The History of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity to the Present Time: Comprising Their Conquests, Dispersions, Wanderings, Persecutions, Commercial Enterprises, Literature, Manners, Customs, and Forms of Worship; With an Account of the Various Effort

Excerpt from The History of the Jews From the Babylonian Captivity to the Present Time: Comprising Their Conquests, Dispersions, Wanderings, Persecutions, Commercial Enterprises, Literature, Manners, Customs, and Forms of Worship; With an Account of the Various Efforts Made for Their Conversion

In every point of view in which the state of the Jews can be contemplated, it must be regarded as an object fraught with the deepest interest. They have been a wonderful people from the beginning. Their history, commencing with the call of Abraham, extending onward to the periods of their captivity - and the destruction of J erusalem - and embracing the subsequent judgments that overtook them their present dispersion - and their future glorious prospects, - is a history full of meaning and of interest, and valuable for the lessons which it teaches. It difl'ers, in many impor tant respects, from the history of any other portion of the human race. The country which they once occupied exhibits many singular and peculiar features. Once they were God's peculiar treasure, -first as a family, and then as a nation. Their national literature is the most ancient in the world; and their code of laws, as embodied in their sacred books, was admirably adapted to the circumstances in which they were placed, and to the promotion of the spe cific purposes for which it was designed. The great features of their national character are delineated in the records of their earliest history. Once they were a kingdom of priests, an holy nation but they neglected the great sal vation; and now they are homeless and desolate, without a king, and without a prince, and Without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without a Terraphim. Nevertheless, they remain unconsumed, meted out, and trodden down but marvellously pre served, as a distinct and separate race, dwelling alone, not reckoned among the nations, a bye-word and a proverb.

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