JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
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THEN SAID THEY UNTO HIM, WHO ART THOU? WHAT SAYEST THOU OF THY-SELF? HE SAID, I AM THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS; MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD.—St. John i. 22, 23.

I shall speak to-night, brethren and friends, of the relation of Judaism to Christianity. I have felt that such a study will not only, at this day, have a fresh interest for us as devout scholars, but will bear in the truest way on the work of your Society. There has been, I may well say, no time in the history of our faith when we were abler than now to open with all the lights of older and newer learning this wonderful book of the Hebrew Revelation. It is in this domain that the keenest questions of a critical age have been raised, and unbelief has sought to undermine the whole fabric. But in proportion as a Christian science has explored the record with fearless honesty, while it has given up many fancies of past interpreters, the supernatural truth has stood forth clearer and stronger. It is thus we will study it. As we pass in review this Divine history, we shall see it linked with the whole plan of God in the training of the race; we shall see its faith, its worship, its social movements pointing to Christ, the fullness of times; and in that central light we shall know our spiritual heritage, our perfect law of liberty.

With such a design we open the Book of the old Covenant and turn at once to the fact which makes this Hebrew people of such worth to us as the witness of Revelation. It is a history that stands alone in the past. A wandering herdsman of Semitic race leads his tribe from the Chaldean plains; [3/4] and after repeated migrations, and a long serfdom in Egypt, it is found a full grown people in a corner of the world near the Mediterranean Sea. It passes through the earlier form of a commonwealth into a brilliant oriental monarchy; and at last, after years of discord, of captivity under the changing empires of East and West, after the later hierarchy from the day of Ezra, it is broken in pieces, and becomes as at the first, a homeless and scattered race.

And what is it that makes this people of Israel so remarkable? Was it a leading power in the political or social history of that Eastern world? No. Egypt, Persia tower above it as Caucasus above an ant hill. Was it a teacher of mankind in ancient learning? No. India had its speculative wisdom, Greece its native growth in letters and arts, which have entered as "a possession forever" into the training of Europe. But this people was in a rude, half cultivated state, almost the scorn of the civilized nations with whom it came in contact; and its only classic literature, contained in the books of the old Testament, can hardly give it the fame of an intellectual race. The time is past, when our fanciful scholars were wont to derive all the treasures of natural and moral science from the principia of Moses. What is the secret of this history? It is, that in the keeping of this obscure Semitic family there was the knowledge of the one spiritual and living God. Look over the record of all the great nations of East or West; study the whole development of religious thought from the morning twilight of history out of which Abraham emerges with his family, and it is the witness of a universal Polytheism. The "wisdom of the Egyptian" led only to the worship of a divine power enshrined in the crocodile and the ibis; the races of Asia had every shape of superstition from the loftier adoration of sun and star to the grossest rites of the Syrian. The progress of nature-religion was, as has been fully traced by modern science, a slow and painful one from the first notion of fetish worship, the coarse Pantheism that identified God with tree, [4/5] river and brute, to the conception of a personal mind above nature. Yet it never reached the belief of the Divine unity; and still less the moral idea on which it rests. When St. Paul stood in Athens, in the latest time of its refined culture, he found only the altars of its marble gods and demi-gods. But here in this nook of Palestine we have the highest truth, which even the philosophic thought of a Plato grasped as a vague abstraction. It is no scientific monotheism; it is the religious faith of a people. God is the one, personal, living Jehovah. They claim to be His chosen in virtue of this belief; separate from all others, as witnesses and keepers of this one revelation.

We pause then, here, and ask what shall explain the anomaly? Whence came this primeval doctrine? Was it, as some of the earlier neologists maintained, a mysterious lore, imparted to the Hebrew leader by the priesthood of Egypt? Later criticism has entirely disproved that fancy, and shown that the mysteries of that ancient land were only a crude Pantheism, without the least likeness to the Hebrew doctrine. It must have been an original. No other people could have furnished it. There remains the favorite theory of our modern orientalists. It was, we are told, the stern ethical thought of the Semitic race, which led to this conception of the unity of God, while the Indo-Persic fancy revelled in its dream of Polytheism. But, unhappily for such theorists, these Hebrews stand alone among the Semitic people as monotheists; others of their stock held the grossest Baal worship; and the Arab, the cousin of the Hebrew, was a Pagan, until Mohammed borrowed from Jewish books his doctrine of the Divine unity. To complete the refutation, the Persian, who comes nearest the Hebrew in his ideas of a supreme God and his hatred of idols, was no Semite. Was it, again, the discovery of a Moses in the vision of his own solitary thought? It were to suppose, that in the dawn of the human intellect he could reach a height beyond any in the ripest age. [5/6] But besides, I repeat, it is no doctrine of a sage; it is the faith of a people. None could ever have imparted such a truth, unless there were a corresponding culture of the whole social mind. If there were still wanting evidence, it lies here, that this sublime revelation of the Jehovah, the "I am that I am," was from first to last above the religious level of the people themselves. The best Hebraist of our time has shown that before the day of Abraham, they were idolaters, believing in the gods of the hills and plains; and all along, in spite of the truth vouchsafed them, they were lapsing into idolatry; they set up the calf under the shadow of Horeb; they grieved the Most high with hill altars and images; and only by the sternest discipline was their faith preserved. One only key can unlock this riddle. We say with Muller, "how is the fact to be explained, that the three great religions of the world—Judaism, Mohommedanism, Christianity—in which the unity of the Deity forms the keynote, are of Semitic origin? We are content to answer that it was by a special Divine revelation."

But we must pass to the further view of this Hebrew polity. It has not only such a faith, but we find a social and religious structure upbuilt on it. The central feature is a code of moral law. We are told that God wrote it; is it worthy of him? We turn anew to the record. That Decalogue stands alone, rising like Sinai above the desert of ancient history. It teaches the being of the one, spiritual God; the strict exclusion of idol worship; the reverence of the holy name; the day of social rest; and last, as seems probable, among the religious commandments in the first table, the honour of parents. It teaches, again, the duties of man to man, a social ethics, not in scientific form, but embracing all the great relations of life. There is reared on this code the whole plan of a Divine commonwealth. At first glance, it seems indeed to contain much of childish admixture, a minute ceremonial of worship, feast-day, [6/7] fast-day, and purifying. But if we study it from the only true, the historic point of view, we find a perfect fitness to the development of this people. All these rites have their use; some directly religious, some like the rules of food, of washing, given for a sanitary purpose. Nor does the ritual ever hide the moral framework. Here is the first and purest type of a commonwealth in history; with its elective council of judges; its priesthood, strictly unlike any ruling caste of Oriental growth; its prophetic order, which, as has been strikingly shown, held the element of republican liberty; here is a basis of social distribution of land; provision for the poor, the widow, the stranger; here, while as with all early peoples slavery is permitted, a wholesome law guards it against perpetuity or abuse; and, everywhere, the spirit of a large, loving humanity redeems the barbarism which belongs to the time. We must so measure it, not by an ideal or a Christian standard; and in this light primitive history offers no comparison.

We pause again at this second step, and ask the origin of such a polity? Was it the sudden work of the Hebrew statesman in the wilderness? As well ask if one hand reared the pyramids. It were to suppose a miracle far greater than all which neology rejects. Nor is it reasonable to believe it borrowed, since our latest study proves that no other early nation could have lent it. Here or there a feature, as the rite of circumcision, may point to a common origin with Asiatic nations beyond this; but the whole structure of the decalogue and the national polity is original. We turn again to the modern solution. It is held to be the later romance of Hebrew writers, in the age when they wished to represent to Israel an ideal picture of the past. But this solution cannot explain it. Whatever the date of the Pentateuch, as a written compilation, there are in it primitive records so marked in their very character, as to be incapable of after invention. The Law itself not only [7/8] in the simple grandeur of its truth, but even in the form of the two stone tables; the early council of the seventy; the subordination of the priesthood, so unlike the later sacerdotal state; the division of clean and unclean meats; the Sabbath and the great sacrifices; all these are traceable to the primeval time. If the books, containing this polity, were lost in their complete form, we could construct the Mosaic system from these colossal remains, as a Cuvier constructed the mammoth from a few bones. But more than this, to think it the ideal romance of some later time of Ezra, is to suppose that after the commonwealth had passed into a priestly state, such a spirit of Hebrew freedom could have survived to describe it, or such a picture of the forgotten polity could have been accepted as Divine, and incorporated into the sacred books. No. A skeptical fancy never suggested a slenderer theory. Nothing save the fresh, primeval draught of the God taught artist could have been its original.

With such a study we may gather these unmatched facts together, and ask; nay, we demand their explanation, on any ground save that of special Revelation. It matters not to dispute of any secondary questions. It matters not whether the cosmogony of Moses can be harmonized with the results of science, or whether there be discrepancies in the historic record. They do not touch this inquiry. The Bible is not given to be a treatise of astronomy, or geology, and is not, therefore, to be weighed in any such scales, by either its critics or defenders; but it was meant to be the record of certain supernatural truths, the revelation of the one Maker and Ruler; of the fact of moral evil, the covenant of redemption, the history of Divine Law. I plant the argument there. If neology cannot overturn these foundations of supernatural fact, we have reason for the miracles which attend that long, splendid career of the Hebrew past; and older or newer unbelief will dash the surges of its assault against it in vain.

But from this central point we may now open at once [8/9] the whole character of that history. We go back to the night when Abraham stands in the solitary plain, and hears the Divine voice, "My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be father of many nations." It was the plan of God to redeem the world, and therefore He made this little people witness and keeper of the truth, on which the destiny of mankind must rest. There was no trivial purpose in the Providence, that chose an obscure corner of Judea, apart from the movements of the social world. We see its wisdom. It was so this people of God could be preserved, as in some sheltered bay, from the storms that swept over the vast ocean of Oriental life, wave on wave of a material civilization, a godless empire, each swallowed by its successor. We need not, with the narrow theory of many older Christian historians, look on the heathen world as having no place in the Divine plan; but rather recognize in each of the great kingdoms a step in that universal development, ripening at last in Christian civilization. India and Egypt gave their early science; Greece its immortal ideas, its art, its social freedom; Rome its fabric of law, which passed into the life of modern Europe. But we may none the less acknowledge in this Hebrew race the special deposit of that revelation, which was of more moment than all else to the progress of the world. In such a view the narrower features of this ancient polity have their true vindication. Such jealous severance from other nations kept alive the social and domestic virtues, the family bond of the children of Israel. Their ritual, Sabbath, feast-day and Temple were a grand symbolic history, as a pictorial Bible to the child, wherein they read the truths they could not yet grasp in their spiritual meaning. Yet, how striking the fact! even in this seeming superstition there is the absence of all idolatry. Who does not recall the story of the Roman general, as he tore aside the veil of the Temple, expecting to see some hidden God, and started back in wonder, at finding only a vast, vacant chamber? In comparison with all others, this Hebrew [9/10] religion was most spiritual. It was not yet time for the Gospel. It was the age of law. It was the father chastening his children. It was law, the schoolmaster, or in the truer reading, the paidagogus, the slave leading the child by the hand to Christ, training the wayward intellect, holding up the tables of moral duty to the popular conscience, winning by outward promises, scourging with outward penalties, making ready for the coming manhood of the world.

We reach thus the crowning feature of the system. It was the preparation day of Israel for Christ. If in any other light we study that history, it is an utter enigma. It cannot explain itself. That so unparalleled a development should take place in a corner of our earth, merely for the social growth of an insignificant race, is a harder marvel for neology than all Revelation claims. Christianity alone solves Judaism. The Hebrew religion, in the perfect image of Coleridge, is a transparency, dark and meaningless if seen from without, but place in it the lamp of Christianity, and each color, each line comes out in harmony. And thus this history is a prophecy, in a much nobler sense than many interpreters make it, who pry painfully into every exact Messianic detail of the record. We should study it by the large law of historic Revelation. That Messianic faith, so stamped on this people, was the assurance in the whole national mind of a destiny beyond themselves, as keepers of a divine truth; and as the decay of commonwealth and kingdom brought disappointment, it only grew stronger through captivity and death, till it became the fixed idea of the nation. The Hebrews lived in the time to come. Like their language, they had no present tense, only past and future. Their great error was, that they did not comprehend their history as a future beyond the national theocracy; and so, at last, the sacerdotal state of Ezra and the Maccabees became only a petrified institution. Yet with all their bigotry and Pharisaic tradition, they did their work, and when the new conditions [10/11] of a "better covenant" made them no longer needed, the Hebrew life passed away. But the structure remained, and yet remains, like those lower courses of stone which the traveller sees in the wall of Jerusalem, under the later pile of Christian or Saracen architecture, still pointing back to the day of a Solomon; it stands unmingled with the relics of ancient idolatry, unbroken amidst the changes of time or men.

Such is Judaism. As we thus study it, we recognize the purpose of God. Wonderful people! Where in the whole history of the past, is there one that has so shaped the course of civilization, as this race of Israel? Where in the universal empires, that have shaken the earth, from those who have left their half deciphered names on pyramid and temple to the Caesars, one so lasting as this? Where in the treasures of classic philosophy or letters, is there a gift like this single Book of the Hebrew Scriptures? Where a record of the primeval secrets of our human race, like the Genesis? Where such songs of praise and penitence as in that Psalter, which Luther called "A book of all saints," whose voice still rises as freshly as at the beginning under the roof of the Christian Temple? Where such majestic thought as in Isaiah; such tender grief and love as in Jeremy; such an utterance of faith, of spiritual freedom, as in that line of prophets, who cast the last sunset rays along the fading horizon of Israel? But more than all He who was born the Christ, the Godman, the Saviour, was of the lineage of David; a Jewish mother, blessed among women, nursed him; Jewish hearts loved him; and while the temple is fallen, the glory of the Son of God still hallows his cradle and his sepulchre.

It is, then, my brethren, no needless survey of this subject which we have taken; but every step has led us to the right view of the connection between Judaism and Christianity. We can impartially adjust that question. We need not fear the results of a true criticism. It will only remove superficial errors, it will teach us the real purpose [11/12] of the Hebrew Revelation as the record of these essential truths; and as we more and more study it in the spirit which I have urged, we shall learn its place in universal history. Nor is it only a question of the past, but it concerns our view of Christianity itself. Without it the religion of Jesus Christ becomes only a chapter of human development; with it, the one continuous law of all revelation is made clear. The historic roots of Christianity are there. The Hebrew past has given us what cannot fade away. Its faith in the one living personal God is ours; its decalogue abides in its moral truth; its ancient institutions, its circumcision and passover have been changed into our own by that social growth which brings the new out of the old. We have kept what is essential, is catholic, and put away what is local, national, transient. With our purer light, our spiritual freedom, we still look back in gratitude to that Hebrew dispensation; and in these latter days, when faith is too often opinion, and liberty license, the Law of Israel stands above us to teach the fear of God.

Yet we are fully to understand this historic fact of Christianity, and not mistake it for any traditional view. If the Gospel has its roots in Judaism, it is no Mosaism continued, no mere development of the Jewish system. It is "a new thing." The outward form of that system, its ritual, its sacrifice, its ministry, has no binding authority for us. Christ fulfils it in abrogating it. Let this principle be well defined. It marks the border line between the Gospel and the law. The historic growth of religion from Judaism is of worth to us, as witnessing the unity of Revelation, but it has no worth as the basis of a positive Christian code. Christ must interpret Moses, not Moses Christ. Yet, strange to say, though eighteen centuries have rolled away since Jesus spoke on the Mount, and a Paul rebuked the circumcisers to their face, there is still among us the leaven of the Pharisees. It is seen in our interpretation of the Scriptures. We have our divines, who, with the same Rabbinical minuteness seek [12/13] an occult sense under each vowel-point, hunt for mysteries in the breastplate of Aaron and the utensils of the Levites, and think to honour the Holy Word, with all its stately chapters of real history, by turning it into a holy anagram. But there is a worse vice than this. We have our ceremonial doctors, who lay down as Christian law, that all, even to the rites of Judaism, is binding unless specifically annulled; who quote the rule of tithe as authoritative, identify the Sabbath day with the Lord's day of the Resurrection, think a Christian worship modelled on the temple service and altar; nay, more, who, in defiance of the epistle to the Hebrews, quote high priest, priest and levite as the type of our three fold ministry; who change the ambassadors of Christ into a sacerdotal tribe, and the Holy Communion into a perpetual sacrifice. This is our Catholicity. This is our advanced Ritualism. My brethren, if this be Christianity, I marvel why I am here to preach for the conversion of the Jews. Why convert them? Better leave them, since we are travelling backward so fast, as the unchanged ideal which may always quicken our poor aspirations. If this be Christianity, then shut the book of the New Testament; it is a needless oracle; and let us take up again our weary march through the desert until we sit beneath the brows of Sinai, for the Messiah is not come and the Redemption is a dream. No, brethren, this is the Judaism, that fought at the beginning for mastery with the apostles, and must be conquered. This is our "concision." Let us hold fast the better inheritance. Ours is no Aaronic priesthood, but the ministry of the Son of God; ours no perpetual altar sacrifice, but a communion with him of whom that was the vanishing shadow; ours no local presence, but a worship of spirit and truth; ours no tradition of the elders, but the authority of Christ, who speaks by His living word to the personal faith and conscience of believers.

In that view I may well, at closing, address this society for the conversion of the Jews. We are, as members of [13/14] the universal church, seeking to bring the ancient race into the fellowship of their own Messiah. It is because we believe in Christianity as the kingdom of God, no local religion, no more theocracy, but one that breaks down all partition walls, that we can labour for such an end. I do not, therefore, ask whether they are yet to have a restoration to their own land, or what is to be the precise character of their future. Although I give due respect to the learned, who have so interpreted the prophecies, I cannot find any proof that the promise is more than one, conveyed under Hebrew imagery, of that Christian redemption which shall embrace mankind in one great family. Nay, to me the whole tenor of the New Testament points to a unity, where there is neither Jew nor Greek. Nor can I read otherwise the analogies of history. I know the seeming strength of the argument from the unchanged features, the strange identity of the Jewish race even through ages of exile. But it is a more indelible law, that no nation in the record of mankind, after it has done its specific work, has ever entered anew on another national career. Their moral identity is gone. The whole social character, the habits that once grew in the soil of Palestine, are uprooted. The religious faith itself has lost its living power, and has become little more than a cold monotheism. Yet here I confess that much is theory. He who makes the clouds of human history his chariot, will fulfil his plan. But instead of lessening our motive, I hold that the view I have given inspires us with a nobler hope. We have our labour for the sure future of Christ's own kingdom; and with it we have our debt to Israel, not only in the far past, but the debt we owe for a Christian injustice. Who does not look back with shame to that long record of wrong done to the guiltless children of a Caiaphas and a Judas, to the ages of persecution they have suffered at the hands of most Catholic kings, and of the Church which forgot the last legacy of forgiveness her Lord breathed from His cross? We thank God that day is gone. We labour to win their minds with [14/15] truth, and reach their hearts with love. It may be such a task shall be a slow one. It is not strange if their ancient pride of race, ennobled by the memories of suffering, shall long keep them apart from us. Yet the time shall come, blessed be the Lord God of Israel! when they shall see that their religion is not less, but greater in the fulfilment of Christianity; that the little throne of David and the local Messiah are but a narrow reading of their own prophecies; that to be the heralds of a civilization which covers the world, is a prouder faith than to be of an isolated and barren race; and then shall the veil at last drop from their hearts; and we and they be no longer aliens, but fellow-citizens with the saints in the one household of God.

TENTH ANNUAL REPORT.
JANUARY, 1869.
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Another year of labors and results in the work of gathering in the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and bringing them home to the fold of Jesus of Nazareth, has closed, and we are called upon to present the account of our work and its prospects.

Reserving the more specific statements for another place, the Board of Managers beg to bring before the attention of all interested in this Society's work, the fact that they are prepared to fully recommend the enlargement of that work, and the adoption of such measures as may tend to nationalize it where hitherto it has had but a local or Diocesan character. In other words, the Board would respectfully submit the proposition that this Society, when thus made general in character, and representing our whole Church in these United States, has claims of the same nature, and carrying the same weight of obligation as the work of our Foreign Missionary Board. Every argument, every word uttered in the interest of that important organization, applies with a peculiar and intensified force to the field of effort contemplated in the operations of this Society. The Church of Christ is a debtor first and chiefly to "the Jews." Of that race are the fathers, the giving of the Law, and the Covenants. Of that race, as concerning the flesh, "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." To that people was the Gospel of a crucified and risen Saviour first in order of time to be preached, "beginning at Jerusalem." From that people were summoned [16/17] the first Missionaries of the Cross, and from among them, too, in later time, have arisen some of the brightest lights that have illuminated and blessed the Christian Churchmen like Neander or Bishop Alexander, who, in the simplicity of their faith, the consecration of their profound learning, and the purity of their character and lives, have left a precious legacy to the Church of all ages and nations and tongues, and from whose graves there comes a loud call to the Church of Christ to give herself with renewed faith and energy, with an increased devotion and liberality to this great work.

But not to repeat arguments that must be familiar to every well-instructed Christian, the Board desire to mention some of the more special reasons for the enlargement and nationalizing of this Society's sphere of efforts, and particularly to commend them to earnest Christian consideration. And,

I. It is the evident duty of the Church to place herself in regard to the field of labor, in the right position with reference to the Divine promises, regardless of results. No matter, indeed, whether conversions to Christianity from Judaism be many or few. The God of Abraham will not cast off His chosen seed forever. The veil that is now upon their hearts, while Moses is read in their synagogues, shall one day be removed. The branch of the true olive, though for a season broken off, shall be grafted in again, and shall yet bear fruit. The children shall cry out again as their fathers did, "Hosanna to Him that cometh in the name of the Lord." Jerusalem shall be built, and in due time; we know not how, we know not when. Israel shall be gathered into the one true fold of Him of whom Moses and the Prophets did write. Look at the lessons appointed to be read for the service of today. There are the Promises. Is the Church afraid to trust God? Why shall she not place herself in the right position with regard to what are evidently the designs of the Divine mind, and take her station on the platform of the Divine Promise?

II. [18] Again, there is encouragement found for thus generalizing the effort of this Society in the evident willingness of the similar society in New York, for coalescing with the one here represented. The response which has been received to a proposition for nationalizing the work has been such as to lead us to believe that a union would lead to still further enlargement of means and influence.

III. Another fact here deserves consideration, viz., that of the whole receipts of our Treasurer as shown in last report, a little more than $950 or more than one-third came from without our Diocese. While this result may well provoke us to greater liberality at home, it serves to show that the work of the Society finds a responsive chord in other hearts abroad, at the same time giving us no uncertain hint as to the possibility of obtaining larger means with a more extended presentation of our claims than we have yet ventured upon.

IV. Again—An organization of a general character furnishes the greatest facilities for an increase of labors, the better management of the work and the employment of Missionaries as fast as the contributions may warrant. While, perhaps, some of our missionary organizations receive the half of what they need, still, the whole history of missions proves most clearly that a vast amount of money, time and effort are always wasted through lack of a wise concentration or too numerous and irresponsible instrumentalities. Let there be one large, well-appointed and vigorously alive association, having whatever it possesses of means and energy under well directed control, with what we might always presuppose i.e., reliance on the Divine favor, it will not have long to wait, before it can give a reason for its existence.

V. Again, we ask you to consider for a moment the many openings now presented for successful Missionary effort among the children of Israel in every large city of the world, and the vast increase of the Hebrew population in our nation. New York, Albany, Philadelphia, and [18/19] other Northern cities fairly swarm with them. They have their Jewish quarters nearly if not quite as much as Frankfort, Breslaw and Jerusalem. In New York, Chatham and other streets; in our own city, Second and Third streets are full of Jewish physiognomies of the eager eye and the eager inquiry after custom and trade so characteristic of their people, meet us at every step, characteristic largely because in many lands Christian persecution has made money to be the very life of the Jew. While God is multiplying the nation among us, shall not this Church increase the joy by using every legitimate means to turn their minds to the consolation of Israel?

VII. Again, look across the ocean and see how successful has been the London Society in its efforts for Jewish evangelization. Look how it has succeeded by representing the whole Church, not here and there a Diocese, but the whole Church in calling forth the clergies of the Anglican Church for this work. With the consciences of God's people thoroughly aroused; with her best and brightest minds enlisted in the work, a fresh breath of life seems to pervade the whole English Church, and results can be shown bearing a most gratifying proportion to efforts made in this field. Think of this one fact alone, that to-day there are more than one hundred and twenty clergymen in the Anglican Church and in our own Church who are of Hebrew descent and converts from Judaism. And yet that Society, which has been such a blessed instrument in cooperating with Jehovah, had its beginning in human weakness, nay, even amid prejudice and contempt, showing, in the second year of its existence, while representing nearly two millions of British Communicants, a smaller amount of contributions than the same work here representing hardly fifty thousand Communicants.

Shall not the American Church feel stimulated and encouraged by the example of the Mother Church to greater labors, greater diligence, and greater faithfulness, with the certainty, if she will but labor, of the same blessed results?

The Rev. L. C. Newman's report was presented to the [19/20] Board at its last meeting and contains the following resume of the year's proceedings which was read at the annual meeting of the Society:

RESUME OF THE YEAR'S PROCEEDINGS.

"As your missionary sends the details of his reports to your stated meetings, he now only gives a recapitulation of his proceedings for the entire year.

"Visits paid from January 1, 1868, to January 1, 1869, 350, including 33 visits paid in New York and Newark, N. J. During the same time I received 209 visits from 49 inquirers and unbelieving Jews, and from 56 converts.

"Books and tracts distributed during the year—Bibles, 9 (1 Dutch, 2 German, 3 in English, and 3 in Hebrew); Pentateuchs with Haphtorahs and Messianic selections of the Prophets, 15 copies; New Testaments, in Hebrew, 20; Parts of New Testaments, with Commentaries, in Hebrew, 34; Book of Common Prayer, in Hebrew, 11 copies; the Pilgrim's Progress, in Hebrew, 7 copies; The Old Paths, by Dr. McCaul, 3; 4880 pages of various Tracts in the German, Hebrew and English languages, all having a direct bearing on the controversies between the Jewish and Christian religion, and Jesus as the Saviour of Israel.

"During the past year I baptized two children of converts. These, I trust, will be educated in the truth of Christianity, which they would not have been had not their fathers foresworn the Jewish faith.

"In conclusion, your missionary would repeat his remarks in last year's report, that the real results of his efforts are only known to Him who beholds the secrets of the heart—may He grant the increase—may He hasten the redemption of Israel, and appear to them gloriously in these latter days, and may we be ready to take the children of the Lord's ancient people and carry them in our arms to the Saviour of sinners, that they may be washed from their guilt and shame, and adorned with the robes of righteousness, and the garments of salvation. Amen."

CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIETY.

I.

This Society shall be called the Protestant Episcopal Association for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews.

II.

Subscribers of two dollars or more per annum shall be considered members, and a payment of twenty dollars at one time shall constitute a life member.

III.

The officers shall be a President, Vice-Presidents, twelve Managers, a Treasurer and Secretary, who shall be elected by the members of the Society at the annual meeting in January, and shall have charge of all its affairs, appoint its missionaries or other agents, and make, from time to time, by-laws for their own government.

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