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the bud close to it that will bear fruit. The process of taking away these lateral shoots, simple as it may appear, requires skill; in unskilled hands this also would injure the tender bud. Our Father is the husbandman-the vine dresser. In due time-that is, the succeeding year, these buds put forth their strength; but, if there had been no taking away from the fruit-bearing branch, two evils result―(a) the ripening may be incomplete, and (b) the vigour of the branch is impaired; the issue of which would be either no fruit at all, or a very meagre produce. We admit the skill, the wisdom of our Vinedresser ; can we trust Him? The uninitiated perhaps marvel at the ruthless knife of him who prunes the natural vine; their knowledge is at fault; let us bow the head and worship when our heavenly Vinedresser seems mercilessly to cut away so that we bleed at every pore. Is the Vine no sufferer? "In all their afflictions He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them."

Two theories have been advanced concerning this taking away :

1st. That we should read, "every branch that beareth not fruit in Me He taketh away." This involves the absurdity that a branch not in Christ may bear heavenly fruit. Hence it must be rejected.

2nd. That this taking away, means that such are removed from the earth. This theory is contrary to facts; they are not taken away. Hence we reject this also.

Of the two different parties, it is said that one bears fruit, has something taken from it, and bears more fruit, abiding in Christ. Of the other it is said to bear no fruit, is taken entirely away, and so abideth not in Christ.

The meaning of this taking away must be gathered from the consideration of what abiding in Christ is. "Abide" is a precise rendering of the original, and it means "continue to dwell." Now one cannot continue where he has never been; therefore, one in Christ is here contemplated. But in what sense is it that Christ says, "Abide in Me?" Does it mean, "Go not away from Me into perdi

tion?" Not so; "I am persuaded," says Paul, by the Spirit," that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Then it must mean something else, and we think that abiding in Christ means keeping His commandments, maintaining communion with Him, delighting ourselves in Him. It is the resulting peaceful, happy state, then, from which the Father takes away; this secondary abiding in Christ-as it may be termed-cannot be maintained except we bear fruit. It might be objected that it is rather a consequence of our conduct than a decree of the just God. God is the author of consequences as well as of causes. "I will harden Pharaoh's heart," said God, but the hardening was the natural issue of disobedience.

This abiding in Christ has certain privileges. He searcheth hearts, and thus knows the mind of our spirit, and maketh intercession accordingly. He knoweth the mind of the spirit of one who is "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord:" there is much perhaps that such know not, but He knows and pleads effectually, not forgiveness, for there is no commission of sin probably, but for loving favour towards these upright ones; whereas for those who bear no fruit, there are no "kisses of His mouth," but intercession between them and the just displeasure of His Father and their Father; and this perhaps only until the afflicting rod can no longer be withheld, but to the great loss of the

offender.

"Every branch in Me that beareth fruit, He taketh from it that it may bear more fruit." Here it is impor tant to observe that the part taken away is itself fruit-bearing; ; so that what the heavenly Husbandman takes away is not what is evil, but what is good; still, more good results from the taking away than from being left. To use again a gardening expression "it is stopped back." By this " taking from," then, we are to understand the various kinds of

afflictions with which our Father is pleased to visit us, as sickness, loss of effects, &c.: thus is our fruitfulness increased.

Another and an amazing privilege is thus expressed by our Lord, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done for you." (Ver. 8.) 0, amazing grace! What will you? To succeed well in business? To prosper in any worldly undertaking? To get a good living? These are all promised in that word, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." There are, however, many good things in the life of a child of God summarised under "the fear of the Lord." For these good things ask boldly, and " you shall receive," says our Lord, "that your joy may be full." There was an earthly sanctuary recognised by Jehovah, so there are earthly joys sanctioned by Him: these we may ask for, and His delight is to give, but we must trust Him for the time, the manner, and the measure.

To walk with God is no holiday pastime. It involves great trials of faith and patience, but it has joys all its own-"joy unspeakable." If any will walk with God, let him make no conditions of exemption from sorrows, from thorns which rend the flesh, from wounds which mortify, and appliances which cauterise. If he plans, there is disappointment; if he builds, there may be ruin; if he plants, there may be blight. Leave all to God, but do what He bids; and then one may say with David, "I shall not be moved." Clifton.

W. HOWELL.

THE FANCIED MOUNT SINAI. THE following short article, which appeared in The Globe of the 18th ult., is so thoroughly in accordance with our own view, that we gladly reproduce it, by way of warning to our readers not to be easily led astray by the reports of the so-called discovery.

"Startling news has come to us from Cairo. According to the telegraph, Dr. Beke, the Eastern traveller, has at last discovered the true Mount Sinai.' Others before him had gone on the mission, and with the same result.

They all discovered 'the true Mount Sinai.' It is true Dr. Beke's mountain is accurately described, and we ought to have no doubt that Dr. Beke has at

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length solved a question long in dispute among travellers and biblical scholars. The true Mount Sinai' is one day's journey north-east of Akaba; it is called by the Arabs Jabel el Nur, or Mountain of Light; its height is 5,000 feet. The fact that the mountain the Doctor has seen, is 5,000 feet high, and only a day's distance from Akaba, is in itself in favour of Dr. Beke's view. That this mountain should be called the Mountain of Light by the people in its neighbourhood should be conclusive. Unfortunately, however, when we heard Dr. Beke had started from England to discover the true Mount Sinai, we knew beforehand he would accomplish what he had set his mind upon. Those who have done so before him have regarded themselves as equally fortunate. The search of a man predetermined to succeed in such a matter is invariably successful. The truth is, notwithstanding the distance of the mountain from Akaba, and its height, and the name it goes by, and the remains of sacrificed animals found on its summit, the telegraph should have informed us, not that' Dr. Beke has found the true Mount Sinai,' but that Dr. Beke has seen a mountain he resolved to regard as the true Mount Sinai.' Before the claims of the sacred Mount that for centuries has attracted pilgrims from all parts of the world can be disallowed in favour of another, a hundred miles distant, the world will require proofs impossible to be now given."

THE DEATH-BEDS OF CHRIST
REJECTING JEWS.

WE would rather not have made the
awfully solemn scenes of this head-
ing the subject of an article. The
presiding genius, however, of the Bell
Lane Jewish Free School Organ, of
the 20th ult., has been indulging his
splenetic virulence against a statement
of positive truth on the subject, alluded
to in our last issue by one of our ablest
and most accurate contributors.
feel compelled therefore to take up
the implied challenge-notwithstand-
ing the vituperative diatribes and
coarse language in which it was
thrown down-to furnish, God willing,

We

in our next issue, a full and particular account of the teaching of modern Judaism about death, purgatory, transmigration of souls, the subterranean rolling to Jerusalem for the resurrection, prayers for the dead, &c. &c. &c. The information will be as much for the benefit of our Gentile Christian readers as for such illinformed Jews as conduct the Bell Lane Free School print.

We shall at the same time take the opportunity of pointing out from the statements of that veracious (?) Weekly the truthfulness of another of our correspondents respecting the one idea of a certain class of Jewish unbelievers.

66

"

THE JEWISH REPRESENTATIVES IN THE NEW HOUSE OF COMMONS. IT is a somewhat, interesting coincidence that the Israelitish members of Parliament recently elected consist of equal numbers of Hebrew Christians and nominal Jews. Only the former count the first Lord of the Treasury at their head.

Correspondence.

ST. STEPHEN'S SPEECH BEFORE THE SANHEDRIM.

22, Westbourne Square, Feb. 19th, 1874. DEAR SIR,-At the suggestion of my friend Mr. McCaul, I write for your mind on a passage upon which I am now engaged, i.e., St. Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrim.

In Genesis, we read that Jacob bought a piece of ground of the sons of Hamor, &c. Now I understand by "the father of Shechem," the lord or founder of Shechem, taking Shechem as the name of a place; and that for these reasons: (1) It is tautological to speak of the sons of Hamor and then to mention Shechem if he had been one of these sons. (2) It is not the wont of the Hebrew writers to name a father from a son, but a son from a father. It is David the son of Jesse, Abner the son of Ner; not Jesse the father of David, Ner the father of Abner. (3) In the first book of Chronicles, chaps. ii. and iv., passim, "father of " is used in the sense of the lord or builder of a place; and so I take it to be here.

Then arises another question: Who

were the Beni-Hamor? My belief is, that it is but another name for the Amorites. In support of this theory I note that Josephus and the LXX. call Hamor Εμμωρ, not Εμμωρ. On the other hand whilst the Egyptian tablets speak of Cheta and the Amor, the Hittites and the Amorites, euneiform inscriptions spell this latter name Hamor. Stronger evidence still is the last verse but one of Joshua: though the Hebrew reads, "Children of Hamor the father of Shechem," the LXX. reads, "the Amorites who dwelt in Shechem." I may add that Lachmann, on purely critical grounds, reads the verse in the Greek, τῶν υἱῶν του Έμμωρ τῶν ἐν Σηχεμ—a place and

not a person.

My object in writing to you is to obtain your judgment on my theory, and to ask you especially as to the Targum on Joshua, and whether it supports the view of the LXX. or no; and whether you, out of Rabbinical stores, can throw any light on this. If Beni-Hamor be Amorites, then if Abraham bought land in Shechem, he must have bought it of them, the same as Jacob afterwards did. Pray forgive my troubling you. I am, yours truly,

Replies.

WM. DENTON.

THE LAND OF SINIM.

MY DEAR DR.,-In attempting to meet the wishes of your correspondent, T. H. B., we shall submit for his consideration, the different views entertained respecting the country termed

D by the prophet Isaiah, xlix. 12. Jewish tradition supposes that country to be the south land of Egypt, Pelusium, which means marsh town: the Arabic name, Tena, signifying a marsh. Had Pelusium been meant by the prophet, we may safely conclude that the translators of the Septuagint version of the Bible, who were Jews resident in Egypt, would have known that Pelusium was meant by Sinim, and not "the land of the Persians," as rendered in their version. There were cities not far distant from the residence of the prophet, bearing the name of I'D Sin, but none of them is agreeable to the context. Dr. A. Clarke renders the word bushes: "And from the land of bushes!!" To say the least of it, this is a most unsuitable version, and

unsupported by critical authority. The Hebrew word for bush is a distinct word,, seneh, a thorn-bush, a sense which cannot be admitted here.

Lexical authors of the highest critical authority, seem unanimous in taking

,the land of Sinim ארץ הסינים the

to be China. "The land of Sinim, supposed to be China, which is in the East, in opposition to P, which appears to imply the West." (S. Newman, Heb. Lex., p. 331.) An authority of considerable weight in the decision of this question is that of Dr. Gesenius, whose able note we quote in extenso from his Hebrew Lexicon. "The land of Sinim, Isa. xlix. 12, where the context implies a remote country situated in the eastern or southern extremity of the earth. I understand by Sinim, the Sinenses, Chinese, and their country is Sina, China. This very ancient and celebrated people was known to the Arabians and Syrians by the name, Sin, Tehin, Tsini; and a Hebrew writer might well have heard of them, especially if sojourning in Babylon, the metropolis, as it were, of all Asia. This name appears to have been given to the Chinese by other Asiatics; for the Chinese themselves do not employ it, and seem indeed to be wholly destitute of any domestic name, either adopting the names of the reigning dynasties, or ostentatiously assuming high-sounding titles, as Tchung-Kue-tchin, people of the empire in the centre of the world. But when this name was thus given them by other nations, and whence it was derived, is matter of question. If the opinion of those writers be correct, who suppose the name D, Sinim, Senenses, to come from the dynasty Thein, which ascended the throne in 246 B.C. (see Du Halde, Descr. de la Chine t. i. § 1; Abel Remusat, Melanges Asiatiques, ii., p. 334, seq.), then a Hebrew writer even so late as the age of Cyrus could not have mentioned this name. But to say nothing of the people called Tschinas, and spoken of in the laws of Menu,* the authors of the above

* The objection raised to this view on the ground alleged-that the name China was derived from the Thsin dynasty, which commenced 246 B.C., is disposed of by the fact that Chin, China, is mentioned in the Institutes of Menu, which were composed twelve hundred years before Christ (Sir W. Jones), or at the lowest computation, nine hundred years B.C., about the age of Homer (Mr.

opinion themselves concede that the name of this dynasty may have become widely known among foreign nations long before it acquired the sovereign power over all China. Nor are there wanting other methods of explaining the name. In the Chinese language Tchin denotes men; why, now, may not foreigners have applied to them the very name by which they have designated themselves and other men? and especially so the Hindus, among whom the name Tchina is found in the books of the Buddhists.- Klaproth's Asia. Polyglotta, p. 538."

Since this question has been so ably discussed by Dr. Gesenius, most of the commentators, as Delitzsch affirms, and also such orientalists as Langles (in his Recherches Asiatiques), Movers (in his Phoenicians), Lassen (in his Indische Alterthumskinde, i. 856-7), have decided in favour of this opinion. "The name Chin," says Newman, the eminent Sinologist, "did not obtain currency for the first time from the founder of the great dynasty Tsin; but long before this, Tsin was the name of a feudal kingdom of some importance in Shen-si, one of the western provinces of the Sinese land. Fei-tse, the first feudal king of Tsin, began to reign as early as 897 B.C. It is quite possible, therefore, that the prophet may have heard of the land of the Sinese in the far east, and this is all that we need assume; not that Sinese merchants visited the market of the world on the Euphrates (Movers and Lassen), but only that information concerning the strange people, who were so wealthy in rare productions, had reached the remote parts of the east through the medium of commerce, possibly from Ophir, and through the Phoenicians." We assume it to be highly probable, through the aid of philology, that there had been commerce between China and India at an early period. The Hindustani word for sugar is chin-i, this produce being evidently named from chin, china, whence it seems to have been first brought to India; as sugar-candy is called misr-i, apparently from Misr, Egypt, whence it had been brought.* In the old Sanscrit language,t china means, not only the people of that distant land, but

Elphinstone). The name, therefore, must have been known by other Asiatics long before the times of the prophet. *Vide Shakespear's Hind. Dict. † Vide Benfey's Sansc. Dict., sub. voc.

cloth is so named, perhaps from its being brought from China to India.

It is stated by an objector* that "the seer on the streams of Babel certainly could not have described any exiles as returning home from China, if he had not known that some of his countrymen were pining there in misery, and I most positively affirm that this was not the case." In the first instance, this rationalistic objector appears from these terms to assume that the seer had been what his school is pleased to term the pseudo-prophet Isaiah, who has clothed his history with a prophetic garb. This is an example which may be classed with what are termed "unhistorical fictions," of which the rationalistic school is so prolific. The prophet Isaiah had in vision the future spread before him, and saw, in prophetic vision, many of his countrymen scattered among the isles of the west, and in the countries of the far east, and predicted of their return to their own father-land. As to the negative conclusion arrived at by Egli and so decidedly stated, it is equivocally expressed. It may mean, that there were none of the sons of Israel in China, which sense would ignore all historic notices we have of many of that people having dwelt for ages in that far distant land; or we may take these terms to mean, that there were some of that people dwelling in China, but not "pining in misery.' And such was the case: during a long period of their exile they were not "pining in misery," so far as outward circumstances were concerned; but, no doubt, there would be an inward longing to return to their father-land. And who does not know the greatness of that love the Jews have for their own country, the land of the Lord, which was the glory of all lands? The feeling is natural, and to encourage their hope the prophet gave utterance to the prophecy under discussion.

It is almost needless to state, that many of the sons of Israel are at present residing in China and Malabar. Doubtless many English readers have read of the visit of Dr. C. Buchanan to their settlements in that far country. He found them divided into two classes, the black and the white Jews. The former had become dark, perhaps, from long residence in the country, and partly, no doubt, by mixed marriages with the natives. It is ascertained

* Egli.

from the records of their own history and of their nation, that their settlement in that distant land had been from the time of the Babylonish captivity to a comparatively recent period. The white Jews date their removal to China, among their dusky brethren, from the time when Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. The account given of their wanderings to the far east seems not in the least improbable, when we consider that many of that unhappy people fled into Egypt during the Babylonish captivity, where they received an asylum from King Pharaoh; and that many of them took refuge in Arabia, and settled there. Others were brought by Nebuchadnezzar, during the siege of Tyre, and settled in Spain; others fled into Persia, and through Persia to the far east, where they are at present to be found in considerable numbers. Whether their records originally engraven on copper plates, &c., are true or fictitious, it does not ignore the fact, that many of that exiled people are residing in Cochin China, and have been there for ages, whose numbers have been increased by certain tribes of Jews from Spain and other places from time to time, who had heard of their prosperity.

In conclusion, to satisfy the inquiries of your correspondent, so far as our limited space will allow, we beg to inform him, that in that most interesting research to discover the local habitation of the lost ten tribes of Israel, the American Indians have been fixed upon as being identified with that long lost people, but upon the slightest and most inconclusive grounds. In the absence of all authentic historic testimony as to the origin of a people, if there be any linguistic remains left by the primitive settlers in their adopted country, these may in most cases supply us with a clue to the country whence they had emigrated. This is just the kind of proof we are supplied with from the alphabetic characters employed in the ancient monumental writings found in Central America. On a review of all the ancient alphabets employed among the primitive Oriental nations, we find the completeness of the identity between the ancient American alphabetic characters and those of the hieroglyphics of Egypt, supplies strong presumptive evidence of one common origin of the two peoples. I remain,'yours faithfully, East Pontop.

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