A JEWISH WITNESS THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST.

We cannot present our readers with a more interesting record of Jewish conversion than that which is furnished by the following history, for which we are indebted to a valuable volume, by the Rev. R. H. Herschell, and of which a more detailed notice is given in our present number under the head of "Reviews." We are sorry that our narrow limits forbid the insertion of the entire narrative, but we are sure that its perusal, as given here, will excite a wish to become acquainted with it, as it stands in the volume from which it is extracted.

Having been favoured by God with pious parents, their great care was to impress my mind from childhood with a profound reverence for God, and for the Holy Scriptures. I was taught to repeat the morning and evening prayers with great solemnity; and on the feast-days my attention was particularly drawn to the impressive confession in our Liturgy, "It is because of our sins we are driven away from our land,” &c. On the day of atonement, I used to see my devout parents weep when they repeated the pathetic confession that follows the enumeration of the sacrifices which were appointed by God to be offered up for the sins of omission and commission: and many a time I shed sympathetic tears as I joined them in saying, that we have now no temple, no high priest, no altar, and no sacrifices. As I advanced in years and understanding, my religious impressions became stronger; fear and trembling often took hold upon me; and what was then my refuge,-what the balm for my wounded spirit? Repeating more prayers, and asking God to accept the calves of my lips! This satisfied my mind at the time; but the satisfaction arose from ignorance of the character of God as a holy and a just Being, and of my own state as a guilty sinner, whose prayers, proceeding from unclean lips, could not be accepted as a sweet savour by the thrice holy Lord God of Sabaoth.

I continued in this state of mind until I was about sixteen years of age. At this period I became acquainted with a Polish Jew, who had studied several years at the University of Berlin, and consequently had become acquainted with Gentile literature. He strongly advised me to give up the study of the Talmud, and devote myself to the study of German and secular literature. After a hard struggle of mind, I resolved to follow his advice, and accordingly went

to -. Here there was not only a change in the character of my studies, but an entire change in my habits and mode of life. At first my conscience was much disturbed, and I was often very unhappy; but, after a time, these feelings wore off.

In process of time the Lord laid his afflicting hand upon me. The death of my beloved mother, whose tenderness to me I remember to this day with the deepest gratitude and affection, was a heavy stroke to me, and plunged me into the utmost grief. I was then visited with sickness, and my conscience became much disturbed. What I then endured can only be expressed in the language of the sixth Psalm. I solemnly vowed to become very religious. I resolved to fast one day in every week, to repeat many prayers, and show kindness and charity to the poor. But this could not pacify my guilty conscience, as the study of German literature had weakened my confidence in religious observances, had driven me from my own religion, and given me nothing in its place. One day I was in acute distress of mind, feeling, as David expresses it, that I had sunk “in deep mire, where there is no standing;" that all my own efforts to free myself were of no avail, my struggles only made me sink deeper and deeper. For the first time in my life I prayed extempore. I cried out, "O God! I have no one to help me, and I dare not approach thee, for I am guilty; help, O help for the sake of my father Abraham, who was willing to offer up his son Isaac, have mercy upon me, and impute his righteousness unto me." But there was no answer from God, no peace to my wounded spirit. I felt as if God had forsaken me; as if the Lord had cast me off for ever, and would be favourable no more.

me,

66

One morning I went to purchase an article in a shop, little knowing that God had there stored up for me the "pearl of great price," which he was about to give me without money and without price." The article I purchased was wrapped up in a leaf of the Bible, which contained a portion of the sermon on the mount. The shopkeeper was probably an infidel, who thought the Bible merely waste paper; but God over-ruled the evil for good. As I was walking home, my eyes glanced on the words: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." This arrested my attention, and I read the whole passage with deep interest.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of

heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their's is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. v. 3—10.)

I was much struck with the sentiments contained in this passage, and felt very desirous to see the book of which it was a portion; I had no idea what book it was, never having seen a New Testament. A few days after, God directed my footsteps to the house of an acquaintance, on whose table lay a copy of the New Testament. Impelled by curiosity, I took it up, and in turning over the leaves, beheld the very passage that had interested me so much. I immediately borrowed it, and began to read it with great avidity. At first I felt quite bewildered, and was so shocked by the constant recurrence of the name of Jesus, that I repeatedly cast the book away. At length I determined to read it through.

66

The interview between Jesus and Nicodemus, narrated in the third chapter of John, riveted my attention. I was as much astonished as Nicodemus himself at the saying of Jesus, 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," ver. 3. If he had told me to fast, to give alms, to go morning and evening to the synagogue, to repeat the prayers twice or three times a day, and that then I should see the kingdom of God, I could have understood it: but when told of a new birth, I was ready to exclaim with Nicodemus, “How can these things be?" Christ's explanation of the reason of his sacrifice, by a reference to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, struck me very forcibly: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." (ver. 14, 15.) I had many times read the account of the brazen serpent, but had never understood its spiritual import before; nor perceived that it was the forgiving love of God that healed the poor Israelite, when his veins were filled with the poison of the serpent, and his soul defiled with the poison of sin. When utterly unable to help himself, the free mercy of God provided a remedy; and the

poor sinner, whose body was in danger of death, and whose soul was in danger of everlasting punishment for his rebellion against God, had only to look at this serpent lifted up, and he was immediately healed. Christ here declared that what the brazen serpent was to the wounded Israelite, He is to the perishing sinner, who feels that he is guilty before God.

This doctrine was so new and strange to me, that, instead of at once perceiving it was just such a remedy as I needed, and entreating God to show me if all this were indeed true, I became more agitated and distressed: and feared that if I continued to read this book, I should be led away from the religion of my fathers. I therefore resolved to lay the New Testament aside, and devote myself to the study of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. I felt that I had never hitherto Istudied the Bible with a desire to know what God therein taught me as an individual; to learn what he would have me think, and feel, and do. I therefore began to study it with views and feelings very different from any I had experienced before.

I was much struck with the circumstantial manner in which God has seen fit to detail what he said to the serpent, to the woman, and to the man. When I considered how completely every word pronounced against the man and woman has been fulfilled, I thought it certain that every word spoken to the serpent must have as full an accomplishment; and that, as sure as the word of the living God is true, so surely shall the "seed of the woman," shall some descendant of the woman, "bruise the head" of Satan; that is, shall undo the evil which he has wrought in the creation of God.

The question that then naturally occurred was: What must this seed of the woman do, in order to restore man to the state of happiness which he lost by the fall? And the obvious answer was: He must bring back the alienated heart of man again to rest its affections on God as the supreme good: he must so exhibit the love of God to man, as to draw forth man's love in return. And the love he must now reveal, is love of a higher kind than that of mere complacency in a holy being, such as we may suppose God to have felt towards unfallen man; it must be a love that can, with consistency to the perfect holiness of God, be extended towards guilty and rebellious creatures. But here a difficulty arose: if this seed of the woman be merely one of the fallen race to whom this

new revelation of love is to be made, if he is one of the alienated and rebellious sinners, how is he first to be raised out of this state; where, and how, is he to acquire a knowledge of this forgiving love of God? Must he not be an intermediate person? an umpire, who can lay his hands upon both? (Job ix. 33.)

It was impossible to conceal from myself that I was involuntarily portraying the character which Jesus of Nazareth assumed to himself. In spite of my struggles against them, these convictions irresistibly forced themselves upon me; man is a fallen creature; his heart is by nature alienated from God; he cannot recover himself from this state of alienation; the promised seed of the woman must be a mediator between God and man; he must partake of the nature of both, and yet he must not partake of the sin of man; and how can all this be, except by I shrunk from addingthe incarnation of Deity in man; for I saw at a glance where this admission would land me.

Though I had thrown aside the New Testament, I could not get rid of the light I had acquired from it. It seemed to shed a radiance on every line of the Pentateuch, which I was now studying; making that clear which was before dark and mysterious; giving order and consistency to what had formerly appeared arbitrary and unconnected.

After some time spent in the diligent study of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, it occurred to me that my abandoning the study of the New Testament was very unreasonable. "Why should I hesitate to read it?" I asked myself. "If I am sure it is false, it can do me no harm; and if I am not sure it is false, is it not my duty diligently to examine if it be true?" The more I examined

into the truth of Christianity, the more did the question appear to be narrowed into a small compass: Jesus of Nazareth was either the promised Messiah, or an impostor and deceiver. The New Testament is either a revelation from God, or an invention of lying and wicked men. After mature deliberation, I was forced to come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah, and that the New Testament is, equally with the Old, the Word of God.

But this conviction, so far from bringing peace with it, seemed at first to increase the trouble of my soul tenfold. All the hatred and prejudice with which I had been accustomed