Introduction to the Old Testament

The old testament.

Of the inspired writings thus committed to the care of the people of God before the birth of Christ the first in importance, as well as in the order of time, are five books of Moses, therefore called The Pentateuch or The Law. Then come the historical books, comprising : Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four Books of Kings, first and second Paralipomenon, first and second Esdras, first and second Macliabees, together with Tobias, Judith, and Esther. Next in order are the doctrinal or didactic books : Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus. Lastly we have the prophetical books, which are subdivided into the greater and the lesser prophets.

Anciently the Jews divided these books into "the Law and the Prophets." Down to the time of our Lord the Jewish teachers had devised various arbitrary divisions of the Old Testament books. They were agreed in giving to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, the appellation of Torah, " the Law." But under the designation of " The Prophets " they included, together with the twelve lesser prophets and the three greater (Isaias, Jeremias, and Ezechiel), Josue, Judges, and the Four Books of Kings. Under the designation of Hagiographa (Hebrew, Chetubim, "writings") they classed all the other Scriptures of the Hebrew canon, whether historical, prophetical, didactic, or poetical.

The Jewish authors of the Greek or Septuagint version of the Old Testament deviated from this classification, giving the books of Scripture in the order which we have them both in the Latin Vulgate and in the Douay Bible.

However, as modern biblical scholars have agreed to treat of these venerable books in the more convenient order of

The Pentateuch, The Historical Books, The Prophets, The Poetical Books,

We shall follow this classification in our remarks.

I. The pentateuch.

It is most probable that these " five books" formed in the original Hebrew only one volume or roll of manuscript. The present title — 57 Ttivtdtivxoi (/3t'j3a.o{), "the fivefold book" — was bestowed on it by the Greek translators. To them also may be, in all likelihood, attributed the division of the books as each now stands, together with the Greek titles which distinguish them. In the Hebrew manuscripts the only division known was that into small sections called parshiyoth and sedarim, which had been adopted for the convenience of the public reader in the synagogue.

Of all books ever written, this fivefold book of Moses is the only one that enlightens us with infallible certainty on the origin of all things in this universe, visible and invisible ; on the creation of mankind and their destinies ; on their duties, during this life, toward their Almighty Creator and toward each other, and on the rewards and punishments of the eternal life hereafter.

In its first pages we see how our Divine Benefactor prepares this earth to become the blissful abode of our first parents and their descendants. We read of the compact or covenant which He makes with Adam and Eve ; then comes the violation of that compact ; and then the fall and banishment of the transgressors from their first delightful abode. We see the human race, divided into faithful servants of God, on the one hand, and despisers of his law, on the other, spreading themselves over the face of the globe, while wickedness goes on increasing to such a pitch that the offended Creator destroys the entire race, with the exception of one good man and his family.

With this man, Noe, and with his three sons, God once more renews the covenant made in the beginning. They are the parents of the human family as it now exists. But their descendants, counting, probably, on the long life of many centuries hitherto enjoyed by mankind as a privilege not to be taken away from themselves, soon fall into the old self-worship, the abominable sensuality, and the demon-worship begotten of pride, and following it as its sure chastisement. God, to preserve as a living faith the Promise in the Redeemer, and to secure a nation of faithful worshipers of his holy name, separates from the sinful crowd Abraham; and from his grandson, Jacob or Israel, spring the twelve patriarchs, the fathers of God's people. Of the history of this chosen race, their captivity in Egypt, their sufferings, their miraculous deliverance, the new covenant made with them by their divine Deliverer, down to the death of Moses and their arrival on the confines of the national territory reserved to them, the Pentateuch tells in detail.

It is a wonderful story. But let us glance rapidly at it, as we review in succession each of these five books.

The book of genesis.

The Greek word which stands for title means "birth," just as the first word bereschith in the Hebrew text means "in the beginning." Genesis, therefore, gives us, in its first chapters, the brief and inspired history of the creation, of the birth and first beginning both of the world and of mankind. St. Paul, in his epistle to the infant church of the Colossians (i. 12-17), te ^ s tnem that "the Father . . . hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; ... for in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers : all things were created by Him and in Him : and He is before all, and by Him all things consist."

Before the coming of Christ the whole pagan world was plunged in darkness impenetrable concerning the origin of man and the world, and the sublime destinies appointed in Christ for Adam and his posterity in the very beginning. Christian teaching dispelled this midnight darkness and revealed to all believers both the secret of man's origin and the incomprehensible glory of his supernatural destinies. We, children of the nineteenth century of Christian civilization, being thus made "partakers of the lot of the saints in light," can find unspeakable pleasure in standing with the inspired penman at the very first beginning of God's ways, and in allowing our souls to dwell on the contemplation of his magnificence — of His infinite power and His infinite love.

According to the definition of the late general council of the Vatican, renewing the dogmatic decree of another general council also held in Rome, God in the beginning of time created — that is, brought from a state of absolute non-existence into full and complete existence — both the material universe and the world of angelic spirits. Man was only created after these.

Moreover, all things were created in and by the uncreated and eternal Son and Word of the Almighty Father, "all things ... in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers." Thus, together with the world of matter in all its inconceivable variety and magnificence, was created the world of angelic spirits, in their own different orders of greatness, goodness, wisdom, beauty, and loveliness — to be, in the design of their Creator and King, associated afterward with man and his heavenly destinies. They, too — before man appeared on earth — had their own eventful history. They were created free — free to love their Divine Benefactor and to consecrate to Him in dutiful and devoUd service the life and exalted powers He had given them — or free to refuse such service to the Highest.

Many chose to serve their own pride, and were forever separated from God and from the glorious abode of everlasting bliss, where He reveals His inmost being and shares His inmost life with His faithful ones. Many more yielded rapturous submission and lowly service to their most loving and magnificent Lord and Father, and they were forthwith exalted to the unchangeable possession of Himself and His Kingdom.

So, in these first verses and pages of Genesis — the Book of Origins — we are treading on abysses of revealed truth — of truth which explains to us both the world beneath and around us, and that unmeasured world which extends on all sides above and beyond our little globe, both the world we can see with the bodily eye and touch with this hand of flesh, and the unseen realities of that world far otherwise glorious, in which the Lord of Hosts Himself is the central Sun of spiritual beings innumerable, whose brightness and glory is shadowed forth dimly in the starry hosts of the firmament above our heads.

Man was made "a little less than the Angels" in natural excellence; but he was at the same time raised by the divine adoption to the supernatural rank and destiny of the Angels. He, too, was created free to choose between good and evil : between a loving submission and devoted service to his Maker, and obedience to his own weak will. Raised so high, surrounded with such lavish wealth of gifts and graces, "crowned with glory and honor, and set over the works" of God's hands here below, he too freely disobeyed and sinned, and was separated from the Most Holy God.

Not separated hopelessly and forever; for the merciful Son, whose work man was, took on Himself to expiate, in His own good time, the awful guilt of man's ingratitude and disobedience.

The promise that He would do so was deposited in the sorrowing hearts of our first parents, when they were justly banished from their beautiful abode in the earthly paradise. This is the Promise and the Hope kept alive in the long line of patriarchs extending from Abel and Seth to Abraham.

Genesis, from the end of the third chapter to its close, is but the history of this immortal Hope, and the other books of the Pentateuch do but describe the national institutions, political and religious, by and through which this Hope was to be preserved undimmed among the universal darkness of Heathendom, till the Star of Bethlehem warned Israel that the Light of the World was come.

The book of exodus.

The title is a Greek word, meaning " a going out " or "departure," because its chief purpose is to describe the miraculous means by which God enabled Moses to lead the people of God out of Egypt in order that He might, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, renew more solemnly His covenant with them, and give them such national laws and institutions as would distinguish them from all other peoples.

The sacred historian describes the wonderful increase of the descendants of Israel in the land of the Pharaohs, which had been saved from utter ruin by the genius of Joseph, Israel's youngest son. Then, after the death of the wise minister, the hatred of the idolatrous Egyptians against the worshipers of the one true God was aroused by the spectacle of the latter' s wonderful increase in numbers. Egypt was full of enslaved foreign races whom their pitiless masters forced to work both in cultivating the land and in building the beautiful cities and stupendous monuments whose ruins survive to this day. To this slavery the Israelites were condemned one and all ; and to check effectually their further increase — indeed, to extinguish the race altogether — the male children were ordered to be strangled at their birth.

Here comes in the story of Miriam or Mary, a little Hebrew maiden, who succeeds in saving from destruction her infant brother, ever afterward known as Moses, the most illustrious figure of our Lord, and the destined deliverer of his race. Adopted as her own son by Pharaoh's daughter, Moses is brought up amid the splendors of the Egyptian court and in all the varied learning of its schools, till he is old enough to prefer openly God's cause to the service of Pharaoh. He does not hesitate to cast his lot with his down-trodden brethren, but is repelled with unnatural ingratitude by them. After forty years of exile, he is commanded to return to "the House of Bondage," clothed with authority from on high and commissioned to lead his people forth free in spite of every obstacle.

The central fact and miracle in the book is the passage of the Red Sea — so strikingly typical of Christ's passion in Jerusalem, and of the manner in which the Cross wrought our redemption. The paschal lamb, whose blood on the Hebrew door-posts saved the believing households from the visit of the devastating angel, had its counterpart in the mystic oblation of Christ on the very eve of His death, and in the divine and ever-present reality of the commemorative sacrifice He then instituted for all coming time. "This is My Blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matt. xxvi. 28), clearly points out the identity of the Victim, and of the redeeming Blood, both in the eucharistic celebration and in the fearful consummation of Calvary. The Cross was the instrument of victory used by the Redeemer in His supreme struggle ; it was symbolical of the extremity of weakness and shame in the Sufferer — the Almighty Power thus shining forth in this very extremity. Even so did the aged Aaron's staff in the hand of Moses open a pathway through the waves for God's people in their dire need, and overwhelm in utter destruction Pharaoh and his pursuing hosts.

The fatal tree had been in the Garden the occasion of Adam's downfall and of the ruin of his posterity ; a feeble staff in the hands of Moses works out the liberation of the chosen race and effects the destruction of their enemies : even so did our Divine Deliverer tread the Red Sea of His passion with all its abysses of shame and degradation, dividing the waves of the sanguinary multitude by His cross of ignominy, and allowing Himself to be nailed to the accursed Tree and to hang therefrom in death as the true fruit of saving Knowledge and eternal Life for the nations.

The Law afterward given to Israel on Mount Sinai, together with the detailed legislation concerning the chosen people's religion and government, all foreshadowed the more perfect Law to be given by Christ to His church and for the benefit of the whole world. Equally typical and prophetic of the sacraments and graces of the New Law were the manna, the water from the rock, the brazen serpent, and, indeed, all the incidents of the people's life during the forty years' wandering in the wilderness.

The whole of Exodus must be read in the light of the Christian revelation to be understood and appreciated.

The book of leviticus.

This book is so called because it chiefly treats of the ceremonies of divine worship to be performed under the direction of the Levites, the priestly order among the Jews. It is the detailed Ritual of the Jewish church.

It must never be forgotten, both in studying the solemn religious worship of the Jewish sanctuary and temple, and in assisting at the sacrificial service of the Christian church, that what God commanded to be done on earth is only the shadow, the preparation, and the foretaste of what takes place in the Heavenly City above, in that divinest of sanctuaries, where He receives unceasingly the worship of Angels and Saints, and in return eternally pours out on them the flood of His blissful love.

The Christian temple with its altar, its one sacrifice, its unchanging Victim, and its adorable and unfailing Presence, is but the lively image of that supernal Holy of Holies, in which the Lamb ever slain and ever immortal is the central object of praise and love and adoration {Apocalypse, chapters iv., v., and following). Thus the sweet and ever-abiding Presence in our tabernacles and the Communion in which in the Gift we receive the Giver, are but the foretaste and the pledge of the unchangeable union of eternity, and of that ineffable Possession destined to be the exceeding great reward of all the faithful children of God.

This blissful life of Angels and men, made perfect by charity in the City of God on high, being the End for which we are created, has, on earth, its nearest resemblance in the Church. But inasmuch as the Hebrew people of old were the forerunners of the Christian people, God so ordained it that the Jewish ritual and worship should be a preparation for the Christian liturgy.

Hence, the Mosaic sanctuary, first, and the Temple of Solomon, afterward, were, each in its turn, the House of God, in which He dwelt in the midst of His people — having, between the Cherubim of the Ark, His throne, on which He received their adorations, their hymns of praise, and their petitions, as well as His Mercy Seat for granting special favors in dire need.

Thus the Temple, the House of God, was also the house of the nation, who were God's family, just as every family dwelling in Israel was, in God's thought, and in the belief of the people, to be hallowed as God's own house and kept pure from moral evil. Wherefore, holiness in the heavenly as well as in the earthly temple, spotlessness and perfection in the principal sacrificial victims that typified the Lamb of God immaculate ; purity in the pontiffs, priests, and inferior Levites who ministered at the altar, and purity also in the people who offered the victims for sacrifice or assisted at its celebration ; all these are inseparably connected with the notion of worship ; all these form the subject of the various ordinances of Leviticus ; and all point most significantly to the far greater moral perfection and far higher purity of heart and hand required of the priests and people of the New Law, when they approach its altar.

The book of numbers.

It is so named from the double numbering or census of the Israelites mentioned, the first, in chapters i.— iv., and, the second, in chapter xxvi. It contains, moreover, the history of their wanderings in the desert, from their departure from Sinai till their arrival on the confines of their promised national territory, in the fortieth year of the Exodus. Both the census and the history are interspersed with various ordinances and prescriptions relating to the divine service and the moral purity of the nation.

Among the remarkable incidents which stand out in the narrative are : the sin and punishment of Aaron and his sister Mary (chap, xii.), and their death (chap, xx.); the prophecy of Balaam (chaps, xxii.-xxiv.) ; and the appointment of Josue as lieutenant to Moses.

The book of deuteronomy.

The title comes from a Greek word, meaning "a republication of the Law," because in it Moses promulgates anew, with extraordinary solemnity, the law delivered on Mount Sinai. The adult people whom he had brought forth from "the house of bondage" had all died in the wilderness in punishment of their repeated sins and forgetfulness of the divine power and goodness shown in their deliverance. Of the "Three Deliverers," Aaron and Mary had been called to their rest; even Moses, because he had once publicly doubted the power of his good God, was not to set foot within the promised land.

The new people, who obeyed Moses as they came within sight of the beauLiiul country of Palestine, were nearly all born in the wilderness; they had not tasted of the bitterness of Egyptian servitude, nor had they witnessed the terrible display of Jehovah's power at the passage of the Red Sea. It was necessary, therefore, that he who, under God, had been the guide and parent of the nation in the crisis of its fate, should remind his followers of what God had done for them, and explain how truly the law which He gave them was a law of love — that the Covenant of the Most High with Israel was one pregnant with untold blessings to all who would faithfully observe it, while its violation was sure to be visited by the most awful chastisements.

Hence the Book is mainly taken up with the record of three discourses of the great Hebrew Lawgiver, delivered, all of them, in the plains of Moab, on the lofty eastern side of the Jordan, overlooking the Dead Sea. The country itself, the theatre of the most terrible vengeance of the outraged Majesty of Heaven on a favored but deeply sinning race, was eloquent of the suddenness and certainty of the divine retribution. Abraham, the father of the mighty multitude now assembled around Moses, had in his day witnessed the fate of the guilty " cities of the plain " of Jordan. A brackish sea now rolled its sullen waters where they had once stood in their beauty and pride amid all the fairest fruits of earth. Beyond and above toward the north, extended the fertile regions amid which Abraham and Sara had once tarried as pilgrims, and which had been promised as a lasting homestead to their posterity.

How well might Moses, himself about to close his earthy career, urge upon that posterity with all the fervor of a patriot and a parent the duty of being true to the God of Israel, of observing lovingly that Laitf which distinguished them from all the peoples of the earth, and fidelity to which should ensure them victory over every foe, with all the blessings of uninterrupted peace and prosperity !

1. The first discourse (chaps, i. to iv. 40) vividly recalls the causes for which their immediate ancestors were not allowed to take possession of the national territory. Then follows a most touching and eloquent exhortation to the perfect obedience in which their fathers had been so lamentably deficient. "And now, O Israel, hear the commandments and judgments which I teach thee : that doing them, thou mayst live, and entering in mayst possess the land which the Lord the God of your fathers will give you " (iv. 1).

There is nothing in the Old Testament more impressive or more fruitful in lessons of heroic generosity for parents and children and all who fear God, than these sublime pages, into which the dying Moses seems to have poured his great soul. "Behold, I die in this land (of Moab) ; I shall not pass over the Jordan : you shall pass and possess the goodly land. Beware lest thou ever forget uie covenant o* the Lord thy God which He hath made with thee ! " iv. 22, 23.

2. The second discourse, beginning with the fifth chapter, is, properly, the solemn and renewed promulgation of the Law. One feels the fire of divine inspiration glowing in every page of these soul-stirring chapters. " Hear, O Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength" (vi. 4, 5)! He reminds this singularly privileged people that God's severe dealings with themselves and their parents was the wise love of a father seeking to restrain the waywardness of an unruly child. " He afflicted thee with want, and gave thee manna for [thy] fo^ ., which neither thou nor thy fathers knew : to shew that not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God. Thy raiment, with which thou wast covered, hath not decayed for age, and thy foot is not worn ; lo ! this is the fortieth year ! That thou mayst consider in thy heart, that as a man traineth up his son, so the Lord God hath trained thee up" (viii. 3, 4, 5).

3. The third discourse (chaps, xxvii.-xxx. 20) enjoins on those who are to lead and govern the people after Moses the duty of binding the whole nation, when in possession of the land of Chanaan, to give themselves a solemn sanction to this covenant with God, by the alternate blessings on the obedient observers and curses on the transgressors, to be uttered near the grave of Joseph in the Valley of Sichem. The entire ceremonial to be observed in this memorable national solemnity is minutely detailed by the legislator.

God's grace, vouchsafed abundantly even then to His children in view of the future merits of His incarnate Son, will not fail the subjects of this law. " This commandment that I command thee this day, is not above thee, nor far off from thee. Nor is it in heaven, that thou shouldst say, 'Which of us can go up to heaven to bring it unto us, and we may hear and fulfill it in work?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that thou mayst excuse thyself and say, ' Which of us can cross the sea and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do that which is commanded ? ' But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it. ... I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live " (xxx. 1 1-19) !

There is not a family in which these inspired lessons should not still be repeated by parents to their children. The Spirit of God, who spoke by Moses, is ever near at hand to give efficacy to the dear voice of father or of mother, rehearsing these immortal teachings, and faithfully laboring to bring down on their loved ones the blessings promised by the Almighty Father, and to turn away from their homes the terrible curses sure to follow on the neglect of God and the contempt of His Law.

4. Most beautiful, too, and most touching is what is related in the concluding chapters of the parting of Moses with his people ; of the sublime Canticle or hymn which he composed for them, and which is still one of the most triumphant songs of the Christian Church ; of his going up to the summit of Mount Nebo to have a first and last look at the Promised Land, where it lay in all its beauty, across the Dead Sea and the Jordan; of the prophetic words of blessing poured in turn on each of the Tribes of Israel encamped below on the plains of Moab, and, finally, of his holy and mysterious death.

One is forcibly carried forward to another age, when He of whom Moses was only a figure and precursor was to tread these same plains, and to prepare the way for the foundation of another kingdom, and then, after having tasted of the bitterness of the most awful death, to appear before His own with His person all transformed by the glories of a heavenly existence, with His transpierced heart all aglow with divinest charity, to ascend to Heaven while blessing them and filling their souls with undying faith and all-embracing love.

The historical books.

The book of josue.

The title of this book is derived both from its being most generally believed to have been written by the great man whose name it bears, and from its containing a faithful record of his government of God's people.

The name itself (Hebrew, Jehoshuah, i.e., "God the Saviour") is identical with the adorable Name of our Lord. Hence, in the Septuagint Greek and in the early Latin version, this book is called " the Book of Jesus the Son of Nave."

The blameless man chosen to be the successor of Moses, to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, to defeat the combined armies of the heathen Canaanites, to divide the national territory thus conquered among the Twelve Tribes, and to leave them in secure possession of their independence, was a fit type of the Redeemer to come, who could alone reconquer for all our race the forfeited inheritance of eternity, who alone could introduce us into His Kingdom, and share its glories with us. And the personal character of the man could sustain the burthen of the Name which is above all names, so that the virtues of the great leader, as well as his achievements, made him worthy to b:ar the name and the figure of Jesus.

Called at first "Osea," or, rather, Hosea the Son of Nun, his name was changed into Jehoshuah or Jesus by Moses, when the latter chose him as one of the explorers of the land of Chanaan — most probably the leader of the exploring expedition. It was a most befitting occasion for the change. The exploration was but a prelude to the conquest. In this Josue was to be the chief actor. The prophetic change of name is presently justified by Josue's heroic courage and truthfulnesx When the explorers return and give the most discouraging accounts of the Chanaanites, who are to be dispossessed, of their giant stature and impregnable strongholds, the people revolt against Moses and murmur openly against the Lord Himself. Caleb and Josue, on the contrary, oppose the popular clamor and flatly contradict the exaggerations of their associates. " Be not rebellious against the Lord ! " they say to the craven multitude. . . . "And fear ye not the people of this land . . . All aid is gone from them. The Lord is with us ; fear ye not ! " The two heroic leaders would have been stoned on the spot had not God then and there saved them by a miracle.

Well worthy, therefore; of the attentive and devout perusal of all Christian families are the inspired pages in which Josue relates how he crossed the Jordan at the head of the embattled Tribes — God's Ark and the priestly bands leading the way, while the waters of Jordan stood still. Then the half-peaceful, half-military processions around the walls of Jericho (chap, vi.); the terrible punishment of the avaricious and hypocritical Achan (vii.); the utter extermination of a people given body and soul to the abominable idolatry of which even modern science is ashamed, and the purification by fire of the very site of the polluted cities; the sublime scene offered in the beautiful vale of Sichem by the victorious Israelites, when they solemnly dedicate themselves to Jehovah (viii.) ; the nr'raculous prolongation of daylight to enable Josue to complete his victory over God's enemies :

In seven years Josue completed the work of conquest. "And the land rested from the wars." Then the venerable chief of God's people enters upon the more difficult task of allotting to each tribe a portion of the national territory. Here occurs a heroic incident deserving of everlasting remembrance. Caleb demands that Hebron and its territory be allotted to him in fulfillment of a previous promise made by God through Moses, and because the city itself and the mountainous district around it were then the abode of a race of gigantic warriors (Anakim or Enachim), giants not only in stature but in wickedness. He takes on himself and his sons the task of driving out this evil brood, three tribes or families of whom held the place and seemed to render it impregnable. " Give me therefore this mountain, which the Lord promised, in thy hearing also, ... if so be the Lord be with me. And Josue blessed him and gave him Hebron in possession. And from that time Hebron belonged to Caleb, . . . until this present day: because he followed the Lord the God of Israel."

Josue himself emulated this splendid example of his friend : he asked and received from the nation another of these mountain-strongholds, situated on the confines of the hostile heathen nations who held the sea-coast, the possession of which must oblige his posterity to be perpetually in arms for the defence of their country and their religion.

His last solemn appearance before assembled Israel was in the Vale of Sichem, near the tomb of Joseph, on the spot hallowed so long before by Abraham and Jacob, looked upon not only as the birthplace of the nation but as " the sanctuary of the Lord ' (xxiv. 26). To the people over whose welfare he has watched so long and so faithfully the venerable leader, now one hundred and ten years old, delivers a prophetic message from the Most High, rehearsing briefly the History of His own providence over Abraham and his descendants, from the calling of the great patriarch in Chaldsea to the present hour of triumph and blissful security amid their predestined inheritance. Again this most privileged race are challenged by their Divine Benefactor to use their free will.

" Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him with a perfect and most sincere heart . . - Tw if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord, veil have your choice . . • And the people answered and said : God forbid we should leave the Lord, and serve strange gods ! "

" Josue therefore on that day made a covenant, and set before the people commandments and judgments in Sichem. And he wrote all these things in the volume of the law of the Lord : and he took a great stone, and set it under the oak that was in the sanctuary of the Lord" (xxiv. 14-26).

The power to serve the Lord freely or freely to turn their backs on Him, so clearly set forth in this striking passage of Holy Writ, was, as Josue foresaw and foretold, to be time and again most shockingly abused. How often was this same lovely vale to witness the dreadful retribution brought down on Israel by its incurable fickleness and ingratitude, till He whose Name Josue bore and honored by his glorious life came Himself to make another and an everlasting Covenant with mankind ! On that same spot, seated, footsore and weary, at noontide by the side of Jacob's well, the Good Shepherd was one day to address to the Samaritan Woman — the type of erring humanity — the creative words that were to renew her soul and to renew the face of the earth as. well.

The book of judges.

The engraving on page 10 is but too eloquent an illustration of the sad fate of those who, chosen to be God's children and His privileged instruments for good, forget Him, are shorn of all their glory, and become the thralls and playthings of His enemies. Behold one of the Judges of Israel, the mighty Samson, condemned to do the work of a brute beast and grind corn in a mill !

But what and who were the Judges of Israel ? They were men raised up from time to time, during a period of about three hundred and forty years, to deliver the recreant Hebrews from the foreign oppression brought on them by their own sins, and to rule the land under the immediate direction of the Most High. Under Moses and Josue, and till the election of Saul, the Hebrew commonwealth was a theocracy, or a republic with God as its real head, and chosen leaders under Him to rule the people and secure the execution of His laws. Of these deliverers and rulers, called Judges, however, only a few are mentioned in Scripture. In ordinary times, and when no foreign yoke weighed on the whole people, they were governed by their tribal princes, elders, and chief priests.

Thus we see Josue before his death (xxiv. 1) calling together " the ancients, and the princes, and the judges, and the masters." He chose no one to succeed to his office ; nor did God appoint any one to be his successor. Of the people, after his death, it is said (Judges ii. 7-14): . . . "They served the Lord all his (Josue's) days, and the days of the ancients that lived a long time after him, and who knew all the works of the Lord, which He had done for Israel . . . And all that generation was gathered to their fathers : and there arose others that knew not the Lord, and the works which He had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they served Baalim. . . . And the Lord being angry against Israel, delivered them into the hands of plunderers, who took them and sold them to their enemies that dwelt round about."

The first chapters in the book clearly account for this state of things. Thus, in chap, i., we see the joint efforts made by the neighboring tribes of Juda and Simeon, who held an extreme position in the south, to exterminate or expel the Chanaanites. Each of the two tribes acts as sovereign within its own territory, and invokes the aid of the other as that of a co-sovereign power. They gave no quarter to their foes and made no truce with them

Not so with the other tribes mentioned in the sequel of the chapter. "The sons of Benjamin did not destroy the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem." " Manasses also . . . And the Chanaanites began to dwell with them." So with the other tribes on both sides of the Jordan . Even in Egypt the seductions of idolatry amid the splendors of a superior civilization had teen too much for the early Hebrews, the immediate progeny of the twelve patriarchs. It required the hardships of slavery and all the wrongs of the most pitiless oppression to make the poor victims hate the gods as well as the persons of their oppressors.

But in the enchanted land of Palestine, with its lovely climate and its teeming soil, there were in the pleasant lives of the heathen population a thousand things capable of turning the brain and perverting the heart. God had made there the earth a paradise ; and God's capital Enemy, the Devil, had turned it into a scene of perpetual riotousness and debauchery.

The bitter waters of the Dead Sea only covered up a few of the more guilty cities: others not less sinning against God and nature flaunted their iniquity all over the land. Even modern scholars do not dare to fathom the dark depths of this idolatry, or care to reveal the hateful mysteries of what they have fathomed. No wonder that He who is the Creator of man, and the lover of the soul and its purity, should have decreed the extermination of this gigantic wickedness and forbidden all intercourse with neighbors whose very breath was contamination.

Of the thirteen Judges whose names are mentioned in this book, the record is as follows : Othoniel, a younger brother of the great Caleb, chap. iii. 7-11; Aod and Samgar, iii. 12-31; Debbora and Barac, iv. and v. ; Gedeon, vi.-ix ; Abimelech, son of Gedeon, ix. ; Thola and Jair, x. 1-5 ; Jephte, x. 6-18; xii 7 ; Abesan, Ahialon, and Abdon, xii. 8-15 ; finally, Samson, xiii.-xvi.

The remaining five chapters are a fearful story of the degeneracy of the tribe of Dan — the open practice of idolatry under the cover of the name of the true God beginning with one house and then adopted by the whole tribe ; fast upon the heels of this apostasy comes a terrible outrage committed by the inhabitants of one Benjamite city, Gabaa, of which the entire tribe of Benjamin assume the responsibility, and which leads to a war of extermination waged against the offenders by the other tribes.

Some portions of this record of three centuries and a half are deserving of a close study. The deliverance wrought by Debbora, and the glorious hymn in which she pours forth her feelings of thanksgiving and triumph, recall the dark days of Egyptian servitude and the heroic part played by Mary, the sister and saviour of Moses. Then we come upon Gedeon and his chosen band of warriors — men who could refuse to drink even their fill of water from the brook; examples of heroic temperance in an age when unbridled sensuality reigned supreme over their own countrymen ; men worthy to achieve the liberation of their people from the twofold slavery of vice and idol-worship; what a lesson for all future time !

More forcible still is the lesson taught by Samson in his incomparable strength and resistless prowess while faithful to his Nazarite vows and observant of the divine law, as well as by the extremity of his weakness when yielding to pleasure and preferring self-indulgence to the heroic abstemiousness and unwearying zeal demanded of God's representative and the champion of Israel. The lively image of Christ who fought single-handed the battle of our salvation and triumphed by his infinite self-abasement over Lucifer and all the hosts of pride — Samson, by his single arm, defeated the embattled Philistines, and, blind and degraded, brought down destruction on his oppressors, triumphing in death over the enemies of his God and of his people.

To Israel Honor hath left and freedom, . . . To himself and father's house eternal fame; And, which is best and happiest yet, all this With God not parted from him, as was feared, But favoring and assisting to the end."

The book of ruth.

This book, received as canonical, by both Jews and Christians, formed, in early times, a portion of or an appendix to the preceding book of the Judges. The Talmud ascribes its authorship to Samuel. The Septuagint makes it a separate book ; and in this, as well as in placing the Book of Ruth between Judges and the four Books of Kings, the Latin Vulgate and the English Version have followed the Septuagint.

It tells with exquisite and most touching simplicity the story of a young Moabite woman, the widow of a Jewish exile, who will not forsake her poor mother-in-law, Noemi, when the latter, having lost everything and every one dear to her, sets out on her return to her native city of Bethlehem. Ruth's devotion to her forlorn parent not only leads her to forsake country, relatives, and friends for Noemi' s sake, but to support the latter by such labor as the very poorest had recourse to in an agricultural country. This heroic devotion, as well as the young woman's native grace and modesty, win the respect of Booz, a rich kinsman of her deceased husband's, who marries her.

From this auspicious union springs Obed, the father of Jesse, and the ancestor of King David and of the Redeemer Himself. Thus the purpose of the author was to point out clearly the genealogy of the Prophet-King and the descent from him of Mary and her Divine Babe. The Holy Spirit also intended to show how tenderly Providence watches over the souls of those who put their whole trust in Him, and give up for Him all earthly affections and possessions. The Holy Fathers have seen in Ruth the figure of the Church of the Gentiles whose heart was solely set upon faith and hope in Jesus, the blessed fruit of life and salvation borne by the stem of Jesse.

Moreover, the book itself is a sweet picture of rural home-life among the people of God. Our hearts, while reading it, are deeply touched by Noemi 's yearning for Bethlehem, her native spot ; for the religious atmosphere of her early home, and the companionship of her own kindred; by the single-mindedness of Ruth, her self-sacrificing attachment to her poor, lone kinswoman ; her generous determination to support the latter by her own toil, and the docility, simplicity, and modesty which characterize her whole conduct in the most difficult and delicate circumstances ; and by the manly piety and conscientious uprightness of Booz.

It is a lovely page of Holy Writ, full of precious teaching, from parents to children, when the former have applied both mind and heart to glean the precious ears of truth from a field that has given abundant harvest of edification to Jews and Christians for thousands of years. (See also the story of Ruth and Noemi in Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, chap. x. p. 103.)

The four books of kings.

This portion of the historical books of the Old Testament is so called, because it describes the rise of the kingly dignity in the person of Saul, and gives the history of all those who ruled as kings over God's people both while Israel formed one kingdom and after its division into two. In the Flebrew text the two first Books of Kings formed but one and was called the Book of Samuel, the third and fourth also forming one single volume called the Book of Kings or Kingdoms. In the Septuagint Greek all four were designated as the Books of Kings or Kingdoms ; and this was adopted by the early Latin translators and is followed in the Vulgate — Protestants affecting and preferring in this as in other things to follow the Hebrew text and the Jewish authorities.

The first book contains the history of Samuel down to his death, in the beginning of chap. xxv. Hence the first twenty-four chapters are generally attributed to him ; and as he had anointed both Saul and David to be kings over Israel, these two first books, which narrate the history of their reigns, may seem a continuation of the record begun by Samuel. The continuators are thought to be the r-.-ophets Nathan and Gad, as one may gather from 1 Paralipomenon xxix. 29 : " Now the acts of King David, first and last, are written in the book of Samuel the Seer, and in the book of Nathan the Prophet, and in the book of Gad the Seer."

First and second kings.

As we travel down the road of history from the days of Samson and the other Judges, we come upon the grand figure of Samuel, one which arrests our attention and challenges our admiration equally with the sublime personages of Josue and Moses. Samson died gloriously, and by his heroic death expiated the sad weaknesses which marred his career and prevented him from effecting the complete independence of his people and reigning in undisputed power over a united and regenerated Israel.

There are no such weaknesses to dim the lustre of Samuel's saintly life. His birth is a boon granted to the prayers and tears of his pious mother, Anna. By her he is consecrated to God from the first instant of his existence, and placed from childhood in the sanctuary as a thing that exclusively belongs to the Most High and Most Holy. Even at that tender age, he is the privileged organ of the divine Will toward the aged and over-indulgent High Priest Heli, announcing to him, who was both the secular and religious head of the nation, the terrible judgments brought down on Israel by his sacrilegious and tyrannical sons.

There is no break in the beautiful life thus begun in the sanctuary. The soul nurtured and kept pure by the deep spirit of prayer, increases constantly in strength ar.d holiness, till we find Samuel, now arrived at the age of manhood, delivering to guilty and oppressed Israel solemn exhortation couched almost in the last words of Josue : "If you turn to the Lord with all your heart, put 'away the strange gods from among you, Baalim and Astaroth ; and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines " (1 vii. 3). Would you know the secret of that resistless energy with which the Son of Anna thenceforward to his dying clay sought to promote the cause of God and the cause of His people? Listen to the adjuration which the Israelites in their despair, and surrounded by their cruel foes, address to Samuel : " Cease not to cry to the Lord our God for us, that He may save us out of the hand of the Philistines! . . . And Samuel cried to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him." Then comes the great victory for Israel on the spot made memorable by former disastrous defeat ; and there too a monument is set up called Ebcn-ezer or " The House of Help."

The man of prayer, of good counsel, and unsleeping energy, thus goes on from victory to victory: "And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel."

It is most touching to read of the humility of this illustrious man, who, when his people reject him and demand a king to rule over them, submits like a little child to the divine will, anoints Saul for the kingly office, without ever ceasing to direct and counsel him, or to guide both prince and people in the faithful observance of the law of God. "Far from me be this sin against the Lord, that I should cease to pray for you ; and I will teach you the good and right way. Therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth and with your whole heart . . . But if you will still do wickedly, both you and your king shall perish together" (xii. 23-25).

Alas, both king and people do forget the "great works" done among them by their Divine Benefactor, and forget, as well, the fatherly counsels of Samuel, and go on from bad to worse till Saul and Jonathan and the strength of Israel go down together in one common ruin on the red field of Gilboe !

David, who had been anointed king in the life-time of Saul, does indeed profit by the terrible examples of the divine justice, bringing on himself and his people blessings in proportion with his fidelity. Most gifted himself — poet, musician, brave warrior and wise statesman, fitted by all these gifts to shine in peace as well as in war- • David makes of Israel a united, prosperous, and mighty nation.

But he too forgets God in the intoxication of prosperity and power; he sins, sacrificing to the gross sensuality prevailing in the nations round about, and brings on his house, his people, and himself the terrible retribution which never fails to overtake the man who is placed on high to shine by his great virtues, and whose dark deeds are an incitement to evil in those beneath him.

But David, when guilty and visited with punishment for his guilt, differed from Saul in this: that, whereas the latter' s proud self-will refused to bend beneath the chastising hand, or to confess his sin and make atonement for it, David put on sackcloth and ashes, invoked the spirit of repentance, sent up to the God of hi? heart continual cries for forgiveness, and watered his couch by night with the bitter tears wrung from him by his grief. David was a man after God's own heart, because, even in his fall, he forgot not the God of his youth ; and the sense of his guilt only made him seek to serve the Divine Majesty with tenfold fervor and increased humility. Saul, guilty, turned his back on God and sought from demons the knowledge of his own future and of the fortunes of his house. David, guilty, prostrated himself in the dust and sent up his heart-cries to heaven for mercy on his people and on himself. "The Lord is my Rock, and my strength, and my Saviour; God is my strong One: in Him will I trust : my shield and the horn of my salvation. He lifteth me up and (is) my refuge : my Saviour! And thou wilt deliver me from iniquity" (2 Kings xxii. 2, 3).

Third and fourth books of kings.

More terrible even than the end of Saul is that of the wise and magnificent Solomon, David's son. God lavished on this prince the rarest gifts of mind and heart, together with the undisputed possession of his father's kingdom. To him whose reign was "established in peace," and who was the illustrious figure of the Prince of Peace, Christ, it was given to build the first glorious temple ever erected for the worship of the one true God. His reign forms a central point toward which all preceding events in Sacred History seemed to tend, and whose surpassing glories were to be reflected downward on succeeding ages till He appeared who was to fulfill all promises in His person, and to eclipse all glories in the divine achievements of His humility and His charity. And yet the student of the Bible is filled only with sadness, and something like discouragement, in seeing this most wise prince become the most besotted and depraved of sensualists — an object of contempt and loathing to all true manhood, while the early piety which impelled him to build the most magnificent of temples to the God of his fathers is forgotten in the disgusting and insatiable appetite for pleasure, which with pagan wives brings into the City of David the fearful scandal of the idol-worship of the Egyptians and Chanaanites.

To this most foolish and most guilty king succeeds a son who inherits some of his father's worst vices without any of his great qualities. And then the curse of Heaven falls on Israel in the form of irremediable political division. Ten of the Twelve Tribes fall away from Roboam, and constitute an independent kingdom which is to have gods of its own. Thus, divided, Israel — divided in religious belief and political allegiance — goes on, reign after reign, with the consuming cancer of idolatry, and of the fearful immorality it begets, fastened on the majority of the nation, while the minority in the southern kingdom are ruled by a few good princes, whose reforms and examples are neutralized by the pagan vices of their successors. At length both kingdoms are blotted out and their people scattered abroad in captivity.

We see, during the period covered by these two last books — 427 or 405 years — we see a people of brothers, instead of remaining united in the one religious faith and under one strong government, forming two rival and hostile nationalities, each of which, when the other prevails, calls in the aid of the stranger and the heathen to help restore the balance. A fatal mistake against sound policy — that is, against the laws of nature. But amid the gloom and the guilt of that long period grand figures loom up : the men of God, the prophets commissioned to keep alive the true faith among populations given over to doubt, to ignorance, to idolatry, and manifold corruption; or sent to save the national life from utter extinction : Elias, and Elisaeus, and Jeremias, who wrote these same two last books of Kings, what names and what undying glory are theirs ! No less illustrious and combining with the prophetic gifts of the others the glory of being, like Jeremias, an historical writer, Isaias has, moreover, the honor of being numbered among the martyrs of the Old Testament. But although living under several of the princes whose reigns are chronicled in the Books of Kings, this great Prophet-Martyr's name is not mentioned therein.

Paralipomenon or chronicles.

The original Hebrew title of these two books literally means "daily records," because they contain the substance of journals kept by the official annalists of the two kingdoms of Juda and Israel. In the Septuagint they are called "The First and Second Book of Paralipomenon," or of things overlooked in the Books of Kings. The books of Paralipomenon are therefore supplementary to the preceding historical works of the Bible. The title "Chronicles," adopted in the Protestant version, was suggested by St. Jerome. The books themselves are considered to be the work of Esdras, the restorer of the temple and of Jewish worship after the captivity. He evidently made use of documents prepared by others and dating from previous times.

One of his main objects, if not his chief purpose, seems to have been to place on record a series of genealogies which might assist the rulers of the restored remnants of tribes toward giving to each Jewish family the inheritance of its fathers, as allotted under Josue. As, moreover, the perfect regulation of divine worship in the Temple was in his eyes and those of the nation a matter of the most practical importance, he drew up also genealogies of the priestly and levitic families, so that they might perform their functions in the order and with the regularity prescribed under David and Solomon. These families had to live on the tithes and offerings given them while discharging their sacred functions, each in their turn, in Jerusalem. It thus became imperative to have a public and authentic list of these families and their numbers, so as to secure perfect regularity and discipline in the successive bands of priests and levites called to minister in the sanctuary. This Esdras did, as may be seen in the books themselves.

As to the purely historical portion of the books, it contains what is the very heart of the national life — the detailed story of David's glorious reign, the great promise and performance of Solomon's youth, together with the incredible splendor and luxury that were to be his bane. Of his licentiousness and open encouragement of idolatry within his own capital and household, there is no mention here. The writer refers us back on this subject to the Second Book of Kings. The inspired Chronicler, however, is careful to describe Solomon's stolid and vicious son in such a way, that we are forced to behold in this precocious despot's conduct the natural result of the paternal training and examples,

Roboam had for mother an Ammonite princess, one of those women which God had so often and so solemnly forbidden his people to connect with themselves by marriage. What the influence of this idolatrous woman over the perverted and prematurely old monarch (he died at sixty) may have been, we know not from authentic history. The mere fact that her son became Solomon's successor allows us to suppose that she ruled supreme over the silly, pleasure-seeking king. Her son, as well as "the young men . . . brought up with him in pleasures," and his evil counselors from the beginning of his reign, had not more of faith than he had of kingly prudence. Even after the disruption of his kingdom, he refuses to profit by the terrible prophetic lessons delivered to Jeroboam during Solomon's lifetime (3 Kings xi. 29). "When the kingdom of Roboam was strengthened and fortified, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him." And what is the consequence? "In the fifth year of the reign of Roboam, Sesac king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem (because they had sinned against the Lord." . . . There is terror and a show of that kind of repentance which is begotten of mortal fear. "The Lord is just!" both prince and people exclaim in their extremity. But the Lord, who is ever more merciful than just, will not allow the Egyptian to exterminate the guilty ones. They become vassals and tributaries of their old-time foes and oppressors. " So Sesac king of Egypt departed from Jerusalem, taking away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king's house" (2 Paral. ii. 9).

The gold with which Solomon had so magnificently- enriched the Sanctuary had been, every bit of it, the gift of David, the fruit of his conquests and pious economies. The lavish profusion of gold and silver with which Solomon had adorned and enriched his own palaces and harems, had been ground out of his impoverished and over-taxed people. All is now swept into the coffers of the Egyptian ! Brass replaced gold in the temple as well as in the palace. But the faith, the love, the heart service which Jehovah solely prized, and which would have made Roboam and his people invincible against every enemy, neither the king nor his subjects thought of bringing to the house of God oi to their own homes. " He did evil, and did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord ! " But "even in Juda there were found good works ; " and so God will keep to the promise made through Ahias (3 Kings xi. 36), " that there may remain a lamp for My servant David before Me always in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen, that My Name might be there."

And so, through the gloom of the long succeeding centuries, this "lamp," the steady light of the Promise, shall continue to cheer faithful hearts both in Jerusalem and amid the sorrows and despair of exile, till our Day Star, our "Orient from on high," shines out above the hill-tops of Bethlehem.

The first book of esdras.

Esdras, the author of this book, as well as the probable author of the preceding Chronicles, is justly revered as the second parent of the Hebrew nation. But before we speak of his personal merit or of his deeds, let us give one glance at the last chapter of Paralipomenon.

Here we have King Eliakim or Joakim placed on the throne of Jerusalem by the Egyptian conqueror who has deposed Joachaz. "Joakim was five and twenty years old," the sacred historian says, *' when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did evil before the Lord his God. Against him came up Nabuchodonosor King of the Chaldeans, and led him bound in chains to Babylon."

On the throne of this unworthy prince is placed his son of nearly the same name. " Joachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord. And, at the return of the year, King Nabuchodonosor sent and brought him to Babylon." Sedecias, an uncle of this boy-king, and brother to the two deposed and exiled monarchs, now succeeds to this precarious sceptre. " Sedecias was one and twenty years old when he began to reign ; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and did not reverence the face of Jeremias the Prophet speaking to him from the mouth of the Lord . . . And he hardened n ^ s neck and hio heart from returning to the Lord the God of Israel."

In the footsteps of this wicked prince walk the leading men ox priests and people. Their patient God vainly warns them of the coming evils. "But they mocked the messengers of God, . . . until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people. For he brought upon them the King of the Chaldeans. "... City, temple, everything strong and fair, all is swept from the face of the earth by the Babylonian conqueror, and the miserable remnants of Juda are driven away into captivity. Is it not terrible ? and is not such blindness, such perseverance in evil, a something so incredible that one is staggered by the recital of such monstrous perverseness ?

With regard to the Book of Esdras itself, it is, manifestly, a continuation of the preceding book of annals or chronicles. Cyrus the Great is moved to restore the Temple of Jerusalem and to revive thereby the Hebrew nationality. In captivity such holy priests as Esdras and Nehemias, and such prophets as Jeremias and Daniel, had shed on the Hebrew name and religion such extraordinary splendor, that the great and right-minded Cyrus was drawn toward the true faith and toward a people whose supernatural virtues formed such a contrast with the surrrounding corruption of heathendom. So, both priests and people had been chastened by the terrible trials of exile and bondage ! And God would once more gather together His scattered ones ! There is an accurate list of the exiles whom Cyrus permitted to accompany Zorobabel and Esdras on their touching patriotic mission. And what pregnant lessons for the most generous souls aspiring to build up anew the ruins of country and home are found in these monumental pages ! How the story of patriotic self-sacrifice and religious faith belonging to these far-off times and countries apply literally to this our nineteenth century and the long-cherished aspirations of more than one struggling people ! It would be so profitable to parents themselves in every Christian family to study, with their whole mind and heart, this and the following book, and then hold up to their dear ones the golden lessons gleaned from such attentive perusal !

The book of nehemias, or the second of esdras.

When Esdras had succeeded in building up the Temple and in restoring and reforming the remnants of his people, he returned to Mesopotamia to report on his accomplished mission. Alas, it required the eloquent voice, the strong hand, and conciliatory temper of the truest of priests and wisest of statesmen to ce^p the fickle people to their resolutions. Such of the Hebrews as had been living in Judaea before the arrival of Esdras and his colony of exiles had either become as heathenish and corrupt as the neighboring Chanaanites, or had made of the little religion they retained a mixture of idolatrous practices and Hebrew superstitions. They were, at best, but poor auxiliaries to Esdras and his zealous band of restorers. But what shall we say of the non-Hebrew populations, the old enemies of God and of his people ? They used every exertion and every artifice to prevent the restoration of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple. When force and fraud failed, they tried on the faithful Israelites the old fascination of their idolatrous customs, of their licentious celebrations, and pompous pagan festivals. And they succeeded.

Nehemias had to return with Esdras to Jerusalem to begin anew this unfinished labor of social and religious reform and material reconstruction. The story grows in interest from chapter to chapter, as the two great men, brother priests laboring together with one mind and one heart, rekindle by voice and example the faith and zeal of their fellow-countrymen. They proclaim the Law anew, and induce the people to celebrate with extraordinary fervor and solemnity the Feast of Tabernacles (2 Esdras viii. and ix.) With one voice priests, princes, and people confess God's infinite goodness in their behalf and their own inconceivable ingratitude. " Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept Thy law . . . And they have not served Thee in their kingdoms, and in Thy manifold goodness, . . . and in the large and fat (wide and fruitful) land which Thou deliveredst' before them . . . Behold, we ourselves this day are bondmen : and the land, which Then gavest our fathers, ... we ourselves are servants in it ! . . . And because of all this we ourselves make a covenant, and write it, and our princes, our Levites, and our priests sign it " (Ibid. ix. 34-38).

The book of tobias.

We have, in the saintly man after whom this book is called, another illustrious instance of the living faith and heroic virtue displayed in exile by so many of God's people. No book in the Old Testament affords such touching examples of filial piety, domestic simplicity and purity, and that unflinching devotion to one's brethren in their darkest days of suffering and oppression. The virtues which shine forth in the life and home of Tobias are those which mast be eternally the very soul of domestic happiness and public welfare. The morality of the whole book is a most beautiful commentary on the law of life delivered through Moses ; a splendid mirror in which even Christians may see what they ought to be and are not, as compared with the saintly men and women of twenty-six hundred years ago.

Tobias was born in Cades (Kedesh)-Nephtali, in the northern part of Galilee. It was the native city of Barac, in which Debbora had organized the little army that was to prove victorious over the proud hosts of Jabin and Sisara. From time immemorial the place was a famous stronghold, one of the "cities of refuge" established by Josue. Near it Jonathan the Machabee fought against the treacherous generals of Demetrius, changing a disastrous defeat into a glorious victory. Beneath its very walls was shown the spot where the stout-hearted Jael completed Debbora 's triumph by slaying with her own hand the cruel Sisara.

Tobias, nurtured in this eagles' nest, displayed from earliest boyhood qualities far superior to those of the soldier and conqueror. He learned even when a child in years, to do " no childish thing in his work," and when his fellow-countrymen and townsmen "all went to the golden calves" of Jeroboam in Samaria, " he alone fled the company of all, and went to Jerusalem to the temple of the Lord." He appears to have been a wealthy youth who delighted in devoting generously his wealth to the support of the true religion. What he had been in childhood and youth he continued to be in manhood and all through life. " He took to wife Anna of his own tribe, and had a son by her whom he called after his own name ; and from his infancy he taught him to fear God and to abstain from all sin." Carried with his wife and child into captivity by Salmanasar (Shalman-Ezor) Iv., King of Assyria, Tobias shone so pre-eminently above his fellow-captives and the Assyrian nobles and courtiers at Niniveh that he attracted the notice and won the favor of the monarch himself, and was by him loaded with honor and wealth. For in the midst of this idolatrous and sensual race, when his Hebrew fellow-captives shared in the forbidden rites and pleasures of their captors, Tobias "kept his soul and never was defiled," being ever "mindful of the Lord with all his heart."

The book, from the first chapter to the end, reads like a glorious epic in praise of exalted piety and patriotism. Two kindred families, bound still more closely together by the same deep, practical faith, are the principal personages, while evil spirits and God's own archangel display respectively their baneful influences and healing power. What a picture is that household in the mighty Niniveh, in which the now poor and sightless Tobias is made the butt of his wife's unfeeling sarcasm and headlong temper ! He had risked and spent everything on his persecuted countrymen ; and now as he sits at home, blind and destitute of all earthly comfort, a woman's foolish tongue ceases not to lash him. " Where is thy hope, for which thou gavest alms, and buriedst the dead ? " It was in vain that he replied, " We are the children of the saints, and look to that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from Him." The pitiless tongue ceased not for all that to scourge him with the reproof: " It is evident thy hope is come to nothing, and thy alms now appear ! ' ' And the poor, helpless sufferer, seeing no further aim in life, would lift his soul to God on high: " Thou art just, O Lord, and all Thy ways mercy and truth and judgment ! . . . Command my spirit to be received in peace ; for it is better for me to die than to live."

At the same hour, in the city of Northern Ecbatane, a dear friend and kinsman of Tobias, Raguel by name, was suffering deep affliction in the person of his only child, Sara. This man was both virtuous and wealthy. But, through some mysterious dispensation of Providence, evil spirits were allowed to persecute him and his. Every one who had till then sought the hand of his innocent and pious daughter had fallen a victim to the Evil One. This drew suspicion on Sara, so much so, indeed, that even her servant maid openly and bitterly taunted her with being a murderess. Prostrate before the Divine Majesty in the privacy of her own chamber, the distressed girl was sending up her heart-cry for help: "I beg, Lord, that Thou loose me from the bond of this reproach, or else take me away from the earth." But Northern Ecbatane (the capital of Cyrus) is on the road to Rages (the modern Rhey, a few miles southeast of Teheran) ; and in this last city lived one of Tobias' tribesmen, Gabelus, to whom in the days of his great prosperity the former had lent a large sum of money. This sum, before dying and in the interest both of his wife and of his son, Tobias is now anxious to recover. And here comes in the sweet and loving providence of the Father. The succor needed by the two suffering families will not be delayed. Then is told the marvelous story of the Archangel Raphael's undertaking to guide the younger Tobias all the way to the distant home of his kinsman, where God was keeping in store for him the spotless soul of a true woman as well as part of the riches which were to raise his aged parents once more to affluence. To his father also the angelic guide, on their joyful return to Niniveh, restores the sight so long lost. How magnificent is the hymn of prophetic praise and exultation which goes up from this tried and grateful soul ! "I and my soul will rejoice in Him. Bless ye the Lord all His elect; keep days of joy, and give glory to Him. Jerusalem, city of God, the Lord hath chastised thee for the works of thy hands. Give glory to the Lord for thy good things, and bless the God eternal ; that He may rebuild His tabernacle in thee, and call back thy captives to thee, and thou mayst rejoice for ever and ever ! "

The book of judith.

Here is another thrilling page of sacred history taken from the annals of that same epoch of partial restoration from captivity and exile. Moses had been saved from the waters of the Nile by the watchful love of his sister, Mary, who also continued to be the angel of his life in the court of Pharaoh, and till her great brother could openly choose between the service of the Egyptian oppressor and that of his own oppressed kinsmen. With him, when sent on his divine mission of liberation, was associated Mary, who thus deserved the name of Deliverer. Then came Debbora and Jael to work out the freedom of Israel during the period of the Judges ; and now Judith stands forth to deliver the restored tribes from the threatened renewal of their subjugation and expulsion from their native land. No mere analysis of the story can give the reader a truthful idea of the condition of things in Palestine or of the desperate extremities from which a woman's inspired heroism freed her country and people. Even those who see in Judith's artifice a something exceedingly like criminal fraud, must remember that Sacred History records more than one deed of the most illustrious personages which the historian does not pretend to excuse or justify. But, to one who calmly considers the circumstances of the age and country— the brutal lust for conquest and plunder which animated the Nabuchodonosors and Holophernes of these pagan times — there can occur no valid reason for refusing to Judith the glorious praise due to a woman, who devotes her own life and imperils her honor in order to save the honor of her countrywomen and the independence of her own nation, then struggling to confirm its long-lost and scarcely recovered freedom. (See the Author's reasoning on this subject in Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, chap. xvii. pp. 1 80-81.)

The book of esther.

Just as the God, who watched so lovingly over the destinies of that race which was to give to the world Christ and His Apostles, showed again and again how easily and surely He could employ the hand of a single man to work out the salvation of an entire people, even so does He use again and again a weak and timid woman as His instrument, in order to render still more irresistible the demonstration of His almighty Power. Modern scholars judge it probable, that the Assuerus who raised Esther to the throne, was no other than the blindly proud and blundering Xerxes who attempted, at the head of the united armies and fleets of all Western Asia, to conquer and subjugate the little republics of Greece. The indescribable splendor and magnificence of this royal despot forms a kind of background for the picture of Esther's loveliness and piety, of the utter helplessness of her Hebrew fellow-exiles, and of the implacable animosity existing between them and their old Amalekite foes. The book, although affording us but a glimpse of that fairy-like luxury and incredible servility prevailing in these great eastern capitals, enables us, nevertheless, to see the fearful extent of the corruption from which God wished to preserve His people, by keeping them from intimate communication with their heathen neighbors, and binding them to his own service by inviolable fidelity within their own national territory.

Their existence as a free people in Palestine was to be the consequence of this fidelity to the law of Jehovah. His overshadowing protection secured them from disaster, defeat, and subjugation, so long as they served Him with their whole heart. And in their exile among the nations, while they were taking to heart the bitter lessons of experience, He ever showed Himself ready and prompt to assist them and to protect them from utter extinction, when the cry of their heart went up to Him.

Aman, the all-powerful favorite of Assuerus, has taken every means to annihilate the scattered remnants of the Hebrew race by one fell blow, and throughout the vast Persian empire. The young Hebrew Empress knows, as well as her uncle and foster-father, Mardochseus, that the hand of God alone can arrest the blow about to fall, and that united prayer to Him can make Him stretch forth His arm to save the innocent and strike down the guilty aggressor. Trusting in the intervention of that Power and Goodness which will have us entreat it in our direst need, Esther employs meanwhile all the means which human prudence suggests to enlighten the Emperor on his favorite's character and designs. Woman's wit comes to the aid of woman's loveliness and patriotism ; iniquity falls into the net it had itself spread for the guiltless, and cruelty perishes by its own devices. These are pages to be read again and again, as one reads the most enchanting tale of eastern romance. For here no romance can come up to the reality.

First and second machabees.

The two books bearing this title contain the history of a heroic family of priests who conquered the national independence under the Greek kings of Syria, and were also the successful champions of religious liberty. The surname of " Machabee," first borne by Judas, son of the priest Mathathias, arose, according to some, from a Hebrew word signifying "hammer" — both the father and his sons having been in the hand of God a hammer for shattering the might of their oppressors. Others, on the contrary, derive the appellation from the initial letters of the Hebrew sentence in Exodus xv. u : "Who is like ro Thee among the strong, O Lord?" These letters, it is said, were inscribed by Judas on his victorious banners : and hence the surname. The name is bestowed not only on Judas and his brethren, but en a generous widow and her seven sons most cruelly put to death in Antioch by the pitiless tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes.

The first book of Machabees — a manuscript copy of which in Hebrew, or, rather, in the popular Syro-Chaldaic of the Machabean age, was seen by St. Jerome — is the history of forty years, from the beginning of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes to the death of the High Priest Simon Machabee. The second book is the abridged history of the persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes and Ptolemy Eupator, his son, being compiled from a full and complete history of the same in five books, written by Jason, and now lost. This abridgment describes in detail many of the principal occurrences related in the first book. Both historians, however, seem to have written independently of each other, neither having seen the other's work.

No history, ancient or modern, contains a more vivid and thrilling story of living faith and heroic valor.

The prophets.

We must not, if we would form a correct conception of Sacred History, separate the Prophets and their utterances from their proper connection in the series of contemporary events. They, their prophecies, and their lives, form an integral portion of the annals of the epoch in which they lived. The very historical books we have been just passing in review are incomplete, and, in some parts, incomprehensible, if severed from the words and actions of such men as Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, Haggaeus, and other prophets, who acted such an important part under the Kings or' Jerusalem and Samaria, while striving, under divine inspiration, to correct and convert bad sovereigns and their sinful people,, or to direct and encourage the good.

The name of prophets is sometimes given in Scripture to persons who had no claim to prophetic inspiration. In classic Greek, the word Ttpo^r^s, "prophet," designates any person who speaks for another, especially one who speaks in the name of the Godhead, and thus declares or interprets His will to men. The primary meaning of the word prophet is, therefore, that of an interpreter. In the Bible the word has several significations: ist. It applies to all persons of superior learning or uncommon intellectual gifts, whether their knowledge regards divine or hu i things. Thus in i Corinthians xiv. 6, "prophecy" means the supernatural knowledge of divine things bestowed as a gift on certain persons, and in the infancy of the Church, to enable them to teach others ; whereas, in Titus i. 12, "a prophet of their own," means a Cretan author who had accurately described his own countrymen as "always liars, evil beasts, etc." 2d. He is called a prophet who has either of things past or present a knowledge exceeding the power of nature. Thus Elisaeus knew that his servant Giezi had secretly obtained rich presents from Naaman. Thus also when the soldiers buffeted our Lord the night before his death, they asked Him to " prophesy" who had struck Him. 3d. Again, a man is said to be a prophet when he is inspired to say what he does not understand, as Caiphas (St. John xi. 51) " prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation." 4th. In the proper and primitive sense of the word, Aaron is to be the "prophet;" that is, the interpreter, of his brother Moses (Exodus vii.) Hence both our Lord and St. Stephen upbraid the Jews with having persecuted all the prophets ; that is, all those who had been sent to declare to them the will of God. 5th. The designation of prophets was also given to all those who sang hymns or psalms with extraordinary enthusiasm, so as to seem beyond themselves. In 1 Kings x. 12, Saul meets a troop of these singers, joins them, is seized with their divine enthusiasm, and it is therefore said : " Is Saul also among the Prophets? " This same meaning applies on several occasions to David and Asaph and to the young men trained as singers for the temple, and who are therefore called "the sons of the prophets." 6th. The word " to prophesy," again, is understood of the power of working miracles. Hence (Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 14) it is said of Elisaeus: "After death his body prophesied," because the contact with the holy man's corpse raised a dead man to life. 7th. But this gift of miracles was the seal which stamped with the divine authority the utterances of the Prophet properly so called ; that is, the man to whom God has revealed and enjoined to announce to the world future events which no created mind could of itself have foreseen. (See Bergier, Dictionnaire de Theologie.~) Such are the divinely commissioned men whose books we are now to consider.

The four great prophets.

Isaias.

By the universal consent both of the Jewish Church and of the Christian, Isaias is given precedence in rank over the other prophets, though he cannot claim priority in time. He was of royal birth, and the elevation and beauty of his style are in keeping with his high rank and nobility of soul. He is by far the most eloquent of the Prophets. Besides, he describes so minutely the person of Christ and His sufferings, as well as the birth and destiny of the Christian Church, that one might think he was recording past events or describing what was present before his eyes, rather than announcing to the world what was still hidden in the night of ages, and could only be the secret of the divine mind and power. For this reason the book of Isaias has been caller' a fifth Gospel, so clearly does he perform the task of an evangelist.

The prophetic mission of this great man and great saint runs through the reigns of four kings of Juda — Ozias, Joathan, Achaz, and Ezechias, his life having been gloriously crowned with a cruel martyrdom under Manasses. Like the Prophet Elias before him, and like John the Baptist long ages after him, Isaias in performing his sublime mission wore the penitential garb of the Nazarites, the long blackish-gray tunic of haircloth fastened round the loins with a rope or girdle of camel's hair. Thus habited, the man of God would, most probably, go into one of the spacious courts of the Temple, while the people were flocking in to some solemn sacrifice, and from one of the lofty flights of steps leading up to the altar of burnt offerings, would pour forth the words of his divine message on the multitude beneath and around. The very first words of these inspired oracles still thrill the coldest reader with emotion : " Hear, O ye Heavens ! and give ear, O Earth ! For the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children and exalted them; but they have despised Me, The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib. But Israel hath not known Me, and My people hath not understood ! "

No words could more aptly state God's case as against His blind and ungrateful people under the Old Law, as well against the professed or nominal followers of Christ under the New Law of Grace. We are, all of us who believe in Christ and through Him in the Father, the adopted children, the family of God. How He has exalted the sons of Adam ! How tenderly He has provided for the bringing up of the human race to a God-like resemblance with their all-bountiful Parent and Benefactor ! And is not our life one long act of contempt of that Adorable Majesty ? — one long and persistent ignoring and misunderstanding of that ever-present and patient Goodness?

To understand even the literal sense of these most pregnant chapters, it will be necessary to read not only the history of the four kings under whom Isaias preached and taught and performed miracles, but also the two preceding reigns of Amasias and his father Joas. Joas, saved in infancy, and by a miracle, from the slaughter of all the male descendants of David, and brought up by his aunt Josabet in the very sanctuary of the Temple, would, one might think, be sure to be worthy of David and lovingly faithful to God his Protector. And yet, in the very flower and pride of his manhood, he introduces among his people the abominable worship of Baal and Ashtarte — murders in the very sanctuary which had sheltered his infancy and childhood his cousin and foster brother, the High Priest Zacharias, and runs, uncontrolled, his race of wickedness, till he is himself cut off by the hand of a murderer. Not much better is his son Amasias. He was a cruel king: he caused 10,000 Edomite prisoners to be cast, in cold blood, headlong from the cliffs of Petra, while he hesitated not. in the hour of victory to cause sacrifices to be offered in honor of the idols worshiped by his victims. A cruel soldier is rarely a brave man ; and a coward is always a vain one. So Amasias provokes his father's namesake, Joas, King of Samaria, to war; is shamefully beaten, taken prisoner, brought in chains to Jerusalem, which is partially dismantled by the victor, aid at length, like his father, is cut. off by the red hand of murder. There is no use in teaching or warning these purblind princes, in whose veins the heroic blood of David is changed into mud : they will neither be taught, nor enlightened, nor warned. Such were the men who had ruled the Kingdom of Juda immediately before the birth of Isaias.

Now read in the first five chapters the prophetic denunciations and warnings which apply to the latter part of the long reign of Ozias. Like Solomon, he began his reign young — at the age of sixteen — and by his piety and his genius raised the Kingdom of Juda to a height of glory it had not known since Solomon. Though he did not end his long reign like this prince, so unwise with all his wisdom, Ozias forgot himself in his old age, and, like Saul, attempted to usurp the functions of the priestly office. He was stricken with leprosy at the very altar, and had thenceforward to yield his kingly functions to his son Joathan, and live in the rigorous seclusion imposed on lepers. That there was degeneracy in the body of the nation, as well as in the ruler himself, we may well believe. And in this light we can understand the denunciations of the first five chapters of Isaias. " O my people, they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps (that is, 'lead thee along the way to destruction.'). The Lord standeth up to judge, and He standeth to judge the people." Listen to the fearful description, at the end of the fifth chapter, which he gives of the coming of the Babylonians and Assyrians to chastise the insolence and ingratitude of this wilfully blind people. The hostile armies coming on from the shores of the Persian Gulf are like a mighty tidal wave which rises and advances swiftly, bearing down all resistance. "And they shall make a noise against them that day like the roaring of the sea. We shall look towards the land, and behold darkness of tribulation, and the light is darkened with the mist thereof! "

2. With chapter vi. begins another series of prophetical teachings. " In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated ; and His train filled the temple." The dead monarch had dimmed the glory of his long reign and splendid services to religion and country, by an obstinate attempt to thrust himself into the sanctuary and to offer with hands unanointed incense upon the altar. In contrast with this sacrilegious presumption stands out the shrinking humility of Isaias — called and chosen, as he knew himself to be, to the sublime and perilous functions of the prophetical office. "And I said, ' Woe is me . . . because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of Hosts.' "

Touched by the terrors of the prophet's humility, one of the attendant Seraphs takes a live coal from the altar of the heavenly temple, and touches therewith the lips which are to speak such mighty things to the world. The reign of Joathan was a continuation of the best traditions of the preceding reign. In one particular only did the son of Ozias fail in magnanimity and firmness of purpose. " The high places he took not away : the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places " (4 Kings xv. 35). Had the people of Juda, then, become so addicted to these clandestine practices of idolatry that the very best princes dared not attempt their suppression? This was, therefore, the sin of the people, and argues to what extent the abominable idol-worship of Palestine and Syria had taken hold of the popular heart in Jehovah's special inheritance. This fact will furnish a key to the most terrible denunciations and predictions of the first chapters in the book, particularly to that uttered by the prophet after his lips had been purified by the sacred fire. " Go and say to this people, ' Hearing hear, and understand not ! And see the vision and know it not ! ' . . . And I said : ' How long, O Lord ? ' And He said : ' Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land shall be left desolate.' "

This brief and magnificent vision of the Heavenly Temple on high, and of the enthroned Majesty of the infinite God, was, doubtless, proclaimed in the temple of Jerusalem to the assembled multitude of tepid, half-hearted worshipers. It reminded them that the splendors of God's earthly house was but a fatnt image of the everlasting, and that the holiness demanded of both priests ind people was only a preparation for the perfection of the beatified state. This sublime revelation, together with the clear and definite announcement of coming ruin to both temple and nation, hung over Juda and its rulers like a cloud big with coming storm during the entire reign of Joathan.

3. The prophecies in the three following chapters, vii., viii., and ix., were delivered during the reign of Joatham's successor, the weak-minded and unprincipled Achaz. The league formed against Jerusalem by the Kings of Israel and Syria had always been baffled by the unflinching and prudent policy of Joathan. His son inherited none of his religious faith or statesmanship ; and, threatened as he was by the allied armies, he bethought him of calling in to his aid the King of Assyria. Besides, one chief purpose of the King of Israel was to dethrone the descendants of David and set up a Syrian to rule in Jerusalem. This moved to its depths the patriotic soul of Isaias. He knew that the Kingdom of Juda had nothing to fear from the designs or power of the allied kings ; and he scorned the idea of invoking the aid of the foreigner and the heathen to fight the battles of Jehovah and to protect the throne of David. The enemy is already in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and it becomes a matter of life or death to prevent him from cutting off its supply of water. So Achaz marches out to protect the Upper Pool whence the chief supply was derived. Thereupon Isaias is bidden to take his son Sheas-Jashub ("Remnant shall Return") and to confront Achaz with these words: "See thou be quiet. Fear not, and let not thy heart be afraid ! . . . " Speaking of the formidable league and its designs against the House of David, the divine oracle is most emphatic : " It (the league) shall not stand, and this shall not be!"

But the unbelieving and timid Achaz cannot set aside either his terrors at the sight of the hostile armies, or his doubts about the victory promised by Isaias. Here comes in the famous prophesy about the Deliverer to be born of a Virgin-Mother : "Hear ye, therefore, O house of David ! Is it a small thing for you to be grievous to men, that you are grievous to my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel (God with us)." It was in vain that the prophet had assured Achaz that " within three score and five years Ephraim (that is, the Ten Schismatic Tribes forming the Kingdom of Israel under the leadership of the powerful tribe of Ephraim) shall cease to be a people." The young king will not believe and will not be dissuaded from calling in the Assyrians. Then comes the bitter reproof and the renewal of the glorious Promise made in the Garden to Eve and Adam guilty: " Behold a Virgin shall conceive," and God shall become Man, Our God, "God with us" forever — the Son of David of whose Kingdom there shall be no end.

Let this unbelieving king, who will not trust to Jehovah's power and protection, call in the Heathen from the banks of the Tigris, and let his idol-worshiping people become the allies of the worst enemies of God. " The Lord shall bring upon thee (Achaz), and upon thy people, and upon the house of thy father, days that have not come since the time of the separation of Ephraim from Juda, with the King of the Assyrians." And all through the desolation and the long captivity of these coming years, there is for Juda a twofold consolation, like a twin beacon to light its path through the gloom : their "Remnant shall Return," and in the fulness of time Em manuel shall be born to them. As for the prophet himself, with the clear foresight both of the devastation that is soon to come, and of the future Redemption of Israel and the entire race of man, he will put his sole trust in the Lord: "Behold, I and my children whom the Lord hath given me for a sign, and for a wonder in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwelleth in Mount Sion . . . I will wait for the Lord who hath hid His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him ! " His two sons as they grow up and walk by his side in Jerusalem and through the land shall be "a sign," and a standing prodigy or "wonder" sent to Israel from the Lord of hosts. We have seen that the elder Shear- Jashub, or "Remnant shall Return," was an ever-present warning, by the very name he bore, both of the coming desolation and exile and of the restoration of a remnant of the race. The boy, therefore, was a sign of the Divine justice as well as of the Fatherly mercy soon to be displayed. In chapter viii. the birth of another son is described as attended with extraordinary solemnities. Isaias is commanded to set up a large scroll or tablet bearing the words, Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz; that is, "Hasten, Booty, Speed, Spoil;" and when his younger son is born he is bidden to call him by this prophetic name so full of terrible significance to the kingdom of Juda. Already the King of Assyria had come down with an army on his allied enemies, the Kings of Damascus and Samaria, and had depopulated not only a portion of Syria but the valley of the Jordan around the Lake of Galilee, carrying the inhabitants away into exile. This does not make King Achaz heed any the more the warnings and exhortations of Isaias ; this prince more than ever courts an alliance with the Assyrian. The people, however, without ceasing to cling to their vices and their idolatry, are frightened into favoring a league with Damascus and Samaria. This only hastens the coming of the Assyrian. It is in vain that the great prophet tries to fire the national heart with the only flame that should burn therein, the love of their fathers' God and the love of their fatherland. Vainly does he exhaust himself in repeating that no enemy can harm Juda and Jerusalem so long as they repose a loving trust in Jehovah. " Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself; and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He shall be a sanctification to you" (viii. 13, 14). . . . " By the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is troubled, and the people shall be as fuel for the fire : no man shall spare his brother" (ix. 19). "What will you do in the day of visitation, and of the calamity which cometh from afar ? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? ... As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idol, so also their idols of Jerusalem and of Samaria. Shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?" (ix. 3-1 1). Then will come the turn of the Assyrian empire itself. "Shall the axe boast itself . against him that cutteth with it? ... As if a rod should lift itself against him who taketh it up!" And again, after repeating for the twentieth time His promises of mercy and final restoration, the Lord adjures Jerusalem in these touching words: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord the God of hosts: O, my people, that dwellest in Sion, be not afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike thee with his rod, and he shall lift up his staff over thee in the way of Egypt. For yet a little and a very little while, and My indignation shall cease, and My wrath shall be upon their wickedness. And the Lord shall raise up a scourge against him."

Meanwhile, in favor of the " true Israelites," the men of pure lives, unfaltering faith, and unshaken hope in the promises, the Prophet ever holds up their sure fulfillment. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him " (xi. 1, 2).

Surely it was the same Spirit who rested upon the patriot prophet himself.

3. Chapters xi. and xiL form one of these exultant hymns which we conceive Faith to be wont to sing amid the darkness of the densest idolatry and the wrecks of home and country. "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand the second time to possess the remnant of His people, which shall be left from the Assyrians. . . . And thou shalt say in that day: I will give thanks to Thee, O Lord, for Thou wast angry with me : Thy wrath is turned away, and Thou hast comforted me.

Behold, God is my Saviour, I will deal confidently and will not fear : because the Lord is my strength and my praise, and He is become my salvation."

Then come, under the designation of "burdens," the prediction of the terrible retribution which is to be dealt out on each of the enemies of God and His people — on Babylon, the Philistines, the Moabites, on Damascus, Samaria, the Assyrians and Egyptians. He pauses, in chapter xxii., while describing the devastation of Juda, to utter against Sobna, one of the blind and vicious counselors of blind and vicious princes and people, the divine judgment gone forth against him. "Thou hast hewed thee out carefully a monument in a high place, a dwelling for thyself in a rock. Behold the Lord will cause thee to be carried away, as a cock is carried away, and He will lift thee up as a garment. He will toss thee like a ball into a large and spacious country."

Nor shall the maritime powers of that age be spared by the scourge of divine justice. Tyre and Sidon shall fall. " The Lord of hosts hath designed it, to pull down the pride of all glory, and bring to disgrace all the mighty ones of the earth. . . . The earth is infected by the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, they have changed the ordinance, they have broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore shall a curse devour the earth, and the inhabitants thereof shall sin. ... It shall be thus in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the people, as if a few olives that remain should be shaken out of the olive-tree, or grapes, when the vintage is ended. . . . With breaking shall the earth be broken, with crushing shall the earth be crushed, with trembling shall the earth be moved." This moral and social convulsion, like the mighty upheavals that are recorded in geology, is now a matter of history. And how very nearly its terrible teachings come home, at this hour, to the guilty Christendom of the nineteenth century, with the decline of faith, the weakening of all authority, human and divine, the spread of intellectual and moral corruption, and the breaking up of the whole order of society in opposition to the laws of nature and the solemn ordinances of nature's God !

Together with this breaking up of the old Pagan order there is present to the eye of the prophet the end of all things, the final judgment and doom ; the wicked ones both of heaven and of earth "gathered together as in the gathering of one bundle into the Pit," and the eternal reign of God with His faithful servants in the heavenly Jerusalem. At this prospect the rapt soul of Isaias bursts forth into a shout of triumphant song: "O Lord, Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee, and give glory to Thy name ; For Thou hast done wonderful things. Thy designs of old faithful, Amen ! . . . Therefore shall a strong people praise Thee, the city of the mighty nations shall fear Thee. Because Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress : a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat. . . . And they shall say in that day : Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for Him, and He will save us : this is the Lord, we have patiently waited for Him, we shall rejoice and be joyful in His salvation."

From this vision of the Eternal Rest on high which thrills the soul of the prophet, he passes to the return of Israel from captivity, and the heart of the patriot bursts forth into a still more lofty strain, because with the vision of his restored people is mingled that of the glory of the Christian church. " Sion, the city of our strength — a Saviour ! A wall and a bulwark shall be set therein. Open ye the gates, and let the just nation that keepeth the truth enter in ! The old error is passed away : Thou wilt keep peace, peace, because we have hoped in Thee ! You have hoped in the Lord for evermore, in the Lord God mighty for ever. . . . And in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, we have patiently waited for Thee : Thy name and Thy remembrance (are) the desire of the soul!"

Full of divinest eloquence, most sublime poetry, of tender piety that stirs every pulse of the reader's heart, the stream of Isaias' inspiration flows onward in its rapid and majestic course, unlike anything else in sacred or profane literature, — the glory of the Hebrew intellect, the wonder and light of the Christian church.

The above beautiful canticle may have been written and uttered when Jerusalem, during the invasion of Salmanasar (Shalmanezer) Iv., was preserved from capture and spoliation, while Samaria fell into the hands of the invader. This was during the reign of the incomparable Ezechias, the most perfect prince who ever sat on the throne of David, and who was of one mind and one heart with his kinsman, the great prophet of Juda. Ezechias had made a clean sweep of the "high places," and of every other relic of idolatry within his kingdom. Without positively neglecting what is called political prudence in his dealings with other sovereigns, he placed his whole trust in Jehovah alone, and spurned every alliance that might imperil the faith or weaken the proud self-reliance under God with which he inspired his people. There were, however, those among them, Sobna (Shebna), the high treasurer, for instance, who hankered for a close union with Egypt as a means of resisting Assyria. But neither the prophet nor the king showed any mercy to these politicians. We have seen above how Sobna was disgraced, and can judge from his case how it fared with all those of his class. " Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, trusting in horses, and putting their confidence in chariots, because they are many; . . . and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel ! . . . Egypt is man, and not God, and their horses flesh, and not spirit : and the Lord shall put down (stretch out) his hand, and the helper shall fall, and he that is helped shall fall, and they shall be confounded together" (xxxi. 1-3). Formidable and resistless as then appeared the power of the Assyrians, their utter defeat is announced repeatedly and with such detailed circumstances as could not but challenge the attention of the whole people. " Behold the name of the Lord cometh from afar, His wrath burnetii. . . . You shall have a song as in the night of the sanctified solemnity. . . . And the Lord shall make the glory of His voice to be heard. . . . For at the voice of the Lord the Assyrian shall fear being struck with the rod " (xxx. 27-31). But with these notions and predictions of deliverance from temporal evils and earthly foes are always mixed up visions of the Divine Liberator and of the long- delayed Redemption. "Behold a king shall reign in justice!" (xxxii. 1); and the Spirit is " poured upon us from on high" (xxxii. 15).

Meanwhile the flood-gates of the Assyrian invasion are opened, and the mighty hosts of Sennacherib inundate Syria and Palestine. Jerusalem, at length, is beset by the viclorious host. To the faithful and brave-hearted King Isaias, in this extremity, utters messages of the most cheering import. " Thus saith the Lord : Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, with which the servants of the King of the Assyrians have blasphemed Me. ... I will send a spirit upon him, . . . and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own country." When the invader concentrates at length all his forces round the beleaguered city, Ezechias, in answer to his blasphemous insolence, challenges the fatherly love of Jehovah for His people: "O Lord our God, save us out of his hand, and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that Thou only art the Lord!" (xxxvii. 20). While still kneeling before the Mercy Seat, Ezechias receives through Isaias the answer to his prayer. It is Jehovah who speaks to the proud and blasphemous Assyrian : ..." I will put a ring in thy nose and a bit between thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou earnest" (xxxvii. 29). That very night, . . . " The angel of the Lord went out, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand."

This, miraculous deliverance had been the great event toward which all the preceding prophecies, all the denunciations, and all the unceasing activity of Isaias pointed. From the very first page he knew what was to be the dreadful fate of the schismatic and idolatrous Ten Tribes forming the Northern Kingdom, mat of Israel or Samaria. They were to be swept away by the hand of the Assyrian, and for them, as a nation or a body politic, there was to be no restoration. To avert from the Kingdom of Juda and Jerusalem, its capital, a similar fate, was the cherished purpose for which Isaias lived, labored, wrote, and prophesied. To inspire his people and their rulers with an absolute and unwavering trust in Jehovah, — in His love, His willingness and power to protect and shield them from all dangers, he bent all the resources of his genius and influence, and discharged most faithfully the duties of his recognized calling as a Seer and Prophet. When the epoch of the dreaded Assyrian invasion was near at hand, God sent to his people a perfect king in Ezechias, and to the Prophet a most zealous auxiliary in his mission of religious reformation and patriotic revival. Even the wretched remnants of the Ten Tribes which had escaped the sword or the greed of the Assyrian, understood the lesson which both Isaias and their own prophets Micheas, Osee, and Amos had vainly taught them throughout all these years of delusion and guilt. When they found the glory of Samaria gone, and their country wasted like a stubble-field over which the fire had passed, they turned their eyes and their hearts to Jerusalem and its God, and sought with them an asylum in their utter despair.

But history tells us that the turn of Juda and Jerusalem was yet to come. The Babylonian captivity awaited them. This God had revealed in advance to Isaias, — and this forms the subject of the last twenty-seven chapters of this book. Chapters xxxviii. and xxxix. are out of their place in the order of time ; the sickness of Ezechias happened before the deliverance of Jerusalem and the flight of Sennacherib. But as the Prophet's soul was occupied with this central event in his life, he postponed what related to the illness and cure of the holy king to the thrilling recital of Jehovah's victory. This illness had occurred two years before the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, and fifteen years before the close of the royal life. But connected with the King's restoration to health is an incident which had great influence on the events that were soon tc follow on the flight of the Assyrian host.

Merodach-Baladan Iv., King of Babylon, anxious to cultivate friendly relations with the enemies of the Assyrians, had sent ambassadors to compliment the King of Juda on his recovery. "Ezechias rejoiced at their coming, and he showed them the storehouse of his aromatical spices, and of the silver, and of the gold, . . . and all things that were found in his treasures. There was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Ezechias showed them not." It was a display prompted by a vanity unworthy of so great a character, and condemned by sound policy as well as by sound sense. Forthwith the divine messenger is at hand to question the imprudent sovereign, and to receive a frank answer. "And Isaias said to Ezechias: Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold the days shall come, that all that is in thy house, and that thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried away unto Babylon. There shall not be anything left, saith the Lord. And of thy children that shall issue from thee, . . . they shall take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon."

4. This Babylonian captivity and the means to be employed by Providence to restore Juda become henceforth to the prophet not only a subject of continual and absorbing interest, but one which he speaks of as present. Cyrus, the destroyer of the Babylonian power, though yet unborn, is mentioned by name again and again, and the providential mission that he is to fulfill is clearly sketched out. But the crimes which bring on Juda this visitation, and the manifold evils of exile and bondage which are the chastisement of these crimes,— only remind the Prophet of the sad condition of the entire race of man, miserably degraded by the captivity of sin and serving false gods in their degradation. Side by side with the restoration by Cyrus is described the Redemption by the Messiah ; and together with the person of Cyrus we are made to behold the person of Christ. The birth, education, labors, sufferings, and death of the Redeemer are set forth in colors so vivid, minute, and life-like, that Isaias may be well said to be fulfilling the office of Evangelist rather than that of Prophet.

It is, however, to the book itself that you must go, dear Reader, to find in its inspired pages so much of light, and sweetness, and strength. For the Spirit who spoke by this great and holy man never fails to open the eyes and move the hearts of those who study his writings with humble and earnest faith.

The book of jeremias.

Two of the darkest reigns that ever disgraced any country, or saddened the hearts of men who believe in a Supreme Being and in the eternal laws of morality, separate Isaias from Jeremias. Manasses, born to the good King Ezechias after the latter's recovery from the mortal illness mentioned above, and about the very period of the siege and deliverance of Jerusalem, was as unlike his pious and public-spirited parent as a son could well be. The alliance which the former contracted with the Babylonians, and from which Isaias foretold the direst consequences, became a state necessity with his successor. Worse than that, however — worse indeed than any calamity which had ever before befallen the Kingdom of Juda — was the formal and open apostasy of Manasses. Not only did he forsake the faith of his father, but he introduced in its stead the foulest idol-worship of Babylon and Syria, banishing from the Temple every remnant of the worship of Jehovah, desecrating its precincts and the Holy of holies itself with the most odious heathen rites; blotting out, so far as he could, from the laws and institutions of his native country every trace of the "Law of God, every memorial of His past mercies to Israel. Not content with this, he persecuted with the most unsparing cruelty all those who were faithful to their conscience, the priests and prophets, especially, and, among these, Isaias. This great man, the stay of religion and nationality, the glory of his race and age, was now past eighty. Of course, years had not diminished his zeal in the service of his God and his country. And the last chapters in his prophecies are there to tell us that the beautiful mind had lost none of its power, and the prophet's divine eloquence none of its inspiration. Had the Holy Spirit disclosed to him the secret of his own cruel death at the hands of the impious Manasses? We cannot say. But there is a touching appositeness in the last utterances recorded by Isaias. " For Sion's sake, I will not hold my peace ; and for the sake of Jerusalem, I will not rest till her Just One come forth as brightness, and her Saviour be lighted as a lamp " (lxii. i). " Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this Beautiful One in His robe, walking in the greatness of His strength ? Why then is Thy apparel red, and Thy garments like those that tread in the wine-press " (lxiii. i, 2)? Are these the words of a martyr, conscious of his approaching fate, and gazing from afar on the form of the King of Martyrs, as He stands alone, with blood-stained garments and torn head and limbs on the wood of His cross, about to stretch forth His hands to the nails? For it is the constant tradition of both the Jewish and Christian churches that Manasses caused the great -souled prophet to be inclosed in the trunk of a tree and sawn in the middle.

It was the privilege of Jeremias to be called to fulfill his prophetic mission during the reign of Josias, the grandson of Manasses and the son of a father who rivaled Manasses in impiety and wickedness. During the reign of the saintly Josias and till the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldseans — that is, during a period of forty years — Jeremias continued to discharge the duties of his sacred office with a heroism and eloquence that make him rank only after Isaias. Like St. John the Baptist, he was sanctified before his birth for the sublime mission to which he was destined. And he needed all the extraordinary graces of which this first one was a pledge. For to none of the prophets or of the saints of the Old Law was assigned a mission so barren in consolation, so full of that intense bitterness which arises from the spectacle of prolonged national degeneracy and apostasy, and from the utter ruin of the dearest hopes of the priest and the patriot. It was a lifelong martyrdom. When he first heard the Divine Voice calling him to his long struggle with ignorance and iniquity — a woman Holda (Huldah) was the sole organ of the divine will in all Juda. Though afterward he was to have as his auxiliaries in the prophetic office not only Holda and his disciples, the brothers Baruch and Saraias, but Sophonias, Habacuc, and Urias, still, scattered as were the remnants of God's people both in Egypt and Mesopotamia, utterly desolate as was the land of Juda and Israel, and obstinately perverse as his countrymen and their leaders continued to be, Jeremias encountered nothing but contradiction, hatred, and persecution. He is imprisoned by his countrymen during the siege of Jerusalem, because he counsels them to make terms with the enemy, knowing supernaturally, as he does, that on a conditional surrender depends the preservation of the city and the Temple, as well as immunity from the frightful evils of a place carried by storm. He opposed, as did Isaias before him, every alliance with foreigners, and advocated as the only safeguards to national independence a total reform in manners and religion and unbounded loyalty to Jehovah. Even the good King Josias was continually hesitating between an alliance with Babylon and a league with Egypt. In spite of Jeremias' earnest remonstrances, the prince did attach himself to the Chaldseans, and perished by the hands of the Egyptians whom he persisted in attacking without cause. Thus the Prophet was assailed with equal hostility by both political parties in Jerusalem who happened to incline either for the Babylonian alliance or for the Egyptian. After the death of Josias began that succession of deplorable reigns each of which recalled the worst crimes of Manasses and Amon — princes and people continuing in exile and slavery what they had been in their own country, God-defying and God-forsaken.

As to the order in which these prophecies were given and consigned to writing, we are informed that, up to the fourth year of Joakim, King of Juda, Jeremias had not recorded his prophecies in writing. He, therefore, by divine command commits to writing "all the words " that he had spoken from the Lord " against Israel and Juda, and against all the nations." In this task his disciple Baruch fills the office of secretary. This first volume is destroyed in the wicked King's own chamber, and Jeremias is bidden to write another volume. This contains all that had been put down in the first "besides many more words than had been before" (chap, xxxvi. 1-32).

We can thus take these first thirty-six chapters as containing the first and principal portion of the prophecies of Jeremias, as well as the chief incidents of his own personal history as given by himself. Chapters xxxv. and xxxvi., however, interrupt the chronological order, the first to set forth the heroic fidelity of the Rechabites as a lesson to a sensual and faithless generation, and the other to give a history of the book itself, as well as to warn more solemnly both the nation and its King that the Babylonian captivity so long threatened was near at hand.

In chapter xxxvii. the prophet resumes the account of his mission under King Sedecias just where his narration ended in chapter xxxiv. At this point we find the Babylonians besieging Jerusalem, and the recreant King and his counselors send, in their terror, to consult Jeremias about the final issue. For the enemy had withdrawn his forces momentarily to meet the Egyptians advancing to the rescue. There is but one answer— rthe prediction so often repeated in vain: "The Chaldaeans shall come again, and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with fire." He cannot deliver to them a false message from the God of truth; and they will not "bring themselves to believe in the destruction of Jerusalem as foretold. So, he is cast into prison, first, and then the Egyptian faction demand that he shall be put to death (xxxviii. 4). The King consents, and the prophet is cast into the worst of dungeons as a preliminary to his execution. Saved from this peril by an Ethiopian slave, he is pressed more vehemently by Sedecias to tell him, the King, the truth as he desires it. "And Jeremias said to Sedecias, Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel : If thou wilt take a resolution and go out to the princes of the King of Babylon, thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burnt with fire ; and thou shalt be safe and thy house." Of course the King would not assent.

And then the end came (xxxix). The remaining chapters, as far as xlv., recount the taking of Jerusalem and the evils which followed. The Prophet remains among the ruins of his country still bent on helping the miserable remnants of his people left behind by the conqueror to return sincerely to the God of their fathers. He knows what the Almighty can do with a few faithful, repentant, and resolute hearts to build up even a destroyed nationality. And so his crushing grief is lightened in the endeavor to make of the few who remain of Juda and Israel true worshipers and true citizens. But political division and party rivalries, the bane of falling commonwealths and the curse of such as strive to rise, set the Jews against each other ; caused one faction to massacre the leaders of the other, and then to seek a refuge in Egypt against the vengeance of the Babylonians. The Prophet and his disciple, Baruch, are compelled to follow them thither. In vain did Jeremias announce that Egypt should not protect them ; and equally in vain, during his captivity in that land, did he try to convert these men from their evil ways. The very accomplishment of the prophecies which they had so often derided before the event, only made them the more bitterly hostile to him, and only rendered more intolerable his denunciation of the crimes which his fellow-exiles in Egypt added to all their former wickedness. At length — so the most ancient and venerable traditions say — they put him to death, in order to silence forever the voice which no bribe could buy and no fear intimidate. But they could not thereby still the voice of their own conscience nor remove from above their own heads the Almighty Hand and the sword of the divine justice toward which Jeremias had so often directed their eyes in vain.

The remaining chapters of the book must be read in the light of contemporaneous history and with the aid of the most scholarly critics.

The prophecy of baruch.

All agree that the illustrious man, who has given his name to this book, was the disciple, secretary, and associate of Jeremias. His noble birth and powerful connections were so well known, as well as the esteem in which he was held by his master, that the court party under Joakim attributed to Baruch's persuasion the great prophet's constancy in proclaiming the certain destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans. Both were imprisoned together, and both would have doubtless perished together had not the bad King's fears caused them to be reprieved; the taking of Jerusalem found them still in prison. The conquerors spared them. But their fate, according to the most ancient traditions, united them in life and death. They both died together in Egypt, witnessing to the end to the truth of Jehovah's prophecies. So must you, dear reader, study the writings and the lives of these two heroic men as one inseparable whole, full of elevating examples and divinest teachings.

Ezechiel.

Ezechiel, the son of Buzi, was of a priestly family, a contemporary of the two preceding prophets, and carried off a prisoner to Babylonia by Nabuchodonosor, together with King Jechonias, eleven years before the final capture and destruction of Jerusalem. He tells us that he was called to fulfill his prophetic mission " in the thirtieth year." And it has puzzled scholars not a little to find out from what event he reckons these years up to the "thirtieth." Be that event what it may, we know that the thirtieth year here mentioned coincided with the fifth of the captivity of Jechonias, as well as the fifth of the reign of his son, Sedecias. During the twenty years which followed Ezechiel did not cease to fill his sacred office. His chief purpose is to confirm in the faith his fellow-captives in Chaldsea. They despaired, in their bondage, of ever seeing their race restored to Palestine, many and clear as had been the declarations of Jeremias on this subject. What this great prophet had so often announced in his own country, what indeed he continued to predict in Jerusalem all through these first years of the captivity, Ezechiel was called to proclaim on the banks of the Euphrates. So that these two illustrious contemporaries were like two inspired singers taking up alternately the burden of the same song, the one in the far northeast amid the splendors of Babylonia, the other in the southwest and among the blindly-sinning multitudes of fore-doomed Jerusalem.

No other prophet has clothed his predictions and teachings under such varied and striking forms. Sometimes he gives his utterances the shape of distinct predictions (vi., vii., xx., etc.); sometimes they are proposed as allegories (xxiii., xxiv.); again as symbolical actions (iv., viii.), or similitudes (xii., xv.), or parables (xvii.); or as proverbs (xii. 22 ; xviii. 1 and following); or, finally, as visions (viii.-xi.) "The book," says Dr. Smith {Dictionary of the Bible, art. "Ezekiel "), "is divided into two great parts, of which the destruction of Jerusalem is the turning-point ; chapters i.— xxiv. contain predictions delivered before that event, and xxv.-xlviii. after it, as we see from xxvi. 2. Again, chapters i.-xxxii. are mainly occupied with correction, denunciation and reproof, while the remainder deal chiefly in consolation and promise. A parenthetical section in the middle of the book (xxv.-xxxii.) contains a group of prophecies against seven foreign nations."

Another very convenient grouping of the prophecies, according to the same author, is that of Havernick, who divides the book into nine sections, as follows:. I. Ezechiel's call, i.-iii. 15. Ii. The general carrying out of the commission, iii. 16-vii. Iii. The rejection of the people because of their idolatry, viii.-xi. Iv. The sins of the age rebuked in detail, xii.-xix. V. The nature of the judgment and the guilt which caused it, xx. -xxiii. Vi. The meaning of the now commencing punishment, xxiv. Vii. God's judgment denounced on seven heathen nations : Ammonites, xxv. 1-7; Moab, 8-14; the Philistines, 15-17; Tyre, xxvi.-xxviii. 19; Sidon, 20-24; Egypt, xxix.-xxxii. Viii. Prophecies after the destruction of Jerusalem concerning the future condition of Israel, xxxiii.-xxxix. Ix. The glorious consummation, xl.-xlviii.

One most touching incident in the prophet's life deserves especial mention. During the ninth year of his captivity, his wife died at the very time that Jerusalem was sorely pressed by Nabuchodonosor. " Son of man, write thee the name of this day on which the King of Babylon hath set himself against Jerusalem. . . . Woe to the bloody city of which I shall make a great bonfire. ... I will judge thee according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, saith the Lord. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying : I take from thee the desire of thy eyes with a stroke; and thou shalt not lament, nor weep; neither shall thy tears run down. Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead : let the tire of thy head be upon thee, and thy shoes on thy feet, and cover not thy face, nor eat the meat of mourners. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and my wife died in the evening ; and I did in the morning as He had commanded me. And the people said to me : Why dost thou not tell us what these things mean that thou doest ? And I said, The word of the Lord came to me, saying, Speak to the house of Israel : Thus saith the Lord God, ' Behold, I will profane My sanctuary, the glory of your realm, and the thing that your eyes desire, and for which your soul feareth : your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword.' And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your faces, nor shall you eat the meat of mourners. You shall have crowns on your head, and shoes on your feet" (xxiv. 1-23).

Alas, grievous as was the lot of these poor wrong-headed exiles in Babylonia at the moment of this particular prediction, it was to become incomparably worse after the return of Nabuchodonosor. They were to be separated and scattered through the length and breadth of the empire, most of them to perish through misery and hardship. This is the reason why the latter misfortune is so great as compared with the former, that even the loss of the nearest and dearest, and the annihilation of the most cherished national hopes are as nothing compared with the intolerable bitterness of their coming ills.

Daniel.

While the Hebrews were enduring all the humiliations and hardships of captivity and exile under the yoke of their Assyrian masters, Providence was preparing avengers for all the impiety and cruelty displayed in Palestine and elsewhere by Sennacherib and his successors. The Chaldaeans had ever borne with impatience the rule of Nineveh ; and before this proud city fell forever Babylon began to reassert its own independence and superiority. Nabopolassar, the father of Nabuchodonosor, firmly established the Babylonian supremacy, and with the assistance of the Medes under Cyaxares effected the utter and final destruction of Nineveh.

For the exiled Hebrews the annihilation of the Assyrian power only meant a change of masters, not freedom from the yoke or restoration to their native land. The most extravagant despotism and the most repulsive forms of idolatry marked the new Chaldaean empire, as we may judge not only from the Book of Daniel, but from the very annals which are daily brought to light from the ruins of the Babylonian cities.

Daniel too, like Isaias, was of the royal race of David, was carried away into captivity in the third year of King Joakim, and with three young companions was brought up as a page in the royal palace. As the idolatrous practices of the Chaldaeans demanded that all animal food served on the royal tables should have been previously offered to the gods, to partake of them implied a participation in this idol-worship. This to the worshipers of the true God was a defilement and an abomination. And such meats Daniel and his companions refused to touch, preferring to feed exclusively on vegetable food. On this fare they grew up to robust and comely manhood. And, as had long before happened to Joseph in the house of Putiphar, heroic temperance brought them supernatural wisdom. Though scarcely emerged from boyhood, Daniel, as the story of Susanna proves, was known among his fellow-captives to be possessed of a knowledge all divine. In the fourth year of the noble youth's exile happened the famous vision sent to the king of the statue made of divers metals, and the stern interpretation given of the monarch's dream by Daniel. The despot is awed for the moment into acknowledging the God of Israel as the only living God. But his subsequent career of conquest turns his head, and he, too, will have himself worshiped after the manner of his ancestor Bel or Baal. Then comes a second terrific dream (iv. 8-27; which Daniel also explains, and is followed by the proud king's salutary expiation. Finally, under Baltassar (Belshazzar), a third fearful vision is sent, prophetic of the impending doom of the empire itself. Daniel is again sent for to read "the hand-writing on the wall;" and that very night Babylon is taken by Cyrus and his Persians, and by Darius and his Medes.

The seven first chapters of the Book of Daniel are partly historical and partly prophetical, while the four following relate to the rise and fall of the great empires which are to rule the earth, and among which shall be cast the lot of the children of God till the end of time. In chapter ix. occurs the celebrated prophecy of the "seventy weeks of years" after the expiration of which Christ the Messiah was to consummate the work of redemption. In the last two chapters, xiii. and xiv., are found the story of Susanna and that of Bel and the Dragon.

The twelve minor peophets.

All the writers, who in the Old Testament are designated under the title of Prophets, lived within the period elapsed from the year before Christ, 784 to 445, the date of Nehemias' governorship over Judaea, a space, therefore, of about three hundred and forty years. Of the Four Greater Prophets we have already spoken. But, as the Twelve Lesser Prophets have lived at the same time with their more illustrious brethren in the prophetic office, giving to these, under God's inspiration and direction, the aid of their ministry, so it seems but rational to group them together in the order in which they lived. Thus we shall have four groups: 1st. Osee, Amos, Jonas, Michasas_, and Nahum, who were contemporaries of Isaias. 2d. Sophonias, Joel, and Habacuc, who belong to the epoch of Jeremias. 3d. Abdias, who lived during the period of the captivity, thus is a contemporary of Daniel and Ezechiel. 4th. Aggias, Zacharias, and Malachias belong to the time of the Restoration, extending from Zorobabel in 546 to Nehemias in 445.

So, dear reader, it will help you not a little toward the understanding of what is most important in each prophecy, if you will go to the table on page 00, and then read a brief summary of the reigns of the contemporary kings whether of Israel or Juda. Thereby you will be better able to see the drift of the prophecy and to compare each prediction with what is contained in the book of the Greater Prophet, who lived at the same epoch, and for whose assistance God inspired and sent the Minor Prophets of his age.

Another advice we must here give parents or others who are desirous or accustomed to read for the young and innocent select passages from the Scripture, is — to be very careful not to allow their pure-minded and unsuspecting charge to read for themselves and without discrimination the books of the prophets. There are passages in them which might and would disedify or shock the sense of English readers.

Eastern nations, in the days of Isaias and Daniel, were anything rather than refined in their manners, their sentiments, or their language, although they were far advanced in the arts of mere material civilization. Even in Palestine, all through the centuries over which extended the lives and teachings of the prophets, there existed a sensuality in manners, derived from the too common practice of the abominable idolatry of their Chanaanite and Babylonian neighbors, and a corresponding coarseness of language, of which but few among us, happily, have any conception.

Hence it is, that the prophets sent to rouse men steeped in vice and almost brutified by the prevailing idol-worship from their deep sleep of forgetfulness or insensibility to divine things, use figures, comparisons, parables, allegories, expressions which to us are most shocking, but which conveyed the truth in the only form calculated to strike and startle the God-forgetting generations among whom they lived. Over these passages the guides of youth will pass to find what is edifying and beautiful and instructive in these inspired writings.

I. Osee, amos, jonas, mich^Eas, and nahum.

i. Osee began his mission most probably in the last year of Jeroboam Ii., King of Israel (died B. c. 784), and continued his labors during sixty years down to the reign of Ezechias, King of Juda. He with his brother prophets in the northern kingdom did for the enlightenment and salvation of the Ten Tribes what Isaias was at the same time doing for the Kingdom of Juda. Jeroboam Ii. had been the most fortunate of all the rulers of the northern kingdom ; had wrested from the surrounding Pagan nations not only the territories belonging to his own subject tribes, but also that which belonged to Juda and Benjamin and which had been long held by their enemies. This restoration of the entire patrimony of God's people had been the subject of more than one prophecy, and the restorer had even been designated as a deliverer in the inspired utterances. However Jeroboam Ii. was not the man to unite piety toward the true God with the courage of the soldier and the wisdom of the statesman. He could not or would not understand that unity of belief and worship was the great secret of national strength, prosperity, and invincibility. In religious matters he was the worthy successor of Jeroboam I. and of Jehu, favored idolatry to the exclusion of the worship of Jehovah, and allowed himself and his people to float unresistingly down the stream of drunkenness and licentiousness. As we shall see, Amos (vii. 9) predicted the utter overthrow of this prevaricating dynasty.

The first three chapters of Osee are filled by one terrible allegory full of light and menace for both kingdoms. God again and again in Scripture speaks of His love for this chosen race as that of a husband for the woman whom he has made his wife, choosing her from among all living women. The favors conferred on Israel He continually likens to the extraordinary proofs of affection, tenderness, and profuse liberality, which the most devoted of husbands never wearies in bestowing on the bride of his choice. It was the divine purpose to make of the privileged people a queen among nations. This purpose had been thwarted by the incurable perversity of the chosen one, and all the divine liberality and magnificence made the occasion of the foulest guilt. What reason would not favored Israel have of accusing the Most High of being untrue to His covenant, if He had neglected His own people despite their inviolable fidelity and heroic devotion, and lavished on the idolatrous nations round about the favors promised exclusively to His own? What if all the transgressions and the odium of faithlessness and t inconstancy could be laid to His account? This is what is implied in the fearful allegory of these first chapters. Their thought, imagery, and expressions, are borrowed from the life and language of a people lost to all sense of guilt and shame, and accessible only to the terrible threats implied in the converse of the above supposition, and suggested by the awakened consciousness of a nation that had so often in the past experienced the prodigies of Jehovah's love, and which is now threatened with the extremity of His vengeance. "The children of Israel shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without altar. . . . And after this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their King: and they shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the last days" (iii. 4, 5). This first portion may well apply to the close of Jeroboam's brilliant reign, while the troublous interregnum of eleven years whicn followed on his death may have filled the popular mind with serious apprehensions about the near fulfillment of the prophet's threat.

The succeeding chapters strike the reader of biblical history with the same feeling of singular aptness, when one remembers that the popular leaders in the northern, as well as in the southern kingdom were always hankering after an alliance with the Egyptian or the Mesipotamian kings, while they and the blind multitude they misled were plunging deeper every day into the criminal excesses reproved by the divine law. " Ephraim saw his sickness and Juda his band : and Ephraim went to the Assyrian, and sent to the avenging king. And he shall not be able to heal you, neithei shall he be able to take off the band from you. For I will be like a lioness to Ephraim and like a lion's whelp to the house of Juda : 1 will catch, and go: I will take away, and there is none that can rescue" (v. 13-15). "Ephraim himself is mixed among the nations: Ephraim is become as bread baked under the ashes, that is not turned. . . . They called upon Egypt and went to the Assyrians" (vii. 8-1 1). . . . " Egypt shall gather them together, Memphis shall bury them : nettles shall inherit their beloved silver, the bur shall be in their tabernacles. The days of visitation are come, the days of repaying are come : Know ye, O Israel, that the prophet was foolish, the spiritual man was mad, for the multitude of thy iniquity, and the multitude of thy madness. . . . My God shall cast them away, because they hearkened not to him : and they shall be wanderers among the nations ! " (ix. 6-17.)

So Osee in Samaria, as Isaias in Jerusalem, was looked upon by the scheming politicians as a madman, and by the pleasure-seeking populace as a fool, because he dared threaten the nation in the noonday of its prosperity and pride with defeat and dispersion. And yet the burthen is laid on them both to proclaim the coming doom to every prince who ascended the throne, and to the daily crowd who rushed to the groves and high places, to the altars of Ashtarte and haunts of forbidden pleasure.

But these incorruptible and fearless men, in whose hearts the love of country and race was inseparable from the love of their Master, ceased not to bear their witness in the midst of the sinful crowd. "Ephraim feedeth on the wind, and followeth the [changes of the] heat : all the day long he multiplied lies and desolation : and he hath made a covenant with the Assyrians, and carried oil into Egypt. Therefore there is a judgment of the Lord with Juda, and a visitation for Jacob: He will render to him according to his ways, and according to his devices. . . . Therefore turn thou to thy God : Keep mercy and judgment, and hope in thy God always" (xii. 1-6).

Would you, dear reader, understand both the purpose and the mission of such prophets as Osee, then go back to 2 Paralipomenon xviii., and peruse the entire chapter carefully. Few scenes in sacred or profane history are so full of salutary instruction, or so powerfully drawn as that in which the wily and impious Achab and the pious but inconsistent Joshaphat are placed, in presence of the population of Samaria, directly beneath the successive influence of the lying prophets of Baal and the cruelly-treated minister of Jehovah. Samaria is the capital of "Ephraim" or the Kingdom of Israel. From the perusal of that single chapter you can understand what enemies the worshipers of the true God found among their own brethren, the descendants of Jacob, the descendants even of Ephraim, the favored son of Joseph.

2. Amos.

This man of God had not been trained in the schools of the prophets, and, as we may judge from his style, knew little, if anything, of book-learning. He was by profession a dresser of sycamore or wild fig trees, and one of the numerous " herdsmen of Thecua," alternately pasturing his flocks or dressing his trees on the hills that stretch around his native town between Hebron and the Dead Sea. He was older than Osee, and exercised the prophetic office before him, about the middle of the reign of Jeroboam Ii. ; that is, about the year 800 before Christ. If you have read, as we suggested, of the visit paid to the idolatrous Samaria and its dissolute court by the good King Josaphat, you may begin to have some conception of the dreadful apostasy of Ephraim or the Northern Kingdom. Not content with the Egyptian idols — the images of the ox worshiped on the banks of the Nile, and which Jeroboam I. had solemnly set up in the sanctuary of Bethel — Achab had filled Samaria with the abominable statues of Baal, and its palaces and temples with hundreds upon hundreds of priests, magicians, and prophets devoted to the service of the Sidonian god. These were the sights and this the worship with which Josaphat did not fear to defile his own soul and those of his followers in visiting the beautiful city where reigned Achab and Jezabel. But the power and splendor of Jezabel, Achab, and the First Jeroboam were cast into the shade by the military genius, the conquests, and the prudent administration of the Second. Israel (Ephraim) was then at the very highest point of glory, and with the prosperity of the Kingdom had increased the splendor of idolatry, the corruption of all classes, and the uncontrolled oppression of the poor by the rich.

Just when Samaria was thus steeped in sensual pleasure, and intoxicated with its recent greatness and glory, God sent the poor, illiterate herdsman of Thecua all the way to Samaria and Bethel to rebuke the prince, the priests, and the people for their crimes, and to announce the approach of the Assyrians with chains and a yoke ..." Hear ye this word, ye fat kine that are in the mountains of Samaria — you that oppress the needy, and crush the poor. . . . Come ye to Bethel and do wickedly ; to Galgal, and multiply transgressions ; and bring in the morning your victims, your tithes in three days ... I destroyed [some of] you, as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, and you were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning : yet you returned not to Me, saith the Lord . . . Hear ye this word which I take up concerning you for a lamentation. The House of Israel is fallen, and it shall rise tio more' 1 (iv., v.) ! "And the high places of the idol shall be thrown down, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste : and I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword " (vii. 9).

Thereupon Amasias the High Priest of Bethel expels the prophet from the land. But the fearless Seer, ere he departs, declares to Israel one last vision, in which the terrible justice which strikes the unrepentant is blended with the tender mercy that will spare and not destroy utterly. "Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth : but yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For behold I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, as corn is sifted in a sieve : and there shall not a little stone fall to the ground" (ix. 8, 9).

3. Jonas.

It is a not improbable opinion among biblical scholars that Jonas was anterior in time to both Amos and Osee. He is generally thought to have exercised his ministry during the reigns of Joas, King of Israel, and of his son, Jeroboam Ii. He is the representative of our Lord both in His death and in His glorious resurrection. The mission on which the prophet was sent — that of procuring the conversion and the salvation of an entire people; his being cast into the sea during a storm to save the remaining ship's crew from perishing ; the miracle by which his life is preserved amid the depths of the sea, and he is cast ashore the third day to continue his journey and perform the errand on which he is divinely sent ; all this is most wonderful, even in the history of that people whose life was a series of stupendous miracles, and whose existence down to the present day is a miracle that arrests the attention of all serious-minded persons. The resurrection of Christ — the basis of the Christian's faith and highest hopes — is the great central miracle in the history of Revealed Religion. The conversion of the pagan world hinged on a belief in it. The men who proclaimed it, and who had witnessed it, sealed their testimony both by miracles and their own blood. It was a supernatural fact, supernaturally proven to the world. The miracle of Jonas, which prefigured it, was also a supernatural fact to which God's people bore constant witness. The Divine Power which shone forth so transcendently on Calvary, shone also with surpassing evidence in the case of him who bore the figure of Christ buried in the sepulchre and arisen on the third day. To one who believes in the Living God and in His omnipotence, it is worse than folly to question the power of preserving life amid the most terrible dangers, and where no hope of escape appears to the eye of mere reason. If I believe in that Fatherly Hand which saved Daniel in the Lions' Den, and his three young companions amidst the flames of the Chaldsean furnace, why should I hesitate to believe that the same Hand could shield from harm in the deepest depths of ocean — the servant, albeit a momentar.ly recreant one — on whose mission a nation's welfare depended ?

We cannot measure b) ;he rule and square the power of Him who made the heavens and the earth, and with whom alone are the incommunicable secrets of life and death.

4. Micheas.

He was a native of Morasthi or Maresheth, a village in the southwestern part of the territory of Juda, and a contemporary of Isaias, whose phraseology he sometimes borrows (compare Micheas iv. 1-13; Isaias ii. 2, and xli. 15). During the reign of Ezechias, as we learn from Jeremias xxvi. 6-18, Micheas prophesied the chastisements about to befall both the northern and the southern kingdom. He foretells the coming of Salmanazar, the ruin of Samaria, which shall be made to resemble "a heap of stones in the field when a vineyard is planted." Then he predicts the evils which the invasion of Sennacherib will bring on Juda and Jerusalem. " I am filled with the strength of the Spirit of the Lord, with judgment and power, to declare unto Jacob his wickedness, and to Israel his sin. Hear this, ye princes of the house of Jacob, and ye judges of the house of Israel ; you that abhor judgment, and pervert all that is right . . . Because of you, Sion shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall be as a heap of stones, and the mountain of the Temple as the high places of the forests" (iii. 8-12). By the side of these clear and stern denunciations of coming woe and dispersion, are found no less clear and comforting promises of redemption from captivity, especially of the universal Redemption to be wrought by Christ. "And thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands of Juda; out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be the Ruler in Israel : and His going forth [is] from the beginning, from the days of eternity" (v. 2). Then come touching adjurations in which the Most High recalls to his ungrateful people the miracles performed of old for their deliverance, and the worthlessness of their present sacrificial worship, while they themselves lack all the virtues which are alone pleasing to the Deity. "I will show thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requireth of thee : Verily, to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk solicitous with thy God ! " Such are the divine lessons of righteousness and piety which these inspired men ceased not to teach, not for their own generation only, but for all time.

5. Nahum.

He prophesied under Ezechias; and the desolation which had befallen the northern kingdom, as well as the destruction which had been wrought in the Kingdom of Juda by the mighty and pitiless hosts of Sennacherib had fired the prophet's soul against the Assyrians. The downfall of their power and the utter ruin of Nineveh, their capital, form the subject of Nahum's three magnificent chapters. "The burden of Ninive ! " he begins, one may imagine after the sudden and miraculous overthrow of Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem. The entire prophecy is colored by the spectacle of this terrible rout of the Assyrians. " The Lord is patient, and great in power, and will not cleanse and acquit [the guilty]. The Lord's ways [are] in the tempest and a whirlwind, and clouds [are] the dust of His feet. He rebuketh the sea and drieth it up : and bringeth all the rivers to be a desert." One may almost see the breath of the divine vengeance blowing on the countless army of horsemen, spearmen, and chariots that encompassed Jerusalem, like a surging tide which had hitherto overborne everything in its course. And lo ! Jehovah blows upon it and it disappears with the morning light, living wave impelling living wave before it, and leaving the land covered far and wide with the wreck of chariots, horsemen, and infantry ! "Who can stand before the face of his indignation? and who shall resist the fierceness of His anger? " Then comes the prophecy of the fall of Nineveh — the mistress and corruptor of all Asia, at the zenith of her glory and power when the Seer pronounced her doom. " Woe to thee, O city of blood, all full of lies and violence ! Rapine shall not depart from thee. The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the neighing horse, and of the running chariot, and of the horsemen coming up: and of the shining sword, and of the glittering spear, and of a multitude slain, and of grievous destruction ! . . ."

Compare these pregnant chapters with the accounts given in our own days of the ruins of Nineveh and her palaces, and of the monuments and annals that had lain buried for thousands of years in this vast grave of a pitiless despotism.

Ii. Sophonias, joel, and habacuc

i. Sophonias.

He lived in the reign of Josias, King of Juda, and was, it is thought, descended from the holy King Ezechias. He began his prophetic office some time before Jeremias entered on his, and also before Josias had seriously begun to reform the abuses and corruptions which Sophonias so bitterly denounces. There are but three chapters, the first of which sets forth the national sins and the certain retribution they shall bring on Juda. The Church has embodied in her liturgic hymns some of the sublime and terrible imagery of the prophet. "The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and exceeding swift: The voice of the day of the Lord is bitter . . . That day [is] a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and obscurity, a day of clouds and whirlwinds, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high bulwarks." The Chaldaeans are to be the instrument of the divine wrath in chastising all Palestine ; and then the hand of the Lord shall fall heavily on both Nineveh and Babylon. The remnants of Israel shall be gathered together and the Gentiles themselves shall find salvation.

2. Joel.

Some weighty Jewish and Christian authorities make this prophet a contemporary of Joram, son of Achab, and King of Israel, who died in the yeai 889 B. c. For the mention by Joel of a great famine similar to that which occurred during the reign of that prince afforded a foundation for their opinion. If, however, this famine is identical with that mentioned by Jeremias (viii. 13), then this as well as other reasons allow us to make Joel a contemporary of the latter prophet. Jeremias says: "There is no grape on the vines, and there are no figs on the fig-tree, the leaf is fallen : and I have given them the things that are passed away." Joel, on the other hand, says : " That which the palmerworm hath left, the locust hath eaten : and that which the locust hath left, the bruchus (cankerworm) hath eaten : and that which the bruchus hath left, the mildew hath destroyed." This plague, however, is only sent in mercy to rouse men to do penance for their sins. " Because the Day of the Lord is at hand, and it shall come like destruction from the mighty." The description of this dreadful day reminds one forcibly of that given in the prophecy of Sophonias, as quoted above. From this twofold picture of the temporal visitation of famine and the terrible judgment of the Last Day, Joel turns to the first coming of Christ — the " Teacher of Justice, and He will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you as in the beginning." Thus with the visions of judgment, and rigorous judgment, are always blended visions of mercy and reconciliation ; and with the calamities and miseries of the present are mixed the glorious perspectives of future redemption and everlasting peace.

3. Habacuc.

The Rabbinical traditions assign the reign of Manasses as the time of this prophet's mission. The latest researches, however, place him with Sophonias in the reign of Josias, thereby making him contemporary with the beginning of Jeremias' career. He and his two brother-prophets, Joel and Nahum, are looked upon by Hebrew scholars as classical models of diction. He predicts the downfall of the Chaldsean empire, brought on by the national vices, insatiable ambition, greed, cruelty, drunkenness, and manifold idolatry. How aptly the prophet's description and denunciation of all and each of these vices apply to the conquerors, statesmen, and politicians of our own day ! . . .

"The proud man . . . who hath enlarged his desire like hell [the gvave]: and is himself like death, and he is never satisfied : but will gather together to him all nations, and heap together to him all people. Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a dark speech concerning him : and it shall be said, Woe to him that heapeth together that which is not his own ? how long also doth he load himself with thick clay ? Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee? and they be stirred up that shall tear thee, and thou shalt be a spoil to them ? . . . Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and prepareth a city by iniquity " (ii. 5-12) ! The third and last chapter contains one of the most sublime hymns to be found in the Bible : the Church in hei solemn office applies it to the triumph of the Redeemer.

Iii. Abdias.

It is quite uncertain when this prophet lived. Some scholars think that he lived at the same time with Elias. But others, with much more probability, say that he lived during the Babylonian captivity. He denounces the cruel persecutions got up against the exiled Jews by their traditional enemies the Edomites, of which we have an instance in the book of Esther. They followed in the wake of the Chaldaean conquerors, watching every road and by-way through which the fugitive Jews could escape, and cut them down mercilessly. The prophet predicts that Edom shall in its turn share the fate of its neighbors, without ever sharing their restoration to national independence and prosperity. On the contrary, they are to become the vassals of their restored Jewish brethren.

Iv. Aggeus, zacharias, and malachias.

The first two of these prophets date their mission from the same year, " the second year of Darius." Both were probably born in exile and returned to Jerusalem with Zorobabel, in conformity with the edict of Cyrus. The building of the temple had been suspended during the space of fourteen years in consequence of the hostility of the neighboring Samaritans and Edomites (Moabites and Ammonites). Aggeus is sent to Zorobabel, the Governor of Judaea, and to Jesus the son of Josedec, the High Priest, to rouse their zeal for the completion of the sacred edifice, the very symbol and soul of Hebrew nationality. They and their countrymen are consoled for the inferiority of the second temple, as compared to the first, by the divine assurance that the former shall be glorified by the personal presence of the Messiah Himself. The resumption of this great national work was also the first object of Zacharias' prophetic labors. The first six chapters contain visions regarding the events which were then happening in Judaea, mingled with the prospective glories of the Christian Church and the conversion of the Gentiles. The completion of the Temple structure, as a thing essential to the national religion and a vital condition of the national existence, is insisted on in each of these successive visions. " Thus saith the Lord : I will return to Jerusalem in mercies : My house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts" (i. 16). The nations which have dispersed and oppressed Juda shall see their power broken, and shall no longer oppose the restoration of Hebrew nationality. Jerusalem shall so increase in extent through the multitudes of returning exiles, that qo wall can contain them. " I will be tt it, saith the Lord, a wall of fire round about" (ii. 4). The zealous priests who devote themselves lo this grea\ work of reconstruction shall be divinely protected against the calumnies of their enemies and the disfavor of the Chaldasan Kings. Jesus the son of Josedec, to whom this personally applies, brings, by his very name, the vision of the future Jesus before the prophet's mind. " Hear, O Jesus, thou High Priest, thou and thy friends that dwell before thee, . . . behold, I will bring My Servant the Orient" (iii. 8). And so the prophetic visions continue, consoling and encouraging the toilers under Zorobabel, and strengthening their faith with the reiterated promise of His coming, who should reign over the whole earth. " Thou shalt take gold and silver, and shalt make crowns, and thou shalt set them on the head of Jesus the son of Josedec the High Priest. And thou shalt speak to him, saying : Thus saith the Lord of hosts, . . . Behold a Man, the Orient is His Name . . . He shall build a temple to the Lord : and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne ; and He shall be a priest upon His throne " (vi. n-f3).

To the zealous men who desire to see the great ordained fasts kept solemnly as a means of propitiating the divine favor, Zacharias gives a reasonable answer. In the days of their former prosperity, the solemn fasts were kept in a narrow and selfish spirit. God had commanded them, while they fasted, " Judge ye true judgment, and show ye mercy and compassion every man to his brother. And oppress not the widow, and the fatherless, and the stranger and the poor; and let not a man devise evil in his heart against his brother" (vii. 9, 10). Now that they and their fathers have paid so dearly for the violation of these divine precepts, the new generations must observe the spirit of the law while attending to the letter. " These then are the things which ye shall do. Speak ye truth every one to his neighbor: judge ye truth and judgment of peace in your gates. And let none of you imagine evil in his heart against his friend : and love not a false oath: for all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord" (viii. 16, 17). Let true religion but shine forth in these godly virtues, "And many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem. ... In those days . . . ten men of all languages of the Gentiles shall take hold, and shall hold fast the skirt of one that is a Jew, saying : ' We will go with you ; for we have heard that God is with you' " (viii. 22, 23). Are we not made to assist at the preaching of the Twelve Fishermen of Galilee among the proud nations of the Roman Empire ?

The three succeeding chapters, ix.-xi., are different in character from the preceding. They contain threatening prophecies against the cities of Syria, Phoenicia, and the Philistine seaboard— threats which soon afterward found their realisation through the arms of Alexander the Great. Juda is comforted with the assurance that, meanwhile, no harm shall befall its children. These prophetic utterances, however, are in many cases only applicable to the epoch of the Messiah; for here we find the very words which the Evangelist St. Matthew applies to our Lord on his last entrance into Jerusalem: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion ! shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem ! Behold thy King will come to thee, the Just and Saviour : He is poor and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (ix. 9) ! There are menaces against guilty priests; a glowing description of the triumphs of Christianity ; a distinct prediction of the final destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple under the Romans, and of the rejection of the Jews. The three last chapters, xii.-xiv., have for heading " The burden of the word of the Lord upon Israel." The events of the life of Christ, and the characters of His Person and sufferings, are portrayed with extraordinary vividness. A few pregnant sentences point out the trials of His church : xiii. 8, 9.

Zacharias is the most diffuse and obscure of all the Minor Prophets.

Malachias, the last of these inspired men, has been thought by some scholars to be an angel in human form — the name itself meaning in Hebrew " a messenger of Jehovah," Malachijah. Some writers have identified him with Esdras. What, however, seems most probable is that he lived after Aggeus and Zacharias, and during the rule of Esdras and Nehemias. In spite of the reformation which these great men labored so strenuously to effect in the morals and religious discipline of the restored people, Malachias, like his two elder brother-prophets, was offended by the scandals and abuses which were constantly occurring, and which inspired but little hope of a general and lasting improvement. The leading classes, whose example was to be the light of the nation, were themselves a prey to corruption even at this early stage of the Restoration. "To you, O Priests, that despise My Name, and have said, Wherein have we despised Thy Name ? You offer polluted bread upon My altar, and you say, Wherein have we polluted Thee? In that you say, The table of the Lord is contemptible. . . . Who is there among you that will shut the doors, and will kindle the fire on My altar gratis? I nave no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts " (i. 9, 10). And then comes the famous prophecy of " the clean oblation," to be offered in His Name "in every place from the rising of the sun even to the going down." Besides, the priests, who are the guardians and expounders of the law, were giving at that very time the fatal example of marrying Gentile wives, thereby renewing the sin which, more than any other in the past, had led to the national corruption, apostasy, and ruin. To this incurable inconstancy and unfaithfulness there remains but one remedy, the rejection of the Jewish dispensation and worship. " Presently the Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the Testament whom you desire, shall come to His Temple. Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts" (iii. 1).

Ii. Poetical and didactic books.

The book of job.

This book— the authorship of which the most respectable Hebrew tradition, that of the Targum, attributes to Moses — is now acknowledged to resemble in style the Pentateuch and other most ancient Hebrew writings. It is generally believed among scholars that Job, whose name signifies "one persecuted or afflicted," lived in the northern part of Arabia. Indeed, St. Jerome, in his day, remarked, that Job's diction bore a wonderful resemblance to the best Arabic compositions. Be that as it may, the great lesson taught by the life of Job is, that one who had "none like him in the earth, a simple and upright man, and fearing God, and avoiding evil," remains faithful to God and true to his own conscience, amid the most terrible afflictions. There is also that other sweet and consoling lesson taught at the same time, that the Father who permits His own to be most sorely tried, never allows the trial to be too much for the sufferer. His own Divine Spirit is ever nigh flooding the soul with light from above, even when the night of suffering is darkest, and always warming the heart to love, to bear, to hope, when all human joys fail and all earthly affection is turned into bitterness. He who marks out for each star its fixed orbit in the heavens, and who sets to the ocean the limits beyond which its fury cannot prevail, also knows how to limit our misfortunes, to revisit us even here below with hours of sunshine and felicity that give us an earnest of the eternal joys. Read for yourselves, O children of God, and learn from Job how to bear, and how to hope in the Living God.

The book of psalms.

David, "the sweet singer of Israel," is not only the great national poet of the chosen race, but the loved songster of the Christian church, whose words of prayer, praise, and triumph all true Christian homes and hearts have ever made their own. These inspired songs reflect the whole personal history of David from the time that he was secretly anointed King by Samuel, called to become the defender of the Kingdom against Goliath and his Philistines, obliged to charm with the sweet sounds of harp and voice the evil spirit of jealousy that possessed Saul, tried by persecution, exile, and treachery all through the remaining years of Saul's ill-starred reign, down to the dark days of Gilboe. The shepherd-lad of Bethlehem, the young conqueror of the Philistines, the son-in-law of Saul, the fugitive among the desert places of Israel, was still the man whose heart " thirsted after God," and whose frequent songs breathe the faith and hope and fervent love of these chequered years. How he delighted, when in possession of the throne, to form bodies of singers for the service of the Tabernacle, and to compose the most thrilling hymns for the solemn feasts of the nation ! When he brought, at length, the Ark in triumph to the city of Bfivid, he would himself be foremost among the singers, casting aside the warrior's armor and the kingly robes, to sing and dance in a simple linen tunic before the Ark — the visible resting-place of his loved and adored Jehovah in the midst of the people. And when the Queen ridiculed her royal husband for what she thought so unseemly an exhibition, how David's indignation breaks forth ! " Before the Lord who chose me rather than thy father (Saul) and than all his house, ... I will both play, and make myself meaner than I have done : and I will be little in my own eyes." . . . David is still in heart the shepherd-lad of Bethlehem, whom God had so often protected against the assault of beasts of prey prowling in the night, and whose soul even then delighted in singing the praises of his Almighty Protector. So will he continue to the end. His one dreadful fall in the heyday of his power, only creates in his repentant soul a deeper humility, and calls forth those penitential psalms which are the comfort of ail souls acquainted with sin and sorrow.

To the people whom he had made so great and so happy his psalms continued to be the cry of the national heart on all solemn festivals. Even in captivity they found in these inspired and prophetic strains incentives to sincere repentance for their past ingratitude, and the most cheering promises of future restoration to country and freedom. The Christian Church, ever since the day of Sion's final destruction, has continued to make of David's psalms her own book of praise and prayer. Around the altar of the Lamb in Jerusalem, as well as around every altar where He abides from the rising to the setting sun, we sing evermore the canticles of Sion's prophet-King. Other Hebrew poets, inspired like David himself, have added song after song to his immortal book ; theirs, however, are only a few. David is still rightly called the Psalmist.

The book of proverbs.

This is the production of King Solomon. The first nine chapters excel the remainder of the book in poetic beauty of diction as well as in continuity of thought. The next twelve chapters are composed of separate and, apparently, independent maxims. Chapters xxv.-xxix. were composed under the reign of the best and greatest of Solomon's successors, the saintly King Ezechias, who collected the scattered maxims and utterances of his ancestor and added them to Solomon's book. The last two chapters are of uncertain authorship.

The book of ecclesiastes.

This is also the work of Solomon, who throughout the book speaks of himself as the Koheleth, "preacher," ecclesiastes in Greek. We know from sacred history how wisely Solomon began his reign, and with what shameful folly and guilt he tarnished its premature close. This book is the composition of a man who has had his fill of worldly greatness and enjoyment, who has drunk to the dregs the cup of life, and found only bitterness and weariness at the bottom. It is as if the Spirit of God had forced the guilty King to confess that all is " vanity of vanities," save to fear God from one's youth and inviolably to keep His commandments. "And all things that are done God will bring to judgment! " What must have been, at its latest hour, the terrors of that soul so privileged and so guilty!

Solomon'S Canticle of canticles.

The God of Israel had designed that the chosen nation should be, under Solomon (Hebrew, Shelomoh, peaceful, pacific), a living and ravishing picture of the state of the Christian people under the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace. Solomon, on whom had descended in youth the spirit of supernatural wisdom as well as prophecy, afterward proved utterly unfaithful to the graces lavished on him. Still, just as the unworthy Balaam was forced by the Divine Spirit to prophesy the blessedness and final triumph of the Church, even so was the apostate soul of Solomon forced to sing in this Song the undying mutual love which binds the true Solomon to His Bride, the Church, and the Church to Him through all the struggles and persecutions of ages.

The book of wisdom.

The author of this book has for his chief object to teach rulers, statesmen, and judges. By many scholars the work is ascribed to Solomon. The authorship, however, remains uncertain. The first six chapters are a compendium of the first nine chapters of Proverbs. In vii., viii., ix., the writer describes the road by which he attained the possession of Wisdom, as well as her innate excellences. From the tenth chapter to the end a series of examples are quoted from sacred history to demonstrate the manifold utility of Wisdom, to show the wickedness of sin, the blissful reward of faithful souls, the undying punishment of the wicked.

The book of ecclesiasticus.

This book is also entitled "The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach," or " Ecclesiasticus," /. e. , preacher. Like the book of Ecclesiastes, the present work contains a body of moral precepts and exhortations tending to enforce the practice of all virtue and to exalt the excellence of wisdom. The author would appear to have aimed at following the plan of the three preceding books in composing his own. Hence we have first a body of maxims in imitation of the Proverbs, then a series of reflexions somewhat in the style of Ecclesiastes, and finally a long poetical panegyric of great and holy men, recalling the style of the Canticle of Canticles. It was written in the second century before Christ under the Asmonean or Machabean dynasty. It gives a very high idea of the culture of the Jewish schools of the period. Some passages recall the poetry and eloquence of Isaias.