394 MQNTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



be suffered to pass unnoticed to his grave. In what I have said, and in what 

 I mean to say, I neither insinuate commendation nor censure. As Christians, 

 we can form no just estimate of his character by our peculiar standards of 

 excellence. But the fact of his belonging to the Hebrew nation, I confess, 

 was one inducement which led me to announce my intention of impressing 

 upon this congregation the lessons which are suggested by his sudden removal 

 from a world where he held a station so conspicuous and so influential. I 

 never think of a Jew but I feel a glow of shame mantling in my cheeks ; though 

 it is some relief to me to know that in England this insulted and degraded 

 people have for many generations not only found a refuge but a home, and I 

 trust that the day is not far distant when they will enjoy all the civil privi- 

 leges of Britons. Discharging the obligations, they are equally with ourselves 

 entitled to the honours which the state confers upon good citizens and good 

 subjects. And throughout the civilized world, it is some consolation to feel 

 that a Jew is no longer an outcast from social humanity. But oh the dismal 

 past, the heart-rending scenes of other times ! It is no apology for the un- 

 paralleled wrongs inflicted upon them by professed Christians and Christian 

 governments, as they have, been impiously called that this oppressed race 

 threw a halo of glory around their sufferings, and that the flames of the auto- 

 da-fe purified them into heroes and martyrs.* It is, in truth, a glaring ag- 

 gravation of the guilt of their remorseless persecutors. What a foul blot is 

 their history on the annals of Christendom ! Century after century consigned 

 them to hopeless .wretchedness. They had none to plead their cause on earth, 

 and their only ; advocate in heaven they had despised and rejected yet, if his 

 voice could have keen heard in the church which professed to reverence his 

 character and to fellow his example, a Jew would have been the object of its 

 sympathy, of its prayers, of its compassion. I trust the time will come when 

 the descendants: of Abraham will be taught to distinguish between Christianity, 

 and the spoliators and murderers who so long assumed and profaned th 

 Christian name. ! that they knew that no part of the miseries under which 

 their fathers groaned can in justice be charged upon that blessed religion 

 which proclaims peace on earth and good-will to men ! The savages that 

 persecuted them to the death were not, could not be, the followers of the meek, 

 the merciful, the holy Jesus. I shall be pardoned this brief digression, and 

 you will prolong your attention a few moments while, in pointing to the 

 tomb of the great capitalist who has just departed, I contrast the triumph of 

 death with the triumph of mammon. How the one is tarnished and disgraced 

 before the other ! And is this all that the world can do for its most devoted 

 worshippers, to mock them with possessions which have no reality! The 

 grave is always instructive. But there lies the man of many millions : years 

 of anxiety were spent in their accumulation ; and to increase them, and at the 

 same time to show the power of their possessor, at his bidding a panic shook 

 the whole commercial world to the centre ; at his bidding, too, the agitation 

 was hushed into a calm, but not till a thousand wrecks were scattered at his 

 feet. But in his turn the mighty is fallen in vain was the golden sceptre of 

 Mammon held forth to soothe or to menace that enemy who is neither to be 

 bribed nor intimidated, who is armed with terrors, and who has all the wealth 

 that individuals have amassed, from Croesus to Rothschild, under his supreme 

 control. In the presence of the god, death claimed and bore away his victim, 

 but left his wealth to be dissipated till at length not a vestige of it shall remain. 

 It has been the fate of all large accumulations gradually and imperceptibly to 

 diminish, or suddenly to vanish away. We cannot visit the shining heaps of 

 Croesus : if they exist, they bear no mark that they were ever his. Thellu- 

 son's^ immense fortune is dissolving like snow before the sun; and of Roths- 

 child's, in a century, or even in a few years, it may be enquired, Where is it ? 



* "When driven from Spain by the cruel edict of Ferdinand and Isabella, the suf- 

 ferings of the Jews were only equalled by their heroic fortitude. Milman's narra- 

 tite is most touching and affecting." 



