ARTICLE IX. The Jew From the Maccabees to Christ. PART II. WHERE stood the Temple, there stood national unity, stability, and resistance to progress. Where spread Synagogues, there teemed ever-multiplying centers of intellectual movement, diversity of view, and individual as against co-operate religion. Both worked together for the well being of relig ion, and outwardly, in harmony. Yet the thrill of the Synagogue troubled the conservatism of the Temple. And the gravity of the Temple misliked the nimbleness of the Synagogue. Still, the freest upholder of the Synagogue kept within the unity of Israel by frequent sacrifice in the Temple. But he felt its worship ponderous, its forms mechanical, while in the Synagogue thrusting aside priestly mediation, staple of the worship of the Temple, for himself, he stood face to face with God. The priestly party of the Temple reaching God less by soul than by symbol, resented, but silently, their own supersedure by the personal worship of the synagogue. Priests came there, but not heartily; and were received there, not quite as laymen, yet scarcely as priests. The aroma of their office clung to them, but faintly. They took part if they chose in the services, and at their close pronounced the benediction. But with that exception, only on a par with other worshippers they felt themselves supernumeraries, and the dignity of the Temple chafed at the equality of the Synagogue, and was uncordial there. And, rooted in the old paths, naturally the priesthood looked askance at the mind of the nation slipping from its old forms into the activities of the Synagogue. Nor did it oil the fracture, nor span the divergence, that, in the Temple lay the strength of the Sadducees, and that of the Pharisees in the Synagogue. From the rise of the Synagogue, ever more and more impossible became to the Temple its former monopoly of Jewish unity. 1 Deutsch, 139. NEY SERIES. VOL. XXI. 9 At the laying of the foundation of the new building, “ all the people shouted with a great shout, (and) praised the Lord; "but the "ancient men that had seen the first house wept with a loud voice, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the wer ping.2" Unconscious welcomes and farewells were these; the sobs of the old, unknowing laments for the priestly unity of the past, the shouts of the young, salutations to the freer unity of the future, with body in the Temple, mind and soul in the Synagogue. Different this from the forecasts of Isaiah and Ezekiel. By "an high way from Assyria," "the outcats of Israel and the dispersed of Judah " were to assemble" from the four corners of the earth," no more two nations, but one," under "one shepherd, in the land and upon the mountains of Israel." 3 It was not so to be. The outcasts from Israel had sunk from sight like streams in the sand. And the remnant from Judah that returned, yeasting with germs from the incipient Synagogues of Ezekiel, could no more have re-settled on the lees of the past, than could the various Protestantism of today pack itself into the moulds of Hildebrand. Yet, to revive in the new conditions, the dead things of the old, fain are the legends of the return. At the Overthrow, snatched by flying priests from the altar, the sacred fire had been hidden in a pit. Pit and fire miraculously discovered at the Return, the fire had become Naptha. And to the prayer, that again in His "Holy place God would plant His people, His whole people, Israel, as Moses hath spoken," the Naptha, Fire sacred to Ormazd, consumed, by sanction of Nehemia', the first sacrifice on the re-erected altar of Jehovah.5 The prayer, longs back to Mosaic unity. The sacrifice, offers strange fire before the Lord;" offence under Moses, guilty of death. The past invoked by the petition is unreal; a dream shimmering through the glamours that glorify the 2 Ezra iii. 22, 13. 3 Isaiah xi. 12. 16; Ezekiel xxxvi. 21, 23. xx. 1; xxxiii. 30, 31. 5 II. Maccabees i. 19-36. The Naptha still burns perpetually in the Parsee fire temples "All round the World, vol. ii. p. 299. Ezekiel viii. 1; xiv. 1; 6 Leviticus x. 1, 2. at Baku on the Caspian perspectives of memory. Save in the ideal, such past had never been; nor ever therefore could answer summons to revival. Yet the legend has meaning. Natural to the Jew of the period were his pleadings for the past. But by the Naptha on his altar, himself suggested the impracticability of their realization. That Naptha was not only his courtesy to the religion, but, as against his Mosaic nationality, was his homage to the lordship of Persia. And how would have brooked that lordship, the Jew's attempt to solidify his prayer? Not at all of his past, the Naptha was a symbol of his future; its smoke, pillar of cloud between himself and his backward; its flame, lamp through their obscurities, to lore and languages other than his own. The day of the Naptha dates the dawn of his expansion. Then felt he the first thrill of brotherhood for aught beyond Judea. Resiliances afterwards had he many. But mostly under grind of persecution, or in the astringent hatreds of war. Never again, anchoret from the world sank he quite back into his sulky seclusion. Abhorring idolatry, in his fight for independence he yet. raged not against the idolatry but the tyranny of the Greeks. Let him keep it to himself, and the Greek might coddle his idolatry as he liked, for aught cared the Jew. It was an absurdity; but no concern of his. But against idolatry forced on himself, he was fell. It was against this compulsion of conscience, his suffocation of soul, that, on field of fight, he cut to nothing the armies of Antiochus. His thought of them as idolaters, may have whetted, but his fury against them as tyrants, was it, that maddened his sword. Still, once they were under it, for them, he had the usual tolerances of war. out from his own blood shot a spume of traitors, vilest of foes. Covenanters of Scotland would have banned them as 66 malignants," Republicans of the Revolution, as " rascally Tories." 8 But 7 We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one, I. Cor. viii. 4. 8 A rascally Tory rode in the night to give notice to the enemy." Washington to his brother, December 18, 1776. Mahon's History of England, vi. 127. 11 What Against them, pitiless, "ho set his face like a flint." wonder! By birthright, Jehovah, their Father, their mother, Judea, their nurse, the Synagogue, the Decalogue, their alphabet, and their master, Moses, trampling on every sanctity of nature and of home they "joined themselves with the heathen," cringed to Antiochus, "were sold to do mischief," sacrificed to idols," set up the abomination of desolation," an offering of swine every day,' 10 upon the altar," tore and burned"the books of the Law," murdered circumsised childron, and hung the little corpses to the necks of their mothers. Originals of the war, at every lull they blew its embers into blaze, whooping both sides on again to slaughter. On these, the Jew was ruthless. For ransom, slavery, or roturn of prisoners, Greck captives casily he spared. Apos. tates, never! Against them, relentless, raged his sword, hewing them in picces before the Lord.13 "Eight hours long hung in balance Wellington's fight at Waterloo.14 Afterwards, said he, had I had the army broken up at Bordeaux, the battle would not have lasted for four." But for the inveteracy of the traitors the war of Jewish Independence, tormenting the patience of three and twenty years, begun B.C. 166, ended B.C. 143,- would have closed at Adasa in five. "Nicanor pitched in Bethoran. Judas pitched in Adasa. The hosts joined battle. Nicanor's host was discomfited; himself slain. They cast away their weapons and fled. The Jews pursued after them a day's journey, sounding after them with trumpets. The people rejoiced greatly. The land of Juda was at rest." 16 The statement adds, for "a little while." For, for eighteen years longer the war devoured its prey, and did so at provocation of apostate Jews. To the faithful of the time, "a man's foes Of the Tories again he writes, "these wretched creatures - one or two have done what a great many ought to have done long ago, -committed suicide!" 1st April, 1776. Mahon etc.. vi. 85. 22. 10 Josephus," Antiquities " xii. v. 4. 111. Maccabees i. 43-62, Ibid. verses 11-16 13 I. Samuel xv. 23. 15 Timb's Wellingtoniana, 59. were they of his own household." Brothers of one womb had cach other by the throat. A foreign, tarred on a civil war, screwing its dagger in the nation's heart. Yet out from desperation triumphant rose the loyalists, "so that being but a few they overcame the whole country and chased barbarous multitudes, and recovered again the Temple renowned the world over, and freed the city, and upheld the laws which were going down; the Lord being gracious unto them with all favor." " Then the sword ceased from Israel." Regular government returned. Traitors were extinguished. For Jonathan Maccabees, now independent monarch of Judea, (B.C. 152) "destroyed the ungodly men out of Israel.” 17 To the devout Jew of the time, native heathenism was blasphemy; to the patriot, treason; by both to be" hated with perfect hatred." 18 To the heathenism of the Gentiles as Gentiles, the exclusive son of Abraham deemed himself indifferent. Yet, perhaps, unconsciously aversion to it may have steeled his pride at his lowest against summoning Gentile aid. At any time of his straits he might have had it from Rome. For his tyrant, Antiochus, was no favorite there. In the first year of the Jewish revolt, (B.C. 168,) he had overrun Egypt and was at siege before Alexandria. Despatches from Rome bade him begone. To their bearer, said Antiochus, "I will consider." Scoring a cirele round the king, "ere you cross that line," said the Roman, "decide." He did; and rushed to vent his fury on rebellious Jerusa lem. Had the Jew sought Rome then, he would have missed the miscrics and the glories of the wars of the Maccabecs. But he craved to win by himself alone. He won. For not till his midnight clomb to morning, with foresigns of a triumphant meridian, threw he out hails to others; nor then for help, but acknowledgement. While yet"in wars on every side," he hesitated “to be troublesome" for assistance from others.19 For he had 17 II. Maccabees ii. 21, 22; I. Maccabees ix. 73. 18 Psalm cxxxix. 21, 22. 19 The first message to Rome for aid (161) was rather in form than earnest. 1. Mae cabees viii. 17, 18. |