multitude of people is the king's honor," Prov. 14: 28; and the second, that the blessing of the moon should be pronounced in the adorned apparel of the Sabbath. The ceremony is performed as follows. On Saturday evening after prayer the whole congregation repair to the enclosure of the synagogue, when their eyes are immediately turned towards the heavens to see if the moon is not obscured by clouds, if so they must wait till the clouds have passed away from it; or if it continues obscured they must wait for another opportunity, since the blessing must not be pronounced until the face of the moon is perfectly bright. As the whole blessing is too long for insertion here, I will only give a part of it:

1 ברוך יוצרך ברוך עושך ברוך קונך ברוך בוראך' וכו' 2 כשם שאני רוקד בְנָגְדָךְ ואין יכולתי לנגוע בך כך לא יוכלו כל אויבי לנגוע בי לרעה 3 תפול עליהם אימתה ופחד בגדול זרועך ידמו כאבן 4 דוד מלך ישראל חי וקיים' 5 שלום עליכם עליכם שלום 6 סימן טוב ומזל טוב יהא לנו ולכל ישראל אמן

1. "Blessed is thy former, blessed is thy maker, blessed is thy possessor, blessed is thy creator." (Thus far the address is to God. The next is to the moon, for the suffixes are feminine, agreeing with moon.) 2. "Inasmuch as I cannot reach thee or touch thee in my jumping towards thee, (i. e. the moon, and they jump accordingly three times,) so likewise my enemies shall not be able to reach me, to do me evil." Then again they address God. 3. "Fear and dread shall fall upon them by the greatness of thine arm, they shall be as still as a stone." 4. "David the king of Israel liveth and is in existence." 5. "Peace be unto you, unto you be peace." 6. "A good sign or omen, and good luck shall be unto us and to all Israel. Amen." The above sentences are repeated thrice. Next they repeat the above quotation of the disciples of Rabbi Isurael. When all is over, a shaking of garments takes place, by which they believe that the evil spirits which adhered to them drop from them, and this closes the ceremony.

The Talmudists have the most extraordinary and even blasphemous ideas concerning the moon, and do not hesitate to blaspheme God on account of it. They suppose that God created the sun and moon of equal size, but diminished the latter after she demonstrated to her Creator the impropriety of creating two rulers equal in strength and magnitude.

This strange idea they take from Gen. 1: 16, where God calls both the sun and the moon great; but as in the latter clause of the verse he calls the moon the lesser light, they make this blasphemous assertion; that God repented of having diminished the moon, and therefore asked the children of Israel to expiate his sin, by offering a sin-offering for him. This abomination is found in a Gammarah Shebouth, page 9, as follows:

אמר ריש לקיש מה נשתנה שעיר של ראש חודש שנאמר בן ליהוה אמר יהוה שעיר זה יהא כפרה עלי שמיעטתי את הירח

"Rashlokish said, What is the reason that the words b (for Jehovah) are used at the offering of the kid at the new moon?" Num. 28: 15. 'And one kid of the goats for a sin-offering,' for the Lord, (as they explain it,) which is not found at any other offerings, for he said, Let this kid be an atonement for me for having diminished the moon.” I cannot but think that the Talmudists must have been possessed with unclean spirits, to have written and taught such abominations, and the fact that the Jews believe implicitly word for word their assertions, fully demonstrates their spiritual blindness.

In one respect the Jews in the Holy Land are far worse than those in Russia, Poland and Turkey, inasmuch as they are much attached to the practice of praying to deceased saints and relics. The veneration which they have for the supposed stones of the temple is beyond description. They never venture to approach them with their shoes upon their feet; prayers are offered before them on every Friday, and many of them are actually worn from kissing. Praying to the dead is unlimited both by time and place. Every spot is frequented where are supposed to be buried saints, whose names are found either in the Mishna, the Talmud, or the Bible. An annual resort for this purpose is at Safed, at the grave of Rabbi Simeon Ben Yekhoiah, the author of the Zohar, which closes with a drinking festival, that lasts about three days, the particulars of which I have given you in a former letter. When I passed through Tiberias on my way to Jerusalem, I met outside of the gate a poor old woman, bearing a small pitcher in one hand and a lamp with oil in the other, and proceeding towards the declivities of the hills, where are the caves of Rabbi Akiba, (who distinguished himself as armor-bearer to the false Messiah Bar Kakaba,) SECOND SERIES, VOL. IV. NO. I.

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which רבי מאיר בעל נס,and of Rabbi Mayer Baal Ness

means the lord of miracles. It is believed by all, that if any one meets with a misfortune, he will be set free from it by promising any sum of money to the latter deceased Rabbi. The income amounts to immense sums, a part of which is expended in burning oil at his cave day and night, and in the respective synagogues of the Holy Land, and the remainder the living Rabbies keep for their own use.

I met also many persons returning from the performance of these devotions. How truly applicable to the present state and practices of the Jews is the 2d verse of the 55th chapter of Isaiah!

Last winter, Mr. Nicholayson and myself and many others visited a cave on the summit of Mount Olivet, where the prophetess Huldah is supposed to be buried. It is joined to a Mosque. In the cave are two large oblong stones, placed one upon the other, something in the form of a sepulchre. There we found several Spanish Jews, barefooted, with their faces turned toward the blocks, and praying very earnestly, though the day was very wet and cold, and the cave, as I have said, on the very summit of the mount, requiring an exhausting effort to reach it. The following fact will show the eagerness of the poor Jews in the Holy Land in praying to the dead. A few weeks after the above incident took place, two Jews came to our house and begged us to aid them in hiring some mules to take them to Safed, which had recently arrived from Beyroot, and whose muleteers had taken up their abode in our garden. They wanted three mules, and the roads being at that time bad, the muleteers demanded a high price, at least what would be equal to four or five pounds. They did not regard the exorbitant price, but urged the muleteers to set out immedi ately, which they refused to do. When Mr. N. and myself observed their impatience, we inquired of them the reason of it. One of them replied in a pathetic and enthusiastic manner, "We ought to be at a certain grave in Safed after three days." As I began to remonstrate with him upon the unlawfulness of the practice, he rose up instantly and said, "Good-by, I shall get other mules ;" and away they went. This last summer I became acquainted with a Jew who came all the way down from the Crimea to the Holy Land, on purpose to pray to the deceased saints there. He called

it, which means visiting the graves of their fore. fathers. After satisfying his superstitious notions, he returned home to his wife and children.

The practice of praying for the souls in purgatory, exists universally among the Jews, and is, of course, one of the corruptions of the Talmud. To accomplish this, they have recourse to three expedients. The first is, to have a son pray publicly in the Synagogue for the souls of his parents; the second is, to have sufficient means to hire a train of readers of the Talmud, whose intercessions are supposed to possess a twofold efficacy; by them the souls of their employers are rescued from purgatory, and then benefited by their merit; the third is, to pay an annual sum to the chanters, that they may offer prayers for their contributors, which they do four times a week, twice on Saturday and once on Monday and Thursday. For those who pay best the prayers are chanted, but for the others only mumbled over in a monotonous tone, and that but once a week. These prayers are continued for eleven months from the day of a person's decease.

El Mollay אלמלא רחמים The prayer is called

Rakhmim, or, The remembering of the (departed) souls. The fee is collected by those who are employed to pray, three times a year, viz., on the day preceding the feast of unleavened bread, on the pentecost, and on the feast of the new year. Those who cannot possibly employ the above expedients, die in despair, and the surviving relations give themselves up also to despairing lamentations. To such, death is indeed the king of terrors, but it is no less so, to every Jew, without exception, however able he may be to resort to the above expedients. Surely had the gospel no other recommendation than that of changing this king of terrors into a messenger of peace, it would be sufficient to make it the object of our warmest affection and choice. Oppression, also, may be regarded as belonging to their religious rather than to their moral state. It is one of the

commands or obligations imposed by the Talmud, and is therefore now practised everywhere by the Rabbinical Jews, but only by one class, viz., the wise men

of the Talmud, that is, the Rabbies who know how to explain the Talmud, over those who do not know, called by Peasantry. The name is very much detested among them, although this class may read the Bible, and live an

innocent and pious life. The Talmud compares them to beasts of burden, and their lawful oppressors are authorized to do them any injury with impunity, while they can obtain no share in the happiness of the future world, except by laboring, trading for and supporting their oppressors. These arbitrary injunctions, and many more much worse, may be found in the Gammarah Psohhim, page 49.

Before I begin to translate the abominations which I have alluded to, I will state what my own opinion was respecting them before I was enlightened by gospel truth. I never dreamed that such atrocious acts could be put into execution. The same holds good respecting my poor brethren according to the flesh; and I may venture to say that the Jews, for many centuries, could not swallow such strong poison. For it is evident that the Jewish commentators upon the Talmud, as far back as the 12th century, and more especially the commentary of whom the Jews regard as inspired, and whom they follow in every respect, have tried to alleviate the guilt of such assertions by explaining them away, as I shall show hereafter. And although they have accomplished something in this respect, yet the Talmud remains sufficiently corrupt to make it and its writers objects of abhorrence to the highest degree. The commentator, however, in seeking to remove the apparent danger, has succeeded so far as to make these corruptions more palatable, though their pernicious influence upon the soul remains untouched, or rather made worse. For every Jew drinks in his iniquitous commentary with great avidity, and without the least remorse, which they would not have done if the text had remained to speak for itself. Oh how blind was I to take them all to be the inspired word of God, or the spirit of the law and the prophets, as the Talmudists assert that they are. At the same time how gracious was the Lord to me in not allowing me to perpetrate that which the corrupt Talmud taught, and the more so that he at last snatched me as a brand from the burning, and thus made me an heir of righteousness through the lively and lovely way which the blessed gospel furnishes. I cannot therefore but feel deeply for my poor, poor brethren, who are yet left thus to grope in darkness, to be led by the blind, and to fall, broken, snared and taken by the subtle Talmud. The Lord has truly done a marvellous work, and a wonder among this very people.