There are few words so much misunderstood as the word , usually rendered "fear," and which in many minds is confounded, as shown above, with the idea of "terror." In most instances "awe" or "reverence" would be a preferable translation.-P. A.

BEECHER ON THE JEWS.

There is one people that has endured. I refer to the Jews. Their national economy was based upon a regard, not merely to God personally, but a regard to that righteousness, which is the marrow of the providence of God in this world. Though they did not strictly adhere to this, they were the earliest nation, and the only nation in early times, that attempted to organise a temporal polity on the immutable principles of righteousness. And what is the result? They are as vital to-day as when Abraham went forth. The old patriarch himself was not more a man, than are his posterity men. In the days of Moses, and King David, and Solomon, when the military power of the Jews was felt all over the world, there was not so much in that stock, as there is to-day. There is scarcely a country in Europe, in which the principal chairs of some of the best institutions are not held by the Jews. There is not a school of philosophy, of statesmanship, in which you shall not find the Jew-mind to range high. Wasted? They have been blown about like dust! They have endured persecution, enough to blot out any ordinary people a dozen times; and, to-day, nowhere shall you find more national breadth of character than among the despised, vagabond Jews. But although they have no place to put their foot as Jews, they are Americans in America; Europeans in Europe; and Asiatics in Asia. Although they are Jews only by sufferance and historical reminiscence, yet they exist, and hold their own in the world.-REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Church Union.

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CONVERSION OF THE JEWS.

Lewis Dufour Lingerne, who lived in the reign of Louis XIV., says, "A Jew, a man of understanding, but of an advanced time of life, told me that it was wasting water to baptise a Jew." See instances of this opinion in Spain and Portugal. The fact is, a Jew will continue a Jew, till the tenth generation. If a Jew were to turn Christian, he would be of the sect of Socinians, because they deny the divinity of Jesus Christ.- Recreative Review.

THE HUMAN VOICE.

The qualities of the human voice are commonly distinguished under three heads, according to the natural organs which appear most particularly concerned in its modulation and tones. First, when the sound appears to issue almost entirely from the lungs, it is distinguished as a chest voice ; secondly, when the throat appears the chief organ connected with the production of sound, it is called a throat voice; thirdly, when the process of breathing seems more than usually connected with the nostrils, and the sound is accordingly modulated by their influence, it is called a head voice.

There is a fourth kind of voice, which is but little appreciated, that does not seem to come naturally from the chest, but the quantity of sound that I allude to, is not that which is produced in the throat, and distinguished under the name of falsetto; nor is it the voce di testa. It is a species of ventriloquism, a soft and distinct sound, produced apparently in the chest, and chiefly in the back of the throat and head-an inward suppressed quality of tone, that conveys the illusion of being heard at a distance. It is a sweet and soft melodious sound, wafted from afar, like unto the magic spell of an echo. Mr. Braham is the only public

singer I ever heard who has availed himself of the proper advancement which the feigned voice affords. This kind of voice is in common use among the Hebrews, and is termed by them hip, "voice of a child." I am decidedly of opinion that it is partly in consequence of their cultivating this particular tone, that they possess that peculiar sweetness of voice that has ever distinguished them from other singers.-NATHAN. History of Music.

CRUEL CUSTOM.

It is said that Charlemagne instituted a ceremony at Easter, which consisted in a Christian's giving a box on the ear to a Jew; and it appears that the brutal ignorance and superstition of those times made those who were appointed to perform this scandalous ceremony very zealous to make it as hurtful to the poor Jew as possible; for in the time of Count William the third, Hugo, Chaplain to the Viscount of Limoges, having been appointed to perform it, exerted himself with so much zeal, that he made both the brains and the eyes of the poor Jew drop out of his head to the ground. This execrable custom was, about the middle of the 12th century, changed into a tax, which was appropriated to the Canons of Saint Serin.-RAYNAL. Histoire de Thoulouze.

PREJUDICIAL REMARKS.

The Jews have at all times been the object of numerous prejudices, of monstrous accusations. We may well believe that many of those crimes have been imputed to them wrongfully; but that which by no means is an error or a calumny is the love which this degraded (déchu) people has for lucre; a love which often causes them to adopt the most vile practices to obtain it. Neither is it a prejudice to assert that the hereditary hatred of the Jew against every

religion except his own, and specially against the Christian religion, causes him to consider himself as an enemy, even under those governments which grant him the greatest protection, and leads him constantly to the commission of condemnable deeds.

M. Amedée de Batz says, in one of his works, "The Jew is a Jew before he is a Frenchman; he is a tradesman, before being a citizen; he is a being apart in a great city, who has not the heart of a man, except for the brethren of his own faith, and who looks upon all other men as far below his co-religionists. Neither the arts, nor literature, nor science, is able entirely to efface the prodigious love for gain which is in his heart with his life-blood. Let the Jew be a broker, a lawyer, a sculptor, an architect, a notary, or a judge, he will always speculate; the base of his actions. will be always money, and nothing but money."-MIGNE. Troisieme Encycl. Theologique, tome xx., p. 513.

[As the present work professes to give various opinions respecting our nation, I have included the above without comment.-P. A.]

TYPES OF JUDAISM.

There are types of races which have a wonderful power of adaptation to the changes of climate, while others are scarcely able to support the least change. Among the former we may cite the Jew and the Gipsy. The Jew, at the present moment, is to be found in every part of the world; in Europe, from Norway to Gibraltar; in Africa, from Algiers to the Cape of Good Hope; in Asia, from Cochin to the Caucasus, from Jaffa to Pekin. In America he is to be met with from Montevideo to Quebec; he has peopled Australia; and has given proofs of his powers of acclimatisation under the tropics, where people of European origin have constantly failed to perpetuate themselves. In

relation of altitude, though he seldom inhabits the mountains, for his tendencies are mostly industrial or commercial, yet there is nothing to make us suppose but that he possesses a physical compatibility for residence in elevated localities. On the other hand, he has lived for many ages, and lives still, on the only part of the globe-the valley of the Jordan-which is situated more than 400 metres below the level of the sea, and where it is doubtful whether any European would succeed in propagating his race. Finally, wherever the Jewish race has been studied up to the present time, it has been found to present to statistics of births, deaths, and proportions of sex, differing completely from those which govern the nationalities among whom they reside. Assuredly so unexpected a fact, and one so contrary to reasoning, is not one of the least interesting of the facts which medical geography has demonstrated to us. -BOUDIN. La Géographie et Statisque Médicales.

RABBINICAL HISTORIES.

The DD of Zacuto, or "Book of Genealogies," is the most important of the Jewish histories; but it has not met with the luck of a translator, from the circumstance of some anti-Christian passages, which might easily have been expunged. We have the 17 п, or the "Branch of David," by Ganz, illustrated by Vorstius. Gentius has

,שבט יהודה,,given a better version of Solomon ben Vergas

or "Book of Judah." Vergas was a Spanish physician, who collected sixty-four afflictions of his people, among which he classes "public disputations with Christians," and the number of false Messiahs. These rabbinical histories do not reach lower than the middle of the sixteenth century. It is a pity that Menasseh Ben Israel did not complete his design of a history of Judaism.-ISAAC D'ISRAELI.