call upon you?" I merely nodded in the affirmative, as the footman closed the door; and I drove off from Stamford Hill.

At an early hour Mrs. Levison arrived at Kensington on the following Saturday. At my reqnest, she sent away the chariot until the evening, as I assured her I had prepared a little dinner expressly for her, as I knew her husband would be engaged a good deal during the day at synagogue. I was sorry to observe that the fair Rebecca looked agitated and unwell. She told me that her husband more than suspected her bias in favour of Christianity; and that it had been the cause of some disquiet and very unpleasant feeling between them-he had even insinuated that he conceived it was his duty to report her wavering, and almost apostate state, to the Elders, adding, but with much tenderness of manner, "that he could not endure the thought of his own beloved wife, wandering away from the true faith of Abraham, to the worship of strange gods,' for such he deemed the adoration that the Christians pay to Jesus of Nazareth.' What course ought I to pursue, dear Mrs. Griffiths, ?" demanded she. "If I embrace the doctrines of your church, I excite the anger, perhaps the hatred, of Mr. Levison, and very probably cause the death of my mother. On the other hand, shall I not offend most fearfully my great Creator by temporising on such a subject, and denying, as your Peter did, the Son of God-my Lord and master? I am in a most dreadful strait, and must implore your advice to guide me-already my poor Joel has assured me, that he would never love a vile Meshumid, or apostate, but must depart from me, or send me, like Hagar, away into the wilderness:'-it was but a threat." And as poor Rebecca said this, those brilliant eyes of her's were moist with tears; and she turned away her head to prevent my seeing them: in another moment they were gone.

"But," said I," you have still doubts respecting the truth of our religion. Is it not premature to think yet of abandoning your own, giving deep offence to your nearest connections, and after all find out, perhaps, that you are neither one thing nor the other-neither Jew nor Christian? How did Mr. Levison suspect that you had changed any of your opinions?"

"By seeing me constantly reading this book, to him so obnoxious. Indeed he threw my New Testament into the fire; but I have purchased another, and here it is."

"And do you mean to let him see you studying this one also," I enquired, "thus giving him food for perpetual altercation?"

"That is exactly one of the questions I meant to ask you," she replied; "I ought not to be ashamed of doing what I consider right; and surely the importance of seeking to know whether the Messiah is yet come, must be allowed to justify fully my

research."

"Assuredly," said I; "but there seems to me no necessity for dashing into this enquiry with all a zealot's warmth, and making a display of sentiments that are not yet even fixed within your own mind! Cannot you peruse and study this sacred volume in secret and calmness? Weigh well the arguments you find there; and should

you, as I fervently trust will be the case, feel satisfied of the truths contained therein; should conviction come into your heart; keep it a dear and holy thing, a divine and sacred gift, until a proper season for declaration takes place."

"What!" cried Mrs. Levison, with a vivacity that made her eyes sparkle like brilliants. "Would you have me shrink from my duty?—abstain from acknowledging the Christ; and thus commit the same error, and deserve the same punishment as did my forefathers, eighteen hundred years ago; for which they have been a dispersed and despised people ever since?"

"My dear Rebecca," said I, "all young converts (and I begin now to think you really are one,) are possessed ever with this burning thirst for publickly avowing their faith, and fighting on their way through all opposition. Were you a man instead of a woman, I should encourage such a noble daring, perchance; but it appears to me, that every end would be answered by your becoming in heart a Christian, namely ensuring your own salvation, by doing, as the virgin mother of our Lord did, until she saw there was the proper season arrived, namely, pondering on these things in her heart.' You can neither preach to others, nor go out as a missionary; but you can exercise the divine precepts of our religion by devotion, forbearance, charity, and meekness. Who knows but what in time, by a patient submission to God's will, by slow degrees, by a careful unfolding of those Truths you know and delight in, by a judicious and watchful diplomacy, if I may use such a word for such a subject, you may be the means, assisted by the Spirit of God, of converting your beloved husband also."

"O that is too much to hope!" exclaimed the young wife, "you are not aware that Mr. Levison has just written a book to prove, that the modern Jews have entirely cleansed themselves from the oral traditions of the Talmud, and practise nothing but the pure ordinances of Moses."

"And is not. this the case?" enquired I.

"Far from it," answered she; for we are taught to hold sacred even the writings of the Mishna,' which has nothing to do with the divine writings, but is a collection of traditions transmitted down by word of mouth from father to son, and now bound together in one volume. O that you could see the records of the Jewish 'Beth-din,' or tribunal, here in London. What absurdities have crept in since the time of Moses!"

"It is far better that I should not," cried I; "surely it is enough for us to know, that moral blindness is upon your nation, and to hope the scales may be removed from their eyes, so that they may see the blessed light that has entered into our own."

"Then you think there is no necessity," enquired Mrs. Levison, with much embarassment, no absolute requisition for me, in case, that is, of my having all my doubts removed, of my being publicly baptised, and openly renouncing Judaism?"

"First get away your doubts, and then I will answer your questions," said I; but I could not help smiling at the extreme earnestness of her manner, as she mentioned baptism, and her

insisting on my replying to her query before she would enter upon the subject of her doubts.

Thus pressed, I gave an opinion that I ought to have referred first to my worthy diocesan, the Bishop of London, who, most kindly has already attended to some of my appeals to him, and who, if I have been wrong in the judgment I gave to Mrs. Levison, will, I hope, have the kindness to set me right.

"Then you think there would be no necessity for my being publicly baptised?" demanded Rebecca.

"Decidedly not," I answered; "nor do I think as these ceremonies of adult baptism are now conducted in our churches of the establishment, they are productive of any good whatever, as they savour more of a public spectacle than a religious rite."

"It would break my heart, I think," said Rebecca, "if Joel should call me in earnest, Meshumid,' or "the accursed apostate.' I have fretted much about it, I do assure you."

"Go home, then, my dear Rebecca," said I, tenderly taking her hand; "bury as you would your dearest treasure, the saving truths that are contained in this little book, in the depths of your own heart; conceal the book itself, and only study it as we protestants were obliged to do of old, with pious fraud, covertly in the midst of caverns, or secretly in forests, until happier days, which have come to us, and may come to you. But now for your doubts."

"I hardly know how to mention one," said the beautiful young Hebrew woman, deeply blushing; "indeed it seems now to be my only scruple; I wish I could get over that."

"Speak it out freely, daughter of Judah," I said, sportively.

"I have written it down," added Rebecca, much confused, “at least, I have written the exact words of Mr. Levison upon the subject, after our conversation which took place some months ago, either in Teboth, Shebat, or Adar, I forget which month."

"You forget too," said I, "that all these names are Hebrew to me; but never mind the month."

"I wrote them down from memory," said Rebecca; speaking to the Gaon, or chief Rabbi.'

"Joel was

She read it aloud :-" And it is on this sandy ground that these credulous Christians found their faith-the miraculous conception! Why, it has been reported the very same of all the heathen heroes and demi-gods! all claim their origin, or their disciples have done it for them, from Divinity! And on this preternatural birth hangs their chief evidence. How absurd to suppose that a Virgin should conceive! The prophets never imagined such a thing without the usual means ordained!"

66

"I did not stay to hear the argument concluded, you may be sure," said Rebecca, with the loveliest modesty; yet still I am staggered by what was said."

Then you believe the miracles our Lord performed?" said I. "I have no repugnance to them," answered Rebecca; "but for

this other."

"I see no difficulty about it," answered I," the first Adam, or man of the earth, sprung from thence, and without marriage, without

the union of the sexes; why should not then the second Adam, as he is called, the Lord from Heaven come, or be made manifest to his creatures in the same or any other manner? But it seems to me, that neither the miraculous conception, nor the miracles themselves, are at all necessary to prove the identity of the promised Saviour with Jesus of Nazareth, as his divine precepts and blessed example, his exemption from all taint of sin, bear full and sufficient evidence within themselves of his origin. The testimony is complete without them."

"What! think you then that Jehovah, the Great and Mighty One, actually took up his abode for nine long months within the bosom of the Virgin Mary?" demanded Rebecca: "this seems to me incredible, impossible! for who was there then to superintend and uphold the entire universe, when he, the Maker, the Sustainer, was so cribbed up? I feel lost, Mrs. Griffiths, at the idea, and own myself here a sceptic."*

"Only enlarge your ideas of the Deity, and you will get rid of all the difficulty," said I. "So clogged are our minds by our close connection with material things, that we form but a gross conception of the spiritual nature of the first essential cause,―of his omnipresence. His indwelling, therefore, and generating power in the Father of our Lord, prevented not in the smallest degree his universal presence, throughout the boundless, the untraversed, the unimagined fields of space; and knowing intimately the thoughts and actions of every created thing, however mean, however minute, that inhabited the myriads of planets that shoot into existence at his command, and are annihilated at his bidding; the incalculable strata of brilliant orbs, above, below, around; beyond the reach of any telescope that has been, or ever can be, invented! Where then is the mystery in this incarnation, more than in every other birth? Each one alike owes its creation to Him, the Giver of all life, although effected by more common means.'

I paused, and smiled at my own enthusiasm. I was only surprised I had not broken my neck over some of those rolling planets I had met with thus in my course, and come down headlong like poor Cocking in his parachute, without another word to say for himself, and his tin hypothesis, which broke like Cardinal Wolsey's bladders, not under him "but right a-head."

"Pray proceed," said Rebecca after a pause, which I interpreted into a high compliment to my rhetoric, " pray proceed," said she, "I could listen to you for hours!"

"I doubt that very much," I answered sportively, "nothing wearies the mind so much, as these high flights into immensity; aye, and wearies the body too! I wonder my old Bridget has not brought in the tea! I have no doubt she is rummaging up all my fine tea-equipage, a present to me from my heart's darling, Algernon Meredith, on his old nurse's birthday. O sure enough, here comes the glittering, embossed, silver tea-pot, cream ewer, and sugar

This is an argument I have heard advanced by a Unitarian; and the Jews constantly make use of it.

basin, with all the china array, 'fit,' as she often says duchess.""

"Go on with the Virgin Mary."

for any

"She must have been a most sanctified creature herself," said Rebecca, "to be selected for the shrine, the resting-place of the Holy Spirit, for your book says it overshadowed her;' to give birth to the Messiah, or "God with us.'

"No doubt she was so," I replied; "I amused myself the other day in imagining the thoughts, the aspirations of the youthful Mary, before the annunciation that called forth from her that beautiful poem of hers, My soul doth magnify the Lord,' &c."

"And did you put your thoughts on paper?" eagerly asked my fair guest, "I will have them. If you refuse me," she added, with most delightful archness, "I vow I will go home, and be immediately publicly baptised! Dressed in white, will I sit in the Rector's pew, with all eyes gazing on the young Jewess, and thinking more of her than of their prayers, or even of the impressive sermon made expressly for the occasion, and afterwards printed in The Pulpit.'" "You are a little satirist," said I, "only think what a splendid sight it was (not an auto da fé certainly, but something of the same nature) when a clergyman I knew, actually got up eight Hebrew converts for one exhibition. O how attractive! Had St. Paul himself announced in great placards upon the Church-doors his intention to preach within these walls upon baptism, he could not have obtained a larger congregation-such crowding!"

“You were there?" enquired Mrs. Levison with some anxiety. "I am every where," said I.

"I feel there is a better way of proving my conversion," said Rebecca, "than that; and I will endeavour to do so: but shew me what you have written about the young Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord."

I arose at this expression: my bosom swelled; my eyes overflowed; and, folding the perfect form of Rebecca Levison to my heart, I kissed her forehead and blessed her.

We were both much affected: so to relieve her and myself, I opened my little portfolio; I took out a scrap of paper, blotted and underscored--the nucleus of a poem, that may perhaps see the light of day, but which is already born in the world of imagination-conceived by the immortal spirit, and therefore in real being. What a fuss I am making about a couple of half finished verses, on a dingy bit of paper. I declare, on the back of my washing-bill!-if it were not for Rebecca's sake, I would not take the trouble of transcribing them, but "Transcendentalism," O what a long word! is now quite the fashion; and I have a spice of it in my constitution.

Lines supposed to be spoken by the Virgin Mary when almost a Child.