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A VISIT TO HEBRON.

R. WHEELER and I made a missionary journey of four days to Hebron. The dispenser, Mr. J. Eliahu, started some hours before us, in order to announce our coming and to get the dispensary into working order. During our stay the doctor saw and treated over two hundred patients, and I had a great many opportunities for speaking to them of Christ, the Physician of souls, whilst they were waiting in the dispensary for the medicines prescribed. Most of them were people whom I had met before, chiefly Sephardim, but there was a sprinkling of Ashkenazim as well. To several who had often heard the Gospel on former occasions, I pointed out, during quiet talks I had with them one or two at a time, the great danger and folly of hardening their hearts and closing their eyes to the truth. Others seemed to be surprised to hear that we expected Messiah to come a second time, and asserted that it was a new doctrine put forward by the missionaries, and therefore a proof that our religion was a wrong one, seeing that we could alter our views as we thought proper. In answer to this, it was pointed out that both the New Testament and our Liturgy speak, as they always have done, of the Second Advent of Messiah.

I met a fine old Ashkenazim Jew who had been over thirty-five years in Hebron and knew all the old missionaries-Nicolayson, Crawford, Dr. Macgowanand spoke with great respect of them as well as of Dr. Chaplin, whom he mentioned with extreme gratitude as having on two occasions saved his life, and as being "a lover of Israel." This stately old Jew occupies a high position in the Jewish community. I had a very interesting conversation with him, and he discussed the respective claims of Christianity and Modern Judaism with me in a most friendly manner. We next called on the Jewish physician.

Being considerably higher than Jerusalem, Hebron is becoming more and more a health resort for Europeans resident in Southern Palestine. We found a Hebrew Christian family from Jaffa living in a house they had taken for the summer months, for the sake of some of the little ones who had been seriously ill. At the hotel we found a party of six missionary ladies from Jaffa and Damascus, who had come to enjoy the cool breezes and verdant landscape, and to recruit their strength during the midsummer holidays. J. E. HANAUER.

BOOK RECEIVED.

Pictures and Stories from the Holy Land, for children, by James Neil, M.A. London: Lang, Neil & Co.

THE MISSION STATIONS OF THE SOCIETY.

HE Map on the opposite page shews how the Society is at present occupying the Jewish world. Its operations extend to to three-fifths of the globe-Europe, Asia, and Africa-the two continents of America and Australia being outside the limits of its Missionary operations, having Societies of their own.

Beginning with Europe-in England, with a Jewish population of at least 100,000, Missionaries are at work in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Hull; Leeds being vacant at this particular time. A Missionary for the Jews in Ireland is stationed at Dublin. On the Continent, Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Königsberg, Rome, Lemberg, Cracow, Warsaw, Bucharest, and Constantinople are the chief centres of its work; whilst Rotterdam, Danzig, Memel, Galatz, Jassy, and Bistritz may be considered outlying stations. There is no Missionary at Vienna just now, the Rev. G. H. Händler having lately retired from active service, and no successor having been as yet appointed. During the past few years several stations have been given up, such as Cologne, Strasburg, Frankfort, Breslau, and Posen, it having been felt that the Christians of Protestant countries might be left to carry on their own Missions to Jews, and thus leave the Society free to concentrate its energies principally in those lands-Roman Catholic, Greek, and Mohammedan-where the Gospel light is shining less brightly.

Passing over to Asia-to the old Bible lands-the Society is well represented in Palestine-at Jerusalem, Safed, and Jaffa; whilst Hebron may be considered as an outlying station of the Holy City. Damascus and Smyrna are occupied; also Persia, with its towns of Ispahan, Teheran, and Hamadan; whilst the neighbouring district of Mesopotamia, with Bagdad for its centre, formerly a station of the Society, will we trust, soon again be the scene of Missionary labours.

In Africa, along its northern coast with a Jewish population of half a million, Missionaries are at work at Mogador, in Marocco, Algiers, and Tunis. Alexandria is unoccupied at the present moment. In Abyssinia there are six native agents, faithfully and devotedly struggling to carry on the work under fearful odds, under the fatherly supervision of Mr. J. M. Flad, at Kornthal.

It cannot be said that the Jewish Mission Field is adequately occupied. In Galicia, with its 700,000 Jews, the Society has only one Missionary; in Russia, with from four to six millions of Jewish subjects, there are only two Missionaries. The Jewish Pale of

JOTTINGS FROM JOURNALS OF MISSIONARIES IN LONDON.

"I had as usual," writes the Rev. A. Bernstein, " a number of visitors during the month-Jews and proselytes, each wishing for advice or help. Among them was Mr. Sheenmann, of Siberia, who carries on in that country a work similar to that of Joseph Rabinowitch at Kischeneff, and on the same lines. He told me that about 50 Jews are believers, that he and a rabbi had been baptized in the name of the Trinity, though he considers this insufficient, and that he must wait another year or two before he gets civil liberty to enable him to undertake the work of organization. I had conversations with two very respectable German Jews living in Russia Lane, just behind Palestine Place, and the result was that they applied for the admission of two of their children into the Society's Schools. I have devoted some time to the tracts and to the revision of Mr. Bergman's translation into Judeo-German of parts of the Bible, and I am glad to say that Genesis has already been printed separately and reads well."

Writing a month later, the Rev. A. Bernstein says:-"I have finished the revision, I might almost say re-translation, of the whole of Mr. Bergman's Judeo-German Pentateuch, a work which will, I trust, be greatly blessed to vast numbers of the Jewish people. As to the value of the translation, I leave it to others to judge, and will only say that I have carefully studied the etymological meaning of words, as well as the rendering of them into the simplest intelligible German; and wherever the learned disagree concerning the meaning of a word, I have given more than one rendering in brackets, leaving the reader to choose which he likes best. I refer to this again in my report, not only because I have devoted my spare time to it, and a little more which belongs usually to the Society, but because I wish that the Society should have the credit and the claim of taking a foremost interest in any work which concerns the spiritual welfare of the Jewish people."

Speaking of the Special Service held in Palestine Place on the eve of the Day of Atonement (September 30) in connection with the Hebrew Christian Prayer Union, Mr. Bernstein says: "It is a long time since we had such a good gathering of earn es converts in the Chapel. There must have been about 130 converts, irrespective of the boys and girls from the Hebrew Schools. A great many of them are zealously engaged in Christian work among Jews and Gentiles, and I seldom preached to a more discerning and appreciative congregation."

From Mr. H. Silberbusch's reports we extract the following instance of destitution amongst Russian Jews in London :"Entering a lodging-house in Chambers Street, I found that the house, which consists of only four small rooms, afforded sleeping accommodation for 25 or 30 persons. I was shown into a room downstairs in the basement which does duty as dining, sitting, and reception room; a cross-legged dirty table and two benches made up all the furniture therein. But the want of furniture was amply supplied by a dozen hungry stomachs. A woman was lying ill on the floor. At one end of the table there sat three men (who had to pay a penny) breakfasting on dry bread; a few others (who could not produce the precious coin) stood and looked on. At the other end of the table there sat three others playing a game of dominoes, perhaps in order to drown the cravings of hunger. The tenant of the house and myself were obliged to stand for want of room. Most of the lodgers were Russians: the three who breakfasted told me that they owed their repast to Missionaries, having each received threepence at a Mission Hall on the previous Saturday,"

Mr. Radziviloffsky has been working for some time in the parish of St. Stephen's, Spitalfields. There are four small streets which contain 500 Jewish families, making perhaps 2,500 souls. As there is a constant moving in and out, new faces appear every day, some coming from Russia, Austria, and elsewhere. Thus the Gospel is often proclaimed by Mr. Radziviloffsky to Jews who are entirely ignorant of it.

From the Bible Woman's journal :-"I visited two families. In one family I came across a young Jewess, who welcomed me, and was glad when I spoke to her of the love of our Saviour. I prayed with her, and when I was about to leave, she asked me to come and see her often, and to tell her more about the love of Christ, for she would like to be baptized. I promised her that I would come and see her two or three times a week, and I would instruct her in the truth of the Gospel as far as it lay in my power. I also learnt that she has two little children and advised her to put one into the Hebrew Schools."

From the Colporteur's journal :-"Speaking to a Jew whom I met in Whitechapel Library, I took out my Bible and read with him the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, and began to narrate to him the history of our Lord's life; but, to my astonishment, I found him to be well acquainted with it. I asked him how he came to read the New Testament, to which he replied that he frequently saw his uncle reading a small book which he would not let anybody look at, and when he had done reading, he used to hide it under the mattress of his bed. This excited his curiosity, and in the absence of Lis uncle he used to take the little book and read it—thus he became acquainted with its contents. I promised to give him a New Testament the next week.

The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia. By HAROLD FREDERIC. London: William Heinemann. [First Notice.]

IN this first notice we can do little more than draw our readers' attention to a very remarkable book which has recently appeared, and which forms a tremendous condemnation of the policy of Russia towards the Jews, or, as the reviewer in the Times forcibly describes it, "the most coherent and the fullest presentment of the case against the Russian Government," and, "not one whit more trenchant or unsparing than the facts warrant."

The author gathered his materials during a long and painstaking journey through Russia, both within and outside the Pale, and he himself describes his own setting forth of them in this book as "an indictment more solemn, more sweeping, more terrible than exists in written language against any other people." We think he must be right. He describes the Russian policy towards his co-religionists as a "brutal and wanton persecution," "a ceaseless blackmail," and asserts that "hundreds of thousands of people were and are still being torn from their homes, swindled and robbed of their possessions, and driven like criminals into that present pen of horror, the Pale, or beyond the borders of their native land" (p. 35).

Mr.

The indictment against Russia does not stop here. Frederic, looking beneath the surface, declares the Russian

Judenhetze is "only one phase of a vast national movement" of Russia for the Russians. The unhappy Jew was the easiest foreigner to begin with. "It will be the turn of the German next." The heading of the first chapter is "Parai Domoi" ("It is time to go home"), Aksakoff's famous phrase, embodying the sum total of Pan-Slavic aspirations, and signifying, according to Mr. Frederic, that it was "time to give over the pretence of apeing Western Europe; that it was time to throw to the winds the effort to appear civilised; that it was time to turn the clock back again to the starting-point of Peter the Great, to undo all that his German successors had done in imitation of Occidental methods, to frankly relapse into Slavonic barbarism."

Into the "tragic story" of the Jews in Russia, as told by Mr. Frederic, we cannot enter now: suffice it to say, it is of thrilling interest, and written with a good deal of American smartness, which entirely relieves the subject of all heaviness.

THE ANTISEMITES AND THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PETER.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun-else the above combination of the latest product of the Weltgeist with the latest discovery in ecclesiastical documents would be unpardonable. We do not know whether many of our readers have read much of the precious literature which is now being poured wholesale over the greater part of Germany, inciting, almost in so many words, the populace to acts of violence against the Jews. We hope for their sakes they have not, for it is very painful reading. Anything more disgraceful to so-called Christian literature than the attacks upon the Jews and everything Jewish it has not been our lot to read. One would suppose that the Jews were the quintessence of all the vices, and the poor Gentiles their slaves and scapegoats. We in England are not, thank God, attacked by this disease of shortsightedness and ignorance, but we cannot refrain from speaking thus strongly about it, lest we be thought not to sympathise with the Jews in the heavy burden that they now have to bear, and more particularly with our Missionary brethren, upon whom the brunt of the battle often falls.

For it must not be thought that the Antisemitic movement is directed solely against those who are Jews by religion. It hates Hebrew Christians with an even worse hatred. In a German paper now lying before us baptized Jews are not only held up to utter scorn, but are branded as hypocrites who are baptized merely to secure greater protection for the Jewish nation, wider opportunities for its advance. The Antisemites are the very bitterest opponents of all efforts to promote Christianity amongst the Jews. Some even go so far as to say that Christ was never promised to the Jews, and that the God of the Old Testament is an absolutely different Being from the God of the New.

This reminds us of at least the language of Marcion, the antiJudaic gnostic heretic of the middle of the second century. And the same hatred of anything Jewish is to be seen in the Gospel of Peter. Yes, dislike of the Jews on the part of Gentile Christians is no new thing. But one would hardly have expected to find in any Christian writing such gross "whitewashing" applied to Pilate as the Gospel of Peter shows, in order to throw the greater blame of the crucifixion upon the Jews. It can, indeed, be paralleledand we commend the parallel to the Antisemites-for in another early work we read that in answer to Pilate's prayer for forgiveness before his execution by Tiberius a voice comes from heaven

saying, "All generations shall call thee blessed... for under thee all these things were fulfilled." Other traces of the feeling which the writer of the Gospel of Peter entertained towards the Jews may be seen in his omission of the prayer "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do," and in his making the penitent thief address his reproachful reply not to his fellowmalefactor, but to the Jews: So too, after the resurrection, the Roman soldiers hasten to Pilate, confessing that Jesus was the Son of God, and expressing their fear of letting the Jews know that He had risen, lest they themselves should be stoned. The fragment is, in other words, marked by intense dislike of the Jewish nation, and the Scriptural records are perverted in order to give greater point to this dislike.

Yet surely Jesus was a Jew? Certainly not, say the modern Antisemites; He is too good to have been of Jewish origin. Only partly, say the Antisemites of old time, for He was not fully man at all. He felt no pain, and His diviner part left Him at the crucifixion. It is, we must grant, hardly fair to say that dislike of the Jews led the author of the Gospel of Peter into his docetic heresy, yet the two things logically go together. If Jesus was not really Jewish, He was not really man. To suppose Him to have been of Gentile blood is a folly reserved (so far as we know) for the nineteenth century. It will, we imagine, attract no one, and we allude to it only to show the lengths to which hatred of the Jews will lead educated men to go. Truly Christian men, on the contrary, who love their Lord, will, for that reason, love the race from which He sprang and to which His earthly activity was primarily given. Missions to the Jews are the necessary outcome

of love to Jesus.

FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES. Nathanael (Heft 5, 1892). Dr. Dalman's account of the life and work of the late Dr. C. P. Caspari is very encouraging to all lovers of Israel. He was brought to confess Christ in baptism when a young man, and became one of the leading theologians of Europe. We are thankful to be able to add that his interest in Missions to the Jews never flagged, but seemed rather to grow as years went on. Pastor Faber gives a most interesting story of his own travels in Persia, where he came across some striking examples of secret conversion to Christianity among Mohammedans. Dibre Emeth (Nos. 11, 12, 1892). Our earnest fellow-worker the Rev. W. Becker continues his excellent little publication. In the first of these numbers he gives an attractive summary of the principal incidents in the Society's annual report. In the second he speaks at some length of our dear friend the Rev. C. J, Goodhart, and of Dr. K. H. Klee, for many years one of the Society's missionaries and the editor of the missionary periodical Jeshurun. We have also received from Mr. Becker a copy of an excellent sermon by him upon the lessons to be learned from the cholera visitation.

Le Reveil d'Israel (Dec., 1892), by Pastor Kruger, is always interesting. The present number contains more especially a report of missionary work in Algeria by Mr. Borloz. It also notices the decision of the central conference of American Rabbis, held in New York, at which it was decided that proselytes should be admitted without the initiatory act of circumcision. There is also a frank and interesting letter from a Jew dealing with the claims of Christianity. The author recognises the moral greatness of Jesus, and the good that Christians have done in promulgating many of the chief doctrines of Judaism, but goes no further. M. Kruger answers the letter with no little Biblical and Talmudical learning.

* Vide Mr. J. A. Robinson's edition of the Gospel according to Peter, page 20.