have been banished from their own country, and are scattered among all nations, as a punishment for their unbelief and sin. It is therefore plain, that although the Jews had once the true religion, and although they still hold the truth that 'there is no God but one', yet now their doctrine is mixed with error and their religion with unbelief.

Their rejection, then, of Christ, and the divine truth He offered them, was a national crime which a righteous God could not but visit with a condign national punishment. Scarcely forty years elapsed after that crime ere God's judgements overtook the Jewish nation in such a manner, that the towns and villages of their land were destroyed, their temple was burnt, Jerusalem was made a heap of ruins, most of their men were slain by the sword, or perished by famine and disease, and the remainder, with the women and children, were scattered to the four quarters of the globe. This was not done by Christians, but by the heathen Romans, whom God employed as the instruments of His vengeance. Since that time until now the Jews have remained without government and country of their own, frequently oppressed and generally despised by all the nations among whom they are sojourning as strangers.

The number of Christians meanwhile steadily increased everywhere; though fiercely opposed by the Jews up to the destruction of Jerusalem, and afterwards relentlessly persecuted for several centuries

longer by the Roman emperors, who had cause, from the rapid spread of the new faith, to fear for idolatry, the religion of the State.

There were then two monotheistic religions face to face, the Jewish and the Christian; the former (evidently no longer the same with that which anciently bore its name) but powerless, lifeless, productive only of the dead works of an outward legality, substituting a multitude of ritual observances for a living and loving faith; deprived of its sanctuary, its divinely-ordained services and priesthood, yet failing to discern that the time for those services was gone by; professed by a dismembered people, still boasting of ancient privileges, yet unable to make any converts in the many countries over which they were scattered; the latter, or the Christian religion, on the contrary, full of life and power; leading men from a course of sin to a life of holiness; transforming self-righteous Pharisees into humble and honest believers; enabling the selfish to yield up their possessions and their life for the good of others; imparting heavenly wisdom to the unlettered, and undaunted courage to the timid; spreading from city to city, from country to country; emptying the temples of the idols, extinguishing the fire on their altars, gaining converts by its heart-conquering power from amongst the poor and the rich, the simple and the learned, and, in less than three centuries, mounting even upon the throne