He assured me that ten times the number of missionaries now labouring in Poland and Silesia might find full scope for their energies in cultivating that extensive and hopeful field. The opinion prevails that the Jews present a hopeless field for missionary culture, but there are many things leading us to a contrary conclusion.
God hath not cast off his people, if, with the Apostle, we believe that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him; and if we search amongst the Jewish people, we may find luany like their fathers, who bowed not the knee to Baal; many like the godly Jews of former days— men like Simeon, 'just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.'
I felt much interested in a description given to me by Pastor Boerling, of one of his acquaintances, an aged Rabbi, who, like Anna the prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser, departed not from the temple, ' but served God with fastings and pravers night and day.' Regularly at the hour of midnight was that aged patriarch to be found in the synagogue making confession and supplication unto God. He was accidentally overheard on one occasion by Mr Boerling, and he repeated to me the prayer, which a retentive memory enabled him to recall. While I listened to it, I thought I saw before me Daniel when he set his face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes. The spirit was the thronged with Jews in their gabardines ready to turn an honest penny by exchanging the foreign money of travellers for the coin of the realm, and trying thus while serving the traveller to make their plack a bawbee as many a Scotsman does by honest trading, the stranger may find reason to conclude that there is nothing surprisame, the expressions similiar to those which characterised the prayer presented by that prophet, and recorded in the 9th chapter of the book which bears his name: —
'O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; we have sinned and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments; neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, OUT princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land... O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee... O my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; deftr not, for thine own sake, O my God; for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.'
This Rabbi led an abstemious life. On one occasion, when offered a little wine he declined. In a short but thrilling reply (to which I cannot do justice in a translation), he stated his reasons for acting thus: — 'I read,' said he, 'that wine makes glad the heart of man; and 1— can I be joyful while the city of the Lord is trampled under foot? Can I be joyful while the name of Jehovah is blasphemed? Can I be joyful while the people of God, having turned their back upon the Lord, are weltering in sin? ' Is not this the spirit expressed by the Psalmist,—' If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If T do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave unto the roof of my mouth: if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.'