completely impracticable for them to mingle in any free intercourse with the rest of the nation: they constituted, in short, an order of monks; were led, by religious feeling, to tear themselves away from the whirlpool of society, so full of danger to the soul, and so fatal to almost all that move within its sweep, and to work out in retirement, with rigorous diligence, the great and arduous preparation for a world to come, for which, supremely, the trial of human life is allowed to every child of Adam. They considered the business of piety so important, that it called for the continual, and as far as possible for the exclusive, care of every person that hoped to secure its blessings; and they looked upon the world, at the same time, as so contrary, in all its influence, to the spirit of devotion-and upon the constitution of the human heart, as so disposed through moral derangement to yield to this influence, and so almost inevitably liable to lead to ruin and death, when allowed to proceed in any measure according to its natural operation, -that it seemed to them the wisest and the only safe course, to seek security by flying, as far as it was in their power, from the vantage-ground of the enemy, and by making it the painful toil of life to extinguish or eradicate, by self-denial and mortification of the body, the treacherous principles of evil that lodged in their own bosoms. It was the same way of thinking, which, in later times, carried many a Christian hermit away from the tumult of society, to take up his lonely dwelling in the wilderness or the mountain cave, and in the end erected the monastery and the nunnery in every district of the church.

It has been conjectured, that this third Jewish sect had its origin in Egypt, where so large a body of the nation came to be settled under the second temple: an idea that gathers some plausibility from the consideration, that the climate of that country has always been peculiarly adapted to create and cherish such a temper of mind as disposes persons to the sort of feeling, and the manner of life, that monkery requires. At any rate, a very considerable proportion of the sect, which altogether, of course, was quite small, was found in Egypt; and it was that part of it, too, which carried to the most rigorous extreme, the principles of its constitution. They had some little societies also

in other countries, into which the Jews were dispersed : but still their chief strength was at last in Palestine itself, where, we are told, about four thousand of them resided, principally upon the western shore of the Dead sea. These last were in several respects less rigid than their brethren of Egypt, not thinking it necessary to retire so completely from the midst of ordinary life, and not caring to cut themselves off, to the same extent, from its common pursuits. Hence the sect consisted properly of two classes of members, viz. the practical Essenes, who were found for the most part in Palestine; and the contemplative Essenes, who had their residence especially in Egypt. The name Essenes, was appropriated, in a great measure, altogether to the practical class in Judea, while those in Egypt were styled Therapeuta; the last name, however, is only the first one translated into Greek, and both mean Physicians; a title which the sect assumed, not so much on account of any acquaintance with the art of healing bodily diseases, which some of them might have had, as because they made the health of the soul their great care, and professed to cure its infinitely more dangerous maladies.

The Essenes of Palestine, although they deemed it advisable to keep at a distance from large cities, had no objection to living in towns and villages, and were accustomed not only to pay some attention to agriculture, but to practise certain arts also, taking care only to avoid such as contribute in any way to the purposes of war and mischief. They held all their property in common, living, wherever they were found, in societies by themselves, uniting the fruits of their labour in one stock, and all receiving out of it whatever they needed for the support and comfort of life. Their wants, at the same time, were not such as were very difficult to be supplied: their clothing was all of the plainest kind, and no one thought of having more than a single suit at once, which he wore till it was worn out their food was at all times simple in the extreme, a piece of bread and a plate of soup being the ordinary portion of every individual, at their principal meal: their houses were humble, and altogether without ornament: their whole manner of life, in short, was after the most frugal and unrefined style; for it was their opinion, that only the

real wants of nature should be regarded in the provision that is made for the accommodation of our bodies in this world; and that every sort of luxury and pleasure of mere sense, being suited only to strengthen the baser principles of our nature, and to hinder the soul in its attempt to emancipate itself from the dominion of the flesh, ought to be dreaded and avoided with the most anxious care. Commerce, accordingly, as designed to minister only to the unnatural and unreasonable appetites of men, they considered altogether an unlawful employment. They made no use of wine: they held war to be in all cases sinful, and every art also that was designed to be subservient to its interests; yet when they travelled, they thought it not improper to carry weapons, in order to protect themselves from the robbers that abounded through the country: they held slavery under any form to be contrary to nature and reason; they did not approve of oaths, and made no use of them, except when they became members of the society; on which occasion, having previously lived on trial for the space of two years, every one who joined them was required to bind himself in the most solemn manner to love and worship God, to deal justly with all men, to abstain from doing harm to any creature, &c.; and yet they were remarkable for their strict regard to truth in all the concerns of life; insomuch that the word of an Essene was allowed by all that had any knowledge of them, to be worth full as much as the oath of another man. They did not think it wrong to marry, and some of them, accordingly, consented to make the experiment of wedlock; but it was considered to have so much hazard in it, that a single state was esteemed to be more desirable. In their religious duties, they were remarkably strict and regular: in the morning, they never uttered a word about common business before the rising of the sun, (the sun never found any of them in bed of course,) but occupied themselves till that time with their prayers: after this duty of devotion, they all went to their several employments: about eleven o'clock, they left their work, washed themselves with cold water, retired for a while to their several cells, or apartments, and then assembled in their dining room to partake of their plain meal of bread and soup; the afternoon called them again to their work,

and when it was over, brought them a second time round their common table, spread with a supper of the most frugal sort, after which each withdrew to attend to his evening prayers at the commencement and the close of every meal, a short prayer was addressed to God, as the author of the blessing. The Sabbath they kept so carefully that they would not so much as move a dish in the house during the whole of it, lest it should be a violation of its holy rest; and besides attending to private religious duties, they reguJarly met on that day for public worship in Synagogues which they had of their own, where the Scriptures were read, and explained by such among them as by reason of age and understanding were best qualified for the task. 'When any member was found guilty of gross crime, or unfaithful to his profession, they cut him off entirely from their society.

The Therapeute of Egypt differed from the Essenes of Palestine, only in being more rigidly severe in their manner of life. They withdrew from the midst of the common world altogether, and gave themselves up almost entirely to solitude and contemplation. Those who joined them did not bring their property along with them, and put it into the common stock, as was usual with the Essenes, but leaving it all to their friends, whom they felt it their duty utterly to forsake, they came into the society unburdened with a particle of its care. Marriage was not in use among them at all. Their diet was merely coarse bread and salt, accompanied sometimes with a little hyssop, and the only drink they ever allowed themselves, was water; nor did they indulge themselves with even this scanty fare, except in the most sparing manner, making it their daily practice not to taste any food before sun-set, because they thought the day should all be appropriated to the cultivation of the soul, by meditation and study, and that the night alone ought to be employed in satisfying the necessities of the body-and little enough even of that was needed for this purpose, in their self-denying and abstemious manner of life; some of them, it is said, used to become so absorbed in their contemplations, and so engrossed with their pursuit of wisdom, that they forgot to take their food even at the close of the day, and at times for as much as three whole

days together-yea, in some instances, a whole week was passed almost without eating at all-so wonderfully did the entertainment with which the mind was fed in the banqueting house of Philosophy, enable them to dispense with the grosser aliment that is appointed to invigorate and sustain our animal nature! The women-for there were such belonging to the society-never came into company with the men, (who themselves, in fact, lived every one separate from the rest almost all the week,) except on the Sabbath, when they assembled with them in the Synagogue, though in a distinct part of the house, cut off by a wall of some height from that which the rest of the congregation occupied; and also at the common table which it was the custom to spread on the evening of that sacred day for their whole company to partake together. In their worship, they made much of hymns, and on certain occasions joined in sacred dances.

The whole sect agreed with the Pharisees in their belief of the existence of spirits and the immortality of the human soul, and seem also to have entertained the same general idea of God's sovereign providence in the government of the world. They denied, however, the resurrec tion of the body; and as they looked upon it as the chief hindrance to virtue and wisdom in this present state, and made it, accordingly, their great care to mortify all its natural appetites, while lodged in its fleshly prison, it did not seem to them desirable at all to have it recovered from its ruins; or rather the thought of shutting up the emancipated spirit a second time within its walls, was utterly at va riance with their whole notion of the blessedness of that future state to which they looked forward. They did not receive, it seems, the traditionary law of the Pharisees; but, while they acknowledged the written word of God to be the only infallible rule of religion, they made use of a fanciful sort of interpretation in explaining it, which subjected it, after all, to the authority of human opinions, and opened a door for the introduction of all manner of error: they held that the Scriptures, besides the direct and natural sense of their language, have a deeper and more important meaning, mystically buried in that first one, which alone constitutes the true heavenly wisdom of their pages,