secuted the truth of God in the days of Elijah—how their
love of error sent them into the Babylonish captivity—and how
there has been some grievous error of some kind or other,
which delivered them into the hands of the Romans, and has
kept them in a state of dispersion for so many hundred years.
But the passage from which our motto is taken sets forth most
strikingly the possibility of fatal mistake on the part of the
Jewish nation, and also the possibility, in such a case, of God's
turning to the Gentiles. "Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in
the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good
way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
But they said, We will not walk therein. Also, I set watchmen
over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet.
But they said, We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, (
Hebrew characters) and know, O congregation, what is
among them. Hear, O earth; behold, I will bring evil upon
this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it."—Jer.
vi. 16-19. Who will dare to deny, after such a passage,
the possibility of a Jew's being in error?
But some may ask, What is Judaism? what is Christianity?
Answer.—Judaism is that religious system contained and
acknowledged in the prayers of the Jewish synagogue, whether
German or Portuguese, and professed by all who use them as
the ritual of their worship. Christianity is the religious system
taught in the New Testament; or, in other words, Judaism
is the Old Testament explained according to the traditional
law, (Hebrew characters). Christianity is the Old Testament
explained according to the New. According to this
explanation, the Jewish Prayer-book teaches the divine authority
of the oral law. Of this there can be no doubt, for, in the
first place, the whole ritual of the synagogue service, and the
existence and arrangement of the synagogue itself, is according
to the prescription of the oral law, as may be seen by comparing
the Jewish prayers with the Hilchoth T'phillah. If it be
asked why the Jew uses these prayers, and no other—why he
wears phylacteries ((Hebrew characters)) and the veil ((Hebrew characters))—why he conforms
to certain ceremonies at the New Year, and the Day of
Atonement, and the other feasts—why he repeats a certain
benediction at the reading of the law—why he reads out of
a parchment roll, rather than out of a printed book—why a roll
of the law written in one way is lawful, and in another way
unlawful, the only answer is, the oral law commands us thus to
do. The whole synagogue worship, therefore, from the beginning
to the end of the year, is a practical confession of the
authority of the oral law, and every Jew who joins in the
synagogue worship does, in so far, conform to the prescriptions
of Rabbinism. But, secondly, the Jewish Prayer-book ex-
