whole world of man. At the same time, the Jewish race quits the narrow boundaries of Palestine, to spread itself, in its wide dispersions, over the earth. We pause here. I shall in my next lectures, proceed to the examination of the important subjects of Talmudism, on the one hand, and of Christianity and Moslemism on the other.

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LECTURE VI.

THE SECOND TEMPLE-THE ORIGIN OF TALMUDISM.

THE first small colonies of Jews (whose numbers were subsequently augmented by other bodies) that returned from the Babylonian captivity to Palestine, were necessarily composed of those exiles, who, faithful to the standard of the Prophets, had kept themselves aloof from the habits and manners and the Idolatry of Babylon, and held fast to Mosaism, though perhaps regarding it merely as a peculiarity of the Jewish race.

Their total alienation from Heathenism was further confirmed by the erection of the Second Temple, by the influence of the three last prophets, and by the efforts of the two upright but somewhat stern legislators, Ezra and Nehemiah. Holding official situations at the Persian Court, and being thereby invested with something of a judicial character, they enforced the observance of many municipal regulations in popular life, and introduced many ordinances for the re-establishment and reorganization of divine worship.

From that moment, all admixture of heathen elements will be found to have wholly and finally disappeared from amid the Jewish race. Happily, under the mild and tolerant sway of the Persian monarchs, centuries of tranquillity passed over the heads of that race—centu

ries of internal and external growth, during which they acquired organic consistency and firmness. Of these years of peace and progress, nothing can be observed, since nothing is known of them, nor did anything occur in them worthy to be recorded. Even the overthrow of the Persian monarchy by Alexander the Great, caused but a brief interruption to this halcyon interval of calm. This small and no longer independent nation could but bend reed-like beneath the world's mighty events, but could not be crushed by their pressure. So that the dissensions and conflicts among Alexander's generals passed over the land, like a summer shower, the Jews yielding homage now to the Egyptian Ptolemies, now to the Syrian Seleucidæ. The struggle in which the Jews themselves were destined to engage, began when the rest of the world had almost regained tranquillity, and has continued, with but small interruption, from that moment up to the present day. The more firmly the Jews established themselves on the broad basis of Mosaism, the more evident did it become that it presented, not an ideal, but a real contrast to Heathenism, a contrast inherent in the very being, physical and mental, of the Jewish race. The heathen world, restored to peace, awoke to the consciousness that this antagonism existed; it took up arms and combatted it, as for life and death. After Heathenism had thus opposed the Religious Idea within the Hebrew race, and had succumbed to that idea within Judaism itself, foreign heathenism turned to bay, to do battle with it in the persons of the Jews, then and evermore its bearers.

The first champion of Heathenism in the fight against the Religious Idea, was the Seleucide, Antiochus Epiphanes. He sought to exterminaté, not the Jews, but Judaism.

He used every means to compel the Jews to bend the knee before his idols. Then arose a small band of Jews, to do glorious battle in a glorious cause. Then it was again shown what a handful of people, when bound together by one intense and animating principle, may achieve, even though the power of a world be arrayed against them. As the Greeks fought against the Persian Colossus, the Swiss against the Burgundians and and Austria, so fought the little band of the Maccabees against the host of the Syrian, ten against a thousand. Hurrying from victory to victory, they ere long restored, not only the religious idea, but also freedom and independence to their people and country. Bearing on high the trophies of this triumph, the Jews regained for a time their historical position as a nation among the nations, governed by native rulers, who soon exchanged the priest's mitre for the king's diadem.

But it was the struggle which had quickened into pulsation the life-current in the hearts of the Jews. Tranquillity once restored, the ruling families exhausted themselves by mutual dissensions, splitting the people into parties, that attacked each other with all the virulence of fraternal animosity. Morality and religion were thus undermined. The opposing factions themselves summoned the second champion of Heathenism, the Roman, into Judea, which country he would doubtless soon have visited unbidden, since it lay in his path of conquest.

The people having thus lost their internal self-dependence, by means of the disunion and conflicts of their leaders, submitted almost without resistance to the yoke of Rome. But her rule degenerated soon into. unheard-of oppression on the part of the exacting governors, who transplanted the despotism then prevailing

in the imperial court of Rome, to the soil of the provinces. In the Jewish race there yet dwelt a fund of strength, which had long disappeared from the other dependent states of the empire. So soon as discontent and hatred came to prevail between the governors and the governed, it was impossible but that religious strife should speedily ensue. Everything heathen was obnoxious to the Jew, as everything Jewish was ludicrous and contemptible in the eyes of the Roman. To render idolatrous worship to the statues of the Cæsars in the temple, was repugnant and impossible to the Jew, while his incomprehensible refusal was regarded by the Roman as being prompted by a spirit of resistance only. The igniting spark was not long ere it fell on this inflammable heap.

The Jews rose en masse with desperate fury against the Romans, and soon freed their land from the presence of an enemy, whose sway at that very time extended from the Euphrates, over the lands watered by the Danube, the Weser, and the Tweed, to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Atlas Mountains to the sources of the Nile. Two distinct but equally dangerous circumstances co-operated to render a war of extermination inevitable-its fatal issue certain. The first of these was the invasion of Judæa by countless legions, flushed with a long course of conquest under the veteran generalship of Vespasian and Titus. The second and more fatal condition of this impending ruin, was the internal dismemberment of the people, who, lacking one ruling spirit, were torn into factions by their several contending leaders. During the continuance of the war with the Romans, these rival chiefs, some of them animated by the fiercest zeal, others advocating submission