The antient history of this most singular people, in point of antiquity, authenticity, and importance, is indisputably pre-eminent over all other national records. It has often been observed that here we are first made acquainted with the benevolent designs of Providence in the restoration of man to the lost favour of his Creator, and that we behold the gradual developement of the momentous purpose; every thing tending to its accomplishment, every point converging to the same focus. It appears at one view to be the will of the Deity that a peculiar people, and through their means the rest of mankind, should be made sensible of a particular and most important truth; and we find accordingly that almost every circumstance recorded of that people has a certain degree of reference to that truth: every sacrifice affords them a typical representation of it; every rite or ceremony contributes to impress it on their minds; and things apparently the most unconnected with it, such as the circumstances of their worldly condition, their sufferings and distresses at one time, or the renewal of their peace and happiness at another, all concur in promoting its establishment. If Abraham, to whom and to whose descendants the promises were made, is commanded to offer up his only Son on Mount Moriah, it is to represent to this people and to their posterity a picture of that future sacrifice of Jesus Christ which was hereafter to be offered up on the same holy ground. * If the people are subjected to the bondage of a tyrant in a foreign country, and delivered from their captivity by the intercession of a wise and virtuous lawgiver, it is to habituate them to consider themselves as always under the immediate protection of heaven; and to lead them to expect a farther deliverance hereafter from a severer bondage, through the medium of a more wise, more virtuous, and more powerful Redeemer. The institution of the Passover, which directed the perfect and spotless lamb to be slain in commemoration of the people's deliverance from the fiery sword of the heavenly messenger, their subsequent travels through the wilderness, their miraculous supply of food from heaven and of water from the hard rock, -the lifting up of the brazen serpent, and their final settlement, after all their sufferings, in the land of promise, were designed to favour the future reception of gospel-truths: but the intima

*It appears to be generally acknowleged that the mountain, to which Abraham conducted Isaac to be sacrificed, was the same with that on which Solomon afterward built the Temple of Jerusalem. Compare Genesis, chap xxii. and 2 Chron. chap. iii.

tions of the divine purpose did not rest here: these were only the visible signs of its completion, and more full and explicit declarations were conveyed to the people by the written language of their inspired teachers. Every the smallest circumstance was here detailed to them; the peculiarities of the conception, the birth, the life, the character, and the death of the Saviour were distinctly and minutely described. It is well known how accurately all these accorded with the several circumstances of the history of one particular person, and how impossible it has hitherto been to assign any other human being to whose history they bear the slightest resemblance. To account, therefore, for their unbelief in Jesus Christ, the degenerate remnants of this wonderful people have no other refuge than to affirm that the Messiah, whom their prophets have foreshewn, is still to come; and that redemption from their present state of disgrace and suffering is now as much as ever among the benevolent purposes of the Deity. They have the same attachment as heretofore to their holy Scriptures, and the same confidence in the truth of all that "Moses in the law and the prophets did write:" but, with regard to the spiritual nature of the scheme of redemption, they are as much as ever blinded; they are still looking for an earthly conqueror, though at the distance of more than eighteen conturies since an heavenly one was given to them; and still expecting jubilees, and banquets, and sensual entertainments, as the recompense of their sufferings, and apparently as the ultimate and only object of their hopes.

Considering that one at least among the very forcible arguments for the truth of Christianity is furnished, not only by the present degraded condition of the Israelites, but also by their infidelity itself and the weakness of those arguments with which they endeavour to uphold their cause, we have received with pleasure, and perused with attention, a book which gives a simple and impartial exposition of the present state of religious feeling among so extraordinary a people. The author, we should inform our readers, is very manifestly a firm believer in Christianity; yet it does not by any means appear that he has been induced by that reason to take up the cudgels against the adversaries of his faith. In stating and explaining the opinions, traditions, rites, and ceremonies, which have been professed and followed by the great body of the Jewish people since the time of Christ, he is seldom, if ever, found wandering from his path in order to expose their fallacy, or to deride their folly; and far less does he ever condescend to oppose their doctrines with any uncharitable spirit of controversial discussion. We do not recollect to

have seen any work on the same subject written in language so impartial, or in so plain and elementary a style.

The volume is divided into twenty-five chapters, to each of which is assigned a treatise on some particular doctrine, tradition, or ceremony. In proceeding to give some account of it, we shall not be expected to enter into a systematic analysis of the whole contents of every chapter: it will be sufficient, we trust, both for our own and the reader's purpose,. if we take a general survey of its design and merits, and direct the principal share of our observations to the most universally interesting and most popular sections.

Chapter I. is very properly devoted to an examination of the Jewish Scriptures. These, it is well known, are still regarded by the people as the standards of their religious creed, and are still considered to have been composed under the immediate influence of divine inspiration. The former three-fold distribution of them into the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, is still retained; and though the number of the books has been augmented, in order most probably (as Dr. Prideaux observed) to make them correspond with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, yet the writings. themselves have neither been increased nor diminished. The Jews have been accused of altering the distribution of their Scriptures for the sake of degrading the authority of Daniel; whose writings they found it impossible to expunge altogether from their canon, yet were unwilling to admit into the list of prophecies: they have, therefore, as it is said, deemed it con-venient to adopt the intermediate plan of degrading the writings of Daniel into the rank of the Hagiographa, in order to render them less at variance with their ideas of a future Messiah. The charge, however, does not obtain Mr. Allen's assent; and he thinks that so serious an accusation ought to be supported by a greater weight of evidence than has hitherto been adduced.

'Maimonides,' says he, indeed, in a passage just referred to, says: "Our nation has unanimously agreed in ranking the book of Daniel among the books called Hagiographa, and not among the Prophets." It would be easy to shew, that some of the reasons alleged for this denial of Daniel's prophetical character are destitute of any foundation in truth, and that others furnish nothing more than frivolous distinctions without any real difference. But it will be sufficient to cite a confession of Maimonides himself, in the same work, that Daniel wrote by the Holy Spirit. The testimonies of some of the most learned Jews are highly in his favour. Abarbinel maintains, that his spirit of comprehension was that of true prophecy; Jacchiades states that

he attained to the highest pitch of prophecy; and the Talmud ranks him with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.'

Another charge, equally severe, and perhaps equally unfounded, is that the Jews have wilfully corrupted parts of the Hebrew text; for which there appears to be scarcely any other foundation, than the occasional varieties of interpretation that have been given by different translators to the same scriptural passages. Aquila, a Jewish proselyte, undertook, in the second century, as it is well known, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek language; and this, being found occasionally at variance with the Septuagint version, which the early fathers of the church had always considered as the standard of correctness, gave rise to the idea (for it seems to be only an idea) that the Jews had wilfully and systematically corrupted the text. The charge, apparently, is founded on the weakest evidence. It may be perfectly true that disagreements are to be found in many detached passages, but surely it would be most unfair thence to infer that any wilful deviation from the original has been made with any sinister intentions. Let any one consider the varieties of readings, of construction, and of interpretation, which different commentators and translators have assigned to numerous passages in any of the Greek classics; how impossible it has been to preserve the purity of the original text, and to prevent the introduction of glosses and errors through the negligence or the ignorance of the various transcribers. The same we conceive to have been the case with the Scriptures. From the last of the prophets under the Old Testament, as Mr. Allen very justly observes, to the invention of printing, more than eighteen hundred years elapsed. Is it reasonably to be supposed that, in all the numerous transcripts which were made during this long period, no varieties, no errors, should have crept in? or that, when they had once crept in, they should not have increased and multiplied, and given birth to new varieties and greater errors? The fact, we believe, is well known and universally acknowleged. Yet the late collation of the Hebrew manuscripts by Dr. Kennicott has put it beyond all question, that the sacred volume has been handed down to us in a far greater state of purity than any other book of nearly similar antiquity; and that, among all the different readings which have been found, none have affected any material point either of doctrine or of practice. Indeed, so far from wilfully corrupting the text of Scripture, it appears that the Jews have been particularly watchful and scrupulous in preserving it. They have counted the large and small sections,

sections, the verses, the words, and even the letters; in proof of which Mr. Allen refers his readers to Simon's critical history of the Old Testament, in which that writer speaks of having seen a MS. of Perpignan containing the following enumeration:

← They have likewise reckoned, which is the middle letter of the Pentateuch, which is the middle clause of each book, and how many times each letter of the alphabet occurs in all the Hebrew Scriptures."

It is not indeed pretended that any important advantages can accrue from such calculations, or that the perfect integrity of the Hebrew is thus established: but they serve, notwithstanding, as a clear proof of the care and endeavours of the Jews to preserve the literal sense of Scripture, and as a confutation of those who charge them with having corrupted the Bible in order to justify their disbelief in Christ.

One of the most amusing chapters in the present volume will be found to be that which gives an account of the Jewish traditions concerning the human soul. The corporeal frame of man is, according to many of the Rabbies, animated by a triple soul, which they designate by the terms, nephesh, ruach, and neshama. These are supposed to correspond to three worlds; the nephesh is created for the middle world, the neshama for the upper, and the ruach for the lower; and man inhabits any one of them according to the qualification of his soul. The mysterious doctrine of the conjunction of these souls, called in Hebrew ibbur, is this: the nephesh enters at the birth of a man: at the age of thirteen and a day, if his life has been good and virtuous, he becomes possessed of the ruach; and, if his life continues to be virtuous, in the twentieth year he is supposed to be qualified for the neshama. If, on the contrary, his character be faulty, the nephesh and the ruach are perhaps suffered to remain without the neshama; sometimes a man is only worthy of the nephesh, and so continues without the ruach and the neshama; and then, according to these Rabbies, the ruach and neshama remain in a place concealed, and known only to the holy and blessed God. In such a theory, it is easy to trace the faint outlines of the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, whence in all probability

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