Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ple from the destruction of a famine and pestilence that occurred about this time.

Augustus was now reigning in Rome, and the two sons of Herod were sent to be educated at his court: so great was the regard now paid to a people that were shortly to be their destroyers. Herod, fearful of the disaffection his cruelties provoked, thought he should conciliate favour and immortalize his name by rebuilding, on a more splendid scale, the sacred temple of Jerusalem. The difficulty was to persuade the people that he would or could perform the work, and they refused to suffer a stone to be removed of the old building, till he had collected materials for the new. Accordingly he set 10,000 men to work in carving masonry, &c. under the direction of 1,000 priests, whom he kept in pay; and a thousand carts were employed in fetching materials. In two years every thing was ready; the old temple was then removed, and in about ten years the whole was completed. B.C. 15. This was the temple in which the Saviour taught, and the magnificence of which struck with awe the Roman army, when, a century after, they came to its destruction. The stones of this temple were of white marble, exquisitely wrought and polished—the gateways were closed with costly veils of gold, and silver, and purple-around the cornices were hung festoons of grapes and leaves, curiously carved in gold-the ceilings were carved in cedar. Such is the description given by those who saw the building, so quickly doomed to its final destruction.

Meantime Herod's crimes and miseries increased; his two sons, the children of Marianne, became the objects of apprehensive jealousy, and suffered on the gallows. Plot after plot, murder after murder, succeeded to each other-every where feared and hated, the nearest members of his own family were at once the most treacherous of his enemies, and the most injured objects of his cruelty.

But now the time was come. The eternal purpose of

God, announced to Adam in paradise, pledged to the patriarchs in the land of Canaan, foretold ages after ages by the prophets of Israel, and typified in all the ceremonies of the Mosaic law, was now to be consummated in the appearance of the Messiah-proudly expected till he came, and when he came, rejected and despised. It is here that we must make the second division in our history, and leave the people of God while we trace up the history of the other nations of the earth to this important period, when the condition of all, and the destiny of all, were to be so deeply affected by the birth, to them unknown, of the ruined world's Redeemer. The state of Judeah at this period, when the birth of John the Baptist gave the first warning to those who would believe of the approaching crisis, was such as the Almighty had by his spirit foretold, and such, no doubt, as suited the purposes he had in view. Despised and encroached upon as it was by the prince upon the throne, the Jews were attached, and more strictly than at many times they had been, to the letter of their fathers' law; for it was by those who pretended a zeal to the God of Abraham, and not by the worshippers of other gods, the Messiah was to die. There was no idolatry in Israel now. The people held the oracles of God in reverence-by them they professed to measure their conduct, and on them to build their faith; and so far they believed them, that the coming of the Messiah, as therein foretold, was anxiously anticipated. But essentially and truly they believed them not: else had the Messiah been recognized and acknowledged when he came; for in his appearance those prophecies were exactly fulfilled. There was at this time great profession of religion in Judeah, and great contention about it; as we have seen in the long divided sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and 'there were other sects, as the Galileans, the Herodians, &c.; but to all alike the Messiah was unacceptable, for the doctrine he taught was adverse to them all. The Pharisees were the predominating party-we have already spoken of the

nature of their credence, and shall readily perceive how much it stood opposed to the Messiah's claims. They, in conjunction with the rest of the nation, expected in the predicted King a triumphant conqueror, who should reduce the nations of the earth under the standard of Israel, and extend their dominion to the limits of the creation. Proud, cruel, and rapacious, the doctrines of Christ were little suited to their taste-high in their own esteem, and rigid observers of external form, they were ill pleased to hear the humiliating scheme of salvation by the merits of another, and of resurrection to a life so different from the eternity in which they believed. The Sadducees, next in consequence to these, and opposed to them in every thing, were opposed no less to the unwelcome messenger. They believed in no futurity, and therefore needed no redemption from its dangers; no wonder that they did not wish to have their dream of earthly happiness disturbed by fearful predictions of what should be its recompense hereafter. In respect to the smaller sects, it does not appear whether the Herodians were a religious or merely a political party, nor in what way they were separated from the others. The Galileans seem to have been distinguished only by their resistance to Roman power, to pay tribute to whom they considered contrary to the law of God. The Essenians were a sect of recluses, living in excessive austerity, apart from the rest of the world-famed for their high pretence of sanctity, and contempt for the rest of mankind, as well as by some peculiarities of doctrine. Of their opinions we are not very well informed-their habits were peculiar. A rigid self-denial was their method of propitiating the Deity: in pursuance of which purpose they renounced the world and its enjoyments, and lived apart from the rest of the people. They never ate till after sun-set, and then their meal was spare, the best of their food being bread and hyssop. Their beds were hard, their hours of repose but few-their dress was plain white and of coarse material. On the Sabbath they repaired very early to

their synagogues, and remained there in prayer and reading through the day. The Pentecost was kept by them with unusual rites. At day-break they assembled to prayers and reading, dressed in new washed garments of the purest white-after a day of uninterrupted devotion, by moving their bodies backward and forward in measured time, they worked themselves into what they considered an extacy of devotion, and remained together dancing and singing through the night: when the morning broke, they turned themselves towards the sun, their usual position at prayers, paid their adoration to the Supreme Being, wished each other a good day, and retired to their separate cells. Other sects there were, but the differences among them are difficult to trace. All, it appears, held the law of Moses in professed esteem, and abided by their own interpretation of it-all professed allegiance to the God of Abraham-but to all alike his Messiah came unwelcome, for the message he brought was not to the mind of any. To the meritorious austerities of the Essenian, the ostentatious devotion and selfconfidence of the Pharisee, and the infidel security of the Sadducee, the tale of unmerited redemption from helpless corruption, was strange and revolting: the seemingly obscure and powerless Messenger who came upon this errand of mercy, was far other than the brilliant conqueror their sublunary ambition had anticipated: and the Messiah, foretold and waited for through four thousand years, was personally rejected then, for the same reasons, and under the influence of the same mistakes, as he is virtually rejected now by those who, since his coming as before it, profess to believe the written word of God; but do in fact believe no more of it than accords with their own mundane views and wishes.

The temporal affairs of the Jews were also suited to fulfill the predicted circumstances of the Messiah's advent. Rome had subdued the world; and reposing on the summit of her power, had closed the temple of Janus, the symbol of universal peace. The land of Ju

deah itself, though prosperous and at peace, was sunk into the obscurity of a tributary province: thus the great event which was passing there, the deepest interest of the whole created world, the wonder of Heaven itself, might be transacted there unseen and unobserved-for so it was designed of Heaven; most consistently with all its plans and purposes hitherto manifested. The great things of this world have never been chosen for exhibiting the great things of God; else had the small and powerless progeny of Abraham not been chosen for his peculiar people, while Egypt and Assyria, with their splendid palaces and victorious tents, were passed by without regard―else had the Saviour of men been born and crucified in Rome, the metropolis of the world, and not in the obscure dominion of a tributary province.

Some expectation there probably was among surrounding nations, gathered from their intercourse with the Jews, and from the dispersion of the Greek translation of the Scriptures, that something at this time was to happen in Judeah, by reason of the arrival of her predicted king: but there is no reason to suppose these foreign states took any interest in the lowly being when he came, either to save or to destroy him. There were, however, those who did believe and did expect, and most joyfully received him-the sons of God were not a race extinct, now that the people of Israel were serving their own devices, any more than they had been when at the court of Nebuchadnezzar they served the gods of Babylon. The supreme Being knew where to find them, and the angel Gabriel was sent accordingly to Zachariah, a pious priest, as he ministered at the altar, doubtless himself in anxious anticipation of the expected advent, to announce to him that the time was even come, and the way must be made ready for the Messiah's approach: more especially to foretell to him the birth of a son, the miraculous offspring of age and barrenness, who unlike in birth as in character to the rest of mankind, was to be the harbinger of the world's Re

« AnteriorContinuar »