ivity is generally
strongly marked, and in very early childhood made manifest. Thus, in
the third or fourth generation, where all have been blacksmiths, the
child will be born with the muscles of the right arm more developed
than those of the left, and the first plaything he demands is a hammer.
So, where a family have been traders, will the offspring naturally
discover an aptness for bargaining and commerce. This is illustrated in
the instincts of the Jews, a people of extraordinary brain and
wonderful tenacity of purpose. Five thousand years since, a small
fragment of the Semitic race, residing in Mesopotamia between the
waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris, consisting of two families,
came into the land of Canaan, in Asia Minor; from them have descended
the people known as Jews. The country over which they spread, and which
is known as Judea, is not more than four hundred miles long by two
hundred and fifty in breadth, situated between two populous and
powerful empires, the Assyrian and Egyptian, who, waging war too
frequently, made the land of Judea their battle-field, and its people
the objects of persecution and oppression. The earnings of their labor
were deemed legitimate prey by both, and taken wherever found: they
were led into captivity by the Assyrians and by the Egyptians,
enslaved, and denied the legal right to possess the soil--which, to the
everlasting disgrace of Christian Europe, was a restriction upon this
wonderful people until within the present century. A blind bigotry
would have blotted them from the face of the earth, but for that
energy, talent, and enterprise possessed by them in a superior degree
to any people upon the globe. Inspired by a sublime belief that they
were the chosen people of God, no tyranny nor oppression could subdue
their energies. They prayed and labored, went forward with untiring
determination, upheld by their faith, and always, under the direst
distress, found comfort from this belief and the fruits of incessant
labor. The soil of their loved Canaan was barren, and yielded
grudgingly to the most persistent labor. This drove them to trade, and
an extended intercourse with the world. Without a national government
of sufficient power to protect them when robbed by the people or the
governments surrounding their own, they were compelled, for
self-protection, to resort to every means of concealing the earnings of
their enterprise and superior knowledge and skill from Christian