LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. S.,..C GIFT OF Class CYCLOPEDIA OP RELIGIOUS LITERATURE, CONTAINING: THE LIFE AND WORDS OF CHRIST, BY CUNNINGHAM GEIKIK. NEW YORK: JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER, 1883. 1 - CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGES I. INTRODUCTORY , 110 II. THE HOLY LAND 11 17 III. PALESTINE AT THE TIME OP CHRIST 18 30 IV. THE REIGN OF HEROD 30 44 V. THE JEWISH WORLD AT THE TIME OF CHRIST 45 51 VI. THE RABBIS AT THE TIME OF CHRIST, AND THEIR IDEAS RE- SPECTING THE MESSIAH 52 58 VII. BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 59 73 VIII. THE ANNOUNCEMENT TO MARY 73 80 IX. THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 80 88 X. AT BETHLEHEM 88 96 XI. THE MAGI 96109 XH. NAZARETH, AND THE EARLY DAYS OF JESUS 109123 XIII. EARLY BOYHOOD 123139 XIV. SOCIAL INFLUENCES 139149 XV. THE PASSOVER VISIT TO JERUSALEM 149 160 XVI. EARLY YEARS 161169 XVII. LIFE UNDER THE LAW. 170180 XVIH. JUDEA UNDER ARCHELAUS AND ROME 181198 XIX. THE ROMAN PROCURATORS 198207 XX. HEROD ANTIPAS AND CHRIST'S OWN COUNTRY 208215 XXI. THE GALILEANS AND THE BORDER LANDS 216225 XXII. BEFORE THE DAWN 226242 XXIH. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is AT HAND 242257 XXIV. THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 258269 XXV. THE NEW PROPHET IN THE WILDERNESS 270284 XXVI. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS AND THE DEATH OF JOHN 284302 XXVH. THE TEMPTATION 302314 XXVIII. THE RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS 315328 XXIX. THE OPENING OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC MINISTRY 329343 XXX. VISIT TO JERUSALEM 344 355 XXXI. FROM JERUSALEM TO SAMARIA 356373 XXXII. OPENING OF THE MINISTRY IN GALILJEE 373382 183652 CONTENTS. vi CHAPTER PAGES XXXIII. CAPERNAUM 382393 XXXIV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS 394409 XXXV. THE CHOICE OF THE TWELVE, AND THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 410 422 XXXVI. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (continued) 422432 XXXVH. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (concluded) 433445 XXXVIII. OPEN CONFLICT 445458 XXXIX. GALILEE 458467 XL. DARKENING SHADOWS LIFE IN GALILEE 4G7 477 XLI. THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 478489 XLJI. AFTER THE STORM 489501 XLIII. DARK AND BRIGHT 501515 XLIV. THE TURN OF THE DAY 515531 XLV. THE COASTS OF THE HEATHEN 532544 XL VI. IN FLIGHT ONCE MORE 544-^556 XL VII. THE TRANSFIGURATION 557567 XL VIII. BEFORE THE FEAST 567578 XLIX. AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 578590 L. AFTER THE FEAST 591-599 LI. THE LAST MONTH OF THE YEAR 600611 LH. A WANDERING LIFE 611624 LIU. IN PEREA 625641 LIV. IN PEREA (continued) 641659 LV. PALM SUNDAY 659675 LVI. JERUSALEM 675687 LVH. THE INTERVAL 687702 LVin. FAREWELL TO FRIENDS 702718 LIX. THE FAREWELL 719735 LX. THE ARREST 735745 LXI. THE JEWISH TRIAL 746756 LXII. BEFORE PILATE 756773 LXIII. JUDAS THE CRUCIFIXION 774 701 LXTV. THE RESURRECTION AND THE FORTY DAYS 792812 LIST OF ATJTHOEITIES. The following are some of the authorities used in this book ; 'many, hoio* erer, being necessarily omitted: Andrews, The Life of Our Lord upon the Earth. London, 1863. Augustus Predigten d. Kirchenvater. Svols. Leipzig. 1S3S. August! u. De Wette's Uebersetzung, d. Alt. u. Neuen Test. Heidelberg, 1814. Baring -Gould's Heathenism and Mo- saism. 8vo. London, 1869. Baring-Gould's Christianity. 8vo. 1870. Post Mediaeval Preach- ers. London, 1865. Baumgarten's Leidensgeschichte Jesu Christi. Halle, 1757. Baumgarten's Geschichte Jesu. Braunschweig, 1859. Baur's (F. C.), Die Drei Ersten Jahr- hunderte. Tubingen, 1863. Bengelii Gnomon. Londini, 1855. Bertheau E., Die Sieben Gruppen Mo- saischer Gesetze. Gottingen, 1840. Besser's Bibelstunden. 2 vols. Halle, 1864. Brunei's Les Evangiles Apocryphes. Paris, 1863. Bunsen (Ernest), Chronology of the Bible. London, 1874. Bunsen's Das Leben Jesu. Leipzig, 1865. Buxtorf's, Lexicon, Chaldaicum Tal- mudicum et Rabbinicum. Folio. Basilese, 1639. Buxtorf ' s Sy nagoga Judaica. Basileae , Campbell (Principal), On the Four Gospels. Aberdeen, 1803. Caspari, Chronologisch-geographische Einleitung, &c. Hamb., 1869. Cohen's Historisch Krit. Darstellung d. Jiidischen Gottesdienstes. Leip- zig. 1819. Curtis' ^Vanderer in Syria. London, 1853. Davidson's (Dr. S.) Tischendorf s New Test. London, 1875. De Wette's Handbuch z. Neuen Test. Leipzig, 1857. DeWette'sArchaologie. Leipzig, 1830. Delitzsch's Ein Tag in Capernaum. Leipzig, 1873. 'elitzsch's Delitzsch's Schet Welch ein Mensch! Leipzig, 1872. j Delitzsch's Durch Krankheit zur Gene- sung. Leipzig, 1873. | Delitzsch's Jiidisches Handwerkerle- ben zur Zeit Jesu. Erlangen, 1869. Delitzsch's Jesus und Hillel. Erlan- i gen, 1867. , Derenbourg's Palestine aprSs les Tai- muds, &c. Paris, 1867. ! Dillmann, d. Buch Henoch. Leipzig, 1853. I Dillmann, d. Buch d. Jubilaen, in Ewald's Jahrbuch, 1849 1851. I Dollinger's The Gentile and the Jew, &c. 2 vols. London, 1862. I Dollinger's Christenthum und Kirche. Regensburg, 1868. Duke's Rabbinische Blumenlese. Leip- zig, 1844. I Dupanloup (Eveque d'Orleans), His- toire de N. S. Jesus Christ. Paris, 1872. I Ebrard's, The Gospel History. Edin- burgh, 1863. i Ecce Homo. 6th edition. London, 1866. Eichhorn's Einleitung in d. N. Test. Leipzig, 1820. I Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judea- thum. 2 vols. Konigsberg, 1711. i Ellicott's (Bishop) Historical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. London, 1868. Elsey's Annotations. Svols. London, 1827. viii LIST OF AUTHORITIES. Ewald's Geachichte. Vols. 1 to C. Gottingen, 1864. Ewald's Alterthiimer. Gottingen, 1866. Ewald's Die Drei Ersten Evangelien. 2 vols. Gottingen, 1870-2. Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. London, 1857. Farrar's Life of Christ. 2 vols. Lon- don, 1874. Fritzsche's Libri Apoc. Vet. Test. Graece. Lipsiee, 1871. Fiirrer's Wanderungen durch Palasti- na. Zurich, 1865. Fiirst's Hebraisches Handworterbuch. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1863. Gesenius, Thesaurus Linguae Hebraeae et Chalcleeas. 4to. Lipsiae, 1835. Gfrorer's Das Jahrhundert d. Heils. Stuttgardt, 1838. Gieseler's Eccles. History. 5 vols. Edinburgh, 1846. Godet's St. Luke. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1875. Godwyn' s Aaron and Moses. London , 1667: Greswell's Harmonia Evangelica. Oxon, 1850. Grotii Annotationes. Londini, 1727. Guillemard's Greek Testament. He- braistic Edition, S. Matthew. Cam- bridge, 1875. Hagenbach's Kirchengeschichte. Vol. 1. Leipzig, 1861. Hanna's (Dr.) Life of Our Lord. 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1863. HartemannV, Leben Jesu. Stuttgart, 1839. Hase's Leben Jesu. Leipzig, 1865. Hausrath's Neutestamentliche Zeitge- schichte. Vols. 1 and 2. Heidelberg, 1874. Herder's Geist des Christenthums. Leipzig, 1798. Herzog's Real-Encyklopadie. 22 vols. Gotha, 1866. Hess' (J. J.) Leben Jesu. 3 vols. Zu- rich, 1773. Hess' (M.) Rom und Jerusalem. Leip- zig, 1862. Hilgenfeld's Die Jiidische Apokalyp- tik. Jena, 1857. Hilgenfeld's Messias Judaeorum. LTpsiee, 1869. Hofmann's Leben Jesu nach d. Apok- ryphen. Leipzig, 1857. Hug's Einleitung. Stuttgart, 1847. Hurwitz, Heimann, Sagen der Ebraer. Oettingeu, 1838. Hutton (R. H.), Essays Theological and Literary. 2 vols. London, 1871. Irving (Edward), John the Baptist. London, 1864. Irving (Edward), Our Lord's Tempta- tion. London, 1864. Jacox, Secular Annotations on Script ure Texts. London, 1875. Jost's Geschichte des Judentmimrv Leipzig, 1857. Josephus, Opera Omnia (Bckker). Leipzig, 1856. Josephus, Whiston's Translation. Keim's Jesu von Nazara. 3 vols. Zu- rich, 1867. Keim's Geschichte Christus. Zurich, 1866. Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Litera- ture. 3rd edition. Edinburgh, 1860. Kuinoel's Novum Test. Libri Historic!. 3 vols. London, 1835. Kurzgefasstes Exeg. Handbuch zum Alten Test. 17 vols. Leipzig, 1841 1864. Lange's Life of Christ. 6 vols. Edin- burgh, 1864. Lange's Kommentar Matthaus, Mar- kus, Johannes. Bielefeld, 1860. Langen's Judenthum in Palastina, &c. Freiburg, 1866. Lightfoot's Horse Hebraicse. 4 vols. Oxford, 1859. Liicke's Kommentar ii. d. Schriften Johannis. Bonn, 1820. Luthardt's Das Johanneische Evange- lium. Nurnberg, 1852. Luthardt's Fundamental Truths of Christianity. Edinburgh, 1869. Lynch's Exploration of the Jordan and Dead Sea. Philadelphia, 1849. McClellan's New Testament. London, 1875. Martineau's (Harriet) Eastern Life, Present and Past. London, 1850. Martensen's Christian Ethics. Edin burgh, 1873. Maundrell's Journey. London, 1810. Melvill's (H.) Sermons. 6 vols. Lon- don. Meri vale's Conversion of the Roman Empire. London, 1865. Merrill's (Rev. Selah) Galilee in the Time of Christ. Bib. Sacra. Ando ver, U. S., 1874. Meyer's Kommentar U. d. I.ev,-- Ttart. Gottingen, 1858. LIST OF AUTHORITIES. Michaelis' Mosaisches Reeht. 3 vols. Frankfurt a. Mayn, 17<". Mill's British Jews. London, 1853. " Nablous and the Modern Samar- itans. London, 1864. Milman's History of Christianity. 8vo. New York, 1861. Mommsen's Romische Geschichte. 3 vols. Berlin, 1868. Monod's (Adolphe) L'Enfance de Je- sus. Paris, 1860. Neander's Life of Christ. London, 1857. Newman's (J. H.) Sermons. 10 vols. London, 1869. Nork's Rabbinische Quellen u. Paral- lelen. Leipzig, 1839. Nork's Etymologisch Real-Worter- buch. 4 vols. Stuttgart, 1845. Nugent's (Lord) Lands Classical and Sacred. London. Oosterzee's d. Evan, nach Lukas- Bielefeld, 1867. Pagnini Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae Folio. 1577. Palestine Exploration Fund Reports, 1870-76. Passo\v's Handworterbuch der Griech- ischen Sprache. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1831. Paulus, Das Leben Jesu. 3 vols. Heidelberg, 1828. Paulus, Die Drei Ersten Evangelien. 3 vols. Heidelberg, 1842. Pressel. Das Leben Jesu. Reutlingen, 1857. Pressens6's Jesus Christ, His Times, Life, and Work. London, 1858. Recovery of Jerusalem (The). 8vo. London, 1871. Reland's Antiquitates Sacrse. Utrecht, 1712, Renan Vie de Jesus. Paris, 1870. Les Apotres. " 1866. Saint Paul. " 1869. L'Antechrist. " 1873. Reynolds' John the Baptist. London, 1875. Riggenbach's Vorlesungen ii. das Le- ben Jesu. Basel, 1858. Robertson's (F. W.) Sermons. 3 vols. London, 1872. Robinson's (Dr. E.) Biblical Research- es in Syria and Palestine. 3 vols. London, 1860. Robinson's (Dr. E.) Lexicon of the New Testament. New York, 1858. Robinson's (Dr. E.) Harmony of the Gospels. London. Rohr's Palastina. Zeitz. 1335. Rosenmuller's (D. J. G.) Scholia in Novum Testamentum. Norira- bergse, 1804. Rosenmuller's (E. F. K.) Handbuch der Biblischen Alterthumskunde. i vols. Leipzig, 1825. Scapulae Lexicon Graeco - Latinum. Fol. Oxonii, 1820. Schenkel, Das Charakterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864. Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon. 5 vols. Leipzig, 1869. Schleiermacher's] Predigten. 4 vols. Berlin, 1844. Schleiermacher's Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1864. Schleusner's Lexicon in Nov. Test. 9 vols. Lipsiae, 1819. Schneckenburger's Vorlesungen ii. Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. Frankfurt-am -Main, 1862. Schottgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmu- dicae. Dresden u. Leipzig, 1733. Schrader's Der Apostel Paulus. 5 vols. Leipzig, 1830. Schurer's Lebrbuch d. Neutest. Zeit- geschichte. Leipzig, 1874. Scrivener's Nov. Test. Graecum. Cam- bridge, 1875. Schmidii N. T. Concordantiae. Glas- guae, 1819. Sepp, Das Leben Jesu. 6 vols. Re- gensburg, 1865. Sepp's Jerusalem u. d. Heilige Land. 2 vols. Schaffhausen, 1873. Smith's (Dr.) Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biog. and Myth. 3 vols. London, 1853. Smith's (Dr.) Dictionary of the Bible. 3 vols. London, 1860. Smith's (Dr.) Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London, 1869. Stanley's Sinai and Palestine. Lon- don, 1856. Stanley's Jewish History. London, 1856. Stanley's Sermons on the Apostolic Age. Oxford, 1847. Steinmeyer's Miracles of our Lord. Edinburgh, 1875. Stephen's Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petrasa, and the Holy Land. 2 vols. New York, 1838. Theile and Stiers' Polyglotten-Bibel. Bielefeld, 1863. Thomson's The Land and the Book. London, 1863. LIST OF AUTHORITIES. Tholuck's Bergpredigt Christi. Ham- burg, 1833. Tholuck's Kommentar z. Evangelio Johannis. Hamburg, 1837. Tholuck's Sittliche Charakter d. Hei- denthums. Gotha, 1867. Tischendorf's Pilati circa Christum Judicio quid Lucis afferatur ex Act- Is Pilati. Lipsia;, 1855. Tobler (T.), Bethlehem. Gallen u. I Berne, 1849. Tobler (T.) Nazareth. Berne. transactions of Society of Biblical / Archaeology, 1872-76. London. Trench's (Archbishop) Notes on the Parables. London, 1860. Trench's (Archbishop) Notes on the Miracles. London, 1856. Tristram's Natural History of the Bible. London, 1873. Tristram, the Great Sahara. London, 1870. Tristram, the Land of Moab. London. UUmann's Die Siindlosigkeit Jesu. Gotha, 1863. Ullmann's Historisch oder Mythisch? Gotha, 1866. Von der Aim's Urtheile heidnischer u. Jiid Schriftsteller U. Jesus. Leip- zig, 1864. Webster and Wilkinson's Greek Test. 2 vols. London, 1855. Weidemann's Darstellungen d. Lebens Jesu, &c. Gotha, 1864. Weil's The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud. London, 1846. Westcott's Intro, to Study of the Gos- pels. London, 1860. Wieseler's Beitrage. Gotha, 1869. Wieseler's Chronologische Synopse. Hamburg, 1843. Williams' Commentary on the Gospel Narrative. 6 vols. London, 1869. Winer's Realworterbueh. 2 vols. 3 Auf. Leipzig. No date. Winer's Grammatik Neutestament- lichen Sprachidioms. Siebeute Auf. Leipzig, 1867. Zunz, Die Gottesdientsiichen Vortragrn der Juden, &c. Berlin, 1832. PREFACE. No apology is needed for the publication of another Life of Christ, for the subject, to use the words of Mr. Carlyle, is "of quite peren- nial, infinite character, and its significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. " The freshness and interest of the name of Jesus, and its power as a great factor in the spiritual history of the world, increase with each generation. The influence of His life, His words, and His death, have, from the first, been like leaven cast into the mass of humanity. He made religion spiritual instead of ceremonial and external; universal, instead of local. He gave us the magnificent dowry of a faith in One Common Father of the whole human race, and, thus, of a world-wide brotherhood of all mankind. He con- firmed the doctrine of our immortality, and scattered abroad the germs of a heavenly life by His fundamental requirements of love to God and our neighbour. All reforms of individual and public life lie veiled in these principles, awaiting the advance of our moral sense, to apprehend and apply them. They have already given free- dom to the slave; raised woman; purified morals; mitigated war; created liberty; and made humanity a growing force, in things private, civil, and political. All that love to our fellow-man can prompt finds itself only a copy of that Life which was spent in con- tinually doing good, and the noblest self-sacrifice for others finds ^ itself anticipated by Calvary. To the individual Christian, JESUS is the Divine Saviour, to be- lieve in Whom is life everlasting: to know Whom is to have peace with God. Love has no diviner emblem than the Good Shepherd: Beneficence no ideal so perfect, as that "it is more blessed to give than to receive :" Fidelity to duty no loftier standard than a life laid down at its command : Self-sacrifice no dream so perfect as the rec- ord of His death on -the Cross. xil PREFACE. To write the story of such a life is no easy task, but it is one beyond all others important for the best interests of the age. It is impossible to describe the infinite dignity of His person, but His words and acts are His legacy to us, which it is vital to study and apply. I have tried in this book to restore, as far as I could, the world in which Jesus moved; the country in which He lived; the people among whom He grew up and ministered; the religion in which He ,was trained ; the Temple services in which He took part ; the ecclesi- astical, civil, and social aspects of His time ; the parties of the day, their opinions and their spirit; the customs that ruled; the influences that prevailed ; the events, social, religious, and political, not men- tioned in the Gospels, that formed the history of His lifetime, so far as they can be recovered. In this picture, He, Himself, is, of course, the central figure, to which all details are subordinate. I have tried to present His acts and words as they would strike those who first saw or heard them, And have added only as much elucidation to the latter as seemed, needed. All His Sayings and Discourses are given in full, for a Life m which He is not His own interpreter, must be defective. No one can feel more keenly than myself how open such a book must be to criticism. Where the best and wisest have differed, I could not expect that all will agree with me, and I cannot hope to have escaped oversights, or even errors, in treating a subject so ex- tensive. I can only plead my honest desire for truth and correctness, in mitigation of judgment. I trust, however, that my book, as a whole, presents a reliable picture of the Life of Our Lord in the midst of the world in which He moved, and that it will throw light on the narratives in the Gospels, by filling up their brief outlines, where possible. For the various sources to which I have been indebted I must only refer to the books named in the list of authorities at the beginning. I have used them freely, but always, so far as I know, with due acknowledgment. And, now, go forth, My Book, and may He whose honour thou eeekest, bless thee, and thy Unknown Reader! THE LIFE OF CHRIST. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. THE life of Jesus Christ, which is to be told in these pages, must ever remain the noblest and most fruitful study for all men, of every age. It is admitted, even by those of other faiths, that 'He was at once a great Teacher, and a living illustration of the truths Ho taught. The Mohammedan world give Him the high title of tho Masih (Messiah), and set Him above all the prophets. The Jew,j confess admiration of His character and words, as exhibited in the Gospels. Nor is there any hesitation among the great intellects of different ages, whatever their special position towards Christianity; whether its humble disciples, or openly opposed to it, or carelessly indifferent, or vaguely latitudinarian. We all know how lowly a reverence is paid to Him in passage after passage by Shakspere, the greatest intellect known, in its wide, many-sided splendour. Men like Galileo, Kepier, Bacon, Newton, and Milton, set the name of Jesus Christ above every other. To show that no other subject of study can claim an equal interest, Jean Paul Richter tells us that "the life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages." Spinoza calls Christ the symbol of divine wisdom; Kant and Jacobi hold Him up as the symbol of ideal perfection, and Schelling and Hegel as that of the union of the divine and human. "I esteem the Gospels," says Goethe, "to be* thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendour of a sub-, jimity, proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever have manifested upon earth." " How petty are the books of the philosophers, with all their pomp," says Rousseau, ' ' compared with the Gospels ! Can it be that writ- ings at once so sublime and so simple are the work of men? Can He whose life they tell be Himself no more than a mere man? Is there anything, in His character, of the enthusiast or the ambitions 2 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. sectary? What sweetness, what purity in His ways, what touching grn.ce in His teachings! What a loftiness in His maxims, what pro- found wisdom in His words! What presence of mind, what deli- cacy and aptness in His replies! What an empire over His passions'? Where is the man, where is the sage, who knows how to act, to suffer, and to die without weakness and without display? My friend, men do not invent like this; and the facts respecting Socrates, which no one doubts, are not so well attested as those about Jesus Christ. These Jews could never have struck this tone, or thought of this morality, and the Gospel has characteristics of truthfulness so grand, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that their inventors would be even more wonderful than He whom they portray." ''Yes, if the death of Socrates be that of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." Thomas Carlyle repeatedly expresses a similar reverence. "Jesus of Nazareth," says he, "our divinest symbol! Higher has the human thought not yet reached." "A symbol of quite perennial, infinite character, whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest." Dr. Channing, of Boston, the foremost man in his day among American Unitarians, is equally marked in his words. "The character of Jesus," says he, "is wholly inexplicable on human principles." Matthias Claudius, one of the people's poets of Germany, last century, writes to a friend, "No one ever thus loved [as Christ did], nor did anything so truly great and good as the Bible tells us of Him ever enter into the heart of man. It is a holy form, which rises before the poor pilgrim like a star in the ni^ht, and satisfies his innermost craving, his most secret yearnings and hopes." "Jesus Christ," says the exquisite genius, Herder, "is in the noblest, and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity." No one will accuse the first Napoleon of being either a pietist or weak-minded. He strode the world in his day like a Colossus, a man of gigantic intellect, however worthless and depraved in moral sense. Conversing one day, at St. Helena, as his custom was, about the great men of antiquity, and comparing himself with them, he sud- denly turned round to one of his suite and asked him, ' ' Can you tell 'me who Jesus Christ was?" The officer owned that he had not yet taken much thought of such things. "Well, then," said Napoleon, "I will tell you." He then compared Christ with himself, and w T ith the heroes of antiquity, and showed how Jesus far surpassed them, "I think I understand somewhat of human nature," he continued, ' ' and I tell you all these were men, and I am a man, but not one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires ; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him." "The Gospel is no mere book," said he at another THE LIFE OF CHRIST. . 3 time, " but a living creature, with a vigour, a power, which conquers all that opposes it. Here lies the Book of Books upon the table [touching it reverently] ; I do not tire of reading it, and do so daily with equal pleasure. The soul, charmed with the beauty of the Gospel/is no longer its own: God possesses it entirely: He directs its thoughts and faculties ; it is His. Yfhat a proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ ! Yet in this absolute sovereignty He has but one aim the spiritual perfection of the individual, the purification of his conscience, his union with what is true, the salvation of his soul. Men wonder at the conquests of Alexander, but here is a conqueror who draws men to Himself for their highest good; who unites to Himself, incorporates into Himself, not a nation, but the whole human race !" I might multiply such testimonies from men of all ages ana classes, indefinitely; let me give only one or two more. Among all the Biblical critics of Germany, no one has risen with an intellect more piercing, a learning more vcist, and a freedom and fearlessness more unquestioned, than De Tvette. Yet, listen to a sentence from the preface to his Commentary on the Book of Reve- lation, published just before his death, in 1C49: " This only I know, that there is salvation in no other name than in the name of Jesus Christ, the Crucified, and that nothing loftier olTers itself to humanity than the God-manhood realized in Him, and the kingdom, of God which Pie founded an idea and problem not yet rightly understood and incorporated into the life, even of those who, in other respects, justly rank as the most zealous and the warmest Christians ! Were Christ in deed and in truth our Life, how could such a falling away from Him be possible? Those in whom He lived would witness so mightily for Him, through their whole life, whether spoken, written, or acted, that unbelief w r ould be forced to silence." "Nor is the incidental testimony to Christ of those who have openly acknowledged their supreme devotion to Him less striking. There ha\ d been martyrs to many creeds, but what religion ever saw an army of martyrs willingly dying for the personal love they bore to the 'founder of their faith ? Yet this has always been the charac- teristic of the martyrs of Christianity, from the days when, as tradi- tion tells us. Peter was led to crucifixion with the w r ords ever on his lips, "None but Christ, none but Christ," or when the aged Poly- carp, about to be burned alive in the amphitheatre at Smyrna, answered the governor, who sought to make him revile Christ "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me wrong; and how can I now blaspheme my King w r ho has saved me?" Nearly seventeen hundred years passed from the time when the early confessor died blessing God that he was counted worthy to have a share in the number of martyrs and in the cup of Christ ; and a man of high culture and intellect lies dying, the native of an island peo- pled only by outside barbarian* in the days of Polycarp, Tbe at 4 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. ten el ant 3, watching liis last moments, see his lips move, and bending over him, catch the faint sounds, "Jesus, love! Jesus, love! tho same thing," the last words uttered before he left them. It was the death-bed of Sir James Macintosh. Thus the character of Christ still retains the supreme charm by which it drew towards it the deepest affections of the heart in the earliest age of the Church; and such a character must claim, above all others, our reverent and thoughtful study. If we attempt to discover what it is in the personal character of Jesus Christ, as shown in His life, that thus attracts such permanent admiration, it is not difficult to do so. In an age when the ideal of the religious life was realized in the Baptist's withdrawing from men, and burying himself in the ascetic solitudes of the desert, Christ came, bringing religion into the haunts and homes and every-day life of men. For the mortifications of the hermit He substituted the labours of active benevolence; for the fears and gloom which shrank from men, He brought the light of a cheer- ful piety, which made every act of daily life religious. He found the domain of religion fenced off as something distinct from common duties, and He threw down the wall of separation, and consecrated the whole sweep of existence. He lived, a man amongst men, shar- ing alike their joys and their sorrows, dignifying the humblest de- tails of life by making them subordinate to the single aim of His Father's glory. Henceforth the grand revolution w r as inaugurated, which taught that religion does not lie in selfish or morbid devotion to personal interests, whether in the desert or the temple, but in lov- ing work and self-sacrifice for others. The absolute unselfishness of Christ's character is, indeed, its unique charm. His own life is self-denial throughout, and He makes a similar spirit the test of all healthy religious life. It is He who said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive;" who reminds us that life, like the wheat, yields fruit only by its own dying; who gave us the ideal of life in His own absolute self-oblivion. We feel instinc- tively that this Gospel of Love alone is divine, and that we cannot withhold our homage from the only perfectly Unselfish Life ever seen on earth. There is much, besides, to which I can only allude in a word. He demands repentance from all, but never for a moment hints at any need of it for Himself. With all His matchless lowliness, He ad- vances personal claims 'which, in a mere man, would be the very delirium of religious pride. He was divinely patient under every form of suffering, a homeless life, hunger and thirst, craft and vio- lence, meanness and pride, the taunts of enemies and betrayals of friends, ending in an ignominious death. Nothing of all this for a moment turned Him from His chosen path of love and pity. His last words, like His whole life, were a prayer for those who returned Rim evil for good. His absolute superiority to everything narrow or THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 5 local, so that He, a Jew, founds a religion in which all mankind are a common brotherhood, equal before God; the dignity, calmness, and self-possession before rulers, priests, and governors, which sets Him immeasurably above them; His freedom from superstition, in an age which was superstitious almost beyond example; His superi- ority to the merely external and ritual, in an age when rites and ex- ternals were the sum of religion : all these considerations, to mention no others, explain the mysterious attraction of His character, eveii when looked at only as that of an ideal Man. When, from His character, we turn to His teachings, the claims of His Life on our reverent study are still further strengthened. To Him we owe the expansion of whatever was vital in Ancient Judaism from the creed of a tribe into a religion for the world. The Old Testament reveals a sublime and touching description of God as the Creator and the All- wise and Almighty Ruler of all things; as the God, in whose hand is the life of every living thing and the breadth of all mankind; the God of Providence, on whom the eyes of all creatures wait, and who gives them their meat in due season; as a Being of infinite majesty, who will by no means clear the guilty, but yet is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in good- ness and truth: as keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and as pitying them that fear Him, like as a, father pitieth his children. But it was reserved for Christ to bring the character of God, as a God of Love, into full noon-day light, in His so loving the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that who- soever believeth in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. In the New Testament He is first called Our Father in Heaven the Father of all mankind. The Old Testament proclaimed Him the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the Portion of Israel: Christ points the eyes of all nations to Him as the God of the whole human race. The fundamental principles of Christianity are as new and as sub- lime as this grand conception of God, and spring directly from it. The highest ideal of man must ever be, and his soul reflects the image of his Creator, and this image can only be that of pure, all-embracing love, to God and man, for God is love. Outward service, alone, is of no value: the pure heart, only, loves aright: it, only, reflects the divine likeness; for purity and love are the same in the Eternal. A religion resting on such a basis bears the seal of heaven. But this divine law constitutes Christianity. The morality taught by Christ is in keeping with such fundamental demands. Since love is the fulfilling of the law, there can be no lim- itation to duty but that of power. It can only be bounded by our possibilities of performance, and that not in the letter, but in spirit and in truth, both towards God and our neighbour. The perfect holi- ness of God can alone be the standard of our aspiration ; for love means obedience, and God cannot look upon sin. To be a perfect Christian 6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. is to be a sinless man sinless through the obedience of perfect lore. Such a morality has the seal of the living God on its forehead. It is to be remembered, in realizing our obligations to Christ, that there was a perfect novelty in this teaching. Antiquity, outside the Jewish world, had no conception of what we call sin. There is no word in Greek for what we mean by it : the expression for it is synonymous with physical evil. There was either no guilt in an action, or the deity was to blame, or the action was irresistible. Priests and people had no aim or desire in sacrifices, prayers, or festi- vals, beyond the removal of a defilement, not considered as a moral, but a physical stain ; and they attributed a magical effect to propiti- atory rites through which they thought to obtain that removal; this effect being sure to follow if there were no omission in the rite, even though the \\ill remained consciously inclined to evil ! The Roma.1 was as free from having any conception of sin as the Greek. Eveu such moralists as Seneca had only a blind spiritual pride which (vnfounded God and nature, and regarded man the crown of natm\> and its most perfect work as God's equal, or even as His superior, for the divine nature, in his creed, reaches perfection in man only, \fvery man, he tells us, carries God about with him in his bosom; in one aspect of his being he is God virtue is only the following nature, and men's vices are only madness. Compare with this the vision of God high and lifted up of awful holiness but of infinite love, and the doctrine of human responsi- bility, which the heart itself re-echoes as taught by Christ ; and the study of His life becomes the loftiest of human duties. We owe it no less to Christ that the belief in a future life, with its light or shadow depending on a future judgment, is now part of the creed of the world. Judaism, indeed, in its later ages at least, knew these revelations, but Judaism could never have become the religion of mankind. Pagan antiquity had ceased to have any fixed ideas of anything beyond this life. Immortality was an open question ; the dream of poets rather than the common faith. But Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. Doctrines such as these^ illustrated by such a Life, and crowned by a death which He Himself proclaimed to be a voluntary offering "for the life of the world," could not fail to have a mighty influence. The leaven thus cast into the mass of humanity has already largely transformed society, and is destined to affect it for good in ever- increasing measure, in all directions. The one grand doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man, as man, is in itself the pledge of infinite results. The seminal principle of all true progress must ever be found in a proper sense of the inherent dignity of manhood ; in the realization of the truth that the whole human race are essentially equal in their facul- ties, nature, and inalienable rights. Such an idea was unknown to antiquity. The JEW, speaking in the Fourth Book of Esdras, ad- dressed God--" On our account Thou hast created the world. Other THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 7 nations, sprung from Adam, Thou hast said are nothing, and are like spittle, and Thou hast likened their multitude to the droppings from a cask. But we are Thy people, whom Thou hast called Thy first-born, Thine only-begotten, Thy well-beloved." In the Book Sifri, the Rab- bis tell us "A single Israelite is of more worth in the sight of God than all the nations of the world; every Israelite is of more value before Him than all the nations who have been or will be. " To the GREEK, the word ' ' humanity. " as a term for the wide broth- erhood of all races, was unknown. All races, except his own, were regarded and despised as "barbarians." Even the Egyptians, in spite of their ancient traditions and priestly "wisdom," the Cartha- ginians, the Phoenicians, Etruscans, Macedonians, and Romans, not to mention outlying and uncivilized peoples, were stigmatized by this contemptuous name. The Greek fancied himself appointed by the gods to be lord over all other races; and Socrates only gave expres- sion to the general feeling of his countrymen when he thanked the gods daily for being man and not beast, male and not female, Greek and not barbarian. The ROMAN, in common with antiquity at large, considered all who did not belong to his own State, as hostes, or enemies; and hence, unless there were a special league, all Romans held that the only law between them and those w r ho were not Romans was that of the stronger, by which they were entitled to subjugate such races if they could, plunder their possessions, and make the people slaves. The fact that a tribe lived on the bank of a river on the other side of which Romans had settled, made its members ' ' rivals, " for the word means simply the dwellers on opposite sides of a stream. It was even objected to Christianity, indeed, that its folly was patent, from its seeking to introduce one religion for all races. "The man," says Celsus, "who can believe it possible for Greeks and Barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, to agree in one code of religious laws, must be utterly devoid of sense. " Antiquity had no conception of a religion which, by readily uniting with everything purely human, and as readily attacking all forms of evil, could be destined or suited to the wants of ail humanity. Nor did it deign to think that the aristocracy of the r^ce could stoop to have a religion in common with the bar- barian to whom it almost refused the name of man. It was left to Christ to proclaim the brotherhood of all nations by revealmg God as their common Father in Heaven, filled towards them with a father's love ; by His commission to preach the Gospel to all; by His inviting all, without distinction, who laboured and were heavy laden, to come to Him, as the Saviour sent from God, for rest ; by His receiving the woman of Samaria and her of Canaan as graciously as any others; by His making Himself the friend of publicans and sinners; by the tone of such parables as that of Dives and Lazarus* by His equal sympathy with the slave, the beggar, and the ruler; by the whole bearing and spirit of His life; and, above alj, 8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. by His picture of all nations gathered to judgment at the Great Day, with no distinction of race or rank, but simply as men. In this great principle of the essential equality of man, and hia responsibility to God, the germs lay hid of grand truths imperfectly realized even yet. Thus, it is to this we owe the conception of the rights of individual conscience as opposed to any outward authority. There was nd dream of such a thing before Christ came. The play of individuality, which alone secures and exemplifies those rights, was unknown bl restricted. Among the Greeks, the will of the State was enforced on the individual. Morality and goodness were limited to what wa.i voted by the majority as expedient for the well-being of the com- munity at large. When a man had paid the gods the traditional sacrifices and ceremonies, he had little more to do with them. Not only could he not act for himself freely in social or private affairs ; his conscience had no liberty. The State was everything, the man nothing. Rome knew as little of responsibility to higher laws than its own, and had very limited ideas even of personal freedom. Christ's words, ''One is your 'Teacher,' and all ye are brethren;" "One is youx* 'Father,' even the Heavenly;" "One is your 'Guide,' even the Christ," were the inauguration of a social and moral revo- lution. The SLAVE, before Christ came, was a piece of property of less worth than land or cattle. An old Roman law enacted a penalty of death for him who killed a ploughing ox ; but the murderer of a slave was called to no account whatever. Crassus, after the revolt of Spar- tacus, crucified 10,000 slaves at one time. Augustus, in violation of his word, delivered to their masters, for execution, 30,000 slaves, who had fought for Sextus Pompeius. Trajan, the best of the Romans of his day, made 10,000 slaves fight at one time in the amphitheatre, for the amusement of the people, and prolonged the massacre 123 days. The great truth of man's universal brotherhood was the axe laid at the root of this detestable crime the sum of all villanies. By first infusing kindness into the lot of the slave, then by slowly undermin- ing slavery itself, each century has seen some advance, till at last the man-owner is unknown in nearly every civilized country, and even Africa itself, the worst victim of slavery in these later ages, is being aided by Christian England to raise its slaves into freemen. AGGRESSIVE WAR is no less distinctly denounced by Christianity, which, in teaching the brotherhood of man, proclaims war a revolt, abhorrent to nature, of brothers against brothers. The voice of Christ, commanding peace on earth, has echoed through all the cen- turies since His day, and has been at least so far honoured that the horrors of war are greatly lessened, and that war itself no longer the rule, but the exception is much rarer m Christian nations than in former times. The POOR, in antiquity, were in almost as bad a plight as the slava THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 9 * How can you possibly let yourself down so low as not to repel a for man from you with scorn?" is the question of a rhetorician oi the imperial times of Rome, to a rich man. No one of the thou- sands of rich men living in Rome ever conceived the notion of found- ing an asylum for the 'poor, or a hospital for the sick. There were herds of beggars. Seneca often mentions them, and observes that most men fling an alms to a beggar with repugnance, and carefully avoid all contact with him. Among the Jews, the poor were thought to be justly bearing the penalty of some sin of their own, or of their fathers. But we know the sayings of Christ " It is more blessed to give than to receive:" "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me:" "Give to the poor." The abject and forlorn received a charter of human rights when He proclaimed that all men are brethren : sprung from the same human stock ; sons of the same Almighty Father; one family in Himself, the Head of regenerated humanity. The condition of WOMAN in antiquity was little better than that of the slave. She was the property of her husband, if married ; if un- married, she was the plaything or slave of man, never his equal. The morality of married life, which is the strength and glory of any peo- ple, was hardly known. Pompey and Germanicus were singular in the fidelity that marked their marriage-relations, on both sides, and were famous through the singularity. The utter impurity of the men reacted in a similar self -degradation of the other sex. In Rome, mar- riages became, as a rule, mere temporary connections. In order to escape the punishments inflicted on adultery, in the time of Tiberius, married women, including even women of illustrious families, en- rolled themselves on the official lists of public prostitutes. St. Paul only spoke the language which every one who knows the state of morals of those days must use, when he wrote the well-known verses in the opening of his Epistle to the Romans. The barbarians of the German forests alone, of the heathen world, retained a worthy sense of the true dignity of woman. "No one there laughs at vice," says Tacitus, "nor is to seduce and to be seduced called the fashion." " Happy indeed," continues the Roman, thinking of the state of things around him, "those states in which only virgins marry, and where the vow and heart of the bride go together!" " Infidelity is very rare among them. " The traditions of a purer time still lingered beyond the Alps; the afterglow of light that had set elsewhere. These traditions, thus honoured in the forests of Germany, were formulated into a supreme law for all ages and countries by Jesus Christ. Except for one crime, husband and wife, joined by God in marriage, were not to be put asunder. Woman was no longer to be the toy and inferior of man. Polygamy, the fruitful source of social corruption, was forbidden. Man and woman were to meet on equal 10 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. terms in lifelong union : each honouring the other, and both training their children amidst the sanctities of a pure family life. The enforcement of these and kindred teachings, destined to re- generate humanity, required lofty sanctions. That these are not wanting, in the amplest fulness, we have in part seen already, and shall see more and more as we advance. Meanwhile, enough has been said to show why, even apart from the mysterious dignity of His divine nature, God manifest in the flesh, and even independently of His being the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Christ's life and sayings, alike unique among men, deserve the rev- erent study of all. "From first to last," said the great Napoleon, on one occasion, ' ' Jesus is the same ; always the same majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle. Throughout a life passed under the public eye, He never gives occasion to find fault. The prudence of His conduct compels our admiration by its union of force and gentle- ness. Alike in speech and action, He is enlightened, consistent, and calm. Sublimity is said to be an attribute of divinity : what name, then, shall we give Him in whose character were united every ele- ment of the sublime? ' ' I know men ; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Every- thing in Him amazes me. His spirit outreaches mine, and His will confounds me. Comparison is impossible between Him and any other being in the world. He is truly a being by Himself. His ideas and His sentiments; the truth that He announces; His manner of convincing; are all beyond humanity and the natural order of tilings. "His birth, and the story of His life; the profoundness of His doctrine, which overturns all difficulties, and is their most complete solution ; His Gospel ; the singularity of His mysterious being ; His appearance; His empire; His progress through all centuries and kingdoms ; all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery. " I see nothing here of man. Near as I may approach, closely as I may examine, all remains above my comprehension great with a greatness that crushes me. It is in vain that I reflect all remains unaccountable ! "I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ." CHAPTER II. THE HOLY LAND. THE contrast between the influences which have most affected the world, and the centres from which they have sprung, is very striking. Greece, the mother of philosophy and art, for all time, is not quite half the size of Scotland; Rome, the mighty mistress of the world, was only a city of Italy ; Palestine, the birthplace of our Lord, and the cradle of revelation, is about the size of Wales. From Dan, on the north, to Beersheba, on the south, is a distance of only 139 miles, and the paltry breadth of twenty miles, from the coast to the Jordan ; on the north, increases slowly to only forty between the shore of the Mediterranean, at Gaza, and the Dead Sea, on the south. When it is remembered that America was unknown till within the last four centuries, the position of Palestine on the map of the ancient world was very remarkable. It seemed the very centre of the earth, and went far to excuse the long-prevailing belief that Jerusalem was the precise central point. On the extreme western limit of Asia, it looked eastward, towards the great empires and religions of that mighty continent, and westward, over the Mediterranean, to the promise of European civilization. It was the connecting link be- tween Europe and Africa, which could then boast of Egypt as one of the great centres of human thought and culture; and it had the date- less past of the East for its background. Yet its position towards other lands was not less striking than its real or apparent isolation. Separated from Asia by the broad and im- passable desert, it was saved from becoming a purely Eastern coun- try, either in religion, or in the political decay and retrogression which have, sooner or later, marked all Eastern States. Shut in, by a strip of desert, from Egypt, it was kept, in great part, from the contagion of the gross morality and grosser idolatry of that land; and its western coasts were washed by the "Great Sea," which, for ages, was as much a mystery to the Jew, as the Atlantic to our an- cestors, before the era of Columbus. There could have been no land in which the purpose of God to "separate" a nation "from among all the people of the earth," to be the depositary of divine truth, and the future missionaries of the world, could have been so perfectly carried out. Nor did its special fitness as a centre of heavenly light amongst mankind pass away till the whole scheme of revelation had been completed; for by the time of Christ's death the Mediterranean had become the highway of the nations, and facilitated the diffusion of the Gospel to the cities and nations of the populous West, by the easy path of its wide waters. The long seclusion of ages had already 12 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. trained the Jew in religious knowledge, when forced or voluntary dispersion sent him abroad to all lands, with his lofty creed : the passing away of that seclusion opened the world to the ready dissem- ination of the message of the Cross. It is an additional peculiarity of the Holy Land, in relation to the history of religion, that its physical features, and its position, together, brought it, from the earliest ages, in contact with the widest range of peoples and empires. Egypt and it are two oases in wide-spreading deserts, and as such attracted race after race. Vast migrations of northern tribes towards the richer southern countries have marked all ages; and Egypt, as the type of fertility, was a special land of wonder, to which these wandering populations ever turned greedy eyes. In a less degree, the Holy Land shared this dangerous admira- tion. It was the next link to Egypt in the chain of attractive con- quests Egypt itself being the last. As in later times the Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Turk suc- cessively coveted the valley of the Nile, and took possession of it, so in the very earliest ages, as many indications prove, wave after w r ave of immigration had overflowed it. In all these inroads of new nationalities, the Holy Land, as the highway to Egypt, necessarily shared, and hence, as centuries passed, race after race was brought in contact with the Jew, in spite of his isolation, and the Jew into con- tact with them. Such a fact was of great significance in the religious education of the world. It leavened widely distant nations, more or less, with the grand religious truths which had been committed to the keeping of the Jew alone; it led or forced him abroad to distant regions, to learn, as well as to communicate ; and it reacted to en- sure the intense religious conservatism to which the Jew, even to-day, ow r es his continued national existence. That was a fitting scene, moreover, for the advent of the Saviour of the world, in which, email though its bounds, He was surrounded not by the Jew alone, but by a population representing a wide proportion of the tribes and nations of the then-known earth. The inscription on the cross, in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, was the symbol of the relation of Christ's life, and of His death, to all humanity. But perhaps the most striking peculiarity of Palestine as the spot chosen by God for His revelations of religious truth to our race, and for the incarnation of the Saviour of mankind, is that it presents within its narrow bounds the characteristics of climate and produc- tions scattered elsewhere over all the habitable zones from the snowy north to the tropics. The literature of a country necessarily takes the colour of its local scenery and external nature, and hence a book written in almost any land is unfitted for other countries in which life and nature are different. Thus the KorSn, written in Arabia, is essentially an Eastern book, in great measure unintelligible and uninteresting to nations living in countries in any great degree different, in climate and modes of life, from Arabia itself. The THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 18 sacred books of other religions have had only a local reception. The Bible alone finds a welcome among nations of every region over the earth. It is the one book in the world which men everywhere re- ceive with equal interest and reverence. The inhabitant of the coldest north finds, in its imagery, something that he can understand, and it is a household book in multitudes of homes in the sultriest regions of the south. Intended to carry the Truth to all nations, it was essential that the Bible should have this cosmopolitan attractiveness. Yet it could not have had it but that such a country as Palestine was chosen to pro- duce it. Within the narrow limits of that strip of coast, as we might call it, are gathered the features of countries the most widely apart. The peaks of Lebanon are never without patches of snow, even in the heat of summer. Snow r falls nearly every winter along the sum- mits of the central ridge of Palestine, and over the tableland east of the Jordan, though it seldom lies more than one or two days. On the other hand, in the valley of the Jordan, summer brings the heat of the tropics, and the different seasons, in different parts, according to the elevation, exhibit a regular gradation between these extremes. Thus, within the extent of a single landscape, there is every climate, from the cold of northern Europe to the heat of India. The oak, the pine, the walnut, the maple, the juniper, the alder, the poplar, the willow, the ash, the ivy, and the hawthorn, grow luxuriantly on the heights of Hermon, Bashan, and Galilee. Hence the traveller from the more northerly temperate lands finds himself, in some parts, sur- rounded by the trees and vegetation of his own country. He sees the apple, the pear, and the plum, and rejoices to meet the familiar wheat, and barley, and peas, and potatoes, and cabbage, carrots, let- tuce, endive, and mustard. The Englishman is delighted to find himself surrounded by many of the flowers of his native land ; for out of the 2,000 or 2,500 tlowersof Palestine, perhaps 500 are British. It looks like home to see the ranunculus, the yellow water-lily, the tulip, the crocus, the hyacinth, the anemone, mignonette, geraniums, mallows, the common bramble, the dog-rose, the daisy, the well- known groundsel, the dandelion, sage, and thyme, and sweet mar- joram, blue and white pimpernel, cyclamens, vervain, mint, hore- hound, road- way nettles, and thistles; and ponds with the wonted water-cress, duck- weed, and rushes. The traveller from more southern countries is no less at home ; for from whatever part he come, be it sunny Spain or Western India, he will recognize well-known forms in one or other of such a list as the carob, the oleander and willow, skirting the streams and water- courses; the sycamore, the fig, the olive, the date-palm, the pride of India, the pistachio, the tamarisk, the acacia, and the tall tropical grasses and reeds; or in such fruits as the date, the pomegranate, the vine, the orange, the shaddock, the lime, the banana, the almond, and the prickly pear. The sight of fields of cotton, millet, rice, 14 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. sugar-cane, maize, or even of Indian indigo, and of patches of melons, gourds, pumpkins, tobacco, yam, sweet potato, and other southern or tropical field or garden crops, will carry him back in thought to his home. There can be no more vivid illustration of the climate of any land than the vegetation it yields, and Palestine, tried by this test, repro- duces climates and zones which, in other countries, are separated by many hundred miles. A book written in such a land must necessarily be a reflection, in its imagery and modes of thought, so far as they are affected by ex- ternal nature, of much that is common to men all over the earth. The Scriptures of the two Testaments have had this priceless help in their great mission, from Palestine having been chosen by God as the land in which they were written. The words of prophets and apostles, and of the great Master Himself, sound familiar to all man- kind, because spoken amidst natural images and experiences com- mon to all the world. Though essentially a mountainous country, Palestine has many broad and fertile plains. It is a highland district, intersected throughout, and bordered on the western side, by rich, wide-spread, ing lowlands. The plain on the western side extends from above Acre, with an interruption by Mount Carmel, along the whole coast, under the re- spective names of the plain of Acre, the plain of Sharon, and the Shefelah, or low country, the land of the Philistines in early ages. From this border plain the country rises, throughout, into a table- land of an average height of from 1,500 to 1,800 feet above the Mediterranean ; the general level being so even, and the hills so close together, that the whole length of the country, seen from the coast, looks like a wall rising from the fertile plain at its foot. Yet the general monotony is broken, here and there, by higher elevations. Thus, to begin from the south, Hebron is 3,029 feet above the sea; Jerusalem 2,610; the Mount of Olives 2,724; Bethel 2,400; Ebal and Gerizirn 2,700; Little Hermon and Tabor, on the north side of the plain of Esdraelon 1,900; Safed2,775; and Jebel Jermuk 4,000. This long sea of hills is full of valleys nmning east and west, which form so many arms of torrent beds, opening into the Jordan valley or the Mediterranean. These valleys, on the eastern side of the water- shed, towards Jordan, are extremely steep and rugged; as, for in- stance, the precipitous descent between Mount Olivet and Jericho, which sinks over 4,000 feet in a distance of about fifteen miles. The great depression of the Jordan valley makes such nigged and diffi- cult mountain gorges the only passes to the upper country from the east. There is not a spot, till the plain of Esdraelon joins' the valley of the Jordan, open enough to manoeuvre more than a small body of foot soldiers. The western valleys slope more gently, but, like 'the eastern, are the only means of communication with the plains, and THE LIFE OF CHRIST. v 15 offer such difficulties QS explain the security of Israel in ancient times, entrenched among hills which, at the best, could be reached only by rough mountain passes. The Jew lived, in fact, in a strong moun- tain fastness stretching like a long wall behind the plain beneath. The appearance and fertility of this highland region, which, alone, was at any time the Holy Land of the Jews, varies in different parts. The southern district, below Hebron, is a gradual transition from the desert, from which it is approached in slow ascent. It was known in Bible times as the Negeb, or south country, and is an uninviting tract of barren uplands. As we pass north into the hills of Judah and Benjamin there is somewhat more fertility, but the landscape is monotonous, bare, and uninviting in the extreme, for most of the year. In spring, even the bald grey rocks which make up the view are covered with verdure and bright flowers, and the ravines are filled with torrents of rushing water, but in summer and autumn the look of the country from Hel)ron up to Bethel is very dreary and desolate. The flowers vanish with the first fierce rays of the summer sun : they are ' ' to-day in the field, to-morrow cast into the oven. " The little upland plains, which, with their green grass, and green corn, and smooth surface, relieve the monotony of the mountain-tops farther north, are not found in Judea, and are rare in Benjamin. The soil, alike on plain, hill, and glen, is poor and scanty. Natural wood dis- appears, and a few small bushes, brambles, or aromatic shrubs, alone appear on the hill-sides. " Rounded hills, chiefly of a grey colour," says Dean Stanley " grey partly from the limestone of which they are formed, partly from the tufts of grey shrub with which their sides are thinly clothed their sides formed intp concentric rings of rock, which must have served in ancient times as supports to the ter races, of which there are still traces to the very summits; valleys, or rather the meetings of those grey slopes with the beds of diy water- courses at their feet long sheets of bare rock laid like flagstones, side by side, along the soil these are the chief features of the greater part of the scenery of the historical parts of Palestine. These rounded hills, occasionally stretching into long undulating ranges, are for the most part bare of wood. Forest and large timber are not known." Fountains are rare in this district; and wells, covered cisterns, and tanks cut out in the soft white limestone, take their place. Such are the central and northern highlands of Judea. In the west and north-western parts, which the sea-breezes reach, the vegetation is more abundant. Olives abound, and give the country in some places almost a wooded appearance. The terebinth, with its dark foilage, is frequent, and near the site of Kirjath-jearim, " the city of forests," there are some thickets of pine and laurel. But the eastern part of these hills a tract nine or ten miles in width by about thirty-five in length between the centre and the gteep descent to the Dead Sea is, and must always have been, in 16 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. the truest sense a desert. Van de Velde well describes it as a bare arid wilderness : an endless succession of shapeless yellow and ash- coloured hills, without grass or shrubs, without water, and almost without life. Another traveller speaks of it as a wilderness of moun- tain-tops, in some places tossed up like waves of mud, in others wrinkled over with ravines, like models made of crumpled brown ^)aper, the nearer ones whitish, strewn with rocks and bushes. Such is the desert or wilderness of Judea, the scene of the earlier retire- ment of John the Baptist, and the popularly supposed scene of the Temptation of our Lord. Though thus barren and uninviting as a whole, in our day, the universal presence of ruins proves that Judah and Benjamin had a teeming population in former ages. Terrace cultivation utilized the whole surface, where there was the least soil ; and in such a climate, with an artificial supply of water, luxuriant fertility might be secured everywhere except on the bare rock. The destruction of these terraces has doubtless allowed much soil to be washed into the valleys, and lost, and the destruction of the natural forests of which there are still traces must have greatly diminished the supply of water. Even in the now utterly barren districts of "the south" abundant proofs have been discovered that cultivation was anciently extensive. The fact that there are no perennial streams in the western wadys, while there are many in those trending to the Jordan on both sides, where the forests or thick shrubberies of oleanders and other flower- ing trees still flourish, speaks volumes as to the cause of the present sterility. Passing northward from Judea, the country gradually opens and is more inviting. Rich plains, at first small, but becoming larger as we get north, stretch out between the hills, till at last, near Nablous, we reach one a mile broad and six miles long. The valleys running west are long, winding, and mostly tillable : those on the east are less deep and abrupt than farther south, and, being abundantly watered by numerous fountains, are rich in orange groves and orchards. Nablous itself is surrounded by immense groves of olive-trees, planted on all the hills around. Nowhere in Palestine are there nobler brooks of water. The rich uplands produce abundant crops of grain when cultivated; yet it is, on the whole, a region specially adapted for olives, vineyards, and orchards. The mountains, though bare of wood, and but partially cultivated, have none of that arid, worn look of those of some parts farther south. North-west of the city of Nablous the mountains gradually sink down into a wide plain, famous as that of Sharon, mostly an expanse of sloping downs, but dotted here and there with huge fields of corn and tracts of wood, recalling the county of Kent, and reaching to the southern slopes of Carmel, with their rich woods and park-like scenery. Passing still northward, from Samaria to Galilee, another wide THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 17 plain" of great fertility that of Esdraelon stretches out from the northern side of the luxuriant Carmel. It might, under a good government, yield vast crops, but the inhabitants are few and poor, and tillage is imperfect. The country now rapidly improves. Vegetation is much more luxuriant among the hills of Galilee than elsewhere west of the Jordan. Fountains are abundant and copious, and many of the torrent beds are never dry. The hills become more and more richly wooded with oaks and terebinths, while ravines occur here and there thickly clothed, in addition, with the maple, arbutus, sumach, and other trees. The hills of Judea are barren; those of Samaria have been well compared to the hilly districts of the south of Scotland; but those of Galilee are more like the rich hills of Surrey. Yet the whole region is thinly peopled. This highland paradise has far fewer inhabitants than even the bleak mountains of Judea, where " for miles and miles, there is often no appearance of life, except the occasional goat-herd on the hill-side, orthe gather- ing of women at the wells. " The coast of the Holy Land, as has been said, is a long plain. This, on the north, is a mere strip, till near Acre, but it spreads out from that point into a flat, rich, loamy plain, at first only a few feet above the sea level. Corn-fields and pasture-lands reach several miles in- land. South of Carmel it expands into the plain of Sharon, now left bare and parched in many parts ; its ancient forests long ago de- stroyed, except in stray spots, and cultivation little known. As we go south, the soil is lighter and drier, and the vegetation scantier, till we reach the Shephelah, or " low country" of the Bible, the ancient Philistia, which begins in rolling downs, and passes into wide-spread- ing corn-fields and vast expanses of loamy soil to the far south. The eastern boundary of Palestine is the deep chasm in which the Jordan has its channel. The name of that river indicates its course : it means " the descender. " Rising in the mountains of Lebanon, it flows south, through the marshy Lake Merom and the Lake of Galilee, to the Dead Sea, in a course of about 150 miles. From the Lake of Galilee, its channel is a deep cleft in the mountain range, from north to south, and so broken is its current that it is one con- tinued rapid. Its bed is so crooked that it has hardly half a oilo straight; so deep, moreover, is it, below the surface of the adjacent country, that it can only be approached by descending one of t:io steep mountain valleys, and it is invisible till near its entrance into the Dead Sea, at a level of 1,317 feet below that of the Mediterranean. There is no town on its banks, and it has in all ages been crossed at the same fords ; no use can be made of it for irrigation, and no vessel can sail the sea into which it pours its waters. It is like no other river. CHAPTER III. PALESTINE AT THE TIME OF CHRIST. AT the birth of Christ the striking spectacle presented itself, in a degree unknown before or since, of the world united under one sceptre. From the Euphrates to the Atlantic; from the mouths of the Rhine to the slopes of the Atlas, the Roman Emperor was the sole jlord. The Mediterranean was, in the truest sense, a Roman lake. From the pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile, on its southern shores ; from the farthest coasts of Spain to Syria, on its northern ; and thence round to the Nile again, the multitudes of men now , divided into separate nations, often hostile, always distinct, reposed in peace under the shadow of the Roman eagles. There might be war on the far eastern frontier, beyond the Euphrates, or with the rude tribes in the German forests on the north, but the vast Roman world enjoyed the peace and security of a great organic whole. The merchant or the traveller might alike pass freely from land to land; trading vessels might bear their ventures to any port, for all lands and all coasts were under tlie same laws, and all mankind, for the time, were citizens of a common State. At the head of this stupendous empire a single man, Octavianus Caesar now better known by his imposing title, Augustus ruled as absolute lord. All nations bowed before him, all kingdoms served him. It is impossible for us, in the altered condition of things, to realize adequately the majesty of such a position. Rome, itself, the capital of this unique empire, was itself unique in those ages. Its population, with its suburbs, has been variously estimated; some writers, as Lepsius, supposing it to have been eight millions, others, like De Quincey, setting it down as not less than four millions at the very least, and not impossibly half as many more. On the other hand, Merivale gives it as only half-a-milliou, while others make it two millions and a half. Gibbon estimates .it at twelve hundred thousand, and is supported in his supposition by Dean Milman. The truth lies probably between the extremes. But the unique grandeur of Rome was independent of any question as to its size or population ; the fact that arrested all minds was rather that a mere city should be the resistless mistress of the habitable world. Round the office and person of the Caesar, who only, of all rulers, before or since, was in the widest sense a monarch of .the whole race of men, that is, one ruling alone, over all nations, there necessarily gathered peculiar and incommunicable attributes of grandeur. Like the far-stretching highways which rayed out from the golden mile- stone in the Roman Forum to the utmost frontiers, the illimitable majesty of the Emperor extended to all landa. On the shadowy, THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 19 resistless, uncertain, but ever-advancing frontiers of a dominion which embraced almost the whole habitable world, as then known, the com- mands issued from the imperial city were as resistless as in Italy. There were, doubtless, some unknown or despised empires or tribes outside the vast circumference of the Roman sway, but they were regarded, at the best, as Britain looks on the wandering hordes or barbarous and powerless empires beyond the limits of her Indian pos- sessions. Gibbon has set the grandeur of Rome in a vivid light, by describing the position of a subject who should attempt to flee from .the wrath of a Caesar. ' ' The empire of the Romans, " -says he, ' ' filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single per- son, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the Senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or on the frozen banks of tLe Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, a^d it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed wiv.L a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an ob- noxious fugitive. 'Wherever you are,' said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, ' remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.'" At the birth of Christ this amazing federation of the world into one great monarchy had been finally achieved. Augustus, at Rome, wai the sole power to which all nations looked. "His throne, like the "exceeding high mountain" of the Temptation, showed "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory," spread out around it far be- neath, as the earth lies in the light of the sun. No prince, no king, or potentate of any name could break the calm which such a universal dominion secured "a calm," to use De Quincey's figure, "which, through centuries, continued to lave, as with the quiet undulations of summer lakes, the sacred footsteps of the Caesarean throne." It was in such a unique era that Jesus Christ was born. The whole earth lay hushed in profound peace. ,A11 lands lay freely open to the message of mercy and love which He came to announce. Is or was the social and moral condition of the world at large, at the birth of Christ, less fitting for His advent than the political. The prize of universal power, struggled for through sixty years of plots and desolating civil wars, had been won at last, by Augustus. Sulla and a.Iarius, Pompey and Caesar, had led their legions against each other, alike in Italy and the Provinces, and had drenched the earth with, blood. Augustus himself had reached the throne only after thirteu year;; cf war, v.'hich involved regions wide apart. The world wad 20 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. exhausted by the prolonged agony of such a strife; it sighed for repose, and perhaps never felt a more universal joy than when the closing of the Temple of Janus in the twenty-ninth year before Chris i announced that at last the earth was at peace. The religions of antiquity had lost their vitality, and become effete forms, without influence on the heart. Philosophy was the consola- tion of a few the amusement or fashion of others; but of no weight as a moral force among men at large. On its best side, that of Stoic- ism, it had much that was lofty, but its highest teaching was resigna- tion to fate, and it offered only the hurtful consolation of pride in : virtue, without an idea of humiliation for vice. On its worst side I that of Epicureanism it exalted self-indulgence as the highest end. Faith in the great truths of natural religion was well-nigh extinct. Sixty- three years before the birth of Christ, Julius Caesar, at that tune the Chief Pontiff of Rome, and, as such, the highest functionary of the state religion, and the official authority in religious questions, openly proclaimed, in his speech in the Senate, in reference to Cati line and his fellow-conspirator that there was no such thing as a future life ; no immortality of the soul. He opposed the execution of the accused on the ground that their crimes deserved the severest punishments, and that, therefore, they should be kept alive to endure them, since death was in reality an escape from suffering, not an evil. ' ' Death, " said he, " is a rest from troubles to those in grief and misery, not a punishment; it ends all the evils of life; for there is neither care nor joy beyond it." Nor was there any one to condemn such a sentiment even from such lips. Cato, the* ideal Roman, a man whose aim it was to " fulfil all righteousness," in the sense in which he understood it, passed it over with a few words of light banter; and Cicero, who was also present, did not care to give either assent or dissent, but left the ques- tion open, as one which might be decided either way, at pleasure. Morality was entirely divorced from religion, as may be readily judged by the fact, that the most licentious rites had their temples, and'male and female ministrants. In Juvenal's words, "the Syrian Orontes had flowed into the Tiber," and it brought with it the appal- ling immorality of the East. Doubtless, here and there, throughout the empire, the light of holy traditions still burned on the altars of many a household; but it availed nothing against the thick moral night that had settled over the earth at large. The advent of Christ was the breaking of the " dayspring from on high" through a gloom that had been gathering for ages; a great light dawning on a world which lay in darkness, and in the shadow of death. To understand the condition of things in the Holy Land in the life time of Jesus, it is necessary to notice the history of the reign that was closing at His birth, for religious and political affairs acted and roacted on the spirit of the nation as only two phases of the same thing. THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 21 The reign of Alexander JannfTMi-s. of the Maecabwan or Asmonean line, had been marked by the bitterest persecutions of the Pharisaic party, whose insolence and arrogant claims had caused the king to throw himself into the hands of their Sadducean rivals. After his death these disputes continued under Queen Alexandra, who favoured the Pharisees, but the disquiet culminated, after her death, in the far worse evil of a civil war between her two sons, the elder, Hyrcanus, ft weak, indolent man ; the younger, Aristobulus, on the other hand, bold and energetic. Hyrcanus had been made high priest, and Aris- tobulus had been kept from all power during Alexandra's life tho Pharisaic party themselves holding the reins of government; but she was hardly dead before Aristobulus forced his brother to resign the throne, to which he had succeeded, and left him only the high priest- hood. Hyrcanus would, apparently, have quietly acquiesced in this change, but the evil genius of Aristobulus and of the nation was present in the person of an influential Edomite, Antipater, who had gained the confidence of Hyrcanus. Stirred up by this crafty in- triguer, the elder brother re-claimed the throne Arab allies were called in Jerusalem was besieged, and both the brothers appealed to the Roman generals in Syria for a decision between them. As the result, Pompey, then commanding in the East, appeared on the scene, in the year 63 "B. c. ; got possession of the country by craft ; stormed the Temple, which held out for Aristobulus, and inaugurated a new era in Palestine. The Pharisees had hoped that both of the brothers would be put aside, and the theocracy, which meant their own rule, restored ; but Pompey, while withholding the name of king, set up Hyrcanus as high priest and ruler, under the title of ethnarch. All the conquests of the Maccaba3ans were taken from him : the country was re-distributed in arbitrary political divisions; the defences of Jerusalem thrown down, and the nation subjected to tribute to Rome. This itself would have been enough to kindle a deep hatred to their new masters, but the seeds of a still more profound enmity were sown, even at this first step in Roman occupation, by Pompey and his staff insisting on entering the Holy of Holies, and thus committing what seemed to the Jew the direst profanation of his religion. Antipater had allied himself from the first with Rome, as the strongest, and was now the object of furious hatred. The nation had supposed that Pompey came as a friend, to heal their dissensions, but found that he remained as their master. Their independence was lost, and Antipater had been the cause of its ruin. It is perhaps of him that the author of the Psalms of Solomon speaks when he says, ' ' Why sittest thou, the unclean one, in the Sanhedrim, and thy heart is far from the Lord, and thou stirrest up with thy sins the God of Israel?" Treachery, hypocrisy, adultery, and murder are charged against him, and he is compared to a biting serpent. Yet the guilt of the people, it is owned, had brought these calamities on them. Through this, the ram had battered the holy walls, the Holy of Holies 23 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. had been profaned, the noblest of the Sanhedrim slain, and their sons and daughters carried off captive to the West, to grace Pompey's triumph. At the thought of this the Psalmist is still more cast down, and humbles himself in the dust before the retributive hand of Je- hovah. But there was no peace for Israel. War lingered on the southern borders, and in B.C. 57 Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, once more overthrew the government of Hyrcanus and Antipater, but the Fo^ mans forthwith came in force, and crushed the revolt by another con* quest of Jerusalem. In this campaign a cavalry colonel, Mark Antony, so especially distinguished himself, that the keen-sighted Antipater, seeing he had a great future, formed friendly relations 'with him, which led to the weightiest results in later years. Hyrcanus and his favourite were now again in power, but they had a troubled life. The people rose again and again, only to be as con- stantly crushed. In B.C. 56 Aristobulus, who had escaped from Rome, began the war once more, and the next year, his son Alexan- der made another vain revolt. In B.C. 62, when the Parthians had revenged themselves by the destruction of the legions of Crassus who, in time of peace, had plundered the Temple to fill his own treasures the Jews rose still once more, but Cassius, who had escaped with the wreck of the army of Crassus from the Parthian horsemen, soon crushed the insurrection, and Antipater emerged as, at last, the unfettered lord of the country. The civilwar which broke out, in the year 49, between Pompey and Caesar, for a time promised a change. Judea, like all the East, adhered to Pompey, and Caesar therefore set the imprisoned Aristo- bulus free, and gave him two legions to clear his native country of the adherents of his rival. Antipater and Hyrcanus already trembled at the thought of a popular revolt, supported by Rome, when news came that Aristobulus had suddenly died no doubt of poison and that his son Alexander had been beheaded, in Antioch, by Pompey 'a orders. Antipater had thus managed to get his enemies out of the way. When Pompey's cause was finally crushed, next year, at Pharsalia, Hyrcanus and Antipater, like the princes round them, were in a false position. Six weeks later, Pompey lay murdered on the Egyptian sands. Meanwhile, Caesar, who had landed in Egypt, at the head of hardly 4,000 men, to settle the disputes for the throne of that country, was attacked by the native soldiery and the restless population .of Alexandria, and reduced to the most desperate straits. At this moment a motley army of Eastern vassals came to his relief, anxious to efface at the earliest opportunity the remembrance of their relations to Pompey. It included hordes of Arabs from Damascus, and bands of Itureans from beyond Jordan, but its strength lay in 3,000 chosen troops brought by Antipater. The strange host was nominally commanded by Mithridates of Pergamoe, a bastard of the great Mithridates, but Antipater was the real head. THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 26 He induced the Bedouin teaders on the opposite side to withdraw, and persuaded the Egyptian Jews to supply Caesar with provisions. After fierce fighting, the Roman fortune triumphed, and Ca3sar, now enamoured of Cleopatra, then one-and-twenty years of age, remained conqueror. Alexandria was heavily punished: the Egyptian Jews received extensive privileges, but the affairs of Palestine were left to be settled when Caesar came back from Pontus, in Asia Minor, to Which he had been summoned to repel tin invasion from Armenia. On his return to Syria, in the autumn of the year 47, Antipater hastened to meet him, as did also Antigonus, a son of Aristobulus. But the wounds of Antipater, received in rescuing Caesar from de- struction, weighed more than the hereditary claims of Antigonus, who. feeling this, fled to the Parthians, to seek the aid which Rome refused. In other respects, the Jews were treated in the friendliest way. Those of Lesser Asia were confirmed in the privilege of unchecked remittance of their Temple contributions to Jerusalem. Their synagogues were put under the protection of the Temple laws, and they were once more granted immunity from all demands for public service on the Sabbath, and on the preparation-day, from the sixth hour. In Palestine, Hyrcanus was sanctioned as high priest; the five divisions of the land previously made were put aside, and the whole united under Antipater, as procurator. The Jews in all the towns of Syria and Phenicia were put on the same favoured foot- ing as those of the Holy Land itself. No troops were to be raised in Judea, nor any Roman garrisons introduced. The Temple tax and the Roman dues were regulated according to Jewish usage. Hyr- canus, as high priest, received the rank of a Roman senator, and was made hereditary ethuarch, with the right of life and death, and of legal decision on all questions of ritual. Still more, the right was granted to fortify Jerusalem again, and Antipater, for his own reward, was made a Roman citizen, with freedom from taxes on his property. The Idumean dynasty may be said to have begun from tli is date, as the procuratorship granted to Antipater made hLa henceforth independent of Hyrcanus. All these concessions he took care to have forthwith confirmed at Rome, and graven on plates of brass. These diplomatic successes, however, failed to make Antipater popular. He assumed some of the public duties of Hyrcanus, to show the Sanhedrim that the civil power had been rightly transferred from the incapable hands of the high priest. But the suspicion sank ever deeper in the popular mind, that the final setting aside of the Maccabaean family was designed, and it was even said that the Essene Menahem had told Herod, Antipater's son, years before, as he met him on the street, that he would grow up to be the scourge of the Maccabasans, and would in the end wear the crown of David Yet Hyrcanus could not shake himself free, even had he had the energy to do so, for lie needed the help of the alien to protect him L of c 2. 4 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. against his own family. His daughter Alexandra had lost, on his account, both husband and father-in-law, by foul or legal murder. His nephew, Antigonus, lived in a foreign land as a claimant of the throne, his grand-children were the orphans of Alexander, who had faPen under the axe of the headsman. The house of the Idumeau, the alien in Israel, was nearer to him than his own flesh and blood. Antipater, in accordance with the tradition of his house, had married a daughter of the Bedouins the fair Kypros to preserve the connection with the sheikhs of the desert by which his father had grown rich. She bore him four sons, Phasael, Herod, Joseph, and Pheroras, and a daughter, Salome. Of these, Antipater, as ruler of the country, named Phasael governor of Jerusalem, and Herod a young man of twenty-five he sent to Galilee, to put down the bands of desparadoes, who thickly infested it, half robbers, half religious zealots, fighting against the hated Romans. Herod was well qualified to maintain the honour of his house. He was a fear- less rider, and no one threw the spear so straight to the mark, or /shot his arrow so constantly into the centre. Even in later years, when strength and agility begin to fail in most, he was known to have killed forty wild beasts in one day's hunting. Herod took prisoner Hezekiah, the dreaded leader of the " robbers," and his whole band, and put them all to death. But his success only en- raged the patriots of Jerusalem. In violation of the right put ex- clusively into the hands of Hyrcauus, as high priest, by Caesar, he had slain free Jews and these, men fighting for the Law, and against the heathen intruders into the heritage of Jehovah; and the Sanhedrim the high council forced their nominal leader, whose legal prerogative had been thus invaded, to summon the offender before them. Herod obeyed, after having made Galilee safe, but appeared with a powerful escort; and at the same time, a message was sent by the proconsul of Syria not to injure him. He would, however, have been sentenced to death, had not Hyrcanus left the chair, and counselled his young friend to leave Jerusalem. Gnashing his teeth, Herod rode off to Damascus, to the proconsul, from whom he shortly after bought the governorship of Coele-Syria and Samaria, for which, as a Roman citizen, he was qualified, returning soon after, with a strong force to Jerusalem, to avenge the insult offered him. But, at the entreaty of his father, whom his boldness confirmed in authority, he withdrew, without violence. All Palestine was now in the hands of Herod's house, for Antipater ruled Judea, and Herod himself was over Samaria and Ccsle-Syria. The Roman generals were uncertain whom to follow. Csesar's for- tunes seemed waning in Africa. Bassus, one of Pompey's party, seized Tyre, and sought to seduce the soldiers of Sextus Ca3sar, the Syrian proconsul. Antipater sent a mixed force, and Herod led the cavalry of Samaria, to the proconsul's help. Bassus was beaten, but Sextus Caesar himself was murdered by his own soldiers, and for lvt r a THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 25 years Phasael and Herod had to maintain a difficult war. At last, in the year 44, the news came, when all were expecting Caesar in the East, that he was murdered. The schemes of Herod's family seemed ruined. Things, however, soon righted themselves. Antony began to play a leading part in Rome, and had all the edicts of Caesar confirmed, to prevent hopeless confusion. Interest led Antipater for the time to join Cassius, Caesar's murderer. Herod \von favour as the first to pay him the war tax of about 150,000, levied on Galilee. Antipater showed, equal zeal ; but when the people were too poor to pay the enormous sum demanded, Cassius sold their sons and daughters as slaves, to make it up. Feeling Herod's usefulness, the republican leader, on leaving Judea, named him procurator of Coele-Syria, and gave him also military power over all Judea, promising him the crown, if all went well. The Idumean family were still on the top of the tide. But Antipater's course was run. Shortly before the Feast of Tabernacles, in the year 43, he died of poison given him in his wine. The murderer was well known a follower of Hyrcanus, Malichus by name who wished to excite insurrection in the Maccabaean's favour, against the Romans and their Idumean viceroy. Herod and his brother, with well-acted craft, feigned friendliness with him, till, a year later, they got him into their power, and murdered him, in turn, with the help of Cassius. Hyrcanus kissed the hands of his nevf master, and cursed the murdered man as the enemy of his country! The year 43 closed with wild troubles all over the land. Malich's son on the south, and Antigonus on the north, invaded the land; but Herod overthrew them both. The week Hyrcanus, w r ho still dreaded the house of Aristobulus, received the conqueror in Jerusalem, with childish gratitude. Herod availed himself of this to ask Mariamne, daughter of Alexander, whom Pompey had beheaded, and grand- daughter of Hyrcaims himself, in marriage. lie had already one wife, Doris, who had borne him a son, Antipater; but she was now sent away, and went off to bring up her son in deadly hatred of the Maccab&an family, who had taken her young husband from her. The hopes of the Jewish patriots revived once more after the battle of Philippi, in the autumn of the year 42. It was left to Antony to pay the soldiers after the battle what had been promised them: and to raise the vast sums required, by war taxes and the sale of titles, he moved towards Asia. Here a deputation of Jews pro- testing against Herod and Phasael's government waited on him; but Herod had always been friendly to the Romans, and was better pro- vided w r ith money than the people. Antony, for his part, hated the Jews, and liked Herod, as the son of an old comrade, with whom, eighteen years before, he had fought against the very people who now accused his son before him. Hyrcanus himself appeared in Ephesus on behalf of the two brothers, and they themselves played their part so well that they were not only confirmed in their own positions, but received .substantial favours besides. 26 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Antony was one of those undisciplined natures which revolutionary times produce a rtlan of powerful but neglected parts, who had grown up in the shattered and utterly immoral Roman world; unbridled in his passions, and, amidst all the energy of his will, with- out moral restraint. When in Egypt, as colonel of horse, he had for the first time seen Cleopatra, then fourteen years old, but already flirting with the son of Pompey. In the years B.C. 46 to 44 she was living in Cesar's gardens at Rome as that great man's mistress, and there Antony had been amongst the most zealous in paying her honour. After Caesar's death he had done her service, and had tried to get her son Caesarion "out on the list of Caesar's heirs. But, like Herod, she had been forced to go to war against Antony, because the camp of Cassius was nearer than that of his opponent. For this she was summoned before him, and made her appearance at Tarsus, in Cilicia, in the summer of 41. She was now twenty-eight, but still in the bloom of her beauty, and displayed her charms so effectively that Antony was forthwith her slave. His worst deeds begin from the time he met her. To please her he caused her sister to be dragged out of a temple in Miletus and murdered, and he put to death all she chose to denounce. She herself hastened to Egypt, whither Antony panted to follow her. In Antioch, in Syria, in the autumn of the same year, he would have put to death a Jewish deputation sent to protest against the two brothers, had not Herod prevented him. The two w T ere, more- over, appointed tetrarchs, with all formality. At' Tyre, to which he had advanced, thousands of Jews threw themselves in his way with loud, persistent, fanatical cries that he should depose the brothers. Angry before, he was now furious, and set his troops on them and hewed them down, killing even the prisoners taken. He then moved on to spend the winter with Cleopatra. Throughout Judea and even in Egypt the deepest despondency reigned among the Jews. The advent of the Messiah was to be pre- ceded by times of darkness and trouble, and so gloomy seemed the state of things then prevailing that it appeared as if the long-expected One must be close at hand. The belief or, at least, hope, found ex- pression in the writings of the day. The Jewish Sibylline Books, composed in Egypt in these years, predicted that "when Rome once rules over Egypt, then will the greatest of the kingdoms, that of the Immortal King, appear among men, and a Holy Lord shall come who Avill rule all the countries of the earth, through all ages, as time Hows on." In Palestine there was great excitement. After their bloody inau- guration into their office by Antony, the two tetrarchs, Phasael and Herod, could count on few faithful subjects, and a new storm soon rose from the East which threatened to destroy them. Since they had sold themselves to the Romans, the exiled Maccarbsean prince had conspired more eagerly with the Parthians, and had been supported THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 27 in his appeal by Roman exiles of the party of Brutus and Cass'ius. The Parthians hesitated long, but at last the rumour came that they were preparing for war. Jerusalem trembled, for the Euphrates was undefended, and there were still garrisons of the republicans, which could not be trusted, all through Syria. The action of Antony in such a crisis was impatiently awaited; but feasting and pleasures reigned An Alexandria. The queen played at dice with the Triumvir; drank and hunted with him ; wandered through the streets by night with him, playing rough tricks ; she, dressed as a servant-woman, he, as a servant-man. She let him escape her neither by night nor day. Her extravagance was unparalleled; at a dinner she drank crushed pearls, that the cost of a meal might come to a million sestertii, as she had wagered it would. There was no end of her light follies, to amuse him ; she had foreign pickled fish hung by divers on his hooks as he fished, and induced the senator Plancus to dance as Glaucus, naked, at one of her banquets, painted blue, his head wreathed with sea-weed, and waving a tail behind him, as he went gliding on all fours. The costliest meals were at all times ready in the castle, for the cook never knew when they would need to be served up. Sunk in this sensual indulgence, Antony left it to the proconsul of Syria to defend that province, till forced, in the spring of the year 40, to go to Greece, to manage a war which his wife had stirred up, to draw him away from Cleopatra. Meanwhile, Asia Minor was overrun by the Parthians, and Phasael and Herod saw themselves ex- posed to an early inroad, against which they were helpless. And now, to use the fine figure of Hausrath, there rose again before Hyrcanus, as if from some long-disused churchyard, the ghost of that dynastic question which for tliirty years had haunted the palace, and could not be laid. His nephew Antigonus came from Chalcis, where he had been living with a relative, and obtained help from the Parthian leader, on the promise of giving him 1,000 talents and 500 wives, if he were restored to the throne. At Carmel, Anti- gonus was greeted with shouts, as king, and he hastened on to Jeru- salem, where part of the people joinedliim. The tetrarchs succeeded in driving him and his adherents into the Temple, and shutting them up in it ; but daily fights took place in the streets, and, as Pentecost was near, and crowds of armed and half -armed pilgrims arrived in the city, the brothers were, in their turn, shut up in their palace, from which, however, their soldiers made constant sallies, butchering the crowds like sheep. At last the cup-bearer of the Parthian prince came to the gate with 500 cavalry, asking entrance as a mediator be- tween the factions, and was admitted by Phasael, who was even weak enough to let himself be persuaded to set out for the Parthian head- quarters, taking Hyrcanus with him, to conclude arrangements for peace. At Ptolemais they found themselves prisoners, and were soon after fettered and put in confinement, Herod, meanwhile, had re- fused to listen to similar treacherous invitations, and having mounted 28 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. his family on mules by night, set off with them, in the darkness, towards the strong fortress Masada, on the Dead Sea, where his brother Joseph had command, reaching it only after terrible fighting in the passes of the hills. Leaving his women behind in safety, and taking his men with him, he now fled towards Edom ; but as lie had no money, the sheikhs of Mount Seir refused to receive him. In the meantime the Parthians had thrown oft' the mask in Jerusa- lem, had plundered the city, and were sweeping like a devouring tire through the land, proclaiming Antigonus everywhere as king. In the camp, Hyrcanus was the first to do homage to the new sovereign, but Antigonus flew at him, and with his own teeth bit off his ears, to unfit him for ever for the high priesthood, and then sent him beyond the Euphrates as a prisoner. Phasael escaped further insult by a voluntary death. Deprived of weapons, he beat out his brains against the walls of his dungeon. Antigonus now assumed the name of Mattathias, from the founder of the Maccabrean family, and the titles of high priest and king. But his position was insecure, for Masada still held out, and was defended by Joseph, Herod's brother, for two years, till Herod relieved it. The barbarities of the Parthians, moreover, undermined his authority. On their small horses of the steppes they scoured the country in troops, mangling the men, mal- treating the women, burning down whole towns, and torturing even the defenceless. No wonder that, though a Parthian never watered his horse in the Jordan after the vear B.C. 38, the memory of these mounted hordes lingered in the minds of the people, so that even St. John introduces them in the Apocalypse, as a symbol of the plagues of the final judgment, wliich were to destroy a third part of men. Herod, repelled from Idumea, fled to Egypt, which Antony had left at the beginning of the year 40. Cleopatra, however, gave him a friendly and even distinguished welcome, thinking she could win him over to her service, and use him as general against the Parthians. But Herod had .higher aims. Braving the danger of autumn storms, he set sail for Borne, w r as shipwrecked off Rhodes, built a new trireme with borrowed money, reached Italy soon after, and on getting to Rome found there both Octavian and Antony. Before them he had his cause pleaded so skilfully that the Senate unanimously appointed him King of Judea, and he was formally installed in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the usual heathen sacrifices. Seven days later he was on his way back to Palestine, and the cause of Antigouus was doomed. This new dignity, however, carried in its bosom the seeds of all Herod's future misery. Hyrcanus, though disqualified for being high priest, could yet be ethnarch, and his grand-child Aristobulus, brother to Mariamne, Herod's betrothed, was alive. Herod's kingship was a wrongful usurpation of the rights of both. Meanwhile, the position of Antigonus was getting desperate. The nieltjes of the Parthians, the failure to take Masada, and a fresh out- break on a great scale, in Galilee and on the lake of Gennesareth, of THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 39 zeal against the heathen oppressors of the land, had turned the Rabbis and the Sanhedrim, hitherto his supporters, against him. Nor were the people more friendly. As he left the Temple on the Day of Atonement, accompanied by a crowd, to conduct him to his palace, the multitude turned away to follow two Rabbis who chanced to pass. Yet Herod was still, in the eyes of the nation, only "the servant of the Asmoneans." Herod began the war against Antigonus with the assurance of Roman help, but Silo, the Roman general, let himself be bribed by Antigonus, and Herod had to struggle single-handed. The Romans only plundered Jericho, and quartered themselves idly on the nation at large. Herod had to turn against the zealots of Galilee, since he could get no help towards more serious efforts; and he "soon extirpated them. The Parthians, however, by this time had been driven" out of Asia Minor and Syria, and finally crushed, in a great battle on the Euphrates. Two new legions were now free to aid Herod, but their general, like Silo, cared only for making money, and, like him, took a bribe from Antigonus. In the meantime, Joseph, Herod's brother, fell in battle, and this roused Herod, who was always faithful to his family, to fury. With only a nondescript army he burst on Galilee and Judea, and drove the Maccabaeans before him like chaff. Except Jerusalem, the whole land was now his, and he set himself to the task of taking the capital. For two years, with only raw recruits who knew nothing, veterans who had forgotten everything, Itureans who took his pay and did .as little as possible for it, and treacherous allies, he had fought against a fanatical people, who turned every hamlet and cavern into a fortress. It needed a genius and a superhuman energy like his to triumph in such a war. In the early spring of 37 B.C. he proceeded to invest Jerusalem, but thought it politic, before the siege actually began, to go to Samaria and marry Mariamne, the grand-daughter of Hyrcanus, his rival and enemy. The Samaritans, in their hatred of the Maccabsean dynasty, had been Herod's devoted supporters in the war; and he had honoured their loyalty by placing his bride, and the rest of his family in their keeping, at Samaria, when it first broke out. He was no sooner married than the work of blood once more began. Jerusalem was besieged by his army of Samari- tans, friendly Jews, wild Idumeans, and mercenaries from Phenicia and Lebanon, and fell on the 10th of June, after a fierce struggle, which was followed by wild pillage and slaughter. Antigonus w T as taken prisoner, and was put to death by the Roman general, at Herod's entreaty, after he had suffered the outrage, hitherto unknown i - vards a prince, of being scourged like a slave. Thus another As- nuv.-ean was out of the way. The family had reigned 126 years. Herod was now really king. A great bribe to the Roman army freed the country of the burden of the Roman support, and the misery of its lawlessness. A bloody proscription, after the pattern of that of the Roman triumvirate, mowed down all enemies within the city, the 80 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. gates of which were closed till the executions were ended. In the midst of this, Antony, once more beside Cleopatra, in Egpyfc, and needing endless wealth for their mutual prodigalities, sent a demand to all the kingdoms he controlled, Judea amongst others, for a vast sum of money. Herod had only an empty treasury; a country strewn with ruins and smoking heaps; and moreover, it was the Sab- bath year, in which the laws made by Caesar prohibited the levying any tax. The proscription had therefore to be made a means of rais- ing funds, as had been done by Octavian and Antony, at Rome. Forty-five of his richest opponents were put to death, and their prop- erty confiscated so ruthlessly, that even their coffins were searched at the city gates for jewels or money. Many were glad to escape deatK by giving up all they had. "The oppression and tyranny had no limit," says Josephus. Herod, however, was none the richer, for he had to send off the whole crown treasures of the Asmoueans to Lao- dicea, to help to make up the amount demanded from him. CHAPTER IV. THE KEIGN OP HEROD. THE position of Herod was 'difficult in the extreme. He had every- thing to reorganize. Galilee lay exhausted by brigandage, entire towns were unpeopled, as Lydda, Thamna, Gophna, and Emmaus, whose inhabitants had been sold by Cassius as slaves. Jericho had been taken and plundered once and again : five towns round it lay in rubbish and ashes ; Marissa had been burned down by the Parthians ; and in the midst of all, the bleeding land had to be harried afresh, to satisfy Cleopatra and her slave, Antony. But the genius of Herod erelong built up a strong government out of this chaos, surrounding himself with his old friends, and ruthlessly crushing his enemies. Filling posts, where needful or desirable, with foreigners of any na- tion, he yet strove to keep on a good footing with the Rabbis, and Pharisee party at large, but gradually took from their Sanhedrim and schools the legal and civil powers they had exercised, leaving them the control only of municipal and ecclesiastical details. A high priest was appointed, such as the times seemed to demand. ~No native could be trusted; Hyrcanus, who still survived in Babylon, was disqualified; Aristobulus, the king's brother-in-law, was too young, and Herod was a born Idumean. A Rabbi from Babylon was therefore selected, as likely to give no trouble, but the rule was introduced, as an extra pre- caution, that the office should, henceforth, be held, by any one, only for a short time. Hyrcanus was wiled from the East that Herod might have him in his own power, and prevent his being played 'off against him in case of another Parthian war. But Herod's position was a fatal one. Willing to treat his subjects THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 81 well, Rome, to whom he owed his crown, forced h ; m to oppress them. He wished to reign as a Jew, but he had nwle a thank-offer- ing in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus for the Ciovn. He knew that he could be popular only by observing the Law. but his being king at all was illegal. He nattered the Rabbis, but they were his deadliest enemies. Yet all this was little to the troubles which his ambition had prepared for him in his own household. Had he founded an entirely new dynasty, his relations would have been on his side, and he could have relied on a party. But he had been unwise enough to marry into the family he had overthrown, in the hope of gaining a colour of legitimacy for his reign; and in doing so he had at once* failed to appease the injured, and had brought his mortal enemies round him, as his relations. The marriage with Mariamne, by which he hoped to strengthen his title, carried with it his keenest indictment. In Aristobulus, his brother-in-law, he saw only a rival, and he betook himself to the usual remedy of tyrants murder to make himself safe. But this only made his position so much the worse, for his best-loved wife knew that he had murdered her bvother, ?nd their very children had more right to the throne than himself. His sus- picions were thus roused at his every step in his own palace, and could only be appeased by fresh crimes. He raged against his own flesh and blood, and made himself wretched as a man, to be secure a* a king. Towards the close of the year a great disaster befell the Triumvir, Antony. His troops, deserted by their barbarous allies, had to retreat from Media, marching for twenty-seven days through a wasted coun- try, pursued by the Parthians, and often in want of food or water. Twenty thousand foot, and four thousand horse, perished, and all the army train was lost, before he reached the Araxes, on the Caspian Sea, and eight thousand more died before he got to Sidon on the sea- coast, Here he waited for Cleopatra, who was alarmed at hearing that his wife Octavia was coming to meet him, and, pretending that she would die if he deserted her, so Unmanned him that he left his army to his officers and went off with her to Egypt. He was now entirely in her hands, and the neighbouring powers soon felt (he results. Alexandra, the mother of Mariamne and Aristobulus, was sorely aggrieved that her son should not have been made high priest, as was his right, and plotted with a crafty officer of Antony's suite, then at Jerusalem, to get Antony to help her in the matter. He asked and got the portraits of both brother and sister to send to his master, but it was with the design of getting Antony enamoured of Mariamne and of thus raising a rival to Cleopatra, and his scheme succeeded. An- tony fell in love with the Jewish queen, and was only kept from acting on his passion by his fear of the jealousy of his Egyptian mis- tress. He confined himself for the time to asking Herod to send th bov to him. 83 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Herod was alarmed, and induced Antony to withdraw his request, which he said would lead to a revolt if granted ; but seeing how thingg stood, he deposed the high priest and appointed Aristobulus, then seventeen, in his place. Unfortunately for the lad, the Jews hailed his elevation with delight. The result was that Herod, soon after, got him held under the water in a bath, at Jericho, till he was drowned, and pretended it was an accident. Alexandra and Mariamne, knowing the truth, thirsted for revenge, and plotted with Cleopatra to obtain it. She on her part was anxious to get hold of Judea, and only used the plotters for this end. Herod was summoned before Antony, but he ordered, before he left, that, should he not return, Alexandra should be put to death as a punish- ment, and Mariamne, also, killed, to prevent her falling into the hands of Antony. Unfortunately for all, this was told them in his absence, and Mariamne, roused to frenzy, greeted him, on his coming back, with an outburst of the long pent-up hatred she felt at his crimes. Alexandra was forthwith thrown into chains; his sister Salome's husband, who had betrayed the secret, was put to death; IVIariamne, whom he passionately loved, was spared a little longer. Other troubles, from outside, now, for a time, thrust the domestic miseries into the background. Herod had discovered Cleopatra's designs, which were to get all the country, from Egypt to Syria, for herself. Antony was to be persuaded on one pretext or other, to de- throne the different rulers. She did actually get him to put Lysanias, the ruler of the Lebanon district, to death, on pretence of his being in league with the Parthians, and got his principality, which sho presently farmed out. Herod was now between her possessions, on both north and south, and feared lest her influence with Antony might be his ruin. She next begged and got part of the Nabataean kingdom : then the whole sea-coast of Palestine from the river Eleutherus to Egypt- Tyre and Sidon excepted and, finally, Herod had to give up to her the Oasis of Jericho with its balsam plantations the richest part of his kingdom. The summons to Laodicea and the taking away of Jericho seemed to show that Herod's influence with Antony was shaken, and opposition consequently raised itself once more. Plots were again rife on every side, at home and abroad. Cleopatra was bis constant terror, for at any moment she might spring some new mine under his feet. Even the Maccabseans were once more raising their heads. The Rabbis, whose schools had flourished immensely since their exclusion from politics, began to interfere with them again. Hillel and Schammai were, respectively, the heads of the more liberal and the harsher parties. But Herod was too much occupied by great affairs to trouble himself about them. Things were rapidly coming to a crisis in the Roman Empire. The object of the Egyptian queen in lavishing her blandishments on An- tony became more and more apparent. She had entangled him in THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 3S ker snares only to serve herself, and the great Samson laid his head unsuspiciously on her Delilah lap. She dreamed of bringing the, whole Eastern empire of Rome, through him, under Egyptian rule, and of becoming the empress of half the world; and it seemed as if he were willing it should be so. He gave mortal offence at Rome by celebrating his triumphs, not there, but at Alexandria. He gave Cleopatra the title of the "queen of kings." Their two sons, Ptol- emy and Alexander, were to be "kings of kings." He gave Syria, Phenicia, and Cilicia to the former, and Armenia and Media, with Parthia, as soon as it should be overcome, to the latter; while to their daughter, the young Cleopatra, he handed over Cyrenaika. Cleopa- tra herself was made Queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Ccele-Syria, her son Csesarion sharing them with her. After the example of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, both he and she assumed divine honours Cleopatra as Isis, Antony as Osiris and their statues were set up in sacred places. Public feeling at Rome was outraged and alarmed. The popular poets sent verses afloat in which Antony sought to make the Jupiter of Rome give way to the barking, dog-headed Anubis, threatened the galleys of Rome with being outsailed by the boats of the Nile, and would fain frighten the trumpets of Rome with the clattering sistrum. Caesar laid the facts before the Senate, and An- tony, in return, made charges against Caeear. . War long inevitable at last broke out, and was decided in the sea-fight at Actium. Cleo- patra had persuaded her dupe to fight on the water rather than on land, that she might flee to Egypt at the first signs of defeat, and she did this in the midst of the battle, when victory was yet entirely doubtful. Ever his ruin, she thus completed her fatal triumph, for the weak man, as if he could not live without her, forthwith deserted . his forces, though his ships were still fighting stoutly, and he had 100,000 foot, and 12,000 horse, on the sea-shore, who had never fought at all. It was noticed that on the day of Actium a terrible earthquake took place in Palestine, killing 10,000 persons and endless cuttle. Herod, seeing Antony fallen, forthwith made peace with Caesar. Fresh plots of Alexandra had been discovered, in which Hyrcanus, now eighty years old, was to be played off against him ; but they only led to the revolting sight of the last of the Maccabseans, in extreme old age, being beheaded by his son-in-law. Herod's hands were getting redder and redder with the blood of his kindred. With Caesar he managed things well, entertaining him royally on his way through Palestine to Egypt, and providing supplies for his army on their march, with equal wisdom and munificence. Meanwhile An- tony and Cleopatra spent their last days in feasting and revelry, varied with ghastly trials, before them, of every known poison, by turns, on different prisoners, to see wh?ch caused the easiest death. In the autumn of 30 B.C. Antony stabbed himself mortally, and Cleo- patra soon after ended her life by poison, leaving Herod to breathe freely for the first time in long years. Octavian toak him into favour, 34 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. for he needed such a man as a protection on the eastern borders, to defend them against the Parthians. Jericho was given back, Samaria was incorporated with his kingdom, with various coast towns, and some territory beyond the Jordan. Cleopatra's body guard of 400 Gauls was presented to him by Octavian. But if he had honour and rewards, it was at the cost of an expenditure, to do honour and homage to his imperial master, that seemed to have overstrained his resources. Once more safe from dangers that might well have overwhelmed him, Herod found, on his return from attendance on Octavian, such troubles at home as darkened his whole future life. The quarrels of his seraglio had come to a head. Alexandra and her daughter Mari- amne were now the only two left of the old royal race, and were so much the more hated by the kindred of Herod. Mariamne tall and noble in person had the pride of a daughter of kings, and let Salome, Herod's sister, feel it. In Herod's absence she discovered that, for the second time, he had left orders to kill her and her mother if he did not return ; and she showed what she thought of this when he did come back, by receiving him with undisguised aversion. Her enemies took advantage of this to fan Herod's anger by every scandal they could invent against her, till, in the end, he believed she had been unfaithful, and the fair queen, deserted and betrayed by all, wai handed over to the headsman. Herod's remorse, when she had thus actually perished, was awful. He lost his reason for a time, would call for her, lament over her, kept his servants calling her as if she were still alive, gave up all business, and fled to Samaria, where he had married her, to seek relief from his thoughts in hunting. At last he fell into violent illness, and lay seemingly hopeless. Alexandra, furious at her daughter's murder, thought this the right moment to attempt to set Mariamne's two sons on the throne, which w r as theirs by right, more than their father's. A plague had broken out, and this "the Rabbis construed into divine vengeance for the queen's death. The news roused the tyrant, ill as he was. Alexandra was instantly put to death, and many others shared her fate ; but already a new sus- picion had risen to torment the wretched man. Alexandra's procla- mation of his sons as the rightful heirs had made them, also, his fancied enemies. Among the people the memory of Mariamne was sacred, and their hopes were set on her sons. Octavian was now sole ruler of the Roman world, under the high name of Augustus, and an era of restoration and refinement took the place of destruction and tumult. With the widespread peace, trade revived, and prosperity returned to Judea among other countries. The patronage of literature and art, the construction of public works, and the rebuilding and beautifying of Rome and the cities and towns of the provinces, were now the fashion, set by Augustus, and slavishly followed by vassal kings. In imitation of him, Herod patronized men whose writings could shed a lustre on his court notably the twe THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 3* brothers, Nicolaus and Ptolemy, of Damascus, both, able and faith- ful public servants. Nicolaus was a voluminous and skilful author as well. Other Greeks and half -Greeks were put in offices of trust or honour, as members of the government, or ambassadors, or as tutors and travelling companions to his sons. Most of them served Herod honourably to the last, but there were not wanting some of the Greek sycophants who at that time infested all courts, and one of the worst of these, Eurykles the Lacedaemonian, who amassed wealth by espionage and false witnesses, was destined to be the bad genius of Herod's later years. The biting wit of the Rabbis spoke of the whole heathen* government of the court as "the proselytes of the king's table. " A shrewd and able man like Herod, whose leading thought was to flatter and serve Augustus, so as td secure his permanent favour, was of great use in a disturbed border country, to one who, like Augustus, was as much disinclined as unqualified for war. When, therefore, Herod determined in the year B.C. 28 to send Mariamne's two sons to Rome, Caesar received them with every honour, and gave the lads every facility for growing up in the midst of high Roman life. But they little knew in how dark a gloom all this early splendour would set ! By a curious coincidence it was their tutor's son, with whom they rose to manhood, w T hom Virgil had flattered as an infant by ap- plying to him, in the fourth Eclogue, the Messianic hope of the Jews Of this "Messiah" of Virgil they were now the youthful friends. Herod himself took his sons to Rome, and was honoured by a gift froni Augustus of the district of Lebanon, and of the lawless terri- tories of Iturea and Trachonitis, with the fertile plains of the Hauran. The former swarmed with robbers, like Galilee in Herod's youth, and the tw r o latter were filled with wild clans of borderers, who were the terror of the land at large. But on his return, Herod soon reduced them so thoroughly that they w r ere peaceful even under his successors. A year after, Herod could personally report his success to Caesar's minister Agrippa, at Mitylene, to which he went to meet him. Two years later Herod received from Augustus, in person, at Antioch, the districts of Ulatha and Panias, to round off his kingdom suitably. He now reigned over a larger kingdom than any preceding Jewish monarch. The glory of David seemed to be outshone. From. Lebanon to the far South, and from the edge of the Desert to the sea-coast, was Jewish territory. Nor was the political glory granted to Herod less than the material. He was made the representative of Agrippa in the East, and it was required that his counsel should be taken, jaefore anything of moment w r as done by consuls or governors. Amidst these flatteries from Augustus it was necessary to do some- thing to conciliate the Jews. Hence, in the year 24 Herod had mar ried a Jewish maiden Mariamne, daughter of Boelhos, a priest of Alexandrian origin, who was raised to the high priesthood, to dignify the alliance with "the fairest woman in the world," Jesus, the son OF THE UNIVERSITY 86 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. of Phabi, the high priest at the time, being set aside in his favour. Boethos was a great accession to the small body of the Sadducean dignitaries, but, in politics, was, of course, a Herodian. So much intercourse with heathenism, however, and the splendid flatteries by which Herod sought to retain and increase the power of his master, were not without their effects on Judaism. Even in the days of the Syrian kings, Palestine had been encircled by Greek towns and cities, and the immigration of heathen settlers had, in Herod's day, made the towns of the Philistine coast and of the Decapolis much more Greek than Jewish. The only bounds to Herod's introduction of foreign novelties were his dread of national opposition. Greek had become the court dialect of the Empire, as French was that of Europe in the days of Louis XIV., and still remains to a great extent; and hence it was universally favoured and spoken by tlie upper classes in Herod's dominions. Samaria received a Greek name, had Greek coins, and Greek idolatry. The first act of Herod, after Augustus had aggrandised him so greatly, was to build a temple of white mar- ble to 'his patron, at Panias, the future Caesarea Philippi, lying finely on one of the southern spurs of Lebanon. Before long, venturing to bring heathenism nearer the centre of the land, he built another tem- ple to Caesar in Samaria, and surrounded it by a consecrated approach, a furlong and a half in circumference. A grand palace was also begun in Jerusalem itself, in the heathen style, with wide porticoes, rows of pillars, and baths, its one wing receiving the name of Caesar, the other that of Agrippa. Herodium, which he built on the hill, at the mouth of the deep gorge leading to the Dead Sea, where he had so bravely defended himself against the Parthians, was planned as a Roman castle, rising over an Italian town, with public buildings and stately aqueducts. His grandest undertaking, after the Temple, was the creation of Csesarea, on the coast. The name was another flat- tery of the Emperor; that of one of the great gignal towers on the smaller harbour was Drusion, .after Caesar's son. The great pier was adorned with splendid pillars. Broad quays,, magnificent bazaar's, spacious basilicae, for the courts of law and other public uses, and huge sailors'-homes, invited a great commerce ; and on an eminence above rose a temple, with a colossal statue, visible far out at sea, of Augus- tus, as Jupiter Olympus, and another of Rome deified as Juno. Theatres and amphitheatres were not wanting. A grand palace, de- signed for Herod himself, became later the Praetorium of the Roman procurators. Temples to Jupiter, Neptune, -Apollo, Hercules, Bac- chus, Minerva, Victory, and Astarte, soon adorned the town, and showed the many-coloured heathenism of its population. It was. moreover, provided with a system of magnificent underground sewer.* in the Roman manner. Csesarea was in every respect a foreign city. Its population was more heathenish than Jewish, and their mutual hatred often led to fierce riots. In Jerusalem itself a theatre and amphitheatre were erected. Count' THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 8? lees foreign proselytes and numerous heathens had settled in the city. The coins bore Crreek inscriptions. Among the troops of Herod were Thracian, German, and Gallic regiments. So thoroughly, in deed, had foreign elements gained a footing, even in the fanatical capital, in spite of the Rabbis, that, while the people at large retained their native dialect, many Greek words had been permanently incor- porated with it. The very Temple displayed proofs of the irrepres- sible influences of the great world outside Judea. Its outer court was thronged by heathens, and countless gifts presented by heathen princes and^nobles adorned the walls of the court of the priests. The Ptolemies had enriched it by numerous costly gifts. Sosius, when he took Jerusalem, in concert with Herod, vowed a golden crown. Among the Temple vessels were wine jars which had been presented by Augustus and his Empress. It was, indeed, a common thing for Romans to make gifts of this kind. They very often, also, presented offerings. When Pompey had taken Jerusalem, his first care was to provide the usual sacrifices. Agrippa, the friend and patron of Herod, offered a hecatomb on his visit to Jerusalem fifteen years before Christ, and Augustus provided that sacrifices should be offered daily at his expense to tne Most High God ; and such an example must have had countless followers. All the hatred between Jews and heathen was not strong enough to prevent the Temple becoming, like all the famous sanctuaries of ^the age, a gathering point for the world at large. There was, clearly, much to keep a fanatical people in a constant tension, and to make them more fanatical still. Heathen temples, with their attendant priests, pompous ritual, and imposing sacrifices, abounded in the land. Gaza, in the south, was virtually a Greek city, and worshipped a local Jupiter as the town god, ' ' who sent rain and fruitf illness on the earth," and associated with him, in its idol- atry, another Jupiter the Victory Bringer Apollo, the Sun, and Hercules, and the goddesses Fortune, lo, Diana, Juno, and Venus. Ascalon worshipped Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, the Sun, Minerva, Mercury, Castor and Pollux, and the Syrian Moon goddess Astarte, as the heavenly Venus the warlike, spear-bearing, Queen of Heaven. On the rocks at Joppa, the marks of the chains were shown which had been forged for Andromeda. A laurel-crowned Jupiter was worshipped at Dora, north of Caesarea. At Ptolemais the favourite divinity was the goddess Fortune, but with her, Jupiter, Apollo, Dlana,*Venus, Pluto and Persephone, and Perseus, with the Egyp- tian Serapis, and the Phrygian Cybele, had their respective wor- shippers. In Tyre, the old worship of Baal and Astarte the Sun and Moon retained their pre-eminence, with a Greek colouring of the idolatry. In Damascus Greek heathenism was in the ascendant. Jupiter, Her- cules, and Bacchus, Diana, Minerva, Fortune, and Victory had their temples, and were stamped on the local coins. In the future province 88 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. of Philip heathenism was predominant. In Panias or Csesarea Phil- ippi, as we have seen, Herod built a temple for the worship of 'Augus- tus, but the leading divinity was the god Pan, as the old name of the town Panias indicates: Jupiter, however, and Astarte, with a horn of plenty, Apollo, and Diana, had also their votaries, and no doubt their temples. Heathenism flourished in Batansea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis. Helios, the Sun, was the great object of worship, and so deep-rooted was this idolatry that the early Christian missionaries knew no other way of overthrowing it than by changing it into the name of the prophet Elias, and turning the temples into churches dedicated to him. Round this central divinity, however, the worship of Bacchus, Saturn, Hercules, Minerva, Fortune, Venus, Victory, Peace, and other divinities flourished more or less. The cities of the Decapolis were very heathen. Thus, all round the central district of Palestine, and to some ex- tent even within its limits, heathenism had already in Herod's day, and, consequently, in Christ's, its temples, altars, idols, and priests. Jehovah was no longer the sole God. With a few exceptions of Syrian or Egyptian divinities, Greek names and rites marked the source of the corruption, though we have given the Roman names as better known. Of all this aggressive heathenism Herod, so far as he dared, was the ostentatious patron. If he could hardly venture on much within the narrow limits of Judea, cenotaphs, mausolea, and other monuments offensive to a Jew, were seen along all the leading roads, and so many places were called by new Latin names, in honour of the imperial family, that a traveller might think he was in Italy. Nor was Herod ever without money to bestow on neighbouring heathen cities, as a mark of friendliness, in building gymnasia, piazzas, theatres, and aqueducts, or in the shape of prizes to be striven for in the circus. It seemed as if the throne of David existed only to spread heathenism. It was clear to the Jews that Herod's heathen subjects were nearest his heart, since, amidst all his lavish munificence to them, he had done nothing to beautify a single Jewish town except Jerusalem, to which his additions were, themselves, heathen. The most appalling reports respecting him spread from mouth to mouth. He had preserved the body of Mariamne for seven years in honey for the most hideous ends ; he had strangled all the great Rabbis, except Baba-ben-Boutra, and him he had blinded . The most intense hatred of him prevailed. It was with the extremest mistrust, therefore, that the RabWs heard in the year B.C. 20 that Herod intended replacing the humble temple of the Exile by one unspeakably more splendid. It is said that Baba-ben-Boutra had seen a crack in the old structure, and coun- selled Herod to build another in its place, as an expiation for the murder of Mariamne and the Rabbis, and to conciliate the people for his favour to heathenism. The prophecies were played off by him, to. win popular sanction t his undertaking, for Haggai had foretold THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 39 that a new temple of surpassing glory would one day be built. But so great was the distrust, that ail the materials of the new temple needed to be brought together before a stone of the old one could be touched. At last, on the regnal day of Herod, in the year B.C. 14, the unfinished structure was consecrated, and the lowing of 300 oxen at the Great Altar announced to Jerusalem that the first sacrifice in it was offered. But scarcely was the consecration over than national gratitude was turned into indignation by his setting up a great golden eagle the emblem of heathen Rome over the great gate, in expec- tation of a visit from distinguished strangers from the imperial city. The nation was not duped as the king had expected, in spite of his having begun a temple so magnificent that even a Jewish saying owns that he who had not seen it" had seen nothing worth looking at, an abyss yawned between him and them, He had burned the registers of Jerusalem to destroy the pedigrees of which the people boasted : he had tried to make it be believed that he was the descendant of a foreign Jewish family, but no one regarded him as anything but the slave of their kings. All felt that his conduct was as little Jewish as his birth ; and that he was rather a Roman proconsul than the King of Israel. Even the worst of the Maccabsean house were bound to the national faith by the functions of the pontificate, but though Herod might be made King of Judea by the favour of Rome, no earthly power could make him a descendant of Aaron, without being which he could not be high priest. In vain Herod tried to make himself beloved. He had done much to deserve gratitude in these later years, and yet the nation wrote his -virtues in water, and his faults in brass. A dreadful famine, followed by pestilence, had spread misery and death in the thirteenth of his reign. No rain had fallen at the required times, and the crops utterly failed, so that there was no food for either man or beast. Men said it was a judgment of God for the defilement of His land by their king's crimes and heathen innovations, for Mariamne's blood, now four years shed, still seemed to cry for vengeance, and since her murder sx theatre and circus had profaned Jerusalem, and heathen games, in which men fought with men, to the death, had been set on foot witl_ great pomp. Samaria, the hated rival of Jerusalem, was even then, moreover, being rebuilt, with a heathen temple in it, in which a man Augustus was to be worshipped. Herod felt the peril of his posi- tion, and acted from policy, as others might have done from the wisest and most energetic philanthropy. Selling the very plate in his palace, and emptying his treasury, he sent funds to Egypt and bought corn, which he brought home and distributed, as a gift, among all the people, for their money had been spent for the merest necessaries before this relief came. He even provided clothing for the nation in the winter, where it was wanted, for sheep and goats alike had been killed for food, and he supplied seed corn for next spring, and thus the evil time was tided over. For a while it seemed as if the people THE LIFE OF CHRIST. really become loyal. But bis best acts of one moment spoiled the next. The bazaars and schools muttered treason contin- ually. One year Herod remitted a third of the taxes, but tongues went against him none the less/ and presently he seemed to justify their bitterness by decreeing that all thieves should be sold as slaves to other countries, where, as the people said, they would lose the blessing of Abraham, could not keep the Law, and would be lost for ever. Meanwhile Agrippa visited Jerusalem again, and bore himself so wisely that thousands escorted him to the sea-coast when he left, strewing his path with flowers. Next year Herod returned the visit at Sinope, lavishing bounty on heathen and Jewish communities alike, on his journey out and back. The Jews of ea^h city of Asia Minor seized the opportunity of his passing, to complain, through him, to Agrippa, that the privileges granted them by Caesar were not, observed. The Greeks, on the other hand, reviled them as bloodsuckers and cancers of the community, who refused to honour the gods, and hence had no right to such favour, but Herod prevailed with Agrippa on behalf of the Jews, For once, Jerusalem received its king heartily when he returned; he, on his side, acknowledging the feeling by a remittance of a quarter of the taxes of the year. The dismal shadow that had rested over the palace in past times had been in part forgotten while the two sons of the murdered Mari- amne were in Rome. In the year B.C. 17, however, the old troubles had begun again, to darken at last into the blackest misery. Herod had recalled his sons from Rome. Alexander, the elder, was eighteen ; Aristobulus, the younger, about seventeen. They had grown tall, taking after their mother and her race. In Italy and Judea alike, their birth and position, amidst so many snares, w r on them universal sympathy. Roman education had given them an open, straightfor- ward way, however, that was ill-fitted to hold its own with their, crafty fawning Idumean connections, in Jerusalem. Their morals had, moreover, suffered by their residence in Rome, so that Alexan- der, at least, appears to have exposed himself to charges against which Jewish ecclesiastical law denounced death. In any case they w r ere heirs to the hatred that had been borne towards their mother. Her fate doubtless affected their bearing towards their father, and it was said that they wished to get the process against Mariamne reversed, and her accusers punished. Their ruin was doubtless determined from the first ; and their unsuspicious frankness, which showed their aversion to the other members of the family, gave materials for slan- der, and aided in their destruction. Herod sought to reconcile the strife by the course usual at the time, and married Aristobulus to his sister Salome's daughter Berenice, who was, unfortunately, still, en- tirely under the hostile influence of her mother, though she afterwards grew to be a worthy woman. Alexander, as became the heir to the throne, was married to a king's daughter, Glaphyra, of the family of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia a daughter of a prostitute of the THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 41 temple of Venus in Corinth, whom Archelaus had married. The bride might be fair, but she was not prudent, and filled the palace in Jerusalem with stories of her contempt for Herod's family as com- pared with her own. Whatever Aristobulus said to his wife was carried to Salome, and spies were set on the two young men, to report what they could. The quarrels of the women grew fiercer daily, and involved the two brothers fatally. Nothing else was spoken of*m the city but the strife in the palace. Another element of mischief was soon added. Herod's youngest brother, Pheroras, joined the party of Salome. He had married a slave girl, who w r as so devoted to the Pharisees that she got her husband to pay for them the penalties Herod had imposed, for their having refused to take the oath of allegiance. Pheroras, who was a true Edomite in his fickle faithless- ness, was a born conspirator. He had plotted already against Herod, and resolved, in revenge for Glaphyra's loose tongue about his low marriage, to join Salome, and hunt the two youths to death. On Herod's return from his visit to Agrippa in Asia Minor, in the winter of B. c. 14, he found the palace in a ferment, and heard for the first time that the youths intended to apply to Augustus to have the process against Mariamne reversed. I*n his rage, he resolved to recall Antipater, his eldest son, who, with his mother, had been banished from the court on account of Mariamne, and who was thus a deadly enemy of her sons. This step was the ruin of Herod's peace. Anti- pater instantly joined Salome's party : watched every step and caught every word of the unsuspecting youths : never himself accused them to his father, but played the part of lago consummately, in exciting the suspicions to which Herod's guilty conscience was only too prone. The presence of an elder brother not having sufficed to humble the tAvo, Antipater's mother, Doris, was also recalled to court; that they might see how their hopes of the throne were vanishing. Their enemies, moreover, did their best to stir them up against each other, to work more harm to both. Antipater, erelong, got himself named as heir, and was sent, aa such, to Rome, in the year B.C. 13, but even from Italy he managed to deepen his father's suspicions so much, that Herod himself went to Rome, taking the two young men with him, to have them tried before Caesar for intended parricide. They defended themselves so well, however, that an outward reconciliation followed, and Herod re- turned to Jerusalem with them, as joint heirs, with Antipater, of his dominions. But the quiet was soon disturbed. The mutual hatred of the women, and the plots of Pheroras and Antipater, though for a v time fruitless, made progress in the end. The slaves of the youths were tortured, at their suggestion, and accused Alexander of conspiracy; and he, w r eary*of life, and furious at the toil laid for him, was foolisk enough to say that he was guilty, but only in common with all Herod'a relations, except Antipater. The unfortunate young man made an 42 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. exception in his case as a special and trusted friend ! The "whole of Herod's connections were now unanimous for his death, but it was not to happen yet. His father-in-law found means to appease Herod once more, which was the easier, as Herod had discovered the deceit of Pheroras, and had found his sister Salome carrying on intrigues which he did not approve. He was indeed to be pitied. The family quarrels embittered his existence, and his suspicions had been so excited that he trusted no- body. Every one was suspected, and could only defend himself by raising suspicions against others. A Greek at court determined tc profit by the position of affairs and bring it to a final crisis. Trusting to get money from Antipatcr, Herod, and Archelaus, alike, ii' he ended, the matter, he laid his plans ".o bring about the death of the young men. Forging documents ana inventing acts, he made Herod believe that his sous were really plotting his death. The tyrant forth- with had them thrown into chains, and their slaves put to torture, stoning those who confessed any guilt. Nothing kept him from put- ting the princejs to death but fear of offending Augustus, for even Salome tormented him day and night to kill them, though one was her son-in-law. At last Herod sent to Rome for permission from Augustus to put them to death. The request cost him the crown of Arabia, Augustus declaring that the man who could not keep his house in order w T as unfit to be trusted with additional kingdoms. Yet he gave him permission to do as he thought fit with his sons. A. court, one-half of Romans, one-half of Jews, was now held at Bery- tus, and Herod appeared as prosecutor. In vain the Roman proconsul brought his three sons with him to excite the grey-headed despot's fatherly feelings. He acted like a madman: detailed his injuries with the utmost passion, and supplied the want of proof by bursts of fury. The sentence was given as he desired, and he had the satis- faction of having pursued his own sons to the death. In the year B.C. 7, the princes were strangled at Samaria, where Herod had mar- ried their mother. If the hoary murderer hoped for peace by this new crime he was deceived. Autipater lived with his two brothers, Archelaus and I hilip, at Rome, and, there, first excited them against iiis father, and then betrayed them to him. Pheroras, Herod's brother, he sought to make his tool in killing Herod. He was afraid that if he did not destroy his father soon his own infinite villany in the past would be discovered. Pheroras was, in fact, in a false position. His wife and her relations were strongly on the side of the Pharisees, who wished above everything to destroy Herod, and put Pheroras, as their friend, on the throne. Prophecies were circulated by them, that it was the will of God that Herod and his sons should lose the king- dom, and that Pheroras and his wife should inherit it. Their tool, Herod's eunuch, Bagoas, was to have a son who would be the Messiah. Many were won over in the palace, but the plot was dis- THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 48 covered, and many Rabbis and others put to death. Herod demanded that Pheroras should divorce his wife, but he preferred to leave the court and go to Perca with her, rather than^ forsake her. Here he soon after suddenly died, report said, by poison. Herod, however, had his body brought to Jerusalem, and appointed a great national mourning on his account. Inquiry respecting his death at last brought to light the whole secret history of years. He had died by taking poison, sent by Anti- pater to kill Herod. The plot was found to have wide ramifications where least suspected. Even the second Mariamne was proved to have been privy to it, and her son Herod, was on this account, blotted out of his father's will. Thus, as Josephus says, did the ghosts of Alexander and Aristobulus go round all the palace, and bring ihe most deeply hidden secrets to light, summoning to the judgment seat those who seemed freest from suspicion. Antipater was now unmasked, and Herod saw the kind of man for whom he had sacrificed his wife and his sons. With pretended friendliness he sent for him from Rome, nor did any one warn him of his danger, though proceedings had gone on many months against his mother, ending in her divorce. Perhaps, says Josephus, the spirits of his murdered brothers had closed the mouths of those who might have put him on his guard. His* first hint of danger was given by no one being at Csesarea to receive him, when he landed, but he could not now go back, and determined to put a bold face on it. As lie rode up to Jerusalem, however, he saw that his escort was taken from him, and he now felt that he was ruined. Herod received him as he deserved, and handed him over for trial to the Syrian pro- consul. All hastened to give witness against one so universally hated. It was proved that " he had sought to poison his father. A criminal who was forced to drink what Antipater had sent for Plerod presently fell dead. Antipater was led away in chains. The strong nature of Herod at last gave way under such revela- tions, which he forthwith communicated to his master at Rome. A deadly illness seized him, and word ran through Jerusalem that he could not recover. The Rabbis could no longer repress their hatred of him, and of the Romans. Their teachings through long years were about to bear fruit. Two were especially popular, Judas, the son of Sariphai, and Matthias, the son of Margolouth, round whom a whole arrny of young men gathered daily, drinking in from them the spirit of revolution. All that had happened was traced to the anger of Jehovah at Herod's desecration of the Temple and city, and violations of the Law during his whole reign. To win back the divine favour to the nation, the heathen profanations erected by Herod in the Temple must be pulled down, especially the golden eagle over the great gate. Living or dying, they would have eternn 1 , rewards for this fidelity to the laws of their fathers. Such counsels from venerated teachers w r ere like fire to the inflammable passions of 44 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. youth. In the middle of the day a vast crowd of students of th Law rushed to the Temple; let themselves down with ropes from the top of the great gate, tore down the hated symbol of Rome and of idolatry, and hacked it to pieces in the streets. Mobs rose in other parts of the city, also, to throw down other objects of popular hatred, but the troops were turned out, and the unarmed rioters were scat- tered, leaving forty young Pharisees in the hands of the military. Brought before Herod and asked who had counselled them to act as they had done, they answered, touchingly, that they did it in obe- dience to the Law. In vain he tried to alarm them by saying they must die: they only replied that their eternal reward w r ould be so much the greater. The two Rabbis and the young men were sent to Jericho for trial before Herod, and the Rabbis and the ringleaders were burned alive, the others being beheaded. On the night after they suffered there was an eclipse of the moon, which fixes the date as the 11 th of March, B.C. 4. Death was now busy with Herod himself. His life had been a splendid failure. He had a wide kingdom, but his life had been a long struggle with public enemies or with domestic troubles, and in his old age he found that all this misery, which had made him the murderer of his wife, her mother, and his two sons, not to speak of other relations and connections, had been planned for selfish ends by those whom he had trusted. The curse had come back on him to the full, for his eldest son had sought to murder him. His government had been no less signal a failure, for revolt had burst into flames at the mere report of his death. The strong man was bowed to the dust at last. A loathsome disease prostrated him, and he suffered such agonies that men said it was a punishment for his countless iniqui- ties. Carried across the Dead Sea to the sulphur baths of Callirhoe, he fainted and almost died under the treatment. All round him were alarmed lest he should do so before ordering the execution of Anti- pater, but an attempt on the part of the prisoner to bribe his gaoler was fatal to him. Augustus had granted permission for his execu- tion, with the caustic irony, that it was better to be Herod's sow than his son. Five days after Antipater had fallen Herod himself ex- pired. He was in his seventy-first or seventy-second year when ho died. CHAPTER V. THE JEWISH WORLD AT THE TIME OF CHRIST. WHEN the conquest of Babylon by Darius and Cyrus had trans ferred the fate of the Jews, then in captivity in that empire, to the victorious Persian, their long exile had" had its natural effect in re- kindling their zeal for the religion of their fathers, and of intensify- ing their desire to return to their own land. Before Cyrus finally advanced to the conquest of the great city, more than twenty years had been spent, for the most part, in distant military operations. But long before he drew near Babylon, the Jewish leaders, stimulated by the'assurances of the prophets then living, or of earlier date, felt sure of his victory, and of the speedy deliverance of their nation from their hated 'oppressors. The glorious promises of the later chapters of Isaiah, and the exultation of many of the Psalms of the period, are doubtless only illustrations of the intense spiritual excite- ment that prevailed in the Jewish community, throughout the lands of their exile, during the years immediately preceding the fall of Babylon. All that was noblest in them had been roused to an en- thusiasm which might, perhaps, become perverted, but was, hence- forth, never to die. The spirit of intense nationality, fed by zeal for their religion as the true faith, confided to them exclusively as the favourites of Heaven, had been gradually kindled, and yearned, with an irrepressible earnestness, for a return to their own country, that they mTght be free to fulfil its requirements. Men of the purest and warmest" zeal for the honour and the historic rights of their race had never been wanting during the captivity, as the natural leaders of their brethren, and now took advantage of the character and cir- cumstances of Cyrus to obtain from him a favourable decree for the restoration of Jerusalem, and the free return to it of their people. In the year 536 before Christ, such as w r ere most zealous for their relig- ion, and most devoted to their country and race, were thus enabled once more to settle in the land of their fathers, under the protection of the Persian empire, of which they continued subjects for two hundred years, till Alexander the Great, in B.C. 333, overthrew the Persian power. The new community, which was to found the Jewish nation for a second time, was by no means numerous, for we still know with cer- tainty that the whole number of these Pilgrim Fathers, who gathered together amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, and the other cities which were open to them, did not amount to more than 42,360 men, with 7,337 servants of both sexes. The dangers and difficulties before those who might return had winnowed the wheat from the chaff : the faint- hearted and indifferent had lingered behind, and only the zealots and 46 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. puritans of the captivity had followed Zerubbabel, the leader of th* new Exodus. The rock on which Jewish nationality had foundered in former times had been too frank an intercourse with other nations ; too great a readiness to adopt their customs, and even their heathenism ; too slight a regard to the distinctively Jewish code of social and political law; and, with these, too wide a corruption of morals. The verj existence of the nation had been imperilled, and, now, the one fixed thought, of leader and people alike, was to make it sure for the fu- ture. Their manners, and their whole system of civil and religious laws, offered a ready and effectual means to aid them in this supreme ob- ject. It was only necessary to secure an intensely conservative spirit which should exclude all change, and Israel would henceforth have an abiding vitality as a separate people. Nor was this difficult, for the ancient framework of their social polity largely provided for it. The spirit of Judaism, as embodied in its sacred law, directly commanded, or indirectly implied, all that was needed. Intercourse with other nations, as far as possible, must be prevented ; the intro- duction of foreign culture shut out ; the youth of theoiation trained on a fixed model ; and, finally, no gap must be left by which new opinions might possibly rise from w r ithin the people themselves. For this last end some studies must be entirely prohibited, and others re- warded with supreme honour and advantage. Finally, some caste or class must make it their special care to see that this great aim of national isolation be steadily carried out a caste which should itself be secure of abiding unchangeableness, by clinging fanatically to all that was old and traditional, and shrinking from any contact with whatever was foreign or new. The Mosaic laws had already inclined the Jew to a dislike to friendly intercourse with other nations, and this feeling grew to a fixed contempt and aversion towards the rest of mankind, after the return, as Judaism deepened into a haughty bitterness of soul, under the influence of national sufferings', and weakened spiritual life. Tacitus describes the Jews of his day as true to each other and ready with help, but filled with bitter hatred towards all other men- eating and marrying only among themselves; a people marked by sensual passions, but indulging them only within their own race. . . . The first instruction to proselytes, says he, is to despise the gods, to abjure their country, and to cast off parents, children, or brothers. Juvenal paints them, as refusing to point out the way to any but u Jew. or to lead any one, not circumcised, to a fountain he sought. A nation which thus hated all other men would be little disposed to sit at the feet of any people as scholars. Prejudice, strengthened by express laws, shut out all foreign culture. A curse was denounced against any Jew who kept pigs, or taught his child Greek. No on THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 47 could hope for eternal life who read the books of other nations. Jo- sephus, with true Jewish pride, and smooth hypocrisy, tells us that his race looked down on those who had learned, the language of for- eign nations, such an accomplishment being common not only to free-born men, but to any slave who fancied it. He only is reckoned wise, he adds, among the Jews, who is skilled in the Law, and able to explain the sacred writings. In the da} r s of our Lord, when ad- vancement could be obtained only by a knowledge of Greek and of Grecian culture, pride and scruples often gave way before interest. Still the nation, as a whole, held ignorance of everything not Jewish a sacred part of their religion, It was as little permitted that the hated Gentile should learn the Hebrew language or read the Law. St. Jerome expatiates on the trouble and cost he had at Jerusalem and Bethlehem to get a Jew to help him in his Hebrew studies. His teacher "feared the Jews, like a second Nicodemus." " He who teaches infidels the Law," said the Rabbis, "transgresses the express words of the command; for God made Jacob" (the Jews, not the heathen) " to know the Law." But though thus jealous of others, the greatest care was taken by the Jew to teach his own people the sacred books. Josephus boasts that " if any one asked one of his nation a question respecting their Law, he could answer it more readily than "give his own name; for he learns every part of it from the first dawn of intelligence, till it is graven into his very soul." That every Jewish child should be taught to read, was held a religious duty ; and every boy was required to learn the Law. There was no Jew who did not know thoroughly the duties and rites of his religion, and the great deeds of his fathers, the misfortune was, that they were kept utterly ignorant of aoy other history than their own. The exact knowledge of the contents of the Books of the Law was, thus, within the reach of all ; but much more was needed than th