ing an intermediate, judgment is suspended till the day of atonement. If he repent before that day, he is adjudged to life; but if not, he is then liable to death. When a man's virtues and vices are compared, the first and second sins are not reckoned, but only the third, and those which follow."*

Concerning the punishment of sin after death, a catechism. of modern Judaism contains the following question and an

swer:

"How many judgments then does such a man undergo, when he leaves this world?

"Answer. Seven. The first is when the soul departs from the body. The second is when his works go before him, and exclaim against him. The third is when the body is laid in the grave. The fourth is Chibbut Hakkefer; that is, the beating in the grave, when the angel Duma rises, attended by those under his command who are appointed for the beating of the dead. They hold in their hands three fiery rods, and judge at once the body and the soul. The fifth is the judgment of the When his body has lain in the grave three days, he is ripped open; his entrails come out, and his bowels are taken and dashed in his face. After the three days a man receives judgment on his eyes, his hands and his feet, which have committed iniquities, till the thirtieth day. The sixth is the judgment of hell. The seventh is, that his soul wanders, and is driven about the world, finding no rest anywhere till the days. of his punishment are ended."

In answer to an objection urged against parts of this, that a dead body is not capable of feeling, Rabbi Isaac says, "A worm in a dead body is as painful as a needle in a living one."

The precepts of modern Judaism are enumerated by the Rabbies, six hundred and thirteen. They are divided into two classes-affirmative and negative. The affirmative are two hundred and forty-eight; answering, as we are gravely informed, to the number of members in the human body. The negative are three hundred and sixty-five; which rabbinical anatomy pronounces to be the number of veins, or other smaller vessels.

Rabbi Crool, of Cambridge, in his book on the restoration of Israel, speaking of the two tables of the decalogue, says: "These two tables contained the whole six hundred and thirteen precepts of the law." And the reason he assigns is highly characteristic of modern Judaism. It is this: "In the ten

I am unwilling to quote such poison, even in the way of exposure, without exhibiting, in connexion with it, the divine antidote, in the language of God himself, by the Apostle James:-"Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, HE IS GUILty of all.”

commandments there are six hundred and thirteen letters, and each letter stands for one command; and in the whole law of Israel there are six hundred and thirteen commandments; and such was the power of these two tables, that it contained the complete law. Thus far it is proved that a perfect God gave a perfect law."

In a work entitled Prayers for the New Year, printed in London in 1807, and used in the synagogues, we find the following painful specimen of modern Judaism:

"O! deign to hear the voice of those who glorify thee with all their members, according to the number of the two hundred and forty-eight affirmative precepts. In this month they blow thirty sounds, according to the thirty members of the soles of their feet. The additional offerings of the day are ten, according to the ten in their ankles. They approach the altar twice, according to their two legs. Five men are called to the law, according to the five joints in their knees. Lo! with the additional offering of the new moon, they are eleven, according to their eleven ribs. They pour out their supplication with nine blessings, according to the muscles in their arms; these contain thirty verses, according to the thirty in the palms of their hands. They daily repeat the prayer of eighteen blessings, according to the eighteen vertebræ in their spine. At the offering of the continual sacrifice they sound nine times, according to the nine muscles in their head. In the two orisons they blow eight times, according to the eight vertebræ of their neck. Their statutes and laws are contained in five books, according to the five perforations. He hath ordained the six orders of the Mishna, according to the six different imaginations of the heart and inward parts; also the animal life, spirit, rational soul, perception, appetite; the skin, flesh, veins, and bones: these shall all lift up the eye, and pierce the ear, and open the mouth, that with the tongue and speech of their lips, and from the sole of the foot to the head, may shew the particulars of their good acts; so that when the sound of the cornet ascends, their adversaries may be ashamed, and that they may be justified in the day of judgment, and hear the second time from their God."

Such is the appalling spectacle presented by modern Judaism! A mixture of buffoonery and falsehood, cheating the conscience, and drowning the soul in everlasting perdition from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. The case, considered simply as one of missionary obligation, cries aloud for exertion, and it is a case in which effective exertion is attended with peculiar and complicated difficulty. The details of the traditions and superstitions of

the Jews are but little known by the Christian church; yet it may safely be affirmed, that no man who is ignorant of them, can be a competent Christian Missionary (or what, in this case, is synonymous, a Christian Controversialist) to the Jews. The Christian controversialist against Popery, however gifted, eloquent, and mighty in the Scriptures he may be, is seen and felt to be incompetent if he be ignorant of the Missal, the Breviary, and the Mass Book. And equally, or more glaringly incompetent, must be the Christian controversialist among the Jews, if he be ignorant of the Targums, the Talmud, and the Cabbala.

Targum is a Chaldee word, signifying a paraphrase. The general opinion is, that these paraphrases originated in the circumstances arising out of the Babylonish captivity. That the Jews dwelling among, and serving the Chaldeans by the space of seventy years, during which time a whole generation, with few exceptions, must have passed away, did very generally adopt the language of their masters; that pure Hebrew ceased to be a vernacular tongue, an accurate knowledge of it being confined to the priests, and perhaps a few of the higher orders of the nation. When they returned to Jerusalem, and the law was read in pure Hebrew, an interpretation was indispensable to enable them to understand it. This interpretation must have been Chaldee, the only language with which the majority were acquainted. There is reason to believe that the method adopted in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and continued for several generations on every Sabbath day, was for a sentence of the law to be read in Hebrew, and then interpreted in Chaldee, and so each successive clause to the end of the section. These interpretations were at first given extempore by persons familiar with both languages, and under the superintendence of Ezra. Nehemiah viii. 1-8.

Afterwards, under less favourable circumstances, these interpretations became less accurate; and eventually degenerated from faithful translations of the word of God into fanciful paraphrases of men. These paraphrases, though progressively more and more mingled with human falsehood, nevertheless continued to be received as of divine authority, and were, in many instances, perpetuated by insertion in the margin of the copies of the law. Increasing in number from time to time, they were at length collected by certain industrious persons, who supplied of their own what was yet wanting, to complete a version of any one or more books of the sacred volume. These compilations are the Targums. Many are supposed to be lost. The most celebrated of those still extant, and in per

nicious use amongst the Jews, are that of Onkelos on the Law, and that of Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Prophets.

The word Talmud signifies learning or doctrine. The book distinguished by this title, and received amongst the Jews with the most unbounded veneration, consists of two parts, called the Mishna and the Gemara. The Mishna denotes a second law. The Jews believe that all the precepts of the law, given to Moses, were accompanied with an interpretation. They say that God first dictated the text as it is written in the Pentateuch, and then gave Moses an explication of every part of it. It was commanded that the text should be put into writing, and the explanation committed to memory, to be communicated to that generation, and transmitted to posterity by word of mouth. Hence the former is called the written law, and the latter the oral law.

When Moses came down from the Mount, he delivered both these laws to the people. As soon as he was returned to his tent, he was attended by Aaron, who sat at his feet, and to whom he recited the text, and taught the interpretation which he had received from God in the Mount. Then Aaron rising, and seating himself on the right hand of Moses, Eleazar and Ithamar entered, and Moses repeated to them all that he had communicated to their father; after which they arose, and seated themselves, one on the left hand of Moses, and the other on the right hand of Aaron. Then went in the seventy elders, and Moses taught them in the same manner as he had taught Aaron and his sons. Afterwards entered the congregation at large, or all of them who were desirous of knowing the Divine will; and to them also Moses recited the text and the interpretation, in the same manner as before. These two laws, as delivered by Moses, had now been heard by Aaron four times, by his sons three times, by the seventy elders twice, and by the rest of the people once. After this, Moses withdrawing, Aaron repeated the whole that he had heard from Moses, and withdrew: then Eleazar and Ithamar did the same; and on their withdrawing, the same was done by the seventy elders; so that each of them having heard both these laws repeated four times, they all had them firmly fixed in their memories.

Towards the end of the fortieth year after the departure from Egypt, Moses assembled the people, announced the time of his death to be near, directed those who had forgotten any tradition he had delivered, to come to him, that he might repeat it to them anew, and invited them to apply to him for a solution of all questions in which they found any difficulty. The last month of his life was employed in giving these repe

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titions and explications to the people, and especially to Joshua, his successor.

Before Joshua died, all the interpretations which he had received from Moses were transmitted by him to the elders who survived him. These elders conveyed them to the prophets, and by one prophet they were delivered to another. In every generation, the president of the Sanhedrim, or prophet of his age, for his own private use, wrote notes of these traditions, but taught in public only by word of mouth. Thus matters proceeded, no part of the oral law being committed to writing, for public perusal, from the time of Moses to the days of Rabbi Jehuda, or Rabbi Judah Hannasi, called the Saint, anno mundi 3980. This celebrated Rabbi observed that the students of the law were gradually diminishing in number; that difficulties and distresses were multiplying; that the kingdom of iniquity (by which title he designated Christianity) was increasing in strength, and extending itself over the world; and that the people of Israel were driven to the ends of the earth. Fearing lest, in these circumstances, the traditions would be forgotten and lost, he collected them all, arranged them under distinct heads, and formed them into a methodical code of traditional law. The book so composed is entitled The Mishna. Copies were speedily multiplied, and received by the Jews at large with all the unquestionable authority of divine revelation.

The Mishna, however, is written in a very difficult style, and admits of great variety of interpretations. The most learned men among the Jews employed themselves in explaining its difficulties; and about three hundred years after its publication, a collection of the various opinions expressed by those writers was made by Rabbi Jochanan, president of a school in Palestine: and a Commentary so compiled was published. This is called The Gemara; and, added to the text of the Mishna, forms what is called the Jerusalem Talmud. Afterwards a more enlarged Commentary, or Gemara, was made by Rabbi Asha; it is called the Babylonian Gemara, and, together with the Mishna, forms the Babylonian Talmud. *

The Cabbala are absurd fictions, grounded upon certain mystical interpretations of Scripture, alleged to have been given to Moses by God himself. The Jews say that Moses was on Mount Sinai for three several periods, of forty days each; that during the first period he received the written law; that during the second he was instructed in the Mishna; and that the last forty days were spent in the study of the Cabbala. As practised among the Jews, the Cabbala is nothing more than a system of magical charms, consisting in a superstitious