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They were forbidden to retain any of their ancient customs. They were compelled to give public proofs of their apostasy, such as eating of the forbidden meats, working on the Sabbaths, etc. Indeed, it was ordained that every Jew should go to some Christian on each succeeding Sabbath, to prove to him that he actually did work. They were condemned to the severest punishment if they still showed themselves faithful to their religion; they were not permitted to keep Christian slaves, or, indeed, to have any transactions with Christians. Stoning and the flames were decreed against them for every infraction. Their punishment was relegated to the clergy, who themselves were threatened with great severity if they manifested any pity towards the unhappy victims.-BEDARIDDE. Etat des Juifs.

THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH.

"The angel of death," say the rabbins, "holdeth his sword in his hand at the bed's foot, having on the end thereof three drops of gall. The sick man, seeing this deadly angel, openeth his mouth with fear, and then these drops fall in; of which, one killeth him, the second maketh him pale, the third rotteth and putrefieth."-PURCHAS, his Pilgrimage.

Probably the expression, to taste the bitterness of death, may refer to this. See 1 Samuel xv. 32,

.P. A .המות

TACHK'MONI.

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At intervals the occasionally melancholy and generally grave rabbins cast off their garments of mourning, and in festive robes they sing songs of love; they enliven their epigrammatic language by a play upon words, and at times they even offer facetia which the reader is astonished to meet with in the holy tongue. The most prominent among

the Arab rabbins, who have been handed down to us, stands Rabbi Jehuda, of Charisi. His Tachk'moni, written in rhymed prose intermingled with verse, displays a curious melange of didactic, satirical and facetious compositions. A part of this work is devoted to a history of poetry among the Jews, and contains hints for the art of versification.— Hebrew Review.

DENYS MARCHANT.

Seven Jews, whose names have been preserved, sustained a lawsuit in Paris, in 1314. A Jew, Denys Marchant, had been converted, but his brother had brought him back to the faith. The reconversion caused great scandal, and the law interfered. The provost condemned the Jews to be burnt; they appealed to the Parliament; the provost was summoned to give an account of his conduct. The Parliament, after hearing, consulted the theologians, condemned the appellants to cause Denys to return to Christianity; to be detained in prison until he had so done; to be whipped with rods on three successive Saturdays, and to be fined 100 livres. In the end the court banished them from the kingdom, and seized all their property.— BEUGNOT. Les Juifs d'Occident.

[Query? An ancestor of the family of Sir Denis Le Marchant (Clerk of the House of Commons), formerly settled in Jersey.]

A POWER IN THE LAND.

An American paper (Sept. 28th, 1870,) announces that "business was nearly suspended, owing to the Jewish New Year," and that the Jews are "a power in the land."

MODERN JEWS.

Davison in his "Discourse on Prophecy," uses the fol

lowing beautiful illustration, when speaking of modern Jews: "Present in all countries, with a home in none; intermixed and yet separated, and neither amalgamated nor lost; yet, like those mountain streams which are said to pass through lakes of another kind of water, and keep a native quality to repel commixture, they hold communion without union; and may be traced as rivers without banks in the midst of the alien element which surrounds them."

"RICH AS A JEW."

We are accustomed to say, "rich as a Jew," but the Jews, take them all together, are not a rich people. There have always been some few among them that were immensely wealthy, and it was from the observation of these few that the proverb arose.—PEGGE. Anonyma.

GLORY OF THE CHURCH.

"They forget a main point of the Church's glory," says Archbishop Leighton, "who pray not daily for the conversion of the Jews.”—Sermon on Isaiah lxį.

KING OF THE Jews.

Rainard, Count of Sens (about 1008) so much loved the customs and "prevarications" of the Jews (says Raoul Glaber, lib. iii., c. 6), that he ordered every one of his attendants to place after his name the title of "King of the Jews." This affection towards a religion which was a horror in the Middle ages, brought a misfortune to him, for in 1015, an army which the king sent against him, drove him out of the city.-Bibl. de Poche; Curiosités Biograph., p. 72.

LANGUAGE OF PRAYER.

In the eighth century, some persons asserted that it was

only allowable to pray to God in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, which were regarded as holy, in consequence of the inscription put on the cross of Christ. The 52nd canon of the Council of Frankfort, in 794, declaimed against that error. In the Latin Church, that language alone was employed in divine service. At the end of the eleventh century, Wratislaus, King of Bohemia, having requested the authorisation of the Pope to employ the Slavonian language in religious ceremonies, was strictly forbidden to do so.-Ibid.; Curiosités des Traditions, p. 208.

A DROP Of Wax.

A little Jewish child, saved from the massacre of many of his nation at the time of the first Crusades, was brought for baptism. "When it was time to light the lamp, in order to cause some boiling wax to fall into the water (says Guibert de Nogent) a drop, which fell untouched, appeared to form, with perfect exactitude, the figure of a cross; so perfect, that no human hands could have shaped it. This cross certainly did not appear by chance, but was with reason sent by heaven itself, to announce that a man of the Jewish race would display a sincerity of faith truly rare in our days."-GUIBERT DE NOGENT. De Vita sua, lib. ii.,

c. 3.

MOSES.

There is nothing in the records of the world more affecting than the story of the death of Moses, as there is nothing more romantic than his birth, and nothing more stupendous than the work with which he grappled during his life. The more minutely we review the details of this extraordinary biography, the more deeply are we impressed with the significant pathos of its close. The more carefully we study the character of Moses, the more emphatic are the religious lessons derived from his final disappointment.

The child-whose beauty is mentioned three times in the Scriptures, is noticed in such a manner by Josephus as to show that it was always a traditional subject among the Jews-who was trained for his high mission, first at a royal court, in the midst of the earliest recorded civilisation; then under the cliffs and on the slopes of the mountains, among the most solitary scenes of nature-who became the liberator of his people, their liberator and their prophet, and more than their monarch—yet left the promise to Abraham just yet unfulfilled.

He, whose devotion to the people had been so unfailing, whose forgetfulness of self, whose humility, patience, and enduring soul, and the faith on which those virtues rested, were an example to all time; still, for a sin, which a man would hardly notice, is not to set his foot on the soil for which the nation had been prepared. A most touching melancholy rests on all the latest passages of his life. His sister was dead; his brother was dead; of those who had reached manhood when the Red Sea was crossed, hardly one remained; and he himself was not to see the accomplishment of his work, though all the preparations, all the responsibility had been his.

The last two victories have just been won; the Amorites of Heshbon have been subdued; the rock fortresses of Og and Bashan have been stormed. As far as he is concerned, it would appear that all this preparation had been for nothing; as if all this legislation, this government, this war, this varied adventure, had been the discipline for one last sorrow-the prelude to one deep humiliation. The religious lessons arising from this disappointment itself are not obscure. We should not fail to notice how nobly Moses rises above the disappointment, how steadily he looks forward to the future of the people, though he himself must die.-Quarterly Review, vol. 105.

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