No. LI.
SLAUGHTERING OF MEAT, CONTINUED.
According to the confessions of the rabbies themselves, the
time for the advent of Messiah is long since past, what is there
then that prevents the Jews from believing in him, who came
at the appointed time? The grand objection is, that the nation
is still in captivity; they say that Messiah ought to have given
them liberty. The answer to this objection is, that Messiah
was willing, and is willing to this hour, to give them liberty,
but that they will not have it. The very first condition of
national liberty and independence is moral and intellectual
emancipation. No nation was ever yet enslaved until the
hearts and intellects of the people had first become the slaves
of corruption or superstition—and no nation that hugs to its
heart the chains of moral slavery, can ever be made free, nor
could it retain its liberty if it got it. When Messiah came,
therefore, as he found the Jewish nation already under the
Roman yoke, the very first step was to endeavour to emancipate
their hearts and minds, and to deliver them from that moral
bondage, of which their national degradation was only a consequence.
This first step Messiah immediately took—he protested
against the superstitions of the oral law, and pointed them
to the perfect liberty of God's written Word. But the nation
chose to retain the cause of their misfortunes, and to reject the
overtures of deliverance. If therefore they are still in a state of
national dependence, they must not cast the blame on God, and
say that He suffered the time to pass away without fulfilling
his promise; nor upon the Messiah, when they themselves
refused to receive that without which no national liberty can
possibly exist. They chose to give themselves, body and soul,
as bond-slaves to the oral law, there was, therefore, no possibility
of national redemption. It would require an act of omnipotent
coercion, such as God does not employ, to make a nation
free against its will. But perhaps the Jews of the present day
will deny that they are in a state of moral and intellectual
slavery. We refer them, in reply, to the numerous proofs
already given in these papers, and especially the laws of
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Hebrew characters) or slaughtering, upon which we have a few words to
add. Where in all the world can a more wretched slave be
found, than the man, who himself, together with his family, is
ready to perish of hunger, and yet dare not partake of wholesome
food, offered by the providence of God, because his rabbinical
task-masters say, No? But now take another instance:—
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