They appear to have been removed to Babylon and its provinces rather as colonists, than degraded to the condition of slaves, by their conquerors. Great numbers of them together were settled in the cities and villages, where they apparently attended to their own affairs, without any hinderance or other molestation than, probably, paying some tax beyond what was exacted from the natives of the country. They seem, likewise, to have been allowed the free exercise of their religion, with out any interference except on the occasions to which we shall allude presently. The yoke of the conquerors lay lightly on the neck of their captives, for which subsequent events may furnish a clue, by discovering to us that this lenity pro. ceeded as much from policy as from humanity. Our readers will recollect the favourable position of the country of the Israelites for commercial purposes; it had tended, no doubt, to make them expert merchants in the reign of Jehoshaphat it is related, that "he had much business in the cities of Judah." (2 Chron. xvii. 13.) The Babylonians had the wisdom to avail themselves of the superior intelligence and experience of their captives for drawing forth the resources and increasing the riches of the country, by allowing them unmolestedly to pursue those avocations in which they had acquired so much expertness. There was nothing in their treatment and condition to degrade or depress them to such a degree as, by their effects, to stamp their countenance and bearing with an ignoble

character. Yet, their present fallen and dependent state, and the recollection of their absent, beautiful, and once happy country, could not fail to affect their minds deeply, and to give to their countenance a melancholy cast, and reflective expression. "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." (Psalm cxxxvii.) Such was the sorrowful lament of the Hebrew captives. It proves the estimation in which their sublime poetry was held even by their conquerors;-it proves that the Babylonians did not hold their Hebrew captives in contempt.

The expositions and reproofs of Ezekiel, and the mournful confession of Daniel in his ninth chapter, were eminently calculated to embue the people with the deepest reflection on the past,-to cause them to regret the heaven on earth they had lost by their conduct,-and to grave on their hearts that firm attachment for their religion which has never since forsaken them, however they may have failed on too many occasions, at subsequent periods, to regulate their conduct always by its divine precepts. From this time may reasonably be dated the assumption of that rather austere expression of countenance and melancholy bearing from which the nation, generally, has never since been wholly free,the effects, most probably, of a deep conviction that their fallen state, and the many afflictions they have suffered, have been brought upon them by their own faults. The Israelites, destined in future to teach mankind the knowledge of the only true God, and to show his power by their own sufferings and severe trials, had now and for ever cast away the worship

of false gods from their hearts, and were prepared to lay down their lives to evince their readiness and devotion for his service. They were soon called upon to instruct mankind, by such fearful means, in the knowledge of the true God.

Among the several young Hebrew nobles carried captives to Babylon, whom its king directed to be taught in the learning and language of the Chaldeans, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,-subsequently named Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, were pre-eminent over all the others for comeliness of person, and intellectual acquire

ments.

Daniel, through divine favour, having not only recalled but expounded to the king a dream that had escaped his memory, and which the Chaldean learned men were incapable of doing,—he and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, were, in consequence of it, appointed to the most dignified offices of the state; and, as they performed their duties with consummate skill and strict integrity, we readily trace to these circumstances the motives which induced certain Chaldeans to accuse the Jews generally of not falling down and worshipping a golden image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up; for, it is evident, the charge was made principally for the purpose of procuring the destruction of the men who were thorns in their sides; accordingly they specially point out Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who they invidiously state are placed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, as guilty of not serving the gods of the king, and as refusing to fall down before the golden image he had set up. This rouses the king's anger; and the scene subsequently presented to us is appalling to human nature, though it appears to have been viewed with astonishing indifference by the accused.

The men are brought forth, and shown a furnace heated to such a degree, that those employed to throw them into it were themselves consumed by its flames. They are bid to worship the image on pain of being committed to the fiery furnace. -At this trying moment we can,

from the simple narrative in the Scriptures, imagine these men before us, with unblanched cheeks,-a mien as calm as though they had been told they would be thrown on a bed of roses, if they obeyed not,— no obstinate pride in a wrong or vain cause knits their limbs and strengthens their hearts. They are filled with a due sense of the importance of the trial that was now to be made before the Babylonish king and his idolatrous people; whether, from human weakness, the dread of bodily suffering should prevail; or, rising above it,-though the honours and distinctions they enjoyed, with the usual accessories, personal ease and wealth, must have made those sufferings appear still more dreadful,

they should evince their readiness to give up all these and submit to a cruel death, to teach their barbarous oppressors, and all nations afterwards, that no sacrifice could be too great for the service of the true and living God. Was this not a case when they were called upon to lay down the life they had received from their Creator, for his honour and glory? Their answer to Nebuchadnezzar,one of the noblest ever recorded in history, proves that these men hesitated not a moment which of the courses it was their duty to adopt. Nebuchadnezzar, after threatening them with the cruel death before them, if they did not worship the image he had set up, tauntingly asks them, "And who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." The trial is

If it

known to have ended in the salvation of the three pious Hebrews, and the issuing of a decree, forbidding any one, on pain of death, to speak any thing amiss of the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

Daniel again interprets another

of the king's dreams, who, degraded to the condition of the beasts of the field, is brought to acknowledge his own presumption, to praise and honour the Most High, and to confess His power and goodness; when, being restored to his former state and prosperity, he issues his noted edict relating the whole of that remarkable event, and proclaiming his humble acknowledgment of the power and goodness of his Maker.

In the reign of Darius, Daniel, who was advanced by that prince to one of the highest posts in the state, and was intended to be promoted to the very first, excites again the envy and jealousy of the great men of the nation, who, for the purpose of entrapping him and procuring his destruction, obtain from Darius a decree that any one who should presume to ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, save of the king, should be cast into the den of lions. This does not deter the pious Daniel from offering up his usual orisons to his God. In consequence of which disobedience of the royal edict he is cast into the den of lions; whence he is drawn, however, without having experienced any injury whatever, whilst his ene mies, who were subsequently thrown into it, are destroyed by the lions before they reach the bottom of their den.

We have dwelt on these instances to show how perfectly the means now taking by the Deity for spreading a knowledge of himself are in accordance with all his declarations, that through his people all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The kings of Babylon and the Persian princes we have alluded to had evidently confessed the true and living God, but their people appear not to have been then prepared for receiving his purer worship; still, a commencement was not only made, but we see, that, from that period down to the present day, whatever knowledge of the true God has been acquired by mankind has been imparted through the instrumentality

of the Hebrew nation.

The seventy years' captivity being ended, Cyrus gave the Israelites permission to return to their own coun

try and to rebuild the temple and the city-walls. A certain number availed themselves of the permission, but a far greater number remained in Babylon and its provinces, affording a very satisfactory proof that they did not feel the yoke of their conquerors to be very heavy, and that they were engaged in profitable pursuits in that country. Though the Israelites still continued under the dominion of the Medes and Persians, they were allowed gradually to assume the whole management of their own concerns; and for a long period under their high priests they lived in peace and happiness, growing into consequence again as the period approached when the great events of the Grecian and Roman empires were to take place, leading eventually to a more general spread of the Israelites over the globe than had ever prevailed before.

It was during the above period that the events occurred which are related in the Book of Esther. Hadassah, her Israelitish name, adopted as his daughter by her kinsman Mordecai, was carefully educated by him. The occasion that brought her with other young virgins to the court of Ahasuerus is too well known to need being related here. The education of Hebrew maidens must always have been far superior to that of every other nation of those times. When the women were assembled with the other sex to enter into the covenant with the Deity at Sinai, it was plainly inferred that they too were to study the law they had thus voluntarily undertaken to obey. That study was eminently calculated to render them the purest of their sex, to teach them their own dignity, and, occasioning them to exercise their mental faculties, to render them the fit helpmeets and companions of the other sex, which they were appointed to be by the Deity when he first created this, the fairest of his creation. It would be no difficult task to trace in their history that such was the place held by the Israelitish wives

in the houses of their husbands.

The allusion we made to the manner in which Esther was brought up is fully borne out by her history.

The females in other eastern countries appear to have been reared, then, as in the present day, with views very derogatory to the dignity of this fairer part of our species. However carefully their personal attractions may have been attended to, and some few pleasing accomplishments cultivated, their minds would exhibit a dreary and chilling blank; but Esther's was not so. The difference between an intellectual countenance, lit up with the expression of all the mild virtues and delicate sentiments peculiar to the sex, and one that, with all its regularity of features and beautiful complexion, still wants the manifestation that an intelligent soul dwells within, is too well known to leave us for a moment at a loss for the preference given to Esther by the Persian

monarch.

The other young women, who were in turn to present themselves to the prince, ambitious, no doubt, of being selected by him, are said to have decorated themselves with all the finery it was customary to provide them with on similar occasions, to the fullest extent of their little hearts', and still less minds', content; and we see them sent home successively by the monarch without his taking any further notice of them. But Esther, who most probably was desirous to be rejected with disgrace, takes no pains to please-she asks for no ornaments

with which to deck her person; but, unable to divest herself of that superior grace with which an intellectual mind, chastened and purified by the precepts of her religion, had clothed her, she captivates the monarch, who had most likely been previously accustomed either to such passive creatures as we have alluded to, or to the haughtiness of a Vashti.

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In Esther all the firmness induced by a properly trained mind and virtuous habits, was combined with the gentleness of the dove, the modesty of the virgin, and the expressiveness of countenance of brought up to reflection, quite unknown to the native females: Need we wonder then, that Ahasuerus at once perceived the striking difference, and that his affection, instead of diminishing, had subsequently increased to such a degree as to render him willing to grant any request she might have to make, were it to the extent even of half his kingdom! But how astonished does the monarch appear when he learns that, if what she solicits be not conceded, she herself was determined to perish with her people, and he would lose that which he seemed to prize above his life,-a virtuous and intelligent companion and queen. The history tells us, that her affection and duty to Mordecai was as exemplary after her elevation as it had been before. A. A. L.

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COMMENTARY. He further said— Of all moral maxims that ever have been uttered, none exceed the above in importance, truth, and terseness. Modern authors write entire volumes on ethics, containing, we grant, much truth and much beauty; but like the diamond when hidden amidst heaps of pebbles, the reader

must wade through many pages ere he meets with one sentence that at once reaches his heart and stamps its impress on his mind. But here the diamond is laid open to the view, sparkling in its matchless brilliancy, and unequalled in its worth. Time, however, has scattered its dust over the antique jewel: It lies buried; and