partially informed; if we should condemn him on vulgar report, or entertain a secret wish, from jealousy or rivalry, that the charge brought against him might be true; where, let me ask, where would be the harmony between our prayers and our deeds, and how could we possibly escape the withering rebuke of the passage of the text? If, after having implored today those heavenly graces which should render us courteous and forbearing to all men, we were to become so heedless of the petitions we put up to God, as to presume on our wealth or our station, to be overbearing to our equals and tyrannical to our dependents, to require others to give place to us whilst we conceded nothing to them, to ignore the respect which Judaism demands for human rights and human feelings, for freedom of opinion and the unfettered exercise of conscience; in a word, if we were to set aside in practice the prophetic teaching, that all men are the children of One common Father, we should prove ourselves as grossly ignorant as those to whom the words of the text were addressed, with respect to the true ends of religion; if we imagined that the service in which we are now joining could bring us any spiritual benefit; God would assuredly meet us in the solitude of conscience, and rehearse to us the inspired words, "that He searches us within and without, and is acquainted with all our ways;"12 and He would oblige us, in the bitterness of remorse, to confess the serious error into which we had fallen, that He makes no distinction between

12 Ps. cxxxix. 1—4.

what is capricious and evanescent, and that which is permanent and habitual in the practices of our lives.

Before I bring this sermon to a close, I would take leave to apply the text to the institution of the Sabbath, the holy day on which we are met together as fellow-worshippers in the house of God. Brethren, if there be one feature more than another that distinctively marks the ritual of to-day, it is the sanctity and the perpetually binding force of the Sabbath. We have devoutly thanked God for bestowing upon us this ordinance, which we profess to esteem as a blessing and a delight; we have implored Him to accept, with complacency, our pious observance of

to ordain the Sabbath to be a perpetual inheritance

;רצא נא במנוחתנו,His great fourth commandment

; הנחילנו יי אלהינו באהבה וברצון שבת קדשך,to our race 14;

and finally, in the hearing of "the great, mighty, and awful Lord," we have declared it to be our conviction, that the especial means by which it behoves us to manifest our belief that He is the Creator and Ruler of the world is, by our solemnizing the seventh day, and by abstaining thereon from pursuing our

15. ביני ובין בני ישראל אות הוא לעולם,worldly vocations

Now, if the spirit of the Liturgy, in which we have joined, is to be reflected in our actions, we have done well to take part in this prayerful office, and we may confidently hope that God, who desires sincerity of heart more than sacrifice, will have received our supplications with favour and love.

But if, on quitting the synagogue, we should spend any portion of this hallowed day, not in family and social delight, not in moral and mental culture, not in works of mercy and human love, and not in promoting the comfort, the well-being, and the moral and social advancement of mankind—since I hold all these duties to come within the spirit of the sanctification of the Sabbath-but in business or professional occupations for the purpose of gain, our actions would then belie our professions, and our prayers and our works would be manifestly in a state of conflict. Nor is this all for, whilst in the synagogue we shall have professed an implicit faith in God, out of the synagogue we shall have confessed, by our actions, that we have no reliance in Him, or in His word. It is the Lord's will that the sanctification of the Sabbath should be one of the distinguishing tests of confidence which we repose in Him, and He has declared that by this test He will judge us, here and hereafter. True it is, that the conscientious observance of the fourth commandment imposes on us considerable sacrifices with respect to the commercial and professional pursuits in which we are engaged. But we must all feel that, without self-denial genuine piety cannot exist; and if we cannot bring ourselves to make a sacrifice to the highest sense of human duty, the inference is clear, that we do not repose in God the confidence which we professed in prayer to have in Him, and conscience will reveal, to our great mortification, that, in one respect, at least, we are just as much strangers to genuine religion as the misguided men unto whom the Prophet Isaiah was charged to pronounce the rebuke in our text.

As the great object of our meeting here, brethren, from Sabbath to Sabbath, is to improve us in knowledge and in holiness, let us hope that the reflections which the pulpit lesson of to-day is so eminently calculated to excite, may exert over us a permanent and practical influence. Let us endeavour to bring our reason to bear on this important question, so that we may view religion and practise it as a matter not confined to particular localities, or suited to given seasons; but as a holy principle that should characterize us in all places, and regulate our thoughts and our actions as Jews and citizens, as husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, and rich and poor. Let us habituate ourselves to think and to act invariably with a strict regard to conscience, and never to disjoin, in our consideration of moral subjects, the present from the future, the temporal from the eternal. Then may we truly rejoice, when we meet together for Divine worship, even as the Psalmist exulted when the day of public

שמחתי באומרים לי " prayer came round, exclaiming בית יי נלך

"16 because its beneficial effects will be made evident in our lives. Our devotions will come before the throne of grace like the morning sacrifices of old, and within our hearts we shall feel realized the gracious promise of God to his sincere worshippers:

.והיה טרם יקראו ואני אענה עוד הם מדברים ואני אשמע"

"It shall come to pass, that before they call I will answer, and whilst they are praying I will hear." 17

THE MEETING OF JACOB AND JOSEPH: A LESSON

FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

.(פי ויגש היתיריטין) 1854 ,Preached on Sabbath, December 30th

GENESIS xlvi. 29, 30.

ויאסר יוסף מרכבתו ויעל לקראת ישראל אביו גשנה וירא אליו ויפל על צואריו: ויבך על צואריו עוד : ויאמר ישראל אל יוסף אמותה הפעם אחרי ראותי את פניך כי עורך חי :

"And Joseph ordered his chariot, and went up to meet Israel, his father, at Goshen; and he presented himself to him, and threw himself upon his neck, and wept on his neck a long while. And Israel said unto Joseph: now I can die, after having seen thy face because thou art still alive."

Or the many affecting and instructive pictures of human life, pourtrayed in the pages of Holy Writ, none appears to have taken such an entire possession of the best sympathies of our nature, as that of the eventful career of the patriarch Joseph. It commands the liveliest interest from the beginning to the end of the story; its artless simplicity and its deep pathos go straight home to the heart, and the moral instruction which it imparts is applicable to all times and to all men. It admonishes us, in the