As I said this, I offered him the Book of Psalms in Hebrew, which I had with me, and opening it at the thirty-second Psalm, asked if he could read it. He read it immediately and with facility. Do you understand it well? I asked him. Not a single word, he answered. My father, who is a rabbi, taught me, indeed, to read, but he did not instruct me farther. will then explain it to you, I returned. I then expounded line by line, the sense of the Psalm, bringing out from it the doctrine of the salvation of the soul through grace by faith in the mercy of the Lord, in the gift and by the work of the Messiah.

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The Tradesman.-That is not what our rabbies tell us. The Missionary.-I also am a rabbi, but a spiritual rabbi, that is, in the meaning and the spirit of Scripture. I did not always believe in the Messiah, but I believe in him now. Yes, I believe, according to the prophets, in the covenant of grace, in a Messiah promised from the beginning of the world, and I am sure that Jesus Christ is that Messiah.

The traveller made a contemptuous movement with his mouth, but I continued, by referring to what Isaiah says of the man of grief.-And if you like to see the fulfilment of this important prophecy, read this, I said, offering him a New Testament open at the sixth chapter of the gospel of St. John. See what Jesus Christ said of himself to the Jews.

That is the Christians' book, he answered. I have never read it. And he began to read the chapter indicated, and then the following, evidently with interest. Where did you buy this book? he then asked. At Heidelberg, I replied, three or four days ago. The Tradesman.-Ah! that is well.

I must pass through it during the week, and I will buy one also. The Missionary.-You desire to read it, then! Now, if you can promise me to read it every day, at least a little, as much as you may be able, I will gladly present you with this volume.

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engage to do so, he said warmly.-But no,-I cannot promise; my father, should he discover it, would

turn me out of doors. However, yes, I think I will read it in my room in the morning, before I go down. Yes, I give you my promise.

I then gave him the volume, which he received, thanking me much; and when he left me, about an hour afterwards, he renewed his promise in the most sincere tone.

The Child of Abraham.—I doubt not that he kept it. He was struck with what Jesus said to the Jews, and God may have opened his heart as he did mine, and have revealed to him that Jesus is the Messiah.

The Missionary.-I delight to hear you thus express your faith. This reminds me that some years since, being in a town in Scotland, I met there a Jew who had been converted to Christianity about two years before. I was desirous to know if his faith was the same as that which the Lord had given me, and I asked him what he thought of Jesus three years before? I looked upon him, he answered, as an impostor. And now, I added, what do you believe about him? He is, he said, the Messiah, the very Son of God.

This confession of faith, which is also mine, was exactly that which the apostle Simon Peter made, and I saw, indeed, that there is but one only faith.

But wishing also to know if this disciple believed the whole witness of God, I said to him: And, pray, are you certain that you are a child of God? Whoever, he replied, and as if surprised at such a question, believes that Jesus is the Messiah, is born of God, and he knows, says Saint John, that eternal life abideth in him.

The Child of Abraham.-It is so! Faith in Christ is the gift of the Father; to possess this gift is to possess what is in Christ. He who has Christ has life, and that is why your preaching so rejoiced my mind.

This true child of Abraham then presented me with a copy of his Hebrew translation of the New Testament; I was pleased to read in it the same verse he had just quoted, (1 John v. 1,) where the word Messiah, in Hebrew, is put for that of Christ in French or

English. I read it also in the reply of Martha to Jesus, (John xi. 27,) "I believe that thou art the MESSIAH." It is the faith of the elect of God, said a person present, and there is no other. But this faith must be in the heart, must it not?

The Missionary.-Divine faith is nowhere else. To know a thing and say it, is often very different from believing in it and trusting in it. Therefore Scripture does not say: Whoever knows or says, but whoever believes, that Jesus is the Messiah, has life in his name. This is what Saint John declares, (xx. 31,) and blessed be God, who has given us this faith of such great price!

A prayer to the Father of all mercy concluded the conversation. The family separated, and the Missionary on leaving them, said to them: May they be one, our good Lord prayed, as the Father and he are one! B. E. M.

Reviews.

Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Minister of St. Peter's Church, Dundee. By the Rev. Andrew A. Bonar. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co.

THE apostolic maxim, that "no man liveth to himself," is descriptive of a great fact in the history of man. By means of that reciprocal dependence which binds mankind to each other, each one contributes more or less to the formation of the character, and thereby to the shaping of the destiny of those with whom he comes into contact. Serious as is this fact, it is a yet more startling truth, that the salutary or the pernicious influence which an individual has set into operation, is often rather accelerated than retarded, by his departure from the stage of life. His character survives when he is gone, and the contagion of his example continues to exert a posthumous influence when his name is forgotten. The illustration which the his

tory of the most eminent and powerful actors in society affords to these remarks, would lead us to an awful train of reflection. The course of many men of genius has resembled those malignant comets which track their brilliant but wayward path across the heavens, leaving behind them their pestilential influence long after they have vanished out of sight. The career of others, however, may in its beneficent results be compared to the course of the sun, who, when he has performed his diurnal journey, perpetuates his kindly ministry through the reflected brightness of "the lesser lights" of heaven.

To the catalogue of good and wise men, who "being dead yet speak" with a voice even more impressive than they commanded in life, by an unerring but mysterious Providence, the name of Robert Murray M'Cheyne has been added. Eminently useful as he was in life, we question whether the moral influence which the record of his character and labours will continue to exert, will not equal the good he effected when he moved among the living. His brief but most interesting course reads an impressive lesson to all "who name the name of Christ;" but especially to "the ambassador for Christ." Mr. M'Cheyne was born at Edinburgh, on the 21st of May, 1813. Constitutionally of an affectionate and tender disposition, his heart was the home of all the tranquil and domestic affections, and his fertile imagination luxuriated in scenes of soft and placid beauty. To one so gentle and loving, the death of a congenial and endeared brother was an event of peculiar and crushing distress; but by the grace of Him who "worketh all in all," it was the means of giving the first impulse to his religious feelings. Having "lost his loved and loving brother, he began to seek a Brother who cannot die." When he had emerged out of the mists and shadows which often hover over the mind of a young convert, into the sunshine of Christian confidence, the developement of his spiritual character was rapid and symmetrical. The frontal and predominant trait of his religion was the

ardent, adoring, absorbing love of the unseen Saviour. This was the stem which sustained "the fruits of the Spirit," which clustered around it with extraordinary ripeness and beauty-the master-passion which subordinated all the energies of his intellect and heart to the cause of Christianity. His life was truly and emphatically "life in earnest ; and few ministers of the Gospel have descended into the grave with higher tokens of the Divine smile, or with such sincere and widely-felt lamentation on the part of the survivors. He sunk under an attack of fever on the 25th of March, 1843.

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The record of Mr. M'Cheyne's life has been ably drawn by his congenial and attached friend Mr. Bonar. No Christian can rise from the perusal of it unimproved. It is unquestionably one of the most interesting and stimulating biographical narratives of the present age, and is worthy of a place on the same shelf with the Memoirs of H. Martyn, C. Wolfe, and T. Spencer. The "Remains" occupy the greater portion of the volume. They open with a selection of his letters, which are of the same stamp as those of the well-known Rutherford, whom he resembled in several points of his spiritual character. His pastoral epistles are peculiarly worthy of attention, for the point and fervour of his exhortations, and the insight they afford into his heart. A selection of his sermons follows his letters. The reader will be disappointed if he expects to find in them any elaborate discussion of doctrine or ingenious defence of truth. Mr. M'Cheyne was too much engrossed by his parochial, and evangelistic labours to find the leisure, and toomtent on the salvation of his hearers to have the incination to unravel “the cobwebs of controversy." The value of theological literature, however, is not to be always estimated by its skill in dialectic warfare. Mr. M.'s sermons bear in every page the impress of his exalted piety, his fervent imagination, and his intense earnestness. The tract entitled, "Our Duty to Israel," which accompanies this number of "The Jewish Herald," is a characteristic specimen of the style of his pulpit compositions, and merits the attention of all Christians.