66 any other basis than I would that of the Gipsies; for, with both, it is substantially a question of people. They are a people, scattered over the world, like the Gipsies, and have a history--the Bible, which contains both their history and their laws; and these two contain their religion. It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that the religion of the Jews is to be found in the Talmud, and the other human compositions, for which the race have such a superstitious reverence; and even these are taken as interpreted by the Rabbis. A Jew has, properly speaking, little of a creed. He believes in the existence of God, and in Moses his prophet, and observes certain parts of the ceremonial law, and some holidays commemorative of events in the history of his people. He is a Jew, in the first place, as a simple matter of fact, and, as he grows up, he is made acquainted with the history of his race, to which he becomes strongly attached. He then holds himself to be one of the "first-born of the Lord," one of the "chosen of the Eternal," one of the Lord's aristocracy;" expressions of amazing import in his worldly mind, that will lead him to almost die for his faith: while his religion is of a very low natural order, standing only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances," suitable for a people in a state of pupilage. The Jewish mind in the matter of religion is, in some respects, pre-eminently gross and material in its nature; its idea of a Messiah rising no higher than a conqueror of its own race, who will bring the whole world under his sway, and parcel out, among his fellowJews, a lion's share of the spoils, consisting of such things as the inferior part of human nature so much craves for. And his ideas of how this Messiah is to be connected with the original tribes, as mentioned in the prophecies, are childish and superstitious in the extreme. Writers do, therefore, greatly err, when they say, that it is only a thin partition that separates Judaism from Christianity. There is almost as great a difference between the two, as there is between that which is material, and that which is spiritual. A Jew is so thoroughly bound, heart and soul, by the spell which the phenomena of his race exert upon him, that, humanly speaking, it is impossible to make anything of him in the matter of Christianity. And herein, in his own way of thinking, consists his peculiar glory. Such being the case with Christianity, it is not to be supposed that the Jew would forsake his own religion, and, of course, his own people, and believe in any religion having an origin in the spontaneous and gradual growth of superstition and imposture, modified, systematized, adorned, or exexpanded, by ambitious and superior minds, or almost wholly in the conceptions of these minds; having, for a foundation, an instinct-an intellectual and emotional want-as common to man as instinct is to the brute creation, for the ends which it has to serve.* We cannot separate the questions of race and belief, when we consider the Jews as a people, however it might be with individuals among them (p. 501.) Amid all the obloquy and contempt cast upon his race, amid all the persecutions to which it has been exposed, the Jew, with his inherent conceit in having Abraham for his father, falls back upon the history of his nation, with the utmost contempt for everything else that is human; forgetting that there is such a thing as the "first being last." He boasts that his race, and his only, is eternal, and that all other men get everything from him! He vainly imagines that the Majesty of Heaven should have made his dispensations to mankind conditional upon anything so unworthy as his race has so frequently shown itself to be. If he has been so favoured by God, what can he point to as the fruits of so much loving-kindness shown him? What is his nation now, however numerous it may be, but a ruin, and its members, but spectres that haunt it? And what has brought it to its present condition? "Its sins." Doubtless, its sins; but what particular sins? And how are these sins to be put away, seeing that the temple, the high-priesthood, and the sacrifices no longer exist? Or what effort, by such means as offer, has ever been made to mitigate the wrath of God, and prevail upon Him to restore the people to their exalted privileges? Or what could they even propose doing, to bring about that event? Questions like these involve the Jewish mind in a labyrinth of difficulties, from which it cannot extricate itself. The dispersion * Quoted at pages 51 and 52. was not only foretold, but the cause of it given. The Scriptures declare that the Messiah was to have appeared before the destruction of the temple; and the time of his expected advent, according to Jewish traditions, coincided with that event. It is eighteen centuries since the destruction of the temple, before which the Messiah was to have come; and the Jew still hopes against hope," and, if it is left to himself, will do so till the day of judgment, for such a Messiah as his earthly mind seems to be only capable of contemplating. Has he never read the New Testament, and reflected on the sufferings of him who was meek and lowly, or on those of his disciples, inflicted by his ancestors, for generations, when he has come complaining of the sufferings to which his race has been exposed? He is entitled to sympathy, for all the cruelties with which his race has been visited; but he could ask it with infinitely greater grace, were he to offer any for the sufferings of the early Christians and their divine master, or were he even to tolerate any of his race following him to-day (p. 503). INDEX. AFRICANS, the prejudice against them in the United States, AMERICA as a field for the study of snakes, ARGYLL, THE DUKE OF, his singular ideas regarding the preservation of the Jews, . On the Jews and Gipsies, ASIATIC RACES, how they keep distinct from each other, ATHENÆUM, THE, its opinion on Mill's History of India, On the disappearance of the Gipsies, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, THE, on the Gipsies and John Bunyan, BACON, LORD, his philosophy, On Antichrist, BAIN, A., his assistance to Mill, BAIRD, REV. JOHN, of Yetholm, on the Gipsy language, On the mixture of the Gipsy blood, BANKS, SIR JOSEPH, his eulogium on Waterton's Wanderings, BEARDS, by whom only they were lately worn, Bedford, the DUKE OF, erects a statue to Bunyan at Bedford, His creed and system, BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, its opinion of Mill's History of India, On Mill as a servant of the East India Company, On the services Mill rendered to his generation, On Billy Marshall and his descendants, . On the History of the Gipsies, On John Bunyan, BORROW, GEORGE, omits to notice what others have said of the Gipsies, 104 His reflections on the destiny of the Gipsies, 113, 114, 124–127, 131, 132 BORROW, GEORGE, his speculations regarding the origin of the Gipsies, His visit to Yetholm :-The secrecy of the Gipsies in regard to the lan- Gipsy surnames, Gipsies stealing children, Gipsies harbouring priests, and running wenches, . PAGE 123 His strange contradictions about the Gipsies speaking their language, On the hatred the Gipsies have for other people, BREWSTER, SIR DAVID, his letter to Prof. James Forbes, 132 123, 140 BRIGHT, DR., on the secrecy of the Gipsies in regard to their language, their young, On the hatching of crocodiles' eggs, BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, THE, on the Gipsies and John Bunyan, Requested to make experiments on the subject, On snakes shedding their skins, On the hatching of their eggs, BUFFALOES, how they protect their young against wolves, His description of what he was, and what he was not, His name calculated to raise up that of the Gipsy tribe, He might have written works in the Gipsy language, The first of eminent Gipsies known to the world, CANTING, the, of Mill, CAPADOSE FAMILY, vicissitudes in the religious history of the, PAGE CASTE in Great Britain, in the United States, 146, 147, 148, 150, 154, 155 CATS will generally catch rats only under certain circumstances, CICERO on the belief in an ancestral religion, On the existence of God, COMTE on receiving information from others on certain subjects, The influence his Traité de Législation had on Mill, On the great things philosophers are to do, The influence he had on Mill's Logic, CRABBE, REV. JAMES, his mission among the English Gipsies, CROCODILE, the, how its eggs are hatched, and its young taken care of, DISRAELI, the present, a Jew as well as a Christian, DIVINITY STUDENTS (SCOTCH), the nature and length of their studies, The effects that patronage had on them, The disadvantages they are under in the start in life, They could acquire more knowledge of the world than they do, EDINBURGH REVIEW, THE, on James Mill's reading of sceptical books, On his quarrelling with his friends on Mrs. Taylor's account, On Mill's public services, On Benthamism, and some of Mill's peculiarities, EDUCATION, what might be called a common sense and useful one, 152, 153 168 n132, 159 127-129, 142 On the existence of God, On the lack of common sense in some philosophers, ETHIOPIA, the Scottish Gipsies say they came from, FALL, MRS., of Dunbar, a Gipsy, FIGUIER'S Reptiles and Birds-How tortoises are hatched, FORBES, PROF. JAMES, letter to him from Sir David Brewster, |