his other children, and that the lot of that outcast but still beloved son, was for a while cast among strangers; how would such a father wish us to treat him? would he wish us to aggravate his misery, and to leave him to his fate? Would he not rather thank us, were we to take that son aside, to reason with him, to speak comfortably to him, to tell him wherein, and how far he had transgressed, that he had withheld the honour due to him as a father; but that, notwithstanding, his father's heart of tenderness was open to him still, that his bowels of compassion yearned towards him; would not that forgiving father rejoice in us, were we to entreat his wandering son to arise, and to go to his father, and to say I have sinned against thee? Israel is thus estranged; but his father's eye is upon him, as in the days when Isaiah wrote against Babylon, "I was wroth with my people, but thou didst shew them no mercy, upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke." And upon this, in the succeeding verses, he proceeds to denounce the judgments of God upon devoted Babylon. (Chap. xlvii. 6, 8.) But, my Lord, my illustration is feeble. It is not to a father's love, however deep and powerful, we are sent in Scripture to find something of a parallel for God's love, towards his forsaken but not forgotten Israel, it is to the absorbing intensity, the unutterable agony (I had almost called it) of a mother's love, our hearts are referred by the prophet, when he would find an illustration, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" Yes, such anomalies have been found, monster mothers that have set at nought the

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mighty pleadings of that holy nature, that so seldom pleads in vain ; yet not so with God ; “ Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me?" (Chap. xlix. 15, 16.) See then what a concurrence of holy motives urges us onward in this blessed work. Duty, for Christ hath commanded it: gratitude, for we ourselves have received all through them: sympathy, the noblest and purest of those emotions, that notwithstanding the havoc of the fall, still lie concealed amid the mystery of our being -sympathy with the fallen fortunes of those who once were great, and for whom it is reserved in the sure purposes of God, to be great and glorious once again, and that for evermore. And upon what nation, or upon what Church on the face of the earth is it so incumbent to labour in the cause of Israel, as upon the nation and Church so honoured and exalted by the God of Israel! namely, the nation and Church of our own loved England?

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The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time is come." And during the darkness of her present eclipse our efforts will be animated, as we gather cheering hope from the brightness of the blessed future. In all their affliction he is afflicted; but the Angel of his presence shall save them, and make them a praise in all the earth. The law shall once again go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. She shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of her God.

"Yes! Salem, thou shalt rise !thy Father's aid

Shall heal the wound his chastening hand hath made;
Shall judge thy proud oppressor's ruthless sway,
And burst his brazen bonds, and cast his cords away."

THE MESSIAH.*

Thou wert born of woman! thou didst come,
Oh Holiest! to this world of sin and gloom,
Not in thy dread omnipotent array ;
And not by thunders strewed
Was thy stupendous road;

Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way:
But thee a soft and naked child,
Thy mother undefiled,
In the rude manger laid to rest
From off her virgin breast.

The heavens were not commanded to prepare
A gorgeous canopy of golden air;

Nor stoop'd their lamps the enthroned fires on high:
A single silent star

Came wandering from afar,

Gliding uncheck'd and calm along the liquid sky;
The Eastern sages leading on

As at a kingly throne,

To lay their gold and odours sweet
Before thy infant feet.

The earth and ocean were not hush'd to hear
Bright harmony from every starry sphere,
Nor at thy presence brake the voice of song
From all the cherub choirs,

And seraphs burning lyres

Poured through the host of heaven the charmed clouds along.

One angel troop the strain began,

Of all the race of man

By simple shepherd's heard alone,
That soft Hosanna's tone.

* From Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem."

And when thou didst depart, no car of flame
To bear thee hence in lambent radiance came;
Nor visible angels mourn'd with drooping plumes :
Nor didst thou mount on high
From fatal Calvary,

With all thine own redeemed outbursting from their tombs.

For thou didst bear away from earth
But one of human birth,

The dying felon, by thy side, to be
In Paradise with thee.

Nor o'er thy cross the clouds of vengeance brake;
A little while the conscious earth did shake,
At that foul deed by her fierce children done;
A few dim hours of day

The world in darkness lay;

Then bask'd in bright repose beneath the cloudless

sun:

While thou didst sleep beneath the tomb,
Consenting to thy doom;

Ere yet the white-robed Angel shone
Upon the sealed stone.

And when thou didst arise, thou didst not stand
With devastation in thy red right hand,
Plaguing the guilty city's murderous crew;
But thou didst haste to meet

Thy mother's coming feet,

And bear the words of peace unto the faithful few. Then calmly, slowly didst thou rise

Into thy native skies,

Thy human form dissolved on high
In its own radiancy.

LONDON: Printed at the Operative Jewish Converts' Institution, Palestine Place, Bethnal Green.