JEREMIAH, the second of the prophets, began to prophesy in the thirteenth year of king Josi'ah, and during forty years continued to denounce the sins of his countrymen, and the judgments with which they would be visited; and for this he suffered unremitting persecution at their hands. He survived the fall of the kingdom of Judah, and is supposed to have been stoned to death in Egypt, whither he had been carried by the Jews who slew Gedali'ah. B.C. 583.

EZEKIEL, the third of the great prophets, was carried captive to Babylon with king Jehoi'achin, and prophesied beyond the Euphrates at the same time that Jeremi'ah was prophesying at Jerusalem. After many melancholy visions descriptive of the sufferings of Judah and the surrounding nations, God showed him more consolatory events the return from captivity, the rebuilding of the temple, and the restitution of the kingdom of Judah and Israel. Moreover, carrying him in prophetic vision far beyond events comparatively close at hand, he revealed to him the glorious times that are to succeed the conversion of the Jews, and their restoration to their own land -the account of which revelation the prophet has given to his countrymen, in the only language in which a Jew can be made to conceive of the prosperity, and final prevalence of the Church of the living God.

DANIEL, whose rank in the court of Nebuchadnez'zar and his successors reminds us of Joseph in Egypt, was carried when very young captive to Babylon. He was there instructed in the language and learning of the Chal'decs, and we find him among the Ma'gi, who were ordered to be put to death, because they could not tell and interpret to the king a dream which he had forgotten. Dan'iel's accomplishment of this, through divine illumination, by telling the king what he had seen in his vision, a great image of various metals, and what it denoted; his explanation also of another dream, in which the fate of the king himself was prefigured, by a large tree cut down, yet so that its root remained in the earth-his integrity in the high office to which he was promoted-his explanation to Belshazʼzar of the hand-writing on the wall—his firmness in refusing to discontinue his prayers to God, and

his preservation in the lion's den, to which he was in consequence condemned-and his promotion to the highest authority under the reigns of several princes,—are a few of the incidents in the eventful life of this remarkable man.

VII. From the Babylonish Captivity to the Destruction of Jerusalem, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Judea. 717 years.

A. M. 3417-A. D. 134.

B. C. 583-A. D. 134.

ABOUT forty years after the final captivity of Judah, some of the Jews, by permission of Cyrus, returned from captivity under Zerubbabel, who was charged with the holy vessels. They commenced rebuilding the temple, but were opposed by the Cu'thites or Samaritans. About thirty years after this event, the incidents recorded in the book of Esther occurred; and about fifty years thereafter, Ez'ra, with several priests and Le'vites, returned to Jerusalem; and thirteen years after this, Nehemiah, by permission of Artaxerx'es, visited Jerusalem, whose gates and walls he rebuilt. It was under his government that Zechari'ah and Mal'achi prophesied. About 110 years after the time of Nehemiah, the Samaritans, having obtained permission from Alexander the Great, built their temple on Mount Ger'izim as a rival to that at Jerusalem. B.C. 332.

and

The Jews had many revolutions of peace and war, some changes in the mode of their government, from the time of their return from the Babylonian captivity to their complete subjection to the Romans; but their sacerdotal (or priestly) government, as it is sometimes called, continued with but little interruption through the whole space of about 600 years. Having returned into their own country under the sanction and authority of Cyrus, they acknowledged the sovereignty of the kings of Persia, till that empire was overturned by Alexander the Great. They then became subject to his successors, first in Egypt, afterwards in Syria, till they were driven into

revolt by the cruelty of Anti'ochus Epiph'anes, who had caused 80,000 Jews to be massacred in three days, profaned the temple by sacrificing a sow, and sprinkling the holy place with the blood of the unclean animal, and who had issued orders for the whole nation to adopt the Grecian religion. This roused the energies of the people, who, led on by Mattathi'as Maccabac'us and his seven sons, expelled the oppressors, and shook off the foreign yoke. The Asmonc'an princes or Mac'cabees ruled for upwards of 100 years, when, about 63 years before Christ, a dispute for the crown, among the last of their race, gave the Romans an opportunity for interfering and subjecting the country to their own power.

About thirty-six years before Christ, Her'od, son of Antipater, an E'domite, and an officer in the Jewish army, obtained from the Romans, through the favour of Mark Anthony, the kingdom of Jude'a, which he held tributary to Rome. He erected magnificent edifices in various parts of the country, and in particular, repaired and enlarged the buildings of the Temple. In a fit of anger, he caused his beloved wife Mariam'ne to be put to death, for which, when his passion had subsided, his grief was so great, that it nearly cost him his life. Towards the end of his reign our SAVIOUR was born, and Her'od dreading him as a rival, ordered the massacre of all the infants in Bethlehem, under two years of age. Herod died the following year of a loathsome disease, having, five days before his death, executed his son Antipater, for conspiring against him. The Romans so far respected his will as to apportion his dominions among his three sons, Archela'us, Her'od-An'tipas, and Philip. It was this Her'odAn'tipas, tetrarch of Galilee, that beheaded John the Baptist, and to whom Jesus was sent by Pilate the Roman Governor of Jude'a; for this part of Palestine had been reduced to the form of a Roman province, on the banishment of Archela'us, about six years after the birth of our Lord. Her'od-Agrippa I., a practised courtier and crafty politician, having supplanted his uncle Her'od-An'tipas in the emperor's favour, by degrees acquired dominions as ample as had been ruled by his grandfather Herod the Great. It was this Herod-Agrippa I. that killed James

tle brother of John with the sword, and that was caten up of worms. His son, Herod-Agrippa II., who ruled the provinces east of the sea of Galilee, was the prince before whom Paul made his famous defence at Cesare'a, at the time that Festus succeeded Felix as Governor of Jude'a. A.D. 63.

The Jews had never submitted patiently to any of their foreign masters; and in the year 66 they broke out into open revolt against the Romans. Although the oppression of the Roman governors, and the cruelties they practised for the purposes of extortion, are sufficient to account for their insurrection against that power—still, their own intestine divisions, the atrocities they perpetrated upon one another, and the rancorous hatred with which they pursued their seditions, leave us no room to impute to their actions any motive of patriotism. The bonds of civil society seem to have been dissolved, and bands of miscreants, with no other trade than murder, were let loose like fiends to ravage the now doomed land of Jude'a. One of the factions, known by the name of the zealots or robbers, took forcible possession of Jerusalem, degraded the high-priest, and profaned the temple. Ti'tus, on whom the command of the armies in Jude'a had devolved, by the call of his father Vespaʼsian to the imperial throne, was now advancing to besiege the city. He chose the time of the Pass'over, when multitudes from all parts of the country were assembled in Jerusalem to celebrate that festival; which accelerated the work of faminc, and increased fearfully the horrors of the siege. It must be admitted that the Jews fought with desperation in defence of their capital, though every respite from battle with the common foe was employed by the factions in massacring one another. Ti'tus finding there was no hope of taking the city by assault, resolved to starve it into submission. In three days he drew a wall nearly five miles in circuit completely around the devoted city; and thus were the Saviour's words fulfilled, "The days shall come when thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side." All the horrors of famine were now felt; children tore the food from their aged

parents, and mothers devoured their own infants. The starving wretches who ventured out by night into the valley to gather herbs, were seized by order of Titus, and crucified before the walls of the city. They caught every day hundreds of them, and the soldiers, in their hatred of the Jews, nailed those who fell into their hands, in all manner of ridiculous postures to the crosses, " till room was wanted for the crosses, and crosses wanted for the bodies." Sedition still raged within; and the streets, and even the court of the temple, flowed with blood. The city was taken, and with the temple, razed from its foundations. Eleven hundred thousand Jews perished during the siege; and of ninety-seven thousand captives, some were sent to Rome, others sold as slaves. Thus fell Jerusalem, A. D. 70; and with its fall the national existence of the Jews may be said to have terminated. The desperate attempts made about sixty years afterwards to recover their country, resulted in their final expulsion from Judea; since which time, now a period of 1700 years, they have been "scattered among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other." Deut. xxviii. 64.

SUPPLEMENTARY LESSONS.

VIII. Design and Uses of the Jewish Dispensation.

DURING the earliest ages of the history of our race, although mankind had become degenerate and corrupt ever since the fall, there was perpetuated among them a knowledge of those religious truths which Adam had learned and brought with him from paradise. The longevity of man at that period, rendered only one link necessary to convey the knowledge of Adam to the mind of No'ah; for Methu'selah, who, according to the sacred record, must have enjoyed intercourse with the great progenitor of the human race for the space of 248 years, lived with his grandson Noah during no less a period than 600 years. The antediluvian patriarchs appear to have received no additional institutes or communications from heaven beyond what were handed down from Adam, if we except the prophesying of Enoch. They observed