frantic and unbridled fury with which this tumultuary people, the Jews, seem ever to have acted, when any event excited public interest, or pressed with peculiar force on the feelings or prejudices of the nation.

For this purpose it might be sufficient to cite the case of Stephen, whom, untried and uncondemned, they proceeded against with the most infuriate rancour," they gnashed on him with their teeth," and hastily put him to death, even at a time when, by their own acknowledgment, no such judicial power belonged to them. Or we might point to the case of Paul, when he went up to Jerusalem with alms for his nation; who being found in the temple by certain Jews of Asia, who had probably heard him preaching to the Gentiles in their own country, they stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him; and all the city was moved, and the people ran together, and all Jerusalem was in an uproar, until Lysias, the chief captain," or commanding officer of the Roman forces in Jerusalem, came down and rescued Paul, and carried him into the castle.

If it excite astonishment to observe a mixed multitude, in the precincts of the temple, thus transported with rage; the dissensions in the Sanhedrim the next day, when Paul pleaded his own cause before them, will not diminish it; for the strife and passion of the members of that sacred court arose to such a height, that Lysias, "fearing that Paul should be pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them, and bring him into the castle."

This total want of decency and decorum in the highest ecclesiastical court in the world, marks, more strongly than a thousand arguments could do, the peculiarly ferocious temperament of the Jews; their unrestrained fury, and ungovernable passion; and detaches all respect from an assembly, which we should otherwise have considered of the most august and dignified character. While the interference of Lysias, a Roman tribune, in interrupting those sacred proceedings, over which the high priest of the Jews was presiding in person, proves, unequivocally, that all civil authority had passed away from this people,

that the sceptre had departed from Judah,that Shiloh was come, and that, in a temporal sense, they had indeed "no King but Cæsar."

The sacred historian continues to inform uš, that "certain Jews banded together, and bound themselves by a curse, that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul;" and that Lysias imagined Paul was a certain chief of banditti, who had led into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers.

These scattered notices of the state of society in Jerusalem, strongly corroborate the correctness of the statements of the historian whom we are about to introduce to the reader; and prepare the mind for the reception of the melancholy details of the disorganized condition of this distracted nation, which are contained in the following narrative.

It seems unnecessary here to allude any further to the circumstances which induced Lysias to send Paul to Felix, the Roman governor, who resided at Cesarea, and who kept the apostle two years a prisoner. And when we read that Felix "hoped that money should have been given him

of Paul to loose him," we see at once the corrupt and avaricious character of the Roman government; and that Felix, while he was ready to sell justice, if such an anomaly could exist, was yet, without any conviction of the guilt of Paul, but merely to ingratiate himself with the Jews, lest they should accuse him of rapacity and mal-administration to Cæsar, "willing to show them a pleasure," and so "left Paul bound."

Felix was succeeded in the government of Judea by Porcius Festus, before whose tribunal Paul was again accused of the Jews, and again found guiltless by the Romans; but having appealed to Cæsar, he was sent to Rome; and the sacred writers of the New Testament make no further mention of the political state of Judea, or of the administrators of its civil polity.

When Festus came into Judea, he found the whole country infested with banditti, who murdered the inhabitants, plundered the houses, and set fire to the villages. That such should be the demoralized state of the provinces need excite no surprise, when the citizens of Jerusalem, or perhaps some of the very members of the Sanhe

drim, had bound themselves by an oath to attempt the assassination of Paul. These robbers were called Siccarii, on account of certain small swords called Siccæ, which they carried concealed under their garments. They slew men in open day, in the midst of the city, but chiefly at the festivals, where they mingled among the multitude, and stabbing their enemies, they immediately affected to join the outery against the murderers, and thus escaped detection.

Festus sent out patroles of soldiers to destroy these men, and to deliver the country from their tyranny: But Festus was soon succeeded by Albinus, as Procurator of Judea, who was very remiss in his endeavours to correct these abuses; on the contrary, there was hardly any wickedness of which he was not himself guilty. His rapacity and extortion were so great, that he not only, in his political or official capacity, robbed and plundered the people, and burdened them with the most vexatious and oppressive taxes, but he sold the very contents of the prison house; and every robber and malefactor who had been incarcerated for their crimes by former governors, he