2

State of Judaea—The Belief in the Messiah

 

The history of Christianity without the life of its Divine Author appears imperfect and incomplete, particularly considering the close connexion of that life, not only with the mysterious doctrines, but with the practical, and even political influence of the religion; for even its apparently most unimportant incidents have, in many cases, affected most deeply the opinions and feelings of the Christian world. The isolation of the history of Christ in a kind of sacred seclusion has no doubt a beneficial effect on the piety of the Christian, which delights in contemplating the Saviour undisturbed and uncontaminated by less holy associations; but it has likewise its disadvantages, in disconnecting his life from the general history of mankind, of which it forms an integral and essential part. Had the life of Christ been more generally considered as intimately and inseparably connected with the progress and development of human affairs, with the events and opinions of his time, works would not have been required to prove his existence, scarcely perhaps the authenticity of his history. The real historical evidence of Christianity is the absolute necessity of his life, to fill up the void in the annals of mankind, to account for the effects of his religion in the subsequent history of man.

Yet to write the life of Christ, though at first sight it may appear the most easy, is perhaps the most difficult task which an historian can undertake. Many Lives have been composed with a devotional, none at least to my knowledge, in this country, with an historic design; none in which the author has endeavoured to throw himself completely back into the age when Jesus of Nazareth began to travel as the teacher of a new religion through the villages of Galilee; none which has attempted to keep up a perpetual reference to the circumstances of the times, the habits and national character of the people, and the state of public feeling; and thus, identifying itself with the past, to show the origin and progress of the new faith, as it slowly developed itself, and won its way through the adverse elements which it encountered in Judaea and the adjacent provinces. To depart from the evangelic simplicity in the relation of the facts would not merely offend the reverential feelings of the reader, but tend likewise to destroy the remarkable harmony between the facts and doctrines, which characterises the narrative of the Gospels, and on which their authenticity, as genuine historical documents, might to an intelligent mind be safely rested. The three first Gospels, unless written at a very early period, could scarcely have escaped the controversial, or at least argumentative tone, which enters into the later Christian writings, and with which the relation of St John is imbued. The plan then which the author will pursue, will be to presume, to a certain degree, on the reader’s acquaintance with the subject on which he enters: he will not think it necessary to relate at length all the discourses or even all the acts of Christ, but rather to interweave the historic illustration with the main events, disposed, as far as possible, in the order of time, and to trace the effect which each separate incident, and the whole course of the life of Jesus may be supposed to have produced upon the popular mind. In short, it will partake, in some degree, of the nature of an historical comment, on facts which it will rather endeavour to elucidate than to draw out to their full length.

The days of the elder Herod were drawing to a tragedy rarely ventured to imagine. His last years had revealed the horrible, the humiliating secret, that the son, at whose instigation he had put to death the two noble and popular princes, his children by Mariamne the Asmonean, had almost all his life been overreaching him in that dark policy, of which he esteemed himself the master; and now, as a final return for his unsuspecting confidence, had conspired to cut short the brief remainder of his days. Almost the last, and the most popular exercise of Herod’s royal authority, was to order the execution of the perfidious Antipater. Fearful times! when the condemnation of a son by a father, and that father an odious and sanguinary tyrant, could coincide with the universal sentiment of the people! The attachment of the nation to the reigning family might have been secured, if the sons of Mariamne, the heiress of the Asmonean line, had survived to claim the succession. The foreign and Idumean origin of the father might have been forgotten in the national and splendid descent of the mother. There was, it would seem, a powerful Herodian party, attached to the fortunes of the ruling house; but the body of the nation now looked with ill-concealed aversion to the perpetuation of the Idumean tyranny in the persons of the sons of Herod. Yet to those who contemplated only the political signs of the times, nothing remained but the degrading alternative, either to submit to the line of Herod, or to sink into a Roman province. Such was to be the end of their long ages of national glory, such the hopeless termination of the national independence. But, notwithstanding the progress of Grecian opinions and manners, with which the politic Herod had endeavoured to counterbalance the turbulent and unruly spirit of the religious party, the great mass of the people, obstinately wedded to the law and to the institutions of their fathers, watched with undisguised jealousy the denationalising proceedings of their king. This stern and inextinguishable enthusiasm had recently broken out into active resistance, in the conspiracy to tear down the golden eagle, which Herod had suspended over the gate of the Temple. The signal for this daring act had been a rumour of the king’s death; and the terrific vengeance, which, under a temporary show of moderation, Herod had wreaked on the offenders, the degradation of the High-priest, and the execution of the popular teachers, who were accused of having instigated the insurrection, could not but widen the breach between the dying sovereign and the people. The greater part of the nation looked to the death of Herod with a vague hope of liberation and independence, which struck in with the more peculiar cause of excitement predominant in the general mind.

For the principle of this universal ferment lay deeper than in the impatience of a tyrannical government, which burdened the people with intolerable exactions, or the apprehension of national degradation if Judaea should be reduced to the dominion of a Roman proconsul. It was the confidence in the immediate coming of the Messiah, which was working with vague and mysterious agitation in the hearts of all orders. The very danger to which Jewish independence was reduced, was associated with this exalted sentiment; the nearer the ruin, the nearer the restoration of their Theocracy. For there is no doubt, that among other predictions, according to the general belief, which pointed to the present period, a very ancient interpretation of the prophecy, which declared that the sceptre, the royal dominion, should not depart from the race of Israel until the coming of the Shiloh, one of the titles uniformly attributed to the Messiah, connected the termination of the existing polity with the manifestation of the Deliverer. This expectation of a wonderful revolution to be wrought by the sudden appearance of some great mysterious person, had been so widely disseminated, as to excite the astonishment, perhaps the jealousy of the Romans, whose historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, as is well known, bear witness to the fact. “Among many,” writes the latter, “there was a persuasion, that in the ancient books of the priesthood it was written, that at this precise time, the East should become mighty, and that the sovereigns of the world should issue from Judaea”. “In the East, an ancient and consistent opinion prevailed, that it was fated there should issue, at this time, from Judaea, those who should obtain universal dominion.”

Yet no question is more difficult than to ascertain the origin, the extent, the character of this belief, as it prevailed at the time of our Saviour’s coming;—how far it had spread among the surrounding nations; or how far, on the other hand, the original Jewish creed, formed from the authentic prophetical writings, had become impregnated with Oriental or Alexandrian notions. It is most probable, that there was no consistent, uniform, or authorised opinion on the subject. All was vague and indefinite; and in this vagueness and indefiniteness lay much of its power over the general mind. Whatever purer or loftier notions concerning the great Deliverer and Restorer might be imparted to wise and holy men, in whatever sense we understand that “Abraham rejoiced to see the day” of the Messiah, the intimations on this subject in the earlier books of the Old Testament, though distinctly to be traced along its whole course, are few, brief, and occurring at long intervals. But from the time, and during the whole period of the Prophets, this mysterious Being becomes gradually more prominent. The future dominion of some great king, to descend from the line of David, to triumph over all his enemies, and to establish an universal kingdom of peace and happiness, of which the descriptions of the golden age in the Greek poets are but a faint and unimaginative transcript: the promise of the Messiah, in short, comes more distinctly forward. As early as the first chapters of Isaiah, he appears to assume a title and sacred designation, which at least approaches near to that of the Divinity; and in the later prophets, not merely does this leading characteristic maintain its place, but under the splendid poetical imagery, drawn from existing circumstances, there seems to lie hid a more profound meaning, which points to some great and general moral revolution, to be achieved by this mysterious Being.

But their sacred books, the Law and the Prophets, were not the clear and unmingled source of the Jewish opinions on this all-absorbing subject. Over this, as over the whole system of the Law, tradition had thrown a veil; and it is this traditionary notion of the Messiah, which it is necessary here to develope: but from whence tradition had derived its apparently extraneous and independent notions, becomes a much more deep and embarrassing question. It is manifest from the Evangelic history, that although there was no settled or established creed upon the subject, yet there was a certain conventional language: particular texts of the sacred writings were universally recognised, as bearing reference to the Messiah; and there were some few characteristic credentials of his title and office, which would have commanded universal assent.

There are two quarters from which the Jews, as they ceased to be an insulated people, confined in the narrow tract of Palestine, and by their captivity and migrations became more mingled with other races, might insensibly contract new religious notions, the East and the West, Babylonia and Alexandria. The latter would be the chief, though not perhaps the only channel through which the influence of Grecian opinions would penetrate into Palestine; and of the Alexandrian notions of the Messiah, we shall hereafter adduce two competent representatives, the author of the Book of Wisdom and Philo. But the East no doubt made a more early, profound, and lasting impression on the popular mind of the Jews. Unfortunately in no part does history present us with so melancholy a blank, as in that of the great Babylonian settlement of the people of Israel. Yet its importance in the religious, and even in the civil affairs of the nation cannot but have been very considerable. It was only a small part of the nation which returned with the successive remigrations under Ezra and Nehemiah to their native land; and, though probably many of the poorer classes had remained behind at the period of the Captivity, and many more returned singly or in small bodies, yet on the other hand it is probable, that the tide of emigration, which at a later time was perpetually flowing from the valleys of Palestine into Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and even more remote regions, would often take the course of the Euphrates, and swell the numbers of the Mesopotamian colony. In the great contest between Alexander and the Persian monarchy, excepting from some rather suspicious stories in Josephus, we hear less than we might expect of this race of Jews. But as we approach the era of Christianity, and somewhat later, they emerge rather more into notice. While the Jews were spreading in the West, and no doubt successfully disseminating their Monotheism in many quarters, in Babylonia their proselytes were kings; and the later Jewish Temple beheld an Eastern queen (by a singular coincidence, of the same name with the celebrated mother of Constantine, the patroness of Christian Jerusalem) lavishing her wealth on the structure on Mount Moriah, and in the most munificent charity to the poorer inhabitants of the city. The name of Helena, queen of the Adiabeni, was long dear to the memory of the Jews; and her tomb was one of the most remarkable monuments near the walls of the city. Philo not only asserts that Babylon and other Eastern satrapies were full of his countrymen; but intimates that the apprehension of their taking up arms in behalf of their outraged religion and marching upon Palestine, weighed upon the mind of Petronius, when commanded, at all hazards, to place the statue of Caligula in the Temple. It appears from some hints of Josephus, that during the last war, the revolted party entertained great hopes of succour from that quarter and there is good ground for supposing that the final insurrection in the time of Hadrian was connected with a rising in Mesopotamia. At the same period the influence of this race of Jews on the religious character of the people is no less manifest. Here was a chief scene of the preaching of the great apostle: and we cannot but think, that its importance in early Christian history, which has usually been traced almost exclusively in the West, has been much underrated. Hence came the mystic Cabala of the Jews, the chief parent of those gnostic opinions, out of which grew the heresies of the early Church: here the Jews, under the Prince of the Captivity, held their most famous schools, where learning was embodied in the Babylonian Talmud; and here the most influential heresiarch, Manes, attempted to fuse into one system the elements of Magianism, Cabalism, and Christianity. Having thus rapidly traced the fortunes of this great Jewish colony, we must reascend to the time of its first establishment

From a very early period the Jews seem to have possessed a Cabala, a traditionary comment or interpretation of the sacred writings. Whether it existed before the Captivity it is impossible to ascertain; it is certain that many of their books, even those written by distinguished prophets, Nathan, and Gad, and Iddo, were lost at that disastrous time. But whether they carried any accredited tradition to Babylonia it seems evident from the Oriental cast which it assumed, that they either brought it from thence on their return to their native land, or received it subsequently during their intercourse with their Eastern brethren. Down to the Captivity the Jews of Palestine had been in contact only with the religions of the neighbouring nations, which, however differently modified, appear to have been essentially the same, a sort of Nature-worship, in which the host of Heaven, especially the sun and moon, under different names, Baal and Moloch, Astarte and Mylitta, and probably as symbols or representatives of the active and passive powers of nature, no doubt with some distinction of their attributes, were the predominant objects. These religions had long degenerated into cruel or licentious superstitions; and the Jews, in falling off to the idolatry of their neighbours, or introducing foreign rites into their own religious system, not merely offended against the great primal distinction of their faith, the Unity of the God­head, but sunk from the pure, humane, and comparatively civilised institutes of their lawgiver, to the loose Religion of sanguinary usages of barbarism. In the East, however, they encountered a religion of a far nobler and more regular structure: a religion which offered no temptation to idolatrous practices; for the Magian rejected, with the devout abhorrence of the followers of Moses, the exhibition of the Deity in the human form; though it possessed a rich store of mythological and symbolical figures, singularly analogous to those which may be considered the poetic machinery of the later Hebrew prophets. The religion of Persia seems to have held an intermediate rank between the Pantheism of India, where the whole universe emanated from the Deity, and was finally to be reabsorbed into the Deity, and the purer Theism of the Jews, which asserted the one omnific Jehovah, and seemed to place a wide and impassable interval between the nature of the Creator and that of the created being. In the Persian system the Creation owed its existence to the conflicting powers of evil and good. These were subordinate to, or proceeding from, the Great Primal Cause (Zeruane Akerene), Time without bounds, which in fact appears, as Gibbon observes, rather as a metaphysical abstraction, than as an active and presiding deity. The Creation was at once the work and the dominion of the two antagonist creators, who had balanced against each other in perpetual conflict a race of spiritual and material beings, light and darkness, good and evil. This Magianism, subsequent to the Jewish Captivity; and during the residence of the captives in Mesopotamia, either spread with the conquests of the Persians from the regions farther to the east, Aderbijan and Bactria, or was first promulgated by Zoroaster, who is differently represented as the author or as the reformer of the faith. From the remarkable allusions or points of coincidence between some of the Magian tenets and the Sacred Writings, Hyde and Prideaux laboured to prove that Zoroaster had been a pupil of Daniel, and derived those notions, which seem more nearly allied to the purer Jewish faith, from his intercourse with the Hebrew prophet, who held a high station under the victorious Medo-Persian monarchy. But, in fact, there is such an originality and completeness in the Zoroastrian system, and in its leading principles, especially that of the antagonistic powers of good and evil, it departs so widely from the ancient and simple Theism of the Jews, as clearly to indicate an independent and peculiar source, at least in its more perfect development; if it is not, as we are inclined to believe, of much more ancient date, and native to a region much farther to the east than the Persian court, where Zoroaster, according to one tradition, might have had intercourse, in his youth, with the Prophet Daniel.

If, as appears to be the general opinion of the Continental writers who have most profoundly investigated the subject, we have authentic remains, or at least records, which, if of later date, contain the true principles of Magianism in the Liturgies and Institutes of the Zendavesta; it is by no means an improbable source in which we might discover the origin of those traditional notions of the Jews, which were extraneous to their earlier system, and which do not appear to rest on their sacred records. It is undoubtedly remarkable that among the Magian tenets we find so many of those doctrines about which the great schism in the Jewish popular creed, that of the traditionists and anti-traditionists, contended for several centuries. It has already been observed that in the later prophetic writings many allusions, and much of what may be called the poetic language and machinery, are strikingly similar to the main principles of the Magian faith. Nor can it be necessary to suggest how completely such expressions as the “ children of light,” and the “children of darkness,” had become identified with the common language of the Jews at the time of our Saviour: and when our Lord proclaimed himself “the Light of the World,” no doubt He employed a term familiar to the ears of the people, though, as usual, they might not clearly comprehend in what sense it was applicable to the Messiah, or to the purely moral character of the new religion.

It is generally admitted that the Jewish notions about the angels, one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and what may be called their Daemonology, received a strong foreign tinge during their residence in Babylonia. The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize the ministration of angels; but in Babylonia this simpler creed grew up into a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordination were arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven great archangels of Jewish tradition correspond with the Amachaspands of the Zendavesta: and in strict mutual analogy, both systems arrayed against each other a separate host of spiritual beings, with distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each individual had in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel; and was exposed to the malice of the hostile Dev or Daemon. In apparent allusion to or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent Michael, the tutelar angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in opposition to the four angels of the great monarchies; and even our Saviour seems to condescend to the popular language, when He represents the parental care of the Almighty over children, under the significant and beautiful image, “that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven.”

The great impersonated Principle of Evil appears to have assumed much of the character of the antagonist power of darkness. The name itself of Satan, which in the older poetical book of Job is assigned to a spirit of different attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the throne of the Almighty, and is used in the earlier books of the Old Testament in its simple sense of an adversary, became appropriated to the prince of the malignant spirits—the head and representative of the spiritual world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil.

Even the notion of the one Supreme Deity had undergone some modification consonant to certain prevailing opinions of the time. Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime truth of the one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence or philosophic abstraction had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in Oriental language of an Emanation, or in Platonic, of the Wisdom, Reason, or Intelligence of the one Supreme. This being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or more abstract notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism, it was pure Platonismit was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognisable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John the Baptist, and our Lord himself, spoke no new doctrine, but rather the common sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared that no man had seen God at any time. In conformity with this principle, the Jews, in the interpretation of the older Scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings, as the channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition alluded to by St. Stephen, the Law was delivered “by the disposition of angels;”—according to another, this office was delegated to a single angel, sometimes called the Angel of the Law, at others the Metatron. But the more ordinary representative, as it were, of God to the sense and mind of man, was the Memra, or the Divine Word; and it is remarkable that the same appellation is found in the Indian, the Persian, the Platonic, and the Alexandrian systems. By the Targumists, the earliest Jewish commentators on the Scriptures, this term had been already applied to the Messiah; nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme. From this remarkable uniformity of conception, and coincidence of language, has sometimes been assumed a common tradition, generally disseminated throughout the race of man. I should be content with receiving it as the general acquiescence of the human mind in the necessity of some mediation between the pure spiritual nature of the Deity and the intellectual and moral being of man, of which the sublimest and simplest, and therefore the most natural development, was the revelation of God in Christ—in the inadequate language of our version of the original “the brightness of (God’s) glory, and the express image of his person.”

No question has been more strenuously debated than the knowledge of a future state, entertained by the earlier Jews. At all events it is quite clear that before the time of Christ not merely the immortality of the soul, but what is very different, a final resurrection had become completely interwoven with the popular belief. Passages in the later prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, particularly a very remarkable one in the latter, may be adduced as the first distinct authorities on which this belief might be grounded. It appears, however, in its more perfect development, soon after the return from the Captivity. As early as the revolt of the Maccabees, it was so deeply rooted in the public mind, that we find a solemn ceremony performed for the dead. From henceforth it became the leading article of the great schism between the traditionists and the anti-traditionists, the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and in the Gospels we cannot but discover at a glance its almost universal prevalence. Even the Roman historian was struck by its influence on the indomitable character of the people. In the Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a place no less prominent, than in the later Jewish belief. On the day of the final triumph of the Great Principle of Light, the children of light are to be raised from the dead, to partake in the physical splendour, and to assume the moral perfection of the subjects of the triumphant Principle of Good. In the same manner, the Jews associated together the coming of the Messiah with the final resurrection. From many passages, quoted by Lightfoot, I select the following: “The righteous, whom the Lord shall raise from the dead in the days of the Messiah, when they are restored to life, shall not again return to their dust, neither in the days of the Messiah, nor in the following age, but their flesh shall remain upon them.”

Out of all these different sources, from whence they derived a knowledge of a future state, the passages of their prophets in their own sacred writings (among which that in the book of Daniel, from its coincidence with the Zoroastrian tenet, might easily be misapplied), and the Oriental element, the popular belief of the Palestinian Jews had moulded up a splendid though confused vision of the appearance of the Messiah, the simultaneous regeneration of all things, the resurrection of the dead, and the reign of the Messiah upon earth. All these events were to take place at once, or to follow close upon each other. In many passages, the language of the Apostles clearly intimates that they were as little prepared to expect a purely religious renovation, at the coming of the Messiah, as the rest of their countrymen; and throughout the Apostolic age, this notion still maintained its ground, and kept up the general apprehension, that the final consummation was immediately at hand. It is no doubt impossible to assign their particular preponderance to these several elements, which combined to form the popular belief: yet, even if many of their notions entirely originated in the Zoroastrian system, it would be curious to observe how, by the very calamities of the Jews, Divine Providence adapted them for the more important part which they were to fill in the history of mankind; and to trace the progressive manner in which the Almighty prepared the development of the more perfect and universal system of Christianity.

For, with whatever Oriental colouring Jewish tradition might invest the image of the great Deliverer, in Palestine it still remained rigidly national and exclusive. If the Jew concurred with the worshipper of Ormuzd in expecting a final restoration of all things through the agency of a Divine Intelligence, that Being, according to the promise to their fathers, was to be intimately connected with their race; he was to descend from the line of David; he was to occupy Sion, the holy city, as the centre of his government; he was to make his appearance in the temple on Mount Moriah; he was to reassemble all the scattered descendants of the tribes, to discomfit and expel their barbarous and foreign rulers. The great distinction between the two races of mankind fell in completely with their hereditary prejudices: the children of Abraham were, as their birthright, the children of light; and even the doctrine of the resurrection was singularly harmonised with that exclusive nationality. At least the first resurrection was to be their separate portion; it was to summon them, if not all, at least the more righteous, from Paradise, from the abode of departed spirits; and under their triumphant king they were to enjoy a thousand years of glory and bliss upon the recreated and renovated earth.

We pass from the rich poetic impersonations, the fantastic but expressive symbolic forms of the East, to the colder and clearer light of Grecian philosophy, with which the Western Jews, especially in Alexandria, had endeavoured to associate their own religious truths. The poetic age of Greece had long passed away before the two nations came into contact; and the same rationalising tendency of the times led the Greek to reduce his religion, the Jew the history of his nation, to a lofty moral allegory. Enough of poetry remained in the philosophic system, adopted in the great Jewish Alexandrian school, that of Plato, to leave ample scope for the imagination: and indeed there was a kind of softened Orientalism, probably derived by Plato from his master Pythagoras, by Pythagoras from the East, which readily assimilated with the mystic interpretations of the Egypto-Jewish theology. The Alexandrian notions of the days of the Messiah are faintly shadowed out in the book “of the Wisdom of Solomon,” in terms which occasionally remind us of some which occur in the New Testament. The righteous Jews, on account of their acknowledged moral and religious superiority, were to “judge the nations,” and have “dominion over all people.” But the more perfect development of these views is to be found in the works of Philo. This writer, who, however inclined to soar into the cloudy realms of mysticism, often rests in the middle region of the moral sublime, and abounds in passages which would scarcely do discredit to his Athenian master, had arrayed a splendid vision of the perfectibility of human nature, in which his own nation was to take the most distinguished part. From them knowledge and virtue were to emanate through the universal race of man. The whole world, convinced at length of the moral superiority of the Mosaic institutes, interpreted, it is true, upon the allegorical system, and so harmonised with the sublimest Platonism of the Greeks, was to submit in voluntary homage, and render allegiance to the great religious teachers and examples of mankind. The Jews themselves, thus suddenly regenerated to more than the primitive purity and loftiness of their Law (in which the Divine Reason, the Logos, was as it were embodied), were to gather together from all quarters, and under the guidance of a more than human being, unseen to all eyes but those of the favoured nation (such was the only vestige of the Messiah), to reassemble in their native land. There the great era of virtue, and peace, and abundance, productiveness of the soil, prolificness in the people, in short, of all the blessings promised in the book of Deuteronomy, was to commence and endure for ever. This people was to be invincible, since true valour is inseparable from true virtue. By a singular inference, not out of character with allegoric interpreters who, while they refine the plainest facts and precepts to a more subtle and mystic meaning, are apt to take that which is evidently figurative in a literal sense, the very wild beasts, in awe and wonder at this pure and passionless race, who shall have ceased to rage against each other with bestial ferocity, were to tame their savage hostility to mankind. Thus the prophecy of Isaiah, to which Philo seems to allude, though he does not adduce the words, was to be accomplished to the letter; and that paradisaical state of amity between brute and man, so beautifully described by Milton, perhaps from this source, was finally to be renewed. And as the Jewish philosopher, contrary to most of his own countrymen and to some of the Grecian sects, denied the future dissolution of the world by fire, and asserted its eternity, he probably contemplated the everlasting duration of this peaceful and holy state.

Such, for no doubt the Alexandrian opinions had penetrated into Palestine, particularly among the Hellenist Jews—such were the vast, incoherent, and dazzling images with which the future teemed to the hopes of the Jewish people. They admitted either a part or the whole of the common belief, as accorded with their tone of mind and feeling. Each region, each rank, each sect; the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Palestinian, the Samaritan; the Pharisee, the Lawyer, the Zealot, arrayed the Messiah in those attributes which suited his own temperament. Of that which was more methodically taught in the synagogue or the adjacent school, the populace caught up whatever made the deeper impression. The enthusiasm took an active or contemplative, an ambitious or a religious, an earthly or a heavenly tone, according to the education, habits, or station of the believer; and to different men the Messiah was man or angel, or more than angel; he was king, conqueror, or moral reformer; a more victorious Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-ruling Caesar, a wiser Moses, a holier Abraham; an Angel, the Angel of the Covenant, the Metatron, the Mediator between God and man; Michael, the great tutelar archangel of the nation, who appears by some to have been identified with the mysterious Being who led them forth from Egypt; he was the Word of God; an Emanation from the Deity; himself partaking of the divine nature. While this was the religious belief, some there were, no doubt, of the Sadducaic party, or the half-Graecised adherents of the Herodian family, who treated the whole as a popular delusion; or, as Josephus with Vespasian, would not scruple to employ it as a politic means for the advancement of their own fortunes. While the robber chieftain looked out from his hill-tower to see the blood-red banner of him whom he literally expected to come “from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah,” and “treading the wine-press in his wrath,” the Essene in his solitary hermitage, or monastic fraternity of husbandmen, looked to the reign of the Messiah, when the more peaceful images of the same prophet would be accomplished, and the Prince of Peace establish his quiet and uninterrupted reign.

In the body of the people, the circumstances of the times powerfully tended both to develope more fully, and to stamp more deeply into their hearts the expectation of a temporal deliverer, a conqueror, a king. As misgovernment irritated, as exaction pressed, as national pride was wounded by foreign domination, so enthusiasm took a fiercer and more martial turn : as the desire of national independence became the predominant sentiment, the Messiah was more immediately expected to accomplish that which lay nearest to their hearts. The higher views of his character, and the more unworldly hopes of a spiritual and moral revolution, receded farther and farther from the view; and as the time approached in which the Messiah was to be born, the people in general were in a less favourable state of mind to listen to the doctrines of peace, humility, and love, or to recognise that Messiah in a being so entirely divested of temporal power or splendour. In the ruling party, on the other hand, as will hereafter appear, the dread of this inflammable state of the public mind, and the dangerous position of affairs, would confirm that jealousy of innovation inseparable from established governments. Every tendency to commotion would be repressed with a strong hand, or at least the rulers would be constantly on the watch, by their forward zeal in condemning all disturbers of the public peace, to exculpate themselves with their foreign masters from any participation in the tumult. Holding, no doubt, with devout, perhaps with conscientious earnestness, the promised coming of the Messiah as an abstract truth, and as an article of their religious creed, their own interests, their rank and authority, were so connected with the existing order of things, political prudence would appear so fully to justify more than ordinary caution, that while they would have fiercely resented any imputation on their want of faith in the divine promises, it would have been difficult, even by the most public and imposing “signs” to have satisfied their cool incredulity.

With all these elements of political and religious excitement stirring through the whole fabric of society, it would be difficult to conceive a nation in a more extraordinary state of suspense and agitation than the Jews about the period of the birth of Christ. Their temporal and religious fortunes seemed drawing to an immediate issue. Their king lay slowly perishing of a lingering and loathsome disease; and his temper, which had so often broken out into paroxysms little short of insanity, now seemed to be goaded by bodily and mental anguish to the fury of a wild beast. Every day might be anticipated the spectacle of the execution of his eldest son, now on his way from Rome, and known to have been detected in his unnatural treasons. It seemed that even yet, the royal authority and the stern fanaticism of the religious party, which had, for many years, lowered upon each other with hostile front, might grapple in a deadly struggle. The more prudent of the religious leaders could scarcely restrain the indignant enthusiasm of their followers, which broke out at once on the accession of Archelaus; while, on the other hand, the almost incredible testamentary cruelty, by which Herod commanded the heads of the principal Jewish families to be assembled in the Hippodrome, at the signal of his death, to be cut down in a promiscuous massacre, may reasonably be ascribed to remorseless policy, as well as to frantic vengeance. He might suppose that, by removing all opponents of weight and influence, he could secure the peaceable succession of his descendants, if the Emperor, according to his promise, should ratify the will by which he had divided his dominions among his surviving sons.

In the midst of this civil confusion, that great event took place, which was to produce so total a revolution in the state of all mankind. However striking the few incidents which are related of the birth of Christ, when contemplated distinct and separate from the stirring transactions of the times, and through the atmosphere, as it were, of devotional feelings, which at once seem to magnify and harmonise them; yet, for this very reason, we are perhaps scarcely capable of judging the effect which such events actually produced, and the relative magnitude in which they appeared to the contemporary generation. For if we endeavour to cast ourselves back into the period to which these incidents belong, and place ourselves, as it were, in the midst of the awful political crisis, which seemed about to decide at once the independence or servitude of the nation, and might, more or less, affect the private and personal welfare of each family and individual, it will by no means move our wonder, that the commotion excited by the appearance of the Magians in Jerusalem, and the announcement of the birth of the Christ should not have made a more deep impression on the public mind, and should have passed away, it should seem, so speedily from the popular remembrance. In fact, even if generally credited, the intelligence that the Messiah had appeared in the form of a new-born infant, would rather perhaps have disappointed, than gratified, the high-wrought expectation, which looked for an instant, an immediate deliverance, and would be too impatient to await the slow development of his manhood. Whether the more considerate expected the Deliverer suddenly to reveal himself in his maturity of strength and power, may be uncertain: but the last thing that the more ardent and fiery looked for, particularly those who supposed that the Messiah would partake of the divine or superhuman nature, was his appearance as a child; the last throne to which they would be summoned to render their homage, would be the cradle of a helpless infant.

Nor is it less important, throughout the early history of Christianity, to seize the spirit of the times. Events which appear to us so extraordinary, that we can scarcely conceive that they should either fail in exciting a powerful sensation, or ever be obliterated from the popular remembrance, in their own day might pass off as of little more than ordinary occurrence. During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever-ready belief. The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian in the present day would behold the direct agency of the Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was endured, or crime committed, but it was traced to the operation of one of these myriad daemons, who watched every opportunity of exercising their malice in the sufferings and the sins of men.

Yet the first incident in Christian history, the annunciation of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, as its wonderful circumstances the took place in a priestly family, and on so public a scene as the Temple, might be expected to excite the public attention in no ordinary degree. The four Levitical families who returned from the Captivity had been distributed into twenty-four courses, one of which came into actual office in the Temple every week: they had assumed the old names, as if descended in direct lineage from the original heads of families; and thus the regular ministrations of the priesthood were reorganised on the ancient footing, coeval with the foundation of the Temple. In the course of Abias, the eighth in order was an aged priest, named Zachariah. The officiating course were accustomed to cast lots for the separate functions. Some of these were considered of higher dignity than others, which were either of a more menial character, or at least were not held in equal estimation. Nearly the most important was the watching and supplying with incense the great brazen altar, which stood within the building of the Temple, in the first or Holy Place. Into this, at the sound of a small bell, which gave notice to the worshippers at a distance, the ministering priest entered alone. And in the sacred chamber, into which the light of day never penetrated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the chandeliers, which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain light, still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising from the newly fed altar of incense, no doubt, in the pious mind, the sense of the more immediate presence of the Deity, only separated by the veil, which divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, would constantly have awakened the most profound emotions. While the priest was employed within the gates, the multitude of worshippers in the adjacent court awaited his return; for it would seem, that the offering of incense was considered emblematic of the prayers of the whole nation; and though it took place twice every day, at morning and evening, the entrance and return of the priest from the mysterious precincts were watched by the devout with something of awful anxiety.

This day, to the general astonishment, Zachariah, to whom the function had fallen, lingered far beyond the customary time. For it is said of the high-priest’s annual entrance into the Holy of Holies, that he usually stayed within as short a time as possible, lest the anxious people should fear, that on account of some omission in the offering, or guilt in the minister, or perhaps in the nation, of which he was the federal religious head, he might have been stricken with death. It may be supposed, therefore, that even in the subordinate ceremonies there was a certain ordinary time, after which the devouter people would begin to tremble, lest their representative, who in their behalf was making the national offering, might have met with some sinister or fatal sign of the divine disfavour. When at length Zachariah appeared he could not speak; and it was evident that in some mysterious manner he had been struck dumb, and to the anxious inquiries he could only make known by signs that something awful and unusual had taken place within the sanctuary. At what period he made his full relation of the wonderful fact which had occurred does not appear; but it was a relation of absorbing interest both to the aged man himself, who, although his wife was far advanced in years, was to be blessed with offspring; and to the whole people, as indicating the fulfilment of one of the preliminary signs which were universally accredited as precursive of the Messiah.

In the vision of Zachariah, he had beheld an angel standing on the right side of the altar, who announced that his prayer was heard and that his barren house was to be blessed; that his aged wife should near a son, and that son be consecrated from his birth to the service of God, and observe the strictest austerity; that he was to revive the decaying spirit of religion, unite the disorganised nation, and above all, should appear as the expected harbinger, who was to precede and prepare the way for the approaching Redeemer. The angel proclaimed himself to be the messenger of God (Gabriel), and both as a punishment for his incredulity, and a sign of the certainty of the promise, Zachariah was struck dumb, but with an assurance that the affliction should remain only till the accomplishment of the divine prediction in the birth of his son. If, as has been said, the vision of Zachariah was in any manner communicated to the assembled people (though the silence of the evangelist makes strongly against any such supposition), or even to his kindred the officiating priesthood, it would no doubt have caused a great sensation, falling in, as it would, with the prevailing tone of the public mind. For it was the general belief that some messenger would, in the language of Isaiah, “prepare the way of the Lord;” and the last words which had, as it were, sealed the book of prophecy, intimated, as many supposed, the personal reappearance of Elijah, the greatest, and, in popular opinion, a sort of representative of the whole prophetic community. The ascetic life to which the infant prophet was to be dedicated, according to the Nazaritish vow of abstinence from all wine or strong drink, was likewise a characteristic of the prophetic order, which, although many, more particularly among the Essenes, asserted their inspired knowledge of futurity, was generally considered to have ceased in the person of Malachi, the last whose oracles were enrolled in the sacred canon.

It does not appear that dumbness was a legal disqualification for the sacerdotal function, for Zachariah remained among his brethren, the priests, till their week of ministration ended. He then returned to his usual residence in the southern part of Judaea, most probably in the ancient and well-known city of Hebron, which was originally a Levitical city; and although the sacerdotal order had not resumed the exclusive possession of their cities at the return from the Captivity, it might lead the priestly families to settle more generally in those towns; and Hebron, though of no great size, was considered remarkably populous in proportion to its extent. The divine promise began to be accomplished; and during the five first months of her pregnancy, Elizabeth, the wife of Zachariah, concealed herself, either avoiding the curious inquiries of her neighbours in these jealous and perilous times, or in devotional retirement, rendering thanks to the Almighty for the unexpected blessing.

It was on a far less public scene that the birth of Christ, of whom the child of Zachariah was to be the harbinger, was announced to the Virgin Mother. The families which traced their descent from the house of David had fallen into poverty and neglect. When, after the return from the Babylonian captivity, the sovereignty had been assumed, first by the high-priests of Levitical descent, subsequently by the Asmonean family, who were likewise of the priestly line, and finally, by the house of Herod, of Idumean origin, but engrafted into the Maccabean line by the marriage of Herod with Mariamne, it was the most obvious policy to leave in the obscurity into which they had sunk, that race which, if it should produce any pretendant of the least distinction, he might advance an hereditary claim, as dear to the people as it would be dangerous to the reigning dynasty. The whole descendants of the royal race seem to have sunk so low, that even the popular belief, which looked to the line of David, as that from which the Messiah was to spring, did not invest them with sufficient importance, to awaken the jealousy or suspicion of the rulers. Joseph, a man descended from this royal race, had migrated, for some unknown reason, to a distance from the part of the land inhabited by the tribe of Benjamin, to which, however, they were still considered to belong. He had settled in Nazareth, an obscure town in Lower Galilee, which, independent of the general disrepute in which the whole of the Galilean provinces were held by the inhabitants of the more holy district of Judaea, seems to have been marked by a kind of peculiar proverbial contempt. Joseph had been betrothed to a virgin of his own race, named Mary; but according to Jewish usage, some time was to elapse between the betrothment and the espousals. In this interval took place the annunciation of the divine conception to the Virgin. In no part is the singular simplicity of the Gospel narrative more striking than in the relation of this incident; and I should be inclined, for this reason alone, to reject the notion that these chapters were of a later date. So early does that remarkable characteristic of the evangelic writings develope itself; the manner in which they relate, in the same calm and equable tone, the most extraordinary and most trivial events; the apparent absence either of wonder in the writer, or the desire of producing a strong effect on the mind of the reader. To illustrate this, no passage can be more striking than the account of her vision,—“And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”

The Incarnation of the Deity, or the union of some part of the Divine Essence with a material or human body, is by no means an uncommon religious notion, more particularly in the East. Yet, in the doctrine as subsequently developed by Christianity, there seems the same important difference which characterises the whole system of the ancient and modern religions. It is in the former a mythological impersonation of the Power, in Christ it is the Goodness of the Deity, which, associating itself with a human form, assumes the character of a representative of the human race; in whose person is exhibited a pure model of moral perfection, and whose triumph over evil is by the slow and gradual progress of enlightening the mind, and softening and purifying the heart. The moral purpose of the descent of the Deity is by no means excluded in the religions in which a similar notion has prevailed, as neither is that of divine power, though confining itself to acts of pure beneficence, from the Christian scheme. This seems more particularly the case, if we may state any thing with certainty concerning those half-mythological, half-real personages, the Budah, Gautama, or Somana Codom of the remoter East. In these systems likewise the overbearing excess of human wickedness demands the interference, and the restoration of a better order of things is the object, which vindicates the presence of the embodied Deity; yet there is invariably a greater or less connexion with the Oriental cosmogonical systems; it is the triumph of mind over matter, the termination of the long strife between the two adverse principles. The Christian scheme, however it may occasionally admit the current language of the time, as where Christ is called the “Light of the World,” yet in its scope and purport stands clear and independent of all these physical notions: it is original, inasmuch as it is purely, essentially, and exclusively a moral revelation; its sole design to work a moral change; to establish a new relation between man and the Almighty Creator, and to bring to light the great secret of the immortality of man.

Hence the only deviation from the course of nature was the birth of this Being from a pure virgin. Much has been written on this subject; but it is more consistent with our object to point out the influence of this doctrine upon the human mind, as hence its harmony with the general design of Christianity becomes more manifest.

We estimate very inadequately the influence or the value of any religion, if we merely consider its precepts, or its opinions. The impression it makes, the emotions it awakens, the sentiments which it inspires, are perhaps its most vital and effective energies. From these, men continually act; and the character of a particular age is more distinctly marked by the predominance of these silent but universal motives, than by the professed creed, or prevalent philosophy, or, in general, by the opinions of the times. Thus, none of the primary facts in the history of a widely-extended religion can be without effect on the character of its believers. The images perpetually presented to the mind, work, as it were, into its most intimate being, become incorporated with the feelings, and thus powerfully contribute to form the moral nature of the whole race. Nothing could be more appropriate than that the martial Romans should derive their origin from the nursling of the wolf, or from the god of war; and whether those fables sprung from the national temperament, or contributed to form it, however these fierce images were enshrined in the national traditions, they were at once the emblem and example of that bold and relentless spirit which gradually developed itself, until it had made the Romans the masters of the world. The circumstances of the birth of Christ were as strictly in unison with the design of the religion. This incident seemed to incorporate with the general feeling the deep sense of holiness and gentleness, which was to characterise the followers of Jesus Christ. It was the consecration of sexual purity and maternal tenderness. No doubt by falling in, to a certain degree, with the ascetic spirit of Oriental enthusiasm, the former incidentally tended to confirm the sanctity of celibacy, which for so many ages reigned paramount in the Church; and in the days in which the Virgin Mother was associated with her divine Son in the general adoration, the propensity to this worship was strengthened by its coincidence with the better feelings of our nature, especially among the female sex. Still the substitution of these images for such as formed the symbols of the older religions, was a great advance towards that holier and more humane tone of thought and feeling, with which it was the professed design of the new religion to imbue the mind of man.

In the marvellous incidents which follow, the visit of the Virgin Mother to her cousin Elizabeth, when the joy occasioned by the miraculous conception seemed to communicate itself to the child of which the latter was pregnant, and called forth her ardent expressions of homage: and in the Magnificat, or song of thanksgiving, into which, like Hannah in the older Scriptures, the Virgin broke forth, it is curious to observe how completely and exclusively consistent every expression appears with the state of belief at that period; all is purely Jewish, and accordant with the prevalent expectation of the national Messiah: there is no word which seems to imply any acquaintance with the unworldly and purely moral nature of the redemption, which was subsequently developed. It may perhaps appear too closely to press the terms of that which was the common, almost the proverbial, language of the devotional feelings: yet the expressions which intimate the degradation of the mighty from their seat, the disregard of the wealthy, the elevation of the lowly and the meek, and respect to the low estate of the poor, sound not unlike an allusion to the rejection of the proud and splendid royal race, which had so long ruled the nation, and the assumption of the throne of David by one born in a more humble state.

After the return of Mary to Nazareth, the birth of John the Baptist excited the attention of the whole of Southern Judaea to the fulfilment of the rest of the prediction. When the child is about to be named, the dumb father interferes; he writes on a tablet the name by which he desires him to be called, and instantaneously recovers his speech. It is not unworthy of remark that, in this hymn of thanksgiving, the part which was to be assigned to John in the promulgation of the new faith, and his subordination to the unborn Messiah, are distinctly announced. Already, while one is but a new-born infant, the other scarcely conceived in the womb of his mother, they have assumed their separate stations: the child of Elizabeth is announced as the prophet of the Highest, who shall go “before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways.” Yet even here the Jewish notion predominates: the first object of the Messiah’s coming, is that the children of Israel “should be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all that hate them; that they, being delivered from the hand of their enemies, might serve him without fear.”

As the period approaches at which the child of Mary to be born, an apparently fortuitous circumstances summons both Joseph and the Virgin Mother from their residence in the unpopular town of Nazareth, in the province of Galilee, to Bethlehem, a small village to the south of Jerusalem. Joseph on the discovery of the pregnancy of his betrothed, being a man of gentle character, had been willing to spare her the rigorous punishment enacted by the law in such cases, and determined on a private dissolution of the marriage. A vision, however, warned him of the real state of the case, and he no longer hesitated, though abstaining from all connexion to take her to his home; and accordingly, being of the same descent, she accompanied him to Bethlehem. This town, as the birthplace of David, had always been consecrated in the memory of the Jews with peculiar reverence; and no prediction in the Old Testament appears more distinct, than that which assigns for the nativity of the great Prince, who was to perpetuate the line of David, the same town which had given birth to his royal ancestor.

The decree of the Emperor Augustus, in obedience to which the whole population of Palestine was to be enrolled and registered, has been, and still remains, an endless subject of controversy. One point seems clear, that the enrolment must have been of the nature of a population-census; for any property, possessed by Joseph or Mary, must have been at Nazareth; and the enrolment, which seems to have included both husband and wife, was made at the place where the genealogical registers of the tribes were kept. About this period Josephus gives an account of an oath of allegiance and of fidelity, to Caesar and to the interests of the reigning sovereign, which was to be taken by the whole Jewish nation. The affair of this oath is strangely mingled up with predictions of a change of dynasty, and with the expected appearance of a great king, under whose all-powerful reign the most extraordinary events were to take place. Six thousand of the Pharisees, the violent religious party, resolutely refused to take the oath. They were fined, and their fine discharged by the low-born wife of Pheroras, the brother of Herod, into whose line certain impostors or enthusiasts, pretending to the gift of prophecy, had declared that the succession was to pass. An eunuch, Bagoas, to whom they had promised peculiar and miraculous advantages during the reign of the great predicted king, was implicated in this conspiracy, and suffered death, with many of the obstinate Pharisees and of Herod’s kindred. It is highly probable that the administration of the oath of allegiance in Josephus, and the census in St. Luke, belong to the same transaction; for if the oath was to be taken by all the subjects of Herod, a general enrolment would be necessary throughout his dominions; and it was likely, according to Jewish usage, that this enrolment would be conducted according to the established divisions of the tribes. If, however, the expectation of the Messiah had penetrated even into the palace of Herod; if it had been made use of in the intrigues and dissensions among the separate branches of his family; if the strong religious faction had not scrupled to assume the character of divinely-inspired prophets, and to proclaim an immediate change of dynasty, the whole conduct of Herod, as described by the evangelists, harmonises in a most singular manner with the circumstances of the times. Though the birth of Jesus might appear to Herod but as an insignificant episode in the more dangerous tragic plot which was unfolding itself in his own family, yet his jealous apprehension at the very name of a new-born native king, would seize at once on the most trifling cause of suspicion; and the judicial massacre of many of the most influential of the Pharisees, and of his own kindred in Jerusalem, which took place on the discovery of this plot, was a fitting prelude for the slaughter of all the children under a certain age in Bethlehem.

But whether the enrolment, which summoned Joseph and Mary to the town where the registers of their descent were kept, was connected with this oath of fidelity to the emperor and the king; or whether it was only a population-return, made by the command of the emperor, in all the provinces where the Roman sovereignty or influence extended, it singularly contributed to the completion of the prophecy to which we have alluded, which designated the city of David as the birthplace of the Messiah. Those who claimed descent from the families whose original possessions were in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, crowded the whole of the small town; and in the stable of the inn was born THE CHILD, whose moral doctrines, if adopted throughout the world, would destroy more than half the misery by destroying all the vice and mutual hostility of men; and who has been for centuries the object of adoration, as the Divine Mediator between God and man, throughout the most civilised and enlightened nations of the earth. Of this immediate epoch only one incident is recorded; but in all the early history of Christianity nothing is more beautiful, nor in more perfect unison with the future character of the religion than the first revelation of its benign principles by voices from heaven to the lowly shepherds. The proclamation of “Glory to God, Peace on earth and good will towards men,” is not made by day, but in the quiet stillness of the night; not in the stately temple of the ancient worship, but among the peaceful pastures; not to the religious senate of the Jewish people, or to the priesthood arrayed in all the splendour of public ministration, but to peasants employed on their lowly occupation.

In eight days, according to the law, the child was initiated into the race of Abraham, by the rite of circumcision, and when the forty days of purification, likewise appointed by the statute, are over, the Virgin Mother hastens to make the customary presentation of the first-born male in the Temple. Her offering is that of the poorer Jewish females, who, while the more wealthy made an oblation of a lamb, were content with the least costly, a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. Only two persons are recorded as having any knowledge of the future destiny of the child,—Anna, a woman endowed with a prophetical character, and the aged Simeon. That Simeon was not the celebrated master of the schools of Jewish learning, the son of Hillel, and the father of Gamaliel, is fairly inferred from the silence of St. Luke, who, though chiefly writing for the Greek converts, would scarcely have omitted to state distinctly the testimony of so distinguished a man to the Messiahship of Jesus. There are other insurmountable historical objections. Though occurrences among the more devout worshippers in the Temple were perhaps less likely to reach the ear of Herod than those in any other part of the city, yet it was impossible that the solemn act of recognising the Messiah in the infant son of Mary, on so public a scene, by a man whose language and conduct were watched by the whole people, could escape observation. Such an acknowledgment, by so high an authority, would immediately have been noised abroad; no prudence could have suppressed the instantaneous excitement. Besides this, if alive at this time, Simeon ben Hillel would have presided in the court of inquiry, summoned by Herod, after the appearance of the Magi. The most remarkable point in the benediction of Simeon is the prediction that the child, who it would have been supposed would have caused unmingled pride and joy, should also be the cause of the deepest sorrow to his mother; and of the most fearful calamities, as well as of glory, to the nation.

The intercommunion of opinions between the Jewish and Zoroastrian religions throws great light on the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to Jerusalem. The impregnation of the Jewish notions about the Messiah with the Magian doctrines of the final triumph of Ormusd, makes it by no means improbable that, on the other side, the national doctrines of the Jews may have worked their way into the popular belief of the East, or at least into the opinions of those among the Magian hierarchy, who had come more immediately into contact with the Babylonian Jews. From them they may have adopted the expectation of the Great Principle of Light in a human form, and descending, according to ancient prophecy, from the race of Israel; and thus have been prepared to set forth, at the first appearance of the luminous body, by which they were led to Judaea. The universal usage of the East, never to approach the presence of a superior, particularly a sovereign, without some precious gift, is naturally exemplified in their costly but portable offerings of gold, myrrh, and frankincense.

The appearance of these strangers in Jerusalem at this critical period, particularly if considered in connexion with the conspiracy in the family of Herod and among the religious faction, as it excited an extraordinary sensation through the whole city, would reawaken all the watchfulness of the monarch. The assemblage of the religious authorities, in order that they might judicially declare the place from which the Messiah was expected, might be intended not merely to direct the ministers of the royal vengeance to the quarter from whence danger was to be apprehended, but to force the acknowledged interpreters of the sacred writings to an authoritative declaration as to the circumstances of the Messiah’s birth; so, if any event should occur, contrary to their version of the prophecies, either to commit them on the side of the ruling powers, or altogether to invalidate the expectation, that was dangerously brooding in the popular mind. The subtlety of Herod’s character is as strikingly exhibited in his pretended resolution to join the Magians in their worship of the new-born king, as his relentless decision, when the Magians did not return to Jerusalem, in commanding the general massacre of all the infants under the age of two years, in Bethlehem and its district.

Egypt, where, by divine command, the parents of Jesus took refuge, was but a few days’ journey, on a line perpetually frequented by regular caravans; and in that country, those who fled from Palestine could scarcely fail to meet with hospitable reception, among some of that second nation of Jews, who inhabited Alexandria and its neighbourhood.

On their return from Egypt, after the death of Herod (which took place in the ensuing year, though the parents of Jesus did not leave Egypt till the accession of Archelaus), Joseph, justly apprehensive that the son might inherit the jealousy and relentless disposition of the father, of which he had already given fearful indications, retired to his former residence in Galilee, under the less suspicious dominion of Herod Antipas. There the general prejudice against Galilee might be their best security; and the universal belief that it was in Judaea that the great king was to assume his sovereignty, would render their situation less perilous; for it was the throne of the monarch of Judah, the dominion of the ruler in Jerusalem, rather than the government of the Galilean tetrarch, which would have been considered in danger from the appearance of the Messiah.

 

 

3

Commencement of the Public Life of Jesus.