THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO He hath remembered His mercy and His truth. toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Psalm xcviii. 3. SEVENTY years did the Israelites suffer in captivity the punishment the nation had brought upon itself by its disobedience and sin. During the seventy years of the Babylonian thraldom they had ample time to repent of their sins; and prophets and holy men were also among them, who denounced the wrath of God upon the people for their iniquities, and besought them earnestly to turn from the error of their ways. The children who grew up among them heard their parents tell of the former glories of Jerusalem, when God still looked with favour and protection upon His people, defending them against their enemies, and making them to prosper. There is in the Bible a beautiful psalm that touchingly describes the condition of the Jews during their captivity. It is Psalm cxxxvii., and begins: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." And thus mourning over their captivity, and regretting the lost favour of the Almighty, nearly all those who had been carried away captive to Babylon died. In time changes came upon the new masters of the Israelites under Darius, a Median king. Babylon was taken by a brave general named Cyrus; and after the death of Darius, this Cyrus became King of Persia and master of the captive Israelites. By this time the punishment of the Israelites-the captivity among their enemies-seems to have produced the effect for which it was sent; and the Lord turned the heart of Cyrus the king towards these poor prisoners, so that he not only set them free, but restored to them the vessels of silver and of gold that had been taken from the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, and gave the elders of the people a commission to rebuild the temple. Thus, under a leader named Zerubbabel, the Jews returned to their own land after the seventy years' sojourn in a strange land. After a time they proceeded to the most important part of their task, the rebuilding of the temple of the Lord. And we are told that when the builders laid the foundation of this, the second temple, they set the priests in their apparel, with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, King of Israel. And they sang together, praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But it was not an unmingled joy which caused the people to shout thus. Among them were many ancient men who had seen the former temple that had been built by Solomon. And they wept with mingled grief and joy with grief for the glorious building that had been destroyed, and with joy that a new temple was to rise on the ruins of the old. But there were in the land people who were jealous of the permission given to the Jews to rebuild the temple, and they tried to hinder the work as much as possible. They tried to persuade the King Artaxerxes to take back the permission Cyrus had given; and they succeeded in stopping the work for a time. But Zerubbabel and Joshua, the leaders of the children of Israel, |