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future restoration of the Jews to their own land is that the restoration from the Babylonish captivity was very far inferior as to the numbers who were restored; the splendour of their restoration, or the peace, prosperity, and permanence which they subsequently enjoyed from those expectations, which the plain and obvious language of prophecy would lead us to anticipate.

But it may be asked in reply-Have we not underrated the circumstances attending that return. We are apt to adopt the language of the enemy, and speak of the builders of the second Temple, and the labourers at the walls of Jerusalem as a few feeble Jews; and it is continually said that they were all of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and that none of the Ten Tribes of Israel were restored, and yet neither of these assertions are exactly correct. Doubtless the numbers who returned from Babylon were small in comparison of the bulk of the nation; and the Israelites would clearly be few in comparison with the descendants of Judah; but yet it will be found very probably, that very nearly twice as many are recorded to have returned from Babylon as were carried captive; and among those who returned, were many from the ten tribes, of which, if I mistake not, eight are mentioned in the New Testament.

Perhaps it may assist some of your readers in considering this important topic, to state the matter somewhat more in detail.

It appears from 2 Kings xxiv. 14. that there were carried to Babylon in one body 10000 men ; among whom it is generally supposed were included 7000 men of might and 1000 smiths. There were also carried away in different detachments 3,023; 832 and 745, so that the whole captivity of Judah and Benjamin amounted either to 14600 or 22600, accord

ing as you interpret the abovementioned passage in Kings.

It is stated again in Nehemiah vii. 64, that the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand, three hundred and threescore; and of these 29818 or 31031 were of the tribe of Judah; so that either 12542 or 11329 might be Israelites.

When therefore the returned from the captivity are spoken of as few, and feeble, persons forget that according to the recorded numbers twice as many were restored as were carried captive: and there is every reason to conclude that considerable additions were from time to time made to their number. Many who might not be prepared to engage as pioniers in the arduous undertaking, would doubtless gladly avail themselves of any opportunity of returning to the land of their forefathers, when the nation was in some measure re-established.

And as the number of those restored from Babylon was greater than many have supposed, so also was the subsequent prosperity and permanence of the Jewish commonwealth. The nation continued under their own rulers, protected by the divine law, for above five hundred years; and though exercised with various calamities, yet there is reason to conclude that the Jews were less severely tried after their return from Babylon, than they were from the days of Rehoboam to to the captivity. persecutions of Antiochus and

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the wars of the Maccabees were indeed pregnant with calamity, but they will scarcely bear a comparison with the conflicts between Judah and Israel, or the desolations of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and other hostile invaders of the preceding period.

It is indeed obvious that the promise of perpetual indwelling in the land of Judea has not yet been fulfilled; but it may admit of a question whether the expression,

"they shall dwell in it for ever," is intended to convey perpetual duration, or was not rather to be limited to the close of that dispensation. For ever in the strict sense of the word implies eternity, but the earth that now is will most unquestionably be destroyed; and though its materials may be formed anew, the land of Palestine must undergo an entire change, and "the New Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of heaven," conveys to our minds ideas scarcely reconcileable with the eternal duration of any part of our present world.

Without dwelling further on these ideas, I cannot but feel that the more they are seriously contemplated, the more clearly it will appear that the prophecies of Jewish prosperity and dominion were far more literally and extensively fulfilled in the restoration from Babylon than is generally supposed.

But may not these predictions admit of a secondary and a still more glorious accomplishment? Is there any valid objection to the commonly received idea, that the Jews shall be gathered a second time to their own land? and is there not reason to conclude that this second restoration shall be as life from the dead to the gentile world? Enquiries of this nature are frequently instituted, but yet they rather assume the truth and certainty of the points in discussion. There may be no very obvious objection to some of these inquiries, while yet they may not admit of any satisfactory demonstration, nor does the concession of some of these points, necessarily involve the correctness of all.

It is, I believe, generally agreed, that the Jews will eventually be brought into the Church of Christ, and that they will subsequently be admitted to that good land, of which Canaan was only a type, even into heaven itself. If there

fore it is conceded, that under the prophetic declaration concerning their restoration, far greater blessings are intimated than can be predicated of the restoration from Babylon, it may yet be plausibly maintained, that these, better blessings relate to the heavenly Jerusalem, and are not to be limited and confined to an earthly Zion.

So again, if we concede that the conversion of the Jews to the faith of Christ, shall be attended with invaluable blessings to the gentile world, a position which is no where explicitly stated in the Holy Scriptures, though it is hypothetically intimated in Rom. xi. 15; yet still it may admit of discussion, whether the benefit so resulting will be produced by the re-assembling of the whole Jewish race in Palestine, or by employing the newly-converted Jews to proclaim in all the regions of the earth, in every land in which they are now dispersed, that faith which they have hitherto opposed.

I throw out these hints, Mr. Editor, as deserving of serious consideration. It seems to me that almost all our Jewish writers and advocates proceed far too hastily to a conclusion, and assume certain points as indispensable, which require to be more fully and satisfactorily demonstrated; and I cannot but wish that such writers as Mr. Faber, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Cunninghame, or Mr. Bickersteth, would argue those points more closely and entirely on Scriptural grounds than they have hitherto done.

There is one fact which always strikes me as very remarkable, namely, the total absence of any clear prediction of the restoration of the Jews, in the writings of those prophets who lived after the return from Babylon. Now when we consider how incessantly such predictions occur in the former prophets, their total absence from the writings of the latter prophets, affords a very strong presumption that the period of literal restora

tion was past, and that the future blessings in store for the Jews, are of a spiritual character.

There is one point indeed which has sometimes occupied my own mind, but which I have not met with in any of the writers on the Jewish question, namely, this: Suppose the Jews, when converted to the faith of Christ, are to be restored to their own land, How far is this restoration to extend? Is it to be confined to those Jews who continue in their unbelief to the eleventh hour? Or, are the descendants of those Jews, who in times past have received the Christian faith, to be admitted to a share in the privileges which it is assumed will belong to the restored race. Hitherto the converted Jews have merged into the Christian church, they are numbered with the Gentile Christians, and form one common mass; are then the descendants of the many myriads, who in the apostolic times believed; the remnant according to the election of grace, of which St. Paul speaks in Romans xi. 5. to lose caste, and occupy an inferior station to those who at the period of the Messiah's personal reign, (say as Mr. Wolff maintains, the year 1847,) at length acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah; and are those who for above 1800 years have, from generation to generation rejected and blasphemed the Son of God, to be favoured with peculiar privileges and distinctions, as a reward for their long-continued obduracy and rebellion? If not, there must be a separation and a sifting out of the Christians of Jewish race throughout the world, to an extent of which few have any idea.

I am aware, indeed, that many interpret the remnant according to the election of grace spoken of in Rom. xi. 5, as referring to those Jews who were at that period, or who still remain, unconverted. It appears to me, however, to refer o the Jews who were at that period

actually brought into the fold of Christ; and to which remnant a very large accession was doubtless made, by the preaching of the apostles and early Christians prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. That awful event swept away from the face of the earth, the large mass of the unbelieving Jews, while all the Christian Jews were preserved, so that it may be very plausibly maintained, that the then Jewish nation was to be found within the Christian church. The number of Christian Jews very probably far exceeded the number of those unbelieving Jews who survived the destruction of Jerusalem ; and while these latter have been scattered, and peeled, and oppressed in every possible way, the Christian converts, with their descendants, have gone on quietly and unobtrusively increasing and multiplying through a large part of the earth.

These considerations appear to me of considerable practical importance. Mr. Bickersteth has recently stated the unbelief of the Prophets to be a stumbling block which Christians, ought to remove out of the way of the Jews, and that the resurrection inheritance of their fathers ought to be more fully proclaimed; but if the future glory and inheritance of the Jews is not clearly and decidedly revealed, we may be found false witnesses for God while venturing to propound them to Jewish acceptance.

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I cannot indeed find any scriptural precedent for the mode of address which some very pious and excellent men appear disposed to adopt. We Christians,' says Mr. Bickersteth, have thrown obstacles in the way of the Jews. Our persecution, contempt, idolatry, neglect of the law of Moses, and unbelief of the prophets are stumbling blocks which ought to be removed.' But it does not appear to me that British Christians are

guilty of throwing any one of these stumbling blocks in the way of the Jews. Whatever might be the case in former times, the Jews of this land have not for the last two or three hundred years been at least in any considerable degree exposed either to persecution, idolatry, contempt or other trials than has been the case with Papists or Nonconformists. The Jews have not rejected Christianity because of the ill treatment of British Christians, but as their fathers alway rejected the counsel of God, so do they. In a land of light and liberty, and toleration and great forbearance; where they have the Holy Scriptures, teachers, schools, synagogues, and every conceivable advantage, the Jew still remains ignorant of his own faith; unlearned in his own scriptures, prejudiced against his own prophets, determinately opposed to the unwearied and benevolent exertions of the most enlightened men. We may not have sufficiently pressed home upon their attention their guilt and their danger in rejecting Christ; we may be guilty of false charity in not with sufficient plainness declaring that a British Jew is, necessarily so long as he continue a Jew, a child of wrath; we may have encouraged day-dreams, and castles in the air, and led a poor deluded Israelite to fancy that rejecting Christ he may enjoy present or future advantages; but I must contend that the charge of persecution, contempt, or idolatry, does not apply to British Christians in general, and least of all to those who have taken an active part in Bible, Missionary, or Jews' Societies.

I see a poor, ignorant, prejudiced

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Jew-a friend comes up and tells him that he is oppressed, insulted, ill-used by the so called Christians, but that he is an object of divine compassion, that the promises of the Bible belong to him, that he shall shortly be restored to his own land, that he shall see Jesus Christ coming in glorious majesty, reigning personally in Jerusalem, and advancing his nation to a pre-eminence over the Gentile Christians, and over all the nations of the earth.-I think such a mode of address unscriptural, and calculated to lead the Jew to say, Let me wait a while before I attend to Christianity.

I would rather say, My poor friend, you are a dying man—you have broken your own law-you have neglected your own prophets -you have in various respects sinned against your own conscience -you have no sacrifice which you can offer-no propitiation for sin where will you look for refuge? Let me intreat you to read your Bible, to turn to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, to consider of whom the prophet there speaketh. How can you explain this? We believe it refers to one whom you have been taught to despise, but whom we regard as the Son of God-the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. O let me from this scripture preach unto you Jesus. For he that believeth in him shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned."

I cannot but think this is the more scriptural way. Will Mr. Bickersteth or any other of your correspondents, take up the subject seriously, and enlighten me and many others as to the best mode of proceeding with the Jews? ANTROBUS.

PLURALISM AND NON-RESIDENCE.

SIR,-In the notice of my pamphlet on Pluralism and Non-residence, you state that the plan recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the restriction of pluralities, would have left above three thousand of the existing pluralities untouched; and that even the enactment proposed in the last session would have allowed of the existence of two thousand pluralities.' I had not calculated the effect of the Archbishop's Bill when I published the pamphlet; but I have done it since, and find that it would have permitted nearly 4000 pluralities, though his Grace expected it would reduce them to about 1500, the number, on an average, held by 700.pluralists. His words are, 'I conclude that the number of pluralists will in the end be reduced from upwards of 2000 to 700.' Under a similarly mistaken view of the effect of the measure has the present limit been proposed. I give the Church Commissioners credit for meaning to restrict pluralities within narrow limits, but unhappily they have not ascertained the effect of the condition they propose, nor the practicability of

doing away entirely with one of the greatest evils which can oppress a church; and without the abolition of pluralities and the general enforcing of residence, she can never recover the ground which has been lost. The enemies of the church are seeking her destruction with unceasing activity-the souls of multitudes, whom in her present circumstances she cannot reach, are perishing for lack of knowledge. It behoves therefore all her members, and especially her ministers, to labour to get removed the abuses which hinder her expansion and usefulness.

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THE SHORT CANDLE.

As I lately sat in my chamber, I saw a little girl working by the light of a candle. It was burnt down almost to the socket. I perceived that she plied her needle very fast, and at length I overheard her saying to herself, · I must be very industrious, for this is the only candle I have, and it is almost gone.'

What a moral there is, thought I, in the words of this child! Surely I may learn wisdom from it. Life is but a short candle. It is

almost gone and I have no other. How earnestly engaged should I then be in every duty of life. While I have the light of life, how careful should I be to perform every thing enjoined by my heavenly Master.

1. I ought to be in haste to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that when this light is extinguished, there is no other allowed to mortals for preparation.

2. I ought to be all alive to the

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