Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ
MENDELSSOHN, Abraham, second son of Moses Mendelssohn the philosopher,
was born in Berlin in 1779. In 1804, he married Leah, a sister of Jacob
Levi Solomon Bartholdi. The latter having become a Protestant Christian
in 1805, influenced his sister and brother-in-law to follow his example.
Whilst his father had resisted the arguments and persuasion of Lavater
to take this step, he declared:--"Formerly I was the son of my father,
now I am the father of my son." Accordingly, he had his children--Felix,
Fanny, Rebecca, and Paul--baptized in the Evangelical Church, under the
additional name of Bartholdi.
MENDELSSOHN, Dorothea, a daughter of the philosopher Felix, became a
Protestant in Paris in 1802.
MENDELSSOHN, Felix Bartholdi, was born at Hamburg, February 3, 1809, and
died 1857. When he was four years old his parents removed to Berlin. His
father at once procured teachers in music for him, as he had begun thus
early to show great talent in that direction. His teachers on the piano
were Louis Bezer, and Zelter, the friend of Goethe. The chapel
choirmaster, Mr. Hennings, gave him instruction on the violin. The
father of the poet, Paul Heyse, who later became the celebrated
philologist, was his private tutor in the home of the Mendelssohns,
where the intellectual aristocracy of Berlin frequently assembled. When
Felix was nine years old he appeared for the first time at a public
concert, where his remarkable performances won him great applause. Two
years later, we find him in a Berlin Musical Academy, where he studied
church music under Zelter's direction. When he was twelve years old,
Zelter placed him in the Olympic in Weimar, where he made remarkable
progress. When he was fourteen, we find him a guest at Goethe's house,
and his host wrote thus to Zelter:--"Felix's productions astonish
everybody." No one was more delighted at the boy's success than his
father, who took pride in gratifying his son's every wish regarding his
musical education, and the latter's diligence amply rewarded any outlay.
Before Felix was out of his teens he had written four operas. His father
accompanied him to Paris, where he had the education of the best
teachers of the time. Soon after he went to London, where he wrote an
original overture founded upon Shakespere's "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
which attracted the attention of the celebrated singer, Henrietta
Sonntag, and won a great triumph for its composer--he was then twenty
years old. He became a member of a Philharmonic Society. He spent some
time in Rome, where he composed "Die Walpinges nacht," and arranged the
one hundred and fifteenth psalm to music. He also visited Naples. This
Italian town made a lasting impression upon his mind. He played before
many of the crowned heads of Europe. King Frederick William IV. of
Prussia was greatly interested in the young composer, and employed him
to write the music for the "Tragedy of Sophocles." His success greatly
excited the jealousy of the older musicians, but the King became his
dearest friend. Mendelssohn played in 1841 before Queen Victoria. He
thus described the occasion in a letter to his "dear little mother." "I
asked Prince Albert, the Queen's husband, to play something on the organ
for me. He complied. His playing--so beautiful and perfect--many an
organist might have envied him. Then I played and sang my chorus from
"St. Paul," "How beautiful are the messengers." When I had finished the
first stanza, the Queen and Prince Albert joined in the singing. The
Queen asked if I had any new compositions; if so, she would gladly have
them printed. We went into her salon, where there was a piano. I played
and sang again. She praised my playing and singing, and when I bade them
adieu said: 'I hope you will soon visit us in England again.'" This
brilliant career was speedily cut short. The death of his dearly beloved
sister Fanny, in the spring of 1847, affected him seriously. All his
compositions thereafter were melancholy. He became nervous and
irritable. He could not apply himself to his work, but would sit for
hours with his hands folded. After a brief illness he died on November
4, 1857, when he was only thirty-six. Three days after, he was carried
to his grave by the side of his sister Fanny Hensel, in Trinity
Cemetery, Berlin. Felix Mendelssohn was a favourite of the German
people--a musical genius like Weber and Schubert. He put his whole life
and soul into his work. His early death confirms Neander's words--also a
Hebrew Christian--"Whom the gods love die young." God gave him a musical
gift, which he delighted to use for His glory.
MENDELSSOHN, Henrietta, daughter of the banker, Alexander Mendelssohn,
was baptized in Berlin in 1822.
MENDELSSOHN, Nathan, the third son of Moses Mendelssohn, was born in
1782. In 1809, he was baptized by the Reformed Pastor Petiscus,
assuming the name of Carl Theodor Nathanael Mendelssohn. He became a
mechanic by profession, and was at the head of a large industry in
Silesia. He was a sincere Christian, and took an interest in missionary
work among the Jews. He requested the missionaries of the L.J.S. in 1826
to supply him with Bibles for distribution among his workmen. He died in
Berlin in 1852.
MENSOR, Rev. Dr. Meyer, studied theology in Berlin, where he received
the degree of D.D. in 1846. He was subsequently chief rabbi of Chicago.
After embracing Christianity, he was ordained by the Archbishop of York
in 1861-2. After holding several curacies in the North of England, he
was appointed Vicar of Stoke Mandeville in 1879, where he preached the
Gospel for many years, and took a great interest in missions to the
Jews.
MEYER, Friedrich Christian, born in Hamburg in the second half of the
seventeenth century, died in Belgium about 1738. After having been
baptized at Bremen, he became a missionary and travelled for thirty
years. He was the author of the following works: (1) "Licht zu
Erleuchten die Juden," exalting the glory of Christ (Leipzig, 1711). (2)
"Meirath Enayim," a pamphlet written in German, in which the author drew
a parallel between Moses and Christ, shewing the supremacy of the latter
(Amsterdam, 1713). (3) "Der Abscheuliche Mord Christi," in which he
endeavoured to demonstrate that the duration of the exile of the Jews
can be attributed only to the Crucifixion of our Lord, Hamburg, 1719.
(4) "Vera Immanuelis Generatio," written in Hebrew, and demonstrating
the Deity of Jesus from the prophets, especially from Isaiah vii. 14.
MEYER, Hermann Edward, was born in Gross Glogau in Germany, 1796, and
converted in 1817; he studied in Halle, and became professor of law and
philology in Greifswald and in Halle. He wrote mostly about Greek laws,
"Attischen Process," Halle, 1824. In 1828 he became editor of the
"Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung," and especially contributed to the
"Allgemeine Encyklopædie" of Ersch and Grüber. He died in 1855.
MEYER, Rev. Jonas Theodor, was born in Crivitz, a small town in
Mecklenberg, January 30, 1819, and died in New Jersey, March 14, 1896.
His early Hebrew education he received from a Polish Jew in the Cheder,
and then he was sent to relatives in Schwerin, where he studied in the
Gymnasium, so that at the age of fifteen he was in the first class. As
far as religion is concerned, he was taught to fear God, but he knew
very little of the love of God, so that he only lived to appease the
divine wrath by ascetic practices and good works. This did not satisfy
his soul, and he resorted to worldly pleasures, but neither did he find
satisfaction in them. At this juncture he met with the writings of R. S.
Hirsch, the then leader of orthodoxy, and with those of mystic Plessner,
which awakened him somewhat from his spiritual slumber. He then began to
study the Scriptures, and trusted to God's grace and mercy for the
pardon of his sins, yet he found no peace. Thereupon he came in contact
with Dr. Holdheimer, the leader of the Reformed Jews, and by him was
appointed teacher in Schwerin, in 1841, and subsequently recommended as
Reformed rabbi to a congregation in Butzow. But the Reform movement at
that time went to extremes. The rabbis denied the belief in the Messiah
at a congress, from which Meyer dissented. He was placed in a
predicament between the extremes of Orthodoxy and Reform, in neither of
which he could observe vital religion, so he began to study the New
Testament. At first only its sublime ethics attracted him, but by and by
it was the Person and life of Christ which drew him by the Holy Spirit
to Himself. Then he met the missionary Dr. Schwarz, and from him he
heard the Gospel, and attended the lectures of Neander on Galatians, and
those of Hengstenberg, on the history of the kingdom of God, on the Old
Testament, and on its Christology, and was baptized by Dr. Schwarz, July
18, 1847. In 1848 he left the University of Berlin and went to Scotland,
and studied theology at the College of the Free Church at Aberdeen.
Afterwards he became assistant Professor of Hebrew to Dr. Duncan in New
College, Edinburgh. In 1857 he was ordained by Dr. Candish to do
ministerial work among the Germans in Edinburgh. In 1858 he was sent as
a missionary to the Jews in Galatz, Roumania, whence he was transferred
in 1862 to Ancona, Italy. From there he was sent in 1867 to Amsterdam,
to succeed Dr. Schwarz, who went to London. In 1871 he was requested by
the English Presbyterians to take charge of their mission in London, in
which he laboured ardently and successfully until his retirement in
1894.
MOLLIS, Rev. M. L., thus writes of himself:--"I was born in Russia of
Jewish parents, and in the heart of Talmudical study, zeal for
traditional observances, and great orthodoxy. My education was therefore
thoroughly Jewish, and I sincerely and firmly believed in all I was
taught, both at home and in school, as being the commandments of God,
and that in the keeping of them there was great reward.
"Thus far a good foundation was laid, in which I gloried and thanked God
that I was born a Jew and well brought up and instructed in the holy law
of God and the prophets, and, moreover, in the Oral Law and the teaching
of the wise men in Israel.
"I may also add here that I was likewise taught several modern
languages, and received a fair secular education. For this I have to
thank several members of my family at home, who cherished some higher
plans in reference to my future career. My father and mother were dead,
and it had been their desire that I should learn the banking business
when I was old enough. This was not to my taste, and after trying it for
awhile, I left home, and went first to Odessa and then to Roumania to
visit my uncle. I did not stop very long with him, but left the country
and went eastward.
"It was during my travels abroad that I first came into contact with
Jewish missionaries, and heard of Jesus Christ. I had not read the New
Testament before, or even heard of such a book, as far as I can now
remember. I was therefore perfectly ignorant of Christianity, and knew
nothing of the Gospel. Of course, I heard at home of Russian and Roman
Catholic Christianity, but I was a Jew and forbidden to enquire into
their religion, or to read their books. One thing, however, I remember,
made some impression upon me, and that occurred when I was in Odessa. I
saw there some Germans who were Lutherans, and noticed how different
they were in their lives and manners from other people around them, but
I never enquired where the change came from. And so it was at first when
I heard of the missionaries, for I really did not quite know their
religion and what they were teaching. I went one day out of curiosity to
hear one of them read and expound some chapters on Isaiah the prophet.
But when the reader asserted that Jesus Christ was the true Messiah, I