it was usual to assemble on these days as many as three several times, viz. in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night: but on the week days the service was short, consisting chiefly of prayers, with the reading of only a small portion of the scriptures; and on the Sabbath, the principal service was that of the morning, when there was a full reading of scripture, and an address made to the congregation; while the afternoon and evening meetings were occupied more particularly with prayers and singing. Prayer presented in public worship, was held to be more acceptable than prayer offered up in private; so that as many as made any pretensions to piety were still disposed to resort to the Synagogues, on its meeting-days, for the performance of their morning and evening devotions, just, as it was customary for serious persons who lived near the temple to go up to its courts at the times of the daily sacrifices. And it appears, that the Synagogue was considered an advantageous place for individuals to present their stated prayers even on days when there was no public service to be attended; as we read that the Pharisees, to make an ostentatious show of religion, loved to repeat their private prayers standing in these churches; which at other times they did not scruple to do even in the most public places of the streets, pretending that when the seasons for this duty arrived, their consciences would not allow them to neglect it a moment, wherever they might be found, but all, in fact, to be seen of men and to obtain the praise of uncommon godliness among the multitude of the world. (Matt. vi. 5.)

When the congregation was collected together for worship on the morning of the Sabbath, the angel of the Synagogue began the services of the occasion with an ascription of glory to God, and a regular address of prayer toward his holy throne. Then the portion of the law which belonged to that day was read, and the reading of it closed with another doxology chaunted to the praise of the Most High; after which followed the reading of the appointed portion from the prophets. Next came the address to the people, and afterwards another prayer, which concluded the exercises of the meeting. Such appears to have been the general order observed in the ancient service of the Synagogue, as well as it can be gathered from the occasional hints of the

New Testament compared with the manifold traditions of the Jews; which, it is to be presumed, comprehend much correct information relative to the whole original manner of the institution, though it be so confounded with rubbish derived from more modern usage, as to be in no small degree difficult to be ascertained.

At the close of the prayers the whole congregation were accustomed to say, Amen, in token of their concurrence with him that uttered them, in the feelings of thankfulness or supplication which they expressed. So did they respond, also, when the priest pronounced the solemn benediction, according to the form in Numb. vi. 34-36. It was usual, we are told, when this was to be pronounced, for all the priests that were in the house, if there happened to be more than one, to take their station on the pulpit, and repeat it after the manner that was practised in the daily service of the Sanctuary. If there was no priest present, the angel of the Synagogue used to repeat it, still introducing it in some such way as this: Our God and the God of our fathers bless us now with that three-fold benediction appointed in the law to be pronounced by the sons of Aaron, according as it is said, "The Lord bless thee, &c." The people, however, were instructed to withhold in such a case their customary response of Amen. So goes the tradition; and it adds that this pronouncing of the benediction was toward the end of the principal prayer, though not altogether at the

close of it.

It was the custom to have the whole law, that is, the five books of Moses, read over in the Synagogues, every year. Hence, for the sake of convenience and certainty, it was all divided into fifty-four sections, as nearly equal in length as they could be made without serious injury to the sense, which were appointed to be read in regular succession, one every week, till the whole was gone over. It was thought proper to have as many as fifty-four, because the longest years consisted of that number of weeks, and it was desired to leave no Sabbath in such a case without its particular portion; but as the common years were made up of fewer weeks, they used in the course of these to join certain shorter sections, so as to make one out of two, in order to bring the reading regularly out with the end of the year; for it was held ab

solutely necessary to have the whole read over, without any omission, before it was commenced in course again, as it still was on the first Sabbath after the feast of tabernacles. . The copy of the law used for this purpose, which, like all books of ancient time, was in the form of a roll, was written with great care, and generally with much elegance. It was not usual, we are told, for a single person to read over the whole section for any day, in the Synagogue: but several individuals, according to the Jewish representation exactly seven, were called upon to read in succession; whence it became the practice to have each of the sections divided again into several smaller portions for their accommodation. Any male person, who was not a servant, a tatterdemalion, or a fool, and was able to read with ease and distinct utterance, might be invited to bear a part in the exercise only it was the custom to call upon some of the more honourable individuals present in the congregation, to take the lead in reading the first two or three portions of the section particularly it was thought proper to have the first portion read by a priest, if any was in the house, and the second by a Levite. It is not clear, however, that this particular manner, though found prevailing at a later period, was all observed in this part of the Synagogue service in the time of our Saviour.

The reading of the prophets, which followed the reading of the law, was not practised in the synagogues from their first institution, but had the origin of its use in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. We have already, not long since, had occasion to mention the persecution which that wicked monster waged against the worship and the truth of the God of Israel. The rolls of the sacred law of Moses, whenever they could be discovered, were destroyed, and the punishment of death was denounced against every individual with whom a copy of it should be found. In this predicament, those of the nation who still adhered to the religion of their fathers, were led to make choice of particular portions out of some of the other books of scripture, (which, because they had not been in common use, like the books of Moses, in the public worship of the people, had not fallen under the same tyrannic condemnation,) and substitute them in room of the ordinary lessons from the law, in the ser

၈ S

vice of the synagogue. In this way a new set of lessons were introduced, which ever afterwards continued in use; for although when the storm of that persecution had rolled away, the original reading of the law was restored as it had been in the beginning, it was still thought proper not to lay aside these other portions of scripture, but to have them read also, in regular order as before, so that it became a perpetual rule to have Two lessons, one out of the law, and one from the prophets, repeated in this way every Sabbath. The Jews reckoned, in that class of their sacred books which they denominated the prophets, not only such as are actually prophetical in their character, but the chief of those, also, which are merely historical, such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles: whence the second series of lessons comprehended portions from these last, as well as from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, &c: And these were not connected in any sort of order with each other, but had been selected independently, just as they were thought to have some particular correspondence with the sections of the law, to which they answered in the order of their course. As they were quite short, in comparison with the other lessons, they were not divided in the same way for several readers, but each used to be read altogether by a single person.

As the Jews, after the captivity, made use of a language materially different from that of their ancestors, in which their sacred books were written, it became necessary to have the lessons of the Synagogue still interpreted, as they were read, into the common tongue. It seems that even in the time of Ezra, immediately on the return of the nation to their own country, something of this sort was found necessary, when that holy man caused the law to be publicly read in the hearing of the people. (Neh. viii. 8.) In later times, however, especially from the age of the Maccabees, it became still more needful, and was secured, as it appears, with more systematic arrangement. There is reason to believe, that the idea of distributing the scriptures into verses was conceived, and put into practice, originally, for the sake of convenience and order in the interpretation of the Synagogue lessons. As it was necessary for the reader to pause every few moments, till the interpreter be

side him turned what he read into the common tongue, it was natural to think of breaking the whole into little portions of suitable length, so that he might not be at a loss where to stop, or so liable to interrupt and confound the sense by injudicious division, as he must have been, if left in every case to cut it up according to his own pleasure : and when verses were thus introduced into the sacred rolls of the synagogue, it was not strange that they should, in time, become established throughout the whole Jewish bible, as we have them handed down to our own time, and still every where in use. The ancient tradition of the Jews is, that these, as well as the fifty-four greater sections into which the law was divided, had their origin from no less a source, than the inspired authority of Ezra himself. The chapters into which we find all the bible now distributed, it may be here remarked, were invented more than 1200 years after the time of our Saviour, and the verses of the New Testament at a period considerably later still. Nor was again, until some time after the whole bible was thus divided and sub-divided, that the plan of separating the verses into distinct little paragraphs, as they are now found in our common copies of the sacred volume, came into practice; the original plan having been, to let them still follow each other, like common sentences in other writings, in regular order according to the sense, (as all Hebrew bibles are still printed,) and to place all the figures, when the practice of numbering them was adopted, down along the margin, altogether out of the text itself. And truly it is much to be lamented, that God's holy word should ever have been allowed to be so cut up and broken into pieces, as it has now come to be in our common bibles, by having the chapters and verses all completely separated throughout; as if the Spirit that inspired it, had given it for use in that style-whereas, the whole has been the contrivance of man, and tends only to darken the meaning of the sacred page from beginning to end.

Much of our Saviour's teaching was performed in the Synagogues. We are told that he went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their Synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom." It appears, that before he entered upon his public ministry, while he lived as