The Jews in Great Britain: Being a Series of Six Lectures, Delivered in the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, on the Antiquities of the Jews in England

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Before I begin with the immediate subject which brings me before your notice this evening, I would venture to crave your indulgence if my lisping, broken accents, and my limited attainments, should not reflect the credit upon your noble Institution which it so richly deserves. I humbly trust, that you will kindly take into consideration that it is comparatively but a short time since I began to pay attention to your language and literature. It is but little more than eight years since I landed on the shores of England, and eight years to a day since I arrived in your town of Liverpool, at a time when you, in all probability, little thought of erecting such a magnificent edifice for so laudable a purpose. As for me, I positively aver that I did not then entertain the least ambition of ever appearing before you as lecturer in any shape whatever, being then totally ignorant of your language. I trust, therefore, to your kind and well-known courtesy, that you will put the best construction you possibly can on my humble efforts. Whilst it would be unpardonable presumption in me, seeing as I do before me such a host of learned and highly-gifted men, to imagine that there were not those present who, from more extensive reading, were not better acquainted with several, if not with all the subjects which will come before them in the progress of these lectures; it would be, at the same time, regarded as mere affectation and false modesty if I pretended that there were not others less conversant with these subjects than myself, and to whom it may be in my power to impart some information which they may not before have possessed. The history of the Jewsーpart of which I purpose bringing before you in this and five following lecturesーstands indeed associated with all that is sublime in the retrospect of the past, affecting in the contemplation of the present, and magnificent in the future history of mankind. No one who has any feeling at all can help manifesting it at the mention of the name Jewーa name “big with a world of import.” The Jew stands forth until the present day, in the face of the whole world, a living and lasting miracleーa mighty, though shattered monument, on every fragment of which is inscribed, in letters of the brightest gold, the truth of holy writ. No wonder, therefore, that Lord Rochester, when a conceited infidel (for such is the character of all infidels), was obliged to make the following confession: “I reject all arguments with one single exception, that founded on the existence of the Jews; that alone bafflesmy scriptural infidelity.” I say, no one can help feeling interested in the history of the most ancient and venerable people on the face of the whole earth. The Jewish people can trace back their progenitors to the very cradle of the human race: the nations about them are infantine when compared with their hoary antiquity. The following are the words, respecting them, of a learned English divine, father of the celebrated Addison, author of “The Spectator:”ー“This people, if any under heaven, may boldly glory of their antiquity and nobleness of descent; there being no nation who can prove its pedigree by such clear and authentic heraldry as the Jews. For, though a ridiculous vanity hath tempted some to date their original before that of the world, and others, with great assurance, have made themselves sprung from their own soil, yet the Jews, by an unquestionable display through all periods since the creation, can prove their descent from the first man. So that all other nations must have recourse to the Jewish records to clear their genealogies and attest their lineage.” The interest in the history of such a people must at all times be intense, and, if at all times, more especially so now.画面が切り替わりますので、しばらくお待ち下さい。
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