very time to be valiant for the truth; it is the

very time to abound more one another and to all men.

and more in love to

God is richly owning

all these efforts; they accord with his mind who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Let us ever have sounding in our ears and governing our whole conduct the assurance of our Saviour, Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me to give every man according as his works shall be.

Watton Rectory, Herts,

April 10, 1844.

EDWARD BICKERSTETH.

The Three Addresses, GENEVA and OXFORD; GENEVA and ROME; and GENEVA and JERUSALEM, may be had in One Volume. Price 3s. 6d. cloth.

The Office of the FOREIGN AID SOCIETY is No. 10 Exeter Hall, Strand. The Secretary, the Rev. R. Burgess.

A DISCOURSE, &c.

GENTLEMEN,

The committee which has assembled us here, has requested me to call your attention to the people of the Jews.

I shall therefore begin by mentioning the particular motive which ought to induce our own churches to carry the Gospel to them; and afterwards I will endeavour to give you some idea of what these churches have already done towards the fulfilment of this duty within the last twenty

years.

I had also hoped to bring before you the prophetical destinies of this miraculous people, but the small portion of time which we can dispose of this evening will not allow me to do so, and I find myself obliged to defer to another meeting, if it

please God to allow me, the consideration of how closely the subject is bound up with the eternal decrees of God for the redemption of his elect, and the re-establishment of all things.

When Messieurs Duby and Demola called your attention in our last meetings to the Greenland and Nestorian missions, they were necessarily obliged to begin their narrative with a description of the countries where those labours are carried on. The one led us across the great Atlantic, and placing us on those eternal fields of ice, showed us, as it were, at this very hour, the christian Esquimaux in his snow hut, perusing the Scriptures by the light of his feeble lamp, or singing the praises of his Saviour in the gentle harmony of the Moravian hymns. The other, crossing Asia Minor, transported us to the smiling banks of the Lake Ooroomiah, and led us finally up to the mountains of Adiabena, amidst their natural fortresses, where, unconquered through so many centuries, dwelt the noble tribe of the Nestorians; but for myself, where shall I conduct you to find the extraordinary people of whom I am to discourse ?-or rather, where shall I not conduct you? Show me, Gentlemen, one single country that they have not visited, one single region where they have not fulfilled the word of the prophet, "Ye shall be

dispersed throughout all the nations of the earth."

I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." (Amos ix. 9.) "And if the sole fact of their dispersion," says Keith, " is one of the most astonishing events recorded in history, then the immense extent and great distance apart of the countries in which it has taken place, is far more remarkable still."

One of their innumerable synagogues is to be seen at our own gates, in a street of Carouge, as well as in the towns of China, in the heart of Africa, and probably even in countries yet unexplored.

Their restless feet are pressing at this very hour the snows of Siberia, and the burning sands of the desert. Our friend Gobat found numbers of them in the elevated plains of Abyssinia, eighteen hundred miles to the south of Cairo; and when Denham and Clapperton, the first travellers that ventured across the great Sahara, arrived on the banks of the lake Tchad, they also found that the wandering Jew had preceded them there by many a long year. When the Portuguese settled in the Indian Peninsula, they found three distinct classes of Jews; and when the English lately took possession of Aden in the south of Arabia, the Jews were more in number there than the Gentiles. By

a census taken within the last few months in Russia, they amount to two millions two hundred thousand; so that their population in that immense empire exceeds that of our twenty-two cantons. Morocco contains three hundred thousand, and Tunis one hundred and fifty thousand. In the one small town of Sana, the capital of Arabia Felix, they assemble together in eighteen. synagogues. Yemen counts two hundred thousand; the Turkish empire two hundred thousand, of which Constantinople alone contains eighty. thousand. At Brody, where the Christians, who are ten thousand in number, have only three churches, the Jews, twenty thousand in number, have one hundred and fifty synagogues. Hungary has three hundred thousand. Cracovie twentytwo thousand. In a word, it is imagined that were all the Jews assembled together, they would form a population of seven millions, so that could you transport them into the land of their fathers this very year, they would form a nation more powerful and more numerous than our Switzerland.

The field, therefore, which is occupied by the Mission we are about to consider, is no less than the world itself, for it covers it; we may, if we please, examine it at our own gates, or we may