Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ
treatment. After having finished my military year's practice, I settled
in Bromberg, and soon found a promising sphere of activity. This,
however, was interrupted by my participating in the military expeditions
of 1864 and 1866. Also in 1870 I was called to serve in the army as
physician, and took part in the siege of Strassburg, and likewise of
Belfort, and returned home with the decoration of the Iron Cross. I then
renewed my medical work at Bromberg, and continued it for twenty years,
and was also a contributor to the 'General Homoeopathic Periodical.'
Owing to the precarious health of my only child, I was at length
obliged to exchange the northern cold climate for that of the south, and
hence settled in 1883 at Stuttgart. In 1894, in addition to my medical
work, I undertook in 1894 the editorship of the above-named journal. I
have also for some years acted as President of the Committee of the
Society of Homoeopathic Physicians at Würtemberg.
"As for the story of my spiritual life, I may say, with all humility,
that our gracious Lord favoured me early in my youth. Already as a
school-boy I had the opportunity of learning the Gospel, since the Bible
was our book for reading in my first Christian school. I was at that
time much attracted by the works and utterances of Jesus, and deeply
touched by His death, and impressions perseveringly strong were made
upon my mind. The instruction and earnest converse I had with two
fellow-workers of the British Society, Dr. Koppel and Dr. Fürst, helped
me."
This short extract from Dr. Nathaniel Immanuel Mossa's autobiography is
supplemented by the information supplied by Pastor de le Roi concerning
him:--
"One day a Jewish Rabbi of his town asked him to give an address to
Jewish prisoners, and he took for his text: 'Seek ye the Lord while He
is to be found, call ye upon Him while He is near,' and he illustrated
the text by the example of the prodigal son. This was the turning point
in his life. He himself began to seek Him until He found Him or was
found by Him. He afterwards went to Bromberg, where he heard Koppel
giving an exposition on Isa. liii. and he joined in his labours as a
doctor in the Institution at Salem. Koppel recommended him for baptism
to the L.J.S. missionary Bellson, in Berlin. Later in life he settled in
Stuttgart, where he was a great comfort and support to Gottheil, and
after his death, he himself acted as missionary of the British Society
there till he was called home."
MYERS, Rev. Dr. Alfred Moritz, was born in Breslau, of strict orthodox
parents. At the age of twelve his teacher was a famous Talmud rabbi, and
he lived and moved and had his being in the Talmud and in nothing else.
Consequently he became disgusted with it, and when he heard that two
missionaries had arrived in Breslau, he visited them and received tracts
from them. For this he was punished, and when his mother died, he left
his home for London in 1830, and then went to Liverpool, where he heard
the Gospel from the Rev. H. S. Joseph, and after many inward struggles
was baptized in 1839. He studied theology, and became a clergyman of the
Church of England, and a famous preacher. He was Vicar at Barnet, and
afterward of All Saints, Dalston. He wrote an autobiography, "Both one
in Christ," London and Liverpool, 1839, "The History of a young Jew,"
Chester, 1840. "The Jew" translated into German, 1856. He wrote also for
children--"The Peep of Day," "The Night of Trial," upon the first
missionary at Southsea, "Line upon Line," "Reading Disentangled." He
died in 1880.
NACHIM, Rev. M., born in the town of Odessa in 1836. He writes:--
"I was initiated into the covenant on the eighth day (according to the
Jewish rite), and I received the name of Reuben, after my grandfather,
who had been chief rabbi. I do not know the time when I began to learn
Hebrew, but I do remember I was not quite eight years old when I
commenced to study the Talmud.
"In the year 1854, I started on a journey to Palestine. When in
Constantinople I met a Hebrew Christian colporteur named Solomon, who
offered me a New Testament.
"Up to this period of my life I had never heard there was such a book in
existence! That dear Christian man induced me to visit the London Jews'
Society's missionary (the Rev. Dr. Stern). Space does not permit me to
go into detail, but that memorable visit, which lasted several hours,
thanks be to our Heavenly Father, changed my future life. It was then
for the first time I heard that Christianity was not, as I had been led
to believe, a system of idolatry, but based on Moses and the Prophets,
and I left Dr. Stern's house with a burning desire to hear more, and
learn more about it. For two years I visited Dr. Stern constantly, and
the more I learned of the saving truth as it is in Jesus, the more
agonized was my struggle; but at last, though my pillow was oft bedewed
with tears, as I realized fully what decision for Christ would involve,
I was enabled by Divine grace to say, 'I count all things but loss, for
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things;' and on September 16, 1856, I was
baptized in Constantinople by my beloved spiritual father, Dr. Stern,
and I then received the name of Michael (who is like unto God). From
that time I had an earnest desire to witness for Christ amongst my
brethren; and in 1860 I entered the mission field in connexion with the
London Jews' Society, with whom I remained till November, 1869, and then
I commenced my missionary labours with the British Society.
"In closing this brief outline of my life, I desire to express my deep
gratitude to our gracious Lord, who has permitted me to preach the
Gospel of Jesus Christ in Russia, Roumania, Austria, Germany, France,
Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey and Bulgaria, and has blessed the
message to many a Jewish heart, and to the salvation of many souls. I
have also been privileged to preach the Gospel to many members of my own
family, holding influential positions in Russia, and I am thankful so
say that nine of my cousins have been baptized.
"My future is in God's hands, and my earnest prayer is, that the
remainder of my life may be more fully dedicated to His service and for
His glory."
NAPHTHALI, Israel, was one of the earliest missionaries of the British
Society. He was appointed in 1842, and laboured mostly in Manchester. In
1851 he could report twenty-three converts as the fruit of his labours.
In 1870, it was recorded that through his instrumentality fifty Jews
acknowledged Jesus as their Saviour, amongst whom was Aaron Sternberg,
who afterwards became an earnest missionary of the same Society.
Naphthali was an earnest, spiritually-minded Christian; who reached the
age of 86, and died in the Home for Aged Israelites in 1886.
NATHANIEL, (Julla), a North African Jew, was one of the earliest Jewish
converts in England after the Reformation. He was baptized in the parish
church of All Hallows, Lombard Street, London on April 1, 1577, by the
Rev. John Fox, who preached a sermon on that occasion on Rom. xi. in
Latin. That sermon was published in English by James Bell in 1587.
Nathaniel, too, gave an address to the congregation after his baptism.
("Jewish Intelligence," 1827, pp. 28, 321, 406, 445.)
NAVORSKY, son of Moses bar Hayim, who lived in the Archduchy of Posen in
the seventeenth century. His father was a tenant farmer, and when he
died the Polish nobleman, to whom the farm belonged, after demanding
from the widow the payment of false debts, which she refused to pay,
drove her away from the farm, seized her son and had him forcibly
baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. When the Saxons invaded Poland,
one of their officers gave the nobleman a dog for him in exchange. This
officer, being a Christian man and a member of the Moravian brethren,
treated him kindly and instructed him in the truth of the Gospel, of
which he had hitherto been in total ignorance. Later he joined the
Lutheran Church and lived a pious Christian life. He died in 1750.
NEANDER, Auguste. [16] On the 17th of July in the year 1850, an imposing
funeral _cortège_ slowly wended its way through the streets of Berlin,
attended by a Royal carriage and by numerous Government officials,
clergymen, professors and students of the Universities of Berlin and
Halle, assembled to pay their last tokens of respect and esteem to the
distinguished man who was being carried to his final resting-place.
Along the whole route from the residence of the deceased to the
cemetery, a distance of two miles, immense crowds of people thronged the
streets, filling all windows, doors, and available places of
observation. Before the hearse were carried the Bible and Greek
Testament of the man who had done more than any of his contemporaries to
keep alight in Germany the torch of pure and undiluted Christianity. The
whole scene was a striking tribute to the worth and work of the eminent
professor and Church historian, Auguste Neander, who for thirty-eight
years had exercised unbounded influence in the domain of theology, not
only in the University of which he was a distinguished ornament, but
also throughout Europe. And this man was a Christian Jew, whose
conversion and devotion to Christianity were destined to be fruitful in
great results, the end of which we have hardly seen to-day.
[16] Biographies of Eminent Hebrew Christians, by the Rev. W. T. Gidney.
David Mendel, to give him his original name, was born at Göttingen of
poor Jewish parents on January 10th, 1789. He was a scion of the famous
Mendel family, connected by descent with the great Jewish reformer
Moses Mendelssohn, whose successful efforts to elevate and uplift his
then degraded race ended in all his descendants eventually embracing the
Christian faith. In the words of a modern Jewish historian, whose love
of truth led her to place on record what must have cost many a regret to
avow:--"As we read the story of the wise and liberal philosopher, who
broke through the barriers and let in the light of learning and of
social countenance on mediæval benighted Judaism, we shall see that the
very children of the emancipator were dazzled by the unaccustomed rays,
that his sons wavered and his daughters apostatized, and that in the
third generation--only the third--the fetters which degraded were called
degrading, and the grandchildren of Moses Mendelssohn, the typical Jew,
were Jews no longer."[17]
[17] Lady Magnus, "Outlines of Jewish History," ch. xxxvi. p. 284.
Young David Mendel received his early education at the gymnasium or
public school at Hamburg, it being his parents' intention to bring him
up in the legal profession, in which, there is very little doubt, he
would have become distinguished. In 1806, however, having, through the
influence of two fellow-students, Chamisso the poet and another named
Neumann, embraced the Christian faith, he determined to devote himself
to the study of theology, and thenceforth the whole course of his life
was altered. At his baptism he had taken the Christian names of Johann
Auguste Wilhelm, after those of his two friends, to which he added a
new surname, Neander, or the "new man," and the new aims of his life
were thus expressed in a letter which he wrote to the pastor who had
baptized him: "My reception into the holy covenant of the higher life is
to me the greatest thing for which I have to thank you, and I can only
prove my gratitude by striving to let the outward sign of baptism unto a
new life become, indeed, the mark of the new life proclaiming the
reality of the new birth."
Auguste Neander, as he was thereafter known, now entered the University
of Halle, where he studied Christian dogmatics under the celebrated