The Jews are a strange people. Strange and hard has been their fate; and it can be easily accounted for, from their being originally cheated into the fact that they were _God’s chosen people_ to the exclusion of the rest of the human race. Christians ask how it could have been possible for Moses or any other person to induce them to believe that they were so chosen, when miracles and wonders were performed in their behalf, if no such things did in reality take place? The answer is easy:—Christians suppose that the books of the Old Testament were written at the time the generation lived, before whose eyes those wonders were performed. This is a fatal mistake. Those miracles and wonders, no doubt, were ante-dated, and brought forward to the Jews in after times, as proofs of what Jehovah had done for their forefathers; for it clearly appears from the internal evidence of Jewish history, that the five books said to have been written by Moses, were not known to the Jews, as a nation, till after the reigns of David, Solomon, and many others. At what time the five books were first made known to the descendants of Abram, is not ascertained; but, whenever it was, they contained the history of the Abrahamic family, including all the miracles and wonders performed by Jehovah in their behalf. It is easy to perceive, how the Jews might be brought to believe all that was written concerning God’s choice of them, as his peculiar people. An ambitious leader and legislator could, without much difficulty, soon establish them firmly in the conviction that they were Jehovah’s chosen people. It would flatter their vanity; and the credulity of the human mind is such, even now, that we need not wonder that the Jews, as a nation, gave credence to the tales of former times concerning their being the especial favorites of Jehovah. The Jews, then, no doubt were cheated into the firm conviction (by their early leaders) that _they_, of all people on earth, were the chosen of Heaven. This will account for their keeping themselves as a separate people—the heaviest curse that could befal them, and which remains on them till this day. According to the Bible, the dealings of Jehovah towards mankind in general, and of the Jews in particular, will bear out the following remarks:—That, after the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the descendants of Noah were dispersed abroad on the earth, the Bible God forsook the earth for some hundred years. He had no worshippers on earth. He then descends and selects one family to be called after his name. From that moment, Jehovah appears to direct his whole attention to the family concerns of his new choice. Troubles come on in quick succession; Abram’s domestic jars claim his attention and superintendence. Sarah and her maid servant quarrel; the maid is turned out of doors, about a child who claimed Sarah’s husband as its father.