peligro de que forme grande opinion de verse preferido á otros, y llegue á envanecerse con la alta dignidad, y venga de esta suerte á la condenacion que padeció el diablo por su soberbia. 7 No basta que los Cristianos tengan buen concepto de él, sino tambien es necesario que los infieles no tengan motivo verdadero para censurar su conducta anterior á la eleccion, para que no sea despreciado; y viendo la mala opinion en que es tenido, venga á caer en desesperacion, que es lazo que suele poner el demonio. No one who has read the inspired writings will recognise in this extract the least characteristic of inspiration, either as to style or principle.

No. IV. Page 124.

TRANSCRIPT AND VERSION OF A LETTER FROM JACOB COHEN.

שלומכם ירבה :

נגיע ליד החכם סיניור ו'ו. א'. רול אהובי : זה המה ימים כתבתי לאדון. ועד היום עדין לא בא לידי תשובתו. וגם אומנם. לא היה לי טנאי לכתוב פעם אחרת. אף כי כן הוא רצוני. שידוע ומפורסם לאדוני. שלא אעבור על מצותי וחיובי. וביען כי עסקי הניחוני היום. בהיות יום שבתכם. אמרתי עתה אעשה את אשר דברתי. ואשלם

נדרי.

כבר כתבתי לאדון באגרותי האחרונות כי היגיעו לידו תשובותיו על טען הקושיות שהקשה אלי הנוצרי בנביאות ישעיא הכביא. אבל על כל מקום רציתי שאדון יעשה עמי החסד לשליח לי טסח הלשון שכתבתי וכן אראה. שידוע להוי למור. שכפי עניות דעתי. וסברתי עדין תשובתו במקומם עומדת. ולא יש מה לחלוק על דברי. אומנם ידעתי ידועה נאמנה שאותיות מחכימות. ודברי אלהים חיים המה מדברים באוזני עם הארץ כאשר כתב משה

עבד האל בתורתו. לא בשמים היא. ולא מעבר לים. ועל כן אמרו חכמינו. תורה בקרן זוית הרוצה לטול יבוא ויטול. שכל הרוצה באמונת אמרותיו הטהורות והקדושות מן השמים מסיטין אותו לבא בידיעתם. אבל אשאל מאל

שוכן מועטים שיאור לבנו. ויבאגן דין אמונתו. כי הוא מלך מלכים. מלך רחמן. ולא יחפוץ בכלילת מעשי ידיו. ומה גם באותם המתסקים לבא דרך הישר. ולישב תחת כנפי שכינתו. וכל המדבק ביך. כדאי שירחמו שלו ושמשו יזרח. סדר פרשת וירא אליו. יום כ"ג לחדש גוויאמברי

1834 "

הצעיר בעבדי האל יעקוב בלחא אב הכוהן סט :

"MAY your peace be multiplied. To reach the hand of the sage Señor W. H. Rule, my beloved. It is now days ago that I wrote to my Lord, and up to this day his answer has not reached my hands. And besides this, I have not had leisure to write again, although it was my desire to have done so; as is well known to my Lord, that I would not transgress my obligation and my duty. And as my business leaves me at rest to-day, it being the day of your Sabbath, I said, now I will do as I promised, and will fulfil my vow. I have already written to my Lord, in my last letters, the replies which I received on the subject of the objections which the Nazarean" (that is, Christian) "urged against me, out of the prophecies of Isaiah the Prophet. But with regard to the whole passage, I could wish that my Lord would do me the favour of sending me a copy of the very words which I wrote; and then I shall see, that it may be known what is to be said, according to the scantiness of my knowledge. And I will now await your definite reply, for there is no reason why we should differ about words. However, I fully acknowledge that we believe that letters impart wisdom. And the words of the living God are they which speak in the ears of the people of the earth, as wrote Moses, the servant of God, in his law: It is not in heaven. And it is not beyond the sea.* And therefore our wise men say: The law is exposed to view,' (literally, 'on the apex of the angle,') 'he who desires to take it, let him come and take it.' For they who love in faith its pure and holy sayings, bring it down from heaven to come to their knowledge. But I will ask of God, who dwelleth with the lowly, to enlighten our heart, and to lead us into the way of his faith. For he is King of kings, merciful King, and he takes no pleasure in the destruc

* Here is an example of the Rabbinical method of quotation. Whether the writers of the New Testament quoted in this manner is perhaps a question. If so, this illustrates.

tion of the works of his hands. And (I will inquire) what also is in them, (authors) who exercise themselves to walk in the right way, and to dwell under the wings of his presence. And every one who is constant he blesseth. Surely he will be merciful to his dwelling, and his sun shall arise. Order of the Parashath, ' and appeared unto him.' The 23d day of the month November, 1834.

"The least of the servants of God, Jacob, son of Abraham the Cohen. May his end be good."

No. V. Page 154.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, AS RELATED BY THE INCA GARCILASO DE LA VEGA. HISTORY OF PERU, BOOK I., CHAPTER III.

ABOUT the year 1484, one more or less, a pilot, native of the town of Huelva, in the county Niebla, called Alonso Sanchez de Huelva, had a small vessel, with which he traded by sea, and was used to carry from Spain to the Canaries articles of merchandise which sold well there; and at the Canaries he took in the fruits of those islands, and carried them to the island of Madeira, and would thence return to Spain laden with sugar and preserves. As he was going on this triangular traffic of his, crossing over from the Canaries to the island of Madeira, he was overtaken by a storm so violent and tempestuous, that, not being able to resist it, he allowed himself to be carried away before it, and ran for twenty-eight or twenty-nine days without knowing where or whither; for in all this time he could not take the altitude by the sun nor by the north star. The crew suffered excessive labour during the tempest, because it neither allowed them to eat nor sleep. At the end of this long time the wind moderated, and they found themselves near an island; which it was is not known for certain, but it is supposed to have been the one which they now call Santo Domingo; and it is to be particularly observed, that the wind which with such violence and fury drave that ship could be no other than the solano, which they call "East," because the

island of Santo Domingo is westward of the Canaries, which wind in that voyage rather moderates storms than raises them. (This describes the trade-wind.) But the Lord Almighty, when he desires to show mercies, brings the most mysterious and necessary out of contrary causes, as he brought water out of the flinty rock, and sight for the blind man out of the clay which he put upon his eyes, in order that these works might be notoriously shown to be of divine mercy and bounty; so likewise did he make use of this his pity to send his Gospel and true light to all the New World, which had so great need of it; for they lived, or to speak better, they were perishing, in the darkness of Heathenism and idolatry, so barbarous and brutish, as we shall see in the course of this history. The pilot went on shore, took the altitude, and wrote down minutely all that he saw, and what had happened to him at sea; and, having laid in water and fire-wood, returned, guessing his way, without knowing his course either going or coming, so that he wasted more time than he should have done, and by this delay of the voyage his water and provisions were exhausted; from which cause, and in consequence of the fatigue which they had suffered both ways, the sailors began to sicken and die in such a manner, that of seventeen men who left Spain, no more than five reached Terceira, and among them the pilot, Alonso Sanchez de Huelva. They went to the house of the famous Christopher Colon, (Columbus,) a Genoese, because they knew that he was a great navigator and cosmographer, and that he made sea-charts. He received them with much love, and gave them good entertainment, that he might know the things which had befallen them in such a strange and long wreck, as that which they said they had suffered. And as they came so worn out with the sufferings they had passed through, notwithstanding all the kindness which Christopher Colon showed them, they could not recover, and all died in his house, leaving him for an inheritance the labours which had caused their death; which the great Colon accepted with so much cheerfulness and courage, that having suffered others as great, and even greater, for they lasted longer, he succeeded in the enterprise of giving the New World and its riches to Spain, as he set it for motto on his arms: A Castilla y à Leon, Nuevo Mundo dió Colon......The very Reverend Father José de Acosta also touches on this history of the discovery of the New World, with regret

that he could not give it entire; as indeed his Paternity was defective in part of his relation of this circumstance, as of others more modern, because the old conquerors had all died off when his Paternity went into those parts, on which he says these words in book i., chap. xix. : "Having shown that the thought cannot be admitted that the first inhabitants of the Indies should have reached them by navigation undertaken to that end, it follows that if they came by sea, it must have been by chance, and by stress of storms, which, notwithstanding the immense extent of the ocean, is not a thing incredible. For so it happened in the discovery of our times, when that mariner, (whose name we do not yet know, that so great a business may not be attributed to any author but to God alone,) having by a terrible and unseasonable tempest found out the New World, left, in payment of his good hospitality, to Christopher Colon the knowledge of so great a thing."

This is a classical passage in the controversy about the discovery of America, adopted by some, and rejected as marvellous and incredible by others. But if its verisimilitude be allowed to influence our judgment, and the period in the history of the world when the discovery of that continent took place be kept in view, that great event will be characterized yet more remarkably as a providential work of God; making an apparent casualty contribute to the great social revolution which was beginning then, was accelerated by the discovery of printing, and the secession of nations from the Romish superstition, and which is advancing now not less obviously than at the seasons of greatest excitement within the last three or four centuries. Less of romance remains in the history of Columbus, if Alonso Sanchez saw the West Indies before him; but this matters nothing.