their zeal for God and country, but moved them rather to a minute observance of the external prescriptions of the law than to a more reasonable cultivation of its spirit They enforced a whole system of religious practices as tests of orthodoxy, many of them the mere inventions of an ingenious ritualism, others extravagant interpretations of the Mosaic forms. They assumed to be spokesmen of the Deity and final judges of all questions of the Jewish religion. They crushed out all liberty of spirit by their authority, which was as imperious as their rulings were subtle and narrow. To them, however, and to their associates the Scribes-learned copyists and expositors of the Scriptures-the people reverently looked for guidance. They were the only leaders who believed in God and His law; yet they who looked to them for the bread of life were too often fed with husks of ritualism. Fasts were imposed wholly without warrant in the law, postures at prayer, ablutions, religious amulets, exorbitant tithes a whole network of painful duties binding as strictly as the Decalogue, too complex to be even easily learned and impossible of fulfilment. This it was that produced the condition of censoriousness and hypocrisy which we shall find our Saviour so often condemning.

As might be expected, a violent revolt against this enslavement of the religious spirit produced a class precisely the reverse of the Pharisees. The Sadducees threw off not merely the innovations of the Pharisees, but

SCRIBES.

even the valid observances of the Mosaic law. They scoffed, too, at the separatist principles of the Pharisees, mingled freely with pagans and followed their manner of living, frequenting even their lascivious public shows. They lived an easy life; they sought an easy way of deciding religious questions. They very commonly denied the immortality of the soul and the reality of a world of spirits, professing to believe in the Deity only, and that in the vaguest terms possible. Politically they were the willing tools of the Romans, and of Herod the Great and his sons. They were not popular with the masses of the people, who always love and follow fervent spirits. The Sadducees were comparatively few in number, and were of the richer class, having fattened on the favor of the public authorities.

THE SYNAGOGUES AND THE SANHEDRIN.

Every Jewish community throughout the land had at least one synagogue, which was the usual place of public worship and Scripture exposition. Each synagogue was governed by a body of elders, a chief or ruler, a master of ceremonies and a head usher, and these sent their representatives to the Sanhedrin. Of this body, formerly so powerful, the High-Priest was president. It had seventy-one members, made up of the Chief Priests or heads of the sacerdotal classes, together with delegates from the elders of the synagogues and representatives from the college or association of the Scribes. All that survived of national dignity in Israel was represented by the Sanhedrin, once in plenary possession

A PHARISEE.

of the executive and judicial authority over the nation. By its own connivance and consent the Romans had nullified its authority and even usurped its functions.

THE ROMAN POWER IN PALESTINE.

About two generations before the birth of Christ the Roman general Pompey had captured Jerusalem, slain the priests, profaned the Holy of Holies, appointed his creature Hyrcanus ethnarch, and made the country part of the Roman province of Syria. Under Julius Cæsar, Herod, surnamed the Great, a Gentile of Jewish faith, was appointed tetrarch of Judea, and by Antony and Octavius was made king, in vassalage, of course, to Rome. He is one of the most cruel monsters known to history, or even fable. Among his undoubted crimes are unheard-of oppression and massacre of the people, murder of his nearest kindred, and obtrusion of his creatures into the Sanhedrin and high-priesthood. His usurpation was perfect as far as suppression of Jewish liberty was concerned, while he in turn was most slavishly subservient to Rome. Upon his death, which happened shortly after our Saviour's birth, Rome divided his kingdom

among his sons: Archelaus was made ethnarch of Judea, Herod Antipas tetrarch of

Galilee and the Perea, Herod Philip tetrarch of Batanea and Trachonitis-the region lying to the north of Lake Genesarethall strictly subject to Rome. Archelaus was deposed in the tenth year of his reign and his territory annexed to the Roman

LAMP USED IN SYNAGOGUE. province of Syria. Herod Philip

was generally a good ruler; he survived our Lord's mission only a few years. Herod Antipas was cruel, impious, and licentious; he is the Herod who murdered John the Baptist, and to whom Pontius Pilate sent our Saviour on Good Friday. He was finally deposed by the Emperor Caligula and died in exile.

These were some of the steps of the Roman colossus towards the entire extinction of Jewish independence and liberty. Another and a notable one was the imperial census taken at our Saviour's birth under Coponius, Sulpitius Quirinus being proconsul of all Syria. Two insurrections followed, and then the country was more closely incorporated into the empire. A temporary relief was felt under the procurators Ambivius, Anius Rufus, and Valerius, who ruled with moderation. But under their successor, Pontius Pilate, who was appointed about five years prior to our Saviour's public ministry, the Jewish people were made subject to the Roman officials in every detail of government. The Roman procurator was master of life and death, being the chief judicial as well as administrative officer in the land. He was backed by a full military equipment, the Roman legions having detachments in every strong place and a large garrison not only at the official capital, Cæsarea on the Mediterranean, but also in Jerusalem. Roman tax-collectors were at the gates of every town, and the tribute was rigorously exacted. In the heart's core of the venerable theocracy, the Holy City itself, the foreign domination was centred, supervising and completing the political disintegration of Israel.

The idolatrous Roman procurator could at his caprice interfere with the divine sacrificial worship of the Temple, and he did not fail to do so, using the priesthood as an instrument for the people's sub

jection. The deep religious sentiment of the Jews,
ingrained by racial tradition, by education, by the
sincerest personal conviction, made the doctrine and
the worship of the Temple the supreme power of
the nation, and the Romans knew well that they
must secure the leaders of the priesthood i. they
would maintain their supremacy. Therefore, four-
teen years after our Saviour was born, the Roman
governor, Valerius Gratus, intruded a spurious High-
Priest into the Temple in place of Annas, the legitimate
one. Within four years two others were successively
intruded, until, in spite of all protests of the people,
one was found base enough to hold the place under
Roman favor for nineteen years-Joseph Caiphas;
though, for all true Hebrews, Annas remain-
ed the only lawful incumbent. We shall find
St. Luke naming both of them as High-
Priests, one being such by divine right, the
other by the Roman usurpation. They
managed cunningly to work together, An-
nas being father-in-law of Caiphas.

It was when our Lord began to preach
that this lowest depth of degradation had
been reached: three rulers in the politi-
cal order, Pilate governing Judea, with
his headquarters in Jerusalem; the two
Herods, Antipas and Philip, both slaves
of Rome, having nominal authority over the rest of

Palestine; in the religious order two
High-Priests, one real and secret, the
other open and spurious. Could a
worse condition of things be imag-
ined? And what was the hope of
Israel? It was the promised Messias.

TYPES OF

JEWISH

PRIESTS.