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The New Zealand Evangelist

Germany.—The Jews

Germany.—The Jews.

The German Jews have always participated very much of the spirit that has reigned in the Christian Church. When the Spirit of God breathed in the Church, the Jews also inquired into the truth of the Word of God; but when infidelity spread amongst the Christians, the Jews became infidels like their neighbours. I can scarcely say that I have ever met a Jew in Berlin that believed in the Divine authority of the Old Testament; and in a pamphlet lately issned by the Rabbi, or,—as he would call himself, by the minister of the Reform party of the Berlin Jews, the following sentences occur:—“We believe that the frist three chapters of Genesis are but a myths. We do not believe, therefore, that God created in seven days the heavens and the earth.— We are ready, with the majority of our countrymen, to adopt the first day of the week instead of the seventh. We do not wait for a personal Messiah,—equality of political and civil rights is the Messiah we are looking for. We believe that we have been dispersed among the nations, not because the wrath of God is abiding on us, but rather in order to lead these Gentiles to the only one God.” All the press is in the hands of Jews, or in their pay; and for years they have led public opinion, and all their teaching has been directly or indirectly that the wretch must be crushed, and Christianity must be destroyed. Christians have given them the page 209 sharpest weapons to fight against the gospel; and a minister of the Established Church in Germany went even so far as to declare that there was no difference between Christian and Jewish ministers. Hence it comes that they preach openly that the time will soon come when all men will become Jews, and the wild branches of Christianity will be cut off; and it is very possible that all that believe that it is not necessary for a Jew to be circumcised, nor for a Christian to be baptized, will unite, and jointly make a stand against the gospel. Would that the Jews hated Christianity; no, what is worse, they despise it, and contempt is even worse than hatred. Remarkable it is, that at the same time Austria with its ten thousand of Jews is opening just now, no doubt in answer to the prayers of Christians that have been offered up, one might almost say for centuries. There are two hundred thousand Jews in Hungary; in Bohemia, the cradle of the Reformation, where the Hussites were so dreadfully persecuted,—there are ten thousand of Jews who have never heard the sound of the gospel; know nothing of Christianity, but that they have been continually oppressed, persecuted, burdened, with high taxes, and calumniated, and have seen nothing of Christianity, but the abominable and idolatrous practices of the Romish Church.