aid required for the infirm and sick, now fall on a few persons of limited means. It would seem as if, but for occasional contributions from their wealthy brethren in other cities, some of them would perish. When we remember that they are permitted to exercise no trade but that of tailoring; that they have no relief from public institutions; that immense impediments in the way of trade place them at every disadvantage; that they are not accepted as servants; that their wretched quarter is most uninviting as a place to which to resort for making purchases, and that it is damp and unwholesome, and liable to inundations from the overflow of the Tiber, it will readily be seen that their condition must indeed be wretched. I am sure that I do but give you an opportunity to exercise the charity to which you are already prompted, when I ask you to-day to contribute to the relief of the sufferings of poor and infirm Jews during this rigorous winter.

It is creditable to a people whose position is one of so many disabilities,-one calculated to stir up so much evil in the heart,-that there is very little 'crime among them. The number of those who are imprisoned is small. It is generally for very slight offenses that they are committed. The crimes of murder, assassination, forgery, and felony are unknown among them.

That the efforts which are made to convert them to Romanism are not successful, is not surprising. We know that love, and not persecution, is the great means to draw men to Him who is incarnate love. Moreover, the one sin which the Jews believe to transcend all other sins is idolatry. They believe that Romanism is a system of idolatry; and hence

ages of attendance on the preachings intended for their conversion have been utterly without effect. When the present pontiff dispensed the Jews from attending the services, and sent a converted Jew to preach to them, the experiment failed. The church was empty.

It is a melancholy picture which we have sketched. It is part of that doom, the view of which through the vista of centuries called forth melodious lamentations from the tender spirit of Jeremiah. "All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve their soul; see, oh Lord, and consider, for I have become vile. Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand; they are wreathed and come up upon my neck.

He hath

made my strength to fail. The Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to look up. For these things I weep. Mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me."

1. But this is not always to be their doom. They are never to cease their existence as a nation,—for God has said that only "when the ordinances of day and night fail shall the seed of Israel cease to be a nation before him,"-but their humiliation has an appointed end. The preserved remnant of the Jews shall be restored to the Holy Land, and accept their long rejected Messiah, and again live and thrive. under the smile of God. "The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root

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downward and bear fruit upward." (Is. xxxvii. 31.) Behold, I will gather them out of all countries ;""And I will cause the captivity of Israel and the captivity of Judah to return, and will build them as at the first." (Jer. xxxii. 37, xxxiii. 7.) "But fear not thou, oh my servant Jacob, and be not thou dismayed, oh Israel, for behold I will save thee from far off, and thy seed from the land of thy captivity; and Jacob shall return and be at rest and ease, and none shall make him afraid." So speaks God through Isaiah and Jeremiah. And that this restoration to their own land, and this blessing from God will be connected with their conversion to Christ, is evident from the fact that they are under a judgment only so long as they disbelieve. When they shall be blessed it will be because they shall have ceased to be unbelieving and disobedient. St. Paul's eleventh chapter to the Romans unfolds not only their restoration to God's favor, but the pre-eminent privileges which will belong to them as God's first kingdom. They are the original olive tree; we, a wild olive tree, have been "graffed in among them;" the root of the original tree survives alive. The life of the engrafted tree will again be received through it; for, says the Apostle, after having used this illustration-"For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, (lest ye should be wise in your own conceits,) that blindness in part has happened unto Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. As it is written, there shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." For, as he had said above, "If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world—that is, the bringing in of the

Gentiles-what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"

2. Hence, although the dispersion and persecution and misery of the Jews is God's judgment on their obstinate impenitency and unbelief, we must not feel that we are called upon to be the agents of that judgment, and either to oppress them or to leave them to suffer in cold indifference, as if to relieve them and to strive to do them good would be a presumptuous attempt to turn aside or thwart God's awful retribution. On the contrary, God denounces his wrath on those who afflict his people. Mark how emphatic is His language in Zephaniah: "Behold at that time"-the time of her restoration-“I will undo all that afflict thee; and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will give them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame." (Zeph. iii. 19.) We should share the tender spirit of St. Paul toward them. We should see in now wretched Israel a discrowned queen, who is again to resume her scepter and her throne. We should treat her with pitying honor. We should aid her with a sense of privilege. We should remember her glorious past, and her more glorious future. We should not forget that of them, according to the flesh, our Saviour and their Saviour came. If they are the children of those who invoked and called down the guilt of the blood of the Son of God upon themselves and upon their children, we must not forget that that blood cleanseth from all sin, even that unspeakable sin, and was shed for them in love, though by them in hatred, and that it cries from the ground, not to invoke upon them a vengeance which shall be inexorable, but to

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plead with them to yield and live. Its language is, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, yet they shall be as wool." Those judgments are themselves a part of that instrumentality of mercy by which at last they shall hail Jesus as their Messiah, and go up to restored Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads.

God's already executed judgments upon sinning Israel solemnly warn us that all his threatenings will be fulfilled, and that unrepented sin must incur its eternal penalty. His promised restoration of penitent Israel tenderly assures us that his mercy and patience are infinite, and that Christ is able to save unto the uttermost, and that his blood cleanseth from all sin. Let us heed both these lessons, and turn to Him and live!