Under what divine covenant did the Jews return to the Holy Land? 'Thus speaketh the Lord God of Israel, write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book. For lo, the days come that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah; and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. And I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim and Gilead. In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve." Again: For thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. Neither shall the priests of the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to sacrifice continually. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me.'2 Does the subsequent history of the Jews authenticate the inspiration of the prophet, by recording the fulfilment of the promises of Jehovah ?

For two centuries after the return from Babylon the Jews remained subject to Persia. On the conquest of that empire by the Macedonians, and the death of Alexander the Great, rival generals fought for the possession of Judæa, which eventually became the prize of Ptolemy Lagus, who entered Jerusalem on the sabbath

1 Jer. 1. 19, 20.

2 Jer. xxxiii. 17, 18, 22.

without resistance, because Hebrew piety had now attained a perfection which placed the observance of Mosaic law above the duties of patriotism.

Another century witnessed the dominion of the Ptolemies in Judæa, followed by the invasion of Antiochus the Great, who defeated the Egyptian general and annexed the Holy Land, under the name of Palestine, to the kingdom of Syria.

The Jews enjoyed an interval of prosperity under their new master and his immediate successor, but Antiochus Epiphanes sold and resold the office of High Priest to rival candidates of Grecian culture, whose tumultuous conflicts summoned the Syrian monarch to Jerusalem, where he massacred forty thousand of the inhabitants, plundered the temple, defiled the sanctuary, and departed with a multitude of captives, leaving the survivors at the mercy of a Phrygian governor surpassing his master in cruelty.

Two years later Antiochus sent Apollonius to Jerusalem to revive the tragedy of rapine, slavery, and massacre, with the appalling results of thousands slain, whilst piously obeying the fourth commandment, the city plundered and burnt, its walls demolished, and hostile fortifications constructed on Mount Zion, within which the Syrian garrison retired with the captive wives and daughters of the dishonoured dead.

Still greater horrors awaited the unhappy Jews. An edict of the Syrian tyrant proclaimed catholicity of worship throughout his dominions; Mosaic rites and ceremonies were abolished; altars erected to Syrian gods; the temple reconsecrated to Olympian Jove; and the worship of Jehovah suppressed with a savage

cruelty, which terrified some into apostasy, and bestowed on others the crown of martyrdom.

Thus, in the fourth century from the Restoration, we find the unhappy descendants of the Hebrews, who had been lured from Babylon by the fatal mirage of prophecy, suffering the disastrous consequences of superstitious reliance on the supernatural. According to prophetic oracles, they were to multiply as the sands of the sea, and yet their country is depopulated by recurrent massacre. They were to live as freemen under the dynasty of David, and yet are the defenceless slaves of an alien despot. Their reconstructed city was to endure for ever, and yet its houses are destroyed, and its walls demolished. The priesthood was to offer unfailing sacrifices, and yet Mosaic ritualism is abolished, and its ministers slain or forced to witness the appalling sacrilege of Jehovah's altar defiled by the impious abominations of heathen worship.

There can be no pretence that these calamities are inflicted in punishment of Hebrew transgressions. The sins of their forefathers had been blotted out; and, from the Restoration to the massacres of Antiochus, the Hebrews had renounced idolatry, fulfilled the law, and worshipped Jehovah with all the piety demanded by the most zealous of the Prophets; and, if some tendency to Grecian apostasy existed among them, general loyalty to Jehovah sustained the national claim to the favour and protection of the national God. When, therefore, we find Jehovah as unmindful of his promises, and as callous to Hebrew suffering, as fourteen centuries previously, when the daughters of Israel wept

1 Jer. xxxi. 38-40.

for their murdered children on the banks of the Nile, can we escape the inevitable conclusion that Hebrew and Delphian oracles were equally illusory?

The results of theocratic superstition having culminated in these Syrian atrocities, the time had come for trusting more in man and less in Providence. Horrified by the unmerited sufferings of his unhappy countrymen, the aged Mattathias, appealing to the courage of despair, raised the standard of revolt against Syrian despotism; and entered upon the patriotic struggle which, continued with varying fortunes by his heroic sons, achieved results giving to the Jews a brief interval of national life under the Asmonæan princes.

The outlines of this great Hebrew drama are traced in the pages of 1 Maccabees-a work which approaches nearer to the form of history than any other of the Hebrew annals; and, unlike the more mythical version of 2 Maccabees, depicts Hebrew vicissitudes in harmony with the natural sequence of events, unbroken by one vestige of the supernatural.

So exemplary was the piety of the nation at this disastrous epoch of their history that one of the first events of the war was the massacre of a thousand Hebrews, who preferred death to resisting the enemy on the sabbath. The common sense of Mattathias overruled this suicidal piety; and henceforth, the law of self-preservation controlled the observance of the fourth commandment. The sagacious sons of the Hebrew Tribune further sustained the claims of human reason by trusting more to skilful strategy and astute diplomacy than to the predictions of prophets and the promises of Jehovah.

In the fourth generation of the Asmonæan family independence was won, and Aristobulus I. assumed the title of king. The nation remained faithful to the law of Moses and the worship of Jehovah but we fail to trace, in their domestic annals or foreign relationship, the faintest vestige of miraculous favour towards a chosen race. The later generations of the Asmonæan princes, corrupted by power, disclose their degeneracy in domestic crimes; rival candidates claim the throne of David, and contending factions invite the arbitration of Roman generals to establish legitimacy or sanction usurpation. And when Pompey, Antony, or Cæsar become the arbiters of Hebrew destiny, the time is at hand when prophetic dreams of a chosen race and a partisan God must perish in the presence of a practical Providence which then, as now, bestowed its favours on the most skilful generals and the most powerful armies.