The third night was when the Word of the Lord appeared against the Egyptians at midnight, the right hand was slaying the first-born of the Egyptians, and his left hand delivering the first-born of Israel, to establish that which the Scripture saith, "Israel is my son, my first-born," and he called it the Third Night. The fourth night shall be when the world shall arrive at its end to be dissolved, the cords of the wicked shall be consumed, and the iron yoke shall be broken, Moses shall go forth from the midst of the desert, and King Messiah from the midst of Rome [or from the midst of the high place], the one shall speak on the top of the cloud, and the other shall speak on the top of the cloud, and the Word of the Lord shall speak between them both, and they shall go forth together: this is the passover-night before the Lord, to be kept and established by all the children of Israel after their generations.

NUMBERS XI. 26.

But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the Spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp.

TARGUM.

But two men were left in the camp, the name of the one of them was Eldad, and the name of the second was Medad, and the Holy Spirit rested upon them. Eldad was prophesying, and he said, "Behold Moses the prophet, the scribe of Israel, shall be gathered from the world, and Joshua Bar Nun, his disciple, shall minister in the camp after him." Medad was prophesying, and he said, "Behold the quail ascendeth from the sea, and shall be meat to the children of Israel:" then both of them prophesied together, and they said, " In the end of the heel of days, Gog and Magog and their army shall ascend against Jerusalem, but by the hand of King Messiah they shall fall, and seven years of days shall the children of Israel make fires from instruments of war, to the forest they shall not go out, and the tree they shall not consume." Now they were of the seventy wise men, and the seventy wise men went not out from the tabernacle while Eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp.

NUMBERS XXIV. 7.

He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.

TARGUM.

Their King shall arise from their children, and their Redeemer from among themselves, and he shall be among them, and He shall gather for them their captivity from the provinces of their enemies, and their children shall rule over the nations; yea, He shall be stronger than Saul who spared Agag, king of the Amalekites, and the kingdom of King Messiah shall become great.

JONATHAN BEN UZZIEL.

SONG OF SOLOMON I. 8.

If thou knew not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed the kids beside the shepherds'

tents.

4

TARGUM.

The Holy One, blessed be He! said to Moses the prophet, it is required of them that they do away the captivity, that the assembly which is like to a fair virgin whom my soul loveth, walk in the path of the righteous, that she order the prayers according to the mouth of her princes, that she guide her offspring, and that she teach her sons, who are like to the kids of the goats, to go to the house of the congregation, and to the house of inquiry. And in this righteousness they shall be sustained in the captivity until the time that I shall send King Messiah, and He shall conduct them into rest to their dwelling-places, namely, to the house of the sanctuary which David, and Solomon, and the shepherds of Israel, do build for them.

SONG OF SOLOMON IV. 5.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

TARGUM.

Two deliverers shall there be to deliver thee, Messiah, Son of David, and Messiah, Son of Ephraim, who are like to Moses and Aaron, the sons of Jochebed, who were as two fair gazelles that are twins, and they fed the people of the house of Israel, in their righteousness, forty years in the wilderness, with manna, and with fat fowls, and the waters of the well of Miriam.

SONG OF SOLOMON VII. 13.

The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

TARGUM.

And when it shall be the good pleasure of the Lord to redeem His people from captivity, it shall be said to King Messiah, Now the end of the captivity is come, and the righteousness of the righteous smelleth sweet before me, as the smell of balsam, and the wise men of the generation are established at the gates [of the place] of inquiry, labouring in the words of the scribes, and the words of the law. Arise, now, receive the kingdom, which I have laid up for thee.

SONG OF SOLOMON VIII. 1-4.

O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breast of my mother when I should find thee without I would kiss thee; yea I should not be despised. I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate. His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.

TARGUM.

And at that time shall King Messiah be revealed to the congregation of Israel. Then shall the children of Israel say to Him, Come, be thou with us for a brother, and we will go up to Jerusalem, and we will suck with thee the meanings of the law, even as a suckling sucketh the breasts of its mother; for all the time that I was wandering beyond my own land, when I remembered the name of the great God, and gave

up my life for the sake of His Godhead, even the people of the land did not despise me. I will lead thee, O King Messiah, and I will bring thee to the house of my sanctuary, and Thou shalt teach me to fear before the Lord, and to walk in His ways, and there will we keep the feast of Leviathan, and we will drink old wine, which has been reserved in its grapes since the day that the world was created, and [we will eat] of the pomegranates, [for these are the] fruits prepared for the righteous in the garden of Eden. The congregation of Israel said, I am chosen above all people, for I have bound the tephillim on my left hand, and on my head, and the mezuzah is fixed on the right-hand side of my door, the third part of which is over against my bedchamber, so that the demons have no permission to hurt me. King Messiah shall say, I adjure you, O my people of the house of Israel, wherefore do ye contend against the people of the land, [desiring] to go out of captivity? And wherefore do you rise up against the army of Gog and Magog? Tarry ye a little till the people be consumed who have gone up to wage war against Jerusalem, and afterwards the Lord of the world will remember unto you the mercies of the righteous, and it shall be pleasure before Him to redeem you.

ECCLESIASTES I. 11.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come, with those that shall come after.

TARGUM.

There is no memorial of the former generations, and also to the latter [generations] which shall be hereafter, there shall be no memorial of them with the generation which shall be in the days of King Messiah. ECCLESIASTES VII. 24.

That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?

TARGUM.

Behold, now, it is far off from the children of men, to know that all that has been from [the beginning of] the days of the world, also the secret of the day of death, and the secret of the day that King Messiah shall come; who is he that shall find it out by wisdom?

ISAIAH IV. 2.

In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely, for them that are escaped of Israel.

TARGUM.

At that time the Messiah of the Lord shall be for joy and for glory, and the doers of the law for magnificence and for praise, for them that are escaped of Israel.

ISAIAH IX. 6.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

TARGUM.

The prophet said to the house of David, For to us a child is born, to

us a son is given, and He shall receive the law upon Him to keep it, and His name is called from eternity, Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Continuing forever, The Messiah: for peace shall be multiplied upon us in His days.

Sieges of Jerusalem.

PROBABLY no capital city of equal consequence was ever taken and retaken so many times as Jerusalem. We have no record of the date of its foundation; yet its subsequent history is one of continual conquests and continual restorations; and it is no doubt owing to these changes that the ground of the modern city is in many places thirty feet above the level of the old, and that the valleys, which formerly intersected its divisions, are now filled to their summits with soil and débris.

The following are the principal sieges and conquests which the metropolis of Palestine has undergone, not including, however, various brief capitulations during the Maccabean and later Syrian disturbances :

THIS city contains about a thirty-eighth part of the whole population of the Union, and there are more people within ten miles of this church than in any one of thirty-two States of the Union. The growth of New York is enormous. In 1800, it had a population of 60,000; in 1871, nearly a million.

DESTITUTION AND DIFFICULTIES.

There are 20,000 more women than men in New York, and consequently 20,000 women who can never be married, unless they emigrate.

There are 70,000 children who attend no schools, and of those 30,000 are vagrants. It is from this vast street nursery that the criminals are constantly recruited. A great deal is being done for these children, but a very great deal more must be done. The Sunday-school is a most important agency, but it meets with great difficulty on account of the mixed character of the population. There are more Irish in New York than in Belfast, and more Jews than in all Palestine.

TENEMENT HOUSES.

In 15,000 houses there is an average of seven families to each house. The Seventeenth Ward has one-fortieth of the area of the city, and onetenth of the population. 4000 houses in it contain 95,000 inhabitants, of whom 14,000 are children. It has the great honour of being the banner ward for children.

In the Eleventh Ward, the population is at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, giving sixteen square yards to each. In no other city is the population so closely packed. One house in the Sixth Ward contains 360 persons; 97 men, 90 women, and 112 children were found in one house 25 by 100 feet; another house had 287. In many rooms of 8 by 10 or 10 by 12 there were living 5 to 7 adults of both sexes. There is a cellar population of 20,000, and of these cellars 400 were wholly below the street level, with neither light nor air. He had visited them, and been almost suffocated and nauseated in a very short time. In one room, 10 by 14, 25 men and women slept.

THE DEVIL'S AGENCIES.

There are

Other powerful agencies of the devil have to be encountered. 7000 rum-sellers, and but 700 ministers and missionaries! The saloons of this city, placed in a row, would extend eleven miles. Growing mainly out of this traffic there were 87,000 arrests in the year, of which ten per cent. were for crimes, and 15,000 were women.

LICENTIOUSNESS.

The police return 2100 abandoned women, which is far below the mark. There are 6000 bad houses, of which 100 are first-class, and several are dance and music saloons, whose business is to allure to destruction.

AMUSEMENTS.

Man must have amusement and recreation, and he (Mr. M.) enjoyed them as much as anybody; but he did not let the devil take the management of his amusement. There are seventy theatres and theatrical saloons, frequented by 50,000 respectable supporters, and 200,000 of the lower class. Seven millions are expended annually in these amusements, while 40,000 men and women know not where or how to get their next meal.

LICENTIOUS LITERATURE.

There are a dozen papers in the city of New York that are doing more to ruin souls than all the Bibles are saving. They vitiate the whole nature, and leave their readers an easy prey to the most shocking vices and crimes.

CONCLUSION.

There are 380 Protestant churches, with seats for 350,000, but a great number of these are of no use to the masses, and there are not 200,000 persons in these churches on any one Sunday.

There is more spent in New York in drink, which does only evil, than all that is spent in moral and religious efforts, not only in the city but the country; more on actors and actresses than on ministers and missionaries.— G. M. Mingins, in the National Agitator.

A Church-Auction.

Though Henry Ward Beecher's salary for the ensuing year is raised to 20,000 dols. and the assistant pastor receives 2200 dols., the following from the New York Sun, giving an account of the sale of pews in his church, will be sufficient to show how easily a much larger sum is raised than is needed to VOL. XXIV. 2 E