proselyte, the celebrated Nathan Benjamin. This man, a person of position and influence, professed to have seen in a vision the Lord Himself; who informed him that the promised Deliverer had come in the person of Sabbathai Sevi, and that he, Nathan Benjamin, was the Elias who was to herald his coming. The reader will remember that this is the exact repetition of the imposture of Barchochebas and Rabbi Akiba, fifteen hundred years before. Aided by this ally, Sabbathai preached in Jerusalem, and resided for thirteen years in that city, continuing to gain proselytes and bearing down all opposition. The imposture was aided by the remarkable fact that, according to the interpretation of some eminent Cabalists of a passage in the book of the prophet Daniel, the Messiah would make His appearance about the year 1675. One of Nathan Benjamin’s first steps, when he felt himself strong enough to take it, was to assemble the Jews resident in Jerusalem, and inform them that, by virtue of the authority committed to him from on high, he abrogated the fast which would otherwise be observed in the ensuing June, because the time of the coming of the Messiah was a festal one, inconsistent with mourning of any kind. He then brought Sabbathai out to them, who, he said, in the ensuing November would go forth in power and destroy the Ottoman empire. He encountered determined opposition from the wiser among his countrymen, who perceived that his pretensions were not only without foundation, but were likely to bring the gravest calamities on the Jews everywhere throughout the Sultan’s dominions. They even went so far as to try him as a rebel and an impostor, and condemn him to death. His adherents, however, were too many and too powerful to permit of this sentence being carried into effect, and he continued to reside without molestation in the city. After a period of thirteen years from the date of this announcement of his pretensions, he made an expedition into Egypt, where he married, for the third time, the daughter of a Polish Jew, who professed to have received a revelation that she was the destined bride of the Messiah. But the marriage, like the two former ones, was only a marriage in name; and Sabbathai returned to Jerusalem, where he resided for three years more, and then publicly proclaimed himself in one of the synagogues as the Messiah. This once more roused the indignation of the Rabbins, who pronounced against him the sentence of excommunication. This sentence he found too strong for him to struggle against, and he fled to his native city, Smyrna.