according to the ordinary course of human affairs, should have infected him more deeply than ever with polytheistic notions, learned the true sense of Moses and the prophets! Thus, in forgetting the letter of Scripture, he got possession of its spirit.

Become at length devoted and sincere worshippers of the God of their fathers, and punctilious observers of the ancient ritual, and now restored to their city and land, it seemed as if the Jewish people was setting out under auspicious circumstances to run that course of national obedience and consequent prosperity which should render it a visible and perpetual witness in the eye of all nations for a pure theology. Now were bright predictions to be fulfilled, and now was the world to admire a people loved of Goda royal priesthood-an exemplar of wisdom, virtue, and felicity!

So it might have been thought; but the hour was come for an occult law of retribution-a latent principle of the spiritual economy, to take effect upon the chosen race. Those who, age after age, had contemned the Divine promise of temporal prosperity as the reward of religious obedience, and had so long and so perversely "sinned against their own mercies," were now to be dealt with on a different rule-a rule which drew its reason from higher purposes than heretofore had been regarded. The Jewish people were indeed at this time willing to main

tain the honours of Jehovah; and they were allowed to do so :-yet it must be under the condition (for the most part) of tribulation and oppression. The economy of earthly benefits which had remained in force under Solomon, Asa, Jehosaphat, Hezekiah, was superannuated, and was displaced by an economy of motives of a more elevated order.-Antiochus is suffered to try the faith and constancy of those whose faithless fathers had been given into the hand of Assyrian and Babylonian oppressors.

This change in the character of events cannot be contemplated without perceiving that the dawn of a day of immortal hope was just then breaking upon the mountains of Judæa; a precursive trial was therefore to be made of that higher order of things, and of that more perfect discipline wherein the welfare of the soul was to take precedence of that of the body—the spiritual to be preferred to the natural-and Eternity to be more accounted of than Time.

A marked, and a correspondent change took place at this era of Jewish history in the sentiments of the people, and especially of their chiefs. Instead of talking exclusively (as heretofore) of immediate and political deliverance, and of national aggrandizement, they mixed with such secular hopes, views of a more refined and prospective sort. They had gradually learned to look through the dim shadows of death for the rewards of piety;-they turned their eye

from the hills of Palestine, and with a steady courage endured torments and met deaththat they might obtain "a better resurrection." 35 Not a less remarkable revolution of feeling was this than that of their final abandonment of polytheism. It was in truth a progression of the national mind ;—and a progression that involved the remote and universal destinies of the human family; for in the history and fate of the race of Abraham the history and fate of all nations are bound up.

The acquisition of the belief of a future life, and of its infinite rewards and punishments as a popular dogma, deepened and expanded to an immense extent the range of the religious emotions. The Jew of the Asmonean era had become capable of sustaining a part of spiritual heroism such as his ancestors of the time of David had never thought of. The "mighty threes" of that pristine age were indeed valiant as warriors, and faithful too as champions of the God of Israel; but Judas Maccabeus, his companions and his successors, drew the motives of their constancy from considerations far more recondite and potent; and they fought and bled not merely as soldiers, but as martyrs.37

37 The spirit of the Jews of this period, and their religious opinions, are to be learned much better from the two books of Maccabees, than from the polite pages of Josephus, who takes vast pains so to dress up the homely piety of his ancestors in hellenic phrases, as should render

It was natural, as this expansion of the religious notions of the Jews took place under circumstances of extreme national trouble, and reached its maturity while they were struggling for their political and religious existence, that it should bring with it those tumultuary feelings which are provoked, as well in vulgar as in noble minds, by witnessing wanton violations of sacred things, persons, places, and usages. During the three centuries preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, and while, with transient intermissions, this nation of true worshippers was contending against the Macedonian, Syrian, and Egyptian kings, or fretting under the pressure of the Roman power, there was going on a slow accumulation upon the national mind of those emotions-intense, profound, and ungovernable, which, after many a portentous heave, at last burst forth and spread a universal ruin.

But this progression of religious feeling passed beyond its sound state;-the ripening reached

it inoffensive to his Gentile friends and readers. The simple language of faith and pious hope-hope of a better life, the learned author of the Antiquities translates into the dialect of Grecian philosophy and Grecian heroism. This is especially to be observed in the speeches of the Jewish worthies. With no other materials than what he obtained from the books of the Maccabees, he expands and embellishes the simple, affecting, and vigorous expressions of devout patriotism which he there found, and is fain to present his readers with rhetorical harangues, after the fashion of Thucydides. The same intention is copiously displayed in the Book of the Government

of Reason.

T

corruption. The people, while they firmly retained whatever was acrimonious in their national ideas, and whatever might engender spiritual arrogance, cast off those purer and nobler sentiments that had once imparted to their character the dignity and moderation of true virtue. Thus, although their external allegiance to Jehovah, the God of Abraham, remained irritably stedfast, and although they haughtily challenged every point of honour that belonged to them as the only depositaries in the world of an unsullied religion, they renounced those expansive sentiments, so frequently introduced by the prophets, which have a benign aspect toward all the families of mankind.38

Nor was this all-though indeed it might have been enough; for the zealot nation, scrupulous practitioners of whatever in the Mosaic institutions tended to insulate them from the

38

Josephus, who never forgets his solicitude to propitiate the Roman government, and to conciliate Gentile readers, takes pains to conceal that contempt which his countrymen indulged toward the polytheistic world. He even denies in a formal manner that the Jews allowed themselves to condemn or ridicule other modes of worship. "For my own part, I do not bring into question other men's religious practices. In truth, it belongs to us as a people to preserve our own usages;-not to inculpate those of other nations. And our legislator expressly forbade our either ridiculing or defaming those whom the nations around us regard as divinities."-Against Apion, b. 2. This was a bold assertion, and one which his adversary might have easily refuted. Are not the gods of the heathen contemptuously handled by David and the prophets? and are not the worshippers of stocks and stones declared to be stupid and absurd? This scorn of idols and idolaters had increased, not diminished, among the Jews.