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who has described them, to occupy a middle station between Jews and Christians; they take honey and locusts, which are distributed as consecrated elements sacramentally. The chief topic of their discourse is the Light of the World, always introduced in sentences like those of the Evangelist, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"-words which they apply not to Jesus, but to John. Christ they believe to have been, not the Son of God, but a prophet, and a follower of John. Baptism, the rite of initiation, they perform in a large vessel with significant ceremonies at the earliest dawn of the day; they worship John as their father, and ascribe to him the prerogative of illuminating the mind with the light of the true religion. They dedicate to their founder four festivals in the year; the first, to commemorate his birth; the second, the institution of his baptism; the third, his decapitation; and the fourth, his conquest of a dragon of wonderful size, which they pretend that he slew after it had issued from the lake of Tiberias. They have many mystical numbers, mystical names, and mystical spirits, and various books to which they appeal in defence of their tenets and for the encouragement of their faith. But to return from this digression, which it is hoped will not be uninteresting to the reader.

What event occurred at this period particularly effecting the Jews in Rome?

While Herod Antipas was thus conducting the affairs of his government, a decree was issued by Tiberius banishing all the Jews from Rome, or according to one author, from Italy. This edict originated in the hateful crime of a young Roman, Decius Mundus, who, by bribing some Egyptian priests, had debauched a noble lady in the character and garb of their god Anubis. The Jews were implicated in the calamities of the Egyptians by the artifices of the notorious Sejanus, whose nefarious plots might be discovered or thwarted by the known loyalty of the people he persecuted. It appears that this fact was discovered after the death of that prostituted minister, and a more favourable decree was issued by the

emperor.

SECTION II.

INFLUENCE OF THE REJECTION OF CHRIST BY THE JEWS ON THEIR NATIONAL CONDITION.

THE time had now arrived, when the final destiny of the Jewish nation was sealed; when the reiterated and appalling threatenings which had been pronounced by God against their obduracy and unbelief were fulfilled; and immediately subsequent to which, they were oppressed by calamities which might have appalled ages and generations, but which were inflicted upon them within the limits of a single province, and in the duration of a few short years.

WHAT was the political condition of Judæa when Christ commenced his ministry?

A. D. 26.

When the blessed Redeemer commenced his public ministry, Judæa and Jerusalem were agitated with popular commotion, and were oppressed by the outrages of their unjust and tyrannical governor. The predecessors of Pilate had respected the religious principles or prejudices of the Jews, and their standards had not been introduced into the city, because their images of the emperors and of eagles being regarded as idolatrous emblems, were held in utter abomination by the people. Pilate, however, had no such complaisance for their feelings. A body of his troops were to winter in Jerusalem; they entered the city in the night with their standards covered, but the next morning the offensive emblems were displayed. The whole city was in an uproar. A number of the people immediately repaired in a body to the governor at Cæsarea, and implored him to remove the causes of their grief. Pilate refused; he declared that the application was an insult upon the emperor; six days he resisted their importunity; at length he was irritated by their pertinacity; he commanded some soldiers, stationed for the purpose, to put the suppliants to the sword; the Jews immediately offered themselves to be slaughtered, declaring that they had rather die

than violate the laws of their God; their passive constancy astonished, and then affected, the stern Roman, and he commanded the standards to be removed. But he soon returned to his purpose of mortifying the Jews. He placed in the royal palace of Jerusalem a number of shields in honour of Tiberius-an action which they resented rather as an indignity to them, than as an honour to the emperor. Their remonstrances were presented to Pilate in vain, but their application to Tiberius himself was successful, and an order was transmitted to the governor to place the shields in some other place. Pilate dared not disobey, and the shields were removed to Cæsarea.

Give another specimen of the contempt of Pilate for the Jews.

Whether Pilate in his next undertaking was actuated by a reference to the public good, or by a mere desire to vex the Jews, it is unnecessary to inquire. To have a pretext for extorting money from the sacred treasury, he plausibly pretended to build an aqueduct which was to convey water to Jerusalem from a distance of two hundred furlongs; and in order to defray the expense of the undertaking, he demanded that a tax should be laid upon the funds of the temple. The people were irritated into a determined resistance; the sanguinary Roman commanded some of his soldiers to mix with the crowd with weapons concealed under their garments; when the populace persisted with their clamour, at a given signal, these men fell upon the unarmed and defenceless multitude; a vast slaughter ensued; the crowd was finally dispersed, and though the people were intimidated by the massacre, it was soon found that even by this bloody infliction, their spirit was by no means subdued. In what gloomy times, and under what a dreadful tyranny did the meek and lowly Jesus commence his ministry of mercy!

What was the connexion, and what were the consequences of the ministry of Christ to the Jews?

This momentous inquiry demands a specific reply, and it would be unpardonable to omit its brief investigation in this work. The doctrines which the Sa

viour proclaimed, his works of mercy, his efficacious atonement, and the miracles of his grace, it belongs to the theologian, and not to the historian, to illustrate; but no tangible and satisfactory explanation can be given of the subsequent dispersion of the Jews, and of the mysterious dispensations of God to their unhappy race in the subsequent ages of their calamity and woe, unless the question which has just been stated be fully and decisively answered.

What affirmation is particularly to be made upon this momentous subject?

It is affirmed then, that THE REJECTION OF CHRIST BY THE JEWS WAS THE SOURCE OF ALL THEIR MISERIES -the crime which was punished by the destruction of their city, their banishment from their country, their slavery and infamy in every nation- and the assignable reason of that tremendous curse, which has visibly rested upon them in every age and in every place to the present day.

Did our Lord himself make this affirmation?

When the Redeemer lamented the infatuation and wept over the approaching destruction of that unhappy city by whose guilty and unbelieving inhabitants he was murdered, he stated this melancholy fact in the most pathetic and impressive language, in which the most exalted patriotism ever bewailed the falling fortunes of its country. "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate !"

How was the crime of the Jews in the rejection of Christ aggravated?

The Jews had been the objects of the peculiar care of the Eternal Jehovah for a long succession of ages; their history is a record of wonders and miracles; God himself had condescended to be their legislator and king; inspired prophets were continually sent to declare the purposes of his will and to unfold the riches of its grace; from incessant rebellions and

sins, they were reclaimed by the most admirable processes of merciful severity, and by the most extraordinary chastisements of immutable love; the most stupendous deliverances had been achieved for themdeliverances altogether unaccountable by any reference to inferior agencies and secondary instrumentalities; they had not only been blessed with the light of reve lation amidst the gloomy darkness of a benighted universe, but they were exalted to the most ennobling honour which could possibly be conferred by Omnipotence itself upon any nation under heaven, for the Incarnate Jehovah was of their race ;-and yet after all these affecting manifestations of unparalleled mercy, they had not only spurned away the blessings of their God, they had not only continually turned aside to the blasphemous and obscene rites of the nations around them, they had not only evinced perpetual ingratitude, perpetual impiety, perpetual and atrocious rebellion against God; but they completed the melancholy climax of their guilt, by perpetrating the most frightful crime which ever has or could have been committed even in this sin-disordered world. Mournfully just was the striking appeal of the first Christian martyr to this deluded people, “ Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers."

And the doom was appropriate to the crime; for the rejection of the Son of God by the Jews, was attended with the most odious and tremendous aggravations.

Parlicularize the aggravations of the guilt of the Jews in the rejection of Christ.

They rejected Him-though he most conclusively proved by the prophecies of their own Scriptures— prophecies so decisive as to command conviction, and so distinct as to prevent the possibility of mistake, that he was the true Messiah, the Child who was to be born, the Son who was to be given, upon whose shoulders the weight of universal government was to

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