bour, and trust ye not in any brother; for every • brother will utterly supplant, and every neigh'bour will walk with slanders.' No description can convey ideas of more deplorable obliquity and degeneracy of character. The eighth chapter of Ezekiel contains a most affecting account of the wickedness of the Jews about the same period. In that inimitable prayer of the prophet Daniel, recorded in Daniel ix., we see how deeply that holy man was affected with the sins of his people. The same thing appears after their return from the Babylonian captivity. (Ezra ix. 4.) Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgressions of those that had been carried away; and I sat ' astonished until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my • heaviness, and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out

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my hands unto the Lord my God, and said, O,

my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up

'my face unto thee, my God; for our iniquities

' are increased over our head, and our trespass is 'grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of

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our fathers have we been in a great trespass

' unto this day; and for our iniquities have we,

our kings, and our priests, been delivered into 'the hands of the kings of the lands, to the 'sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to a con

fusion of face, as it is this day.' The concluding book of the canon of the Old Testament shows, that the children of Judah were not better at that time than in the days of the more ancient prophets.

Let us now hear the testimony of David Levi with regard to the character of his people, from the time of the Babylonian captivity to the present day. In his remarks upon the prophecy of Hosea, in Vol. III. page 56, he says, "The prophet having thus briefly represented, "by the above figure, the captivity of the ten "tribes, the destruction of Jerusalem and the "first temple, with the visitation of Babylon to "the house of Judah, and not to the house of "Israel, proceeds to inform us of the destruction

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"of the second temple, under the figurative re"presentation of the name of the third child, (ver. S, 9.) And she conceived, and bare a and God said, call his name Lo-ammi, (not my people). This was to show, that the "children of Judah, during the second temple, "would not, by their actions, be his people." Levi elsewhere testifies, (Vol. I. page 59.) that upon the return of Judah from Babylon, "their "sins were not yet done away; and they greatly "added to them, so that they were doomed to

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"a future captivity."

David Levi says,

"that there are many of

"his brethren at present who laugh at all the

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warnings of the divine judgment, and ridicule "the idea of a Messiah coming to save them;

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(for they do not believe a syllable of revela

tion;) much less, say they, can we believe, "that God can ever be so vindictive as to "destroy his creatures by war, &c. Thus" (says Levi,) "do they pretend to honour God, by denying his justice, and depriving him of the

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government of the world which he hath

"created in his wisdom, in opposition to what "the word of God teaches us as the punish"ment of the antediluvians of Sodom," &c. (Vol. III. page 141.)

Indeed, the authority of David Levi was no way necessary to show that the Jews continue to be a wicked people like their fathers; for it is plainly foretold in Ezekiel xxxvi., that they will continue in wickedness till the day of their redemption; and they are there charged with causing the name of the Lord to be profaned among the heathen by their great wickedness.

The conclusion to be drawn from what has been said on this subject, is, that the Jews have, at no period of their history, been a righteous people; and, consequently, the prophecy of Isaiah liii., which relates to a person called the righteous servant of God, cannot relate to the sufferings of the Jewish nation; nor can a people, who, throughout every part of their history, have been wicked and rebellious, and whose sufferings have been only the just punishment of their sins, be personified under

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the character of a righteous servant of God. The Jewish interpretation of this prophecy is therefore false.

The next feature in the character of the righteous servant of God, who is the subject of this prophecy, is, that his sufferings are expiatory of the sins of others: He hath 'borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet ⚫ we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our

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transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon

him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we ' have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of ' us all.'

It is quite clear that the person here spoken of, the righteous servant of God, upon whom the iniquities of us all are laid, must be different from those whose iniquities are laid upon him; in other words, they are not his own sorrows, and his own iniquity, which he bears, but the