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. 66 help," and trust in his help, from heaven. But now, (B.C. 144) enemies brought under foot," he sends an embassy of "amity" to Rome and another of "salute" for "renewal of brotherhood" to Sparta. Hitherto in touch only of the powers of the East, of these two States of the West, fallen Sparta and transcendent Rome he had but the scrappy knowledge of hearsay.20 He had heard of Spartan valor; time and place of its display likely unknown to him. He had rumor of Roman might; his knowledge of it inaccurate and confused. But through all his misapprehensions about them, this he knew, that both States were heathen. Yet, seeking no strength from them when most he needed it, now in the flush and jubilee of his triumph, red, too, from the massacre of his own heathen, from the two peoples he deems foremost among the heathen of the outer world. he bespeaks recognition, "brotherhood and friendship." They were heathen, but they were heroes. He, had stirred to the blare of their trumpets from afar. And zealous as ever for Jehovah, his martial sympathies trod down his religious aversions, and the soldier set foot on the priest in him as he rose to lock hands with the virtues of idolaters. Only virtues of war were they. What then? Hot from his own battlefields they were just the brilliances then to captivate him, and to whirl him out of his Jewish narrowness into brotherhood with patriots and freemen the whole world over. And for a while they did. No loftier character is there in history; not even the Athenian, devout, just, and true, while ran his heroic century after Marathon, than is the Jew of the days of the Maccabees. Even Rome, contemner of every people but her own, held him then, her "friend, confederate, and brother." 21 Diplomatic common-places, these? Perhaps. Yet not to be used, even in compliment, except of a people firm in Roman repute. Not at that time could any premature Tacitus have evoked echo to the scoff that," in the sanctuary of their Temple (the 20 "Judas had heard of the fame of the Romans." I. Maccabees viii. 1 11" Dometrius had heard say that the Romans had called the Jews their friends, and confederates and brethren." I. Maccabees xiv. 38-41. At his issue in Jews) consecrated the figure of an ass." 22 triumph from his three and twenty years struggle for Independence, for eminence as a soldier in no second rank stood the Jew. Nor was he well forward only as a fighter. He had become a man of affairs; broad of view, keen of opportunity, thoughtful of plan, prompt of deed. He headed Egyptia armies, and in Egypt was welcomed to the highest offices of the State. In Alexandria, two of the five districts of the city were set apart for him; and in the other three he was every where. He lived there under a government and governor of his own.29 And throughout the city his industries were omnipresent. That wealth is power, who had learned so featly as the Jew? And by his religious peculiarities, not one of which would he surrender, disadvantaged among his competitors, who, in chase of gain so supple, swift, sure as he? Throughout the Empire, above all and every, was the Jew a trader. Wherever marched Roman army, with Crassus to Parthia, Pompey to Spain or Pontus, Cæsar to Gaul and Britain, keen for commerce as was Rome for conquest, tracked the columns of that army and threaded the lines of its enemies, the ubiquitous, indefatigable, inexhaustible Jew.24 Ninety years before his patronage by Cæsar, throughout her provinces from Africa to Parthia, Rome had accorded him protection for his person and his business.25 And for what now was ever more and more becoming the purpose of his practical life, he profited by her patronage and gathered gear by every wile," not always "justified by honor." In Rome itself multiplying his population and his shekels, insensibly he worked himself in among the social forces of the city, and became a formidable factor in its public opinion. 22 Tacitus History (Bohn) 267. Of the Jews in the desert, says he, that distressed by thirst, "they lay ready to expire, when a herd of wild asses returning from pasture went up a rock shaded by a grove. Moses followed them, and forming his conjecture by the herbage on the ground opened copious springs of water!" This! Yet, with Thucydides open to her scholars, Rome scoffed at Greek truth! 23 Cheletrias and Ananias, Jews, commanded the army of Cleopatra. Milman's History of the Jews, ii. 36 and 32. #4 Mammsen's Rome, iv. 539. 25 I. Maccabees xv. 10-24. |