
 
 190 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 religion. Its grand principle is, that the consequences 
 of Adam's sin, in the sinful inclinations and physical 
 sufferings of this human frame, belong only to this life, 
 and touch not the soul, God's immortal gift to every 
 individual. That soul stands in judgment after death, 
 not for Adam's sin, but for its own while united to the 
 body, and receives forgiveness, not through the inter- 
 cession and meritorious sacrifice of another, but from 
 the changeless and endless mercy of its God, who has 
 promised, not only that our transgressions will be 
 removed from us as far as the east is from the west; 
 and that as high as the heaven is from the earth (that 
 is imrneasureably), so great is His mercy towards those 
 that fear Him., and that that mercy should be extended 
 unto thousands. The ways of God, we are expressly 
 told by Isaiah, are not our ways, nor His thoughts our 
 thoughts ; therefore, even if we knew it, we dare not 
 judge of the sentence it may please Him to pronounce 
 on the souls of men, by our bounded thoughts and 
 finite views. 
 
 You see, then, though the groundwork of both faiths 
 is the same, the superstructure is very different, and 
 ought to be clearly defined to every young Hebrew. 
 The Christian believes that every thought and act of 
 man is clogged with sin. The Hebrew cannot do so ; 
 because his Bible tells him, there are thoughts, actions, 
 ay, and even feelings, which are pure, and holy, and ac- 
 ceptable to his God. There are recreations and employ- 
 ments, which the Jewish creed can regard as innocent 
 and healthful both before God and before man. T.he 
 verses, "There is no man that sinneth not" "In thy 
 sight shall no man living be justified" " The soul that
 
 LETTER XV. 191 
 
 sinneth it shall die," do not contradict this assertion. 
 David meant, that by his own unassisted efforts after right- 
 eousness, and endeavours to conquer sin, he could not be 
 justified before God, because he must have, in addition, 
 a most determined faith in God's righteousness and 
 changeless promises, so to purify his endeavours as to 
 gain them that acceptance which they could not of 
 themselves obtain. "There is no man that sinneth not," 
 and " The soul that sinneth it shall die," do not follow 
 one another as a pronounced doom on man, which 
 requires some infinite union of atonement and redemp- 
 tion to avert. 
 
 The words, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," are 
 not uttered by the Eternal as a distinct and unconnected 
 sentence on ail men, as which they are so often quoted, 
 in defence of the necessity for atonement. Refer to the 
 eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel ; and you will see that 
 they are used merely in reference to, and to prove, the 
 incorrectness of the received idea, that the children were 
 to suffer for the sinfulness of their parents. " As I live, 
 saith the Lord God, ye shall not use this proverb any 
 more in Israel. Behold all souls are mine, as the soul 
 of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine : the 
 soul that sinneth it shall die. But if a man be just, and 
 do that which is lawful and right, .... he is just, he shall 
 surely live before me, saith the Lord God. If he beget 
 a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, .... he 
 shall surely die ; his blood shall be upon him. Now if 
 he beget a son, that seeth all his father's sins which he 
 hath done, and considereth, and doeth not such like .... 
 he shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall 
 surely live .... Yet ye say, Why ? Doth not the son bear
 
 192 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the iniquity of the father ? When the son hath done 
 that which is lawful and right, and hath kept my statutes 
 and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity 
 of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity 
 of the son : the righteousness of the righteous shall be 
 upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked skall be upon 
 him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that 
 he hath committed, . ... he shall surely live, he shall not 
 die .... Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should 
 die, saith the Lord God ; and not that he should turn 
 from his wickedness and live ? But when the righteous 
 turneth away from his righteousness, .... shall he live? 
 All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be 
 mentioned : in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and 
 
 in his sin that he hath sinned, in them he shall die 
 
 Again, when the wicked turneth away from his wicked- 
 ness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is 
 Jawful and right, he shall save his soul alive" 
 
 Now, is it not very clear from these verses, that it is 
 possible, even for the greatest sinner, through God's in- 
 finite mercy, to turn from his evil ways and save his soul 
 alive? And that it is equally possible for man, even 
 though his body inclines him to its own sins and infirmi- 
 ties, still to be nuturalli/ righteous, arid so attract towards 
 him the favour of his God. That the words, so often 
 quoted, simply mean each individual soul that so sin- 
 neth as to reject all God's promises of mercy and for- 
 giveness if he repent, shall individually die. Neither 
 the righteousness of his father, nor that of his offspring 
 will avail to save him : and, in the same infinite justice, 
 if a man be individually righteous, he shall be rewarded
 
 LETTER XV. 193 
 
 for his own righteousness, and the iniquity of a sinful 
 parent, or a sinful child, shall not be visited upon him. 
 And this is no contradiction to the words of the law, in 
 which God says, He will visit the iniquity of the fathers 
 upon the children. It would appear so, superficially 
 considered ; but the threatening of the law, and the 
 comfort of the prophet, have been so ably reconciled 
 in a sermon by the minister of the British Jews,* that 
 I cannot resist (I will not say quoting, for I do not 
 know the exact words, not having heard, or read his 
 sermon) giving you his sense in my own language. 
 
 It is clearly evident, that the frequent use of soul, 
 death, and life, in this chapter of Ezekiel, alludes to the 
 existence after death, to the immortal emanation breathed 
 from God into man. He wouldnotsaya//sow/5 are mine, 
 if He alluded to the body, because, He had before sen- 
 tenced, that " Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt 
 return." The body is not o/*Him, though His creation. 
 The soul or spirit is His, and to Him must return. No 
 sin can touch that soul or spirit, but its oicn, while united 
 to the body. It is not only pure from Adam's trespass, 
 but from those of its immediate parents, and its own off- 
 spring. The body is the heritage of man, as the soul 
 is the immediate and direct gift from God. The judg- 
 ment, then, to which Ezekiel alludes, is that which will 
 be the portion of each soul, in the world to come, 
 after death has closed his bodily existence here. The 
 sentence spoken by God through Moses, alludes to those 
 trials, infirmities, and temptations, which are ever the 
 consequences of man's sinfulness in this world, and which 
 
 * Rev. D. W. Marks. 
 K
 
 194 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 no individual righteousness can avert. Do we not see, 
 as the inevitable rule of this world, the sins of parents 
 visited on their innocent offspring, either in a stigma 
 on their name, depriving them of all connection, and 
 rendering the obtaining of honest employment painfully 
 difficult, if not impossible ; exposing them to evils of every 
 description, and increasing the natural propensity to 
 sin, by the example of those they are called upon to 
 honour and obey? Yet even they have the power with- 
 in themselves to choose the right, and, according to the 
 difficulty of that choice, and their trials on earth caused 
 by their parents' sin, not their own, so great will be their 
 reward hereafter. That they should suffer on jearth, 
 the consequences of the iniquity of their parents, is 
 not the ordainment of God, but the choice of man. 
 Those who sin, know their children will suffer from it. 
 The feeling has been so strong as to check the progress 
 of iniquity. The becoming a parent has awakened 
 very many to the sense of their immortal responsibility, 
 startled them into a conviction, that the present is not 
 all, that they no longer belong to themselves alone. The 
 thought of the soul of their child has first roused them 
 to think of their own ; and meditations how to teach re- 
 ligion and good to their offspring have taught it to 
 themselves. Bad habits have been broken off. Home 
 has been made indeed home; and the world and all its 
 dangers, and temptations, and snares, have been gradu- 
 ally deserted, from the time that an Angel from God 
 has descended on the domestic hearth in the shape of 
 an immortal babe. That becoming a parent has done 
 all this, not one, but very many instances in the 
 annals of mankind have fully proved ; if, then, the sins
 
 LETTER XV. 195 
 
 of parents be visited heavily, it is because a still stronger 
 power to resist the evil, and choose the good, has been 
 granted to them than to others. They do not persist in 
 sin, because ignorant of what will, what must be, its 
 effects on their children. God has not only told them 
 this, but given them increased powers of resisting sin, 
 and stronger incentives for the pursuit of virtue. 
 
 They know, all men know, the consequences of sin, 
 that the act of one individual may recoil in its conse- 
 quences with suffering on many ; then, if they persist, 
 surely the deed is theirs, not the ordaining of Him who 
 has given them the power to resist. That the innocent 
 should suffer in any degree for the guilty, might, and 
 would, seem strange and unjust, if this world were all, and 
 no reward were laid up with God for those who love 
 and seek Him, and yet suffer, on earth. We cannot 
 study revelation without feeling convinced of the consol- 
 ing truth, that we are not only individually responsible, 
 but that our God will judge and have compassion, not 
 only according to the good deed accomplished ; but the 
 sin resisted, the suffering borne, the strength of the 
 temptation, and the force of circumstance. Once this 
 belief fully obtained, and there is neither darkness nor 
 gloom on the face of the earth. Evil, and its necessary 
 consequence, suffering, are not God's ordaining, but 
 man's free choice. Heaven and its unutterable joys, its 
 rest, its fulness, man may aspire to ; but its perfection 
 of felicity, as much above our deserts as the heaven is 
 above the earth, is God's free-loving gift. Evil and 
 good both bring forth their own fruits; but the one, 
 confined to man and earth, is finite, and commensurate 
 with its parent. The other, springing from and re-
 
 196 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 turning to God, is infinite, and so must be as far superior 
 to the mere deserts of even the most righteous, as God's 
 mercy is to man's. He does not love and grant us 
 immortal joys, according to the measure of human love 
 and service, but according to His own. " They shall be 
 righteous in my righteousness, their righteousness is of 
 me, saith the Lord," are words repeated continually ; 
 difficult I fear to be understood in their fulness, unless 
 realized by the heart's interpretation awakening the 
 mind. 
 
 An illustration may, perhaps, be necessary, to ex- 
 plain it more clearly. We are expressly and repeatedly 
 told, that the love borne by our God towards man is as 
 a father's for his children, a mother's for her helpless infant. 
 When Zion (figuratively weeping for the ~ children of 
 Israel) said, "The Lord hath forsaken me, and my 
 Lord hath forgotten me :" God's gracious reply was, 
 *' Can a woman forget her sucking child, and not have 
 compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, 
 yet will I not forget thee." And again : " As one whom 
 his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." Now, if 
 we reflect a moment on the intense love borne by a 
 mother for her babe, long before it can give her even 
 a look of recognition, much less a word of infant fondness 
 in reply on the cares, the thoughts, the feelings it calls 
 forth you will, I think, my dear Annie, more clearly 
 understand what I mean. That mother loves her child 
 according to the vast capabilities of love found in her own 
 breast^ not according to what her child is able to give her 
 she cares for it, guards it, thwarts it when it seeks, as 
 pleasures and playthings, what might prove injurious 
 asks, indeed, as it becomes old enough, love, obedience,
 
 LETTER XV. 197 
 
 and service in return ; but, however imperfectly such 
 may be rendered, continues to love and judge from the 
 fountains in her own heart, not from the merits of her 
 child. Thus it is that our Father in Heaven loves and 
 cares for us. We cannot measure His love by ours we 
 cannot judge of His judgments by our judgment, for we 
 are equals, possessing no greater capabilities for love and 
 righteousness than he whom we judge; but in God's 
 word we read that in His righteousness we shall be made 
 righteous, meaning that our feeble efforts after righteous- 
 ness will be so purified by His as to render them ac- 
 ceptable. In His love our love will not be deemed 
 wholly unworthy. In His salvation we shall be saved 
 svith an everlasting salvation ; and in Him, the Lord, 
 shall all Israel be justified, and shall glory.* 
 
 I think, then, our religion gives us sufficient reason to 
 rest calmly on the belief that the phrase, " The soul 
 that sinneth it shall die," means nothing when consi- 
 dered bj itself, but can only be taken in connection with 
 the whole of the chapter in which it was found ; and that 
 that connection proves it simply to mean that each indi- 
 vidual soul is responsible for its own acts, and will be 
 condemned or forgiven individually, not for the iniquity 
 of another, be he parent or offspring. That Solomon's 
 declaration, "there is no man that sinneth not," did not 
 mean that no man could be considered righteous; be- 
 cause Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and David, Jo- 
 siah and Hezekiah, and many others, were all proclaimed 
 and blessed as righteous by God himself; but simply, 
 that even the most righteous in this life are occasionally 
 
 * Isaiah xlv. 17, 22, 24, 25, and many other portions of this 
 prophet.
 
 198 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 liable to sin, and naturally so inclined to evil as to re- 
 quire some effort to pursue the good. More than any 
 other faith, then, ours points to virtue and holiness, as 
 the goal not only to be pursued, but which God him- 
 self has pronounced as attainable by man. It does 
 not crush us with the fearful thought of hereditary and 
 all-blackening sin, from which no effort of our own can 
 free us. It permits us to trace beauty, and innocence, 
 and truth, where others see nothing but evil. It grants 
 us that blessed feeling of grateful joy, when our con- 
 science whispers that some fault has been conquered, 
 some evil inclination battled with, some painful truth 
 spoken, some good deed performed ; and therefore we 
 may hope God will in His mercy strengthen us more 
 and more to become acceptable to him. Dearest Annie, 
 seek, strive, pray, to become that which our God may 
 bless, and doubt not, unconscious as it may be to your- 
 self, such you will become. Do not be disheartened, if 
 you become more and more awake to the consciousness 
 of inclination to evil ; if you appear, instead of becoming 
 better, to have more faults and errors both in thought 
 and deed than you had before you began to think 
 seriously. It is not that you really have ; but only that 
 you are becoming more aware of them than you were 
 before, when you were ignorant of their existence. The 
 very fact of your being aware of them, should comfort 
 you by the conviction that the light of religion is shining 
 in your heart, illumined by the grace of God, in answer to 
 your earnest prayers and striving ; for without that light, be- 
 lieve me, we never trace our faults and failings. It is only 
 those who pass through life without a thought of God, 
 who deny that the universal inclination to evil is stronger
 
 LETTER XV. 199 
 
 than the desire for the good. Morally righteous, following 
 the received principles of honour and rectitude ; having 
 no temptation to do any very great wrong, or commit any 
 startling sin; passing through an easy comfortable life, with 
 no misfortune, perhaps, to startle from their quiet secu- 
 rity; such are the individuals to believe that nothing 
 more is needed, either for this life, or to gain the next. 
 But they are mistaken, dearest Annie ; our Bible tells 
 us more is needed. The righteous men whom God loved 
 and favoured, were not, indeed, free from sin, but they 
 loved Him, sought Him in every thought and action, and, 
 by prayer and striving, brought His grace to dwell within 
 their hearts, and sanctified their lives to Him. Their 
 very sins brought them yet nearer, by the unfeigned pe- 
 nitence, the deep humiliation which followed, preventing 
 a recurrence of iniquity, and giving virtue and holiness 
 a lovelier and more consoling light, from the former 
 strife and tears. To be Hebrews, indeed, we must be 
 spiritual : and to be spiritual does riot mean an entire 
 freedom from human weakness, or even graver faults, 
 but simply to give the spirit ascendancy over the earthly, 
 and even in this world so to "walk with God," as to 
 associate Him with every thought and deed. 
 
 Many have said, that this leads to irreverence and 
 familiarity ; but they are wrong : for if it did, God 
 would not have commanded His people to love Him 
 with all their heart, and soul, and might, obedience to 
 which can only be paid by such constant association. 
 Nor would our sages have declared, that "man is to 
 impress on his mind, that whatever he does is to be 
 with the intention to glorify his Creator. His rising, 
 his walking, and all his occupations, are to have that aim"
 
 200 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 This, then, is the true spirit of our religion; and this is 
 spirituality. The degraded position which, for so many 
 years, we have occupied all over the world, has naturally 
 tended to prevent our realising this truth, as it was 
 incumbent upon us to do. The mind must have space 
 and opportunity to shake itself free from the cares, 
 desires, and pains of the body, before the spirit can 
 obtain ascendancy ; and this, in the age, or rather 
 climes (for the age unhappily is never past), of persecu- 
 tion, was impossible. But in those blessed lands where 
 the Hebrew is at peace, where the mind may be free, 
 and mark its immortality; there is no excuse for us, 
 if we do not strive, heart and soul, to evince the pure 
 spirituality and divine truths of our holy faith ; not by 
 icords, but by deeds ; not alone generally., but individually : 
 and the youngest, the humblest of those who bear the 
 Jewish name may do this, dearest Annie. Not by great 
 deeds or mighty sacrifices; place God before you in 
 the quiet routine of daily life, and you will not fail. 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 "Do not the Christians believe, that the numerous 
 sacrifices specified in the law prove that vicarious 
 atonement teas a part of the Jewish code, and typified 
 that sacrifice for the redemption of universal sin, in
 
 LETTER XVI. 201 
 
 which they believe?" is the first on your list of ques^ 
 tions, my dear Annie; and I am glad you have asked it, 
 for I trust to be able to remove the mistaken idea, 
 which 1 perceive, from your perusal of Christian autho- 
 rities only, you have derived. You say, that you do not 
 ask it because you think a vicarious atonement needed, 
 as you can rest, satisfied and happy, on the Jewish 
 idea of individual responsibility, which I set forth in 
 my last. You only want to know if sacrifices were of 
 so much importance as they are said to be, and that no 
 prayer could be acceptable, and no sin atoned for 
 without them ; what is the present condition of our 
 nation in the sight of God, now that sacrifices are 
 impossible ? A very natural question, if sacrifices were 
 indeed of the vital and saving importance with which, in 
 the Christian renderings of the Old Testament, they 
 are regarded. But our Bible and its commentators 
 tell us, that the sacrifices in themselves were of very 
 secondary importance, compared with the spirit which 
 was to pervade the offering. Their institution was not 
 to atone for sin, but had its origin in the exceeding love 
 borne by our Father towards the people whom He had 
 chosen, as the teachers and promulgators of His law. It 
 had been the custom, from time immemorial, for the 
 imaginary deities of the heathens to be propitiated by 
 the sacrifice of certain animals in the temples, and 
 certain persons were also set apart for the priesthood, or 
 temple-service. Before man attained to that advance 
 in the scale of being which would enable the mass to 
 acknowledge an Invisible Spirit as God, and, even 
 when revealed, to give Him the spirit-worship which 
 He demanded, as the soul of all religions, an oblation 
 
 K 5
 
 202 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 or offering seemed the natural and palpable return for, 
 or recognition of, benefits received. Except in certain 
 statutes relative to customs which we shall presently 
 consider, and which to prohibit was absolutely neces- 
 sary for the purification of His people, God interfered 
 not with the habits and ceremonies which had become 
 natural, except to sanctify them to Himself. The pro- 
 hibition of sacrifices in those days, Maimonides tells us, 
 would have been as impossible to be obeyed as would 
 a prohibition of prayer in the day of trouble at the 
 present time. God had already instructed His people 
 in the knowledge of Himself; had proclaimed His pure 
 Unity and His glorious attributes, so as to be received 
 and understood by all Israel ; had revealed His supe- 
 riority to the gods of other nations, by such signs, 
 and miracles, and wonders, as none but the Omni- 
 potent and Eternal Creator could display; and this 
 done, and not till then, His mercy ordained a form 
 of worship, which would alike tend to His glory and 
 the sanctification of the worshippers ; and yet, not so 
 rudely interfere with previously contracted habits as 
 to render obedience difficult or impossible. The mere 
 worship of the spirit was not only utterly impossible 
 then, but always : the mass of mankind must have some 
 visible and palpable ordinances of religion, in some 
 ' to inspire, in others to strengthen, spiritual feelings ; 
 and, of course, in the comparative infancy of the world 
 and of man, forms to attract the eye, and occupy the 
 hand, were imperatively needed. This was the origin 
 of the magnificent workmanship of the Tabernacle first, 
 and of the Temple afterwards; of the solemn service 
 and the imposing rites; the rich and peculiar attire
 
 LETTER XVI. 203 
 
 of the officiating priests; the ceremonies which attended 
 the performance of their temple-duties ; and the various 
 ranks, from the lowliest Levite to the sainted office 
 of the first high priest, through whose Urim and Thum- 
 mim, in the earliest stage of the Jewish theocracy, the 
 Eternal's will was visibly revealed. Sacrifices had the 
 same origin, and the same intent, to aid, by outward 
 help, inward devotion. They were to attend not only 
 confession of sin, but ceremonies of rejoicing; but in 
 both were secondary to the temper of the heart, which 
 was to accompany them. On this subject, I cannot 
 do better than quote to you Maimonides' own words : 
 " Reverting to our former proposition, we proceed 
 to observe, that oblations or sacrifices are a part of 
 divine worship only according to the secondary intention 
 of the law;* but invocation, prayer, and similar duties 
 are a part of worship approximating to the primary 
 intention, and necessary to the attainment of it. The 
 Divine Lawgiver has established a great distinction 
 between these two kinds of worship ; for although obla- 
 tions and sacrifices are offered in honour of the ever- 
 blessed God, they are nevertheless not to be offered as 
 before the giving of the law, when every man might 
 offer what sacrifices he pleased, and at whatever time 
 and place he chose; or, if he pleased, might erect a 
 
 * Maimonides explains the primary intention of the law as 
 relating to the purification of the mind and spirit by mental exer- 
 cises and spiritual worship ; and the secondary as relating to the 
 outward forms of worship, and those observances necessary for 
 teaching men the virtues and duties incumbent on a state, whose 
 ruler and governor was the Lord. In the first, of course, prayer 
 and mental devotion were included ; in the second, oblations : the 
 one was between the soul and its Maker ; the other was the out- 
 ward obedience of the state the invisible impulse of devotion 
 made visible and real.
 
 204 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 temple and assume the priestly office ; for all these 
 things are now prohibited. A particular house had 
 been assigned to these services, according to what is 
 said, ' Thy holy things thou shalt take, and go unto 
 the place which the Lord shall choose' (Deut. xii. 26). 
 And to offer sacrifice in any other place is pronounced 
 unlawful ; therefore it is written, ' Take heed to thyself, 
 that thou offer not the burnt-offerings in every place 
 that thou seest' (Deut. xii. 13). Nor are any permitted 
 to bear the sacerdotal office, but those of a certain 
 family ; all those things being to check every kind of 
 improper worship, and to prevent the practice of every 
 thing which the Divine Wisdom judged proper to be 
 abolished. But prayer and deprecation are duties which 
 every one may practise in any place whenever he pleases. 
 
 " It is also, for the reason just stated (the secondary 
 intention of the oblations), that we find the prophets 
 so often reproving men for. their too great eagerness 
 to offer sacrifices, and inculcating upon them that they 
 ARE NOT the first and independent object of the law ; 
 nor has the Divine Being any need of them. Thus 
 Samuel, ' Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt- 
 offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the 
 Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to 
 hearken than the fat of rams.' Isaiah also inquires, 
 * To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices 
 unto me? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt- 
 offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts. And I 
 delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of 
 he-goats.' And Jeremiah says, ' I spake not unto your 
 fathers, nor commanded them in the day when I 
 brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning
 
 LETTER XVI. 205 
 
 burnt-offerings or sacrifices ; but this thing commanded 
 I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, 
 and ye shall be my people* (Jer. vii. 22, 23). These 
 words of Jeremiah have, however, given rise to a very 
 general objection ; for almost every one is ready to 
 urge, ' How could Jeremiah affirm, that God did not 
 ordain burnt-offerings and sacrifices, when it is well- 
 known that the greater part of the precepts of the law 
 relate to them?' But the meaning of his words is what 
 has been already intimated, and is the same as if he had 
 said, ' The primary intention of every part of the law is, 
 that you should know ME, and forsake the service of 
 other gods, that I may be to you a God, and that ye 
 may be to me a people ; and the precepts which enjoin 
 oblations, and command you to worship in my house, 
 are given to instruct, and to assist you in this duty. 
 But these designs ye have defeated, and have had regard 
 only to the outward worship ; for ye have doubted my 
 existence, as it is said, " They have belied the Lord, 
 and said, It is not He." Ye have served idols and 
 burnt incense to Baal, and have gone after other gods ; 
 and have come to my house, and have cleaved to, and 
 had respect only to the temple of the Lord, and to the 
 oblations, which were not the Jirst and principal object of 
 the law.' " 
 
 I fear this long extract will have wearied you, dearest 
 Annie; but before giving you my own ideas on this 
 important subject, I was anxious to place before you 
 those of Mairnonides at length.* Maimoriides, though 
 persecuted for some of his notions in his own time (as is 
 
 * Reasons for the Laws of Moses/from the " More Nevochim" of 
 Maimonides, translated by James Townley, pp. 182 186.
 
 206 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 unhappily the case with all those who have ideas in 
 advance of their age), is now universally acknowledged 
 as one of the most orthodox writers we possess. His 
 Talmudical research was immense, and his knowledge of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures of course perfect, not only in 
 themselves, but in their Talmudical interpretation. In 
 some of his writings we can unhappily trace the fierce 
 exclusiveness, revengeful feeling, and narrow-minded- 
 ness, which cruel and continued persecution had rendered 
 the characteristic of some of the Jews of the middle ages. 
 But these very failings (failings of circumstance, not of 
 nature, or of the Jewish religion), ought to render the 
 opinions of his larger mind and nobler self, of still 
 greater value. We see him at times claim brotherhood 
 with the fiercest and most exclusive of the Talmudical 
 Jews, and yet displaying the real spiritual meaning and 
 intent of the sacred canon, as only an enlarged and 
 spiritualised intellect could have displayed. It was 
 as if the mild lustre of the perfection of the Holy 
 Scriptures triumphed even over the lurid mist of perse- 
 cution on the one side, oppression on the other, and 
 intolerance on both: and that, when engaged on that 
 holy study, all of age and circumstance passed away, 
 and he was permitted to explain them, indeed, in the 
 spirit of him whose name he bore. And like which 
 Moses, his grateful countrymen sometimes say, there 
 never was another, even in his earthly and uninspired 
 nature, till Moses Maimonides arose. 
 
 The opinions of such a man must then be of immense 
 importance to all those attempting to explain the Scrip- 
 ture in an orthodox Jewish light. In fact, so com- 
 pletely do all the Jewish writers of past ages, portions
 
 LETTER XVI. 207 
 
 of whose works I have been enabled to peruse, confirm 
 my repeated assertion ; that the ceremonial was secondary 
 to the spiritual religion inculcated by Moses; that the 
 worship of the heart and mind came before that of hand 
 and form ; that, " Wash you, make you clean, put away 
 the evil of your doings before my eyes cease to do 
 evil learn to do well seek judgment relieve the 
 oppressed judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" 
 would alone make the outward worship acceptable to its 
 Ordainer ; that without attention to this religion of heart 
 and deed, incense and sacrifice were abomination ; 
 oblations vain; the new moons, festivals, and sabbaths 
 (though God could not do away with them, because His 
 Word had passed that they were to be for everlasting), 
 a trouble and weariness to Him, instead of a graciously 
 accepted offering. I should sometimes feel inclined to 
 smile, when I hear my opinions pronounced by both 
 parties more Christian than Jewish, were it not for the 
 deep regret which must attend the conviction, that 
 those who make such an observation know so little, 
 so very little, the true spirit of their faith, not only 
 as revealed in the Bible, but as explained by our own 
 sages. 
 
 We perceive, then, that instead of being primary 
 (which, if they really were types of the Christian dispen- 
 sation, the sacrifices decidedly would be), they were 
 merely instituted as aids and helps to spiritual religion; 
 as giving a kind of palpable and visible means of 
 obedience to "a mixed multitude," who were not yet 
 capable of attaining that mental and spiritual elevation, 
 which would be in itself sufficient to lift the soul to 
 God. But restrictions were laid upon these helps : no
 
 '208 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 one could offer a sacrifice except in Jerusalem, where 
 God had set up His temple : on prayer, however, there 
 was no restriction either of place or time. This at 
 once proves that prayer was acceptable, and repentance 
 available without sacrifice; but oblations without prayer, 
 and sin-offering without repentance, were an abomina- 
 tion. 
 
 In the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus, after a power- 
 ful description of the fearful fate of the disobedient, 
 which, word for word, has been fulfilled, we find the 
 simple conditions which, even in our captivity, will 
 render us acceptable to our still pitying Father, still 
 forbearing God. Read from the thirty-ninth to the 
 forty-sixth verse, and you will perceive not a word of 
 either sacrifice or atonement, but merely that individual 
 responsibility, which consists in an humbled heart, a con- 
 viction of iniquity, and a determination and endeavour 
 to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God :" this will bring Him back to Israel ; this alone 
 is needed to render Israel once more acceptable to Him. 
 Instead of being divided from Him, because we have no 
 sacrifice to make our prayers acceptable, it was expressly 
 prophesied, that " the children of Israel shall abide 
 many days without a king, and without a prince, and 
 without sacrifice, and without an image, and without 
 ephod, and without teraphim" (all of which meant the 
 temple-service, ordained priests, and visible Revelation 
 of the Lord); and yet, during that time, which is the 
 same as that described in Leviticus xxvi. and Deut. xxx. 
 our captivity throughout the nations we have, in 
 these two consoling chapters, explicit and reiterated 
 instruction as to all that was needed to incline the
 
 LETTER XVI. 209 
 
 Eternal once more to us, and restore us to our 
 own. 
 
 If we acknowledged the sacrificial atonement of the 
 Christians, as being the great sacrifice typified by all 
 ours, the prophecy quoted above would remain unful- 
 filled, and, in fact, was not needed, because we should 
 still have a sacrifice and High Priest on whose merit 
 and intercession to rest. Remember, I do not wish 
 to touch on the Christian faith as regards themselves. As 
 I have said repeatedly, I trace the workings of the 
 Eternal in its progress, as a preparation for that great 
 and glorious day when we shall all know Him. I 
 respect, from my very heart, the true spiritual believing 
 Christian, I only wish to make it clear to you, why, as 
 children of Israel, neither you nor I could accept the 
 first grand doctrine of the Christian faith. 
 
 That very many portions of the Psalms and Prophets 
 appear to condemn the sacrifices and other parts of the 
 ceremonial ritual, I quite acknowledge : but the con- 
 demnation was, as Maimonides expressly declares, not of 
 the ordinance itself, but of the fearful spirit in which it 
 was offered. This is clear from the simple fact, that 
 there is never a condemnation of the outward rite, with- 
 out being followed by an allusion to the inward feeling 
 and social deed which ought to have sanctified the 
 rite. The offering, to man, appeared obedience; to the 
 Reader of all hearts, it was directly contrary. " Hath 
 the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacri- 
 fices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, 
 to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the 
 fat of rams." Is not sacrifice obedience? many would 
 demand. No; for it was the mere work of the
 
 210 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 not the impulse of the heart, nor accompanied by 
 prayer: therefore it was so utterly useless as not even 
 to be considered obedience. " Sacrifice and burnt- 
 offering thou didst not desire," says David; "mine 
 ears hast thou opened ; burnt-offering and sin-offering 
 hast thou not required: then said I, Lo I come, in 
 the volume of thy book it is written for me, / delight to 
 do thy will, O my God ; yea, thy law is within my heart." 
 And, again, in his agonised remorse, he exclaims, 
 " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou 
 delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God 
 are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O 
 God, thou wilt not despise" Now, in neither of these 
 Psalms, did the faithful servant of the Eternal, and true 
 follower of the law, intend to contradict, or do away 
 with the ordinance of the sacrifice. He merely meant, 
 that his ears had been opened by the perusal of the 
 law ; and he learned that the sacrifices were not of that 
 primary importance which probably his family, less 
 enlightened than himself, had considered them to be; 
 that, though ordained and permitted, because an ancient 
 custom, God delighted not in them, as He did in a 
 willing heart anxious to do His will ; and all the 
 spiritual and social ordinances of the law were, in His 
 estimation, to be postponed to the deep repentance for 
 sin which produced a broken spirit and a contrite heart : 
 but that, nevertheless, they were to be observed, he 
 proves in the eighteenth and nineteenth verses of the 
 same fifty-first Psalrn " Do good in thy good pleasure 
 unto Zion ; build thou the walls of Jerusalem ; then 
 shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, 
 with burnt-offering and whole burnt-offering, then shall
 
 LETTER XVI. 211 
 
 they offer bullocks on thine altar." And this is no 
 contradiction to the previous words, "Thou delightest 
 not in burnt-offering." It simply means, that were the 
 temple and city of the Lord purified from the constant 
 sins and idolatries of the people, and the sacrifices 
 offered in the spirit in which alone they were acceptable, 
 then would God be pleased with them. David says, 
 " God delighted not in sacrifice, but in a broken and 
 contrite heart;" but if that humbled and repentant 
 spirit dictated and attended the offering, then God was 
 pleased with it, as obedience ; not for any merit in itself. 
 
 Isaiah's witness- to the truth of this supposition, we 
 have already considered, in the Eternal's inquiry, " To 
 what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
 me?" And the concluding command, "Wash you, 
 make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from 
 before my eyes," etc., already quoted, and very many 
 passages to the same import, may be found in the same 
 prophet. In Jeremiah, as Maimonides brought before 
 us, we read, " I spake not unto your fathers, nor com- 
 manded them in the day that I brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifice ; 
 but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, 
 and I will be your God ;" and in a previous verse of the 
 same chapter, we learn ichat these " ways " are ; " Trust 
 not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the 
 temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these ! 
 for if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings ; if 
 ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neigh- 
 bour, if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the 
 widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither 
 walk after other gods to your hurt ; then will I cause you
 
 212 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your 
 fathers for ever," etc. Is it not very clear, then, that 
 sacrifice by itself was of no importance whatever, nor 
 even the public hieing to the temple of the Lord? 
 They were not even considered to be obedience, unless 
 'sanctified by the worship of the spirit, and strict attend- 
 ance to the social duties. The God of changeless truth 
 did not contradict Himself, when He said, " I spake not 
 to your fathers," etc., for He did not command burnt- 
 offering and sacrifice, as the primary intention of His 
 law, which the people, by Jeremiah's words, rebelliously 
 chose to consider them. They were but aids to spiritual 
 worship, and to the heart's obedience. 
 
 In the sublime prophecy of Ezekiel where again and 
 again we are told what to do, even when sunk in wicked- 
 ness, to regain the compassionating love of our Father 
 there is not a syllable of sacrifice or offering, except 
 in the concluding chapters, and in connection with the 
 new and glorious temple, which will almost cover the 
 land of Israel, that all nations may flow into it. Now, 
 if sacrifice and atonement-offering were all in all, as 
 they are by some supposed to be, surely we should find 
 some mention of them in a prophet who, beyond all 
 others, instructs us in those spiritual and moral duties, 
 which, even when scattered over the nations, will draw 
 us near to God, cause Him to be " a little sanctuary in 
 the countries where they shall come," and induce Him, 
 in His infinite mercy, to " take the stony heart out of 
 our bosoms, and replace it with a heart of flesh ; which 
 will enable us to walk in His statutes, keep His ordi- 
 nances to do them, and be His people for evermore." 
 
 In Hosea, exactly in accordance with the other
 
 LETTER XVI. '213 
 
 prophets, we read, " For I desired mercy and not sacri- 
 fice, and knowledge of God more than burnt-o^mw^." 
 " Therefore also now, saith the Lord God, turn ye to 
 me with ail your heart, and with fasting, arid with weep- 
 ing, and with mourning ; and rend your hearts and not 
 your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for 
 He is gracious, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great 
 kindness, and repenteth Him of evil. Who knoweth if 
 He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind 
 Him, even a meat-offering and a drink-offei'ing unto the 
 Lord your God?" Here is not a word of an atonement- 
 sacrifice to bring us back to our God : but that we have 
 only to repent and amend, and then, when the spirit is 
 humbled, and the heart purified, we may rejoice in our 
 meat and drink-offerings, for they will be accepted as any 
 other merely outward rite. 
 
 In Amos we find, " I hate, I despise your feast-days, 
 and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies ; though 
 ye offer me burnt-offering, I will not accept them, 
 neither will I regard the peace-offerings of fat beasts. 
 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, I will 
 not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run 
 down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.'* 
 
 In Micah, " Wherewith shall I come before the 
 Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I 
 come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a 
 year old? W T ill the Lord be pleased with thousands of 
 rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I 
 give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my 
 body for the sin of my soul ? He hath shewed thee, O 
 man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee,
 
 214 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 but to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with thy 
 God." 
 
 Habakkuk says, " The just shall live by his faith," 
 needing neither atonement nor sacrifice for his justifi- 
 cation, or it would have been as clearly specified. Faith 
 would create that holy spirit of obedience to inward and 
 outward religion, which inclines our Father towards us; 
 and therefore, that brief line includes and signifies obedi- 
 ence to all the duties which the law, and the other 
 prophets, enumerated and enforced. 
 
 Zephaniah, in the same spirit, reiterates " Gather 
 yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not 
 desired ; before the decree bring forth, before the day 
 pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord 
 come upon you. Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the 
 earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteous- 
 ness, seek meekness : it may be, ye shall be hid in the day 
 of the Lord's anger" 
 
 Zechariah has repeatedly verses to the same effect, 
 showing, like the twenty-sixth of Leviticus, the thirtieth 
 of Deuteronomy, and all the Prophets already quoted, 
 all that is required of us in our captivity, to regain the 
 loving mercy of our God, and the absence of which 
 rendered our observances of the outward ordinances 
 an abomination in the sight of the Lord, instead of an 
 acceptable obedience. " The Lord has been sore dis- 
 pleased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto 
 them, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts. Turn ye unto me, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith 
 the Lord of Hosts. Be ye not as your fathers, unto 
 whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus
 
 LETTER XVr. 215 
 
 saith the Lord of Hosts, Turn ye now from your evil 
 ways, and from your evil doings : but they did not hear, 
 nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord" (Zech. i. 2 4). 
 *' And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, say- 
 ing, Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, saying, Execute 
 true judgment, and show mercy and compassion, every man 
 to his brother : and oppress not the icidow, nor the father- 
 less, the stranger, nor the poor ; and let none of you imagine 
 evil against his brother in your heart. But they refused 
 to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped 
 their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made 
 their hearts as adamant stone, lest they should hear the 
 law, and the words which the Lord of Hosts hath sent 
 in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a 
 great wrath from the Lord of Hosts. Therefore it is 
 come to pass, that, as He cried, and "they would not hear, 
 so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts: but I scattered them with a whirl-wind among 
 all the nations whom they knew not" (Zech. vii. 8 14). 
 " But now I will not be unto the residue of this people 
 as in the former days, saith the Lord of Hosts. For 
 the seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her 
 
 fruit As I thought to punish you when your fathers 
 
 provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord of Hosts, and I 
 repented not : so again have I thought in these days to do 
 well unto Jerusalem and to the house of Judah : fear ye 
 not. These are the things that ye shall do ; speah ye every 
 man the truth to his neighbour, execute the judgment, 
 the judgment of truth, and peace in your gates : and let 
 none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neigh- 
 bour ; and love no false oath : for all these are things that 
 I hate. , saith the Lord" (Zech. viii. 11 17).
 
 216 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 The prophecy of Malachi is but a reiteration of the 
 same solemn truths; perhaps, even in still clearer lan- 
 guage, showing why the " Eternal had no pleasure in 
 them, and refused to accep^an offering at their hand:" 
 not becRiise He had annulled the ordinance ; but because 
 the offered sacrifices were corrupt and polluted ; bring- 
 ing to the altar of the Lord " that which was torn, and 
 the lame, and the blind, and the sick;" instead of the 
 most perfect of their herds and flocks, which had been 
 ordained, and with weariness, and with a contentious 
 and contemptuous spirit, " Thus ye have brought an 
 offering : should I accept this of your hand ? saith the 
 Lord." And yet they mourn, and weep, and cry out, 
 because " He regardeth not the offering any more ;" 
 thus proving, that they looked to the ordinance alone, and 
 utterly disregarded the spirit in which it was to be 
 offered. The whole prophecy marks the different light 
 in which the mere formalists were considered, compared 
 with the spiritual Hebrews. The former, who prided 
 themselves on their rigid adherence to the ordinances, 
 and, with seemingly mournful humility, walked before the 
 Lord of Hosts, were reproved and condemned ; but "they 
 that feared the Lord spake often one to another ; and the 
 Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remem- 
 brance was written before Him, for them that feared 
 the Lord and thought upon His name. And they shall 
 be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up 
 my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his 
 own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and 
 discern between the righteous and the wicked, between 
 him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not" 
 (Mai. iii. 1618).
 
 LETTER XVI. 21 7 
 
 Perhaps, dearest Annie, you will think, lhat these 
 extracts relate more to the moral and spiritual duties of 
 our people, than to the question which originated this 
 very long letter. But without them, I could not have 
 replied to my own satisfaction. I wished to prove to you, 
 not from Maimonides alone, but from the word of God 
 itself, the true intent of the ordinance of the sacrifice ; 
 its very secondary importance to the great moral duties 
 and spiritual commune between the soul and its God, 
 which constitutes real religion ; the real reason of its 
 apparent rejection by its almighty Ordainer ; and the 
 reconciliation of the constant reference to it in the Law, 
 "with the equally constant condemnation of it in the 
 Psalms and Prophets. I can only hope, that all this I 
 have done, sufficiently for your eagerly enquiring mind 
 to rest more calmly. The law perused alone, might 
 favour the supposition, that oblations were of equal im- 
 portance with the moral and spiritual statutes ; and thence 
 (i. e. from the perusal of the law alone) has originated 
 the too rigid trust in mere outward and multiplied ordi- 
 nances, which has so unhappily tarnished Judaism. But, 
 perused with the explanations of the Prophets explan- 
 ations found in the reproof of iniquity, and information 
 as to what to do, and how to feel, to render outward 
 ordinances acceptable, we need no more to instruct us 
 in the religion which will lead us up to God. Fearing 
 to weary you, however, I will leave the further consider- 
 ation of this important subject till my next.
 
 218 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAM 
 
 I WOULD not wait for an answer to my last, dearest 
 Annie, because, the subject under consideration not 
 being concluded, I thought it better to continue it with- 
 out any further break, than the conclusion of one letter 
 and the commencement of another. The law could not 
 be only a system of spiritual worship. In this life, hu- 
 manity, however far advanced, cannot realise a religion 
 of the inward heart alone. It must have outward aids. 
 And if, even in its advanced stage, this is still the case, 
 how much more necessary must it have been, when man 
 was in his rudest infancy, as in the Exodus from Egypt. 
 To provide for his wants, and help him to realise the 
 constant presence of his invisible God, to institute a 
 reverential form of homage, wherewith to approach and 
 serve Him, to render repentance more palpable, and 
 give its subject the means of proving, that the sin was 
 felt, acknowledged, and, by the deep penitence accompany- 
 ing the offering, not by the offering itself, in some degree 
 atoned ; to prove that every blessing was felt to be a 
 gift from God, and required a sacrifice of thanksgiving, 
 constantly rendering it incumbent on the people to offer 
 public worship, lest the idea of private devotions being 
 sufficient, should render them careless and indifferent ; 
 to impress the dull minds of the mass through imposing
 
 LETTER XVII. 219 
 
 ceremonies, and a magnificent temple service, as far 
 superior in splendour and solemn rites to the Heathen 
 worship from which they had been rescued, as their God 
 was superior to the gods they had thought omnipotent 
 before : this was the necessary and important intention 
 of the Mosaic system ; accompanied, indeed, by such a 
 minute and reiterated detail of the moral duties, indivi- 
 dual responsibilities, and spiritual worship, as ought to 
 have taught them the real intent of the outward form, 
 and how utterly useless, nay how completely, it was an 
 abomination to the Lord, if unaccompanied by an obe- 
 dient spirit, and by that unrestrained and loving service 
 of the heart which was the vital breath of every sacrifice 
 and form. 
 
 Too soon, unhappily, men fell from the lofty position 
 in the sight of God, in which adherence to the true 
 spirit of the law of Moses would have placed them, and 
 they became contented with lifeless obedience to certain 
 outward forms. They trusted in the oblation, and looked 
 not to the state of their own souls, nor cared in what 
 spirit they approached the Temple of the Lord. They 
 imagined the mere sacrifice was obedience, and com- 
 plained of its small effect in gaining for them the favour 
 of their God. Then arose snch men as Samuel, David, 
 and the prophets, from whom I have so largely quoted, 
 to teach them that sacrifice by itself was an abomination 
 instead of obedience that till the duties from man to 
 God, and man to man, were performed, their oblations 
 were rejected, their festivals and sabbaths a weariness 
 and trouble; for their very observance in that perverse 
 spirit increased the national sin. Such was the mission 
 of the prophets when they moved in life amidst the
 
 220 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 people; and such is the mission of their writings to 
 us NOW. Oh, if we would but think so, would but study 
 them as we do the law, and impress their spiritual 
 teachings on our children as we do the mere outward 
 rite, how different would be the aspect of Judaism, how 
 blessed her hope, how near its fulfilment her expecta- 
 tion ! 
 
 Do not imagine from this, that I believe the forms of 
 our religion are of no importance, and that the sacrifices 
 are for ever done away. 1 believe, that every form 
 which we can -observe in our captivity is imperatively 
 incumbent upon us, that our religion is imperfect with- 
 out them, and that every truly spiritual Hebrew, instead 
 of disregarding the outward ceremonies, will delight in 
 obeying them for the love he bears his God : welcoming 
 them as immediate instructions from Him : even as a 
 child obeys with joy and gladness the slightest bidding 
 of those he loves. No real love was ever passive ; it 
 ever longs for action whereby to prove what it feels; 
 and so every ordinance believed to be from the Lord 
 must, by the real Hebrew, be welcomed with rejoicing. 
 Nor do I think the sacrifices annulled. I dare not 
 think so ; for in that case I must disbelieve the prophets. 
 In Ezekiel's remarkable prophecy, contained in the 
 last nine chapters of his Book, wherein he powerfully 
 portrays the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel to 
 their own land, the flowing of all nations unto them, he 
 describes the outward temple-service so exactly in accord- 
 ance with that ordained in the law, only on a much 
 more extensive, and yet grander scale, that we cannot 
 doubt that the ceremonials of our faith will, for us, be 
 the same as they were. And amongst these outward
 
 LETTER XVII. 221 
 
 ceremonials, oblations are expressly included; and not 
 only Ezekiel, but almost all the other prophets advert 
 to them as being again acceptable, when sin shall be 
 purified from the hearts of the people, and " the Mes- 
 senger," or Messiah, whom the Lord shall send, " shall 
 
 suddenly come to His Temple and shall sit as 
 
 a refiner and purifier of silver; and shall purify the 
 sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that 
 they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. 
 Then shall the offering ofJudah and Jerusalem be pleasant 
 unto the Lord, as in the days of old." This is from 
 Malachi, the last of the prophets ; and is it not clear, 
 that instead of oblations making the people righteous 
 and atoning for sin, they were utterly rejected, unless 
 the people were sufficiently purified to offer them in 
 righteousness. 
 
 This is the grand distinction between the Christian 
 and Jewish ideas on the subject of sacrifice. The for- 
 mer, regarding their every mention in the Old Testa- 
 ment as types of the great sacrifice on which their faith 
 is founded, must consider them of such primary import- 
 ance, that all heart-worship was imperfect without 
 them. The latter, on the contrary, are taught, both 
 by their Law and their Prophets, that they are merely 
 secondary : but part of the outward and ceremonial 
 rite, which was of no merit or importance whatever in 
 itself, and by itself, but was accepted as obedience, or 
 rejected as abomination, according to the inward spirit 
 in which it was offered. The Christian believes they 
 are done away with entirely, because, as mere types, 
 they are merged in the reality of the sacrifice of Jesus. 
 The Hebrew believes they are only annulled during our
 
 222 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 captivity, because only in Jerusalem was it legal to offer 
 them ; and that when we are sufficiently purified to be 
 restored to our own, the outward rites will be the 
 same as they were in the days of old; and with them, 
 but merely as part of them (having no merit in itself), 
 sacrifice of course. 
 
 I hope I have made this distinction clear to you, 
 dearest Annie. I am aware that many of our nation 
 think I am wrong ever to enter upon topics connected 
 with the Christian faith, when endeavouring to explain 
 our own. Perhaps they are right in the main : but 
 where there has been an indiscriminate perusal of 
 Christian authors, I am aware, from my own experience, 
 that it is difficult clearly to distinguish the respective 
 renderings of the same subject, unless brought side by 
 side with each other. 
 
 There is one objection connected with sacrifice, to 
 which, as I have no doubt it has entered your mind, 
 though not yet expressed, I will revert before we 
 quite quit the subject. Many sceptics have, I believe, 
 inquired, " Was not the ordinance of the sacrifice a 
 most expensive and useless waste of animal life; and 
 the instructions as to the killing, use of the blood, etc., 
 wearisome and disgusting minutiae, very little in accord- 
 ance with the solemnity and importance due to the 
 service of God?" In reading the Law, we must never 
 forget what I have mentioned before, and I shall proba- 
 bly repeatedly have occasion to mention again ; namely, 
 its special intent to sever the descendants of Abraham 
 from the idolatrous nations with whom they had so 
 intimately mingled, to give them an imposing form of 
 worship, in addition to a spiritual belief, which, instead
 
 LETTER XVII. 223 
 
 of rudely interfering with, or prohibiting previously 
 encouraged habits and customs, would sanctify them, 
 and yet make an impassable distinction between those 
 customs which coidd be sanctified, and those which, by 
 their horrible blasphemy and licentiousness were an 
 abomination, and occasioned the destruction of the 
 nations who practised them. This intent is particularly 
 visible in the oblations, and the minutiae which attend 
 them. Sacrifice itself was not only a remnant of an 
 immemorial usage permitted to continue, but it was 
 made the means of aiding man in realising spiritual 
 religion, and purifying his character from those grosser 
 thoughts of selfish aggrandisement, and the dislike to 
 part with personal possessions, in a more or less degree 
 common to us all. The riches of the Israelites did not 
 consist in gold and silver, in fine houses, and in all the 
 nameless luxuries of modern times. The distinction 
 between the rich and poor consisted in the more or less 
 quantity of flocks, and herds, and land, and its agricul- 
 tural produce ; as, for instance, respecting Nabal, the 
 churlish husband of Abigail, we are told, " there was a 
 man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel, and 
 the man was very great, and he had three thousand 
 sheep, and a thousand goats," and of course bullocks, 
 and the fruit of the land in proportion. And in 
 Nathan's exquisite parable, he distinguishes the rich 
 and the poor man who dwelt in the same city, by this 
 simple phrase, "the rich man had exceeding many flocks 
 and herds ; but the poor man had nothing save one little, 
 ewe-lamb" Now the ordinance of the sacrifice expressly 
 provided for this distinction of ranks and possessions, 
 by the command, " Every man shall give according to
 
 224 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 his ability ; but none shall appear empty before the Lord ;" 
 and the two young pigeons, which were the only offering 
 perhaps the poor man could get, was as acceptable in 
 the sight of his Father, as the two he-lambs without 
 blemish, and the one ewe-lamb, arid the three tenth 
 deals of flour, which the rich man was to bring with 
 him to the Temple on the same occasion. But whatever 
 the quantity, the quality of the offering was to be without 
 blemish, the purest and the best of Israel's possession, 
 an ordinance which, if obeyed, must effectually have 
 removed those fearful vices, avarice and covetousness, and 
 that closing of the heart and hand against all generous 
 impulses, too fearfully the characteristics in every age, of 
 man. From their Father and King they held all their 
 possessions ; and it was but just that He should demand 
 a portion of His own; and according to the purity of 
 the offering, and the willingness of its bestowal, so was 
 the heart of the offerer, right or wrong, with God. 
 
 It was no waste of animal life; and it is, indeed, a 
 fearful misconception of the holy rite, to imagine that the 
 great and holy God needed the blood of goats, and the 
 flesh of rams, or that He was pleased with the slaughter 
 of His creation. He had given certain animals for the 
 food and sustenance of man. It was no useless slaughter, 
 to bring the best and purest of them to His courts, at 
 certain seasons and certain festivals, and offer them up 
 there; for it was an express and imperative command that, 
 the wholesome flesh should not be kept till it v/as impure, 
 and so be destroyed and wasted ; but it was directed to 
 be distributed and eaten with rejoicing, not merely by 
 the bestowers of the offering, but by the poor and the 
 stranger, the fatherless and the loidow; by all who, perhaps,
 
 LETTER XVII. 225 
 
 except at these seasons, knew not how to get a meal. 
 To relieve the poor; utterly to prevent famine, and 
 misery, and their inseparable consequences, crime and 
 sin such was the real intent and use of sacrifices ; 
 and that use alone rendered them acceptable to their 
 beneficent Ordainer. So frequent were the seasons and 
 occasions for sacrifice, that it was utterly impossible for 
 even the poorest and most unprotected Israelite to be 
 wholly deprived of wholesome animal food. There were 
 free-will offerings, burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, drink- 
 offerings, and peace-offerings, all of which gave food and 
 drink in abundance to the poor, and compelled the rich to 
 part with a portion of their wealth for that purpose. A 
 command to distribute three times in the year certain 
 bullocks, sheep, and goats, flour, wine, and oil, to the 
 poor, would have been easily evaded, if left to the judg- 
 ment and mercy of man alone. But made a portion of 
 the service to the great and invisible God, the very 
 quality and quantity of the offerings so minutely speci- 
 fied ; there was no evading it, save by direct disobedi- 
 ence. Again and again, we find in Deuteronomy similar 
 verses to this, alluding to the oblations attending the 
 Festivals of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacle, 
 " And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, 
 and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man servant, and 
 thy maid servant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, 
 and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that 
 are among you, in the place which the Lord thy God 
 hath chosen to place His name there." 
 
 Regarding them thus, how baseless and silly seems 
 the reasoning of the sceptic. Instead of being a use-
 
 226 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 less waste, it was a provision, and rejoicing for the poor. 
 It brought all ranks in social union before their common 
 Father, and provided a vent for the feelings of thanksgiving 
 or penitence, which, in that comparative infancy of hu- 
 manity, demanded something more than mere spiritual 
 realisation. We find, by the Prophets, that the causes 
 of the rejection of the oblations were not only because 
 men imagined that if they sacrificed, it did not at all 
 signify what feelings they encouraged, or what transgres- 
 sions they committed, but also from their presumptu- 
 ously offering the refuse of their flocks, the blind, the 
 lame, and the sick of animals, and polluted bread, 
 instead of the purest and the best. And these were re- 
 jected, not merely as insulting the majesty of Him who, 
 as the giver of every blessing, demanded a pure offering ; 
 but that, as the Hebrews were expressly forbidden to 
 eat any animal which was diseased, or deformed, of 
 course such impure oblations could not perform the part 
 to which they were destined, viz., to provide wholesome 
 food for the poor. And thus, that from which to mere 
 superficial observers, appeared decided obedience de- 
 manding acceptance at the hand of the Lord, was, in 
 His sight, a two-fold abomination. We cannot read the 
 Prophets carefully without being convinced of this ; 
 and therefore am I so anxious that you should study 
 them as frequently, and as attentively as the law. The 
 great mischief amongst us has been the exclusive perusal 
 of the latter; it often and often happening, that the 
 Prophets have never been even examined, until atten- 
 tion has been called to them by Christian friends; and 
 what must be the consequence? So many passages will
 
 LETTER XVII. 227 
 
 equally bear upon the Christian rendering (especially to 
 the many of our female youth ignorant of the language 
 of their ancestors) that they must be startled, uneasy, 
 and doubtful, if not actually converted, unless provided 
 with the invulnerable shield of scriptural conviction of 
 their own, founded on as intimate an acquaintance with 
 the Jewish readings of the prophets, as of the ceremonies 
 and forms of their law. 
 
 The directions concerning the blood, fat, and inwards 
 of the sacrifices, apparently so tediously minute, were, 
 at the time of their bestowal, absolutely necessary, to mark 
 the wide distinction between the Jewish oblations to the 
 Most High God and those of the benighted nations to 
 their idol deities. Those parts which we were to burn 
 and destroy, and the blood which was to be poured upon 
 the ground like water, were the most important portions 
 of the idolatrous sacrifices. With the blood, the most 
 diabolical rites and incantations were constantly prac- 
 tised ; the entrails and other inward parts were always 
 used by the idol priests, for their oracles, and other 
 divinations, as we constantly perceive in the histories of 
 Greece and Rome nations actually civilised compared 
 with the Amorites, and other Canaanitish nations, from 
 whose horrible rites, the Hebrews were to be so guarded. 
 It appears, on a mere casual reading, a harsh and un- 
 needed sentence, that the mere eating of the inward fat 
 and drinking of the blood, of the fowl or beast brought as 
 an offering, should cause " that soul to be cut off from 
 his people;" but when the law was given, God and 
 Moses knew, that these actions, simple as they seemed, 
 marked a relapse into idolatry, and so called for a sentence
 
 228 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 as severe, as that pronounced against those who actually 
 bowed down to idols instead of the true God.* 
 
 To prevent the relapse into the abominations of the 
 nations, who for their wickedness had been cast out from 
 Canaan, could any directions be too minute; or any 
 threatened chastisement too severe ? The very animals 
 chosen for Israel's oblations, were to mark the division, 
 and prevent all assimilation. Cats, dogs, bats, mice, 
 reptiles, all the unclean beasts, we find held in high 
 esteem among the Heathen. Lewis, in his Antiquities, 
 says, "the swine was held sacred to Venus; the owl to 
 Minerva; the hawk to Apollo; the eagle to Jupiter; 
 and even the dog to Hecate." The lion, wolf, dog, cat, 
 ape, arid even frogs, otters, rats, beetles, flies, ser- 
 pents and fishes, were held in idolatrous veneration by 
 the Egyptians and other nations. Now all these, God 
 pronounced to His people as unclean, unfit either for 
 food for them, or for oblations to Himself. Whereas, 
 those animals which He gave us for subsistence, and of 
 which we were to offer unto Him, were those which 
 many of the idolaters actually worshipped as gods, and 
 
 * " Blood was regarded as the food of demons, not only by 
 the nations immediately bordering upon the dwellings of the 
 Isnaelites, but by other idolaters in different parts of the world. 
 Maimonides, in his ' More Nevochim' (lib. iii.), has stated at large, 
 the superstitions of the Zabii, in offering blood as a sacrifice to the 
 infernal objects of their worship. R. Moses bar Nachman, on 
 Deut. xii. 23, says, ' They gathered together blood for the devils, 
 their idol gods; and then came themselves, and ate of that blood 
 with them, as being the devil's guests, and invited to eat at the 
 table of devils, and so were joined in federal society with them ; 
 iitid by this kind of communion with devils, they were able to 
 prophesy, and foretel things to come.' Similar practices obtained 
 also amongst the Romans ; and the sacred books of the Hindoos 
 exhibit the same traces of worship prevailing also amongst them." 
 Townley'a Maimouides' Laws of Moses, Dissertation v. p. 177.
 
 LETTER XVII. 229 
 
 which, in consequence, they would never permit to be 
 slain. 
 
 Thus, dearest Annie, even while our Father's infinite 
 goodness permitted a form of oblation something similar 
 to that to which the mixed multitudes had been accus- 
 tomed, instead of harshly commanding a service so 
 utterly distinct that it would have been next to im- 
 possible in that age to obey, He so ordered it, as com- 
 pletely and entirely to sever it from idolatrous worship 
 and sanctify it to Himself. Considered thus, we shall 
 not find one direction too minute, one ordinance un- 
 necessary, or derogatory unto Him, or one sentence on 
 those who disobeyed or disregarded them, too severe. 
 The proneness to idolatry was so continued, and so fear- 
 ful; the difficulty, in that dark age of the world, for 
 man to realise an idea of a spiritual all-pervading, and 
 yet invisible Unity, as his Maker and God^ so great; 
 that it is next to impossible for us now to regard the 
 varied prohibitions, ordinances, and threatenings of the 
 law, so as clearly to understand them; unless we take 
 the trouble, to read and study those works which will 
 throw a light upon the condition of general humanity, 
 at the period of the Revelation through Moses. This 
 consideration, however, must be postponed to another 
 letter. The subject of the sacrifices has already ex- 
 tended to a greater length than either you or I 
 could have imagined ; but if it has removed any doubt, 
 and clearly explained the origin of their institution and 
 importance in the law, and the reason of their being so 
 continually reproved and even rejected in the Prophets, 
 I shall not regret either time or trouble.
 
 230 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 LETTER XVI II. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 You tell me, dearest Annie, that my last two letters in- 
 stead of wearying you, have answered so many unex- 
 pressed doubts and thoughts, that some of your intended 
 questions, you have expunged from your list. To others, 
 you begin of yourself to perceive the reply ; but you will 
 mention them, to have them clearly defined. So many 
 of the ordinances in the law had appeared to you so 
 minute and unnecessary, so wearisome to attend to, 
 and at the present time so incomprehensible ; but, from 
 what I have brought before you concerning the customs 
 of the nations from which we were to be utterly 
 separated, you imagine they might have had the same 
 intent ; and can be as easily explained as some of the 
 minute ordinances of the sacrifice which we have just 
 examined. You are right. There is not an ordinance 
 in our holy law, which had not an intention perfectly 
 accordant with the mercy, and wisdom, and majesty of 
 the Supreme, and with the preservation of Israel, as a 
 select and holy people, who were to be His witnesses over 
 the whole world, and to the farthest boundary of time ; 
 and now, Maimonides' " Reasons for the Law of Moses" 
 must again be my authority. But again, I must entreat 
 you always to place before you, the fact, that while
 
 LETTER XVII I. 231 
 
 many commands were given to us, to enable us to be- 
 come a pure and holy people, and to instruct us in those 
 feelings and those actions which would be acceptable 
 to our Father; most of the prohibitions related to the 
 customs and practices of the idolatrous nations, especi- 
 ally those of Canaan, whose exceeding wickedness had 
 caused them to be an abomination to the Lord, and 
 compelled Him to destroy them. The terrible im- 
 purity, sinfulness, abominable practices, disgusting rites, 
 and degrading worship, to which human nature had 
 arrived, would appear actually incredible, were it not 
 confirmed by the books of the Zabii, to whose trans- 
 lations into Arabic, Maimonides refers, as giving him 
 " so much insight into the reasons and causes of many 
 of our laws."* 
 
 Accustomed to be surrounded by those to whom 
 Revelation is known, perceiving the God of the Hebrews 
 acknowledged by one or other mode of worship over all 
 civilised lands, the moral laws of our Bible, either pro- 
 fessedly or practically, guiding almost all mankind it 
 is perhaps very difficult for some minds, unless gifted 
 with some degree of imagination, to realise the state of 
 the world and human nature at the time Israel was 
 chosen, and the law bestowed. To enable the Israelites, 
 and " the mixed multitude" that went up with them, 
 gradually to realise a pure faith and holy religion, many 
 ordinances and prohibitions were necessary to be given, 
 seemingly useless, and even burdensome now, because 
 the very idea of the practices which they were to prevent 
 is at present scarcely attainable: but then they were 
 absolutely necessary for the furtherance of the intention 
 * Townley's Maimoiiides, pp. 162, 166.
 
 232 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 of the Lord. It might be, and has, I believe, been 
 urged, that God might have so changed and purified 
 the hearts of Israel, as to have at once inclined them to 
 reject idolatry, and worship Him in spirit and in truth ; 
 but as I think I have before told you, He never works 
 by miracles that which can (humanly speaking) be 
 attained by natural and gradual means. Had His 
 grace so changed the heart of man, no reward would 
 have been needed to urge him to walk in the way of 
 righteousness, and no goodness attached to the per- 
 formance of his duty, or no piety comprised in his love 
 and reverence for God, for all would have been done, 
 simply because he could not help it. This was not the 
 intention of the Eternal. As the descendants of the 
 faithful Abraham, the Hebrews, even in their crushing 
 slavery of Egypt, never entirely lost their mental and 
 spiritual superiority to the nations around them. The 
 mass, no doubt, imbibed, in some degree, the idolatrous 
 notions and impure customs of the Egyptians, else we 
 should not so frequently meet with such mournful 
 records of their relapses ; but amongst them there were 
 ever some individuals whose examples and precepts 
 would keep alive within them the remembrance of their 
 forefathers ; and even the mass, in the time of greatest 
 trouble, we find " crying unto the Lord." 
 
 To attempt any thing like a review of the Law, would 
 be impossible in the space of even one or two letters, 
 dearest Annie. All I wish to impress on your mind 
 is its twofold intent, and to notice a few of the pro- 
 hibitions, which, judged by present experience only, 
 appear so trifling and unnecessary. For the twofold 
 intent I will quote Maimonides' own words :
 
 LETTER XVIII. 233 
 
 " It is clearly evident, from many parts of the Scrip- 
 tures, that the first intention of our Law was to eradicate 
 idolatry, and to obliterate the memory of it, and of those 
 who were addicted to it; to banish every thing that 
 might lead to it, as pythons, soothsayers, passers through 
 the fire, diviners, jugglers, enchanters, augurs, astro- 
 logers, necromancers, etc. ; and, finally, to prevent the 
 most distant assimilation to their practices; still more 
 to the adopting and observing of them. Hence it is 
 expressly declared in the Law, that even as the worship 
 paid to the idol is an abomination to the Lord, so is 
 the oblation offered to it, and every practice in the 
 remotest degree similar. In accordance with this, but 
 placed after the eradication of idolatry, because, of 
 course, till that fearful system was subdued, no true, 
 just, and spiritual notions of the Divinity could be 
 attained, the intent of the law was to bestow on us cer- 
 tain precepts, which were to deliver us from these 
 great errors, and lead us to faith in the one true God, 
 teaching us, that God who created all things is ever 
 present in the world ; that He alone is to be worshipped, 
 loved, and feared; and that to fulfil His will, nothing 
 difficult or laborious is required, but only to love and 
 fear Him, since by these two things His whole worship 
 is perfected, as we shall afterwards demonstrate. Hence 
 it is written, ' And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy 
 God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to 
 walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve 
 Him with all thy heait, and with all thy soul.'" Such 
 are the words and quotations of Maimonides, a Tal- 
 mudical as well as Scriptural student of quite the begin- 
 ning of the twelfth century. Had they been mine, or
 
 234 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 those of any other Jewish writer of the present age, 
 they would, by both parties, Christian and Jewish, be 
 pronounced as the sentiment of the former, not of the 
 latter. As those of Maimonides, they must be orthodox 
 Judaism. O believe me, dearest Annie, if we could but 
 peruse portions of our venerable teachers if our gifted 
 Hebrew students would but give us translations adapted 
 for our inquiring and thirsting youth, we should have no 
 need to seek Christian authorities for a spiritual creed. 
 We should find all sufficient in our own, and perceive 
 how completely love and faith were the primary, and 
 rites and ceremonies the secondary, consideration of our 
 Law. 
 
 " Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk," 
 is one of the prohibitions which has given rise to a great 
 variety of speculations. Its real meaning is, very evi- 
 dently, to prohibit any, even remote, assimilation to one 
 of the principal customs of the Zabii, who, when they 
 had gathered in all their fruits, used " to take a kid, and 
 boil it in its dam's milk, and then, in a magical way, to 
 go about and sprinkle all their trees, and fields, and gar- 
 dens, and orchards with it, thinking by these means that 
 they should make them fruitful, and bring forth the 
 more abundantly the following year." If we found that 
 these words gave a command unconnected and distinct, we 
 might hesitate to attach this explanation to it ; but as 
 the conclusion of the verse " The first of the first-fruits 
 of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord 
 thy God ; thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's 
 milk;" we at once perceive that it is but part of a 
 sentence, and must be explained in connection with 
 the previous part. The Zabii had several idolatrous
 
 LETTER XVIII. 235 
 
 customs connected with the first-fruits amongst them ; 
 most probably the seething the kid, and the command 
 and prohibition of this verse were in consequence of, and 
 to guard against, a similar practice. 
 
 It was a custom of the Amorites, or Zabii, also to 
 offer the first-fruits of the land to their idol, and eat 
 them in their temple, declaring that, unless this rite were 
 attended to, every edible tree would dry up and perish- 
 To guard us against this, we were expressly commanded 
 not to gather in the fruit of the trees for three years after 
 they were planted. " When ye shall come into the land, 
 and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then 
 ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised ; three 
 years shall it be uncircumcised, it shall not be eaten by 
 you." And when gathered, the first fruits of the fourth 
 year were to be offered in the holy place of the Lord, 
 and sanctified to Him. The grafting one tree upon 
 another, was prohibited from the fearful and obscene 
 rites which attended this practice amongst the Amorites, 
 and for the same reason, all mixture either of seeds, or in 
 garments, was not permitted to the Israelite. "Thou 
 shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind; thou 
 shalt not sow thy field with a mingled seed; thou shalt 
 not let a garment mingled of linen and woollen come 
 upon thee. The woman shall not wear that which per- 
 taineth to a man, nor a man that which pertaineth to a 
 woman. The priests shall not round the corners of the 
 head, nor mar the corners of the beard." Now all the 
 prohibitions, trifling as they seem, and incomprehensible, 
 perhaps, to many at present, have all a reason and intent. 
 The first was to prevent all impurity and violation of 
 nature, even amongst brute beasts, who, unless driven
 
 236 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 together for impure purposes by man, always herd with 
 their own kind ; for the same prohibition we find often 
 repeated, "Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass 
 together." With regard to the intermixture of the seeds, 
 it was the custom of the Amorites to sow barley and 
 dried grapes together, believing that without such union, 
 there could not be a good vintage, which, as an idola- 
 trous superstition, was among the abominations for which 
 they were rejected by the Lord. The garment 
 of linen and woollen was the usual dress of the idol 
 priests, who were also in the habit of rounding the cor- 
 ners of their head, and marring the corners of the beard 
 in a peculiar manner ; and to prevent the remotest ap- 
 proximation, even in dress, to those priests of Baal, 
 these customs were prohibited to us. Again : it was the 
 custom of the Zabii, that when a man presented himself 
 before the image of Venus, he should wear the coloured 
 dress of a woman ; and when a woman adored the star 
 or image of Mars, she was to be clothed in armour. 
 They usually considered their gods and goddesses to 
 unite the sexes, and so, to propitiate them, they presented 
 themselves before them wearing a habit different to their 
 sex. When worshipping the god of war, the women 
 thought they could not please him better than by ap- 
 pearing in arms ; and the men, in the presence of the 
 goddess of love and beauty, than by assuming the dress 
 of a woman ; and when sacrificing to Venus, the same 
 change of garment was adopted, to denote that they con- 
 sidered her both male and female.* The impurity and 
 idolatry of such customs is so very evident, that once 
 
 * Young on Idolatrous Corruptions in Religion, vol. i. p. 97, 105, 
 quoted in note 33 of Townley's MaSmonides.
 
 LETTER XVI II. 237 
 
 being aware of them, the reason of the prohibition above 
 named is too self-evident to need comment. 
 
 The prohibition so frequently reiterated, and the 
 transgression of which was always death passing the 
 seed through the fire as an offering to Moloch has, I 
 believe, often been passed over by mere casual readers, 
 as incomprehensible, and by sceptics, as folly, such things 
 never being heard of. Now, instead of never being 
 heard of, it was a most fearfully common rite in all idola- 
 trous nations, especially among the Zabii. And rem- 
 nants of it may still be found amongst the superstitions 
 and legends of some of the northern nations. The 
 opinion was declared and circulated, that if the people 
 did not cause their sons and daughters to pass through 
 the fire, all their children would die, and their property 
 be consumed. Moloch was, I believe, a huge brazen 
 idol, with the body of a man, and the head of an ox, 
 and the punishment for transgressing this universal com- 
 mand, to pass the seed through the fire, was to make an 
 offering of innocent babes to the idol, by heating the 
 image, and placing the naked infant in its red-hot arms. 
 To avoid this, and to propitiate the idol to grant them the 
 lives of their offspring, nothing more was required than 
 to lead the child through the fire. In Maimonides' own 
 age, he tells us that a custom was still existing, of nurses 
 taking the new-born infants in their swaddling clothes, 
 and waving them to and fro in the smoke of herbs, of an 
 unpleasant odour, thrown into the fire.* Dr. Morison, in 
 a learned later work, dedicated to James I., declares 
 himself to have been an eye-witness of a singular custom 
 in Scotland the taking a new-baptised infant, and 
 * Townley's Maimonides, pp. 210, 211.
 
 238 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 vibrating it three or four times over a flame, repeating 
 thrice, " Let the flame consume thee now or never.* In 
 Athens, which we should have supposed too far advanced 
 in civilisation for such fearful idolatry as that of the 
 Zabii, there was a feast kept by private families five days 
 after the birth of a child, when it was a custom for the 
 visitors to run round the Jire with the infant in their arms. 
 In Rome, the country people had private as well as pub- 
 lic feasts, in honour of their goddess Pales, during which 
 they jumped over great fires made of stubble and hay, 
 imagining themselves to be purified by the palilia. No 
 rite amongst the Heathen was considered complete un- 
 less they had passed through fire, as a ceremony of initia- 
 tion, or lustration. And even amongst the early Chris- 
 tians, we find some traces of this superstition in the fact, 
 that St. Chrysostom " blames, amongst other heathen 
 customs then remaining, the lighting two great fires, and 
 passing between them ; and the sixty-fifth canon of the 
 Council of Trullo condemns the observing the new 
 moon, with making fires before their doors, and leafringover 
 them" The scholiast, in commenting on this canon, 
 also says : " The new moon was the first day of the 
 month ; and it was customary amongst the Greeks to 
 hold a feast on that day, and pray that they might be 
 lucky during the continuance of the month. They also 
 kindled fires before their shops and houses, and leaped 
 over them, imagining that all the evils which had befallen 
 them would be burnt away, and that they would be more 
 successful afterwards. Some Christians falling into this 
 heathen custom, occasioned the prohibition of the above- 
 mentioned canon. On St. John the Baptist's eve, also, 
 * Townley's Maimonides, note 37, p. 361 ..
 
 LETTER XVIII. 239 
 
 the vulgar were not to kindle fires during the whole night, 
 nor leap over them ; nor draw lots, nor divine about their 
 good or evil fortune;* and we can trace the remnant 
 of this superstition even now ; and still more strongly a 
 very few years back, in the celebration of Ail-Hallow- 
 E'en, alike in Scotland, Ireland, and the West of Eng- 
 land, 
 
 If, then, we can trace the remnant of this extraordi- 
 nary superstition through so many ages; if there is 
 scarcely a nation amongst the Heathen polished 
 Rome and gifted Athens included and in many parts 
 of Persia, to this very day, by whom in one feast or 
 other, passing through the fire is not a ceremony of the 
 first magnitude, can we not easily imagine its universality 
 and extent, at the time when our law was given, and 
 therefore as easily comprehend the extreme necessity 
 to reiterate the prohibition to the Jews ; and connect its 
 transgression with the threat of some punishment, equal 
 in magnitude to the evils which the idolaters held out, 
 as befalling all those who refused to pass their seed 
 through the fire. 
 
 Thrown amongst the practisers of such impious rites, 
 for so many years, and still surrounded with them in 
 Canaan, from their own disobedience, nothing but a 
 miracle, could have so preserved them from imbibing 
 some portion of their habits, sentiments, and cus- 
 toms, as not to demand the greatest care on the part of 
 the Law, to prevent their relapsing into the horrible 
 degradation of the species, from which the love of God 
 had. rescued them. It is for this reason, that the com- 
 mand " Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through 
 * Townley's Maimonides, note 37, pp. 360 and 361.
 
 240 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the fire to Moloch ; neither shalt thou profane the name 
 of thy God, I am the Lord," is so frequently repeated, 
 and so emphatically enforced with the threat of death 
 to those who disobeyed. " When the Lord thy God, 
 shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou 
 goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and 
 dwellest in their land ; take heed to thyself that thou 
 be not snared by following them, after that they be 
 destroyed from before thee ; and that thou enquire not 
 after their Gods, saying, How did these nations serve 
 their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not 
 do so unto the Lord thy God : for every abomination to 
 the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their 
 gods ; for even their sons and their daughters they have 
 burnt in the fire to their gods" It has always seemed 
 strange to me, that such verses should be so entirely 
 overldoked, by those who assert, that there are so many 
 things in the Law, to which no meaning can be attached. 
 They would in themselves explain them : and the more 
 we study the customs of the early idolatrous nations, the 
 more distinctly and forcibly must the intent of even 
 the minutest ordinance of the Law stand before us. 
 
 The very words we repeat every morning and evening, 
 ' And it shall come to pass, if ye will hearken diligently 
 unto my commandments .... then will I send rain for 
 your land in its due season," etc., had their origin, not, 
 as a promise of temporal prosperity for obedience, as we 
 commonly regard them, but because agriculture and its 
 prosperous seasons, were so closely connected with 
 idolatrous worship by the Zabians, that it was supposed 
 impossible for the earth to produce her fruit, or the 
 Heavens their rain, without the celebration of the most
 
 LETTER XVIII. 241 
 
 impure and abominable practices. Therefore, in addi- 
 tion to the precise prohibition of each of these practices, 
 God inspired Moses to declare, that the earth would 
 yield her fruit, and the Heavens their first and latter 
 rain, only on condition of Israel obeying the command- 
 ments of the Lord, and serving him with all their heart 
 and with all their soul; for if their hearts were deceived, 
 and they turned aside to serve other gods, and worship, 
 as did the Amorities, etc., then, instead of the healthy 
 season which the idols promised their worshippers, God 
 would shut up the Heavens, that there could be no rain, 
 and the earth would of course cease to yield her fruit ; 
 and the people would perish quickly off the promised 
 land. It was to make the multitude understand, that if 
 they adopted the practice of the Canaanites, that adoption 
 would produce the directly contrary effect to that which 
 they supposed. In repeating this portion of our prayers, 
 we generally regard it as merely alluding to a temporal 
 reward ; instead of which, it bore directly upon the 
 practices of the idolaters, and incited us to avoid them. 
 It proves also most forcibly the Divine mission of Moses ; 
 for how could a mere man have ventured to promise, 
 and threaten the interposition of Heaven, in case of 
 obedience or disobedience? The ambition of a mere 
 human lawgiver or leader, would have shrunk from any 
 such test of his mission, knowing the impossibility of 
 bringing the seasons and elements to aid him, and so be 
 likely by such very appeal to disgrace himself before the 
 multitudes whom he desired to lead. Moses, on the 
 contrary, condemns and prohibits all the magic of the 
 Zabians, by promises regarding the produce of the earth 
 and of trees, of healthy seasons, and refreshing rain, 
 
 M
 
 242 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 which he neither could, nor dared have done, had it hot 
 been the voice of the Lord speaking within him. The 
 practices of the Zabians were much too general and 
 deeply rooted, to give way before the mere word of a 
 rnan, unless that word were fulfilled by the witness of 
 nature herself. They might, perhaps, have believed 
 him at the moment of his command ; but instances of 
 disobedience were too common, for that belief to have 
 continued, as we know it did, unless the threatened 
 chastisement had visibly taken place. 
 
 The distinction between the clean and the unclean 
 beasts, also, had its origin not only in teaching us the 
 most pure and wholesome food, but as a still further 
 preventive against the remotest assimilation with the 
 idolaters. In Townley's Dissertation on the Mosaic 
 distinction of animals, preceding his translation of 
 Maimonides, he gives a threefold reason for the dis- 
 tinction: first, to prevent idolatry; secondly, to promote 
 the health and comfort of the people; thirdly, to influ- 
 ence the moral character of the nation. The prevention 
 of idolatry was Assisted by this distinction of clean and 
 unclean animals in two or three different ways. In the 
 first place, it prevented all social intercourse with the 
 followers of idolatry, because, of course, if the Hebrews 
 might not eat of the same food, they could not meet 
 for scenes of dissipation, in which even the most earnest 
 followers of good are sometimes liable to be led astray. 
 In the next place, they were not likely to regard as 
 deities those animals which formed their daily food, 
 adored as they had been by the Egyptians. In fhe 
 third place, by this distinction between clean and un- 
 clean, they were taught to regard with a religious
 
 LETTER XVIII. 243 
 
 detestation those very animals, alike of fish, flesh, fowl, 
 and reptiles, which the idolatrous nations accounted 
 sacred, and held in the highest veneration. Is it not 
 clear, then, that even in the prohibited meats, the inten- 
 tion of severing us entirely from the idolaters is clearly 
 visible, and adds increase of weight and solemnity to 
 ordinances which, had they only been instituted to teach 
 us the most wholesome food, ought to call not only for 
 implicit obedience, but for the deepest thankfulness. 
 
 The extreme usefulness of the prohibition of certain 
 beasts, birds, and fishes, can only be realised in its 
 full extent, by knowing the consequences of indiscri- 
 minate eating in the East. Almost all those animals 
 which were forbidden, abound in gross juices and oily 
 fat, which, thickening the blood and checking perspira- 
 tion, incite all those maladies connected with leprosy 
 a disgusting disease so inherent to the people, that no 
 precaution for avoiding or checking it could be too 
 severe. It was for this reason, also, that an inordinate 
 use of the fat of even clean animals was so expressly 
 forbidden, as in hot countries, where the digestion is 
 naturally slow and difficult, such rich food engenders 
 all sorts of diseases which not only affect the body, but, 
 from the close connection in this world between the 
 two, deaden the soul, and entirely prevent its attaining 
 that purity of sentiment and spiritual aspiration which 
 God has endowed it with powers, even whilst in the body, 
 to attain. Levi Barcelona, a Rabbinical writer, says, 
 " As the body is the seat of the soul, God would have 
 k? a fit instrument for the use of its companion, and 
 therefore removes from His people all those obstructions 
 which may hinder the soul in its operations ; for which
 
 244 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 reason, all such meats are forbidden as breed ill-blood, 
 among which, if there be some whose hurtfulness is 
 neither manifest to us nor to physicians, wonder not at 
 it, for the faithful PHYSICIAN who forbids it is wiser 
 than any of us."* 
 
 I know it is urged by many, that this distinction of 
 meats was all very well in the country where the com- 
 mand was given, and where the reason was so obvious ; 
 but that it does not hold good in our .captivity, as there 
 are no longer idolaters from whom we are to be 
 severed, and the food is no longer unwholesome not 
 perhaps as unwholesome as in Judea, but still far more 
 so than the food legally permitted ; but one cause for 
 their prohibition remains quite as strongly in force now, 
 as at the time of the ordinance. It is, that we are 
 only allowed to eat of those animals who fed on clean 
 and pure food, such as grain, grass, fruit, etc. Almost 
 all those that were prohibited fed on carrion, and other 
 filth disgusting even to think about. The filthy habits 
 of the swine I need not bring to your notice ; but per- 
 haps you do riot know, that shrimps and prawns, thought 
 by some to be so delicate a food, are literally the 
 scavengers of the ocean, feeding even on the dead 
 bodies of the drowned, and the putrefying and impure 
 carcases of dead fish and other animals. They are the 
 same in the ocean, as the carrion-birds are on the land; 
 and surely our whole nature must revolt at the idea of 
 feeding on such animals, even without the prohibition 
 to that effect. This cause of the distinction between 
 clean and unclean exists in every country and eveYy 
 age; and cannot be waived, as many attempt to do. 
 * Townley's Maimonides, Dissertation x., p. 71.
 
 LETTER XV11I. 245 
 
 The law is still the same ; and obedience to the ordi- 
 nance is therefore as incumbent on us in our captivity, 
 as it was in our own land. 
 
 This is but a brief notice of a very important subject, 
 my dear Annie ; but I wish rather to suggest matters of 
 consideration and thought, and so lead you to examine 
 farther for yourself, than to enter into any lengthy 
 dissertation. If we can find reasons for some prohibi- 
 tions, prove the cause of some animals being forbidden, 
 have we not sufficient reason for calm belief in the wise 
 intent, and certain usefulness, and equal necessity for 
 the remainder, even if some* of them should still seem 
 impossible to be satisfactorily explained? 
 
 In the study of the Law, as in every other point of 
 religion, remember and act upon Sir Humphrey Davy's 
 sublime axiom : "I do not consider the results of 
 reason as capable of being compared with those of 
 faith." In His infinite goodness, our Father has made 
 many things clear to us, even in our present imperfect 
 state has inspired men at various times with sufficient 
 wisdom to guide and instruct the mass, not only as to 
 the necessity of love and obedience, but as to the mean- 
 ing, intent, and usefulness of so many of His ordinances 
 so that if we cannot receive the remainder on trust, we 
 are, indeed, undeserving of His love. As I have often 
 told you, I think it a very mistaken notion to accept 
 any religion without examination. The great drawback 
 to Jewish enlightenment, has been the " being Jews, 
 only because our fathers were ;" that is, following certain 
 rites reading certain portions of the Pentateuch 
 observing certain days, and abstaining from certain 
 customs and certain food, because our fathers have, done
 
 246 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 so from time immemorial : and if any inquiry be made, 
 either briefly answering by a reference, not to God's 
 word, but to custom ; or evading it, by saying that we 
 must not inquire too deeply, or that the subject is too 
 abstruse for youthful or female comprehension.* 
 
 This will never do in an age of inquiry and enlighten- 
 ment like the present. Such replies, from their own 
 Nation, are the very incentives to desertion, and the 
 embracing of a creed which will, at least, attempt 
 religious explanation and instruction suited to the sym- 
 pathies and comprehension of the young. Thank God, 
 there is a reviving spirit abroad amongst us. The 
 fearful state of apathy and indifference, superstition 
 and exclusiveness, is in some degree giving place to 
 active inquiry; and thence proceeding, and so doubly 
 hopeful to earnest and spiritual piety: and, therefore, 
 though there is, indeed, still much to bid the anxious 
 worker despond and draw back from every effort after 
 spiritual good, there is more to hope than has yet been 
 the permitted portion of the Jew. 
 
 * This is no exaggeration, as the author's own experience can 
 testify.
 
 247 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 WE will now examine your next objection, dearest An- 
 nie. " Are not the laws of Moses terribly severe, and 
 do they not, by such a sentence as * Eye for eye, and 
 tooth for tooth,' etc., appear to authorise the accusation, 
 that the Jewish religion is one of fire and blood, and of 
 returning evil for evil; very inferior to the forgiveness of 
 injuries, and general spirit of love and benevolence per- 
 vading the instructions of Jesus." This objection is so 
 constantly brought forward, not merely in speech, but in 
 books often, perhaps, only as a passing sentence but 
 still, with such a determined spirit of belief in its exist- 
 ence, that it really appears barely possible to stem the 
 torrent, and prove its utter falsity ; not from want of 
 evidence, but from the difficulty of being heard, and, by 
 a simple statement of the Truth, of prevailing against 
 the mistaken and encouraged prejudices of centuries. 
 Those who wish to burthen our Law with this charge, 
 generally take the verse, " Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, 
 hand for hand, foot for foot," as a distinct verse, not only 
 unconnected with any that comes before or after it, but 
 as comprising in itself the whole spirit of the Jewish 
 creed. They quite forget, that the same law also most 
 imperatively declared, " THOU SHALT NOT AVENGE; 
 
 THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF;" and 
 
 that in commenting upon " Thou shalt not avenge,"
 
 248 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Solomon directs us, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him 
 bread to eat, and, if he be thirsty, give him water to drink." 
 What more can we need, to evince the spirit of that reli- 
 gion of which the writer was not only a member, but with 
 the very depths of which he was intimately acquainted by 
 the gift of wisdom, derived directly from God himself? 
 
 The two-fold intention of our law will help us here, 
 even as in the subjects already discussed. Long unac- 
 customed to any government but the sway of their own 
 passions ; their spirits crushed under life-long toil; their 
 inclinations constantly leading them to relapse into the 
 evil habits and customs, of the benighted nations amongst 
 whom they had for centuries been thrown ; unable, in 
 the first infancy of revelation to realise those holy aspir- 
 ations and yearnings after God for their own sake, which 
 can only arise in an advanced stage of human nature, 
 except in the actually inspired; it was absolutely neces- 
 sary for the moral and spiritual improvement which the 
 Eternal designed, that the law should contain a perfect 
 code of justice, whose impartial severity should strike 
 the Israelites with sufficient awe, to deter them from any 
 wilful committal of injury against each other, and from 
 sin against the Lord. It is utterly impossible for any 
 unprejudiced person strictly and steadily to examine the 
 law, or to read that excellent article in the Hebrew Re- 
 view, on the "Administration of Justice in the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth,"* without being struck by its perfection 
 of justice, fenced round with mercy, and its perfect apti- 
 tude to the condition of the people at the time that it 
 was given. Ha r l its ordinances been obeyed as they 
 were written, it is my firm belief that sin would not have 
 4 By T. Theodores, Esq.
 
 LETTER XIX. 249 
 
 obtained that fearful ascendancy which the annals of 
 Israel present. 
 
 If you read the twenty-first chapter of Exodus care- 
 fully through, and the nineteenth of Deuteronomy, you 
 will perceive that those often-quoted words, " Eye far 
 eye," etc., allude to, and in fact, continue, a series o* 
 instructions how to chastise wilfully committed injury; 
 instructions, not for private and personal revenge, but as 
 the grave and just award of the law, administered by men 
 appointed for the purpose, and whose cool and dispas- 
 sionate examination of the subject laid before them, 
 rendered it an impossibility for any sentence to be pro- 
 nounced on the offender, unless two witnesses could be 
 found to swear to the committal of the deed, and to the 
 person of the accused, which must have removed even 
 the remotest semblance of private revenge, and have 
 prevented even those perversions of justice too often dis- 
 coverable in modern law. 
 
 Whether or not this "lex talionis" ever were enforced 
 in our history, neither the Scriptures nor the writings of 
 Josephus inform us ; but that it pleased the God of in-- 
 finite wisdom and infinite love to ordain it, is, or ought 
 to be, quite sufficient to convince the true believer, that, 
 at the time the law was revealed, it was necessary for the 
 guidance and protection of man, or it would not have 
 been enforced. The irascible and violent passions of 
 Eastern natures were constantly liable to lead them into 
 the infliction of serious injury, unless checked by the 
 dread of equal suffering for themselves. You must re- 
 member, that it was not then, as now, when men's con- 
 sciences are, in general, sufficiently restrained ; and that 
 even deists, by the influence of the very book they deny> 
 
 M 5
 
 250 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 are guarded from injuring their fellows. It required 
 centuries for the spiritual influences and moral guidance 
 of the Mosaic Revelation, so to impress mankind, that 
 whether he acknowledged them or not, still he followed 
 their ordinances, and would have thought himself dis- 
 graced and dishonoured in his own estimation, if he 
 stooped to the wilful infliction of physical injury even 
 on a foe. 
 
 In the infancy of the Law, and in the East, however, 
 brute force was ever called upon to satisfy hate, or in- 
 dulge passion : and it was against this the law was needed 
 to provide; and no sentence, in that debased state of hu- 
 man nature, was so likely to effect the desired object, as 
 the law of retaliation, enforced with all the solemn state 
 and impartial examination of a public court of justice. 
 
 How, then, can this law be twisted and turned into 
 the encouragement of revenge, and the returning of 
 evil for evil ? Surely, we might just as well say, that in 
 England, when any individual is brought up before a 
 magistrate for an assault upon another, and is either 
 fined or imprisoned according to the degree of the 
 offence, whether it proceeded from previously encouraged 
 hate or malice, or was the mere impulse of passion, that 
 the fine or imprisonment is not justice, but revenge, and 
 contrary to the spirit of the Christian religion, which 
 demands not only forgiveness of injuries, but commands 
 that if a man smite one cheek, the other should be 
 offered, and if a coat be stolen, the cloak is to be given 
 instead of demanding retribution. I do not write this 
 in any disrespect to a religion whose foundation is our 
 own. I am only desirous of proving, that the law of 
 retaliation is no more an encouraging of revenge than
 
 LETTER XIX. 251 
 
 the punishment of an assault in England. The fine 
 and imprisonment would not have been sufficient for 
 the extermination of the sin of social injury, in 
 the infancy of mankind. As human nature advanced) 
 the " lex talionis " would naturally fall into disuse, from 
 the absence of all occasion for the chastisement. No 
 man, with the least spark of morality or religion, would 
 wilfully destroy the eye or tooth, or maim a hand or 
 foot, for the gratification of individual evil desires ; and 
 in the case of an accident, the sentence will not bear at 
 all. If, even for accidental murder, our law provided 
 cities of refuge, where the criminal could live securely 
 sheltered from the natural dislike of the friends of the 
 slain, we may rest perfectly satisfied, that all un- 
 intentional injury, not only passed unpunished, but de- 
 manded from the receiver of the injury that perfect 
 forgiveness, which is implied in the commands, " Thou 
 shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the chil- 
 dren of thy people, but love thy neighbour as thyself." 
 Now we cannot feel the desire to avenge, or to bear a 
 grudge, unless we have received some injury; and there- 
 fore, it is as clear a command to forgive and love as 
 before, as if the word forgive had been specified. So 
 careful are we to abstain from even the remotest feeling 
 of a grudge, that our venerable teachers declare, that, 
 " If we were asked for a loan by a neighbour from whom 
 we may have previously asked, and been refused a similar 
 favour, we are not to say, 'Here take it, I am not like 
 thee, and I will not refuse thee, as thou didst me ;" for 
 it proves that even in granting the loan, we harbour a 
 feeling of resentment, and seek a degree of revenge, in 
 laying our churlish neighbour under an obligation."
 
 252 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 " Man is entirely to dismiss every feeling of ill-will from 
 his heart," the fathers continue, "as the law not only 
 extends to the actual deed, but to the inward sentiment ; 
 and therefore, the mind must be pure, that the actions 
 may proceed from a ivorthy source." 
 
 Are these the sentiments of the exclusive teachers of 
 a law of fire and blood, dearest Annie? O do not do 
 your holy faith such wrong, as to pronounce it such, 
 without deliberate examination, not merely of the law, 
 but of its commentators, the prophets and our ancient 
 teachers. The more you study, the more I am con- 
 vinced you will feel the justice of my assertion, that you 
 might just as well charge the English punishment for 
 assault, with being private revenge, instead of the award 
 of justice, as to accuse the Jewish religion of inculcating 
 evil for evil, because the state of mankind in the infancy 
 of the law, required the u lex talionis " for wilfully com- 
 mitted injury, instead of any other sentence. 
 
 I agree with you, that the sentence of death is very 
 frequently threatened in our law, and for what, judged 
 by present notions, seem very trifling offences, parti- 
 cularly those connected with the eating of the prohibited 
 parts of the sacrifices. But we pronounce it a trifling 
 offence, because we are not generally acquainted with 
 the exact nature of the sin in the sight of God. The 
 punishment of death by man's judgment was not an- 
 nexed to the eating of the forbidden animals, Maimonides 
 tells us ; but excision was denounced against drinking 
 the blood, and eating the fat of the sacrifice ; and the 
 distinction is easily explained. The eating of forbidden 
 food was disobedience, and man was individually account- 
 able for it to his Maker. The partaking of the blood and
 
 LETTER XIX. 253 
 
 fat, etc., was IDOLATRY ; and therefore, the most heinous 
 crime which Israel could commit. The eating the 
 blood, etc., the Omniscient knew was always the proof 
 of a relapse into Idolatry, which instead of being con- 
 fined to individuals extended to numbers, who only 
 needed example for the people generally to resume 
 former practices; and therefore Idolatry was deserv- 
 ing of, and could only be checked by, the chastisement 
 of death. 
 
 But though the low state of the people at the delivery 
 of the Law demanded apparently severe chastisements 
 for sin, no nation so ably, so impartially, and so mer- 
 cifully administered justice. Death was, indeed, more 
 frequently threatened in their code than in any other; 
 but the Jewish commonwealth saw fewer executions than 
 any country, ancient or modern, in the whole world. 
 Mr. Theodores' admirable article on this subject in the 
 Hebrew Review,* ought to be known and read, not only 
 by every Jew, but every individual, whatever his creed, 
 who is under the mistaken supposition, that the Law of 
 the Hebrews is one of fire and blood. 
 
 " Every part of judicial procedure in the Mosaic 
 Law, is founded on three principles: publicity of trial; 
 liberty of defence for the accused; aud security against 
 false testimony. Hence a single witness counts as 
 nothing. Two or three at least were necessary to esta- 
 blish evidence. The witness, on whose declaration a 
 citizen was to be arraigned, must previously be con- 
 ducted before the priests and judges, and there take a 
 solemn oath that his judgment was correct." The 
 magistrates then inquired diligently into the truth of 
 * Hebrew Review, vol. iii. pp. 7 and 21.
 
 254 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the accusation, and if proved to be false, the blow 
 intended for the accused recoiled on the false accuser. 
 The trial was to be held before every member of the 
 community, whence false testimony was every instant 
 in danger of being brought to light by some of the 
 surrounding persons. Each of the contending parties 
 was permitted to nominate his judge; and these two 
 selected a third, " but the slightest motive was valid on 
 the part of the plaintiff or defendant, to put aside the 
 eligibility of the judges; and each had the privilege of 
 rejecting the judge chosen by his opponent, provided 
 he could substantiate his objection with proofs of the 
 existence of relationship, intimacy, or any other con- 
 nection by which the opinion of the judge might be 
 influenced. Nor could two judges hostile to each other 
 be seated on the same tribunal, lest their own enmity 
 might produce wilful opposition in their awards." For 
 the validity of the verdict, of course, a majority was 
 needed; and if two of the three were opposed, and 
 the third declared himself unable, or was unwilling to 
 incur the responsibility of the casting vote, two more 
 magistrates were called in, and, if necessary, two more, 
 until a satisfactory majority could be obtained. Those 
 minor tribunals which belonged to each city, and which 
 were held at the city-gates or public roads, could pro- 
 nounce on the payment of tithes, the estimation of vows, 
 and other subjects of the same kind could administer 
 oaths, impose fines, and inflict corporeal punishment; 
 theft, violation of deposits, and immoral conduct alike 
 falling upder their jurisdiction. 
 
 In addition to these local tribunals, there were the 
 Minor Council of Jerusalem, and the Grand Council of
 
 LETTER X!X. 255 
 
 the kingdom, to each of which the accused might 
 appeal, if dissatisfied with the verdict of his own city 
 a privilege which protected him against the fatal influ- 
 ences that local prejudices so often engender. Another 
 admirable point in Jewish justice consisted in the fact, 
 that though the accused individual was arrested and 
 detained till after his trial, there were no such things as 
 imprisonment in dungeons, secret inquests, or examina- 
 tions by the torture, whose awful inflictions often 
 extorted confessions of guilt from the innocent them- 
 selves. In minor offences, the accused, though appre- 
 hended with all the necessary formalities, was generally 
 brought before the magistrates without any delay. 
 Only in cases of murder the accused had to wait the 
 term of his trial; but his prison was a whole town, and 
 his securities the magistrates themselves. 
 
 Careful as the Hebrews were to obtain impartial 
 judgment in minor offences, their precautions and 
 customs concerning the trying of capital crimes, idolatry 
 and murder, deserve yet warmer commendation. A 
 man's testimony against himself had no validity, unless 
 supported by two other credible witnesses. The case 
 of Achan, as related in Joshua, was an exception per- 
 mitted only from the extreme urgency of the times. 
 Nor was the witness of one alone admitted, even were 
 that witness a prophet. Children under age, bonds- 
 men, men of decidedly evil repute, and all such as were 
 by any infirmity precluded from the free use of their 
 physical and intellectual^, powers, were all disqualified 
 from speaking as witnesses.* " The depositions of all 
 
 * As were also women, the reason of which the author has 
 already dilated upon in her Women of Israel, which will account 
 for the non-mention of it here.
 
 256 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 legal witnesses were taken with the greatest circumspec- 
 tion ; and the least discrepancy in their details obtained 
 a verdict of acquittal for the prisoner; and it greatly 
 invalidated their evidence, if the question, whether they 
 had done all in their power to prevent the alleged 
 crime, were not affirmatively answered. The judges 
 for capital crimes consisted of twenty-three members, 
 " eleven of whom were chosen from various professions, 
 in order to throw light upon subjects wherein, besides 
 a knowledge of the laws, practical experience might be 
 required." " During the sitting of the court, the 
 auditors and candidates present were at liberty to 
 ascend the judgment-seat, and to employ all their 
 eloquence if they intended to speak in favour of the delin- 
 quent ; but no such right was granted them, if condemnation 
 were the motive of their application. At any stage of 
 their proceedings, the prisoner might interrupt the 
 debates and demand attention to his defence ; and he 
 was ever allowed the benefit of a scruple, where a point 
 of law rendered the decision difficult." 
 
 " If the majority of opinions were favourable to the 
 prisoner, he was immediately set at liberty ; but if, 
 by the majority found guilty, the court adjourned until 
 the third day. During the intervening day, the judges 
 were to give their whole attention to the case in 
 question, abstaining from wine, and whatever else 
 might interfere with their serious contemplation. The 
 third day found them re-assembled; but only those 
 elders who had found a verdict of guilty on the day 
 of trial, could change their sentence into an acquittal. 
 The word of mercy once pronounced could never be revoked. . 
 In case of great division among the judges, two addi-
 
 LETTER XIX. 257 
 
 tional elders were consulted, and then two more, till 
 sometimes the number of the council amounted to 
 seventy-one. A majority of one voice was sufficient for 
 the release and acquittal of the accused; but it required 
 more than one to pronounce sentence against him. 
 
 " Even after sentence had passed, and the criminal 
 was carried to the place of execution, every precaution 
 was taken to bring his innocence to light, if, indeed, he 
 really were not guilty. The magistrates did not quit 
 their seats. An usher, with a banner, stood at the en- 
 trance of the place of judgment; another officer followed 
 the prisoner on horseback, and incessantly looked towards 
 the judges. On the first intimation of any light having 
 been thrown on the case of the unfortunate man, the 
 usher waved his 'banner, and the officer instantly took 
 the criminal on horseback with him, and rode hastily 
 back. Even at the prisoner's own request, he might be 
 taken back; and this has happened no less than five 
 times. But if no hope arose, the procession moved 
 slowly onwards, preceded by a herald, who proclaimed 
 to the people, 'This man is led to the place of execution 
 for such a crime. The witnesses who have spoken 
 against him are such ones. If any one can offer any 
 defence for him, let him do it speedily.' But if none 
 appeared, the culprit was exhorted to submit with resig- 
 nation, and to confess his crimes. At a short distance 
 from the place of punishment, a soporific was adminis- 
 tered to him, which had the effect of making him less 
 sensible to the horrors of death. And only then, when 
 every chance of reprieve was impossible, sentence of 
 death was passed in the following words: 'Thou hast 
 caused us trouble, and therefore thy God causes thee
 
 258 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 trouble this day. This day shall tliou suffer, but not in 
 Eternity.'' The criminal was then stretched at full length 
 for lapidation, and the witnesses through whose testi- 
 mony this punishment had been decreed against him, 
 approached with the missile (a formula most likely to 
 prevent false witness, for many who would not regard 
 the swearing falsely, would shrink in horror from them- 
 selves being the instruments of death). Again ; the di- 
 vine sentence, ' I abhor the wicked man who slays the 
 innocent,' resounds in their ears; and human justice de- 
 mands its due." 
 
 Such, dearest Annie, was the admirable system of 
 Jewish courts of justice. You will, perhaps, urge, that 
 this system of the state does not do away with the seve- 
 rity of the actual law ; and may inquire, by what right 
 the Jewish elders used so many precautions before pro- 
 nouncing the sentence of death. I answer, By command 
 of the same Law which ordains the punishment, " If 
 there be found among you, within any of thy gates which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman who hath 
 wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God in 
 transgressing his covenants, and hath gone and served other 
 gods and worshipped them, either the sun or moon, or 
 any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded. 
 And if it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and in- 
 quired diligently, and behold, if it be true, and the thing cer- 
 tain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel, then 
 shall (he sentence of death be pronounced. At the 
 mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that 
 is worthy of death be put to death ; but at the mouth of 
 one witness he shall not be put to death" (Deut. xvii. 
 2 8). And again ; " One witness shall not rise up
 
 LETTER XIX. '259 
 
 against any man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any 
 that he sinneth, at the mouth of two or three witnesses 
 shall the matter be established. If a false witness rise 
 up against any man to testify against him that which is 
 wrong ; then both the men between whom the contro- 
 versy is shall stand before the Lord, before the priest 
 and the judges which shall be in those days; and the 
 judges shall make diliyent inquisition : and behold, if the 
 witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely 
 against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had 
 thought to do unto his brother: so shalt thou put the 
 evil away from among you. And those which remain 
 shall hear and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more 
 any such evil among you. And thine eye shall not pity, 
 but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, 
 hand for hand, foot for foot." 
 
 Is it not unanswerably clear from these verses, 
 that the system of administering justice as recorded 
 in the Mishna, Talmud Babylon, and Yad Hacha- 
 zaka by Maimonides (for it is from these venerable 
 authorities, Mr. Theodores informs us, that he has com- 
 piled the article from which I have so largely quoted), 
 has its foundation and its superstructure alike on the 
 Word of God; and that the verses I have transcribed 
 contain in themselves commands for every precaution 
 which we find the courts of justice always taking; and 
 not only in matters of life and death, but regarding 
 minor wilful assaults and other offences? How then can 
 any one so twist and turn the decrees of the Eternal 
 regarding punishment, into a law of fire and blood, of 
 retaliation and revenge, demanding a milder revelation 
 to do away with it? How can they quote "Eye for eye,"
 
 260 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 etc., as the pervading spirit of a religion, when it was a 
 mere judicial sentence, the award of a wilful injury in- 
 flicted upon another, and even as such, never pronounced 
 without such extremely careful investigation of the mat- 
 ters, such proven witness, not alone of the deed itself, 
 but of the evil intention in the heart of the injurer, that 
 our history does not record, in any of its varied phases, a 
 single instance of this law of retaliation having been 
 enforced? Better, far better, for true justice, did the 
 spirit of Hebrew Jurisdiction (ay even the law of re- 
 taliation, with all its restrictions), pervade modern courts, 
 than the infliction ofjiJies, which permits the rich man to 
 go scatheless, for his crimes of inclination, and crushes 
 the heart, and imprisons the body, of the poor, for crimes 
 of circumstance. And when we remember, that this 
 admirable system of administering justice, dates its 
 origin from the earliest age of Revelation, and the lowest 
 condition of mankind, and compare it with the criminal 
 law of the middle ages; the dungeons and the tortures, 
 whose very mention pales the cheek and turns the heart 
 sick ordeals by fire, water, and single combat the 
 inquisition, and its hideous train of secret spies, false 
 witnesses, pitiless extortioners rack, flame, and cord 
 and remember that these practices were permitted, nay 
 legalised, in countries professing to be guided by a faith 
 whose mildness, equity, and love, held the Mosaic law 
 of retaliation in abhorrence; surely, surely, even the 
 most prejudiced will acknowledge, that mercy and true 
 justice were the attributes of the Hebrew legislature, 
 ages and ages before such words were known to and 
 practised by those professing a milder creed. 
 
 I could quote to you very many more verses in our
 
 LETTER XIX. 261 
 
 law> bearing on this important subject, and proving 
 the care taken to prevent any unrighteousness in judg- 
 ment; that we were rieither to allow pity for the poor, 
 nor regard for the mighty to interfere with the correct 
 course of justice; nor by any means to accept a gift; as, 
 in the first place, the poor could not bestow it; and, 
 in the next, " a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and 
 pervert the words of the righteous." But I fear the 
 subject may already have wearied you : one other point, 
 however, I wish to bring to your notice, and that is, the 
 care taken, that infliction of deserved punishment should 
 not disgrace the Hebrew citizen after its infliction. He 
 may have committed some sin demanding the chastise- 
 ment of stripes, which the law expressly tells us were 
 not to exceed forty, lest thy brother should seem vile unto 
 thce. Compare this merciful restriction with the one, 
 two, and three hundred lashes, inflicted for the merest 
 trifle in the armies and navies of civilised countries, and 
 say which is the more merciful? In obedience to this 
 merciful clause, prohibiting any punishment which would 
 render our brother vile in our sight every man, 
 "immediately after having submitted to the sentence of 
 the court, resumed his position in society, without difference 
 as to rank or birth. Since all laws were applicable to all 
 the citizens, it would sometimes occur, that the highest 
 dignitaries had humiliating punishments inflicted upon 
 them ; but they did not, thereby, forfeit their offices, 
 with the sole exception of the president of the Sanhe- 
 drin, whom such a sentence would move back into the 
 rank of the common senators." 
 
 The intention of Jewish justice was to remove sin, by 
 so chastising as to prevent a recurrence of it in the
 
 262 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 individual sinner ; and in his brother, from the effect of 
 example. But it so united mercy with justice, that it 
 never drove man to desperation, and a continuance in 
 sin, which the modern criminal law, unhappily, but too 
 often does. A young man or a young woman commits 
 some offence, and is sentenced either to hard labour or 
 imprisonment; he or she is thrown back upon society 
 with a character hardened in crime, and a conscience 
 in some degree seared to conviction, the necessary con- 
 sequence of compulsory association with irreclaimably 
 vicious offenders. Still on their release, better thoughts 
 and nobler resolutions may return; and they might still 
 have become innocent and virtuous members of the 
 state, if, directly contrary to the spirit of our law, they 
 had not become vile unto their brother ; that is, had 
 they not lost character and caste, and, refused admission 
 into any respectable society or a share of any innocent 
 employment, been absolutely cast back into the vortex of 
 sin, as their only means of subsistence, their only refuge 
 from despair. 
 
 In the Jewish state, this fearful injustice was effectually 
 prevented, by every man resuming the station he had 
 occupied, and no man daring to cast shame in his teeth, 
 because he had, under strong temptation, been led 
 away to sin. It was in his power to remove even the 
 remembrance of it, by a strictly virtuous life. All men 
 were liable to the same infirmities, the same failings, and 
 so none dared to despise a brother. 
 
 I cannot describe to you the pain it always inflicts on 
 me, when I read or hear those misunderstood and mis- 
 quoted words, " Eye for eye," etc., ever cast in the face 
 of the Hebrew as the pervading spirit of his creed, and
 
 LETTER XIX. 263 
 
 so universally believed, that even some of the most 
 unprejudiced on every other subject, the kindest and 
 mildest-judging, and the actual respecters of the Jews 
 as the first-born of the Lord, have been led to adopt 
 this false idea, and will not regard these words in any 
 other light than as inculcating a spirit of revenge. And 
 we have allowed them to persist in this charge ; when 
 every Hebrew ought so to feel the stigma, as to rise up 
 and prove its falsity, by revealing the real spirit of his 
 Divine Law that Law which was the first to teach 
 love to God and love to man; and such forgiveness, 
 that not even a grudging thought should remain ; and 
 such care for the poor, the fatherless, the widow, and 
 the stranger, as none other ever did ; such a careful and 
 particular investigation into every accusation, that none 
 could suffer innocently; that law so severe in theory, 
 because the state of the people needed it to save them 
 from relapsing into idolatry, but so merciful in practice, 
 " that a tribunal which passed sentence of death once in 
 seven years, may be called ' sanguinary,'" was the remark 
 of one of the fathers; and another rejoined, " It would 
 still deserve that appellation, if it passed such a sentence 
 once in seventy years." O why is not the true, loving, 
 beautiful spirit of our holy law more widely known and 
 disseminated by the talent of its followers? Why will 
 not Hebrews feel as Hebrews, and glory in bringing forth 
 to the light of day the institutions, and the customs, and 
 the spirit of their fathers? Many, indeed, have lately 
 distinguished themselves in the law, and in the fine arts 
 of the English world ; but why will not these gifted 
 spirits do something for Judaism as well as England? 
 There is no need to neglect the interests of the latter,
 
 264 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 in attending to the need of the former. We want 
 Jewish writers, Jewish books. Prejudices never can be 
 removed, till the bright undying ray of knowledge 
 flashes over the world, dispersing the mists of ignorance 
 which centuries of hate and persecution on the one 
 side, and of exclusiveness on the other, have accu- 
 mulated; and this ray, kindled in the immortal light 
 of MIND, must wing its way from north to south, and 
 from east to west, through the silent yet eloquent 
 minister, the press; and then there might be hope of 
 justice for the Jew. There is none now ; and the fault 
 is our own I We make no effort to enlighten our 
 neighbours as to the true spirit of the hope that is in us, 
 though no struggle is too great to obtain a proper posi- 
 tion and estimation in the Christian world. I am 
 writing warmly, bitterly, perhaps you will say, though I 
 hope not : but the subject ever makes my heart beat, 
 and my temples throb, with the vain yearning to per- 
 ceive the true spirit of Hebrew patriotism awakening in 
 our people that they would but feel, it is not enough 
 to make the Jew respected; but to have JUDAISM rightly 
 reverenced : and to do this, there must be JEWISH 
 LITERATURE, or the Jewish people will not advance 
 one step.
 
 263 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 I AM not at all surprised at the contents of your last 
 communication, my dear Annie ; though you do seem 
 to fancy that you ought neither to feel, nor express any 
 remaining doubt, when 1 have explained away so many. 
 That I have done so, I am indeed most thankful ; but 
 the subject you have now brought forward, we have not 
 yet considered ; for, though anxious to do so, I pre- 
 ferred waiting till you should advance it yourself. You 
 tell me, I have, in almost every letter, either directly or 
 indirectly referred to the belief in Immortality as the 
 inseparable essence of our holy faith; but that you can- 
 not satisfy yourself as to whether it really were incul- 
 cated fc by the Mosaic Revelation, and, as such, were a 
 legalised point of our religion ; or whether we_have not 
 imbibed our belief in it from association with those in 
 whose guiding book it is revealed in direct words. That 
 the comfort of such a faith is so indescribable, so abso- 
 lutely needed for a calm acquiescence in the Divine 
 government of the mysteries and miseries of this life, 
 that you cannot understand why the Revelation through 
 Moses should not have given more decided information 
 on this all-important subject; that your mind is some- 
 times in such a painful state of doubt and restless 
 
 N
 
 266 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 enquiry, that you find yourself wondering whether you 
 really have foundation for the belief in Immortality, or 
 are resting on a mere fanciful and imaginary truth de- 
 rived from the superstition of ages. If, indeed, the 
 religion given to Israel through Moses, be Divine as 
 you now find it impossible to doubt that it is, why 
 does it not reveal a future state, and desire us to look to 
 another world for the rewards or punishments awaiting 
 our obedience or disobedience in this. Moses appears 
 to you always to refer to temporal recompence, and 
 immediate chastisement; and you cannot help some- 
 times drawing a comparison between the sentiments of 
 your Christian and Jewish friends. In the one, the 
 thought of and belief in, Immortality seemed so ever 
 present, that even the heaviest bereavements were 
 soothed by the hope, not only of the happiness of those 
 who were gone, but of an everlasting re-union ; and, of 
 course, thus considered, Death lost its deepest horror : 
 that amongst your Jewish acquaintance, it was a subject 
 always shunned, the thought of Immorality so vague 
 and undefined, so little able to console in bereavement, 
 so clothed in fanciful hypothesis, that it seemed to you, 
 that it could have no solid foundation, and really was 
 wanting in our religion : that you had also heard, that 
 the Jews believed in transmigration of souls, and had 
 been referred to a passage in David Levi's prayer books 
 to prove it ; and that in consequence of all this contend- 
 ing and bewildering thought, you were feeling not only 
 restless, but actually unhappy. All which had consoled 
 and satisfied you, appeared to have given place to this 
 one painfully engrossing subject; you could neither 
 think of those you had lost, nor of death, as it related
 
 LETTER XX. 267 
 
 to yourself, without a shuddering dread, which made you 
 long to embrace the faith of the Christians, and rest on 
 their belief in atonement and Immortality, which gave them 
 so much comfort ; but knowing the Jewish faith as you 
 do now, you felt that to embrace another was utterly 
 impossible; you could not forswear your own, feeling so 
 intensely not only its divinity but its perpetuity; and you 
 conclude, by entreating me to tell you how to dispel 
 these doubts, and whether your mind will ever rest again. 
 Yes, dearest Annie, it will rest, as it has never yet 
 rested ; for it will be the rest of satisfied enquiry, not of 
 that state of simple quietude which, in childhood, is our 
 own. All that you have expressed, I have myself ex- 
 perienced; and so, I believe, have all who have thought on 
 the subject at all. The same arguments would bear on 
 the subject of belief in Immortality, as those I have 
 already advanced, regarding religion in general. Child- 
 hood adopts without enquiry the lessons it is taught. 
 The indifferent, even the sceptic, will repeat to young 
 children the promise of future reward for good conduct, 
 and of punishment for evil, and will unconsciously infuse 
 some kind of idea of soul, and Heaven, and Immor- 
 tality ; and on this the mind rests quietly, till youth takes 
 the place of childhood, and the mind, bursting into new 
 intelligence, the conviction of new powers, new sensa- 
 tions, demands more from its parents and teachers, than 
 they are sometimes inclined to give. Or it may be, that 
 youth itself, unconscious of the nature of its own rest- 
 lessness, and thrown with those who think this life all, 
 and pursue pleasure or gain, frivolity or labour alone, 
 banish these enquiries in the turmoil of the world, and 
 become careless and indifferent to the soul's healthful
 
 268 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 peace ; others, again, too timid to express their de- 
 sire for information, satisfied to go on quietly as they 
 have done, refuse to listen to the inward enquirers, till 
 they are so silenced, as to forget they have eVer arisen ; 
 but some dispositions must be answered, and it is be- 
 cause those of their own faith will not answer them, 
 that so many leave their native fold and seek another, 
 where answers will be given. Be assured, that you are 
 feeling what all have experienced, in a greater or less 
 degree, more especially amongst those where liberty of 
 thought is permitted and encouraged a freedom un- 
 happily but too often suppressed amongst the Jews ; 
 resulting, indeed, from the baleful effects of persecution, 
 which prevented all public or even home instruction 
 in our faith ; but inexcusable now, in these blessed 
 lands, where we are not only permitted to dwell in 
 peace and freedom, but even granted the liberty of 
 the press. 
 
 Whence arose my ideas of the bliss of heaven, as so 
 infinitely superior to the joys of earth, that even in my 
 very happiest seasons death was no object of terror, 
 I cannot tell you, except, perhaps, from the favourite 
 book of my childhood, Gessner's Death of Abel ; but 
 I can remember one year especially, when just your 
 age, and my life so happy that every day seemed to 
 strew fresh flowers on my path, repeatedly asking myself, 
 when the silence and solitude of night usurped the 
 place of daily joys, " Were I summoned now, could I 
 die willingly, and leave this world so fraught with 
 beauty, and love, and gladness, and seek another, 
 believing it more lovely still ?" The mental answer 
 was invariably in the affirmative. Every beauty and
 
 LETTER XX. 269 
 
 joy here, in their very intensity, seemed but to shadow 
 forth that which would be hereafter. The same year, I 
 had some conversations on the subject with a young 
 Christian friend, who declared she could never sleep at 
 night, if the thought of death came across her mind, it 
 was a subject so fraught with gloom and horror a feel- 
 ing I could not understand. 
 
 One reason for this happy view of death was, that at 
 the time to which I allude, no thought of inward sin 
 and constant liability to error had ever entered my 
 heart. I had only so far quitted childhood as to be 
 conscious of the intense happiness of existence; and 
 through tracing every joy to a loving Father's hand, 
 every beauty of nature to His creation ; adoring Him, 
 in fact, through His works and gifts, His word was 
 still to me a sealed book. I knew nothing of sorrow or 
 sin, and religion with me seemed but another word for 
 gratitude and love. I had, indeed, no doubts of the 
 divinity and perpetuity of my own faith with which to 
 contend ; for though surrounded by Christians, and my 
 most intimate friends earnest followers of that faith, 
 the instructions and example of a beloved mother had 
 brought the Jewish faith to my heart and mind, and by 
 guiding me to God's word for instruction and comfort 
 under every circumstance, had provided me with an 
 invulnerable shield and support, which, though then 
 unvalued, gave me all I required in my time of need. 
 
 A brief interval this intense capability of enjoyment 
 and its indulgence, from many happy circumstances, 
 lasted. But then came change, and anxiety, and sorrow 
 not heavy trials like yours, but those petty cares, and 
 vexations, and disappointments those yearnings for a
 
 270 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 continuance of the peace and joy I had experienced 
 which might not be fulfilled, that rendered daily life as 
 sad and wearisome as it had been gay. My thoughts 
 naturally became more serious; and I found that in 
 many things, in thought even more than deed, I was 
 constantly tempted from the right path ; that it was not 
 such a very easy thing to love and serve God as I had 
 imagined ; that it required a constant watchfulness over, 
 not only deeds and words, but thoughts and motives, to 
 prevent murmuring and rebellion. Death, which had 
 been such a happy thought in joy, became now a source 
 of dread and gloom ; not that I had ceased to regard it 
 as the gate to bliss ineffable, but that I felt myself so 
 utterly unworthy of such bliss, that to die then I thought 
 would condemn me everlastingly. As if to tempt me 
 from my sole Rock of help and salvation, the belief of 
 the Christian came to ine, as it has come to you, and 
 promised comfort and redemption, if I would but accept 
 and believe in the sacrifice of Jesus. So strong was 
 the temptation, that I often think the sin of apostasy 
 must have been mine, had not the infinite mercy of 
 my God so blessed a mother's instructions, as to lead 
 me to His word for my sole guidance and relief. It 
 was only to my mother I could have ventured to reveal 
 these tormenting doubts and painful feelings; and she 
 was then too ill to administer such relief. I could only 
 go to the Book to which her love had led me ; and there 
 1 found, indeed, all I needed all, not only to re-assure 
 me as to my hope in death, but the foundation of that 
 firm conviction of the sufficiency, the support, the inex- 
 pressible consolation of our holy religion, which I have 
 endeavoured to impart to you throughout our corre-
 
 LETTER XX. 271 
 
 spondence. I saw no need for embracing another faith, 
 when the religion of my fathers gave me not only all I 
 required both for heart and mind, but showed me that 
 if I deserted that, I could not embrace the Christian 
 faith, for all that the Christian's taught of death and 
 immortality was the Hebrew's centuries and centuries 
 before. 
 
 Re-assured with regard to my hope in death, and all 
 that was needed for my salvation and acceptance, I was 
 naturally led to the subject now so painfully engrossing 
 you, Whether, indeed, the belief in immortality owed 
 its origin to the preaching of Jesus and his disciples, or 
 was preached to and acknowledged by the Jews? I 
 never rested till my mind was satisfied on this head. 
 My Bible was my sole authority. At that time, there 
 were actually no Jewish books in English to which I 
 could refer; and from my long residence out of London, 
 I knew no one of my own faith to whom I could appeal. 
 Like yourself, I noticed, that to many the notion of 
 immortality was vague and undefined, and their ideas 
 of Heaven and hell far more according to Milton than 
 the Scriptures. The very charge of transmigration 
 startled me as it has startled you ; but, dearest Annie, 
 God's word did not fail me : it re-assured on this topic 
 as on every other ; and may He grant that I may calm 
 and satisfy your mind, as His word did mine. I took 
 notes of my researches at the time. Since then, more 
 extensive reading, particularly of our own writers, has 
 of course enabled me to enlarge more on the subject 
 than I could have done in a first examination of it. A 
 learned dissertation, indeed, I cannot give you ; my only 
 wish is to help you to think for yourself; and my very
 
 272? THE JEWISH FAITBT. 
 
 first object will be to endeavour to remove from your 
 mind alt idea of transmigration as a part of Judaism. 
 That it may have entered the mind of certain Jews, and 
 that their love of fanciful hypotheses may have induced 
 them to propagate it as a portion of their creed, is not 
 at all unlikely; but such a fact only proves the imper- 
 fection and fallacy of man, and no more interferes with 
 the purity and holiness of Judaism, than the strange and 
 childish superstitions of Romanism have to do with the 
 religion of the true Christian. The idea of transmi- 
 gration formed a portion of the religion of the Persians^ 
 as it may still do ,' and as we know it does, amongst the 
 numerous tribes of India. By them it was transmitted 
 to the captives of Israel-, whom Nebuchadnezzar had 
 carried from Judea and scattered over his vast empire ; 
 imbibed, perhaps, at first unconsciously, but encouraged 
 by the fanciful and visionary, and verses sought for in 
 their holy scriptures and traditions, to give it foundation 
 and authority. The Book of Job, as one in which the 
 manners, customs, and philosophy of the East were very 
 vividly portrayed, was pressed into their service; and 
 yet but one verse alone appears to be quoted in their 
 defence, ." Lo, all these things worketh God with man 
 thrice." 
 
 Now, the word they translate thrice, means often- 
 times ; and when taken in connection with the remainder 
 of the chapter whence it is quoted, instead of favouring 
 the groundless doctrine of transmigration, alludes to the 
 preparation man undergoes, by the mercy of God, for 
 immortality. In answer to Job's bitter ejaculation, " Oh 
 that one would hear me ; behold, my desire is that the 
 Almighty would answer me ; and that mine adversary
 
 LETTER XX. 273 
 
 had written a book !" Elihu, in meekness, yet feeling 
 unable to resist the inspiration of the Lord, offered him- 
 self in God's stead ; and, in a strain of impassioned 
 oratory, almost equal to the prophets, reproves Job for 
 his error in endeavouring to penetrate the ways of the 
 Eternal, and lift the veil His wisdom has cast around 
 His actions displays God's infinite mercy in calling 
 men to repentance by visions and afflictions, that he 
 might deliver his soul from death tells him that " these 
 things worketh God oftentimes with man, to bring 
 back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the 
 light of the living" words as clearly illustrative of im- 
 mortality in the Eastern idiom, as if in English we had 
 written " God dealeth out trial and affliction often- 
 times unto man, to prepare his soul for release from 
 death, and for life everlasting with Him in Heaven." 
 
 The progress of this strange belief amongst the Israel- 
 ite captives of Persia, may, in some degree, be accounted 
 for, by a consideration of their degraded state, as re- 
 corded in Ezra and Nehemiah. The precepts of the 
 Law were almost entirely forgotten, the Sabbath pro- 
 faned, and intermarriages so common, that " the children 
 spoke half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak 
 in the language of the Jews, but according to the lan- 
 guage of each people." Besides these visible evils from 
 their captivity, it was quite as likely they should in- 
 wardly imbibe the peculiar notions of the people amongst 
 whom they dwelt ; but, of course, these could not be so 
 publicly known as to be mentioned by Ezra. On their 
 return to Judea, some of the most daring might have 
 sought to preach the doctrine of metempsychosis or 
 transmigration ; and like other innovators upon their 
 
 N5
 
 274 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 holy faith, obtained followers. Many of the priests and 
 rabbins were exposed to imminent danger ; and some 
 even lost their lives in their endeavours to check the 
 progress of this doctrine amongst the ignorant rabble, 
 pronouncing it to be heathenish and unlawful. This 
 fact, in itself, proves that it formed no part of Judaism. 
 We are told, it existed in the time of Jesus ; and it proves 
 the degraded nature of the religion he came to destroy ; 
 but this is a mere assertion easily disproved. It might 
 have existed then ; but it was, like all the other sins of 
 the people, a consequence of their neglect of the law 
 and the prophets, not a portion of their creed. The 
 Romanists believe in purgatory, arid the efficacy of 
 masses for the dead; but, we do not deny that Christianity 
 revealed Immortality to the nations, because some of its 
 followers choose to encourage visionary ideas concerning 
 it, which Jesus did not teach. Then why should Juda- 
 ism, as a religion, be burdened with the idle and un- 
 founded sophistries of some of its followers; when those 
 sophistries have no foundation whatever in the law of 
 God? 
 
 No Hebrew who believes in that most important item 
 of his religion, the resurrection of the dead, can believe 
 in transmigration. Judaism taught the one, and there- 
 fore must condemn the other. How can the thirty- 
 eighth chapter of Ezekiel, the nineteenth verse of the 
 twenty-sixth chapter of Isaiah, arid the second verse of 
 the twelfth chapter of Daniel, be explained, if the soul can 
 inhabit more than one body ? To which would she 
 attach herself, when the great trumpet shall sound, and 
 the dead awake to judgment? The idea is so perfectly 
 absurd, that I would not have entered upon its consider-
 
 LETTER XX. 275 
 
 ation, had I not feared you would burthen your holy 
 faith with the idle visions of its followers. Much, very 
 much, is charged on Judaism, dearest Annie, which is 
 chargeable on the Jews alone. The one is of God, and 
 written solely in His Word, pure, changeless, incorrupt- 
 ible, and holy as Himself; the other is of man, frail, 
 finite, fraught with error and foolishness, the moment he 
 turns from the Word of God to follow his own devices. 
 That the doctrine may be found in the writings of the 
 Hebrews, is very probable; but it must be found in 
 the Bible to be Judaism : and, as it is not there, as 
 ics admission denies the important article of belief 
 there laid down, the resurrection of the dead, rest 
 assured that it is not, and never was, considered part of 
 our creed. 
 
 You tell me, you have heard it remarked, that, to be 
 perfectly purified, the soul should be tried in every posi- 
 tion of life, and that most probably it is so : and that, 
 though but a casual remark, it annoyed and engrossed 
 you, from its apparent accordance with the idea of trans- 
 migration. As I have proved to you that transmigration 
 is contrary to Judaism, I hope you will be enabled to 
 dismiss it, and believe with me, that any person who 
 seriously entertains such an idea must reject the Bible. 
 If man once begins to reason on the "ways and thoughts" 
 of God according to his own, he must be lost in a laby- 
 rinth of error and groundless speculations, which can 
 never find either rest or satisfaction. Our Law has 
 taught us those spiritual and moral, social and domestic, 
 duties, which will incline towards us the favour of our 
 God. The prophets have enlarged upon this Law, and, 
 reproving our idle adherence to mere outward form 5 and
 
 276 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 neglect of our duties towards both God and man, have 
 reiterated the spiritual feelings, the circumcised heart, 
 which must accompany not only our specified hours of 
 devotion, but our whole lives, to render us acceptable. 
 We find not a word of being tried in every condition of 
 life ; God knows the nature of His creatures, but man 
 knows not his brother. He cannot, even in the common 
 occurrences and daily trials of life, judge his brother's 
 feelings entirely by his own ; and how may he then pre- 
 tend to pronounce on the extent of his inward trials 
 on the workings of his heart the struggles of the good 
 with the evil the internal resistance to temptation 
 the difficulty to become that which God loves, and 
 man approves or on the circumstances which have 
 combined to make him that which man may condemn, 
 but on which God may have such compassion, as to 
 raise him even above those, who, in this life, have had 
 no temptation to be led astray. Where would be that 
 "mercy which God has repeatedly promised shall be 
 for everlasting ; not only on the individuals that fear 
 Him, but " on their children Vchildren unto thousands," if 
 man were doomed to go through three or four lives, and 
 so win salvation ? His final reward would be simple jus- 
 tice, needing no intervention of that love and mercy 
 which God has so largely promised to his children. The 
 belief falls to the ground at once, if tried by the test of 
 the Bible. To those who weave theories for themselves, 
 and prefer the dictates of their own finite imaginings 
 to the words of the Infinite God, nothing can be brought 
 forward ; for the very ground of argument is not the 
 same. But the true believer must reject these fan- 
 ciful ideas, this meting out God's mercy and manner of
 
 LETTER XX. 277 
 
 purifying ; for there is no foundation for them in his 
 Bible. 
 
 That our work is not all done in this life; that there 
 are gradations of rank, in that superior existence to 
 which after death we shall attain ; that we do not pass 
 from this world into the highest nature of God's angels, 
 but, according to the superior and more perfect nature 
 of our future attainments, must still do His will ; that 
 according to the manner of our lives here, judged by the 
 ways and thoughts of God not man, so shall we take our 
 place in His Heaven, and enjoy a greater or less portion 
 of felicity with the perfected capabilities of attaining 
 more, and ascending higher and higher in the scale of 
 immortal beings, till our individuality is merged in In- 
 finitude, I do believe most earnestly and unchangeably. 
 I do not bring it forward save as an individual idea ; 
 because, I know it would be said, that Revelation gives 
 me no foundation for it. But I feel, that Revelation 
 does give me authority for its encouragement in the 
 glorious attributes which it assigns to God, and which, 
 without Revelation, we never could have known. 
 
 We will, however, postpone the consideration of this 
 subject till we are satisfied, not only of the truth of our 
 Immortality, but that it was the very essence of the Jewish 
 faith; running through the Bible from the death of Abel to 
 the last words of Malachi, like a silver thread, so fine 
 and subtle as sometimes to be invisible, but of such 
 importance, that, without it, the whole fabric would snap 
 and fall, and the existence of the Deity, and the destiny 
 of man be plunged into impenetrable darkness and 
 despair the law be useless virtue and vice, mere 
 names and of such continuance and strength, that
 
 278 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 neither the assault of sceptics, nor the workings of time, 
 have had power to destroy it, or even diminish the lustre 
 of its rays, gleaming up so softly and purely, yet so un- 
 failingly, from the pages of the Bible. 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 MY last letter was so much shorter than usual, dearest 
 Annie, that I have no doubt it was unsatisfactory, and 
 therefore, I write again, without waiting to hear from 
 you. The subject we are considering cannot be com- 
 pressed in the limits of one or two letters, I shall 
 therefore, arrange and divide it as appears best suited 
 to the sense, without any regard to the forms of corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 When God breathed into man the breath of life a 
 living soul, which was the likeness of Himself, in which 
 He made man, He endowed him with that instinct of 
 Immortality, which marked him, even in his state of 
 innocence, as the germ of a still higher and more per- 
 fected being. That even if he had not sinned, he was 
 destined to be translated to the nature of the angels, 
 we know by the Scriptural description of the garden 
 of Eden, and the after-reference to the tree of life, 
 when God said, " And now, lest he put forth his hand 
 and take also of the tree of life, and 'eat and live for 
 ever; therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the 
 garden : and he placed at the east of the garden of
 
 LETTER XXI. 279 
 
 Eden, cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned 
 every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." In 
 what way man would have attained that purer being to 
 which he was evidently destined, had he retained his 
 innocence, no one may pronounce ; but that it would 
 have been without the pang and trial of death, no one 
 can deny, without denying the Mosaic record. 
 
 The allusion to the tree of life, I myself believe illus- 
 trative of the ease and delight with which Immortality 
 would have been obtained. That had he continued 
 obedient and faithful ; had he permitted the spiritual to 
 conquer the temptations of the earthly being, God would 
 have permitted the clayey shell to exhale, and the 
 spirit to ascend, with as much ease and pleasure, as 
 man could stretch forth his hand to the tree of life, and 
 pluck of its fruit and eat, leaving behind him a pure 
 race a little lower than the angels, as we are told God 
 had originally created him. But when he had sinned, 
 though the spirit could not die, for it was the breath or 
 emanation of the Eternal, the path of life was as diffi- 
 cult to tread, and Immortality to gain, as if, indeed, 
 the cherubim with flaming swords guarded the gates of 
 Heaven, and turned every way, to keep the way of the 
 tree of life. We cannot now approach the gate of 
 Heaven, save through the fiery portals and the dark 
 passage of death. Often and often humanity proves 
 the truth of those exquisite lines of Cowper 
 
 " The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
 Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown," 
 
 and disease and suffering, the broken heart and stricken 
 frame, the sword, the water, ay, and the fire itself, in
 
 280 
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the thousands and thousands of martyrs' deaths, have all 
 been passed, ere Immortality, or, in the emphatic lan- 
 guage of the Scripture, life is gained. Well then, may 
 the Cherubim's flaming sword turning every way, figure 
 forth the trials and death through which Adam's sin 
 caused man to pass, ere he could take of the tree of life 
 and eat and live for ever. 
 
 From the moment the soul or spirit entered the beau- 
 tiful dwelling, which God's own hand had created for 
 it, I believe man was as conscious of his immortal re- 
 lationship with God, as he was of the power of mental 
 volition and physical movement. It was an instinct of 
 his nature, requiring, in the earliest stage of the world, 
 neither revelation nor reasoning, to bring it to his mind, 
 breathing in his every feeling, every power, and as com- 
 pletely part of himself, as his undying soul. The proof 
 of this natural instinct, I find in the fact, that there is 
 scarcely a country or nation, ancient or modern, (except 
 those in the very lowest stage of barbarism), in which this 
 belief cannot in some degree be traced. I do not even 
 allude to the philosophers of the ancients, Socrates, 
 Aristotle, Plato, Longinus, and many others, whose 
 writings bear the strpngest testimony to their belief in 
 Immortality; but to the nations at large, in whom, how- 
 ever visionary, however unfounded, however varied, still 
 the belief, that this life was not all, pervaded and formed 
 an important item in their respective creeds. That the 
 idea of the future was vague, fanciful, formed perhaps 
 from their national characteristics in this world, matters 
 little. All J uphold is simply, that there is a natural in- 
 stinct in every created being, bidding him look forward 
 far beyond the limits of this life, rendering him restless
 
 LETTER XXI. 281 
 
 and craving, and inspiring him to the performance of 
 those deeds which the laws and customs of his nation 
 or country pronounce praiseworthy. The Greeks and 
 Romans believed their heroes and martyrs became gods 
 the Norwegians, and many of the Hunnish tribes, assigned 
 to their warriors distinguished honours in the Hall of 
 Odin. The Indians of America place food and wine in 
 the coffin, and sometimes sacrifice a horse and slaves at 
 the funeral of a chief, to supply him with provision and 
 attendants, according to his rank, and his long journey 
 to an unknown land. If we were to review all the other 
 nations, we should find similar superstitions; and all 
 illustrative of the same fact the instinct of our Im- 
 mortality. There are said to be individuals, who declare 
 they have never felt it, and assert themselves to be so per- 
 fectly satisfied with this life, as neither to care for nor 
 believe in another. It may be so: but such will not 
 alter or remove a general truth. There are many who 
 so pertinaciously cling to one pursuit, or one object, as 
 to be utterly lost to the finer and purer feelings, and 
 pleasures of our nature, and are utterly astonished, that 
 enjoyment can be obtained from such a simple thing, 
 as the sight of a beautiful country, a fine picture, or a 
 piece of sculpture, the hearing of thrilling music, or 
 eloquent poetry; but that their capabilities for such 
 enjoyments are so deadened, that it would seem as if 
 they had never existed, will not convince others of the 
 non-existence of such feelings, but simply prove in- 
 dividual disuse of them. 
 
 Granting, then, that the testimony of all mankind, 
 ancient and modern, savage and civilised, tends to prove 
 that there is an instinct of immortality within us need-
 
 282 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 ing, indeed, Revelation to give us Divine assurance of its 
 truth, and the test of reason for those sceptics who do not 
 think faith in God's word sufficient, and demand proof 
 from investigation and analogy; it follows, that this 
 instinct must have been still stronger when man was in 
 direct commune with his God, than it could be, when 
 his sins had cast a barrier between his soul and his 
 Maker, and he was led farther and farther from Him in 
 the pursuit of his own fanciful and presumptuous devices. 
 It is urged, that in the Mosaic revelation, nay, that 
 throughout the Old Testament, there is no mention of 
 Immortality in direct words; and, therefore, we have no 
 ground for receiving it as an article of belief ; and yet 
 the very persons who urge this, acknowledge, that all 
 those Hebrews who were beloved of God, believed in it, 
 taught it, and had divine revelation, individually, for the 
 grounds of their belief. Now this is very like contra- 
 diction. There is no more mention of this solemn 
 truth being directly revealed to Abraham, Moses, David, 
 etc., than to the mass of the people. It was the privi- 
 lege, the heritage of the latter, equally with the former. 
 It was not made an article of creed, or a specified part of 
 revelation, because its instinct was already so strong in 
 the descendants of Seth, that it was as inseparable from 
 them, as the necessity of prayer, and the ordinance of the 
 sacrifice ; neither of which, in the early stages of hu- 
 manity, was either taught or commanded : prayer, in fact, 
 we never find commanded, either throughout Genesis, 
 or in the Law, because it was part of man's nature the 
 natural vent for the aspirations of the soul, by which 
 alone man can commune with God. No one with the 
 exquisite specimens of supplication which the Old
 
 LETTER XXI. 283 
 
 Testament presents, before him, can refuse to the 
 Hebrews either the privilege or the practice, or belief in 
 the efficacy of prayer ; and prayer, in all its varied 
 phases, invocation, intercession, self-abnegation, en- 
 treaty; and yet to bring up our petitions before God 
 was not commanded in the Jewish dispensation, as in the 
 Christian was not taught indirect words, because it was 
 already, and had been, from the time of Seth, the vital 
 breath of those individuals from whom God's chosen 
 race descended, and was by them, of course, transmitted 
 to their sons and immediate followers. The Law gave 
 opportunity, and appointed days and certain places for 
 the public exercise of this spiritual instinct; but its secret 
 and individual practice, it did not even mention ; so 
 completely was it already part of the worship of the 
 nation. We have specimens of it from the king to the 
 private female, from the law-giver to the captive, from 
 Noah and Abraham to Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah; 
 besides instances innumerable in the Psalms and Pro- 
 phets : and who then can say, because there is no direct 
 command to pray in the Old Testament, that it formed 
 no part of the Jewish dispensation? 
 
 In the New Testament, we find the exercise enjoined 
 ?n direct words, "pray always," " pray evermore," "pray 
 without ceasing." Too long petitions were justly rebuked 
 and a model given, but why was this? Because the 
 nations to whom Christianity was preached, as prepara- 
 tory to a knowledge of the God of Israel, were sunk in 
 ignorance and Heathenism. Many worshipped idols 
 and all, the devices of their own hearts. The divine 
 instincts of the undying nature and imperative desires of 
 the soul, had long been either lost in, or blended with, 
 such darkly erroneous notions, that they absolutely
 
 284 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 needed clear brief emphatic words to enforce them ; and 
 this is the reason why we find the duty of prayer com- 
 manded in the New Testament, and not in the Old, 
 which was intended only for the instruction of the 
 Jews. 
 
 Sacrifice is another strong proof of these spiritual 
 instincts, as we find it offered and accepted, ages before it 
 was made a national ordinance. Abel, Noah, and all 
 the patriarchs, offered sacrifices, and built altars, without 
 any command so to do. God, indeed, told Abraham, 
 when the patriarch asked how he should know that he 
 should inherit the land, "to take an heifer and a she- 
 goat and a ram, all of three years old, and a turtle dove 
 and a young pigeon," for an offering; but this very 
 direction proves the previous existence and practice of 
 such a rite in the family of Seth, or we should find, the 
 method and order of the sacrifice as clearly specified to 
 Abraham, as it was afterwards in the Law, when the long 
 residence of Israel in Egypt had deadened that natural 
 prompting of devotion, or amalgamated it with the 
 something similar but idolatrous rites, which were 
 abominations in the sight of God. How could Abel and 
 Noah have known that sacrifices were acceptable if 
 offered in proper spirit, as a visible acknowledgment of 
 the Divine supremacy, hid there not been some instinct 
 within, prompting the rite? It may be urged, that 
 though the Mosaic record does not mention it, there may 
 have been a revelation of God's will to that effect, as it is 
 said there was against murder and adultery, and com- 
 manding the obedience of the Sabbath.* But whether 
 there really were this unrecorded revelation, or that 
 
 * And, therefore, there may equally have been a revelation of 
 Immortality.
 
 LETTER XXI. 285 
 
 prayer, sacrifice, and observance of the Sabbath, pro- 
 ceeded from those divine instincts which God in His 
 wisdom implanted in man, directly He endowed him 
 with a living soul the fact, that prayer was the vital 
 breath of God's elect, and an essential part of the Jewish 
 dispensation, though we can never once find it actually 
 commanded^ and that sacrifice was offered and accepted ages 
 before it became an ordinance, remains the same, and 
 bears with equal force and clearness on our own asser- 
 tion, that equally with the necessity of prayer, so the 
 BELIEF OF IMMORTALITY, was the very essence of the 
 Jewish Faith and that without it, the Law itself would 
 neither have been given nor obeyed. If we separate this 
 Divine and glorious instinct of the soul from the Old 
 Testament we are at once lost in utter darkness. 
 The Creator is not what He revealed Himself a 
 Being of such infinite love, that neither heaven nor 
 earth can contain it; of such forbearing mercy, that sin 
 itself is forgiven through sincere repentance ; of such 
 perfect justice, that He has given tests of obedience and 
 service, according to the capabilities of His most frail 
 children, not according to His own. He is none of 
 these, if we aver that to the Old Testament Immortality 
 is unknown, but His very word is false. Those who 
 deny to the Jews this glorious belief, know not what they 
 do, nor the fearful charge they bring upon their God. 
 Adopted without examination, ignorance and prejudice 
 so fold round it, as to. believe it indisputable truth, 
 whereas they might well pause and shudder to find, that 
 by its encouragement they actually disbelieve and deny 
 the attributes which the Eternal proclaimed as His own, 
 when he passed before Moses ; and must look upon the
 
 286 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Old Testament as a revelation of injustice, tyranny, and 
 wrath, instead of the love, truth, and justice, compassion 
 and forbearance which, read by the light of belief in 
 Immortality, it is. 
 
 This is a strong assertion, you will say; but, indeed, 
 it is a true one. We must doubt, nay, disbelieve, in 
 God himself, if we disbelieve in Immortality as the 
 vital breath of Judaism. There can be no intermediate 
 path. The Law was given; visible revelation vouch- 
 safed, and prophets granted to a people in whom the 
 instinct of immortality had never been utterly extinct, 
 however choked up in the mass by temporal misery and 
 spiritual darkness. We //now that it was the essence of 
 the Old Testament, exactly as ice know that prayer was 
 an offering acceptable to God, and resorted to by all 
 ranks and conditions of men, not only because we are 
 told so in direct words, but because we read the petition 
 and the reply ; and we cannot read the words of Moses, 
 David, Solomon, and the prophets, without perceiving, 
 unless wilfully blind, that their belief in Immortality was 
 as strong as their belief in, and practical illustration of, 
 the efficacy of prayer. Prayer was not commanded, 
 yet they prayed ; sacrifices were not enjoined before the 
 Law, yet they were offered; and we may just as well 
 deny these facts, though the whole Bible proves them, 
 as to say, because Immortality was not revealed in direct 
 words, it formed no part of the Jewish dispensation. 
 We must never forget, in considering this important 
 subject, that from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abra- 
 ham, and from Abraham to Moses, even in the awful 
 night of Egyptian bondage, the witnesses of the Eternal, 
 and retainers of those instincts and casual revelations
 
 LETTER XXI. 287 
 
 which, till the Law was publicly given, could alone have 
 been their moral and spiritual guides, never failed. 
 God preserved an unbroken line of His people, even in 
 the midst of the corruption and insincerity which devas- 
 tated the whole earth. Compared with the vast multi- 
 tude of the voluntarily sinful, and those who were com- 
 paratively innocent, from actual ignorance, the line of 
 faithful witnesses was indeed but a spider's thread gleam- 
 ing, in its delicate yet visible texture, through a dense 
 and widely-extended pall : but still it was there, and it 
 was to these the Law was given, not to men to whom the 
 God of Israel, and the instincts He had given, were un- 
 known. If the Jewish dispensation had been intended 
 for the darkened multitude, the command to pray to 
 God alone, and the revelation of a future life, would 
 have been given as clearly as we find it in the New Tes- 
 tament. Like the benighted nations to whom the Apos- 
 tles preached, they must have been taught from the very 
 beginning. But the descendants of Seth were prepared 
 by the revelations and instincts already vouchsafed. 
 The groundwork of belief in Immortality, the necessity 
 and efficacy of prayer, and acceptance of sacrifices, was 
 already there, and on this groundwork the superstructure 
 of the Law, and its explanations by the prophets, was 
 raised; and, admitting such groundwork, we cannot 
 acknowledge the superstructure to be imperfect and in- 
 incomplete: we dare not do so; for if we do, we deny the 
 truth and perfection of our God. 
 
 The sacrifice offered by Cain and Abel in the fourth 
 chapter of Genesis, the acceptance of the one and rejec- 
 tion of the other, prove undeniably that there must 
 either have been a direct revelation from the Lord,
 
 288 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 ordaining not only the sacrifice, but the spirit in which 
 it was to be offered ; for it was not the nature of the 
 offering, but the secret sinfulness of Cain, which caused 
 his to be rejected, as is proved by the Eternal's' rep roof; 
 or that He had given with the immortal soul the instinct 
 of worship and spiritual love. The accepted sacrifice of 
 Abel proves this ; and his death was the actual revela- 
 tion, or the visible confirmation of the instinct of our 
 Immortality. The knowledge of good and evil, right 
 and wrong, had been indeed dearly purchased by Adam 
 and Eve, but that very knowledge must now have 
 brought comfort in the midst of agony. They knew, 
 and had known from their birth, that one son was 
 righteous and the other sinful. God himself had marked 
 that it was so, by the acceptance of Abel's offering, and 
 His reproof of Cain. And yet the righteous died and 
 the guilty was doomed to drag on life, a fugitive and a 
 wanderer, through weary years. What must this have 
 taught? Death, the threatened punishment, the invi- 
 sible terror, the inevitable doom of Adam's heritage, 
 had been upon the earth, and snatched away the only 
 righteous, and the guilty lived. If death were annihila- 
 tion, what was Abel's reward? What incentive had 
 Adam to bring up his children for the good, not the 
 evil ? But to Adam and to us that first death was the 
 visible, the palpable, revelation of Immortality. No 
 word was needed to confirm the instinct which God 
 himself had planted, as inseparable from the immortal 
 soul. And did the Bible give us no other proof, allude to 
 the subject by neither word nor record again, the death 
 of the only righteous whom the earth had seen, is enough 
 for the believer to rest, heart and mind, in thankfulness
 
 LETTER XXI. 289 
 
 and peace. But it is not the only record. It is but the 
 commencement of that silver thread to which I have 
 before alluded, as running through the Bible, holding 
 its varied web together, and in its very Jirst event after 
 man's fall, illustrating, with thrilling truth, the words of 
 the last prophet through whom the Lord declared that 
 those who loved and served Him should be His on that 
 day, and in that world where He made up His jewels, 
 and when the difference between the wicked and the 
 righteous alone should be discerned. And in the sen- 
 tence passed on Cain, illustrating with equal force the 
 words in which Ezekiel alludes to eternal life, and the 
 time granted to the sinner for repentance "For I have 
 no pleasure in the death of the wicked, saith the Lord, 
 but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and 
 live." Are not then both these verses, though written 
 ages and ages afterwards, powerfully exemplified in the 
 very first Biblical record after the fall ? Abel was 
 righteous ; and therefore, though it entered not the Divine 
 economy so to interfere with man's free-will as superna- 
 turally to shield him from the fury of his brother, a 
 home was prepared for him in heaven, where he shone 
 as " one of the jewels of the Lord." Cain was sinful, 
 and therefore he could not die till his sin was repented of 
 and atoned, and so the everlasting chastisement which 
 must have been his had he been taken from earth at the 
 hour of his crime, was averted. God had no pleasure in 
 his death, but gave him time that he might turn from 
 his wickedness and live for ever for such is the 
 meaning of the prophet. 
 
 Where illustration and doctrine so exactly agree, 
 though at opposite ends of the same Holy Book, and 
 
 o
 
 290 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 written at widely severed epochs, to my mind it seems 
 scarcely possible to doubt further. In the early stages 
 of the world, man was taught yet more by illustration 
 than by precept. The instinct of immortality placed 
 within Adam, received undoubted confirmation from the 
 events of his own family. He was taught that, though 
 death in its actual physical agony, and in the fearful 
 mental suffering of the bereaved, was in very truth the 
 chastisement for sin which the Lord had decreed, it was 
 yet to the righteous an entrance into life eternal ; that 
 death was the cherubim's flaming sword, but that passed, 
 the tree of life was gained, and man could live for ever; 
 and that lengthened life on earth, might be the portion 
 of the sinner, enduring such trial and temptation as to 
 purify for Heaven, as was the destiny of Cain, whose 
 very sentence proved Immortality as clearly, as his 
 brother's permitted death. From Adam, this conviction 
 passed to Seth ; and from Seth downwards to the chosen 
 repositors of God's Almighty will ; and this, in some 
 measure, prepared them to understand spiritually as well 
 as temporally the promised rewards, and threatened 
 punishments of the revelation on Mount Sinai.
 
 LETTER XXII. 291 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 No, dearest Annie ; the charge so often brought against 
 Moses, that in his ministry and the books revealing it, 
 we can find no mention of Immortality, is not a true one. 
 To the believer, convinced that man was aware of his 
 immortal nature from the period of his creation, and 
 still more from the first event recorded in his family, the 
 Law, especially Deuteronomy, speaks in the clearest 
 terms, of that life and death which are eternal. To 
 those who take up the books of the law alone, and read 
 it as entirely a detached thing, unconnected with either 
 Genesis or the Prophets, its ordinances are all temporal, 
 and its commands and prohibitions merely local and of 
 definite duration. Taking the mere letter, to the utter 
 exclusion of the spirit, the charge may seem correct. 
 To the Hebrew, however, it cannot. He ceases to be a 
 Hebrew, the moment he disbelieves in Immortality as 
 the essence of his creed. Had we no writings left us 
 in which the inner part of the actors of the Bible, men 
 living under the law, and obeying its every precept or 
 suffering the penalty of its disobedience, were displayed; 
 we might, indeed, be accused of making an assertion 
 which we cannot prove. But with the words of Moses 
 in his individual supplication before God of David in
 
 292 
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 his rich treasury of Psalms of Solomon in his Proverbs 
 and Ecclesiastes of all the Prophets of the writers 
 of the Apocrypha of our ancient Fathers from the 
 Babylonish captivity through every age all of whom 
 knew and acknowledged no faith but Judaism, no law 
 but that of Mount Sinai, no revelation, but that which 
 their ancestors beheld we know that Immortality must 
 have been preached, taught, and believed, or how could 
 it have formed, as it does, the essence of their writings, 
 the reflection of their inward thoughts and aspirations? 
 A Jew could not write of Theology, unless Immortality 
 was its ground-work. The extracts of our metaphysical 
 writers in the " Hebrew Review," will prove this con- 
 vincingly; and whence could this firm belief have sprung, 
 except from their own faith? 
 
 There are many causes which account for the apparent 
 omission of the inculcation of immortality, as an article 
 of belief, and an incentive of action, in the laws of Moses. 
 Li the first place, the very selection of the people and 
 bestowal of a guiding law pre-supposes another state of 
 more perfect being : else, why the great care to become 
 purified and righteous, and capable of realising those 
 higher feelings, and nobler pleasures which earth could 
 neither satisfy nor give ? As a nation, the judgments of 
 God were often permitted to be visible ; with respect to 
 individuals, this never was, or could be. The social 
 state, and gregarious nature of man, would entirely pre- 
 vent a realisation, while below, of that happiness which 
 God promised as the reward of the righteous. How- 
 ever, bearing in his own breast the elements of bliss and 
 peace, springing from a conscience perfectly at rest, 
 the infirmities and faults, the suffering and trials of those
 
 LETTER XXII. 293 
 
 around him, especially in any near or dear connection, 
 the liability to all the petty, but not less engrossing 
 sorrows of social and domestic life, must prevent all 
 perfect joy. To have realised on earth, the promised 
 reward of worth and virtue, man must hav-e been con- 
 stituted differently, and have possessed in himself and 
 for himself, the capabilities not only of feeling, but of 
 acting. Each individual must have been created to 
 be his own world, distinct and apart, needing neither 
 domestic ties, nor social help, and, if right within, utterly 
 incapable of suffering from without. Could we have 
 imagined such a being, we might also have imagined 
 that this life would have been sufficient, and that worth 
 would have brought its own isolated individual happiness, 
 and sin its equally isolated misery. But man was not 
 thus created ; and therefore, liable as he is, to all the 
 deeper suffering and intenser joy of a social and grega- 
 rious being, there must be something beyond this life, 
 to which alone he can look for that individual happiness 
 of which God's law, assures him as the effect of virtue 
 and obedience. As a social being, he cannot divide 
 himself from his fellows ; and their influence on outward 
 circumstances, or inward feelings, may make the most 
 truly righteous so sorrow-stricken, that only his own 
 integrity and trust will give him strength to struggle on ; 
 and enable him never to quit the path of light : and 
 the same social influences may so surround the wicked, 
 with enjoyment, luxury, and ease, that not till the awful 
 hour of death, except in the occasions of torturing remorse 
 of his own mind, would he wake to the conscious- 
 ness of sin, and all the horror of a too late desire to 
 atone.
 
 294 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 That man has free will, no one can deny (however, the 
 believer must feel, that God, in His inscrutable wisdom 
 and infinite mercy, over-rules it to the furtherance of 
 His own Divine economy); and therefore, this earth 
 must be, even to the individually righteous, a scene of 
 probation and trial, zvkich, if that were all, needed neither 
 the restrictions of religion nor the acknowledgment of 
 God. Happiness or misery springs from the effects of 
 man's free will; not the free will of the sufferer, but of 
 those connected with him, either in his domestic or 
 social state. To mark the good for undisturbed happi- 
 ness below, would interfere with that free will, and so 
 disturb the order of earthly things, and the supreme 
 government of the Eternal ; yet, if there were no other 
 state of being, this visible distinction on earth must be, 
 or God's word would be false ; and there would be no 
 distinction between vice and virtue. What was the use 
 of a guiding law, obedience to which was to purify 
 and bring reward ; and disobedience to which was to 
 compel chastisement; if this life were all, man's social 
 nature were to remain the same, exposing him to suffer- 
 ing and misery from the imperfection of others, not his 
 own. If we were created, but to live out a brief space 
 of joy or woe, vice or virtue, ease or sorrow, and be 
 annihilated, what would distinguish us from the brutes 
 of the field, whose birth and death are the same? Why 
 should we be burdened with restrictions and ceremonies, 
 ay 5 and an ever-speaking conscience, if we were born but 
 to die? What can it signify how we act, when between 
 the wicked and the virtuous there is no visible distinction, 
 and the former's span of life is often both longer and
 
 LETTER XXII. 295 
 
 happier than the latter. It is folly, almost blasphemy, 
 to pursue the argument further. 
 
 . God granted His Law as a preparation for our immortal 
 being. To help us to distinguish between those things 
 which were acceptable to Him, and those that were not; 
 to enable us to attain a higher and more spiritual exist- 
 ence even here, and so awaken us to those more etherial 
 and subtle aspirations, influences, and capabilities of the 
 soul, mind, and heart, which grosser natures know not, 
 and mere animal education never can produce; and, 
 by constant communing with, and reference to, the 
 INVISIBLE, but all-emanating, all-governing Spirit of 
 the Universe, who had, in thrilling attributes, proclaimed 
 Himself their God and Father, they not only were^ 
 enabled to realise, but to keep alive the consciousness 
 of their immortal soul which that God had breathed 
 into them, by which to know and worship Him; in con- 
 tradistinction to the influences of a more earthly nature, 
 which, had they possessed alone,, would have made them 
 in every respect, save that of actual frame, like unto 
 the brutes of the field, endowed with certain instincts 
 that prompt them to seek and find the largest portion of 
 present enjoyment, and so utterly unconscious of right 
 or wrong, as to need no instinct as to the which to 
 choose. 
 
 That man was an immortal being Moses had., no need 
 to teach ; for, like the necessity of prayer, it was already 
 known to all the descendants of Seth ; but to make it an 
 article so imperative that salvation depended on its 
 acceptance to hold forth its pure but, save to a favoured 
 few, almost inconceivable rest and felicity, the sole
 
 296 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 incentive to obedience in the vast mass of unenlightened, 
 persecuted men, who went forth out of Egypt, would 
 have argued an entire ignorance of human nature, incom- 
 patible with either the wisdom, or the mercy, or the 
 justice of Him, who, in making the slaves of Egypt a 
 holy people, sought but their happiness, and, through 
 them, the happiness of the whole world. 
 
 Nor is there any contradiction in this assertion. There 
 are very few, if any, it does not signify of what denomi- 
 nation, who disbelieve in a future state of existence, 
 however the belief rnay be coloured by their own ima- 
 ginings; but how very few are there who can place this 
 belief always before them, and act upon it as their incen- 
 .tive for action, their soother in earth's trials, and as the 
 motive for universal charity and forbearance, because, 
 in their immortal souls, all men are brethren. Indi- 
 viduals, indeed, there are, and perhaps as many known 
 to God as the " seven thousand," who in Israel's greatest 
 corruption had never " bowed the knee to Baal ;" but I 
 arn alluding to the mass amongst the nations. Christi- 
 anity has, indeed, taught immortality, and in direct 
 words; but do we, can we, trace the belief as inciting and 
 influencing the multitudes, though the creed itself is there. 
 And if a belief so purely spiritual cannot, even in these 
 days of enlightenment and superior wisdom, be said to 
 incite and influence the mass (though they believe), 
 how could we expect it in the oppressed and suffering 
 Israelites in the time of Moses ? Groaning under their 
 brutal bondage, so overwhelmed with work that the 
 body had no rest in which the mind might breathe, 
 and struggle to throw off the shackles of its animal 
 sufferings ; lowered and debased, till they could almost
 
 LETTER XXII. 297 
 
 forget that they were men, who, but misguided enthu- 
 siasts, could imagine that a Revelation of immortality 
 could have been required and welcomed as an incite- 
 ment to obedience and worship, as those more tangible 
 promises of rest and peace in a country of their own, 
 which a merciful God held forth? Could we ask the 
 hundreds and hundreds of unhappy victims to the fear- 
 ful system of overwork in London, which thought should 
 bring the greatest comfort the hope of heaven or the 
 body's needed rest the mind's recreation and the 
 heart's enjoyment ? Can any one doubt what the answer 
 would be ; ay, and they would still be Christians, still 
 believers in immortality. And their Father in heaven 
 would not judge of them .harshly as the enthusiasts of- 
 earth, for He knows our nature, and that while on 
 earth, we need earth's joys. 
 
 That the multitudes, then, at the Exodus from Egypt, 
 needed, and were governed more by temporal than by 
 spiritual promises, is no proof that they did not believe 
 in a future state. God, in His mercy, inspired Moses 
 so to lead and threaten, as would most easily impress 
 their lowered nature. If miracles performed before 
 their very eyes, the awful revelation of Sinai itself, were 
 yet insufficient to keep them believing and obedient, 
 so simply spiritual a doctrine as that of heavenly reward 
 must have been meaningless and vain ; and our Father 
 never demands more from His creatures than He 
 knows they can bestow. The Law was to purify and 
 spiritualise them ; and by the deepening and encourag- 
 ing of the soul's inward breathing, gradually to give such 
 scope and life to its impulses, as to need no divine 
 Revelation of its nature and destiny, for every indi- 
 
 o 5
 
 298 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 vidual possessed it in himself. We know this is the 
 case, by the clearer and clearer views obtained and 
 written on this subject, as man's nature advanced and 
 his intellect matured. Had there been any new Revela- 
 tion vouchsafed to David, Solomon, and the Prophets, 
 we might have denied that there was any reference" to 
 immortality in the Law : But such was not the case- 
 In the writings of these holy men, we see the essence of 
 the creed they professed, brought forward even the more 
 forcibly from their prophetic knowledge, that the day 
 was advancing when the unhappy people would have no 
 earthly resting nor earthly comfort, and their only hope 
 and incentive for adherence to their Law, rest in their 
 firm, unchanging, enduring, and death-defying belief in 
 immortality, a belief which their whole after history 
 proves. 
 
 Do not, then, be startled and pained, dearest Annie, 
 at the accusation so often brought against our Holy Law 
 and divinely inspired Lawgiver. That God did not 
 command faith in so purely spiritual a belief, as after- 
 reward and punishment, as necessary to the acceptance 
 of the people's prayers and service, only proves the in- 
 finitude of His mercy ; not the imperfection of His law. 
 But to say, that Moses never alluded to this sublime and 
 ever existent doctrine, is an utterly mistaken charge. 
 In his very prayer before God, when the people had 
 sinned in the matter of the golden calf, we find these 
 words ; " Ye have sinned a great sin ; and now I will go 
 up unto the Lord; peradventure I shall make an 
 atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the 
 Lord, and said Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, 
 and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou
 
 LETTER XXII. 299 
 
 wilt forgive their sin Ifnot, blot me, I pray thee, out of 
 the book ichich thou hast written. And the Lord said 
 unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, hinvwill 
 I blot out of my book." 
 
 Now the prayer and the reply must have been reported 
 to the multitudes or they would have thought their 
 leader had deceived them, and not attempted to make 
 atonement for them. And both the prayer and the reply- 
 must have been incomprehensible, had they not already 
 known and believed, in that futurity to which Malachi 
 alludes in almost exactly the same words as Moses, 
 though ages had elapsed between them. " And the 
 Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance 
 was written before Him, for them that feared the Lord, 
 and that thought upon his name." Would it not be very 
 remarkable, that Moses and Malachi, the FIRST and the 
 LAST prophets of Israel, should so exactly agree, were not 
 the writings of both divine, and that which was taught 
 by the last, also taught by the first? We can find no 
 record of Moses having been told of the existence of 
 this book; and yet he made the being blotted from it, 
 and so losing his individual immortality as an atonement 
 for the people (an instance of self-sacrifice, with which 
 no other history, sacred or profane, can compete). 
 Therefore that there is no revelation in exact words of 
 a future state, is no proof that the people did not both 
 know and believe in it ; while their being satisfied that 
 Moses did offer to atone for them, though the atonement 
 was refused from God's perfect justice, is equally con- 
 vincing that the book of remembrance, to which he re- 
 ferred, was also known to them. 
 
 Again, we find in the exclamation of Balaam " Who
 
 300 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the 
 fourth part of Israel ? Let me die the death of the 
 righteous, and let my last end be like his," a con- 
 firmation of the same fact. There never was any such 
 visible distinction between the physical death of the 
 righteous and the wicked, as could call for this ex- 
 clamatory prayer from the prophet. He looked beyond, 
 Heathen as he was by race and birth, God had singled 
 him out to proclaim to the people the glorious destiny 
 of Israel ; and he could of course perceive that which 
 was the heritage of Judah, the light of immortality, so 
 gleaming through the dark shadows of natural death, 
 that he concluded his prophecy by the imploring adjura- 
 tion, "Let my last end be like his!" If death were 
 supposed to be annihilation, what could it signify, 
 whether it were that of the Heathen or the Israelite? 
 Both were liable to the same suffering, the same pain ; 
 but the one had but a faint instinct of another life, which 
 the terrors of death might choke : the other had its con- 
 firmed realisation, brightening more and more, as the 
 dark portals neared : and this Balaam knew, or we should 
 not find that earnest prayer, unconnected as it is with 
 his prophecy either before or after. It was, as if so over- 
 powered by the glorious destiny revealed of Israel, even 
 in his death, that the petition, " Let me die the death 
 of the righteous, and let my last end be like his," could 
 not be restrained; and its utterance marked at once his 
 realisation of the immortality promised them. 
 
 The very difference in the sentence awarded to certain 
 crimes, marks the fact, that a future state was already 
 known. Those crimes that did violence to man ; inter- 
 fered with the civil law, and so disturbed the peace and
 
 LETTER XXII. 301 
 
 harmony of the state, Moses invariably threatens to 
 punish with death as inflicted by the civil statutes. To 
 instance one verse among very many, " He that stealeth 
 a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, 
 shall surely be put to death. And he that curseth his 
 father or his mother shall surely be put to death." These 
 were, so to speak, palpable crimes, liable to the judg- 
 ment of man, for it was a. community they injured. " But 
 he that sacrificeth unto any other god, save the Lord 
 only, he shall be utterly destroyed." The expression here 
 is so different to that previously quoted, that it can only 
 mean destruction here and hereafter ; and, again, allud- 
 ing to the observance of the day of atonement, he 
 continues, " for whatsoever soul it be that shall not be 
 afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from 
 among his people ; and, whatsoever soul it be that doeth 
 any work in that same day will I destroy from among 
 his people." 
 
 Now it is evident, these different expressions allude, 
 not only to different degrees of sin, but to distinct chas- 
 tisements. The harmony of social life might not be 
 interrupted, nor man injured by his fellow, without such 
 punishment as would prevent the recurrence of the sin, 
 and serve as an example to others. Circumstances 
 often and often occasion social crimes, particularly the 
 sins of theft and even murder. Those who commit 
 them may have never been taught right from wrong; or 
 the desperation of unconquerable privation and misery 
 may have urged on to momentary acts, wholly foreign to 
 the individual nature. In Judea, indeed, this was never 
 the case to the extent it is in modern lands ; but from 
 our moral law every other has arisen ; and therefore it
 
 302 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 was adapted for all necessities. But though God's infi- 
 nite mercy would judge His frail children by the cir- 
 cumstance, as well as the deed, by the influences of 
 example and education, and so have mercy when man 
 has 'none; yet the laws of a social state could not make 
 this distinction. It was an imperative duty for public 
 criminals, to be publicly chastised; otherwise there could 
 be no restraint on the indulgence of men's passions and 
 desires; and anarchy and misrule would reign alone. 
 But, though " put to death" by the civil law of his 
 country, for treason against that law, much might be 
 found, even in that apparently depraved heart, to obtain 
 for his soul the Eternal's mercy, and so save him from 
 perishing everlastingly. But those secret sins between the 
 heart and its God, could have no restraint by civil law, 
 for they did no social harm, affected but the individual, 
 and might in fact never be known to the state. To 
 these, then, God says "the soul shall be cut off," or 
 " the soul shall die," that man may know, however, he 
 may hide his iniquity, and so escape the judgment on 
 those who sin more openly; yet still his SOUL must stand 
 in judgment before God himself, and will live or die 
 according to his secret deeds. Capital crimes are 
 punishable at once ; and the mental and physical agony, 
 attendant on such a fate, may be deemed sufficient 
 suffering to save the misguided and erring (not 
 the wilful sinner), from everlasting death. While, to 
 those who live on a lengthened day, rejoicing in a seem- 
 ingly triumphant course; in an unnoticed abandonment 
 of their God, and secret oppression of their fellow- 
 creatures; believing that because no judgment has be- 
 fallen them, His threatenings and promises are alike
 
 LETTER XXII. 303 
 
 without foundation, may find that it is to them, that 
 fearful sentence, " That soul shall be cut off from his 
 people," is applied, and learn at the footstool of their 
 God its full and terrific meaning. That so the words of 
 Moses were recorded, is confirmed by the evidence of 
 David in the ninety-second Psalm. " When the wicked 
 spring up like grassj and the workers of iniquity do 
 flourish; it is, that they shall be destroyed for ever! A 
 brief but exact commentary on our own assertion. 
 
 That " put to death" alludes to temporal punishment, 
 and that the soul shall die, or be cut off, or be utterly 
 destroyed, alludes to the sentence pronounced hereafter, 
 is not merely my opinion, but that of all our ancient 
 sages, whose various opinions on the subject of excision, 
 or rather a brief notice of them, I may be able to 
 obtain for you before we quite conclude this subject. 
 If we once acknowledge that the belief in another state 
 of being had been the heritage of man from his creation, 
 confirmed by the death of Abel, the translation of 
 Enoch, and all the promises made to the Patriarchs, we 
 shall find innumerable passages in the Pentateuch that 
 not only confirm it, but actually refer to it in direct 
 words, and in none clearer or more emphatic than in 
 Moses' last address to the people, and in his own death. 
 
 " See," he says, in Deut. xxx. 15, "I have set before 
 thee this day life and good, death and evil ;" and in the 
 nineteenth verse, " I call heaven and earth to record 
 this day against you, that I have set before you life and 
 death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that 
 thou and thy seed may live." 
 
 The mixed multitude who had gone up from Egypt, 
 and whom Moses addressed equally with the more
 
 304 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 enlightened Israelites, most probably regarded them, as 
 the mass would now, merely as alluding to the pro- 
 longation of life and felicity in the Holy Land. But 
 the real descendants of Abraham knew that no man, be 
 he righteous or wicked, could escape the penalty of 
 Adam's sin ; that evil could not be connected with that 
 death, which, as Isaiah afterwards taught, taketh the 
 righteous from the evil to come, and is an entrance into 
 peace, and which, before the Law, was practically illus- 
 trated in the death of Abel, and, during the Law, in 
 choosing the only righteous of the family of Jeroboam, 
 and the righteous king Josiah, for an early death. Nor 
 can that life be considered a blessing and good, which 
 even to the righteous is, from his social nature, so often 
 dashed with misery. The multitudes, indeed, could not 
 enter into this consideration of the subject ; the judg- 
 ments and miracles performed before them as chastise- 
 ments of national sin, had impressed them with the 
 idea, that death by the hand of God immediately 
 followed rebellion against Him ; and their only chance 
 of entering the promised land, and prolongation of their 
 days therein, was implicit obedience; but that the 
 Israelites, especially their priests and elders, princes and 
 leaders all, in fact, who could throw off the mental 
 and spiritual darkness engendered by their long bondage 
 in Egypt, regarded the words of their Law given as 
 alluding to eternal life and death, is proved by a constant 
 reference to a future state, being the very essence of all 
 those writings in the Psalms, Proverbs, and Prophets, 
 which disclose the inner man. 
 
 The very rendering of this mighty truth, proves that 
 intimate knowledge of human nature which Moses so
 
 LETTER. XXII. 305 
 
 fully possessed. Had he addressed himself only to the 
 comprehension and capability of the more spiritually 
 enlightened, the mass would have had nothing on which 
 to rest, for to natures lowered as their own, immortality 
 as their only incentive to obedience would have had no 
 weight whatever. Individuals amongst them there were, 
 no doubt, who would, and did receive and promulgate it, 
 but not such could an earthly leader single out. Had 
 he, on the contrary, addressed himself only to the capa- 
 bilities of the multitudes, and merely promised temporal 
 rewards, the more enlightened must have doubted his 
 individual wisdom, and perhaps disbelieved even his 
 inspired mission, for they knew that " life" might be a 
 "curse," and "death" a "blessing;" and that it was 
 not in the power of the most righteous, by his righteous- 
 ness, so to choose life on earth, that "he and his seed 
 might live." But the words he chose gave incentive 
 for the choice of good, in both their temporal and 
 spiritual sense. Moses' own belief in immortality, not 
 the greatest sceptic will deny ; but there is no record of 
 that sublime truth being revealed to him. If it had not 
 been known before, we know it would have been 
 imparted equally with those glorious attributes of the 
 Creator, which, at his seivant's own request, God pro- 
 claimed before him. Moses was not different to his 
 fellows, until selected and inspired by the Lord in his 
 eightieth year: nor was he inspired without instruction. 
 All that God imparted to him, to fit him for leader and 
 lawgiver, his impartial record has handed down to us ; 
 and equally would he have done so with immortality, 
 had it been then for \\iejirst time revealed. It would 
 not have come by inspiration any more than his other
 
 306 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 spiritual knowledge ; and, therefore, even as Moses 
 believed it, so did every other descendant of Seth, 
 whose spiritual nature was not wholly lost in brutalising 
 bondage; and thus known and believed, there was no 
 occasion for any further revelation or proclamation of 
 its truth, than the constant reference to it in the very 
 act of bestowing the Law and all the ordinances therein 
 comprised. 
 
 The confirmation of this supposition the seal, as 
 it were, placed on the real meaning of Moses' words 
 " See I have placed before you life and good, death and 
 evil;" we find in his oivn death. If the prolongation of 
 this life, were the only reward awaiting the good, would 
 the just, the merciful, the long-suffering God, have anni- 
 hilated His faithful servant at the very moment, that his 
 toils were seemingly at an end, and the promised land 
 attained? If we believe in the divinity of the Bible at 
 all (and I trust, dearest Annie, that on this subject your 
 mind is now quite at rest), we must believe not merely 
 in its lessons of moral guidance and spiritual hope, but 
 in the ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR, which it reveals. 
 These attributes are of as much weight and importance, 
 in attempting to explain, not only the Bible, but life 
 itself in all its varied phases, as revelation either of precept 
 or in act. If we believe in God at all, without even 
 the acceptance of revelation, we regard Him uncon- 
 sciously, perhaps, as good and beneficent, pure and 
 holy; and Deists themselves would reject with horror the 
 idea of associating Him, even in a momentary thought, 
 with injustice or falsehood, tyranny or wrath. This 
 then must be the witness of the sours instinct, the re- 
 flection of that image of God in which He made man.
 
 LETTER XXII. 307 
 
 Even polytheists will make the good deities the superior, 
 and the evil spirits as of minor power, which must, at 
 the end of days, succumb to the good. The revelation 
 of the attributes of Israel's God not only confirms this 
 natural instinct, but gives full scope and comfort to the 
 aspiring mind, and enables it to understand much of those 
 bewildering incongruities daily passing around us, which 
 without such revelation must have remained in darkness. 
 If God, indeed, proclaimed these consoling attributes 
 which the fourth chapter of Exodus . reveals (and what 
 Hebrew shall deny it without forswearing his own soul ?), 
 the death of Moses is an unanswerable evidence to the 
 truth of our Immortality, and to the real spiritual mean- 
 ing of the words, "life and good, death and evil." If 
 Moses might not be reckoned amongst the righteous, 
 who dare ascribe to himself the term, and so avail him- 
 self of the promises of God ? Who can peruse his life, 
 and not be struck with the exquisite beauty of his charac- 
 ter, the union of perfect humility, with the noblest 
 magnanimity, the naturally fiery temper subdued into 
 meekness, "above that of all men on the face of the 
 earth," the childlike faith, yet mighty mind, the for- 
 giving tenderness towards all his brethren; especially 
 towards those who sought to injure him individually, the 
 earnest longing that all " men might be prophets," and 
 so be guarded from sin and accepted before God, the 
 self-abnegation, which led him to offer his own soul as 
 an offering for sinners. Neither sacred nor profane 
 history can produce a character so perfect, for when 
 we compare him with others, we are apt to over-look the 
 peculiar situation and circumstances, which rendered the 
 path of unerring love and duty so much more rugged
 
 308 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and difficult to him than to private individuals. Yet, 
 this great and good man, for the commission of one sin, 
 one breach of faith, was forbidden to enter the land of 
 promise, permitted to gaze upon it, and then die ; and 
 would this, could this have been, if death were indeed 
 annihilation, and the only reward of the righteous, pro- 
 longation of life and prosperity on earth? Every attri- 
 bute of our God so forbids us to believe it, that we 
 scarcely dare encourage the thought without blasphemy. 
 The sin itself was not, indeed, the mere disobedience 
 of striking the rock when God commanded Moses to 
 speak to it. The words of the Bible are, " Because ye 
 believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the people." 
 We read the action ; God saw the heart : and marvel- 
 'ous, incomprehensible, as it may seem in one so perfect, 
 beheld there a momentary want of sufficient faith. He 
 also knew that, by striking the rock, the superstitious 
 people would endow the rod of Moses with that miracu- 
 lous power which belonged to Him alone, and so sanctify 
 the earthly instrument instead of God. But, though 
 the sin was greater than it reads, we know alike, by the 
 attributes as well as the word of God, that it was not of 
 such a nature as to demand the punishment of annihi- 
 lation. If death be the end of being, Moses, for one sin, 
 was to share the fate of his most sinful brethren. He 
 who had sinned once, was to die before he had entered 
 the promised land, even as the most rebellious and stiff- 
 necked, who were ever turning back to apostasy and sin. 
 Abraham, Jacob, David, Elijah, all had sinned, yet 
 neither received death as chastisement. David tri- 
 umphed over innumerable obstacles, and received the 
 reward of his righteousness in some measure, even in
 
 LETTER XXII. 309 
 
 this life. Elijah was translated to Heaven without even 
 the pang of death, yet neither of these characters can 
 be compared with Moses ; and can we believe, for a 
 single moment, then, that his death was either annihi- 
 lation to himself, or believed such by his followers ? The 
 justice and the mercy, ay, and the truth inseparable 
 from the Eternal, forbid the very thought. Who could 
 have believed the words of Moses, that life was the 
 reward of the righteous, death the punishment of evil, 
 if they had not possessed not only the instinct^ but the 
 revelation of Immortality to explain the death of their 
 righteous leader, which, without such revelation, must 
 have so contradicted his parting precepts as undoubtedly 
 to call for heresy and unbelief. 
 
 As an example to his own age, as an emphatic lesson 
 to those to come, his momentary unbelief was chastised, 
 to prove, that not even the most righteous can avert the 
 penalty of sin, which must bring sorrow. Had the 
 Eternal passed over the fault of Moses, there would 
 have been but too many to accuse Him of partiality and 
 injustice: publicly committed, it was publicly to teach 
 us, that, when the visible interference of the Eternal was 
 withdrawn, unless we have FAITH which no tempta- 
 tion can shake, our very efforts after righteousness are 
 incomplete, and we must bear its penalty, in some de- 
 gree, of suffering. But if to Moses, death but closed 
 his eyes on the promised land, to open them on the 
 ineffable blessedness of Heaven, some enthusiasts may 
 demand what was his punishment? While on earth, as 
 I have often told you, we must in some degree be of 
 earth. Whatever degree of spirituality we may attain, 
 there never yet was any mortal, who could put on
 
 310 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 immortality with such rejoicing security, as to have neither 
 regret for parting life, nor awe at the approach of death. 
 Moses was, indeed, inspired above every other man, be- 
 fore or after him ; but he was peculiarly and essentially 
 human, notwithstanding. To his mortal nature, the 
 thought of that promised land of rest and prosperity, 
 in exchange for the toil, and pain, and suffering of his 
 weary pilgrimage and thankless government, must have 
 been fraught with human joy, and the sentence of death 
 before he entered it, endowed with just sufficient mea- 
 sure of mortal pain and disappointment, as would chas- 
 tise and atone for his momentary unbelief. More, God's 
 mercy neither needed nor demanded. The home He 
 had prepared for His faithful servant in Heaven, He 
 knew far surpassed in glory and joy, even the promised 
 land on earth ; and thither he was translated with but 
 one momentary pang ; for neither the infirmities nor dis- 
 eases of mortality had crept upon him, " His eye was 
 not dim, nor his natural force abated." 
 
 To my heart and mind, then, the death of Moses before 
 entering the promised land, is the strongest confirm- 
 ation not only of our Immortality, but of its previous 
 revelation and acceptance as an incentive to virtue, 
 which the Bible gives, and had we that incident alone, 
 would prove, that, by Moses, and in him the doctrine 
 was preached and believed. The Pentateuch, then, 
 instead of containing neither allusion to nor revelation of 
 our Immortality, contains both its precept and its illus- 
 tration. The death of Abel, the translation of Enoch, 
 the human trials and cares of all the patriarchs, had 
 already taught that this life was not all, nor the removal 
 from it evil, and prepared men for the reception of a
 
 LETTER XXIII. 311 
 
 Jaw which was to purify them for Heaven, and reveal a 
 life and death beyond this world. The death of Moses 
 was the practical illustration, not only of the life and 
 death he taught, but in itself a revelation of Immortality 
 based on the immutable and changeless attributes of 
 God. 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 ONCE convinced that Immortality was known to the de- 
 scendants of Seth, dearest Annie, and like the necessity 
 and practice of prayer, the very essence of the Mosaic 
 Law, though the verses which allude to it may appear 
 capable of a temporal as well as spiritual meaning, one 
 great point is gained. In fact, unless we acknowledge 
 and perceive, that it really is the foundation of the 
 Mosaic system, the allusions to it in the after parts of the 
 Bible must be incomprehensible. David and the other 
 Psalmists, Solomon and the Prophets, were all JEWS, 
 living under the Law, teaching its precepts, and puri- 
 fying its ordinances, by vivifying their formal observance 
 by the worship of the mind and heart. No new reve- 
 lation had been vouchsafed to them ; and how then 
 could they have so known and written of Immortality, 'if 
 it had not formed the very essence of their creed? Even 
 those who deny to Moses and the Pentateuch, the reve-
 
 312 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 lation of this glorious truth, allow that it is repeatedly 
 alluded to, in the Psalms and Prophets ; but the one 
 assertion seems completely to contradict the other. 
 Who could have taught the writers of the Psalms and 
 Prophecies this sublime fact? Neither Jesus nor his 
 apostles : for their advent was not till centuries after- 
 wards. How is it, that Immortality is the very life- 
 spring and foundation of all the Jewish theological 
 writers; that we cannot glance over our morning, 
 evening, Sabbath or festival books of prayers, without 
 seeing and feeling such reference to our future life, that 
 we can no more separate its truth from our minds, than 
 we can the fact of our present being? And these prayers 
 are but compilations from David, the Prophets, and pur 
 ancient fathers, with some portions of more modern 
 date. But all have the same reference all the same 
 immortal groundwork. It is but a weak argument to 
 declare that David and the Prophets were inspired to 
 preach it ; it was no part of their Law. . Their writings 
 were for the mass, and how could they have been un- 
 derstood, had the doctrine never been known and 
 received before? It was not as if they taught it in di- 
 rectly explanatory words, as the teachers of the New 
 Testament brought it to the minds of the unenlightened 
 Heathen. They merely allude to it as a spiritual incen- 
 tive" already known, but from the iniquity of the people 
 and neglect of their law, disregarded and uncared for. 
 We have seen the infinite mercy which adapted the 
 rewards for obedience, at the time of the delivery of the 
 Law, to the comprehension and inclinations of the be- 
 nighted multitudes. The same infinite mercy inspired 
 the Prophets to adopt their promises and threatenings,
 
 LETTER XXIII. 313 
 
 not only for their own time, but for the dark future, 
 when the visible manifestations of God's providence 
 would be at an end, and the righteous amongst His chil- 
 dren be liable to be temporally overwhelmed in the 
 torrent of national iniquity sweeping down upon them, 
 save for the hope of an unchanging belief in that life 
 hereafter, to which the prophets so emphatically and 
 continually referred. It was for this reason, that the 
 prophets allude to Immortality, more clearly, and more 
 constantly than the Law ; but their allusions would have 
 baen of none effect, had not the truth itself been already 
 known and generally believed. 
 
 To quote, or notice, all the verses in the Psalms and 
 Prophets which allude to our Immortality, would be 
 useless in a letter, dearest Annie ; though I should wish 
 you, as a pleasant exercise, to search through these books 
 for all the allusions to a future state, transcribe them, 
 and at your leisure give me your thoughts upon them. 
 There is no better method of becoming intimately ac- 
 quainted with the spirit of the Bible. The very search- 
 ing for and transcribing some parts, opens the under- 
 standing, almost unconsciously to others ; and light seems 
 to pour upon the mind, we can scarcely trace the whence 
 or how, save that one verse often appears to bear upon 
 and illumine another, which, merely read, we should 
 pass carelessly by. 
 
 I have already told you my belief, that whenever 
 the term "soul" is used, as in the verses "The 
 soul that eateth blood, even that soul shall be cut 
 off from his people" "The soul that sinneth it 
 shall die" "When the wicked man turneth from his 
 wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, 
 he shall save his SOUL alive," and in many others, 
 
 p
 
 314 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 it alludes to the soul, or life, distinct from the body; and 
 I am borne out in my belief, by the fact, that righteous- 
 ness, however perfect, penitence, however sincere, never, 
 in any age and under any government, averted death; 
 or that wickedness (save in the signal manifestations of 
 God's providence in the wilderness) was ever so cut off 
 as to mark the distinction between him and the righteous; 
 for if this life were all, it was imperatively necessary that 
 such should be the case, to prove the truth or falsehood 
 of the Eternal's word. With regard to Immortality, the 
 same argument may be used, as I brought forward when 
 endeavouring to prove the truth of Revelation, and of 
 the Bible as that revealed word that it is utterly im- 
 possible to advance one step in the consideration of any 
 subject, without granting some presupposed law or fact. 
 "There is not a single science which can build up its 
 so-called proven theories, without granting some law or 
 axiom which it cannot prove. Astronomers, chemists, 
 all natural philosophers, declare such and such things 
 are, and are positive as to the fact. On what foundation ? 
 Their preconceived ideas and granted axioms of the 
 " Laws of Nature." And what are these Laws of Nature? 
 Who can prove that they are what the finite wisdom of 
 man believes them to be? And yet, though they cannot 
 be proved they must be granted, or all science is abso- 
 lutely at an end. Exactly in the same manner must the 
 enquirer into the Bible believe or grant there is a God; 
 and that He is, as He proclaimed Himself, " Merciful 
 and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness 
 and truth; showing mercy unto thousands, and forgiving 
 iniquity, transgression, and sin;" or he is stopped at the 
 first outset, and plunged into darkness and despair. Try 
 as he may, he cannot believe that he is of the same
 
 LETTER XXIII. 315 
 
 nature as the brutes, and he must grant that the dis- 
 tinction between him and them, is, simply, that he has a 
 soul and they have not. But if the gift of this soul 
 does not in the least distinguish between his death and 
 theirs that like them he is destined for annihilation 
 there is no love or mercy in its bestowal ; no necessity 
 for a law to guide it; no happiness in the affections, no 
 satisfaction in mental cultivation. Instead of being en- 
 dowed and blessed above the brute creation, we must 
 sink lower, and would seem rather to be objects of wrath 
 than of love, for we have intense capabilities of suffering, 
 without any assurance or realisation of joy. If man 
 grant, then, which, unless he be an idiot, he must, that 
 there is a God, and a gracious God; and that he is pos- 
 sessed of a soul, marking him as a being of a two-fold na- 
 ture, he must believe that he is destined for something 
 higher and better and nobler than the cattle of the field. 
 The word of Revelation which faith, based on reason or 
 inquiry, assures him is from God, tells him of reward and 
 punishment; joy and life for the righteous, death and 
 misery for the wicked; but that same word, and the his- 
 tory of life through all ages, seem to contradict these 
 promises. Death is the fate of all ; there is no distinc- 
 tion in the earthly fates of the righteous and the wicked, 
 save that only too often prosperity marks the latter, and 
 suffering the former ; and therefore he knows that if he 
 believes in God, and in the gift of his own soul, he MUST 
 BELIEVE IN A HEREAFTER, when that Divine word shall 
 be fulfilled. His immortal soul receives this belief with 
 its very first awakening into consciousness. It can no 
 more be argued out of it, than astronomers and chemists 
 can be argued out of their belief in the laws of nature.
 
 316 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Neither one nor the other can be proved, yet both are 
 believed; and from the one spring the discoveries of 
 science ; from the other, the revelation of Immortality. 
 
 No man believing in God, and in the existence of his 
 own twofold nature, can read the Scriptures without con- 
 viction, that wherever the life and death of the soul is 
 mentioned, it signifies the judgment of eternity; and in 
 innumerable verses trace the confirmation of his Im- 
 mortality. Not only the written Psalms, but incidents 
 in the life of David, prove how firmly he believed in this 
 consoling creed, and how it must have formed part of the 
 religion in which he was reared. 
 
 We have already noticed David's sin, and the fearful 
 effects that followed in the dissensions of his house; but 
 as these events were many years fulfilling, and did not 
 so immediately follow the sin as to appear a judg- 
 ment for it, except to the heart of David himself, God 
 ordained the death of the infant, the innocent offspring 
 of parental guilt, to immediately manifest His displea- 
 sure, by the infliction of bereavement on the offenders. 
 Now if death were annihilation, it is against every attri- 
 bute of our gracious God, to imagine He would have 
 created a babe in His image, and breathed into it the 
 breath of life, to destroy it utterly for the sin of another. 
 We know by the offering of Moses of his own soul, and its 
 rejection, that no man could pay the penalty of another's 
 sin ; each must bear his own. And, therefore, the God 
 of infinite justice would have chosen some other method 
 of chastising David and Bathsheba, rather than bereave- 
 ment, if that bereavement to them condemned the 
 innocent to suffering or annihilation. But the Israelites 
 knew though the guilty suffered, the innocent was taken
 
 LETTER XXI II. 317 
 
 to that Heaven, where he would dwell for ever, a stain- 
 less cherub, by his Father's throne. Had the babe 
 lived, he would have individually suffered the effects of 
 his parents' sin, for against the offspring of such guilt as 
 that of David and Bathsheba, the Mosaic Laws were 
 justly severe; and, therefore, in removing him in his in- 
 fant innocence to a better world, God's attribute of mercy 
 was confirmed, even as His attribute of justice in the 
 bereavement inflicted on David and his wife. 
 k. That so David himself regarded this event in his life, 
 both his words and conduct prove. " While his child yet 
 lived, he fasted and prayed, and wept before the Lord, 
 that the young life might be spared. And the elders 
 went in, and tried to raise and comfort him, but he 
 would not be comforted ; and when the child died, his 
 servants feared to tell him, for they said, Behold, while 
 the child was yet alive, we spake to him, and he would 
 not hearken unto our voice ; how will he then vex him- 
 self, if we tell him the child is dead." But they were 
 deceived ; for when he heard the sad intelligence, he 
 arose from the earth, washed and anointed himself, and 
 came into the house of the Lord, and worshipped and 
 eat bread ; and in answer to the questions of his as- 
 tonished servants, made that reply, which is to me as 
 consoling and convincing of his, and every Jew's belief 
 in immortality, as if immediately revealed. " While 
 the child yet lived," he said, " I fasted and prayed, for 
 who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that 
 the child may live. But now he is dead, wherefore 
 should I fast ? Can I bring him back again ? / shall 
 go to him, but he will not return unto me;" and David 
 comforted Bathsheba his wife.
 
 318 
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Now if David knew nothing of the world beyond the 
 grave, how could the idea of rejoining his child bring 
 such consolation, as enabled him to conquer his own 
 grief, and comfort his wife? If annihilation were to be 
 the portion of his babe and of himself, surely, instead of 
 anointing himself and appearing in the house of God, 
 submissive, ay, and sadly rejoicing, he would have wept 
 and mourned yet more. He was no stoic to find com- 
 fort in his child's death, if he could not have believed he 
 was happier than he could ever have been on earth. 
 He was peculiarly and painfully susceptible to the joys 
 and pains of the affections ; and to him, therefore, yet 
 more than to other men, would the death of a child 
 have been unmitigated anguish, if he had not had a 
 secure hope of an immortal reunion. We know the 
 bitter agony he endured on the death of his darling 
 Absalom. Then, indeed, he wept and refused to be 
 comforted, not that he had less faith in immortality than 
 in the death of his infant, but that when he thought on 
 the fearful crimes of his favourite son, that very belief 
 must have added incalculably to the misery of bereave- 
 ment. His infant's soul was secure; but Absalom's 
 if the sinful might not enter Heaven, how could he be 
 comforted for him? 
 
 The second incident in David's life may not perhaps 
 appear to bear so much upon our immediate subject as 
 the previous one, though to my heart judging it by the 
 attributes of our God, it is so powerfully convincing, that 
 if I disbelieved in immortality as revealed to, and the 
 heritage of, my people, I must equally disbelieve in 
 God. When David sinned against the Lord by num- 
 bering the people, a choice of chastisements was sent
 
 LETTER XXIII. 319 
 
 him through the prophet Gad seven years' famine, 
 three months' flight before his enemies, or three days of 
 pestilence in his land. And David said, " Behold I am 
 in a great strait : Let us fall now into the hands of the 
 Lord, for His mercies are great ; and let me not fall into 
 the hands of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon 
 Israel, from the morning even unto the time appointed ; 
 and there died of the people, from Dan even to Beer- 
 sheba, seventy thousand men." 
 
 Now if this life were all, where would be the mercy 
 and the justice of the Eternal in thus cutting off seventy 
 thousand men, for what at first reading appears one 
 man's sin ? 
 
 But the doubt that may enter our mind as to why 
 David was not individually chastised, instead of so many 
 of his subjects, is removed by a consideration of the first 
 verse of the chapter, in which, by the words " And 
 again the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel." We 
 know that it was an era of renewed national iniquity, like 
 so many which had gone before it, demanding one of those 
 public manifestations of the Eternal's displeasure, which 
 could not " discern between the righteous and the 
 wicked " while below, but after death evinced those " great 
 mercies " in which the Hebrew king so trusted. David 
 had not sinned alone, as in the case of Bathsheba, or he, 
 as then, alone would have been chastised ; but he sinned 
 in connection and in company with the people, and so 
 received punishment in their deaths, and, very probably, 
 the deaths of many of his immediate household.* Many 
 
 * -He had sinned individually in the act of numbering the people ; 
 but it was because of the nationaliniquity that God permitted his 
 evil inclination such ascendancy as to resist the pleadings of Joab.
 
 320 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 might declare that the death of his people was of little 
 consequence to him, so that he remained unscathed j 
 but this is the opinion of natures far too selfish to com- 
 prehend the universal love which characterised David. 
 His strong belief that a hereafter of bliss was laid up with 
 God for the righteous and the meek, who might fall in 
 the chosen pestilence, could alone have dictated the 
 words, " Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His 
 mercies are great ; " but if death were the entire end of 
 existence, what mercy could be shewn in the doom he 
 had chosen ? But to the believer in Immortality, the 
 three days' pestilence was the least terrible of either 
 alternative ; for it exchanged earth for heaven for the 
 righteous with the least and briefest mortal pang, and, 
 checking the sinful in his iniquitous career, removed his 
 evil example from his fellows, and, perchance, permitted 
 him to labour and obey in some other sphere, there to 
 earn his Immortality; for even to the wicked, there 
 seems, to my mind, no such doom as utter annihila- 
 tion. 
 
 This, of course, is but a speculation, dearest Annie, 
 with which, at the conclusion of our scriptural review of 
 the subject, I may indulge myself and you ; but it will 
 not do to bring forward that which must be purely ima- 
 ginary with the holy truths revealed in the Bible. It is 
 enough for us to know and feel that in every signal chas- 
 tisement inflicted on Israel, both in the wilderness* and 
 
 David had power within himself to have conquered that impulse of 
 evil, and refrained from the trespass ; but as he chose the evil, God 
 punished him by a national chastisement, which the people's ini- 
 quity had already prepared against themselves. 
 
 * Alluding to the thousands who perished for the sin of the golden 
 calf; for Korah's rebellion; and for the various murmurings of the 
 people.
 
 LETTER XXIII. 321 
 
 in Judea, Immortality is clearly revealed, or a miracle 
 would have divided the righteous from the wicked upon 
 earth. If we believe in a God, and in His revealed 
 attributes, this must be : we must believe in one or the 
 other; and, as we know, and experience but too soon 
 proves and confirms, that while man has free-will, and is 
 a social being, there can be no distinction made between 
 the righteous and the sinner in this life, we must believe 
 that there is a life hereafter, when this distinction will be 
 made, or deny that God is just and good, and that His 
 word is true. To display His power to individuals, or 
 to prove that no national iniquity ever passed without 
 some signal chastisement that would unanswerably prove 
 His power and judgment, and by its awful and sweeping 
 nature withhold from the committal of similar iniquity, 
 those judgments which the Bible records were abso- 
 lutely necessary in the infancy of revelation. To have 
 divided off the individually righteous, and only stricken 
 the sinful, could not have been, without interfering with 
 the Divine economy, and, moreover, removing all spi- 
 ritual incentive from man. Without belief in Immor- 
 tality, the consideration of those tremendous judgments 
 must plunge the soul in utter darkness ; for they deny 
 the attributes and the word of God ; but with such 
 belief that His attributes and word are immutable and 
 everlasting, they console and strengthen, for they are 
 in themselves the confirmation of a higher and purer 
 hereafter. 
 
 Nothing but a firm belief in his own and his people's 
 immortality, could have dictated David's exclamation, 
 " For the Lord's mercies are great ;" for such a three days' 
 virulent pestilence, during which 70,000 were cut off from 
 
 p 5
 
 322 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the earth, there could be no evidence of mercy, save to 
 the heart of a believer. The triumph of the spiritual 
 part of David's nature occasioned his choice ; for before 
 the anguish of the trial came, he only looked on death 
 as for the righteous an entrance into life. But when the 
 destroying angel's sword was unsheathed, and he beheld 
 his subjects falling like leaves around him, and nought 
 but the suffering of bereavement to the survivors, his 
 human nature triumphed over the spiritual; and we find 
 him clothed in sack-cloth and falling on his face, in 
 agony imploring, " Is it not I that commanded the 
 people to be numbered ? Even I it is, that have sinned 
 and done evil indeed ; but as for these sheep, what have 
 they done ? Let thine hand, I pray thee, O Lord my 
 God, be on me and my father's house ; but not on thy 
 people that they should be plagued !" 
 
 With these words before him, who can say that these 
 three days of pestilence were not chastisement and suffer- 
 ing to David individually? Yet, they do not contradict 
 that belief in the "great mercies of the Lord," which 
 his previous choice had professed. They do but prove 
 the peculiarly human and loving character of the Hebrew 
 king, unable to sustain his people's anguish; and who 
 shall say, that in the moment of trial, the faith in God's 
 mercy shall not so fail us, as to bid us also call out in 
 our agony, " O Lord, hold thine hand," and yet more 
 in the sufferings of our beloved ones, than our own.
 
 323 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 IN perusing the Psalms of David, we can scarcely fail 
 to be struck with their agreement, not only in sense, 
 but in imagery, both with the books of Moses and those 
 of the Prophets ; " Let them be blotted out of the book 
 of the living, David writes of the enemies of the Lord; 
 let them not be written with the righteous," words how 
 exactly similar to those of Moses and Malachi, so often 
 quoted. The distinction between the righteous and the 
 wicked, reiterated again and again, is incomprehensible 
 and false, if we disbelieve in its reference to another life ; 
 inexpressibly and encouragingly consoling, if we feel that 
 it does. " Know that the Lord hath set apart him that 
 is godly for Himself:" can we trace on earth those whom 
 the Lord hath set apart? Is it not but too often, 
 through human suffering only that our imperfect nature 
 attains to that righteousness which is accepted by our 
 God ; and were this life all, where then would be its 
 promised joy? " The wicked shall be turned into the 
 grave, and all the nations who forget God; but the 
 needy shall not always be forgotten, the expectation of 
 the poor shall not perish for ever," words how clearly 
 illustrative, that though on earth the needy may seem 
 forgotten, and the expectations of the poor to have no foun- 
 dation ; yet, earth is not always, nor this life for ever.
 
 324 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 " I have set the Lord always before me ; he is at my right 
 hand, I shall not be moved : therefore my heart is glad, 
 and my glory [or soul] rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in 
 hope: for thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave; nor suffer 
 thine holy one * to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me 
 the path of life : in thy presence is the fulness of joy ; 
 and at thy right hand, everlasting pleasures !" 
 
 Had we only these verses, dearest Annie, we should 
 need no more to prove David's strong and ever present 
 belief in Immortality. They cannot possibly be under- 
 stood in any other light. His heart is glad, and his soul 
 rejoices, he says, from the consoling effect of placing 
 God always before him in the occurrences of daily life. 
 His flesh or body also shall rest in hope (that is, feel no 
 fear of death), for God would not leave his soul in the 
 grave, nor permit that essence which, in its divinity and 
 pure undying nature, is designated in the Eastern idiom 
 as the holy one, to see corruption. "Thou wilt show me 
 the path of that life which leads to Thy presence, where 
 there is indeed fulness of joy, and at Thy right hand ever- 
 lasting pleasures." The preceding allusions to the death of 
 the body and incorruptible nature of the soul, mustconv'mce 
 us, that it is no path of earth to which he refers, but to that 
 life, which is in the presence of God for everlasting. 
 
 "Deliver my soul from the wicked which is thy 
 sword," he says, in Psalm xvii. : "from men which are 
 thy hand, O Lord [meaning instruments in God's hand 
 for the trial and probation of the righteous], from men 
 of the world which have their portion in this life, whom 
 thou fillest with treasure, who are full of children, and 
 leave their substance to their babes. But for me, I 
 * Image of God, or Soul.
 
 LETTER XXIV. 325 
 
 will behold thy face, in [or by] righteousness : I shall 
 be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 
 
 The Psalrn here alludes to those men whose worldly 
 prosperity, notwithstanding their sinfulness, has excited 
 a doubt as to the justice of the ways of the Lord, and 
 which we find explained in the ninety-second Psalm. 
 " How great are thy works, O Lord, and thy thoughts are 
 very deep. A brutish man [one who has never sought 
 to cultivate the spiritual and undying part of his nature, 
 but given full indulgence to the animal] knoweth them 
 not ; neither doth a fool understand this ; that when the 
 wicked spring up as the grass, and all the workers of 
 iniquity do flourish, it is that they may be destroyed for 
 ever." Their portion, then, however enviable in appear- 
 ance, is only for this life ; and from them David entreats 
 that his soul may be delivered, lest it should be led to 
 follow in their paths : for himself he asks but to behold 
 God's face (a figurative term denoting God's presence) 
 through his own efforts after righteousness ; meaning 
 the same as the words we have already quoted " I have 
 
 set the Lord always before me 1 shall be satisfied 
 
 when I awake with thy likeness." Now as there is no 
 reference to sleep, these words evidently signify, " when 
 I awake from this life, the likeness or presence of my 
 God will be all-sufficient for me." He asked not the 
 treasures even of the children of the wicked, for their 
 portion was but for this life (the very term marks a firm 
 belief in another). He asked only to obtain such 
 righteousness as would enable him to behold God before 
 him, even upon earth, and when he awoke to everlasting 
 life to trace and behold that glorious " likeness " in 
 which his soul and the soul of every man was made.
 
 326 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 In the twenty-first Psalm, which is a burst of thanks- 
 giving for victory and spiritual confidence in future suc- 
 cess, David exclaims, of himself, " The king shall joy 
 in thy strength, O Lord ; and in thy salvation how greatly 
 shall he rejoice ! . . . . He asked LIFE of thee, and thou 
 gavest it him, even length of days for EVER and EVER. 
 His glory is great in thy salvation : honour and majesty 
 hast thou laid upon him. For thou hast made him 
 most blessed for EVER : thou hast made him exceeding 
 glad with thy countenance. For the king trusteth in 
 the Lord, and through the mercy of the Most High he 
 shall not be moved." A thanksgiving, how unlike that 
 of a mere human conqueror, tracing strength, glory? 
 honour, majesty, and salvation, all from God alone ; and 
 how strikingly illustrative of that life which was ever 
 present to the heart of David ! He asked life, and we 
 know, by its gift in length of days for ever and ever, it 
 was not the life of earth but of eternity. 
 
 In the twenty-seventh Psalm, after an emphatic 
 description of the differing sentiments and pursuits, and 
 destinies of the righteous and the wicked, we read. 
 " Depart from evil, and do good, and dwell [or live] for 
 evermore. For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh 
 not his saints. They are preserved for ever, but the seed 
 of the wicked shall be cut off. .... I have seen the wicked 
 in great power and spreading himeelf like a green bay- 
 tree. Yet he passed away, and lo he was not; yea I 
 sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the per- 
 fect, and behold the upright ; for the end of that man is 
 peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together, 
 the end of the wicked shall be cut off. But the salvation 
 of the righteous is of the Lord."
 
 LETTER XXIV. 327 
 
 Can one word of these emphatic verses apply to 
 earth and time ? If suffering must be the portion of the 
 righteous, as we know it is ; what joy or comfort could 
 there be in the thought that he was to be preserved on 
 earth for ever ? Besides, the promise that he should be 
 preserved for ever in one verse, and the command, 
 " Mark the peaceful end of the upright," in another is a 
 contradiction impossible to be reconciled, if only supposed 
 to refer to this life. But we know that preserved for 
 ever, applies to the life beyond; and that the end of the 
 upright is full of peace, because he knows death to him 
 is but his birth into a better world ; while to the wicked 
 even his end is cut off; a powerful expression for the doom 
 beyond the mere physical cessation of existence. 
 
 " For thou hast delivered my soul from death," David 
 says, in the fifty-sixth Psalm ; " wilt not thou save my 
 feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the 
 land of the living?" And in the hundred and sixteenth 
 Psalm we find the same expressions, only so much more 
 enlarged upon, that we cannot doubt to what "land of 
 the living" they refer. " The sorrows of death com- 
 passed me," he says, after a burst of thanksgiving to the 
 Lord for having heard the voice of his supplication, 
 *' and the pains of the grave got hold of me, I found 
 trouble and sorrow. Then called I on the name of the 
 Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. 
 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea our God is 
 merciful. The Lord preserveth the simple; I was 
 brought low, and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, 
 O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with 
 thee ; for thou hast delivered my soul from [the fear of] 
 death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
 
 328 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 I will walk before the Lord in the land of the 
 living." 
 
 Now, " the sorrows of death, pains of the grave," and 
 troubles here alluded to, are evidently mental, and have 
 to do, not with sickness and physical infirmity, but that 
 weakness of humanity to which even the most pious are 
 occasionally liable; when death and the grave are fraught 
 with the gloom of leaving earth, instead of with the joy 
 of entering Heaven. David was human ; liable to all the 
 despondency and suffering of his fellows, even in those 
 very things from which, from his constant efforts to know, 
 love, and serve God, he might have been supposed 
 exempt. The hundred and sixteenth psalm describes 
 his combat with his inward self, at the anticipation of 
 death and the grave, the lot of all; the fifty-sixth, 
 whence the same words are quoted, alludes to his out- 
 ward vexations and annoyances, from the enmity of man, 
 which led him to God for relief from them, even as in 
 the hundred and sixteenth, he beseeches relief from 
 himself. In the fifty-sixth " I will not be afraid what 
 man can do unto me," he says, " for thy vows are with 
 me, O God ; I will render praises unto Thee, for Thou 
 hast delivered my soul from death. Wilt Thou not save 
 my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the 
 land of the living." 
 
 The enmity and dangers from man, painful and an- 
 noying as they were, still were endurable, for they were 
 but of earth ; and God's vow or promise was "to deliver 
 his soul from death." There could be no comfort in 
 the supposition that this deliverance was merely a longer 
 life on earth, exposed to all the same annoyances from 
 man, and to end at last in annihilation. This promise
 
 LETTER XXIV. 3'29 
 
 prompted the urgent prayer, " Save my feet from falling 
 into the paths of sin" tempted so to fall, from those 
 petty stings from man which chafe the spirit into irrita- 
 tion and rebellion, far more than those in reality heavier 
 trials which can be traced to, and so received submis- 
 sively from, God. He prayed to be saved from falling, 
 that he might indeed walk before God in the " land of 
 the living." If earth were the land of the living alluded 
 to, even if his feet fell, he would still walk there till his 
 appointed time; and the sinner had an equal, if not 
 greater, share of earthly joys. But the land of the liv- 
 ing which he prayed to enter, was that Heaven, the 
 dwelling of the righteous, where the Lord dwelleth with 
 him that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive 
 the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the 
 contrite ones." 
 
 In the fifty-sixth, this conviction gives him comfort in 
 the midst of trials from man. In the hundred and six- 
 teenth, it has the same effect in a worse trial of despond- 
 ency and dread. Trouble and pain and sorrow almost 
 overwhelmed him ; but his faith did not fail him, and he 
 called on God, and God answered him with a renewal 
 of that conviction of his immortality which had comforted 
 him before. It is very mistaken to imagine that a mere 
 temporary reprieve from the mortal sickness of death 
 could have called forth the heartfelt thanksgiving and 
 spiritual trust in the Lord, with which the whole psalm 
 teems. If it were, we should find some reference to 
 relief from physical pain and sickness. The thanksgiving 
 is for a spiritual benefit, even as the complaint is for 
 spiritual desertion. The prayer and thanksgiving of 
 Hezekiah for increase of mortal life is so differently
 
 330 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 rendered, that it is impossible to believe that David alludes 
 to the same thing. " Return unto thy rest, O my soul," 
 he says, " for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. 
 He hath delivered thee from death, mine eyes from 
 tears, and my feet from falling ; I will walk before the 
 Lord in the land of the living." Here is no supplication 
 that he may do so, but a firm conviction that he will. 
 His soul might again return to its rest; for the faith in 
 its deathless nature, which no physical pain, no mental 
 depression could remove, had, through God's grace, 
 returned. 
 
 "I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now, in the presence 
 of all his people," he says, in the fourteenth and eighteenth 
 verses of the same psalm words as clearly alluding to 
 this life, and a public thanksgiving for the mercy pre- 
 viously received, as the ninth verse refers to Heaven as 
 strongly as if it had been written, " I will walk before 
 God in the land of souls" But clearer proof than all the 
 rest we find in the fifteenth verse " Precious in the 
 sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." How could 
 this be, if death cut the righteous off for ever, removed 
 from earth the sole witnesses of God, and gave to the 
 wicked unlimited dominion, which could not be, if the 
 same fate attended all? Nothing could give sufficient 
 strength and endurance to dawning righteousness, if not 
 for the immortal hope of the righteous who had gone 
 before. How could the deaths of the only ones who by 
 loving service obtained the appellation of His saints, be 
 precious in the sight of the Creator, if such deaths were 
 the annihilation of soul and body, utterly separating 
 them from Him as from their fellows. The verse is, in 
 its brief but emphatic sentence, a complete explanation
 
 LETTER XXIV. 331 
 
 of the real meaning of David's spiritual pain, and its 
 triumphant consolation, and in itself a direct revelation 
 of Immortality. God, in his infinite mercy, rejoiced in 
 the death of his saints, because that earthly death relieved 
 them from earthly sufferings, and permitted the soul's 
 reunion with its kindred spirits in the land of souls, and 
 in His presence for everlasting. 
 
 Very many more of David's Psalms might be quoted, 
 as bearing equally on this important subject, dearest 
 Annie; but I trust you are now sufficiently interested, 
 to seek for them yourself. I will only quote two verses 
 from my favourite hundred and third Psalm ; where, 
 after describing man as one "whose days are like grass ; 
 and as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth, for the 
 wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof 
 shall know it no more," he continues, "but the mercy 
 of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them 
 that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's 
 children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that 
 remember his commandments to do them. The Lord has 
 prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom 
 ruleth over all." Now, if we deny David's belief in 
 Immortality, there is a complete contradiction in these 
 verses. If man be only as a flower of the field, over 
 whom the wind passeth, and findeth him not, how can 
 the Eternal fulfil His word, and show towards him ever- 
 lasting mercy? The longest measure of human life is 
 not a hundred years ; and even if mercy were shewn him 
 every day of those hundred years, it could not be con- 
 sidered as fulfilling the promise from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting. It is also to "those that/ear the Lord, keep His 
 covenant, and remember His commandments to do
 
 332 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 them," that everlasting mercy is promised, in contra- 
 distinction to the wicked, whose lot is only in this life. 
 In this world, as we have so often reiterated, there is no 
 distinction between the righteous and the sinful, nor 
 ever was, nor ever can be; and therefore we know the 
 mercy promised must allude to that other state of ex- 
 istence, which is the portion of the righteous, or the 
 words are utterly void of meaning. It appears to me 
 also, that the nineteenth verse is not so wholly uncon- 
 nected with the preceding eighteenth as the full stop 
 might lead us to suppose ; but that it is for the seekers 
 after righteousness, made perfect in his mercy, that the 
 " Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens," and 
 thus fulfils his promise of "shewing mercy from ever- 
 lasting to everlasting to those that fear him." 
 
 The only remaining Psalms to which I would call your 
 attention are the forty-ninth and seventy-third, the one 
 said to be written for the sons of Korah, and the other 
 by or for Asaph ; and so bearing additional witness as 
 to the fact of Immortality having been known to and 
 taught by the Hebrews, ages before the advent of 
 Christianity. The remark has, I believe, been made, 
 that these Psalms, Proverbs, etc., are but the opinions 
 of erring mortals like ourselves, and will not prove more 
 than our own ideas may suggest to ourselves. But they 
 do prove more. Compare the opinions of the Hebrews on 
 all spiritual matters with the opinions on the same sub- 
 jects of all the cotemporary nations, and then let the 
 sceptic reply, how and why they should have so advanced 
 in such purely spiritual feelings and notions as all the 
 Psalms and Prophets reveal ? Why do we not find the 
 same revelations of Heaven and Immortality, the same
 
 LETTER XXIV. 333 
 
 aspirings of the panting soul after its God, the same 
 earnest longings after righteousness, and firm belief in 
 the mercy that would distinguish between the upright 
 and the ungodly, in other nations as well as the Jews? 
 How does it happen, that we have no record left of the 
 spiritual as we have of the temporal history of the Egyp- 
 tian, Babylonian, Grecian, and Roman Empires, whose 
 dominions were so vastly more extensive, whose power was 
 of so much greater magnitude ; and whose advance in the 
 temporal arts and sciences equalled, if it did not surpass, 
 the little land of Palestine ? How is it, that in all the 
 thousand ages which have elapsed since Moses and 
 David, and the Prophets, we have never found a writer or 
 writers to give us what they have? If the writers of the 
 Bible were mere men, in all respects (I will not say as 
 we are, for that would be an entirely unfair criterion) 
 such as the nations existing at the same era ; how is it, 
 that as time advanced and men's minds matured more 
 and more, there has never been another book compiled 
 to take their place? And how is it, that the Bible alone, 
 of all the writings of the same age, will still bear upon 
 the wants and aspirations moral and mental feelings of 
 all humanity ? Mortal indeed they were, liable to all 
 the frailties and sins, not only of their mingled nation 
 but of their darkened age, but the spirit had been en- 
 lightened by the revelation of God himself, to mark 
 His chosen, and through them to fulfil his promise to 
 Abraham, that " in his seed all the nations of the earth 
 should be blessed." 
 
 The sons of Korah and of Asaph were musicians, and 
 Levites, forming the choirs employed in the Temple 
 service. Asaph himself, and no doubt Korah, were
 
 834 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 living in David's time; and some Psalms are supposed 
 to be the joint production of the minstrel king and his 
 chief musician Asaph ; that is, the words were by the 
 one, and the music by the other. Those Psalms, headed, 
 " For the sons of Korah, or the sons of Asaph," are how- 
 ever considered by some to be of much later date; to 
 have been composed and sung by the descendants of those 
 Psalmists, whose name they bear: a supposition founded 
 on the seeming reference of their subjects to events in 
 the history of their people, posterior to the existence of 
 Asaph and Korah individually. Whatever be their date, 
 the forty-ninth and seventy-third c bear so strongly on 
 belief in Immortality, that they prove beyond all ques- 
 tion, that it was the essence of the Jewish creed, and 
 that to be so, it must naturally have been revealed, or 
 why should the Jews have known it more than con- 
 temporary nations?* 
 
 The forty-ninth Psalm is supposed to have been 
 written during the Babylonian captivity, more than five 
 hundred years before the advent of the Christian era. 
 Its translation in the English Bibles is, however, very 
 obscure. The best rendering is that in page 109 of the 
 Daily Prayer Book of the British Jews; but that it 
 refers to, or rather is, an emphatic description of the 
 differing fates of the righteous and the sinful in the 
 hour of death, is evident, even in its most confused 
 
 * It may be urged that Socrates, Longinus, and other Heathen 
 philosophers, believed and preached immortality without revelation. 
 They did : but it was not till the dispersion of the Jews had pro- 
 mulgated their doctrines in some measure over the lands of their 
 captivity; and no one can compare the more speculative theories 
 founded on reason and analogy of the heathen, with the confirmed 
 belief from divine revelation, which the allusions to this solemn 
 subject and the spiritual aspirations of the Hebrews so betray.
 
 LETTER XXIV. 335 
 
 translation. The very fact of its being chosen by the 
 ancient compilers of our prayers, as the hymn for 
 mourners after bereavement, proves this very convin- 
 cingly. " I will incline mine ear to a parable," the 
 Psalmist says, after calling on all the people to attend, 
 " and disclose my dark saying on the harp. Wherefore 
 should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of 
 my oppressors encompass me. Of those who trust in 
 their wealth, and boast themselves in the immensity of their 
 riches, none can by any means redeem his brother, or give to 
 God a ransom for him (for the redemption of their souls 
 is precious, and it ceaseth for ever), that he should still 
 live for ever and not see the grave. For he seeth the wise 
 man die, and the fool and the brutes to perish together, 
 and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought 
 is, indeed, that their palaces shall continue for ever, and 
 their dwelling to all generations, so they call their lands 
 after their own names." Is not this an exact descrip- 
 tion of the men of this world, seeking, toiling after the 
 riches and treasure of this life alone, laying up pre- 
 cious things, as if they could carry them away with 
 them ; or seeking the poor honour of building palaces to 
 their own fame, and calling their possessions after their 
 own names, that even seeing that death comes to all 
 alike, and will not spare them, nor their brother, nor 
 their children, however large the ransom for their lives 
 which their riches may enable them to offer unto God, 
 that still they pursue their worldly course. " But man's 
 honour [the mere worldly honour and earthly distinctions 
 above alluded to] endureth not. He becometh like 
 the beasts that perish;" because it was the animal pro- 
 pensities, whose gratification he sought alone, to the
 
 336 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 utter neglect of the spiritual, and, therefore, how was 
 the soul fitted to appear before God ? " uch is their 
 way; fools to themselves, and yet their posterity ever 
 applauds them !" And are not the winners of mere 
 worldly triumphs and treasure now, as then, the objects 
 of popular applause ? " Like sheep they are laid in 
 the grave. Death feeds on them ; but the upright shall 
 have dominion over them in the morning [of the resur- 
 rection], when their form shall moulder away in the 
 grave, their dwelling." " But God will redeem my soul," 
 he continues, changing his style from the descriptive to 
 individual apostrophising, which is so often the case 
 with our Hebrew writers " But God will redeem my 
 soul from the power of the grave, when He shall receive 
 me, Selah. Be thou [here the Psalmist is addressing 
 his own soul]; be thou not dismayed, then, when a man 
 [who is not righteous] is made rich, and the glory of his 
 house is increased. For when he dieth, he shall carry 
 nothing away, nor shall his glory follow him. For though 
 he doth here delight his soul, thou shalt be called happy 
 hereafter, whilst he shall follow the generations of his 
 fathers, who never saw the light [of heaven]. Man who 
 is in honour [that is in worldly rank and earthly trea- 
 sures], and understandeth not [the ways of God by 
 seeking after righteousness], is like the beasts that 
 perish." 
 
 Is not this Psalm the exact commentary of those 
 verses of the ninety-second Psalm which I have already 
 so often quoted, dearest Annie? It is in itself so clear an 
 illustration of the argument, that when the wicked pros- 
 per, their prosperity is merely of this world, and that 
 the promised reward and blessing of the righteous is
 
 LETTER XXIV. 337 
 
 laid up with God, as the portion of the undying soul, 
 that it can require no further elucidation. 1 shall be 
 truly glad, if it be as clear to you as it is to me ; for a 
 Psalm appointed for an hour of bereavement ought to 
 have no dark or hidden meaning, but clearly and for- 
 cibly give us confirmed comfort in the thought, that 
 immortality is the very groundwork of our creed. 
 
 The seventy-third Psalm is, in Bagster's Bible, appro- 
 priated to Asaph, and said to bear date about the time 
 of the destruction of Sennacherib's army, seven hundred 
 years before the Christian era. If the date and the 
 author be both correct, Calmet is wrong; and Asaph 
 could not have been cotemporary with David. This, 
 however, signifies little. All we wish to prove is, that 
 immortality was known to the Hebrew, ages before the 
 advent of that religion, which is said to have been the 
 first to proclaim it, not only to the Gentiles but to the 
 Jews. Like the forty-ninth, the seventy-third Psalm 
 first alludes to the prosperity and triumph of the wicked, 
 which had excited the envy of Asaph, notwithstanding 
 his internal belief, that " God is good to such of Israel 
 as are of a clean heart." It is a true picture of the 
 inward doubts and struggles of a holy and righteous 
 man, who, despite his constant endeavours to love and 
 serve God, is himself overwhelmed with trial and care, 
 and perceives the wicked, who know not, and care not to 
 know God, flourishing and happy. " Verily," he con- 
 tinues, in the momentary weakness of his human nature, 
 ** I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my 
 hands in innocence. For all the day long have I been 
 plagued, and chastened every morning;" and so his feet 
 had almost gone, and his steps had well nigh slipped. 
 
 Q
 
 338 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 And the thought of the prosperity of the wicked, and 
 suffering of the righteous, was too painful for him : " until 
 I went into the sanctuary of God, and then understood 
 I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery 
 places; thou castedst them down to destruction. How 
 are they brought into desolation, as in a moment ! They 
 are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when 
 one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou wilt 
 despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved, and I 
 was pricked in my reins [reproached in conscience]. So 
 foolish was I, and ignorant : 1 was as a beast before 
 thee [even for permitting the doubt of thy justice to 
 enter my mind]. Nevertheless [in spite of my doubt 
 and sin], I am continually with thee : thou hast holden 
 me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy 
 counsel^ and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I 
 in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that 
 I desire beside Thee. My flesh and rny heart may fail ; 
 but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for 
 ever. But those that are far from Thee shall perish : 
 Thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from 
 Thee ; but it is good for me to draw near unto God: 
 I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may 
 declare all His works." 
 
 Will not this psalm prove the strength and comfort 
 which the Hebrews realised in the reflections on, and 
 belief in, a future state, dearest Annie ? Do we need 
 more to convince us (hat it must have been revealed, and 
 formed part of the inward religion of every Hebrew. It is 
 folly to argue that it was only known to a chosen few, and 
 that the Jews, as a people, remained in ignorance as to 
 this important point till ages afterwards. Their very
 
 LETTER XXV. 339 
 
 Law was a mass of contradiction without it ; and those 
 psalms which formed part of their temple service, or 
 helps to their devotions in their captivity, were perfectly 
 incomprehensible. The press, or the literature of a 
 country is always the only sure criterion of the ideas, not 
 of a few, but of a nation. The only literature of the 
 Jews was sacred, and confined to subjects of such lofty 
 and spiritual nature, that it bore an impress of advance 
 and enlightenment wholly unlike the literature of cotem- 
 porary kingdoms. That literature emanated from God's 
 Law, and, therefore, all it breathed was taught in that 
 holy Law, and so was the possession of the whole Jewish 
 nation. The iniquity and terrible darkness on all sides 
 surrounding their little spot of holy ground, might, nay 
 must, have had its effect on but too many, in rendering 
 them utterly regardless of their glorious heritage ; but 
 that will not do away with the impression which all their 
 literature leaves ; that Immortality was known and 
 taught even before the delivery of their Law, which 
 without it is as incomprehensible and useless, as with it, it 
 is perfect and eternal. 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 THE books of the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes bear the 
 same witness to the Mosaic revelation of Immortality as
 
 340 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the psalms already quoted. Solomon was, indeed, 
 inspired individually with unusual wisdom; but that 
 wisdom did not reveal to him new things concerning 
 the law already given, but only enabled him to under- 
 stand yet more fully its spiritual as well as temporal 
 meaning. The gift of understanding vouchsafed to 
 him, was very different to the inspirations of the pro- 
 phets. Solomon asked for wisdom to govern a mighty 
 kingdom, and that was granted him : but the records he 
 has left behind him for the benefit of his fellow-creatures 
 in future ages, are but the transcript of a mind and 
 heart in all respects like those of his fellows, save that 
 his wisdom gave him greater facility of thought and 
 adaptation. Even his understanding, gift of God direct 
 as it was, could not, like the prophets', penetrate through 
 the hidden things, or disclose the future. His writings 
 are simply human experiences, having for their ground- 
 work the religion of his forefathers. He was a Hebrew 
 himself, and the faith he followed was that of the Law 
 given through Moses. All he taught them must have 
 been revealed in that Law. He tells us nothing but 
 what his father had written before him. He does not 
 reveal, but simply confirms is but another witness to the 
 fact, that the Jewish religion must have taught and reite- 
 rated Immortality as the " path of life " promised to the 
 righteous, or neither David nor Solomon, nor the other 
 psalmists, could have alluded to it as they do. 
 
 I was once present at a very beautiful lecture on the 
 book of Ecclesiastes, given by a holy Christian divine,* 
 and was much struck by his emphatic declaration, that if 
 
 * The late Rev. Robert Anderson, of Trinity Chapel, Brighton.
 
 LETTER XXV. 341 
 
 sceptics would but turn to that book, they must find how 
 false and utterly without foundation, was this charge 
 against the Jews of their having no belief in Immor- 
 tality ; that if we had but that one book, it would be 
 sufficient to prove how well-grounded was our hope in 
 that divine revelation. And this was the opinion of a 
 Christian, dearest Annie ; and is it not, therefore, a dis- 
 grace upon ourselves, when, either in sentiment or con- 
 duct, we seem to deny that it is the essence of our creed, 
 and thus give a triumph to the scoffer, which it requires 
 both time and labour to remove ? 
 
 The constant reference to the "spirit" in E cclesiastes, 
 proves at once Solomon's firm belief in the mingled na- 
 ture of man, though many may say, and with apparent 
 justice, that it is more a querulous complaint of the va- 
 nity of this life, than a triumphant assurance of a better. 
 But to account for this, we must take the character of 
 the king into consideration. It was, unhappily, only in 
 his very early youth, that his heart was so right with 
 God as to inspire his prayer for wisdom, and to call 
 down from a gracious Father the gifts of prosperity, such 
 as no king of Israel ever enjoyed before or after him. 
 But these gifts did not prove the blessings which they 
 were intended to be. As is unhappily too often the 
 case, they estranged the heart from the purer pleasures 
 of his youth, and made him believe that happiness was 
 only to be found in a succession of exciting earthly plea- 
 sures. Sensuality, and all the enervating luxuries of 
 exhaustless wealth, were his sole pursuits, weakening his 
 mental enjoyments, till even the joys of wisdom appeared 
 to be as vain and profitless as the mere passing pleasures 
 of the world.
 
 342 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 When old age and its calmer mood came upon him, 
 and, wearied and dispirited, he looked back on the 
 scenes which had so engrossed him, but which had left 
 only a sting behind, was it a marvel that his writings 
 should bear the impress of such thoughts ; and that it 
 was easier for him to believe life to be all vanity and 
 vexation of spirit, than to realise that spiritual peace and 
 joy which his father had experienced ? Yet David's life 
 was, with very few intervals, one of trial and suffering, 
 the very name of which Solomon knew not. If we could 
 see the two outward lives placed before us, without their 
 inward experiences, there are few who would hesitate in 
 declaring that Solomon's career must have been the hap- 
 pier, and yet what a contrary evidence their respective 
 writings leave. David, full of spiritual hope and faith 
 and love, seeing the light of heaven so clearly through 
 the dark clouds of adversity and trial, that he could yet 
 rejoice, and find pleasures and lovely things for which to 
 bless God, even upon earth; and Solomon, whose 
 career had been one of unalloyed prosperity, beholding 
 but vanity and vexation below, and, compared with Da- 
 vid's, but a faint gleam of that heaven which awaited 
 him above. But still, that he did behold it all, through 
 the doubt and gloom beclouding his whole being, when 
 he looked back on his profitless career, is in itself a 
 weighty proof of Immortality being indeed the essence 
 of his creed. 
 
 These remarks allude solely to Ecclesiastes. The 
 book of Proverbs (which we shall consider by and by), 
 is written in a different spirit, and more as a book of 
 public instruction, than as a vehicle for individual 
 thoughts. Both books, however, agree in distinctly
 
 LETTER XXV. 343 
 
 teaching that righteousness leadeth to life and wicked- 
 ness to death; that though "all go to one place ; all are 
 of the dust, and all turn to dust again ; " and " who 
 knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the 
 breath of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ? " 
 yet that the Lord will "judge between the righteous and 
 the wicked;" that "whoso keepeth the commandment 
 shall feel no evil thing; and a wise man's heart dis- 
 cerneth both time and judgment. Because to every man 
 there is a time and judgment; the misery of man is great 
 upon him ; for he knoweth not that which shall be, and 
 who can tell him when it shall be ? " words which appear 
 to me to signify that man cannot be happy while 
 doubtful as to the nature of his employments in the 
 time allowed him qn earth ; and the period when judg- 
 ment shall be pronounced, and what it will be. This is 
 exactly the sentiment of a man who had tried earthly 
 pleasures, and, finding them insufficient for his happiness, 
 imagines there must be some preventing cause; and, 
 not choosing to consider that the cause lies in himself, 
 charges, if not exactly Providence, yet, at least, the order 
 of things, as acting against him, and preventing the per- 
 fect enjoyment of life, which, if he could have had the 
 government of his own affairs, he would have assured to 
 himself. " There is no man that hath power over the 
 spirit to retain the spirit [if he had had no revelation of 
 a separate existence of the spirit, what could these 
 words mean ?]; neither hath he power in the day of death ; 
 and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall 
 wickedness deliver those that are given to it." But he 
 tells us repeatedly that "righteousness delivereth from 
 death." Consequently we know that both allude to
 
 344 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 some state of existence beyond this. " Because sen- 
 tence against an evil work is not executed speedily, 
 therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them 
 to do evil." "Though a sinner do evil a hundred 
 times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that 
 it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear be- 
 fore him. Bid it shall not be well with the ivicked." This 
 clearly alludes to the judgment after death, and to the 
 folly of supposing that because sentence against an evil 
 work is not executed speedily, that it is forgotten and 
 passed over. In this life, the next verse tells us, " there 
 are often " just men who suffer as if they had done the 
 work of the wicked, and the wicked as happy as if they 
 had done the work of the righteous ; therefore, to hope 
 for judgment on earth is vanity, and so he commended 
 mirth, as if life might consist of eating and drinking 
 jollily ; but this was not sufficient to satisfy him; and so he 
 applied his heart to wisdom, to see the business done on 
 the earth, and try to reconcile the ways and works of 
 God (for such is evidently the meaning of chap, viii., 17); 
 but he could not succeed, for his heart and time had 
 been too long devoted to worldly pleasures, to obtain at 
 once, in his old age when weariness had overtaken him 
 with doubt and gloom, the pure heart, enlightened eyes, 
 and spiritualised mind which had so enabled his father 
 David to understand and proclaim the ways and works of 
 a loving and compassionating God. He was compelled to 
 remain satisfied with the belief that " the righteous and 
 the wise and therr work are in the hand of God." 
 
 The remainder of the ninth chapter may appear to 
 favour the opinion of sceptics, that Solomon rather en- 
 couraged the thoughtless and irregular pleasures of this
 
 LETTER XXV. 345 
 
 life, than led up to the next. But to me it is only the 
 return of the doubting and weary spirit, which chose 
 to refer every thing to time and chance, instead of man's 
 free will and the Lord's judgment, and so endeavour 
 (vainly indeed) to lessen the stings of his own conscience 
 by lessening individual responsibility: but this, in a 
 Hebrew and a believer in God's Law, could not last 
 long ; and in the eleventh chapter we again find him 
 referring to the works of God, as indeed inscrutable, 
 but nevertheless demanding our adoration, bidding us 
 "in the morning sow the seed; and in the evening with- 
 hold not the hand, for we know not which shall prosper, 
 or whether both may not be good ;" and in the twelfth 
 chapter, after that sublime address, " Remember thy 
 Creator in the days of thy youth," etc., and the exquisitely 
 beautiful description of the dissolution of the human 
 frame which follows, the believer in Immortality bursts 
 forth into the brief but emphatic exclamation of the 
 heart's conviction, " Then shall the dust return to the 
 earth as it was, AND THE SPIRIT SHALL RETURN UNTO 
 
 GOD WHO GAVE IT." 
 
 Here there is neither doubt, supposition, nor sugges- 
 tion. It is perfect conviction, triumphing over all the 
 gloom and weariness that tinged his previous medita- 
 tions completing a most sublime picture of the frames 
 dissolution with the yet sublimer declaration of the spirit's 
 immortality ; and in the few words, " return unto 
 God who gave it," expressing felicity perfect as the 
 heart can conceive ; removing at once all thought of 
 death as annihilation, and teaching that however vain 
 and weary life on earth might be, even to excite the wish 
 to cast it from us and so be at rest, there was no rest
 
 346 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 even after death, save for those whose pleasures and pur- 
 suits in this life, fitted them for the spirit's rest in Heaven 
 with its God. " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
 matter," he continues, in the thirteenth verse of the 
 same chapter, " FEAR GOD AND KEEP HIS COMMAND- 
 MENTS ; FOR THIS IS THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN. For 
 
 God shall bring every work into judgment, with every 
 secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." 
 
 And this is the concluding sentiment of a man, who 
 has been endeavouring to convince himself that life is 
 all vanity and vexation of spirit, who has tried not only 
 every earthly pleasure and sensual indulgence, but even 
 the vast resources and deathless enjoyment of wisdom ; 
 but he had turned from the path of light, and so wisdom 
 herself had become dark, and could give him no rest nor 
 pleasure. And as, in his old age, he looked back on 
 existence wasted, talents misapplied, inasmuch as they 
 had lured him from the study which is above all others, 
 " that he knoweth and understandeth ME, that I am the 
 Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and 
 righteousness in the earth ; and that in these things I 
 delight, saith the Lord." The thought pressed upon him, 
 thus to fear God and keep His commandments, that is to 
 keep Him always before him, was, indeed, not only the 
 whole duty, but the whole safety of man. The very as- 
 surance, "for God will bring every work to judgment," 
 marks and confirms his belief in Immortality, and, as the 
 conclusion of his exhortations and meditations, removes 
 every previous impression which this same book may 
 have given. All men are liable to intervals of such gloom 
 and doubt that their very impressions of the present 
 life are changed ; how much more those of that future,
 
 LETTER XXV. 347 
 
 which they can only behold through faith and an earnest 
 love of God? And, none more so than those who, like 
 Solomon, have tried everj worldly pleasure and found 
 them all wanting; but the nearer he approached the 
 end of this existence, the clearer shone forth the belief, 
 which as a Hebrew could never have been entirely dead 
 within him, of that world in which the spirit will move 
 and act, when dust returned to dust; and of those duties, 
 so simple that the child and the lowliest-minded could 
 understand and observe them ; and so exalted, that the 
 sage and the sovereign, the loftiest intellect and the 
 proudest station would yet feel elevated in their perfor- 
 mances, and every mental faculty be expanded in their 
 contemplation. 
 
 The very fact of Solomon's reiterated complaint, that 
 all he had tried was vanity, instead of fostering gloomy 
 thoughts of this life, ought to be as convincing as if said 
 in direct words, of the existence of a better. There is 
 no allusion in these complaints, to the study of God's 
 ways and works, through his word; because Solomon 
 knew that in that study alone there was no vanity nor 
 vexation, for it would neither fail in itself nor lead us 
 wrong. It was mere earthly pleasure, speculative 
 wisdom, that had proved so utterly vain ; and that they 
 had done so, is positive PROOF of a higher and purer 
 existence. God who, in the hearing of a whole people, 
 had proclaimed Himself to be Love, would never have 
 stored the hearts of his children with capabilities and 
 affections, which were always to yearn for that which they 
 found not, and be unsatisfied with what they had. If 
 this life were all, it would have contained in itself, the 
 full completion of happiness for those who deserved it.
 
 348 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Solomon was blessed with prosperity above all others. 
 If death were the cessation of existence, why could he 
 not enjoy, without a single allpy, the pleasures of this 
 life? What need was there to think of God? There 
 was no present evidence that his departure from this 
 service had excited the Eternal's displeasure; for His 
 prosperity continued uninterruptedly, nay increasing as 
 life advanced? In considering his life and character, we 
 could almost believe that God blessed him with every 
 earthly blessing, arid permitted their misuse to make 
 manifest by positive example, as well as by the precepts of 
 His law, how insufficient was even the most unclouded 
 prosperity of itself to create happiness ; and to prove, 
 that as it was so, THERE MUST BE some higher and purer 
 state of existence, in which the vast capabilities for hap- 
 piness and love, with which He stored the human heart, 
 shall be satisfied and filled. To the denier of revelation 
 the book of Eccclesiastes must indeed be fraught with 
 gloom alone. To the believer in the God revealed 
 through Moses, it is in itself unanswerable evidence of the 
 spirit's immortality. 
 
 Ecclesiastes being full of querulous reminiscences of 
 faded pleasure, we seldom find a reference to the righte- 
 ous, except that they, too, share the common fate of 
 trial and death ; but in Proverbs we have repeated 
 references to them, as blessed far above the wicked, not 
 in this life but in a better. Ecclesiastes, as I have 
 said before, appears more the transcript of individual 
 thoughts from individual experiences, and so is tinged 
 with the gloom and weariness of the writer. Proverbs 
 seems more intended for the use of a community. It 
 does not bear any individual tinge or personal refer-
 
 LETTER XXV. 349 
 
 ence, but enforces certain moral and religious truths, 
 social and domestic duties in short, pithy sentences, 
 likely to fix themselves on the mind. More lengthy 
 dissertations impress for the time, but are frequently 
 forgotten very shortly afterwards. The commentary of a 
 proverb is experience; and so the text remains, very 
 often reminding man of an individual or social duty, for 
 which a longer address would fail. 
 
 In reading the Proverbs of Solomon, we cannot fail 
 to be struck by the constant allusion to " life" and 
 " death," which are utterly meaningless, unless they 
 refer to. a futurity, of which this life is but the thresh- 
 old. " She who forsaketh the guide of her youth, and 
 forgetteth the command of God, her house inclineth 
 unto death, and her paths unto the dead. None that 
 go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the 
 PATHS OF LIFE" (ii. 17). " For the commandment is a 
 lamp, and the Law is light, and the reproofs of instruc- 
 tion are the WAY OF LIFE" (vi. 23), "For whoso 
 findeth me [the wisdom of the Lord, of which the pre- 
 ceding verses, from the eleventh to the thirty-fourth of 
 the eighth chapter, give a most sublime description], 
 FINDETH LIFE, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. 
 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own 
 soul: all they that hate me love death" (viii. 35, 36). 
 Now the wisdom here alluded to cannot be attained in 
 its fulness by the children of earth; and, therefore, 
 unless there be a life where the wisdom sought and 
 cultivated here, can be perfected, Solomon's words are 
 without meaning. Death is the fate of all, whether 
 they seek wisdom or despise it. Nay; but too often it 
 comes the earlier to those who have so pursued wisdom
 
 350 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 from pure love, as to forget the failing strength and 
 suffering frame until too late ; and the grave receives 
 them, ere one quarter of their race is run ; while those 
 who scorn such pure intellectual tastes, who think only 
 of amassing wealth, or the petty ambition of vying with 
 others in means or station who look on the genius and 
 the student as poor idle visionaries who are fit for 
 nothing, and but little removed from fools or madmen, 
 live on in health and luxury, often beyond the time 
 marked as man's allotted age. Where, then, is Solo- 
 mon's wisdom in the above quoted verses ? Judge them as 
 referring to physical life and death, and it is falsehood 
 or folly ; to the life and death which is eternal, and it is 
 fraught with sublimity and truth. 
 
 " Treasures of wickedness profit nothing (we find in 
 chap. x. 2, 3.), but RIGHTEOUSNESS DELIVERETH FROM 
 DEATH. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righte- 
 ous to famish ; but He casteth away the substance of the 
 wicked." " The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life ; 
 and he that winrieth souls is wise" (xi. 30). " The mer- 
 ciful man doeth good to his own soul; but he that is 
 cruel troubleth his own flesh." " The wicked worketh a 
 deceitful work ; but to him that soweth righteousness shall 
 be a sure reward. As righteousness tendeth to life, 
 so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death" 
 (xi. 17 19). "In the way of righteousness is LIFE; 
 and in the pathway thereof there is no death" (xii. 28). 
 " The law of the wise is a fountain of life to depart 
 from the snares of death" (xiii. 14). "The fear of the 
 Lord is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of 
 death" (xiv. 27). "The way of life is ABOVE to the 
 wise, that he may depart from the grave beneath"
 
 LETTER XXV. 351 
 
 {xv. 24). " He that keepeth the commandment pre- 
 serveth his own soul, but he that despiseth his ways shall 
 die. The fear of the Lord tendeth to life, and he that 
 hath it shall abide satisfied ; he shall not be visited with 
 [lasting] evil" (xix. 1623). 
 
 I preferred transcribing all these impressive verses, 
 dearest Annie, to pausing to comment upon them. They 
 bear so emphatically, so unanswerably, upon the subject 
 we are considering, that it appears to me utterly im- 
 possible for any one to read the book whence they are 
 extracted, and yet deny to us a revelation and belief 
 in immortality to us, I mean, as a people ; for it is 
 idle to assert that the knowledge was confined only to a few 
 favoured individuals, when the writings of those indivi- 
 duals were open and known to the whole Jewish people. 
 
 Not one of the verses I have quoted, will bear upon 
 even physical life and death, without doing such violence 
 to the daily experiences of man, as to be entirely rejected 
 and disbelieved. Whereas, regarded as referring to the 
 future reward and punishment of the spirit, they are 
 distinct, comprehensible, and comforting beyond mea- 
 sure, the more so, from their perfect agreement, in word 
 and style, with the expressions already used by Moses, 
 which can only relate to a life and death hereafter, and 
 with the prophecy of Ezekiel already so often quoted as 
 relating to the same subject The very fact of the 
 familiar manner in which Solomon alludes to it, marks 
 it a received popular truth, far more than if he had said 
 in direct words, " Such and such things are ; therefore^ 
 choose righteousness, and depart from evil." Thus writ- 
 ten, we might imagine, they were imparted for the first 
 time to the people; but the words of Moses, David,
 
 352 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 Solomon, and the Prophets, are so based upon a pre- 
 vious revelation and acknowledgment, that if we deny 
 that they allude to a future state, we shall endeavour in 
 vain to understand them, and must condemn the Bible 
 as the word of falsehood, not of truth. Examine well 
 the verses I have transcribed, and I am convinced 
 that you will agree with me as to their immortal 
 meaning. 
 
 The fearful state of Judea, during the continuance of 
 the monarchy prevented all clearer theoretic reference 
 to this important subject. The people were in no state 
 to be restrained from following their evil passions, by 
 any thing so pure and spiritual as the incentive of Im- 
 mortality. Yet even in the historical books, we find no 
 less than four practical illustrations of its truth, which 
 must have struck the people with awe and belief, even 
 in their iniquitous career. The first was the death of 
 Abijah, Jeroboam's son, who, we are expressly told, was 
 to die young, and receive decent burial, because in him 
 alone, there was found some good thing toward the Lord 
 God of Israel (see 1 Kings, xiv. 13), in the house of 
 Jeroboam. Jeroboam's wife herself sought the prophet, 
 whose answer was, no doubt, afterwards heard by all the 
 people, because it was connected with judgment on 
 national sin; "and all the people mourned the child 
 according to the word of the prophet." This one simply 
 recorded incident is in itself sufficient to overthrow the 
 dogmas of materialists and unbelievers. If this life were 
 all, where would be either the justice or the mercy of 
 God, in sentencing the only righteous one of an evil 
 house to an early death ? The being merely removed 
 from the evil threatened on his house, would be but a
 
 LETTER XXV. 353 
 
 negative kind of recompence for that piety which had 
 attracted the notice of his God ; and is completely 
 opposed to the proclaimed attributes of the Creator. If 
 Moses' words, " Choose life that thou and thy seed may 
 live," and Ezekiel's, " When I say to the righteous he 
 shall surely live;" David's "Thou hast delivered my 
 soul from death, that I may walk before God in the 
 land of the living," and Solomon's " Righteousness 
 delivereth from death," if all these allude but to the 
 physical life and death (so to speak) allotted to man, the 
 death of Abijah so absolutely contradicts them all, that 
 if the people of Israel had not had an assured hope in a 
 future existence, which was laid up with God for the 
 righteous, it was enough to have excited them to revolt 
 and rebellion, instead of awing them to submission. 
 There was no need of death to have removed him from 
 the evil visited on his father. The Eternal had equal 
 power to guard and exalt him in life, and, according to 
 his glorious attributes, icould have done so, had there 
 been no purer happiness to be bestowed. But to the 
 Hebrews, believers (even in their most degraded state) in 
 Immortality, the death of the only righteous in Jero- 
 boam's house confirmed the glorious truth which the 
 death of Abel had first revealed; confirmed the words of 
 David, that "precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death 
 of His saints" and practically illustrated the words after- 
 wards spoken by the prophets, that l ' the righteous is taken 
 away from the evil to come, and shall enter into peace ; " 
 "and for those who feared the Lord, and spake of Him 
 often one to another, a book of remembrance was 
 written," marking them as the jewels of His crown. Oh, 
 when we are weeping over the cold remains of a
 
 354 
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 beloved one, recalled in the first bloom of youth, dearest 
 Annie, the early death of Abijah ought to satisfy us 
 as to the wherefore they should go and we remain, and 
 give us hope in the midst of tears. 
 
 And still more powerfully, if possible, is the Hebrew 
 realisation of the revelation of Immortality illustrated, in 
 the only reward vouchsafed to Josiah for his goodness 
 and pious efforts in the service of God. If you refer to 
 the twenty-second and twenty-third chapter of the 
 second book of Kings, and the thirty-fourth and thirty- 
 fifth of the second book of Chronicles, you will find the 
 whole history of this excellent young king, whose heart 
 was perfect towards his God, and in whom, despite the 
 fearful contagion of crime, no evil could be found. 
 When he sent to the prophetess Huldah, to enquire 
 concerning the book of the Law which had been found, 
 and whose awful denunciation on the disobedient had 
 so appalled him, her sentence of mercy for his individual 
 righteousness was couched in' words, which, unless Im- 
 mortality had been the very essence of the Jewish faith, 
 and as such inseparably twined with the idea of death, 
 would have been as equally meaningless, as contradict- 
 ing all Moses' promises of life. as reward, if that life had 
 indeed been merely physical, and ceasing with earthly 
 existence. " But to the king of Judah, who sent you to 
 enquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus 
 saith the Lord God of Israel, as touching the words 
 which thou hast heard: Because thine heart was tender, 
 and thou hast humbled thyself before, the Lord, when thou 
 heardest what I spake against this place .... I also have 
 heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold now I will gather thee 
 to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to the grave
 
 LETTER XXV. 355 
 
 in peace, and thine eyes shall not behold the evil which 
 I will bring upon this place." 
 
 What but a received and realised belief in Immor- 
 tality, as a revelation from God Himself, could have 
 made Josiah regard this sentence, as one of mercy and 
 favour, especially granted him, for his zeal, obedience, 
 and humility? That he did consider it in this light, we 
 know, by its being an increased incentive for him to 
 continue in the path of righteousness, though he knew 
 no effort of his could avert the long doomed chastisement 
 of his sinful people. He died in exact accordance with 
 the words of the prophetess when only thirty, in the 
 prime of youth and hope : and is not this, then, a con- 
 vincing proof that the people of Israel then, equally with 
 us now, regarded the words of Moses so often quoted,, 
 as alluding to a life and death beyond this world ; that 
 the belief was so inseparable from them, that it did not 
 even need the reiterated words of the law to teach it; 
 for we know that Josiah had never seen or read the Law, 
 till it was discovered in cleansing out the neglected 
 temple. Yet so powerful was the incentive of the 
 promised reward to himself (not an early death, as 
 sceptics may read it, but an early translation into peace 
 and joy), that he never ceased his efforts for public and 
 private reform. It would be folly indeed to imagine, 
 that he looked forward to, and was promised by, the God 
 who so loveth righteousness, the mere negative recom- 
 pence of not seeing the evils about to befall Judea. To 
 fulfil the words of His servant Moses, and retain his 
 attribute of immutable truth, if the life there promised 
 were only physical, and length of days and prosperity on 
 earth the only reward for the righteous, Josiah must have
 
 356 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 been preserved to the farthest limit of mortality, and 
 enjoyed nothing but prosperity and rest, instead of con- 
 stant labour in the cause of God, and an early death. 
 All the arguments I have brought forward in the case 
 of Abijah, the perfect agreement of his early removal 
 with the death of Abel, the Law and the Prophets, will 
 bear with equal, if not with still more thrilling, emphasis 
 on the fate of Josiah. Abijah had only innate goodness 
 to bring forward. Josiah had the addition of an earnest 
 and faithful service, demanding (so to speak) still more 
 at the hand of Him who through Moses promised reward, 
 ay, and the reward of LIFE, to those who loved and 
 sought him, and obeyed his ordinances. It would be 
 useless to reiterate these arguments ; but I cannot tell 
 you, dearest Annie, the inexpressible consolation of these 
 scriptural facts ; the practical illustrations, as it were, of 
 the words of Moses and the Prophets. There cannot 
 be a doubt as to early death being far more often a 
 reward than a chastisement, and to be such, there must 
 be a future existence, and an undying soul. 
 
 The stoning of the righteous Naboth is the second 
 incident confirming our Immortality, which the historical 
 books reveal. Here, again, unless we believe the reward 
 of the righteous is to come, we must deny alike the at- 
 tributes of our God, and the words of Moses. Naboth 
 was evidently one of the seven thousand, who, in the 
 midst of national sin, remained faithful to his God ; and 
 therefore, if this earth were all, ought to have been 
 blessed with honours and riches, and long life over and 
 above all his fellows. Instead of which we find his 
 lawful possessions coveted by the rapacious king: and 
 by the diabolical arts of the queen he is falsely accused
 
 LETTER XXV. 357 
 
 of blasphemy, brought out and stoned. Now, is there 
 one believer in that God of infinite mercy, justice, and 
 truth, which the Bible reveals, who can read this incident, 
 and yet need direct words to teach him Immortality? 
 Is there one Hebrew who, with this record before him, 
 can declare that the rewards and punishments taught by 
 Moses are temporal only? one of the stranger faiths who 
 can still refuse to the people of Israel the belief in a 
 futurity of bliss for the righteous, and woe for the wicked, 
 when their Bible narrates such fearful triumph of the 
 wicked over the righteous upon earth ? How could even 
 the few righteous have continued steady and faithful in 
 seeking the path of life, with the earthly fate of Naboth 
 before them, contradicting all the promises of their 
 Lawgiver, if they had not known from ages past, that 
 the " life" promised the righteous was not of earth, and 
 that though the wicked may triumph, their doom is to 
 be cut off for ever ? If immortality had not been uni- 
 versally known (though the mass were too wrapt in sin 
 to act upon the glorious knowledge), we may safely as- 
 sert, that the death of Naboth would have been averted, 
 lest the efforts of the righteous, dispirited from such a 
 permitted tennination to the good, should entirely cease, 
 but it was not averted, because it removed the righteous 
 victim from the evil of earth to a heaven of glory, con- 
 firmed Immortality to the believer, and by the denunci- 
 ations of God through His prophet on Ahab and Jezebel, 
 taught the wicked that the crime was noted for awful 
 chastisement, and bade them tremble, even while ini- 
 quity still held them by a chain. 
 
 The fourth confirmation of a future life, is the miracu- 
 lous translation of the prophet Elijah, which has always
 
 358 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 appeared to me ordained, not only as the reward of a 
 faithful prophet, because there were many equally 
 righteous ; and that one alone should be taken to heaven 
 without the pang of mortal dissolution would seem like 
 injustice towards others, but that his ascent should be a 
 palpable evidence of that Heaven awaiting the righteous 
 after their work on earth was done; to arrest by a miracle 
 the attention of the people, to remove all doubt with 
 which a career of sin and all the mere animal pleasures 
 might have surrounded death, to prove unanswerably 
 that this life was but the threshold of another ; and that it 
 could not possibly end in annihilation, else wherefore had 
 not all the righteous of previous ages been translated 
 equally with Elijah ? He was not the only one by a 
 great many, whose righteousness demanded "life:" and 
 we know that the God whose justice is infinite as His 
 mercy, would never have thus shown favour to one alone, 
 and condemned the rest of His faithful to annihilation. 
 The translation. of Elijah, in the midst of Israel's most 
 terrible iniquity, has always appeared to me one of the 
 most striking, most convincing, and most consoling proofs 
 of a beneficent and most gracious Providence that the 
 Bible gives. 
 
 A theoretic revelation of immortality would have 
 been as utterly unheeded by the people, as were all the 
 spiritual ordinances of the Law. They were in no con- 
 dition for the reception of any thing so pure, if presented 
 to them as a new truth, the acceptation of which was 
 necessary for their salvation. It was too opposed to 
 the present overflow of animal indulgences and earthly 
 desires to have urged them to desert their evil course 
 for the path of life ; and God, in His mercy, instead of
 
 LETTER XXV. 359 
 
 reiterating through chosen servants the rewards that the 
 people were rejecting, performed a miracle so stupen- 
 dous, so impossible to any but Himself, that even the 
 most heedless and sinful must for the time have been 
 startled into conviction of another and purer state of 
 existence ; and that, however they might drown the voice 
 of the solemn truth, there must come a day when 
 before the throne of God, their souls, whether for good 
 or for evil, would stand in judgment. For the righteous 
 especially, the translation of Elijah must have been of 
 inexpressible consolation. In periods of national sin 
 and its consequent misery, not only to the sinning, but, 
 from their social nature, too often also to the good, our 
 human nature not unfrequently so depresses and silences 
 the spiritual, that comfort even from the righteous has 
 departed, and we cannot realise that, which yet from our 
 very heart we believe. This world, and its petty cares 
 and exhausting struggles, seem to chain the spirit to the 
 earth when it most longs to spring on high. Sin and 
 sorrow seem man's lot alone. We forget that our souls 
 are the breath of God, and therefore mark us a creation 
 "a little lower than the angels," however man's sins may 
 have defaced the immortal likeness ; and we find ourselves 
 involuntarily believing, that we are mere insects in the 
 sight of God, over whom He is too mighty and too holy 
 to hold guard. The most sincerely pious, the most 
 earnest strivers after good, have all had to contend with 
 such painful intervals, and more especially when all 
 around them is gloom and crime, and the voice of God 
 is heard but in denunciation upon sin. To such, then, 
 how thrice blessed must have been the ascent of Elijah. 
 It must have recalled their fainting faith taught them,
 
 300 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 however dark and sad their earthly career, even as was 
 Elijah's own, it was but temporary trial to end in an 
 eternity of joy. The Heaven which earth's sins had so 
 obscured was revealed in transceridant glory immor- 
 tality as thrillingly proclaimed, as if an angel's voice 
 had spoken. None other, indeed, could escape death ; 
 but. their souls were deathless, and their dwelling was 
 above. 
 
 Do not regard this rendering of the translation of 
 Elijah as the mere dream of an enthusiast, dearest 
 Annie. The word of God is granted us to be our 
 guide, not merely by precept, but by example not 
 only by revelation in direct words, but by analogy. We 
 are to look upon all it records* as instruction, and search 
 for its divine lessons, not be content with merely those 
 which lie upon the surface. We must remember the 
 Old Testament is OURS. That of the glorious truths it 
 reveals, and the precepts it bestows, no one can deprive 
 us, unless we disregard them ourselves, and by indiffer- 
 ence and neglect, permit others to think we have neither 
 right nor interest in them. We, indeed, value and 
 stand up for the Pentateuch as a Law and Revelation 
 vouchsafed to us alone; but this is only a portion of our 
 inheritance. If we rest satisfied with the Books of 
 Moses, we deprive ourselves of a rich mine of spiritual 
 wealth, instruction, and consolation, which, when thus 
 neglected by its native guardians, naturally becomes 
 the property of aliens, and by them is but too often and 
 too strongly turned against ourselves. Again and again, 
 the truth forces itself upon me, that as a nation we do 
 not study our Bibles sufficiently; and it is proved by 
 the very fact, that while the Sabbath portions from the
 
 LETTER XXV. 361 
 
 Law and Prophets are repeatedly translated and offered 
 to the Jewish public ; there is actually no such thing as 
 the translation of the whole Bible by a Jew. We know 
 the Psalms, because they are almost all contained in 
 our Prayers. We may know one or two chapters or 
 occasional verses of the Proverbs, from the truths they 
 teach in a short sentence, or the experiences with which 
 they sympathise. We know those portions of the Pro - 
 phets that teach our restoration and captivity, but those 
 that bear on our moral guidance and spiritual consola- 
 tion are carelessly passed by. If the Historical Books 
 are read, it is merely as a history of an antiquated past 
 not as practical illustrations of the Law, and con- 
 firmation of the after prophets. We must hope that 
 this mistaken neglect of any part of the Word of Life 
 is passing away, now that there is indeed a spiritual 
 awakening amongst us. The more we study, the more 
 we shall find the fulness of instruction which the Sacred 
 Volume gives. That where there is no precept, there is 
 illustration ; and that even the Historical Books them- 
 selves, apparently so confined to earthly deeds alone, 
 will yet bear witness to, and confirm the holy truth with 
 which (however denied us) our Sacred Volume teems 
 the knowledge of, and received belief in, Immortality !
 
 362 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 WE now come to the Prophets, dearest Annie ; and in 
 them we shall find the doctrines, both of the resurrection 
 of the dead, and of our soul's immortality, still more 
 distinctly revealed than they have been yet. The awful 
 time was nearing, when the prescience of the Eternal 
 knew, that for the continued iniquities of His people 
 His countenance would be turned from them the direct 
 interference of His Providence in visible judgments be 
 withdrawn His presence from the Holy of Holies, 
 where the high priest had once been so favoured as to 
 hold communion and receive reply, depart and the 
 visible glory vanish the very inspiration of His will to 
 prophets and holy men in their captivity cease the 
 Law be read with such painful restrictions, that its 
 spiritual meaning might succumb before the care to 
 observe the ceremonial. Suffering and toil, and con- 
 tempt and wrath were gathering round, in which the 
 spiritual part of our mingled nature might be entirely 
 lost. The free will of man had chosen evil, and brought 
 this chastisement upon them. The prescience of the 
 Eternal beheld it; and while His justice might not 
 withhold the chastisement, His mercy provided conso- 
 lation. Communion direct with Himself, as had been
 
 LETTER XXVI. 363 
 
 the case during the continuance of His temple, was, 
 indeed, at an end ; but He inspired His prophets to 
 write those immortal truths, which would lead the spirit 
 up to Him by belief and obedience, even in captivity 
 and woe. Earth was darkened ; for the one temple was 
 levelled with the ground, but Heaven was brought still 
 nearer. The body might toil and suffer through its 
 allotted space, but the soul beheld its destiny, and could 
 calmly endure. Flame and the rack, the sword and 
 famine might destroy the clayey shell, but the dying 
 Hebrew knew his soul was deathless ; beheld but Heaven 
 and rejoiced. While in his own land, and under the 
 direct government of God ; while judgments and miracles 
 were visible to manifest his Providence to the nation at 
 large ; while the conviction of immortality was so com- 
 pletely the sustaining essence of the Law, that to divide 
 it from the intent of its ordinances was impossible, there 
 was little need of words referring to it; but when all 
 these blessings ceased, and a wide barrier separated the 
 Hebrew from his justly offended God, there was abso- 
 lute need of direct words to bring the solemn and spirit- 
 ual truth home to the heart to be its guide and consoler; 
 and, therefore, God's mercy inspired the prophets to 
 teach it more clearly and distinctly than the Law. 
 
 This is the simple reason of a fact which our oppo- 
 nents so often turn against us. They say, that the 
 prophets were more spiritual than the Law, because 
 they beheld and referred to the advent of Jesus, and to 
 the religion he would teach. As a Hebrew, of course, 
 1 feel that this is a mistaken notion, and that none of 
 our prophecies referred to, or were fulfilled in, Jesus 
 and his new religion; and, therefore, I am anxious to
 
 364 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 provide you with a solid foundation in your own faith, 
 for what may, at a first sight, appear plausible in another. 
 I have already dilated at such length on the real mis- 
 sion of the prophets, that it needs no further repetition, 
 save to assert that as they were inspired to teach the 
 people greater spirituality, than their gross abuse, or 
 rather disregard, of their Law had previously allowed 
 them to attain, immortality naturally formed a part of 
 their revealings as an incentive to a righteous career, 
 when all, even partial, prosperity on earth, would be 
 denied them. 
 
 Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Malachi, are those pro 
 phets in whom we find the clearest allusions to a future 
 existence. The others contain many verses and refer- 
 ences, which can only bear upon the subject, but in less 
 precise words. Many verses that are generally supposed 
 to allude only to our restoration to Jerusalem, / myself 
 believe, refer with equal force to those words in which 
 the soul will move and act meanwhile. The reward 
 promised by Moses, for perfect obedience to the law, was 
 that the days of the people in the promised land should 
 be as the days of Heaven upon the earth" Now this ex- 
 pression is positive confirmation, that there is a Heaven 
 (so to speak) where time is so perfected in happiness, 
 that for earth to receive the same, is the greatest 
 reward that could be promised to the children of men. 
 If this Heaven were nought to them, which, were physi- 
 cal death the end of our existence, must be the case, 
 how could they have even comprehended the nature of 
 this reward, and so received it as an incentive to right- 
 eousness? It would be much about the same as show : 
 ing a beautiful picture to a brute beast, and desiring
 
 LETTER XXVI. 365 
 
 him to admire it, and it should be his. The determined 
 sinfulness of our ancestors always prevented the realis- 
 ation of this glorious promise; but we know that in 
 our restoration it will be fulfilled, and therefore there is 
 neither impiety nor contradiction in the supposition, that 
 our souls will appear in judgment when freed from this 
 life, and yet rejoin the body, at the resurrection of the 
 dead, for everlasting life in that land which will be again 
 an Eden, and where sin, and disease, and death will be 
 so utterly unknown, that their days will indeed be as the 
 days of Heaven upon Earth ; for from Heaven, have the 
 pure and pardoned spirits come, at the word of their 
 God, to revive the body they have left. 
 
 But this is a subject demanding such deep thought 
 and metaphysical disquisition, dearest Annie, that I 
 must not, in justice to either you or myself, enter upon 
 it now. 1 only want you clearly to understand, for the 
 present, when we are entering a field, where the doctrine 
 of the resurrection of the body and the Immortality of 
 the soul are both brought forward, that the one does not 
 contradict the other, as some unhappy sceptics choose 
 to assert. With God both can be. In reflecting on 
 such a subject, try and remember the contents of my 
 ninth letter, that in this life we are no more capable of 
 understanding the wisdom and the power, the works and 
 intentions of the Eternal, than an unborn babe, the 
 knowledge and discoveries of a natural philosopher. 
 Yet, that unborn babe has within himself the necessary 
 capability, and, if spared to maturity, may attain the 
 same vast amount of knowledge ; and equally so have 
 our immortal souls the capabilities to understand the ways 
 and works of the Lord, and, in the gradations of that
 
 366 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 future laid up with Him, may attain to it, though on 
 earth, it is as much shut from him as the earth itself 
 to the unborn child. 
 
 Feeling this, as we must do if we reflect at all, the 
 speculative imaginings which will assail us, as to the 
 destiny of the soul while the body lies in corruption 
 waiting resurrection, unless directed by the revelation 
 of the Holy Scriptures, must lead us into a wide sea of 
 doubt and fancy, which will not only deprive us of rest 
 and comfort, but lure us from our God. 
 
 But if we search the Scriptures, we shall know that 
 our souls are deathless ; that to hope (as the wearied are 
 sometimes tempted to do) for their non-existence, is con- 
 tradicted by the whole evidence of -past and present life. 
 That for every work done on earth with every secret 
 thing, God will bring it into judgment whether it be 
 good, or whether it be evil, contradicts at once the idea, 
 that the souls are torpid, or non-existent till the great 
 day of universal resurrection. They have their work to 
 do until that day, in the various gradations of spiritual 
 existence, and according to the judgment pronounced on 
 their life on earth. And this is sufficient to guide and 
 comfort us while below. The revival of corruption, the 
 mysterious re-union of soul and body, it is our duty to 
 believe, but neither to argue nor speculate upon. With 
 God all things are not only possible, but founded upon 
 a wisdom and love, which here we vainly endeavour to 
 conceive, but which may perfectly satisfy us, that there 
 will be neither degradation nor further trial to the soul 
 in iis reunion with the body. 
 
 The resurrection will not be, the Bible tells us, till sin 
 and death are utterly destroyed from off the earth, and
 
 LETTER XXVI. 367 
 
 therefore, we have scriptural authority for the hope and 
 belief, that the revival of the body will form a tabernacle 
 for the soul, pure as the soul itself, and, instead of the 
 spirit sharing and suffering the infirmities of the body, 
 as now, the body will share the purity and perfection of 
 the soul. 
 
 That this is merely an individual supposition, I will- 
 ingly acknowledge, for I have never met with it in any 
 Jewish or Christian writer; but it is founded on a long, 
 earnest^ and prayerful study of those portions of all 
 the prophets, which refer to our restoration to our own 
 land. I am aware, that many amongst us, and even 
 amongst Christians, imagine that the repeopling Judea, 
 will be achieved by political interference, that it will be 
 accomplished naturally (so to speak) ; and occasional 
 efforts have been made, and pamphlets have been writ- 
 ten, to manifest the wisdom of a co-operation of certain 
 nations, or promulgation of certain statutes, compelling 
 or holding out rewards and privileges, for the Jews to 
 return to Judea : but to my feelings, these efforts are 
 utterly useless. It is impossible to read the Prophets 
 with any attention, and not perceive, that our return 
 will be attended by miracles yet more stupendous than 
 those which marked our progress from Egypt; by a 
 regeneration of the heart, and annihilation of all in- 
 clination to sin, which, in the present state of man, is 
 impossible ; and by the resurrection of the dead, which 
 will not be till the end of days " when the sun shall 
 not give light by day, nor the moon by night, but the 
 Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy 
 glory." 
 
 Our promised restoration, then, is a confirmation.
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 instead of a denial of our soul's immortality ; for every 
 reference to it marks the triumph of the spiritual over 
 the merely corporeal; and this in itself is proof of our 
 mingled nature, and of the continued existence of the 
 spirit, however the body may lie in corruption. For 
 the Lord to be our everlasting light, and God our glory, 
 our life in Judea must be the life of the spirit, however 
 the body may have arisen and shared its purity. The 
 Prophets give us no foundation whatever for the received 
 idea, that the Jews look to a temporal deliverer and 
 mere earthly glories, in the submission of their enemies, 
 and ascendancy over the nations as the sole enjoyment 
 of their restoration PEACE, peace eternal and spiritual, 
 peace springing from the fruition of that thrice-glorious 
 prophecy, " Ye shall not say one to another, Know ye 
 the Lord; for ye shall all know Him, from the least to 
 the greatest of you" PEACE, springing from that 
 blessed, blessed unity of heart and spirit, which will lead 
 all nations to worship in the mount of the Lord, and 
 acknowledge Israel, as indeed His first-born, whose 
 glory it is to be His priests and people PEACE, which, 
 from the cessation of individual and general sin, will rest, 
 brooding like the dove over every human heart PEACE, 
 which will turn the swords into plough-shares, the 
 spears into pruning-hooks; for the vain strivings of mere 
 earthly ambition, the heart-burnings of imagined national 
 wrongs, will have ceased forever PEACE, which will 
 tame even the wild beasts of the forest, and permit 
 even a little child to lead them PEACE, which is of 
 God, and marks the days of Heaven on the Earth, for 
 " the wJtole earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea" PEACE, which is
 
 LETTER XXVI. 369 
 
 the offspring of innocence and joy, of love that knows 
 no death, and faith that knows no doubt. Such and such 
 alone, is the promise attendant on our restoration ; and 
 shall we call this temporal greatness and human subjection 
 of the nations? Dearest Annie, banish the mistaken 
 thought. It has no foundation in our Scriptures ; there- 
 fore it is wrong, and has no part in Judaism. 
 
 But I must not dilate on this subject, connected as it 
 is with our argument of the undying nature and or- 
 dained superiority of the soul over the body in the latter 
 days. I must try and confine myself to the witness of 
 the prophets to our continued existence after indi- 
 vidual death not to national restoration. The subjects 
 are indeed so united, that it is difficult to divide them. 
 The first allusion to a decided existence after physical 
 death, is the magnificent poem contained in the four- 
 teenth chapter of Isaiah. That it is more a figurative illus- 
 tration of what will be Israel's triumph over her insulting 
 foes, than a direct reference to individual immortality, I 
 grant; but even as a figure, it is must important, proving, 
 as it does, how completely the minds of the Hebrews 
 must have been imbued with the subject, or it would 
 never have so formed the ground-work of their literature. 
 " The grave from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee 
 at thy coming, " the prophet says, addressing Babylon 
 under the figure of a mighty king; " it stirreth up the dead 
 for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth : it has raised 
 up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All 
 they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become 
 weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy 
 pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy 
 viols : the worm is spread under thee, and the wor.ns 
 
 H5
 
 370 THE JEWISH 
 
 cover thee. How art thou fallen from Heaven, O 
 Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cast down to 
 ihe ground, thou which didst weaken the nations ! For 
 thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I 
 will exalt my throne above the stars of God .... I will 
 ascend above the heights of the clouds ; I will be like 
 the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to the 
 grave, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee 
 shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, 
 Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did 
 shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, 
 and destroyed the city thereof; that opened not the 
 house of his prisoners?" Can any picture be more sub- 
 lime than this? the fate of the mighty tyrant who thought 
 to make his seat with the Most High, and who had such 
 power in the world the satirical astonishment of the 
 dead, that he should become one of them, and the worm 
 be under and above him ? And then, lest it might be 
 thought that the prophet alluded merely to the dead as 
 inmates of the grave, the eighteenth and nineteenth verses 
 mark the distinction between their fate and that of the 
 proud sinner, whose earthly end was the same; " All the 
 kings of the nations, even all of them, lie m glory, every 
 one in his own house [figurative of the houses appointed 
 in the land of the living]. But thou art cast out of the 
 grave like an abominable branch, as the remnant of those 
 that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down 
 to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden underfoot." 
 Now all who die become carcases, and are down in the 
 grave, so that the distinction here made cannot possibly 
 have to do with the mere differences of burial. We 
 have already heard the dead chief ones of the earth
 
 LETTER XXVI. 371 
 
 allude to their being weak, and having the worm as their 
 companion ; therefore, unless it alludes to something be- 
 yond the body, they cannot be said to " lie in glory" 
 
 We have seen them all together rising to meet the king 
 of Babylon ; therefore, it is not the body, which, resteth 
 " each in his own house." Nor would the mere supe- 
 riority of the pomp and place of burial be sufficient to 
 mark the difference between them. If death were 
 indeed annihilation, what could possibly signify the 
 honours, or the disgrace of interment, either to those 
 that were gone or those who bemoaned them I mean as 
 reward or punishment? To attach such a meaning to 
 this beautiful passage, changes it at once from the sub- 
 limest truth into incomprehensible mockery. Were 
 there not the eighteenth and nineteenth verses, we 
 might indeed suppose it a mere poetic imagining con- 
 cerning the dead, animated in their graves, with as- 
 tonishment at their new guest : but the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth verses illustrate the life and good, death and 
 evil, set forth by Moses, and commented on by Ezekiel. 
 
 The nineteenth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter so 
 clearly reveals the resurrection of the dead, that it needs 
 neither commentary nor transcription more especially 
 as it is more to Immortality as the groundwork of our 
 faith, than to the resurrection, that I am anxious to draw 
 your attention. The thirty-third chapter is, however, 
 one containing in itself such convincing evidence of our 
 argument, that it demands notice. The first twelve 
 verses describe the fate of the enemies of the Lord, the 
 waiting of His faithful servants upon him, the inform- 
 ation that the " Lord dwelleth on high," and that Zion 
 shall be filled with righteousness and judgment. And
 
 372 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 wisdom and knowledge shall be its stable strength, and 
 the fear of the Lord its treasure : but that, for the 
 despising of the covenant, suffering and desolation cause 
 the earth to mourn and languish ; Lebanon to be ashamed 
 and hewn down ; Sharon to be like a wilderness, and 
 Bashan and Cannel to shake off their fruits ; those that 
 are far off shall hear what the Lord hath done ; and 
 those that are near shall acknowledge His might. And 
 then follows a description so vivid of what can only be 
 realised in a future life, that it seems scarcely possible 
 for even the greatest sceptic to read it in any other 
 sense. 
 
 " The sinners in Zion are afraid ; fearfulness hath 
 surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell 
 with the devouring fire?" they ask one of another; 
 "who amongst us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" 
 This is remarkable as almost, the first and only part of 
 the Bible in which punishment after death is clearly 
 specified as having entered into the imaginings of sin- 
 ners, accompanied of course with terror. The Eternal's 
 own sentence is excision : our sages' meaning of which 
 we will examine hereafter. 
 
 The fifteenth verse returns to the consideration of 
 what constitutes righteousness, and the destiny of the 
 righteous. " He that walketh righteously and speaketh 
 uprightly : he that despiseth the gain of oppressions ; 
 that shaketh his hand from holding of bribes ; that stop- 
 peth his ear from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes 
 from seeing evil, he shall dwell on Iriyh ; his place of de- 
 fence shall be the munitions of rocks ; his bread shall be 
 given him, his water shall be sure." Now, we have al- 
 ready been told that the Lord dwelleth on high ; conse-
 
 LETTER XXVI. 373 
 
 quently, we must feel that the " on high," where the 
 righteous is to dwell, is with the Lord, and that can only 
 be in the world to come. The Eastern hyperbole which 
 concludes the verse, confirms its truth by its perfect 
 agreement with other passages. God Himself is termed 
 the rock of our salvation : Abraham as the rock whence 
 we were hewn ; and, therefore, that our defence shall 
 be the munitions, or stronghold, of the rocks, simply 
 means that our guardian and protector is the Lord, who 
 laid the rocks on their foundations. The bread we shall 
 receive, and the waters that are sure, are the same as 
 those held out to us in the fifty-fifth chapter " Ho 
 every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ; and he 
 that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat : yea, buy 
 wine and milk without money and without price. Where- 
 fore do ye spend money on that which is not bread, and 
 your labour on that which satisfieth not? Hearken dili- 
 gently unto me, and cat ye that which is good, let your soul 
 delight itself in fatness." 
 
 In the seventeenth verse, as is constantly the case 
 with the literature of the Bible, the pronoun changes 
 from the third to the second person. Still addressing 
 the righteous, Isaiah says " Thine eyes shall see the 
 the king in his beauty ; they shall behold the land that 
 is very far off." The king here referred to is evidently 
 the Lord; for in the twentieth verse we read, "The 
 Lord is our judge ; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord 
 is our KING ; He will save us." No man in life can see 
 that Holy 'King, or behold with his mortal sight "the 
 land that is very far off;" but in Heaven we shall see "as 
 though in the light of the Lord," and behold Jerusalem and 
 Zion indeed, as the prophet describes. In the eighteenth
 
 374 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and nineteenth verses, he refers to the lingering feelings of 
 human terror clinging round the released soul, to the 
 wondering gaze for the usual officers of the land, and for 
 the pious people in whose possession it lies. But they 
 were no more visible : and in the twentieth verse, we 
 find a beautiful picture of our holy land, as the righteous 
 soul shall see it, from that pure dwelling where it awaits 
 the great and glorious day of the Lord. " Look upon 
 Zion, the city of our solemnities : thine eyes shall see 
 Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not 
 be taken down, not one of the stakes be removed, neith'er 
 shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But there the 
 glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and 
 streams ; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither 
 shall gallant ship pass thereby. The Lord is our judge; 
 the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king; He will 
 save us. Thy tacklings are loosed ; they could not well 
 spread the sail : then is the prey of a great spoil divided ; 
 the lame take the prey. And the inhabitant shall not 
 say, I am sick ; the people that dwell therein shall be 
 forgiven their iniquity." 
 
 The wording, and, in fact, the whole imagery of this 
 glorious passage, proves that it is not in Jerusalem we 
 are first to see these things. They refer, indeed, to our 
 restoration, and to the blessings then awaiting us ; but it 
 is part of the reward of the righteous when " dwelling on 
 high," to look on earth with the eyes of the Lord, in 
 "whose light," as we have been expressly told, "we shall 
 see light." To look on " the land which is very far off," 
 cannot possibly allude to any position on earth ; for, 
 though we may hear of and take an interest in lands that 
 are very far off, we cannot by any effort of art or nature.
 
 LETTER XXVI. 375 
 
 see them. But from above, and with the spiritualised 
 vision of the soul, we may indeed behold it. We 
 shall look through ages, for, to the Immortal, time 
 is unknown, and behold that favoured land, as God has 
 promised, where He will be to us all we need, and 
 where neither disease, nor sin, nor death can enter. The 
 figurative terms applied to the Eternal, u a place of 
 broad rivers and streams," is nothing new in the Eastern 
 
 * 
 
 idiom. " For my people have committed two evils," we 
 find the Lord saying through his prophet Jeremiah; 
 ' they have forsaken me, the fountain of living ivaters, 
 and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that 
 will hold no water." And numbers o f similar passages 
 might be extracted, to prove the referring to our God by 
 the same reviving image. The imagery of the prophets, 
 to obtain its way to the hearts and understandings of the 
 people, was always founded on that which was most reviv- 
 ing and strengthening to human nature in a burning 
 clime. A refuge from the storm a shadow from the 
 heat a rock of strength a place of broad rivers and 
 streams a fountain of living waters all are Eastern 
 figures permitted to be applied to the Eternal, to appeal 
 to the hearts of the weary ; and peculiarly applicable to 
 the land of Judah, where drought and heat were 
 the greatest affliction, shadow and water the greatest 
 blessing that could befall. 
 
 The prophecy we have been considering is a remark- 
 able confirmation of that perfect agreement between the 
 individual Immortality of the soul and its immortal transit 
 after death into a state of consciousness and work, accord- 
 ing as it has prepared itself in this life, with the doc- 
 trine of the resurrection of the body, and our restoration
 
 376 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 to Judea, which I brought forward in the first part of this 
 letter. The prophecy cannot relate to any position in 
 this life, nor solely to our restoration. The five concluding 
 verses certainly describe Zion as she will be at that glo- 
 rious time; but whom is the prophet desiring to "look 
 upon Zion?" Undoubtedly not a mortal inhabitant of 
 the earth, for no mortal vision could embrace it. He 
 addresses that soul of the righteous which he has already 
 said shall " dwell on high and behold the king in his 
 beauty ;" and desires him, as a part of his reward, to 
 behold the city of his love, even as the tender mercy of 
 his God has ordained it shall be restored ; and where, at 
 the resurrection of the body, he too shall move and act, 
 bringing with him that perfection and purity which he 
 has attained in heaven. 
 
 The next witness (chapters xlix., 1.) which Isaiah 
 brings forward in confirmation of the Jewish belief in 
 immortality, is his own experience. " I have laboured 
 in vain," he says, in a moment of despondency ; " I have 
 spent my strength for nought, and in vain ; YET SWRELY 
 
 M5T JUDGMENT IS WITH THE LORD, AND MY WORK IS 
 
 WITH MY GOD." Now what comfort could this belief 
 have brought, if death were annihilation? No man, 
 unless the faith were strong within him, that his judg- 
 ment and work, being with God, would bring sure peace 
 and hope of reward, could have burst forth into such a 
 rejoicing exclamation in the midst of human sorrow and 
 disappointment. It is, indeed, but a single drop in the 
 multitude of evidences which the Bible gives of Israel's 
 belief in immortality ; but it is important, as showing 
 how completely the prophet's heart and mind were
 
 LETTER XXVI. 377 
 
 infused with it, as the natural and consoling accom- 
 paniment of his faith. 
 
 In a previous chapter, also (the forty-fifth), we find 
 abundant evidence of this truth. " Israel shall be saved 
 in the Lord with an everlasting salvation" " I am a jnst 
 God and a Saviour, there is none beside me." " Look 
 unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." 
 "In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, 
 and shall glory." Now if we deny another and purer 
 state of existence, these words are not merely incom- 
 prehensible, but utterly false. What had been the fate 
 of Israel since the days of the prophet, and while he 
 lived? Is there any evidence of their being saved on 
 earth? What is the meaning of the term, "saved in 
 the Lord with an everlasting salvation ?" Had we no 
 other words but these, we have enough to prove the 
 emphatic truth of immortality being the revealed, 
 acknowledged, and treasured heritage of the Hebrews 
 from the very beginning. The very prophecies are so 
 based on it as an already received and believed truth, 
 that if it be denied, or Judea imagined to be the sole 
 heritage of the Israelites, they fall to the ground as 
 mocking fallacies, wanting both foundation and support. 
 How could the mass understand such promises, if the 
 fact of their being immortal beings had only then been 
 revealed? How any man, who calls himself either 
 Christian or Jew, can declare that, in the Old Testa- 
 ment, there is no evidence of immortality, passes my 
 comprehension. The whole fabric falls at once, if you 
 withdraw that only sustaining thread. There is neither 
 God nor Bible to the deniers of immortality, as known 
 unto the Jews. Their whole religion, Law and Pro-
 
 378 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 phets (nay, the very God their Scriptures reveal), are 
 confirmed or denied, by the simple fact of their believing 
 or denying immortality it may be, not told in direct 
 words, though we have them also, but as the basis, the 
 vital essence on which the whole is founded and has life. 
 The fifty-seventh chapter abounds in direct references 
 to a future and more spiritual existence. Refer to the 
 chapter, dearest Annie, and you will see the first and 
 second verses distinctly describe not only the blessed 
 death of the righteous, but the wherefore they are called. 
 "The righteous perisheth, and no man taketh it [the 
 lesson of their death] to heart; and merciful men are 
 taken away, none considering the righteous is taken 
 away from the evil. He shall enter into peace ; they shall 
 rest in their beds or [appointed homes], each one walk- 
 ing in his uprightness." The being merely removed 
 from evil, it is clear, then, is not the only reward of the 
 righteous. What would be the use of walking in his 
 uprightness, if death were the common doom of all? 
 Besides, why that great distinction between the subject 
 of the first and second verse, and tht of the ten verses 
 following ? If this life were, indeed, all, we should say, 
 that the "children of transgression, the seed of false- 
 hood," were the happier, because they followed their 
 inclinations without rebuke or hinderance, and appeared 
 so to prosper, that " the very greatness of their way 
 became a weariness to them ;" but still they would not 
 say, " There is no hope [left on earth] ; we will therefore 
 seek the Lord." They " found the life of their hand :" a 
 powerful expression, denoting that they lived merely for 
 the present, following the chances and flitting pleasures 
 of the day, without a thought of the Eternal or of His
 
 LETTER XXVI. 379 
 
 dwelling. " Of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, 
 that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor 
 laid it [the recollection of me] to thy heart ? Have I 
 not held my peace even of old ;" evidently meaning that 
 God would not interfere to manifest His judgments to 
 the disobedient. He had already instructed them in 
 those things that were acceptable to Him or not, and so 
 left them to their own free will to spring up like grass, 
 and outwardly flourish ; for had they consulted His 
 word, they would have known that the wicked who did 
 so, remained undisturbed in this life to perish for ever. 
 " Therefore he held His peace at them, even as He did 
 at the sinners of old; yet still they feared Him not." 
 " I will declare thy righteousness and thy works, for 
 they shall not profit thee ;" words, how convincing, that 
 without love of, and obedience to, the Lord without 
 in a word, religion even those acts and works which 
 appear righteousness shall not profit us in our judgment 
 before Him. " When thou criest, let thy companions 
 deliver thee ; but the wind shall carry them all away, 
 vanity shall take them ; but those that put their trust in 
 me shall possess the land [of the living], and inherit my 
 holy mountain [or the eternity to which the fifteenth 
 verse alludes, and which has been noticed before *in the 
 thirty-third chapter, where the righteous soul is also 
 promised to 'dwell on high']; and shall say [the 
 righteous shall say to the wicked], Cast ye up, cast 
 ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block 
 out of the way of my people. For thus SAITH THE 
 HIGH AND HOLY ONE WHO INHABITETH ETERNITY, 
 WHOSE NAME IS HoLY; I DWELL WITH THE HIGH AND 
 HOLY;" for such to me is the more correct rendering
 
 380 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 of the words. The particle 3 can be translated with, 
 or in, or at, etc.; any thing signifying connection, the 
 joining of one with another; and as we have already 
 read that God declares He "inhabiteth eternity," we 
 know it cannot be circumscribed to any particular 
 place ; but that He who inhabiteth eternity, saith, " I 
 
 DWELL WITH THE HIGH AND HOLY (and) WITH HIM 
 ALSO THAT IS OF A CONTRITE AND HUMBLE SPIRIT,* TO 
 REVIVE THE SPIRIT OF THE HUMBLE, AND TO REVIVE 
 THE HEART OF THE CONTRITE ONES. FOR I will not 
 
 contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth : for 
 the SPIRIT would fail before 'me, and the SOULS that I 
 have made." 
 
 Can any one assert that these exquisite verses allude 
 to life on earth? Do they not fill the whole heart with 
 their spiritual consolation, and the immensity of the eter- 
 nal's love, towards those who trust in Him, and, from 
 that trust, seek to love and serve Him. Many, perhaps, 
 might say that the terms, " He shall enter into peace," 
 and " rest in their beds," were of equivocal meaning, 
 and might refer simply to the ending of trouble, from 
 the cessation of existence. But the charge of the 
 equivocal nature of the sentence is entirely disproved, 
 not only by the fifteenth and sixteenth verses we have 
 quoted at length, but by two assertions in the same 
 chapter, "each one walking in his uprightness," and 
 " There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked ;" but 
 if the peace mentioned in the second verse, as the award 
 of the righteous, be the mere peace of annihilation, 
 the wicked would share it equally with the Upright, and 
 the death of the righteous be in no way superior. But 
 " each one walking in his uprightness," is emphatically
 
 LETTER XXVI. 381 
 
 added, to prove that the peace and rest promised him, 
 is no negative species of reward: it is thatblessing for 
 which, more than any other, we yearn amid the stormy 
 billows, from which the earthly lives of the righteous 
 are never exempt. The young, the active, the ardent, 
 and aspiring, may indeed feel that such a promise of 
 peace and rest, is but a small incentive to a righteous 
 life; but let them wait a few very brief years, and the 
 fulness of the bliss will be disclosed. Nor have we only 
 that promise. The first and second verses do not stand 
 alone, but are closely connected with the whole after 
 chapter, and especially with the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 verses. Lest the sublime description, contained in these 
 brief words, " Thus saith the high and exalted One, who 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell with 
 the high and holy," should terrify us from seeking after 
 righteousness, as impossible so to be attained, as to 
 allow us to join that high and holy choir who with their 
 God inhabit eternity, we are told, that, " He dwelleth 
 with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. 
 That He will not be ahvays wroth, for the spirit 
 would fail before Him and the souls which He hath 
 made." You cannot read these verses too often, dearest 
 Annie ; for the more you do so, the more you must feel, 
 that the promise contained in them, is our Immortality, 
 and clothed in such words of comfort, that it would be 
 absolutely sin in us to hold back from accepting it, on 
 the plea of our unworthiness. If it did not relate to a 
 future life, why should God say " I will not contender 
 ever, nor will I be always wroth, for the spirit would fail 
 before me, and the souls which I have made ?" How 
 can we dwell with Him who inhabiteth eternity, if the
 
 38'2 THE JEWISH FATTH. 
 
 brief space of mortal life be the sole sphere allotted us ? 
 And again, to refer to the first verse, it not only relates 
 to a future life in itself, but unanswerably confirms the 
 words of Moses, so often quoted " See I have set before 
 thee LIFE and GOOD, DEATH and EVIL," as bringing 
 before us life eternal. If they mean mere temporal 
 blessing, Isaiah's words are a contradiction; and if Isaiah's 
 assertion that the righteous are taken from the evil, and 
 shall enter into rest and peace, is believed to be a 
 mere non-existence in the grave, the promise of the law 
 is false, and lias no meaning. The term " righteous," of 
 course, signifies those who have chosen the GOOD in 
 preference to the evil, and to whom therefore, by the 
 law, LIFE is promised. Why then should the righteous 
 be taken away to escape the coming evil ? If his only 
 sphere of happiness were this little earth, it was equally 
 in the Eternal's power (and from His attributes we 
 must believe it would have been so), to make the path 
 of life smooth, and so fraught with joy, as to have not 
 even a dread of evil, and instead of being " taken away," 
 which evidently means removed from sorrow, before the 
 usual age allotted to man, his life would have been 
 prolonged to the furthest limit, and full of health and 
 joy to the very end. The words of Isaiah, then, are not 
 only full of consolation and hope in their own absolute 
 assertion of our Immortality, but as explanatory, confir- 
 mative of, and a commentary upon, the words of Moses, 
 which we have already considered at so much length. 
 
 The conclusion of this very important chapter, relates 
 equally to the distinction between the righteous and the 
 wicked, which can only be visible in a future existence ' 
 but as it does not bear so exactly on the subject we are
 
 LETTER XXVI. 383 
 
 considering, I shall leave you to study them by yourself. 
 Only remember, dearest Annie, that the extreme com- 
 fort, not of their lesson only, but of the preceding verses, 
 consists in the fact, that they do not address the righteous 
 and holy alone, but the humble, the lowly, and the 
 contrite, those who may have gone on frowardly in the 
 ways of their own heart, but repented in time, and so 
 returned unto their God ; that He would neither con- 
 tend, nor be wrath for ever, but in His infinite mercy 
 healed, and restored comfort, not merely to the sinning 
 ones, but to his mourners, promising peace to them (in 
 contradiction to the confirmed wicked) *' to whom there 
 is no peace, saith my God." 
 
 The last witness borne by Isaiah, to his faith in our 
 Immortality, is that glorious promise in the fourth verse 
 of the sixty-fourth chapter, " For since the beginning of 
 the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, 
 neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he 
 [thou hast] hath prepared for him that waiteth for him 
 [thee]." Nothing can be a more sublime reference to 
 a truth which, while on earth we may only believe, and 
 of which we can have no visible evidence than these em- 
 phatic negatives. They give full space to the imagi- 
 nation and affections ; permit us to think on the promised 
 future, as bliss, as ineffable as can be comprised in the 
 revelations of the Eternal's fathomless love and untiring 
 compassion. " From everlasting to everlasting," we are 
 told, is His long-suffering and forbearance ; " as high as 
 the Heaven above the earth," so immeasurable is His 
 mercy towards us; "as far as the East is from the West, 
 so far hath he removed our transgressions from us;" 
 that His dwelling is eternity, not merely with the high
 
 384 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 and holy, but with the contrite and humble; that the 
 death of His saints is precious in His sight, but that in 
 the death of the sinner He hath no pleasure ; "therefore, 
 turn yourselves, and live ye;" that with Him is the 
 fountain of light, and in His light we shall see light ; 
 that He is the fountain of living waters, and therefore 
 with Him there is no death ; that with Him is the fulness 
 of joy, and at His right hand everlasting pleasures. I 
 might fill pages with similar passages ; but the above are 
 sufficient to explain what I mean by asserting that 
 Isaiah's negatives confirm, and give yet more scope to 
 the glorious expectations which previous affirmative pass- 
 ages had so thrillingly revealed. It is from this chapter, 
 this verse of our prophet, himself a Jew, and speaking to 
 the Jewish people ages before the preaching of St. Paul, 
 that the verse in Corinthians, " Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man 
 the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
 Him " (on which the Christians lay so much stress, as 
 proving how clearly to them Immortality was revealed) 
 is taken. Is it not, then, indeed, a disgrace to us, when 
 by our lukewarmness, or indifference, we permit them to 
 believe, that they really are right, and that we have no 
 hope of Heaven, save through them, when our own 
 Bible not only promises all we need on earth, and 
 hope in heaven, for us as Jews, but is the sole 
 foundation and origin of all the sublime moral truths 
 and immortal revealings, which the Apostles, themselves 
 Jews, preached to a darkened world? That Christianity 
 taught Immortality to the Gentiles is indeed true; and 
 we can well understand the feelings of intense gratitude 
 with which such a revelation must be regarded. But all
 
 LETTER XXVI. 385 . 
 
 we uphold, is simply, that to the Jews, the revelation 
 had been vouchsafed, not only in their law but from 
 the very first of the creation ; that neither their laws, nor 
 their history, nor their prophets, are comprehensible if 
 we deny them the knowledge of existence after death; 
 and that not only was this knowledge the very essence 
 of their faith, but emanated from them, over the whole 
 world, as fulfilment of part of the promise made to 
 Abraham, that " in his seed, all the nations of the earth 
 should be blessed." Jt is not enough that we believe in 
 our Immortality, dearest Annie. Living as a mere hand- 
 ful amongst those who assert that all our knowledge on 
 this subject came from our intercourse with them, we 
 must know, and be ready, if called upon, to point out 
 those passages in our own Scriptures from which all 
 their quoted verses came. We must be able to show 
 them the Divine foundation for our hope ; and look for 
 it, not merely to refute them, but to satisfy our own 
 hearts, which cannot rest with the mere intuitive belief. 
 We bear within ourselves witness that the soul is DEATH- 
 LESS ; but that every instinct will lead us to misery, and 
 perchance apostasy, if we do not satisfy ourselves with 
 the conviction not merely of faith, but of reason. Our 
 own Scriptures abound with more than sufficient for 
 both these in general opposing elements, and therefore 
 am I so anxious, even at the risk of seeming tediousness, 
 to bring before you the facts and verses which either 
 directly, or by analogy, will bear pon the subject.
 
 386 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 WE shall not find, in the prophet Jeremiah, either as 
 numerous or as direct allusions to our immortality, as in 
 Isaiah, but still we shall perceive much to confirm our 
 reiterated argument, strengthen individual hope, and 
 nationally provide an incentive for us to retain our faith- 
 fulness and constancy, as children of Israel, unchanged. 
 Jeremiah, though he abounds in most beautiful and con- 
 soling passages ; still, as a whole, cannot be considered 
 such a spiritual prophet as Isaiah, and the fact is easily 
 accounted for. He was living in the very midst of, not 
 only national iniquity, for that was Isaiah's destiny also, 
 but of national misery. His character appears to have 
 been of still more human mould, if I may be allowed 
 the expression, than either Ezekiel's or Isaiah's. In both 
 of these, the spiritual rose above the human. Their gift 
 of inspiration so pervades their writings, that we con- 
 stantly lose sight of the mortal writer, and read only the 
 messenger of God; but in Jeremiah, we are feeling with 
 the suffering man throughout. We read his utter re- 
 pugnance to his fearful mission, the plainings of human 
 weakness, seeing more the utter misery of earth, than 
 the future peace above. There was no distinction to
 
 LETTER XXVII. 387 
 
 mark the righteous, and yet he knew from his own in- 
 ward experience, that there were some, still striving to 
 love and serve the Lord. He was himself persecuted 
 and torn on all sides by contending factions ; the spirit 
 within urged him to the utterance of the Eternal's will, 
 while that very utterance increased his human sufferings, 
 not from individual feeling, but from the enmity it pro- 
 duced against him. His character was evidently of the 
 gentlest and most yielding kind, and his position inward 
 and outward the most painful that could assail even men 
 of sterner mould, The blackness covering the earth had 
 equally enrobed the heavens; and when we remember 
 that the prophets, though inspired, were still human as 
 ourselves, can we wonder, that his book should be im- 
 pressed more with earthly suffering than Heavenly hope ? 
 There seemed no breathing space for the exhausted 
 spirit, save in the direct inspirings of the Lord, and 
 even they could bring no individual peace ; for the de- 
 nunciations he was called upon to pronounce were 
 fearfully at war with his own gentle nature. 
 
 We should remember these facts, when we turn from 
 his book as more harrowing than comforting: more. a 
 relation of earth, than a witness of Heaven. It is not 
 when in the very midst of trial, that we can realise to the 
 full, or bear witness to, the faith that is still within us. 
 It is afterwards that we know God has never forsaken 
 us, and our own experiences comfort ourselves and 
 others. The trials, too, that can only come from God, we 
 can endure, and thence derive inexpressible consolation 
 even in the midst of pain ; but those which seem all of 
 and from man, crush us to earth, as if we could not rise 
 again.
 
 388 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 This was constantly Jeremiah's case, and therefore not 
 only does it account for his being less spiritual than 
 Isaiah, but renders his witness to our future judgment, 
 and to our immortal destiny (for he does bear witness to 
 both these), yet more valuable. I will transcribe some of 
 the verses that are incomprehensible, unless they bear 
 upon the judgment and life hereafter. In the seven- 
 teenth chapter, from the fifth to the ninth verse, we have 
 a description of the differing fates of the wicked and the 
 righteous, agreeing, not only in sense but in actual words, 
 with the previous witness of David to the same truth in 
 the first Psalm. The ninth verse continues, " The heart is 
 deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who 
 can know it. I, the Loid, search the heart, I try the reins 
 even to give every man according to his ivays, and according 
 to the fruit of his doings" (see also xxxii, 18 and 19). 
 Now we know this will not be on earth, because Malachi 
 tells us that it will not be till the Lord maketh up his 
 jewels, according to the witness of the book of remem- 
 brance written before Him, that, we shall "discern 
 between the righteous and the wicked s between him that 
 serveth God, and him that serveth Him not." In xxii. 
 10. we find, " Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan him ; 
 but weep sore for him that goeth away ; for he shall re- 
 turn no more, nor see his native country." But unless 
 the destiny of the dead be superior happiness, we must 
 equally bemoan them, as well as the exile; nay still 
 more, for the exile may learn tidings of his country, 
 may hope, in spite of sorrowful reality, to behold it 
 once again ; may find .some enjoyment that would bid 
 us cease to weep for him : but if the dead have ceased 
 to exist, they, still less than the exile, " shall return no
 
 LETTER XXVII. 389 
 
 more, nor see their native country." Brief as the verse 
 is, it is a powerful witness as to the immortal hope with 
 which the Hebrews regarded death, and confirms the 
 lesson taught them years before in the death of Abijah. 
 That death to the good is more profitable than life. 
 
 " Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God 
 afar off. Can any one hide himself in secret places that 
 I shall not see him saith the Lord ; do not I fill Heaven 
 and earth?" (xxiii. 23, 24). If existence ended with 
 our residence on this little world, a mere item in the vast 
 work of creation, what need was there either for this 
 knowledge or for that contained in chap. ix. 23, 24 ? 
 What would be either the use, or warning, of knowing 
 that the spirit of the Lord filled Heaven, as well as 
 earth, if we were never to know more of that Heaven, 
 than its name ? And if death were annihilation, how 
 easily could we hide ourselves from the Lord, by self- 
 destruction at any moment. What is it that withholds 
 the hand of the intending suicide? What has made man 
 endure the most terrible and unmitigated sufferings, 
 rather than by his own hand extinguish life ? What 
 but the unspoken, but ever-acting instinct, that though 
 he may close this life, he cannot annihilate existence? 
 that though his eyes may see no more the light of day, 
 God will still behold him? He cannot even in death 
 hide himself from Him ; and this undying instinct is con- 
 firmed by the words of the Lord Himself, through 
 Jeremiah. David had already said, " Whither shall I 
 go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy 
 presence ? If I ascend up into Heaven Thou art there.'* 
 If I make my bed in the grave, behold Thou art there. If 
 I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter-
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 most parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead 
 me, and thy right hand shall hold me," with passages- 
 applied to the ubiquity of the Eternal equally striking. 
 And are not God's own words, " Can any one hide him- 
 self in secret places, that I shall not see him ; do I not 
 fill heaven and earth?'' a direct and thrilling confirmation? 
 And could these have been written by Hebrews, and 
 received as God's inspiration by Hebrews, if belief in a 
 future state, in the impossibility of annihilating existence, 
 in the deathless nature of the spirit, had been things un- 
 known, either to the individual writers or the mass whom 
 they addressed ? The same argument applies to the 
 twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses of the ninth 
 chapter. Why should so much stress be laid on 
 " understanding and knowing the Lord that He exer- 
 ciseth loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in 
 the earth, and delight in these things," if life on earth 
 were all? Surely we should not be blamed if we pre- 
 ferred the wisdom which would guide us comfortably 
 through our stated dwelling here, the might which would 
 give us temporal dominion; the riches, which would 
 provide us with all sorts of luxuries and ease and influ- 
 ence. These things at least we might hope to under- 
 stand, and make use of, but to that knowledge which we 
 are told surpasses all other, our more earthly nature 
 never can perfectly attain, even the most righteous, the- 
 most spiritual are bounded in their yearning aspira- 
 tions, their thirst for heavenly food. The miseries 
 and evils and sufferings of earth choke up and deaden- 
 the wisdom of God's word. They are constantly striving 
 to realise faith, that He is, indeed, a God delighting in 
 loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness^ and would
 
 LETTER XXVII. 391 
 
 do so, if the affairs of earth did not always seem to con- 
 tradict their attributes. They are for ever lost in mists 
 of darkness, and must cease to exist, without either profit 
 or comfort. But that this knowledge is placed by God 
 Himself above all other, is in itself witness of our spirits' 
 immortality. He would never incite us to a study, that 
 we must die without perfectly attaining, unless He knew 
 that there was a future existence laid up with Him, 
 where " in His light, we should see light," and all that 
 was simple faith here, would be the fulness of reality 
 there. Except to firm believers in immortality, the 
 twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses of the ninth 
 chapter of Jeremiah must have been utterly unmeaning; 
 and therefore that they are there, that it is God Himself 
 proclaiming their consoling and glorious truths, ought to 
 be all-sufficient to convince us, that the revelation was not 
 merely known to the people of Israel, fallen as they 
 were, but was inseparable from the religion of their God. 
 The same arguments equally apply to verses like 
 these, with which all the prophets abound: "The 
 Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea I have 
 loved thee with an everlasting love." To beings of a 
 day, born to suffer a brief while and dease to exist, these 
 words would be so devoid of meaning, as almost to 
 seem like mockery. The Almighty God could not so 
 regard us, if He had doomed us to perish off the earth 
 as if we had never been. He could not love us with an 
 everlasting love, if He had not planted a spirit within us, 
 the emanation from Himself, which could understand 
 and receive that deathless love ; nor would He hold 
 forth that love as an incentive for us to become righte- 
 ous, if this earth were all ; for in the toil and trouble of
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 
 
 this life, be it adversity or prosperity, how seldom can 
 we trace or distinguish this promised everlasting love, 
 save in the low still whisper within, which if we deny 
 our immortal nature, is as incomprehensible as the 
 promise itself. Such words, we may be assured, would 
 never be used to the mere creatures of a day, nor to 
 men, to whom the Revelation of Immortality was 
 unknown. 
 
 The beautiful prophecy contained in the thirty-first 
 chapter, and which is generally supposed only to relate 
 to our temporal restoration, is to me quite as convincing 
 of our continued existence in a happier world, as any of 
 the more directly alluding passages: verses 31, 32, 33, 
 and 34, of course relate only to that thrice-glorious day r 
 when, restored to our own land, we shall all, Jew and 
 Gentile, know the Lord, and never turn from His cove- 
 nant more; verses 35, 36, and 37, contain promises still 
 more sublime. " Thus saith the Lord, which giveth 
 the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the 
 moon and stars for light by night; which divideth the 
 sea when the waves thereof roar, whose name is the 
 Lord of Hosts. If those ordinances depart from before 
 me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall 
 cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus 
 saith the Lord, if the heaven above can be measured, 
 and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, 
 1 will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they 
 have done, saith the Lord." And in the preceding 
 chapter (verses 10 and 11), we find, "Therefore fear 
 thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord, neither 
 be dismayed, O Israel; for, lo, I will save thee from 
 afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity ; and
 
 LETTER XXVII. 393 
 
 Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest and in quiet, 
 and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, 
 saith the Lord, to save thee; though I make a full end 
 of the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I 
 not make a full end of thee ; but I will correct thee in 
 measure, and not leave thee wholly unpunished." 
 
 Now, dearest Annie, I have no doubt that on the 
 first reading, you will wonder what these verses can 
 have to do with the promise of immortality. Simply, 
 that unless we are immortal beings, and unless all Israel 
 knew that they were such, the promises are, if not 
 without meaning, utterly false, and impossible to be 
 fulfilled. How has Israel benefited by being that 
 chosen seed of the Eternal, which is to endure until the 
 work of creation can be searched out and understood; 
 in other words, for ever, if physical death be the cessa- 
 tion of his existence ? How can he be said to be in 
 rest and quiet, to be corrected only in measure, and not 
 made a full end of, when we glance back on the history 
 of Israel from their first dispersion until this very pre~ 
 sent time, and read of misery, and blood, and torture, 
 not of the frame alone but of the heart, and of whole- 
 sale massacres and sufferings, at which even the flesh 
 creeps, and every nerve tingles. Israel, indeed, still 
 exists ; but the millions on millions who have endured 
 every possible and impossible suffering, and perished 
 miserably only for being of this chosen seed, if death be 
 annihilation, what is their reward for constancy to a 
 persecuted faith and a Father's promises? Are not they 
 made a full end of? Cast off for all, that not they, but 
 their ancestors have done; ceased for ever from being 
 one of the chosen people; and is not all this direct con- 
 
 s 5
 
 394 THE JEWISH: 
 
 tradiction to the words of a God of truth ? What good, 
 temporal or spiritual, is it to remain Jews, if death 
 brings the same " full end" to them as to all men ? 
 What is it that has so inspired Israel with the spirit of 
 martyrdom, that men, women, and children have all- 
 chosen the most cruel deaths have endured the great- 
 est indignities to which human nature can be exposed 
 resigned all affections, honors, luxuries, even life itself 
 on earth what is it that has done this what can 
 have done it, if the firm belief, almost the realisation, of 
 their spirits' immortality were not the very essence of 
 their faith and being ? How could these gracious pro- 
 mises have brought the comfort, the strength, which we 
 know they have done from the time of their bestowal, 
 and do still, unless Israel had, individually and nationally, 
 a perfect knowledge of his undying existence when this 
 life is closed? Without it, nothing could have saved 
 him from complete amalgamation with the nations 
 amongst whom we have been scattered nothing but an 
 unchangeable hope and trust, that individually each 
 would reap the fruit of his doings, sown in misery and 
 agony below, with Him, who had said he would correct 
 in measure, " BUT NOT cast off entirely," though nation- 
 ally their position was the lowest and most fearful trial 
 for their fathers' sins. 
 
 Dearest Annie, had we but these verses, we have 
 enough to convince us of our destined immortality; of 
 our learning after death the full value of our heritage as 
 the s.eed of Abraham, and of our constancy to that faith 
 which God Himself, for Abraham's sake, bestowed. 
 If we would but engrave the verses I have quoted on 
 our hearts and minds would but remember that they
 
 LETTER XXVII. 395 
 
 are spoken by a God of Truth, " in whom there is no 
 variableness nor shadow of turning" whose words, 
 once spoken, are for everlasting they would alike 
 explain, and receive confirmation from, the history of 
 our people, from the building of Jerusalem in the Past, 
 to our restoration in the far Future. If the millions and 
 millions that have perished in these eighteen centuries 
 of trial and persecution are not, indeed, entirely " cast 
 off for all that they have done" if they are only cor- 
 rected in measure, and not made a full end of, which 
 from God's own words we dare not for an instant sup- 
 pose without the sin of doubting Him, we know they 
 must exist still ; and to exist still, there must be a por- 
 tion of our nature that cannot die there must be a 
 world where that deathless essence moves and acts; and 
 that world must be of a purer, happier, higher nature 
 than this, for it is only by the exercise of our highest* 
 purest, and most spiritual capabilities, while on earth, 
 that it can be even faintly imagined. 
 
 There are very many other verses and passages in 
 Jeremiah, both in his Prophecy and his Lamentations, 
 that could only be written by one who firmly believed 
 in the immortality of the soul himself, and who felt 
 assured, that those whom he addressed believed in it 
 also; but as to transcribe and comment upon them 
 would only be a repetition of already reiterated argu- 
 ments, I prefer leaving them to your own private con- 
 sideration, convinced that your mind once awakened, 
 you will need but little more assistance to trace this 
 glorious doctrine as clearly gleaming up through the 
 whole Hebrew Scriptures, as if written in direct words. 
 
 Ezekiel, too, having dilated upon so fully in my
 
 396 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 fifteenth letter, I shall pass with very little notice. I have 
 already told you that the life and death to which he refers 
 in the eighteenth and thirty-third chapters, can only mean 
 the life and death of the soul, as no effort whatever of the 
 naturally righteous, no repentance, however earnest, of 
 the wicked, can avert the death of the body, the physical 
 cessation of existence. The third chapter, from the 
 eighteenth to the twenty-second verse ; the whole of the 
 eighteenth chapter; the thirty-third chapter to the twenty- 
 first verse, are all emphatic reiterations of the same sub- 
 ject, and cannot be twisted to mean anything else but the 
 judgment of the soul apart from the body; reiterated, 
 too, at a time when all men seemed to share the same 
 fate of sorrow and persecution, without the least manifest 
 distinction between the righteous and the wicked; when 
 all incentive to the worthy on earth seemed at an end ; 
 that still not only might the individually righteous go on 
 humbly rejoicing, and the individually wicked tremble, 
 though judgment appeared delayed; but the priests and 
 guardians of Israel were guilty or not guilty in the sight 
 of their God, according as they warned the people of 
 their trespasses, or l^ft them to their own devices. " So 
 thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto 
 unto the house of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the 
 word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I 
 say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely 
 die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his 
 way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his 
 blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou 
 warn the wicked of his way to turn from it ; if he do not 
 turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou 
 hast delivered thy soul." Now, what can this mean, if
 
 LETTER XXVII. 397 
 
 death were the entire cessation of existence to all men ? 
 The righteous and the wicked, and the watchman, whe- 
 ther he warned them or not, all must share the same 
 fate. And again, why should God say, " As I live, I 
 have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" if death 
 were annihilation, and no judgment beyond ? We might 
 rather suppose that the holy and righteous God would 
 rejoice that His beautiful creation was encumbered no 
 longer by sinners: nay, we know from His attributes, that 
 so it would have been, were there not a judgment beyond, 
 and that judgment for the wicked dying in his ini- 
 quity, such as the everlasting love, the infinite mercy 
 of the Eternal, so revolted from, that as a father He 
 besought the very sinners to repent " Turn ye, 
 turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O 
 house of Israel?" Neither these words, nor those of 
 verses 17, 18, 19, and 20, "Yet the children of Is- 
 rael say, The way of the Lord is not equal : but as for 
 them, their way is not equal. When the righteous turneth 
 from his righteousness and committeth iniquity, he shall 
 even die thereby. But if the wicked turn from his wick- 
 edness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall 
 live thereby. Yet ye say, The ways of the Lord are not 
 equal. O house of Israel, I will judge you, every one 
 after his ways," would ever have been addressed to a 
 people to whom Immortality had still to be revealed. Their 
 objections "the ways of God are not equal" meaning 
 that on earth the ways of the Eternal are so plunged in 
 darkness, that we cannot discover who are objects of His 
 favour, and who are not, are not peculiar to the Hebrews, 
 but are raised in every age, and by the voice of every 
 people, under whatever religious denomination they may
 
 398 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 be classed. God, through His prophet, reproved this 
 want of faith and unfounded complaint; but unless the 
 doctrine of Immortality had been revealed and received 
 long before, His words would have been without mean- 
 ing and without power, for the whole aspect of this world 
 would have denied them. You will wonder, perhaps, 
 why I so constantly refer to the idea of annihilation, as 
 its impossibility is so self-evident, that it scarcely needs 
 refutation. I refer to it only to prove that the ancient 
 Hebrews rejected it equally with ourselves. That the 
 Law and the prophets unite in bearing witness to the 
 assertion that to the people of God their immortal heri- 
 tage was known from the very beginning. That to ma- 
 terialists, to those who believed physical death the end 
 of existence, the Law and the prophets would have been 
 utterly devoid of meaning ; and, to have reached the un- 
 derstanding so as to guide the people, must not only 
 have been couched in very different language, but 
 incited them to righteousness by very different rewards. 
 Remember, dearest Annie, I do not only want to satisfy you 
 individually as to the important fact of our Immortality 
 being preached throughout the Bible, but thoroughly to 
 convince you, that, as the very essence of our religion, 
 it was known to, acted upon, and held forth as an incen- 
 tive to, the children of earth, from the death of Abel 
 downwards concentrated in the hearts of the righteous 
 of the descendants of Shem, and, emanating from them, 
 and for their sakes, on those to whom the Law was 
 given.
 
 399 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 THE thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel is such an 
 emphatic and thrilling description of the power of God 
 to restore the corrupt to life, and the resurrection of the 
 dead, that it needs no comment here, especially, as it is 
 a subject distinct from Immortality, and seldom, or ever 
 denied, as an article of the Jewish creed. The eight 
 concluding chapters of this same sublime prophet, so 
 powerfully delineate our Holy Land, as it will be after 
 the resurrection and Israel's restoration, agreeing so 
 forcibly with the ordinances of the Law, and all the 
 promises of God, that to suppose the faith of the children 
 of Israel will ever merge into another, appears actually 
 impossible to any one, who reads those chapters, even 
 without any other prophecy. 
 
 In Daniel, mysteriously incomprehensible as he gene- 
 rally is, we find exactly the same reference to our 
 immortality and resurrection, and in the same imagery, 
 though, if possible, still more forcibly and clearly (see 
 chap. xii. 1 3) : "At that time shall Michael stand up, 
 the great prince which standeth for the children of thy 
 people : and there shall be a time of trouble, such as 
 never was, since there was a nation, even to that same 
 time." This of course alludes to the end of the days,
 
 400 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 before the tremendous revolution of earth and heaven, 
 which the Scriptures tell us is to herald the restoration 
 of Israel. " And at that time, thy people shall be 
 delivered, EVERY ONE THAT SHALL BE FOUND WRITTEN 
 IN THE BOOK. And many of them that sleep in the 
 dust shall awake, some TO EVERLASTING LIFE, and 
 some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they 
 that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma- 
 ment; and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
 stars for ever and ever," Dan. xii. 1 .3. 
 
 I have already given you my ideas on the perfect 
 compatibility and connection of the two doctrines of 
 Immortality and Resurrection, dearest Annie; and these 
 verses forcibly confirm them. The bodies must indeed 
 awake; for they have slept in death ; but the souls which 
 must rejoin them, to fit them for everlasting life, have 
 never ceased to exist. Observe, too, the same figure is used 
 by Daniel as Moses, David, and Isaiah, had used before, 
 and Malachi after him, "The. book of remembrance 
 written before the Lord for those that feared Him, and 
 thought often on His name." Do not heed the re- 
 marks of scornei's, as to the impossibility of the literal 
 words. In addressing man, that language and those 
 figures were used, which his senses could most clearly 
 understand. In a higher state of existence, there will 
 be higher images found. 
 
 The words are so clear in themselves, that they need 
 no comment. They do not contain a mere allusion, 
 like many verses in the previous prophets, but direct 
 intelligence, which cannot possibly be turned into any 
 other meaning, than the resurrection of the dead and 
 consequent Immortality of the soul, and the wide
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 401 
 
 distinction which shall be made between the righteous 
 and the wicked. " They that be wise,'' we know, from the 
 verses of Jeremiah which I have so often quoted, signify 
 the acquirers of that knowledge which God Himself 
 has pronounced to be superior to every other, the know- 
 ledge of Himself not the wisdom of either the learning, 
 the ambition, or the wealth of this world ; and " those 
 that turn many to righteousness, as the stars, for 
 ever and ever," ought to urge us on, by example 
 yet more than precept, to evince the superiority of the 
 strivings after righteousness over every other thought 
 and pursuit, ought to rebuke that mock humility, which 
 would bid us shrink from usefulness and good, on the 
 vain plea of unworthiness and to incite us by earnest 
 individual endeavour " to do justly, to love mercy, and 
 walk humbly with our God :" and, by the effects on 
 domestic and social happiness thence proceeding, to lead 
 others in the same safe and peaceful paths. With such 
 words before us, distinguishing " those that turn many 
 to righteousness " as destined for a glorious place in 
 Heaven, who can hold back, and pass through life, with- 
 out one thought, one hope, one effort for the benefit of 
 his fellow-creatures ! 
 
 ** Many shall be purified and made white, and tried, 
 but the wicked will do wickedly, and none [therefore] 
 of the wicked can understand ; but the wise shall under- 
 stand." This alludes to the same " end of days" as the 
 previous verses, and marks very powerfully the distinction 
 between those who, inclined to evil, yet resist it, and 
 seek the good, and those who determinedly pursue 
 wickedness, and so turn from them the grace of God 
 " that their eyes are blinded and their ears fat," so that 
 they cannot understand His ways, and are left in His
 
 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 wrath to their own darkness; but the "wise shall under- 
 stand," because they have " made the Lord their study 
 and know in what things are His delight." 
 
 Though in the minor prophets, there may be but few 
 verses which will bear in direct words on our Immor- 
 tality, yet, it is as impossible to divide the doctrine 
 from them, as the soul or animating principle from 
 ourselves. They could not have been written by men 
 who were not believers in Immortality, nor understood 
 by a multitude to whom that truth had still to be revealed. 
 The very moral and spiritual religion which they 
 preached to vivify the law, and, removing mere formal 
 observance, to restore it to its intended purity, proved their 
 perfect acquaintance with a higher state of existence, 
 and the multitude's acknowledgment of it as the indi- 
 vidual essence of their religion. What would have been 
 either the use or benefit of so cultivating the higher and 
 purer qualities, as by so doing to approach nearer and 
 nearer the likeness of God, if we were to share the com- 
 mon fate of all men, wicked as well as righteous, and 
 die without once knowing the end and aim of their 
 spiritual aspirations, the idea and love of our Maker 
 still unsatisfied and unfilled? Why cultivate love, and 
 reverence, and piety, in preference to earthly power, 
 and wealth, and fame, if this little earth were our only 
 destined sphere ? But the question has been asked too 
 often to need re-iteration. I am only anxious that you 
 should feel as strongly as I do, that every moral and spiri- 
 tual precept of the prophets, pre-supposes Immortality 
 as the ground-work of their faith, and that they are 
 without such supposition, actually incomprehensible. 
 
 " For thus saith the Lord unto the House of Israel,
 
 LETTER XXVI 1 1. 403 
 
 SEEK YE ME, AND YE SHALL LIVE." " Seek ye the 
 Lord, AND YE SHALL LIVE." " Seek Him that maketh 
 the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of 
 death UNTO THE MORNING, and maketh the day dark 
 with night," etc. " Seek good and not evil, THAT YE MAY 
 LIVE" (Amos v.). 
 
 The remarks already made wherein life and death 
 are thus used, will equally apply to the above verses. 
 I have only transcribed them as increasing the weight 
 of evidence. And in the same way the words of 
 Micah vii. " Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth 
 iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant 
 of his heritage ? He retaineth not his anger for ever, 
 because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He 
 will have compassion upon us. He will subdue our 
 iniquity, yea, thou wilt cast all their sins in the depths 
 of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and 
 the mercy to Abraham, which thou hadst sworn unto 
 our fathers from the days of old," allude as strongly to 
 Immortality, and are as incomprehensible if we deny it, 
 as the promises of the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah, 
 already brought forward. By the words, the " remnant 
 of His heritage," it is unanswerably clear, that it is 
 Israel in her miserable captivity, whom the prophet 
 addresses ; but what comfort, what truth, could there be 
 in these promises, if there were no other state of exist- 
 ence ? In every land, in every age, we have been, and 
 are, subject to the most awful persecution and misery, 
 if not by actual violence, by contempt, and abasement, 
 and being socially and politically denied our privileges 
 of men and citizens. We know and acknowledge these 
 things as the effect of our fathers' sins, in their deter-
 
 404 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 mined departure from their law and their God, but un- 
 less there had been a clear revelation of another world, 
 where these temporary ills and sufferings cannot enter, 
 the promise of Micah was utterly false, and must have 
 been indignantly rejected by the mass, as impossible to 
 be fulfilled. How could our iniquity be pardoned ? 
 How could the transgression of the remnant of His 
 heritage be passed over, if physical death entirely closed 
 the scene ? How could He be declared not to retain 
 His anger for ever, but delight in mercy, and have 
 compassion upon us, if a few brief troubled years of 
 misery, and but too often a death of horror, were the sole 
 portion of the wretched Jews? How could the truth 
 (or promise) be performed unto (the seed of) Jacob, and 
 the mercy to (the seed of) Abraham, as sworn unto our 
 fathers in the days of old, if the countless millions who 
 have perished by persecution, the unborn thousands who 
 will yet die in their captivity, have no existence beyond 
 this earth, no individuality in Heaven ? It is useless to 
 follow the argument farther. If we believe in God and 
 in His word, the history of the Jews from their disper- 
 sion to the present time, in every age, and clime, and 
 people, is evidence trumpet-tongued of revealed and 
 destined Immortality. 
 
 " Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, 
 mine Holy One? WE SHALL NOT DIE," Habakkuk 
 says in the twelfth verse of his first chapter, following it 
 with an humble enquiry as to why " He who is of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity," should so bear with the 
 treacherous and wicked, as to permit them to go on their 
 way rejoicing and triumphing over the righteous; the sub- 
 ject does not conclude with the chapter, as the division
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 405 
 
 might lead us to suppose. The second continues it, by 
 the prophet declaring he will stand on the watch-tower 
 and look for the reply, but it was not to come distinctly. 
 God said, " Wiite the vision and make it plain upon the 
 tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision 
 is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall 
 speak and not lie. Though it tarry wait for it, because 
 it will surely come, it will not tarry." This alludes to 
 the inspirings of the prophetic spirit within him reprov- 
 ing the impatience which would see the end at once. 
 The next verse answers his enquiries directly. " The 
 soul which is lifted up [to enquire more than God 
 chooses to reveal], is not upright within him. BUT THE 
 JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH." In these few words we 
 have one of the sublimest references to our immortal 
 destiny which the prophets contain. What could be the 
 use of faith, if we were only created for a life which is, 
 as it were, revealed to mortal sight ? There is no virtue 
 so scoffed at, and so little understood, as that which God 
 Himself declares will win us LIFE ! And it is because it 
 is of Him, that, it leads to Him, and therefore seemingly 
 is of no possible use in a mere worldly career, that it is so 
 scorned. The very fact of its being deemed romance, 
 and^folly, and superstition, by men whose only aim is to 
 amass wealth, and live up to all the goods and pleasures 
 and luxuries of earth, whose minds are so narrowed that 
 they can see nothing beyond their individual interests; 
 and so declare they will believe nothing but what can be 
 proved, nothing but what they can understand ; this very 
 fact is proof of its spiritual and deathless nature, incom- 
 patible with the mere animal or earthly part of our 
 existence. Created as we are with capabilities, feelings,
 
 406 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 impulses, aspirations, for ever looking beyond, utterly 
 distinct from the wants of the animal, there would and 
 must be constant suffering without faith ; and were there 
 no other existence, we may be sure a merciful God 
 would have created us differently. He would never 
 have endowed us with faculties doomed to die imperfect. 
 He would never have promised that the just shall LIVE 
 by his faith, if there were not some other existence 
 where that faith would be swallowed up in reality, and 
 our- vain yearnings all be filled. He would never have 
 given this solemn promise, if there were nought beyond 
 the present scene; for it would be demanding a most 
 difficult virtue from His children, which would neither 
 profit nor save them, and could only excite thoughts and 
 hopes and feelings never to be fulfilled. And not only 
 are these blessed words witness unanswerable of a re- 
 vealed and destined immortality, but contain in them- 
 selves the most intrinsic evidence of their divinity. None 
 but the universal Father would have made the sole con- 
 dition of His children's salvation, a virtue attainable by 
 all, from the lowest to the highest, the poorest to the 
 wealthiest, the most deficient in intellect to the wisest, 
 the youngest child to the greatest sage. None but the 
 Eternal, to whom all creation and all time is revealed, 
 would have demanded a virtue utterly distinct from the 
 things of sense and sight; the use of which could only 
 be known, to Him and with Him. Had wisdom, power, 
 and riches, been made the condition of LIFE, how few 
 could have attained to it ; but faith is in the power of all, 
 though not all may choose to encourage and use it. And 
 because it is in the power of all, because it is absolutely 
 necessary not only for our happiness as individuals, but
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 407 
 
 for our obedience and loving service, as children and sub- 
 jects of our God, because without it neither reason, nor 
 riches, nor might, could enable us to understand, and to 
 endure calmly the evil and sin, and suffering in ourselves 
 and around us; because without it, even God himself must 
 be denied or doubted; therefore, it is made the condition of 
 our salvation and acceptance, and O how thankful should 
 we be that so it is. How often are there conditions and 
 circumstances in life, when we can do nothing but 
 believe, when we can realise nothing but faith, when 
 prayer itself seems to have lost its comfort, when the 
 spirit is so crushed under the burden of the clay that the 
 very sense of God's love is darkened, when all that 
 had seemed beautiful and good is changed into deformity 
 and evil, when our very wisdom and reason seem 
 leagued against us, and tell us all is vanity and vexation. 
 Still, still, if we can but believe that all will be clear 
 again, that our Father has not forsaken us, though the 
 comfort of resting on Him seems to have departed, if 
 we can but feel ' k Yea though he slay me, yet will I 
 trust in him," we are safe safe, though every outward 
 service is denied us; safe, however man may deem us 
 wanting ; safe, not only for eternal life, but for returning 
 temporal joy. 
 
 And yet, dearest Annie, there are those who declare 
 the Jews have no faith ; that faith forms no part of Ju- 
 daism; ay, even amongst ourselves I have heard this 
 charge, and every pulse has throbbed with the vain wish 
 to prove to them their great, their fearful error. Ha- 
 bakkuk does but reiterate that which the Hebrews had 
 known from the time " Abraham believed in the Lord, 
 and his faith was accounted to him as righteousness," and
 
 408 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 Moses was rebuked when he struck the rock, "because ye 
 believed me not." Through all the varied phases of 
 their history rebellion and doubt and insubordination 
 which had obtained yet more powerful dominion in 
 the time of the prophets than before; and even they, holy 
 and righteous men, were led to demand how it was the 
 wicked should so triumph, and that He who was of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity, could yet bear with them, 
 forgetting, in the triumphs around them, the words of 
 their prophet-king " That when the wicked flourish, it 
 is that they shall be destroyed for ever." And God, 
 therefore, in his mercy, declares that the vision, or His 
 judgment between the righteous and the wicked, " shall 
 yet speak and not lie"; that though it tarry, man was 
 calmly to wait for it ; for " the soul which is lifted up to 
 enquire more than it is right or needful for man in this 
 world to know, is not upright within him; " but the just, 
 however tried and sad his life on earth, is secure of LIFE 
 IN HEAVEN through his FAITH. 
 
 And this is all repeated, in different words perhaps, 
 but exactly the same sense, in the last of the prophets, 
 Malachi. Though containing only four chapters, it is to 
 me one of the most important of the prophetic books. As, 
 however, my present task is only to bring together all 
 the scriptural evidence of the revelation of Immortality 
 I cannot enter upon it as it deserves. The 13th, 1 4th 
 and 15th verses of the third chapter reiterate the people's 
 complaint, that it is vain to serve God, and what profit 
 is it to keep His ordinances, and walk mournfully before 
 Him ; " The proud are happy, they that work wicked- 
 ness are set up, yea, that tempt God, are delivered.'' 
 And are not these the unspoken, perhaps, but the
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 409 
 
 constant thoughts of the many in the present day? Ay, com- 
 ing sometimes even to those whose hearts are right with 
 God? And what is God's reply ? Words we have quoted 
 so many times in the course of our correspondence, that 
 it would seem almost needless to transcribe them here, 
 were they not needed as the last precious link in the 
 chain of evidence as to the Hebrew's knowledge of his 
 immortality which the Bible gives " Then they that 
 feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord 
 hearkened and heard it ; and a book of remembrance 
 was written before Him for them that feared the Lord 
 and thought upon His name; and they shall be mine, 
 saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels, 
 and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that 
 serveth him. THEN SHALL YE RETURN AND DISCERN 
 between the righteous and the wicked, between him that 
 serveth God and him that serveth him not. For be- 
 hold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven ; and all 
 the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble, 
 and the day that corneth shall burn them up, saith the 
 Lord of Hosts ; and it shall leave them neither root nor 
 branch ; but unto you that fear my name shall the sun 
 of righteousness arise, with healing in his wings. And 
 ye shall go forth and grow as calves in the stall, and ye 
 shall tread down the wicked ; for they shall be as ashes 
 under the soles of your feet in the day that I do this, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." 
 
 With verses like these, is it possible that either Jew or 
 Christian can need more to prove to them the solemn 
 truth, that Immortality was revealed to the Hebrews as a 
 people ages before the Christian era, and that it is ad- 
 dressed to the Jews ; that the promises are made to no 
 
 T
 
 410 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 new creed, but to the followers of the Mosaic Law; and 
 that to keep faithful to that Law, as far as their cap- 
 tivity would permit, was the proof of their righteousness 
 before God, is revealed in the next verse: " REMEM- 
 BER YE THE LAW OF MoSES MY SERVANT, WHICH I COM- 
 MANDED UNTO HIM IN HOREB FOR ALL ISRAEL ; THE 
 
 STATUTES AND JUDGMENTS." How then can we, dare 
 we, by indifference and silence, by living as if we had no 
 thought or hope beyond this earth, give a colouring to 
 the mistaken idea that all our knowledge of and belief in 
 Immortality is derived, unconsciously to ourselves, from 
 our intercourse with Christians; that it forms, and 
 formed, no part of the Jewish faith ! How can Jew or 
 Christian read the Old Testament, and yet believe this? 
 And still more remarkable how is it that no Jew has 
 ever yet, frequently and variously as this charge has been 
 made, turned to his Bible, and replied, his immortal 
 hope is there ? It is not enough to assert we believe 
 in it; that all our ancient fathers make it the ground- 
 work of their writings we must prove it ours, from that 
 one Book which both religions believe divine. 
 
 The verses I have transcribed need no comment, 
 dearest Annie. No effort of the unbeliever can twist 
 them into any other meaning than that future state, 
 where ALONE the distinction between the righteous and 
 the wicked can be discerned. They may cavil and 
 scepticise on the term "Book of Remembrance"; but 
 their remarks are of small importance to the believer, 
 who knows that all such human terms are merely used 
 by the infinite compassion of the Eternal, to reach the 
 limited comprehensions of the human beings whom He 
 addresses ; and that to appeal to them in the imagery of
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 411 
 
 Heaven, would be as perfectly useless and incompre- 
 hensible to them, as to speak in the finest poetry to a 
 new-born babe. The meaning is simply, that not a 
 thought, or word, or feeling, which aspires to the fear 
 and love of God, passes unnoticed by Him. That 
 while the righteous may seem forgotten on earth, and 
 the wicked to triumph unrebuked while those that 
 seek to love and serve Him are tried by every kind of 
 suffering, and those that care not for Him are prosperous 
 and happy; still, that for the former (the righteous) 
 every sigh and tear of uncomplaining pain, every word 
 and action tending to God's glory are registered with 
 Him, to mark us His when physical death has closed 
 this outward scene; and for the wicked, they flourish, 
 to be consumed, root and branch, from before the Lord. 
 This is the meaning of Malachi's words, agreeing alike, 
 in imagery and sense, with all the prophets who wrote 
 before him ; and still more clearly given, to console and 
 strengthen us in the path of right when the prophet's 
 spirit had utterly departed from us; and Israel, for con- 
 tinued iniquity, left to his own devices, and doomed to 
 drain the cup of fury proffered by all the nations. The 
 distinction between the righteous and the wicked could 
 be made even less visibly then, than when God still 
 spoke to Israel through His prophets; and, therefore, 
 lest they should despair, His mercy inspired His last 
 prophet to write such promise as could not be mistaken, 
 or twisted into any other sense. This is the inexpres- 
 sible comfort of Malachi, the intrinsic evidence of its 
 divinity and truth.
 
 412 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 LETTER XXIX. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 WITH the prophecy of Malachi, dearest Annie, we con- 
 cluded the chain of evidence which the Bible gives us 
 as to the Hebrew's right both to revealed and destined 
 immortality. Your remarks, as I have proceeded, have 
 given me real comfort, for when the heart and mind are 
 full of a subject, it often happens that we fail to bring 
 it as clearly and consolingly before the affections and 
 understanding of another, as it is to our own. 
 
 You are surprised that I have not brought forward 
 the Book of Job as additional evidence, as it appears to 
 you, that in Elihu's address, there are some verses that 
 bear very strongly on the subject. There are : but 1 
 did not mention them till we had fully examined the 
 more important references to the subject. The Book 
 of Job has given rise to more speculation than any other 
 in the Holy Scriptures; some even going so far as to 
 declare Job to be merely an imaginary character, and 
 his whole life a moral tale written by Moses to convey 
 certain truths to the people, more engagingly than as 
 mere axioms. But that there was such a character 
 as Job, and that he was pre-eminent for his piety and 
 righteousness, we know to be an undoubted truth, from 
 the fact of God Himself referring to him through His 
 prophet Ezekiel, no less than twice in the fourteenth
 
 LETTER XXIX. 413 
 
 chapter. " Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, 
 and Job, were in it, they should but deliver their own 
 souls through their righteousness, saith the Lord God" 
 (fourteenth and twentieth verses). That he lived before 
 the Law was given we may infer, from the mode of life 
 described being patriarchal, and having no reference 
 whatever to the ordinances of the Law. It is possible 
 that the narrative is enlarged, and the conversations 
 made fuller, and more in regular order, than took place 
 in reality; for the purpose of illustrating the solemn 
 truth, that man may not question the ways of his Maker ; 
 that it is enough for him to know that God is wise, and 
 merciful, and good; that to suppose trial sent from 
 Heaven proves some sin and iniquity in the appointed 
 sufferer, is as wrong as for that sufferer to imagine, that 
 his endeavours after righteousness ought to have ex- 
 empted him from trial ; that the Eternal's dealings with 
 man are as inscrutable as His work of creation; and 
 that till man can penetrate the latter, he may not hope, 
 without impiety, to explain the former. Such has 
 always appeared to me the real meaning of this sublime 
 book. Its elevated style seems to mark Moses as its 
 author, and most probably during his sojourn with his 
 father-in-law Jethro, in Midian. It is completely dis- 
 tinct from the style and language of either the Historical 
 Books or Prophets ; but that its author was inspired, as 
 all the other writers of the Sacred Scriptures, there can 
 be no doubt, or it would not have stood the test of 
 ages. 
 
 Whoever compiled it believed in a revealed immor- 
 tality himself, and taught it to others. Read over the 
 thirty-third chapter attentively, especially from the twelfth
 
 414 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 to the thirty-first verse, and you will find the infinite 
 mercy of God to save man, through trial and probation, 
 from eternal death, most clearly revealed. God speaketh 
 once and twice, sometimes through outward circum- 
 stances of life, sometimes in the visions of the night, 
 when deep sleep falleth upon men, but still man per- 
 ceiveth it not. Then He openeth their ears, that He 
 may withdraw man from his proud and evil purpose, 
 and so save his soul from the grave, his life from a violent 
 end. He chasteneth him with such strong pain through 
 the multitude of his bones, that his life abhorreth bread 
 and dainty meat; his flesh is consumed away that it 
 cannot be seen ; and his bones, which were not seen, 
 stick out. Death is near, both physically and spiritually ; 
 but if then there be found a messenger, or interpreter, 
 or angel with God, pointing out to Him some upright- 
 ness in the sufferer, God will be gracious unto him, and, 
 delivering his soul from going down into the pit, declare 
 He hath found a ransom for him; his flesh shall be 
 fresher than a child's, he shall return unto the days of 
 his youth. He will pray unto God, and He will be 
 favourable unto him ; and he [the purified] shall see 
 His [God's] face with joy, for he [God] will render unto 
 man his righteousness, imperfect as it may be, still it 
 has been remembered, and so saved his soul, for such 
 must be the real meaning of the 24th, 25th, and 26th 
 verses. It is no return to mere physical life and health, 
 for the flesh of a child and days of youth cannot return 
 to middle age without a miraculous intervention, which 
 even, in Bible times, was never the case ; and we know 
 that it is middle or old age, from the expression, he 
 shall return unto the days of his youth. Man cannot
 
 LETTER XXIX. 415 
 
 see the face of his God, nor trace on earth the reward 
 for his righteousness, therefore these verses can only 
 mean, that purified by suffering, his soul has put on its 
 angelic nature, and is saved from that darkness, to 
 which a continuance in iniquity must have consigned it. 
 Nor will suffering be always needed to produce this 
 blessed effect. " God looketh down on man," the 27th 
 verse continues, " and if any say I have sinned and per- 
 verted the right, and it profiteth me not, He will deliver 
 his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see 
 the light." How exactly these consoling verses agree 
 with the thirty-second Psalm. " I said I would confess 
 my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the 
 iniquity of my sin ;" and with the spirit of all the Pro- 
 phets, and the words of Ezekiel, "When the wicked 
 man turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which 
 is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." And 
 how utterly devoid of meaning, unless applied to that 
 world, where alone our life can see the light. " Lo, all 
 these judgments God worketh oftentimes with man, that 
 He may bring his soul from the grave, to be enlightened 
 with the light of the living." And in the thirty-fourth 
 chapter, Elihu reproves Job for thinking, " that it pro- 
 fiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself in 
 God. Hearken unto me," he continues, " ye men of 
 understanding, far be such wickedness from God, and 
 iniquity from the Almighty. For the work of man shall 
 he render unto him, and cause every man to find 
 according to his ways. Yea, surely God will not do 
 wickedly, nor the Almighty pervert judgment. Who 
 hath given them a charge over the earth, or who hath 
 disposed the whole world ? If He set his heart on man,
 
 416 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 He gathereth to Himself his spirit and his breath [though] 
 all flesh may perish together,, and man turn again unto 
 dust." This agrees exactly with the words of the Pro- 
 phets on the same solemn subject ; and the arguments I 
 brought forward when examining them, that the very 
 promise of rendering unto every man according to his 
 ways, pre-supposes a revelation and belief in another 
 and purer state of existence, bea.r equally upon Job. 
 " There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the 
 workers of iniquity may hide themselves" (verse 22), is 
 another such perfect agreement with the words of Jere- 
 miah (xxiii. 24). "Can any one hide himself in secret 
 places, that I shall not see him, saith the Lord : do I 
 not fill heaven and earth?" on which I wrote so fully, 
 tbat it would not need a separate notice, did it not so 
 exactly confirm my argument, that death cannot be anni- 
 hilation, or we could easily hide ourselves from God. 
 
 We find in Job, then, both strong and conclusive addi- 
 tions to the chain of evidence proving Immortality which 
 our Scriptures give. That its author was a Hebrew, 
 and the book received and read by Hebrews, no one can 
 deny; and, therefore, if we grant that it does refer to 
 Immortality, we must also grant that the revelation was 
 already known and believed in, or the references to it 
 would have received neither attention nor belief. 
 
 Diverse as are the respective characteristics of the 
 writers on this subject; widely distinct as are their indi- 
 vidual positions; separate as are the periods of their 
 existence, all use the same imagery all refer to the 
 same pre-revealed and self- confirming truth. In address- 
 ing the multitudes, if they had been utterly ignorant of 
 the subject, the inspired servants of God would have
 
 LETTER XXIX. 417 
 
 either not alluded to it at all, or spoken it in direct terms, 
 as the apostles of Jesus did to the heathen nations. But 
 the Hebrew multitudes, however sunk in sin and misery 
 however they might long for temporal relief, and be 
 guided in their age of darkness more by the hope of tem- 
 poral reward, and the fear of temporal chastisement, yet 
 knew their souls were deathless, that they could not hide 
 themselves from the searching eye of God, even by fall- 
 ing on the swords of their enemies, or being consumed on 
 their own fires. We cannot read the Bible without feeling 
 this ; we cannot be followers of God's Holy Law and be- 
 lieve in His proclaimed attributes, without, from our 
 very souls, believing it. 
 
 Once convinced that our Bible is the foundation and 
 the support of this belief; that it bears in itself unde- 
 niable witness of the glorious revelation being the heritage 
 of Israel from the very beginning, and so was universally 
 known to the seed of Abraham long ages before the 
 Christian era, little more is needed. The truth is wit- 
 nessed, not merely by the writings of our sages, but 
 by the thousand and thousand martyrs, who, ranking 
 amid the very lowest and most ignorant of the Jewish 
 multitude, had yet so firm a faith in the reward awaiting 
 those who remained true to the God of their fathers ; so 
 deep a horror of the punishment of apostasy, that it was 
 comparatively easy to die themselves by the most cruel 
 tortures, and see their wives and children die, than em- 
 brace the faith of the stranger. There was then no 
 peaceful and friendly blending of Hebrew and Christian, 
 as there is now ; and if there had been, the Roman 
 Church of the middle ages kept its doctrines of religion 
 somewhat too closely the portion of the priest, for the 
 
 T 5
 
 418 THE JEWISH FAITH". 
 
 Jews to have learned any ideas of Immortality through 
 them. I am aware that it is said repeatedly, that the 
 Jews of England cannot feel as the Jews of former times ; 
 because they mast have imbibed, from association with 
 Christians, so many of their religious ideas. This is an 
 assertion made by those who can know nothing of Jewish 
 literature, and very little of Jewish history. The writ- 
 ings of our sages, various as they are, mostly bear date 
 when the intermixture of Jew and Christian was utterly 
 unknown ; when there were no printed books and few 
 manuscripts; and when, in fact, the Christian religion 
 held sway over a very small portion of the globe, and its 
 doctrines had neither been clearly defined, nor settled 
 within themselves, as is proved from the multiplicity of 
 schisms in the early churches. Our writings bear also 
 intrinsic evidence of their perfectly Jewish origin, from 
 their containing many exclusive and rigid, and also spe- 
 culative theories, entirely opposed to the Christian creed. 
 The only books which contain English translations of 
 the writings of our sages with which I am acquainted, 
 are the " Conciliator " of Manasseh Ben Israel, which 
 contains the views of very many of our authors ; the 
 Hebrew Review, in which we find long and most interest- 
 ing quotations from Maimonides, Joseph Albo, Jacob ben 
 Asher ben Jehuel, Nachmanides, portions of the Tal- 
 mud and Mishna, with comments on the latter by 
 Naphtali Hertz Wesseley ; and a compilation from our 
 earliest sages in four sermons, by Rabbi Abram Belais; 
 in all of which the doctrine of the soul's immortality 
 is so completely the ground-work, that to deny the 
 belief to the Jews as a people, is one of the most un- 
 founded and mistaken assertions ever made. It cannot
 
 LETTER XXIX. 419 
 
 be seriously entertained by any one, whatever his creed 
 may be, who is at all acquainted with our literature 5 
 but as that literature is, for the most part, Hebrew, and 
 entirely unattainable to the mass of either Jews or Chris- 
 tians, it becomes a positive duty to know and give our 
 reason and foundation for this belief. It is not enough 
 either for our own satisfaction, or the information of 
 honest enquirers of another creed, merely to believe, and 
 assert that belief. We must point to the Book which 
 both parties believe divine, and manifest that the found- 
 ation of all we believe is there ; that from thence all the 
 writings of our sages spring ; and that the whole history 
 of persecution evinces that immortal hope which, as 
 the heritage of Israel from ages past, alone created mar- 
 tyrs. Unless it had been as clearly known and revealed 
 to us as we are told it is to Christians, what could have 
 sustained us in the mental and bodily sufferings of the 
 countless victims of hate and persecution ? What could 
 have upheld us at the stake, or bade us endure famine, 
 torture; heart-crushing agony in seeing beloved ones 
 droop, and suffer, and die, without the power of saving 
 them, when one word of retractation would have given 
 us life, and honour, and temporal peace ? Every religion 
 has had its martyrs, but none like the Jews. None have 
 been such marked victims of every clime and every age ; 
 liable even now, in this era of freedom and enlighten- 
 ment, to crushing degradation, physical torture, needing a 
 spirit of endurance, the lot of none other race on the face 
 of the globe. And if we had no immortal hope, what 
 could be our sustainer? Dearest Annie, were there 
 no evidence but this; were our Bible and its commen- 
 tators mute as to the revelation of the doctrine, we should
 
 420 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 still have enough, more than enough, in the history of 
 our martyrs, to prove how completely it was the indivi- 
 sible essence and vital breath of our creed. The martyr- 
 mother in the time of Antiochus, by her addresses to 
 each of her tortured sons, marks in what manner this 
 consoling and strengthening belief actuated the Israelites 
 in their various ages of martyrdom. No one who reads 
 this remarkable chapter in the Apocrypha,* and remem- 
 bers that it lays bare the heart and mind of an Israelitish 
 mother, taken indiscriminately from the people (not one 
 of either higher rank or talent than her fellows), and liv- 
 ing many centuries before the Christian era, but must 
 allow that the firm hope and consolation of Immortality 
 must have been known and clearly defined to Israel; 
 must have been indivisible from their creed ; must have 
 been revealed as divine, or in such a moment it must 
 utterly have failed. No merely human imaginings could, 
 in such a trial, have had either power or strength. 
 
 I wish 1 could have given you some extracts from the 
 authorities I have quoted, in support of my own argu- 
 ments, but the doctrine so completely imbues their 
 writings, that it would be difficult to quote them without 
 transcribing whole pages. I am wrong to say my own 
 arguments, as they are arguments founded mainly on the 
 opinions of all orthodox Jewish commentators on the 
 word of God, only so far simplified as to be divided from 
 the metaphysical speculations and researches in which 
 our sages so delighted to indulge. But the Immortality 
 of the soul is never made a matter of either metaphysics 
 or speculation ; it is the one simple divine truth, indi- 
 
 * Apocrypha, 2 Maccabees, chap. viii. The subject has been 
 already so enlarged upon in the " Women of Israel," that it would 
 be plagiarism in the author to do more than merely notice it here.
 
 LETTER XXX. 421 
 
 visable from the belief in the existence of a God of 
 justice and love, on which every other doctrine, and 
 ordinance of religion, and metaphysical and speculative 
 enquiry is founded. Deny them this truth, and the 
 ancient sages of Israel could not have written a single 
 line. Instead of which it shines up from their mighty 
 tomes, in such clear and lucid light, that the Christian 
 enquirer has but to seek them, to perceive how little 
 was its revelation through Jesus needed to us the first- 
 born of the Lord. To the Heathen nations, indeed, it 
 was, and God in his infinite mercy permitted a religion 
 grafted on Judaism, and whose very apostles were all 
 Jews, to carry it abroad, that even in our dispersion and 
 captivity, and banishment from our God, in the seed of 
 Abraham, and from the revelation^rsf made to them, 
 "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 MY last communication was shorter than usual, dearest 
 Annie ; because I rather wished you to bring forward 
 yourself the further questions, to which our lengthened 
 examination of this important subject may have given 
 rise, than start them myself. Correctly, as I perceive 
 by your letter, I have surmised them. 
 
 I did not add Mendelssohn's Phaedon to my list of
 
 422 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 authorities, as to the Jewish opinion of the Immortality 
 of the soul because, bold as the declaration may seem, 
 the work disappointed me. As the supposed opinions 
 of a Heathen philosopher, reasoning from analogy, from 
 acute perception, from the extraordinary power of a 
 mind unusually gifted, but unenlightened by revelation ; 
 the work is perfect. We feel that reason alone, is suffi- 
 cient for conviction, that the soul cannot be annihilated, 
 and must have a separate existence. As the work of a 
 Jewish believer, to whom the Holy Scriptures, in their 
 original tongues and all their commentators, were open, it 
 is incomplete and disappointing. He could not, indeed, 
 have put into the mouth of Socrates, allusions to a 
 Divine revelation. He could not have infused the spirit 
 of a Heathen with the spirit of a Jew; but when the 
 Phaedon was accomplished, when he had concluded his 
 imaginary conversation, which proved so clearly, that 
 even to the unenlightened by religion, the soul's immor- 
 tality was a realised and accepted fact, he should have 
 added a chapter with the views of the Jew should have 
 proved that, though reason was the guide of the Heathen, 
 FAITH was enough for the Hebrew; and that God's 
 revealed attributes taught him in a few brief words, what 
 the Heathen needed argument on argument to prove. 
 Had he done this, he would indeed have left us a debt 
 no after-ages could repay ; he would have provided 
 strength and consolation for the young and weak amongst 
 his own, and checked at once the charge of Immortality 
 being no part of Judaism. His book, whose widely 
 spread popularity has brought such honour to his name, 
 would have evinced not merely the sound reasoning of 
 the philosopher, but the pure faith of a Scriptural Jew,
 
 LETTER XXX. 423 
 
 and done more for the honour and glory of his holy 
 religion, than any modern Hebrew had accomplished. 
 These are merely individual opinions, my dearest Annie, 
 and I am very bold, perhaps, to put them forward ; but 
 the feeling of disappointment with which 1 laid down 
 the book was absolutely painful. There was no evi- 
 dence of the Hebrew within its pages ; the follower of any 
 creed might have compiled it. It could not teach the 
 Christian the immortal hope and spiritualised faith of 
 the Jew ; and therefore, though it may bid us venerate 
 the genius of the philosopher, we cannot quote or lean 
 upon it, as a witness of the faith of a believer. 
 
 Why should a doctrine of such vast importance be 
 always bounded by mere conjecture? you ask me, 
 dearest Annie. You do not mean conjecture as to the 
 truth of our Immortality, as that could not be clearer ; 
 but as to the nature of the soul, and its destiny hereafter, 
 both as to reward and punishment. You must remem- 
 ber, that our mingled human and spiritual nature, while 
 on earth, will not allow the perfect comprehension of 
 spiritual things; that we are in a preparatory state of 
 existence, while in this body, and on the earth ; that 
 even were the precise nature of the soul, and the glory 
 and bliss of Heaven, more clearly revealed, we should 
 either no more understand them, than an infant the plea- 
 sures of a virtuous and perfected manhood, or it would 
 entirely unfit us for those duties which we are com- 
 manded to attend to here, and (stronger reason than 
 either) there would be no exercise for that virtue 
 FAITH, the encouragement or non-encouragemont of 
 which marks the heart right or wrong with God. I have 
 endeavoured throughout our correspondence to prove to
 
 424 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 you, the absolute necessity of faith for our acceptance 
 before God, that throughout our Scriptures, it is made 
 almost the sole condition of our salvation, because if we 
 have faith, obedience and love follow instinctively, and 
 God will be served and loved, because we believe He 
 is the being He has proclaimed Himself. We believe 
 that our souls are an emanation from Him, and there- 
 fore deathless ; we believe that He has laid up with Him, 
 for those that love Him, fulness of joy and life ever- 
 lasting. If all were revealed, where would be the 
 excuse of this saving virtue ? Man may laugh it to 
 scorn, may suppose it fit only for women and children, 
 may declare he will believe nothing without proof; but 
 as long as we have the word of God to tell us that faith 
 is righteousness and life, we deserve to forfeit His bless- 
 ing if we renounce it, because the multitude may do so, 
 and by baleful example invite us to follow. 
 
 There is, perhaps, to the generality of mankind, no 
 virtue more difficult to attain, more especially in this 
 fearfully utilitarian age ; but its very difficulty marks its 
 union with the spiritual part of our nature, and its abso- 
 lute necessity, would we make any advance beyond this 
 earth, and its confusing interests, and worldly thoughts. 
 We bear within ourselves, would we listen to its "still small 
 voice," evidence of a higher and purer destiny than life 
 on earth ; we have God's word to tell us our souls were 
 created in His image, and must, therefore, be like Him- 
 self immortal ; to reveal an existence beyond the grave, 
 and to assure us, that there the distinction between the 
 righteous and the wicked will be discerned, and what 
 more do we need? If we believe God is truth, we are 
 as assured of our Immortality, as if based on palpable
 
 LETTER XXX. 425 
 
 and visible certainty. It is often argued, no one has 
 returned to tell us what follows death ; and it is God's 
 mercy that withholds them, for our human nature could 
 not bear the visible presence of a spirit (merely to read 
 of which will cause the flesh to creep and the blood to 
 curdle) ; and even if we could, is it possible that we should 
 believe the word of a fellow-creature more than the 
 word of God? On almost every subject while on earth, 
 our thoughts are bounded, because, while in a finite 
 body, we cannot hope to understand the infinite. We 
 know enough for our guidance, while in this state of 
 existence; and FAITH will or ought to be sufficient to 
 convince us, that our future destiny will so be ordered 
 by a God of love as to satisfy every high, and pure, and 
 ennobling aspiration, whose faint whisperings we have felt 
 even on earth permit us the indulgence of the highest 
 feelings, perfected virtue, adoration, unshadowed love, 
 and active service, which real love ever prompts, without 
 one of those imperfections and painful alloys, to which 
 in this life, even the purest emotions are subject. 
 
 That in His presence is the fulness of joy, and at His 
 right hand everlasting pleasure; that with Him is the 
 fountain of life, and in His light we shall see light ; that 
 He hath declared through His prophet, that eye hath not 
 seen, neither hath the ear heard, what He hath prepared 
 for those that love Him, are sufficient, if we believe the 
 Bible, for us to imagine the destiny of the righteous. 
 
 Were more revealed, were certainty the portion of the 
 children of the earth, as to the glories of Heaven, there 
 would not only be no need for faith (and without which 
 no service is acceptable), but death would not be, as it is 
 intended, the chastisement to which all men are liable.
 
 426 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 from the universal liability to evil. As all men, however 
 righteous in the main, however desirous of walking in 
 the paths of righteousness, still have faults and imper- 
 fections, and are never perfectly holy in the sight of the 
 holy God, as none can be so justified before Him, as to 
 have no need of either purification or chastisement, to 
 render their hearts more perfect. Death comes to all 
 indiscriminately, either by the suffering of disease, to 
 purify the departing; or by the anguish of bereavement 
 to impress on man, that this world is not all, and so 
 startle him with a consciousness of God and religion, 
 which, without such trial, might never have been his. 
 We are to live by faith we are told. If, however, the 
 reward of the good, and the punishment of the wicked 
 were clearly visible, where would be the incentive to 
 choose the good and eschew the evil, save the instinct 
 alone? We require no instruction not to meddle with 
 fire, because its ill-effects are palpable and known. We 
 cannot possibly take any credit to ourselves for not 
 touching it, because the mischief we should do ourselves 
 is so very evident. Now, if we could be quite sure that 
 by pursuing evil instead of good, we were exposing 
 our immortal souls to the same suffering through endless 
 eternity, as we do our bodies when in contact with a 
 destructive element, not all the temptations and al- 
 lurements of sin would have more effect upon us, than 
 the inviting blaze on a frosty day : we make use of its 
 warmth, but we should not think of throwing ourselves 
 into it. In the same manner, the delight of reciprocal 
 affection is so (as it were) palpable, so love-rewarding, 
 that there is not the least credit attached to us for in- 
 dulging in it. Its effects produce such happiness, that
 
 LETTER XXX. 427 
 
 we care not for any intervening obstacle or trial, so we 
 can attain it at last, we are certain of what we seek, and 
 therefore, we seek it instinctively. So would it be were 
 the bliss after death clearly revealed. The same mere 
 instinct would lead us to strive for good, as to avoid 
 suffering. But instinct is a mere animal guide: im- 
 mortal beings demanded something more, both as to the 
 greater difficulty of obedience and belief in a Father's 
 word. Earth is indeed fraught with temptation. The 
 path of evil is infinitely easier to tread than the path 
 of good, and brings with it much more palpable joys 
 and pleasures, and all the triumph of success. And this 
 is all permitted as a trial of that virtue faith childlike 
 reliance on a Father's word, which is more acceptable 
 than any other. Even in the common intercourse of 
 man with man, what insult is greater than doubting or 
 denying an alleged truth; and can we not imagine that 
 to doubt God's word, is so sinning against His holiness 
 and Truth, as to deprive us of the good, in which because 
 He has merely said but not proved it, we disbelieve ? 
 
 With regard to that " death of the soul" to which I 
 have so often told you, that I believe Moses and almost 
 all the sacred and prophetic writers refer, and called by 
 the Jewish writers exctsion, our opinion must be still 
 more bounded than concerning the destiny of the 
 righteous. All the Rabbinical writers, however they 
 may differ as to the precise nature of this punishment, 
 agree as to its infliction being in the hands of God 
 alone, and utterly distinct from the practical juris- 
 prudence of the Hebrews. Their opinions are, as was 
 unavoidable, much too speculative for instruction or 
 guidance. Some, founded on the supposition that long
 
 428 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 life on earth is always a sign of favour in the sight of 
 God, imagine that sudden and early death is meant by 
 the term, " the soul shall be cut off;" but this appears 
 to me to be too contradictory to the spirit of the Scrip- 
 tures, which, in the death of Jeroboam's young son, 
 because of the good found in him ; of the death of 
 Josiah, because his heart was tender, and he humbled 
 himself before God; in the expression of David, "pre- 
 cious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" 
 of Isaiah, " the righteous is taken from the evil to come ;" 
 of Ezekiel, " I have no pleasure in the death of the 
 wicked, but rather that he should turn from his wicked- 
 ness and live ;" seem to teach us, that early death rather 
 evinces favour than displeasure in the sight of God; 
 and that the wicked are often spared longer than the 
 truly righteous, that they may "repent and live." Of 
 course, on this subject there can be no certain opinion; 
 our only safety lies in reasoning on the words of Scrip- 
 ture, not in our own speculations. According to them, 
 the close of physical existence in youth or age can never 
 mean the punishment of excision. The sinner may be 
 violently removed in his early youth by accident or 
 disease, because through the prayers and efforts of 
 righteous relations, and the mer<?y of His God, he may 
 be thus removed from a continuance in iniquity, which 
 would doom him to an eternity of woe. The righteous 
 may be removed in his first youth or engaging child- 
 hood, because he may not need the purifying trials and 
 sufferings of earth ; or is taken, because some good 
 thing is found in him "from the evil to come." The 
 sinner may live to the full age of mortality, either to 
 give him time to turn from his iniquity that he may
 
 LETTER XXX. 429 
 
 live ; or because his sins have so turned God from him, 
 " that he flourished like grass to be destroyed for ever." 
 The righteous servant of God may live the full length 
 of days on earth tried by adversity and sorrow, because 
 God saw probation was needed to perfect the seeds of 
 virtue, and by trial on earth be prepared to shine as the 
 stars of Heaven for evermore ; or that he might do his 
 Father's work on earth, by teaching man the blessing, 
 and hope, and strength of a religious life and unchanging 
 trust in God. No man, therefore, can attempt to pro- 
 nounce judgment on the ways of God, as marked in the 
 varied close of physical existence; nor imagine for a 
 single moment, that an early death pre-supposes some 
 iniquity for which " the soul should be cut off." 
 
 My own opinion as to the meaning of excision is that 
 of Maimonides : "Death in this world, and perdition 
 in the life to come. That the soul, a distinct essence 
 from the body, shall not participate in the existence of 
 the future world, but shall be cut off from life eternal ;" 
 and that the sins which demand this fearful sentence 
 lie between man and his Maker, through an uninter- 
 rupted course of seeming worldly prosperity ; that it 
 does not relate to those social sins which receive the 
 judgment of the state, but which circumstances very 
 often, more than actual perversion of character impel. 
 The sin which is punished on earth may be redeemed by 
 penitence in heaven, but the death of the soul is threat- 
 ened against those who live entirely without God (if, 
 indeed, there can be such), and who, though seemingly 
 harmless before man, may be cast off for their iniquities 
 in the sight of God. 
 
 By the death of the soul, however, we must not
 
 430 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 imagine that annihilation follows physical death, and 
 therefore that the threatened chastisement on the irre- 
 deemably wicked, is of a negative not a positive nature. 
 The Bible gives us reason to believe, that judgment will 
 be pronounced on the souls of all men, the righteous and 
 the wicked, and that it will be only after death, and in a 
 future state, that the distinction will be discerned 
 between them. It follows, then, undeniably, that there 
 is no cessation of existence in the soul of the sinner, any 
 more than in that of the righteous. That both must 
 appear before God, there to receive individual sentence, 
 and that the life and death there pronounced, will be 
 positive in its bliss, or suffering, not merely negative, as a 
 cessation of existence would be. The words, life and 
 death, are used in addressing humanity, because in our 
 present existence they are fraught with deepest meaning; 
 but we know not how much fuller and more extended 
 may be their signification when the soul is free. How 
 ineffable may be the bliss of the one, how intense the 
 suffering of the other. The death of this life is not an 
 end, but a change (and for the proof of this in a natural 
 point of view, dearest Annie, Mendelssohn's Phaedon will 
 be as valuable, as in a theological sense it is incomplete). 
 The death of the soul, therefore, we cannot suppose an 
 end, but also a change; and that change may be, not 
 merely deprivation of the life of the righteous, and a 
 descent into an inferior and darkened sphere ; but from 
 that very deprivation, may spring a sense of suffering 
 impossible to be imagined, till the bliss of which we are 
 deprived is fully realised, as it may be ere final sentence 
 is pronounced. 
 
 On this subject, it is better that the mind should not
 
 LETTER XXX. 431 
 
 linger too long; only so long, indeed, as to permit us to 
 obtain through God's holy word, such ideas of futurity, 
 as will urge us to remain constant and firm in our 
 endeavours to tread the path of piety and right ; and 
 keep aloof from even the appearance of evil, however 
 tempted by the multitude to follow, or however easy the 
 path may seem. The knowledge that after death, the 
 destruction between the righteous and the wicked will 
 be made evident, cannot and ought not to puff up our 
 hearts with uncharitableness towards our fellow-creatures. 
 Those whom our finite judgment may condemn may 
 have some redeeming virtue before God, and we have 
 no right, therefore, even to think of death-consigning 
 evil in our brother. The extreme of punishment after 
 death is threatened, that we may have the incentive to 
 flee from that, as well as, through the hope of acceptance, 
 to pursue the good; but the repugnance with which our 
 merciful Father beholds it as the portion of any one of 
 His children, is forcibly evident in the reiterated in- 
 junctions of His word, "to choose the good and not the 
 evil ; to confess our sins and repent and amend ; that 
 iniquity should not be our ruin ; that He has no pleasure 
 in the death of the sinner ; that if the watchman whom He 
 has appointed to warn the people of their errors should 
 fail, he has trespassed, and not the actual sinner. Verses 
 innumerable may be quoted breathing this same loving 
 and forbearing spirit, and teaching, that the idea of 
 suffering after death is not more repugnant to our 
 notions of an ever-loving long-suffering God, than to 
 have occasion to inflict it, is to Him, however His attri- 
 bute of justice may demand it. We cannot read His 
 word without feeling this to our heart's core.
 
 432 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 You ask me, if I imagine that all the righteous receive 
 the same kind and measure of reward, and all those who 
 do wrong, the same chastisement ; that it appears to 
 you, there are so many gradations in good and evil in 
 this life ; that some are so purely spiritual as to realise 
 pious thoughts and feelings, with scarce an effort, and 
 others are so completely animal in their nature, as, though 
 they do no actual wrong, to find it impossible to conceive 
 any thing intellectual or spiritual ; that many are moral 
 without being religious ; that some do some things that 
 are actually wrong, and yet in the main, are charitable 
 and good ; that some are so fearfully tried, and others 
 pass through life without one cross; that you think of 
 these things till you become puzzled and uncomfortable. 
 So did I once, dearest Annie; but a consideration of 
 the attributes of God brought peace. My opinions on 
 this subject, of course, can be only individual, and, there- 
 fore, do not adopt them as any thing more than a sup- 
 position founded on the love, and truth, and justice of 
 the Lord. 
 
 I do not believe, that the reward of all souls is the 
 same, or that at the moment of their release from this 
 body, they attain the supreme of felicity, except in com- 
 parison with that which they have left. I believe, that 
 there are gradations of angels, or purer beings ; and 
 that we enter that rank amongst them after death, for 
 which our conduct in our sojourn here has most fitted 
 us. That the lowest rank of these beings is so infinitely 
 higher and happier than man, that even to become one 
 of them, may be alluded to in the words " fulness of 
 joy," and that for each stage, there are capabilities, 
 aspirations, active service, leading us higher and higher,
 
 LETTER XXX. 433 
 
 yet, till the supreme of felicity is attained. There may 
 be two human beings, created with the same spiritual, 
 gentle, holy dispositions, seeking but the good. The 
 one may know nothing but suffering on earth, from 
 social and domestic position ; the other's lot may be all 
 joy. Now, I believe, that the soul of the former will be 
 translated to a higher grade of spiritual beings than the 
 latter, though to both will be given the " fulness of 
 joy;" that where life has been all mystery and sorrow, 
 the soul will join those spirits to whom the ways, as well 
 as the works, of the Eternal are revealed, while to those 
 who have had no such trial, whose existence has been all 
 joy and peace, save the few petty trials which every life 
 must bring, though it attain felicity which, compared 
 with the purest joy on earth is too perfect for this world 
 to conceive, is still in a lower rank of angels, to the soul 
 which has been so tried in life ; and must work through 
 the varied plans of spiritual existence, to reach that rank 
 to which the tried and purified spirit had sprung at once. 
 This idea is founded alike on the attributes of God, and 
 on the fact, that the Scriptures give us undoubtedly to 
 understand that. Heaven, or space, is peopled with a 
 variety of angels, arch-angels, ministers, spirits, hosts of 
 Heaven; "angels that excel in strength, and do His 
 commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word;" 
 " ministers that do His pleasure ;" " seraphim," who are 
 entrusted by the Lord to " touch the lips and heart of 
 Isaiah," to speak unto the people; " Michael the prince 
 of the angels" who talked with Daniel ; and very many 
 times the Eternal is mentioned as seen in a vision by 
 his prophets, with the Host of Heaven on either side 
 His throne, from whom issued spirits flying hither and 
 
 u
 
 434 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 thither, to execute His will ; Cherubim, to whom 
 Ezekiel refers in such mysterious yet magnificent 
 imagery, in his first and tenth chapter ; all unite to give 
 us the most sublime ideas of the inhabitants of Heaven, 
 that the mind while in this body can conceive. To have 
 entered more minutely on a therne, so purely spiritual, 
 that some of the lower natures of man cannot even con- 
 ceive it, would have been useless, while still earth as 
 well as spirit. The Bible just gives us sufficient inform- 
 ation, to permit the calm acquiescence of faith, that 
 such things are, impossible as it is for us to comprehend 
 them. And that there are varied grades and offices in 
 the Host of Heaven, authorises the supposition, that the 
 soul joins that rank after death for which it is best 
 prepared. 
 
 For those mere animal natures, to whom all thought 
 of the unseen and spiritual seems entirely unattainable, 
 and who may yet have done their social and domestic 
 duties, and obeyed the laws of the state, because either 
 naturally inclined to follow right, or because they have 
 had no temptation to do wrong, I believe there are 
 preparatory worlds where the soul will learn its spiritual 
 destiny, and become gradually fitted for its angelic exist- 
 ence. That death will bring it, as the souls of all men, 
 before the judgment seat of God, there to receive 
 sentence, which though distinct from that of the wilful 
 and confirmed sinner, will yet cause suffering in the 
 glance back on wasted life (for the power to cultivate 
 the spiritual and intellectual, in preference to the mere 
 animal rests with all men), and the preparatory state, 
 in which the soul must work to win its spiritual com- 
 panionship, though higher and still joy, compared to life
 
 LETTER XXX. 435 
 
 on earth, is yet fraught with the vain regret for the 
 rank it might have gained, had it not lost its time on 
 earth and the yearning aspiration to obtain it. 
 
 Remember, dearest Annie, these are merely the sup- 
 positions of a being weak, finite, blinded as yourself, 
 founded, indeed, on an earnest and prayerful study of 
 God's proclaimed attributes and revealed Word. Our 
 ancient fathers had also a belief in the variety and grada- 
 tions of the hosts of Heaven ; but for the above advanced 
 opinions I alone am responsible. I have brought them 
 forward, simply in answer to those perplexing doubts and 
 questions which had naturally risen in your mind ; but 
 I do not tell you to adopt them, if your faith or reason 
 in anyway revolt from them. All men picture Heaven 
 according to their own imaginings. If these imaginings 
 owe their origin to the study of God's word, they cannot 
 go far wrong ; at least as concerns their soul's health, 
 and their desire to win life in Heaven, by the tenor of 
 their life on earth. Of one truth, we may be quite 
 sure, that the more intellectual and purely spiritual we 
 become in this life, the higher and purer felicity we 
 shall attain in the next. 
 
 I am quite aware that all this is contrary to the 
 Christian doctrine of heaven and hell, Jesus and Satan. 
 That there may be certain portions of our theological 
 works in which the Jewish doctors of the early ages 
 wrote such an idea as Milton has embodied in his 
 " Paradise Lost," with the exception of the intervention 
 of Jesus, as some Christians assert, I cannot, deny ; for I 
 am not acquainted with the deep Jewish works in ques- 
 tion. But ep&>4 they did, their opinions can no more 
 be adopted as articles of belief than the poem of Milton,
 
 436 THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 for the New Testament gives no more foundation for 
 the latter, than the Old for the former. In fact, Scrip- 
 tural Judaism must deny the supremacy of Satan and ex- 
 istence of hell as believed in by Christians ; for nowhere do 
 we find either words or thoughts capable of such construc- 
 tion. Wherever the Hebrew word translated hell is 
 used, it means, and ought to be written, either pit or 
 grave, words to which we attach a very different signifi- 
 cation. Satan is the Hebrew word for adversary, and 
 means an angel, spirit, or messenger of God, employed 
 to try men by such painful afflictions as befell Job the 
 spirit walking up and down the earth, and going to and 
 fro in it by the Eternal's permission, to try the strength 
 of man's faith and virtue. This is evident, both from 
 Job i. and ii., and Zech. iii. 1, 2 ; and by comparing the 
 twenty-fourth chapter of second of Samuel, first verse, with 
 the twenty-first of first Chronicles, first verse, the only parts 
 of the Hebrew Scriptures in which Satan is mentioned. 
 To enter on the subject as I should like, would lead us 
 too far at present ; therefore I must leave these quoted 
 chapters to your own consideration, only begging you 
 to remember, that were the Satan of our Bible the 
 Satan of Milton, he certainly neither would, nor could 
 have appeared with the sons of God before the Eternal's 
 throne, and be permitted by Him to execute His mis- 
 sion. Wherever "evil angels" are mentioned (and I 
 rather think it is but once, in Psalm Ixxi. 49), it simply 
 signifies messengers of evil to a sinful people, not evil 
 spirits opposed to God. The great necessity for youth- 
 ful Hebrews to be clear on these opposing points occa- 
 sions my mentioning them, not to condemn or falsify
 
 LETTER XXX. 437 
 
 the belief of another, but merely to clearly understand 
 our own. 
 
 Your next doubt I am not at all surprised at, dearest 
 Annie, though 1 trust easily to remove it ; that the vast 
 discoveries of astronomers, the marvellous systems of 
 stars and planets, compared with which our earth is but 
 a particle, appear to contradict our ideas of heaven ; that 
 it seems impious in the beings of such a small, and, com- 
 pared with other systems, insignificant world, to expect 
 so much at the hand of God. It might, indeed, be so, 
 if we had not the Revelation of God's will to guide us 
 through this life, and promise the attainment of another. 
 All those mighty worlds, those revolving systems, which 
 are to us but the stars and planets of the night, have 
 been created, and may be still creating by the Lord. 
 All are under His guidance and control, equally with 
 our earth ; and their inhabitants, of whatever nature 
 they may be, equally responsible to Him. It has been 
 said, they may be worlds in which our souls must move 
 and act before supreme felicity can be attained ; and if 
 they are, they do not deny the promises of the Bible. 
 We must be with God, wherever our future destiny 
 be cast : we cannot hide ourselves from Him ; for He 
 filleth Heaven a word signifying every system which 
 shines in the expanse, like stars : and from the high and 
 pure aspirations which alone can lift us from earth ; 
 from the evidence of love, of intellect, in the creative 
 genius of the sculptor, artist, musician, and poet in 
 the contemplative discoveries of the philosopher and 
 divine the more palpable researches of the astronomer 
 and student of nature under all its forms, evidence 
 mighty, not alone in what it realises, but in what it sees
 
 438 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 in the dim distance impossible to be grasped on earth, yet 
 still attainable we know that it is to a higher and purer 
 state of existence we are destined : and what does it matter 
 ivhere that destiny is ? It will be with God and the 
 fulness of joy, for He has promised it ; and if our souls 
 need higher instruction in those preparatory worlds 
 instruction more suited for their more perfected faculties 
 than the instruction intended for us while on earth, 
 another revelation will be given. Wherever and whatever 
 we are, we are His; for those vast systems are His 
 creation, equally with His heaven and our earth ; and 
 therefore wherever we are we shall be with Him still, 
 for we cannot flee from His presence, either in heaven 
 or the grave. 
 
 There is no contradiction then in the discoveries of 
 astronomers and the promises of our Bible. Were the 
 destiny of the soul more clearly defined, there might be ; 
 but there is none now. God promises to the righteous 
 joy and peace, incomprehensible in its perfection to 
 human sense ; and therefore wherever they are, we 
 know that such will be given them. He hath said, He 
 will judge every man according to His ways, and there- 
 fore we know sentence will be pronounced on every soul 
 for its own actions in this life, to whatever other sphere 
 it may be destined. Some have said, How do we know 
 that we have not existed before, and that this world is 
 not to previous existence, the same as other worlds will 
 be to this ? It may be : but neither the Bible, nor internal 
 evidence say that so it is ; and therefore we have not the 
 smallest foundation for the belief. Whereas, that we are 
 ascending in the scale of being ; that we are destined for 
 something higher and better, and nearer God, we are
 
 LETTER XXX. 439 
 
 told both by His revealed word and the internal voice of 
 our own immortal souls. 
 
 Dearest Annie, cultivate, encourage, listen to, this in- 
 ternal voice, that it may attain such ascendancy as to 
 render it equally impossible to disbelieve in immortality 
 as to disbelieve in God. I believe there are very few, 
 if any, who, were the question put, would deny a belief in 
 a future existence : they cannot ; for we find they often 
 believe in spite of themselves. But, would we be better, 
 happier, wiser, this belief ought not to be merely tacitly 
 held as an article of creed, which concerns us little here 
 below, but should be so ever present, so intimately twined 
 with our being, that it would explain at once every 
 seeming contradiction in the ways of God, as displayed 
 in the affairs of men. It would throw a halo over the 
 history of the PAST ; teach us to bear calmly with the 
 difficulties and seeming injustice of the PRESENT, and look 
 to the FUTURE with such strong faith, that hope would 
 seem certainty, and bereavement itself lose its deepest 
 anguish. It would not render us careless or indifferent 
 to the aspect of this life, as some sensualists assert. It 
 would urge us beyond every other incentive to remove 
 misery and vice from our fellows, that the animal might 
 be subdued and the intellectual and spiritual obtain 
 their intended superiority. But it is a subject but too 
 often lost in the pressure of the world. We do not 
 instil it sufficiently into the minds and hearts of our 
 children, and so in manhood, though it may be believed, 
 it fails to become their guide. We think it a subject 
 connected only with suffering and death, that this world 
 is, or ought to be enough for our enjoyment, and more 
 than enough to occupy our thoughts. But all this is
 
 440 -THE JEWISH FAITH, 
 
 false and mistaken reasoning. This world is a chaos of 
 darkness and misery, and injustice and wrath, without the 
 belief in another ; while with that belief its very clouds 
 are illuminated by the light of Heaven gleaming 
 through, and every seeming contradiction, tending to 
 the furtherance of that divine rule of love and justice, 
 which we know we shall understand above. 
 
 But this pure and comforting faith cannot be obtained 
 without effort and perseverance. It is not a gift of God 
 depending on His grace alone, for He has endowed ALL 
 His creatures, from the highest to the lowest, with the 
 capability of attaining it. Our first endeavour must be 
 to examine into the foundation of this belief, and, once 
 convinced its origin is divine, we should not pause 
 till we can so realise it, as to bring it to bear on every 
 event of life, and no more separate it from our thoughts 
 than we can the omnipresence and omnipotence of God. 
 And this can be attained, and not only will its attain- 
 ment bring comfort and strength unspeakable in itself, 
 but actually advance that in which we believe. The 
 more we cultivate the intellect and a healthy imagi- 
 nation, the more shall we realise the spiritual and deaden 
 the mere animal of our mingled nature. The more we 
 give the soul or spirit ascendancy while on earth, and so 
 advance it more in the knowledge of our God and His 
 unseen worlds, the better are we prepared for the higher 
 and purer state of being which we know awaits us, and 
 the higher shall we rank amidst those Immortal hosts of 
 Heaven which surround His throne. We dare not hope 
 to attain spiritual felicity in Heaven if we strive not for 
 it on earth, or realise its blessedness, unless the awakened 
 and ripened intellect has led the spirit to contemplate
 
 LETTER XXXI. 441 
 
 its own. Dearest Annie, I could write on this most 
 important and most solemn subject, to us Hebrews 
 especially, more and more, in the inexpressible longing 
 to bring its peace, its joy, its comfort home to you, 
 whose early trials and eager heart need it so strongly, but 
 hand and brain both fail. I can only reiterate, Seek, 
 strive, pray for this precious blessing, a firm and ever 
 acting belief in this Immortality, which God's holy word 
 proclaims, and His grace will grant it to the full. 
 
 LETTER XXXI. CONCLUSION. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 September, 1846. 
 
 JOY, dearest Annie ! we shall be together once again, 
 never to part I trust, till a happier home shall offer for 
 you than your old friend can give. All through our 
 correspondence, I have been hoping and striving to ac- 
 complish this end ; for though you have carefully avoided 
 referring to petty trials, I can feel they are many and 
 painful, and from them, at least, my love may guard 
 you. Come to me, then, my Annie my lonely home 
 will indeed be brightened, by the presence and affection 
 of one who needs not the ties of blood to be felt, indeed, 
 all my own. Congeniality of tastes, and pursuits, and 
 a warm sympathy, at least, with the natural enjoyments 
 of the young, will, I trust, provide you a companion as
 
 442 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 well as a friend. I have settled the whole business with 
 the family with whom you are residing ; therefore do not 
 allow any of the petty annoyances, as to what they will 
 think and how you can tell them, interfere with the 
 pleasure, which, if I judge you by myself, I know the 
 idea of our re-union will bring. I would not write to 
 you till all the preliminaries were settled, and there was 
 nothing to damp our mutual anticipations. How much 
 we shall have to talk over ! How many little things, that 
 in our correspondence on serious topics we have been 
 compelled to overlook ! Hoping to meet so soon, when 
 conversation will be much more satisfactory than the 
 most explicit writing, I shall not reply to your last most 
 affectionate letter, except to thank you warmly for the 
 feelings it so eloquently expressed, and to assure you 
 that had your earnest and thoughtful enquiries into our 
 holy faith, cost me far more time and labour to answer, 
 than they have, your fond and grateful acknowledgment 
 of all the comfort and peace my answers have imparted, 
 would have made me feel that a blessing had attended 
 every hour devoted to you. But do not let affection for 
 me, my Annie, urge you to give me more than my due. 
 To the blessing of your Father in Heaven, on my lowly 
 efforts, and to your own sweet disposition, which prompted 
 you to seek and listen to the counsels of more experienced 
 age, you owe the comfort and joy, which you tell me you 
 can realise now more fully than you have ever yet done. 
 Many might have felt the same doubts the same 
 anxiety the same restlessness; but there are few who 
 would so banish secret pride and self-sufficiency, as 
 either to feel or acknowledge themselves convinced. 
 There are but too often dispositions which would rather
 
 LETTER XXXI. 443 
 
 bring argument against argument, for neither use nor 
 pleasure, save to evince their own wisdom and seek to 
 overthrow the calm belief of another, and substitute the 
 shallow theories of their own unbelief in their stead; thus 
 strengthening their own prejudices even while they deny 
 the existence of prejudice altogether as actuating 
 themselves. 
 
 I am grateful, indeed, that you were not one of them, 
 for they can neither know happiness nor safety. Your 
 mind only needed a guiding thread to realise to the full 
 all the blessings of a firm religious hope, all the depth, 
 and consolation, and spirituality, of our holy faith, in con- 
 tradistinction to the formality, imperfection, and want of 
 spirituality with which it is so often charged. 
 
 You will mingle now more with your own than you 
 have done yet. You will, I trust, worship God in His 
 house, with the congregation and in the language of his 
 people. But though you will find many families in whom 
 spiritual Judaism has found a resting,many eager and ear- 
 nest to forward the cause of God by increased spirituality 
 in themselves, and a careful nationally religious education 
 of their children, you must not hope to find scriptural 
 Judaism yet the prevailing feeling. It is advancing. If 
 we compare the thoughts and sentiments on the religion 
 of the Hebrews in almost all countries of the present 
 day with those of fifty years back, we shall find there has 
 been, indeed, a mighty movement; though, as merely 
 looking on the present, we may feel the movement is so 
 small as to be almost invisible, and we sometimes are 
 led to despond more than hope. We may watch too, 
 with dread, the too violent reforms, the too indiscrimi- 
 native clipping away of old established, and so somewhat
 
 444 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 treasured forms; but better, far better, this agitation, 
 than the stagnant waters of apathy and indifference, in 
 which fifty years ago all Judaism was plunged. That 
 the modern Jews scattered over the world cannot be 
 judged by the progress of those in England, France, or 
 America, is true. In Russia, Poland, Gibraltar, the 
 northern coasts of Africa, the Holy Land itself (alas, 
 that so it should be ! ), the Jewish population are generally 
 composed of the most ignorant, debased, and super- 
 stitious. Every where, when ignorance, servility, and su- 
 perstition abound, scriptural Judaism is utterly unknown. 
 They retain all the fearful effects of mental and moral 
 bondage and physical persecution. But no man with 
 any honesty of feeling will judge of the spirit of a reli- 
 gion by such nominal followers. 
 
 A miracle retains them Jews, in their observance of 
 certain distinguishing covenants and ordinances, even in 
 the lands where the very fact of their being Jews debases 
 them socially and physically, and so mentally and mo- 
 rally ; but the true observer of human nature will look 
 on the religious and moral bearing of the nations in 
 which the people of God are thus debased, and acknow- 
 ledge that they must be more than human, for the pure 
 spirit of their faith to act upon them in such a situation. 
 
 What is Christianity in Russia ? In Spain ? In some 
 parts of Germany, and many other lands? Can we trace 
 the pure spirit which is to regenerate mankind and bring 
 them back to God? And why, then, should we demand 
 more from Judaism? Divine as the religion is, its fol- 
 lowers are human, and so liable to all the human condi- 
 tions of national position and individual imperfection. 
 It is in free and enlightened nations, where the Jew is
 
 LETTER XXXI. 445 
 
 permitted a position like any other MAN; where he has 
 peace and leisure to give the intellectual and spiritual 
 their ordained ascendancy, that the real spirit of their 
 religion must be sought, and will be found. 
 
 That even amongst them there are nominal Jews, in- 
 different to any pursuit but interest, any pleasure but 
 worldly aggrandisement, so careless of the restrictions of 
 their religion, as either to neglect, or most unwillingly to 
 perform them ; and that there are others still, the mere 
 spiritless formalists of the age of bondage, must not dis- 
 appoint you, dearest Annie, or lead you to imagine that 
 the religion I have placed before you as the Judaism of 
 the Bible, is merely the religion of an individual, and 
 not Judaism. The great drawback to intellectual Ju- 
 daism ; to knowing what our religion is, and on what 
 principles it is founded ; to its appealing to the heart and 
 mind, has been the absence of a Jewish press. Merely 
 to receive religion from the lessons of parents and 
 teachers in our childhood to read the Sabbath por- 
 tions could never be enough; and it is because we 
 have never had a Jewish press, that we are so far behind 
 our Christian brethren in spiritual and intellectual reli- 
 gion. This deficiency, within the last few years, has 
 begun to be felt, and so we may earnestly hope, will 
 gradually be supplied. If we once, as individuals, can 
 know what is our religion, and what is incumbent on us 
 each to feel and do, we shall each work in our own 
 sphere, and so gradually but surely extend the spiritual 
 and intellectual religion, which is the spirit of our faith, 
 and which, though given to man in his earliest infancy, 
 is yet adapted for his highest perfection, and supplies 
 him with a guard from sin, and hope of joy, through all
 
 446 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the varied phases of his existence, from the infancy of 
 humanity to the state to which he was eventually and 
 spiritually destined, " a little lower than the angels." 
 Whilst the press is but just commencing, its deficiency 
 more felt than supplied, let us not trouble ourselves so 
 much with the religion of our brethren as with that of 
 our own hearts. Let us not be content with the Judaism 
 which is apparent in others ; but let us study and know 
 what Judaism really is from the word of God, and seek 
 to become scripturally Hebrews not such because our 
 fathers were. Let us not heed the tauntings of scoffers, 
 who, alluding to the mere nominal Jew or frigid formal- 
 ist, ^demand if that be the religion of God which is to 
 last for ever, and shed its spirit over the whole world? 
 Let us be prepared to make manifest the Judaism of 
 the Bible, and point to God's word as the teacher and 
 container of the religion which will indeed last for ever, 
 and over which neither circumstance nor time can have 
 any power, though its human followers must be influenced 
 by both. If we would but look more into "our Bibles 
 than around us would but have the moral courage to 
 break from the trammels of custom, and stand forward, 
 followers and upholders of the spirit of the Prophets, as 
 well as of the Law ; would we but feel and declare the 
 Judaism of the Bible is the religion of God, not the Ju- 
 daism of the world how different would be the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual aspect of the religion of the Jews. 
 And I feel that THIS WILL BE, dearest Annie, though 
 neither you nor I may behold it to any extent. It is 
 working now ; and if we can but establish in every land 
 a vernacular Jewish press, it will work more and more. 
 The grammatical study and acquirement of our own
 
 LETTER XXXI. 447 
 
 noble language, the Hebrew, which is now made part of 
 the education of every Hebrew child, will forward this 
 glorious end. The light is dawning over many lands, 
 but a faint, faint streak indeed but enough to promise, 
 for God himself has said it, that it will " brighten more 
 and more into the perfect day," and permit " the Sun of 
 Righteousness " to rise and shine on all the nations, as the 
 light of Heaven on the earth. Ages may pass, indeed, 
 ere this will be, but man has the power of progression in 
 himself, and wiLL.attain it. 
 
 I did not intend to have written you so much, dearest 
 Annie ; but on this subject my pen will run on in spite 
 of me. Perhaps the above assertion (which in my own 
 heart is positive belief), as the most comforting to ear- 
 nest Hebrews, is the best with which I could conclude 
 our lengthened correspondence. You will not quarrel 
 with it at all events; and, when disappointed and doubting 
 at the absence in some of all visibly spiritual Judaism, 
 remember, that the very feeling in yourself is evidence 
 of the invisibly working power ; that many others are 
 probably at the same moment experiencing the same 
 emotions. Elijah complained that he alone was left to 
 love and serve God, and the reply of the Omnipotent 
 will bear on all ages, and in all climes: "Behold, 
 there are seven thousand who have not bowed the knee 
 to Baal, nor kissed him ; " meaning, had remained faith- 
 ful to their God, though so invisibly, that even the pro- 
 phet knew it not. However few the number of those 
 whom we know and can depend on to give back our 
 own thoughts on religion, it is no proof that we stand 
 alone. In the sight of God there may be seven times 
 seven thousand spiritual and faithful Jews forwarding
 
 448 THE JEWISH FAITH. 
 
 the honour of their faith, and working in His service, 
 though we know it not. The answer to Elijah ought to 
 impress this solemn truth on our minds, and remove 
 alike despondency and doubt. We are too apt to judge 
 only by what we see, when, had we but faith, the mind 
 would take a wider and truer grasp, and teach us to be- 
 lieve that, even as we feel, so may others, and as we 
 labour so do they. 
 
 And now, dearest Annie, though I will not say farewell 
 to you, I will to our correspondence ; and, with the ear- 
 nest hope and belief that personal intercourse will but 
 deepen the mutual interest and affection which com- 
 menced in your childhood, and has inexpressibly increased 
 during our examination of a subject so momentous, so 
 twined with our very being, as our Faith, 
 
 I remain, 
 Your affectionate and true friend, 
 
 INEZ VILLENA. 
 
 J. Weilheimer & Co., I'nntrr.-, Kin&burjr t;ircui.
 
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