Weekly Trinity journal., 1874-08-01
GODS CHOSEN PEOPLE.

The JewiSh Times gives sketch of
the unhappy position of the Jews during
the dark ages. The Jews, apparently
possessed of strong taste for wandering,
or an Unsuitable love of gain, planted
unsteady colonies in all the Western ma
tions, and sought humbly hospitality
that was never shown. Everywhere they
were received with aversion and disgust.
The dark-skinned and alien race, speak
ing an Oriental language that no Euro
pean could master, and governed by GUS
toms of neatness and propriety that seem
Ell to Goth and Hun an excess of tastid-
iousness, unwarlike, and highly educat-
ed, were met everywhere by an unvary-
ing cruelty and scorn. In Germany,
they were reduced to a peculiar form Of
slavery. A jew was not a person, but
thing, chattel, a waif The Emperor
took possession of the Oriental strangers
as his own peculiar heritage. They were
his bondsmen. He protected them when
he was able, and plundered them when
he waited money. Yet they soon grew
numerous and wealthy III the cities along
the Rhine, and aroused the envy Of their
Christian neighbors by an opulence which
they sometimes incautiously displayed.
They were forced, or probably preferred,
to live apart in a quarter Of the city by
themselves. They founded their syna-
gogues and built their schoolhouses amid
coaseless dangers. The ignorant priests
followed them with maledictions, and the
still more ignorant populace pelted them
with stones, and beat and pummeled
them at viii. Accomplished and gifted
rabbis were often looked upon as magi-
clans. The Jews quarter seemed to the
barbarous Germans center of mysteri-
Gus and fearful deeds. 1t was believed
that the Jews were in the habit Of steal
ing the Host from the altar, in order to
mock once more at the crucifxion with
secret rites, or that they enticed Christ
ian children away to stab them with
sharp knives and sacrifice them in a
frightful ceremony. When a child stray
ed away in the German or Italian cities,
the Christian mothers at once fanced
that it had been lured into the Jewish
quarter to be put to DEATH The Jews
were all supposed to be acquainted with
magic, and capable of weaving dark
spells that brought disease and decay,
misfortune and shame, to Christian
households. Yet they were wonderfully
osperous, and might have outlived
their early unpopularity, had not a sud
den wave of religious fanaticism swept
away what little humanity and intelli-
gence had yet sprung up among the Eu-
ropean nations. The preaching of the
Crusaders turned back the course Of hu-
man progress for 300 years. The passion
for bloodshed and for barbarous cruelty
revived under the fanatical eloquence Of
popes and prelates. Thou shalt not
kill, Thou shalt not steal" were eras-
ed from the Deoaloguo, and the wild and
cruel throngs, dissolute and infamous,
that gathered under the banner of the
Cross made their first essays in robbery
and bloodshed among the wealthy and
cultivated Jewish colonies along the Mo-
selle and Rhine. They burst into the
Jewish quarters; they sacked the rich
houses, and drove their wretched inmates
to suicide and death. Fair women stabb-
ed Themselves in Mentz and Treves.-
Husbands first killed their wives and
then themselves. The Rhine foated thick
with the corpses Of murdered Jews
Rich with spoil and drunken with license
the crusaders swept on, carrying devas-
taticn to all the Jewish settlements thro'
which they passed in Hungary and Aus
tria, and at last perished themselves in
countless numbers, in unutterable tor
ments Of thirst and hunger, disease, la
Dor, by the darts of the Saracens, and
the hatred Of mankind. Nor was the
second army under Baldwin, the chivalry
Of the age, more merciful. When Jeru-
salem fell, they massacred .all the Jews,
men, women, and children, whom they
found in the city, and with tears Of joy
knelt before the Holy Sepulchre. Yet
they might have heard, in the lull Of
their fanaticism, the thunders Of Sinai
and their own condemnation uttered
from the 1aminp uOunt