Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ
earlier career. One little incident is too good to be omitted. Before
Wolff entered upon the curacy, his predecessor, doubting the sentiments
of his successor, preached his farewell sermon from the text, "After my
departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you." Wolff remarks,
"However, he was very merciful, and made no allusion to the coming
'Wolff' in his sermon!"
On his return from Bokhara, Wolff was appointed to the living of
Isle-Brewers, in Somersetshire, with a population of 300, amongst whom
were two farmers, all the rest being peasants. There Wolff remained for
the remainder of his life, his talents and brilliant gifts being wasted
in such retirement, but his energy knowing no diminution. He built a new
parsonage and schools, defraying a portion of the expense from the
proceeds of his works and lectures; and erected a new church, for the
cost of which he laid all his numerous friends and everybody else, under
contribution by incessant correspondence and personal applications. He
was a father to his poor, and every winter supported thirty-five
families with the necessities of life. Wolff was the neighbour and firm
friend of George Anthony Denison, "dearer to him than any," although
theologically in the opposite camp. Amongst Wolff's other numerous
friends and acquaintances, we may mention the names of Sir Walter Scott,
Dean Stanley, Dean Hook, Alfred Tennyson, and Alfred and Margaret Gatty.
Wolff died in 1862, at the age of 66 or 67 years--a long life, when the
restless activity of brain and body is taken into account, and a full
life, in every sense of the word. He exemplified in his person the
saying, "It is better to wear out than to rust out." And his epitaph
might well have been, "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."
WOLFF, Oscar Ludwig Bernard, was born in Altona, 1799. After embracing
Christianity (the date uncertain) he held the professorship of modern
languages and literature successively at Weimar and at Jena, where he
died in 1851. His literary works appeared at Jena in 1841-43 in fourteen
volumes. The best known of his works are "Poetischer Hausschatz des
Deutschen Volkes" (Leipzig, 1839); "Hausschatz Deutscher Prosa" (_ib._,
1855) and "Geschichte des Deutschen Romans," Jena 1843.
WOLKENBERG, Rev. Marcus. Mordecai Wolkenberg (for such was his Jewish
name) was born in 1834 in Russian Poland. When quite young he was
smuggled over the border into Galicia (Austrian Poland) to avoid being
Christianized and trained for military service, it often being the
custom in the time of the Emperor Nicholas I. to seize Jewish lads for
those ends. Mordecai was placed by his parents with pious and orthodox
relatives at Brody, where he gained the interest of the famous rabbi of
the town, Salomon Kluger, and through his teaching soon acquired a good
Hebrew and Talmudical education. When quite a young man he was appointed
tutor in the home of the rich banker Cahner at Jassy, where he remained
about two years. During his stay there he made the acquaintance of the
Rev. W. Mayer, the L.J.S. missionary. After a time of great
heart-searching and deep spiritual experience, he was led to embrace the
Christian faith, and was baptized. Thereupon he had to pass through a
period of bitter trial and persecution, instigated chiefly by his
employer. His occupation had brought him in contact with many people.
All these forsook him when he made his public confession of
Christianity. At length he had to leave Jassy, and, after a while,
Marcus (as his name now was) went to the Malta Protestant College; later
on he came to London, when he read theology with the Rev. A. S.
Thelwall. In 1863 he was appointed an assistant missionary at Jassy.
This was a great trial to his feelings and faith, for it was there that
he first found Christ, and there, in consequence, that he had first
tasted the venom of religious hatred. Here, however, to his surprise, he
was sought for and visited by numbers of his former acquaintances. A
wide door, and effectual, was thus opened to him, one result of years of
patient school and other missionary work by those who had long laboured
in Jassy. Of this circumstance he says: "Most of these visitors were
teachers, some merchants, and others near relatives of one of the
wealthiest Jews here. Nor has the bold proclamation of the truth, on my
part, deterred them from continuing their intercourse with me." For
seven years he thus worked in Jassy and in Bacau for Christ, and with
much blessing. In 1870, owing to the illness of his wife, he had to
return to England; where he laboured successively in London, Manchester,
Birmingham, and lastly in Liverpool, where he died April 17th, 1900,
very much regretted by all who knew him, and not least by many Jews, who
spoke in the highest terms of his goodness, piety, and scholarship.
XERES, Jonah ben Jacob, was a native of North Africa, where he came in
contact with English Christian merchants and learned the truth as it is
in Jesus from them. In 1707 he came to London and was instructed and
baptized by Dr. Allix in 1709. He then wrote an "Address to the Jews,"
containing his reasons for leaving the Jewish and embracing the
Christian religion. (See Wolff Bib. Heb., 14, N. 823.)
The book is dedicated to the then Archbishop of York (in 1709), and
prefaced by an attestation to the respectability of the author by seven
London merchants, and another by the learned Dr. Allix.
"We, whose names are underwritten, merchants trading into Barbary in
Africa, do hereby certify, all whom it may concern, that we, each of us,
having formerly lived for several years in those parts, did then, as we
do now, personally know Jonah ben Jacob Xeres, who was born in Saphia, a
sea-port town on that coast. His parents, being Hebrews, were reputed
to be honest and substantial people; who employed much care in educating
this their son, Jonah, in the Jewish religion, and no less expense in
instructing him in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean tongues. He the said
Jonah lived in that country a professed Jew, till the age of five and
twenty, or thereabouts; and always behaved himself sober in his
conversation, and no less just in his dealing, as some of us have
experienced, having had occasion to employ him on several accounts,
whereby, amongst other conversation, he had an opportunity of
discoursing with some in our factory about matters of religion; and, as
he now informs us, was thereby possessed with some notion, that the
Messiah had already come; whereby, being uneasy under such a weighty
doubt, he came over to England about eighteen months ago, in order to
acquire a full satisfaction. After some time here, he applied himself to
some of us to recommend him to some learned Divine for information;
whereupon he was sent to the Rev. Dr. Allix, on whom some of us have
since waited, who, requesting of us a character of the said Jonah, is
the occasion of this paper, which we do in all respects believe to be
true, and have a very good opinion of the probity and sincerity of the
above-mentioned Jonah; and that we trust upon his examination, he will
prove to the judgment of the Most Reverend the Archbishops, the Right
Reverend the Bishops, the Reverend the Clergy, and all other pious
Christians, to whom we recommend him, &c.
"Done at London, this eight and twentieth day of May, one thousand
seven hundred and nine.
"Peter Fleuriot, Samuel Robinson, John Lodington, John Adams, Val.
Norton, Robert Colmore, Thomas Coleman."
"These are to certify, that upon several discourses had with the
aforementioned Jonah ben Jacob Xeres, I have found him very well
acquainted with the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, and all
other Jewish and particularly Talmudical learning; so that he was
very ready, upon the chief objections that Jews make to the
doctrine, deity, and office of our Saviour. But, as he is endowed
with very good natural and acquired parts, I was the more able to
satisfy and convince him of the truth; so that, after having
examined by Scripture all the most material controversies, he hath
freely declared to myself, and his other friends, his desire to
renounce the errors and prejudices of his education in the Jewish
religion, and to embrace and profess the Christian faith.
"Witness my hand this 30th day of July, 1709.
"Peter Allix, D.D."
ZABANSKI, J., was born at Minsk in Lithuania. His father, a bigoted
Talmudist, sent him once on an errand to a Christian nobleman, who made
him a present of a Hebrew New Testament which, on coming home, he
innocently enough shewed his father, and was peremptorily told to take
it back. This excited in him the curiosity to know the contents of the
book, and he soon procured one. Detected in reading it, he was punished
by his father more than once, and at last the father got the police to
give him twenty-five strokes with a rod for disobedience. The
consequence was that he got ill and had to be taken to a hospital. After
being there nine weeks, he ran away, obtained a situation as a teacher
in a family for three years, where he got possession of a German New
Testament and Dr. McCaul's "Old Paths." He then returned to his father
and asked his permission to go abroad. As this was not granted, he again
ran away, and this time to Constantinople, where he heard the Gospel
from a missionary named Goldberg. Thence he went to Jerusalem, and was
admitted by Hershon into the House of Industry. His countrymen there,
who knew his father as a learned Talmudist, tried every means to snatch
him away from the Mission. They even went to Rachel's grave to pray for
his return to Judaism, and finally sent two Jews to his father to come
and fetch him, but Zabanski became a Christian and laboured afterwards
as a missionary of the L.J.S. from 1864 to 1867, and for a long period
as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in Bulgaria.
ZECKHAUSEN, Rev. Leopold. The following is from his own pen:--
"I was born in December, 1862, at Kovno in Russia, of strictly orthodox
Jewish parents, and, with the rest of my brothers, I got the usual
education of rabbinical Jews. My mother, like so many mothers in Israel,
would fain have seen me devoting myself entirely to the Talmud. I was to
be the rabbi of the family. My inclinations, however, were in the
direction of secular knowledge, and my father was broad-minded enough
not to insist upon an exclusively rabbinical training. At the age of
eleven I was accordingly sent to the local Gymnasium, or grammar school.
After a stay of six years at this school I left Russia with the
intention of studying medicine at the University of Koenigsberg in
Prussia. But six months later financial difficulties, in which my father
found himself, necessitated my dropping the studies and accepting a post
offered me in an office (July, 1881.)
"Once in business I threw myself heart and soul into my new vocation,
and kept on rising steadily. At the end of ten years spent in business
houses in Koenigsberg, Frankfort and Amsterdam, I was offered a
partnership at Libau in Russia. I declined it, however, after some
deliberation, and decided to leave business for good (1891).
"That step was the outcome of another and a more important one, which I
had taken three years previously, and which proved to be the turning
point of my life. While still at my father's house I had begun to get
weary of the endless, and often meaningless ceremonies of rabbinical
Judaism. In Germany and Holland, surrounded by general religious
indifference and rampant scepticism, my faith in Judaism waned more and
more. I tried to make myself acquainted with Christianity, assayed to
study the New Testament, but not with the hope of finding in it truth