They begin their Sabbaths, fasts, and festivals, an hour before sunset, both summer and winter, and conclude them next day at the same hour, or when three stars appear in the firmament. Their year is divided into twelve lunar months; some of which consist of twenty-nine, others of thirty days; which difference is occasioned by the various appearances of the new moon; her first appearance being always accounted the first day of the month.

They count their ecclesiastical year from the

month Nisson, which generally falls about our March; and their civil year from Tishry, the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year, which generally happens in September. They reckon from the creation, and do not make the world so old as we Christians do, who, following Sir Isaac Newton, compute the birth of Christ to have happened in the 4004th year of the world, which, added to 1808, will give the number 5812; exceeding the Jewish chronology by 244 years, this current year being with them 5568.*

See Levi's Ceremonies of the Jews, (printed for J. Parsons, No. 21, Paternoster-row,) passim. Rabbi

*To investigate this confusion of years must no doubt involve an claborate research; yet it is well worth an inquiry, and might profitably employ some learned Jew; for none but a Jew, who can readily have access to Jewish authorities, can well determine so very intricate a subject, as great confusion seems to exist in the mode of reckoning time during the middle ages, and indeed since the time of Alexander of Macedon.

Leo of Modena, who enlarges on their customs, ceremonies, &c. in his History of the present Jews throughout the World, already quoted in this work, is scarcely known, I am told, among the Jews, and not regarded by the few learned among them who have read his works; perhaps from his being thought too partial to the Christians. Yet his history forms the ground-work of what we find on these subjects, both in Buxtorf's Synagoga Judaica, and in the 1st vol. of Picart's "Religious Ceremonies of all Nations."

GOVERNMENT AND DISCIPLINE.The Jewish church is at present governed by a presiding Rabbi in the city or town where they may be settled, who attaches to himself two other Rabbies, and these three combined form a kind of tribunal in sacred or religious causes, and frequently determine private disputes. This tribunal is termed Beth Din, or the House of Justice. As the priesthood is at present totally abrogated, having ceased with the temple, the term High-Priest is an exploded one; no presiding Rabbi now exercising the functions of High-Priest, which were only applicable to the temple. Hence the choice of Rabbi (or Raf as he is termed by the German Jews, or Hacham by the Portuguese) is not confined to the tribe of Levi; although that tribe be the only one that, they conceive, can now be at all distinguished. Its members are all at present considered as laymen. They have, notwithstanding, some trifling distinetions paid them in the synagogue service; for those

among them that are descended from the priests, who are called Cohen, or in the plural Cohenim, perform the benediction, and are called first to the law: they also personate the priest in the ceremony of redeeming the first-born, and have some other complimentary precedences paid them. The Levites, i. e. those who are descendants from the singers in the temple, are second in rank, and are called next to the law, and wash the hands of the Cohenim before they go to the benediction, &c. With all this the Rabbi has nothing to do, unless he chance to be of that tribe. The ministry of a presiding Rabbi, elected for that purpose from the general mass of learned Rabbies by the congregation, whose head he is, consists of nothing more than that, as a spiritual director, he solves questions that arise in the ceremonial observances,-occa sionally preaches,-marries,-superintends divorces, and the ceremony of throwing the shoe, called Chalitza, &c.* He is generally allowed a competent salary, which, together with perquisites, renders it unnecessary for him to engage in any secular business, for which indeed he is seldom capacitated, nor is it thought honourable; although I understand that, in a few instances, some presiding Rabbies in Germany and Italy have been engaged

* Marriage, in all regular societies, is always performed by the presiding Rabbi, or by some one depute. by him; but a marriage solemnised with the due ceremonies by any other orthodox Jew, is valid. The ceremony of throwing the shoe takes place when a Jew refuses to marry his brother's widow, and is grounded on Deut. xxv. 9.

in trade, through the medium of some intervening friend.

Other Rabbies may follow any worldly occupa tion, as the title of Rabbi is merely honorary, and does not confer any priestly ordination or sacred character.*

ANCIENT AND MODERN SECTS.-The Jewish sects, in our Saviour's time, were,

1. The Samaritans, a people partly of Jewish and partly of heathen extraction; who were circumcised, observed the ceremonies of the law, offered sacrifices at their temple on Mount Gerizim, and expected the Messiah; but would not allow Jerusalem to be the place of worship, and rejected all traditions; nor would they receive any of the books of the Old Testament except the five books of Moses.

2. The Pharisees, who added to the written word traditions innumerable, and were remarkable for formality and hypocrisy, and for placing all re

By the 9th article of their creed, the Jews believe in the perpetuity of their law, written and oral, moral and ceremonial: I have therefore yet to learn on what scriptural authority they ground the abrogation of the priesthood, and the practice which they have introduced of admitting men into sacred offices promiscuously, or from any of the tribes, notwithstanding they conceive, that the tribe of Lovi may yet be in some measure distinguished.

ligion in external ceremony. They had subsisted about 150 years before the Christian era.

3. The Sadducees, who were more ancient than the Pharisees, but less numerous. In the Talmud we are told, that they derived their name from Sadoc; and that the sect arose about 250 years A. C. in the time of Antigonis of Socho, president of the Sanhedrim. With the Samaritans, they received only the Pentateuch, and rejected the traditions of the Pharisees. They also denied the being of angels, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul.

They held that the soul had no separate existence, but vanished, or fell into nothing, at the dissolution of its union with the body. Scaliger, and some others, will not allow that they rejected all the books of scripture but those of Moses; because many of them, as Caiphas, &c. were priests, and even high priests. This sect fell at the destruction of Jerusalem, and Sadducees have been but little heard of since. A few, indeed, are said still to subsist in Africa, and some other places; but they are rarely found, at least there are but few that declare themselves for these opinions, and they are held by the other Jews as heretics.

4. The Essenes, who were nearly of the same date with the Pharisees, and were distinguished by an austere sanctity, by having all things in common, by abstaining from marriage, and by living a monastic and contemplative life.