And woc to the greedy prætor returning from his province, if his fingers had dabbled in the purses of the Jews. The howls of their brethren in the city set aroar at him the curses of the whole populace of the capital.26

And this before the fall of Jerusalem. Immediately after it, his restless traders, scattering every-where, scaled the farthest boundaries of the Enpire, the farthest limits of Parthia, and struck aloof into the farthest eastern provinces of China.

In Pekin, Ning-po, Hang chen, and Cai fong-fou, in the modern province of Honan, about 175 A.C., numbers of Jews were settled and well at home. Declining intermarriage with the Chinese, despite their rigid Judaism they were good Chinesc citizens. An imperial inscription of date 1515, A.D. commends them as exemplary subjects, magistrates, soldiers, and, of course, traders; commends, too, their faithfulness to their own religion. They abjured proselytism and revered Confucius. They kept, and strictly, their Sabbaths, and jealously, their Holy books. They had, too, their Synagogues, and maintained circumcision. In remembrance of their old Temple in Jerusalem they had reproduced it in miniature in China, and barred its Holy of Holics against entrance, save, onco, annually, by the high priest. Like all the branches of the Dispersion, they looked forward to a Messiah.27

That they had never heard of Jesus nor of his religion as an offshoot from their own, implies their emigration from Judea before his day, or, more unlikely, the disappearnce of his story from their traditions among the clouds of time. But whenever or wherever outscattered this spore of Jewish energy so far afield from home, what an epitome is it of the complicate Jew. Through alien, and doubtless, often hostile peoples, of tongues unknown to him, through tribes fierce and savage, to push his way from Jerusalem to the borders of the Yellow sca, needed such a blending of boldness with wariness, such sweep of aim with vigilance of detail as demanded for their compaction a man of men.

26 Mommsen's Rome, iv. 539.

27 Milman's History of the Jews, ii. 494–497.

But after his rest was reached, among people, manners, prejudices, and religions, strange, and to him repugnant, that he should settle down in his new surroundings with comfort alike to himself and his hosts, to their usages willow, yet steel to his own, tells how virile yet versatile was the humanity of the Jew. That later in his history he lost himself and went down into the deeps of degradation, is truc. Shame to the

bastard Christianity that hounded him into them.

Yet even in his debasement, subtle of brain and alert of device was he above his rivals. When his knavery outwitted theirs, "sec," said they," the inborn nature of the Jew." Nay, the character tatooed on him by puncture of incessant persecution.

Not of such was the Jew of the Maccabees, hewing his way to freedom through overwhelming foes. Not of such were his teeming sub-nations in Egypt and Babylon.28

Nor again of such was he, who, wherever sailed ship, paced mule, or plodded camel in caravan, swarmed over the routes of the land and the paths of the seas, from Egypt to Britain, from Britain to China, the unresting merchant, trader, trafficker, the omnipresent Jew.

The

As he is now so was he then, autocrat of finance. granaries of Egypt, when full, fed, when empty, famished Rome. And there, dearth meant tumult. The rabble were dined by the State.29 And if to the cry of the proletariate, 46 games for ever and bread for nothing," there came no response of corn, then mobocracy. Now, of the store houses of Egypt the Jew held the keys,30 and on board her grain ships his hand held was at the helm. Wheat to Italy could pass from Egypt only under his permission. For he had supervision of the navigation of the Nile and the contiguous Mediter

28 Philo reckons his countrymen in Alexandria at a million. Encyclopedia Brittanica (ed. 9,)" Israel," p. 430. In Babylon the Prince of the Captivity splendid in bis surroundings, was sub-monarch over a free, industrious, and wealthy people. Milman's History of the Jews, vol. ii. 492.

20 Date of free bread to the mob began with Gains Gracchus (B.C, 123), lasted while Rome lasted, and urged her fall. So far as he could, Julius Caesar tempered its mischief and reduced the number of recipients from 320,000 to 150,000, changing the eustom from sop to the mob, into a sort of poor law. Mommsen's Rome, iii. 122; iv. 495. 30 Edersheim's Jewish Social Life etc., 208.

ranean. For its daily bread the metropolis of the world was at mercy of the Jew.31

Never before had he busied himself with conversions from the Gentiles; nor has he been anxious for them since. But in his rebound under the Maccabees from the crush of Antiochus, till Christ, and onward to his Day of Judgment in the down throw of Jerusalem, he "compassed sea and land" for "proselytes."

He began in the South with Idumea, home of the children of Esau, brother of his own patriarch, Jacob. Since the day of the twins,in alternate triumphs and defeats, between their descendants had raged the old fraternal feud. In the conquest and conversion of Idumea John Hyrcanus, eighth of the Maccabees, quashed the strife, merged Edom in Judea,32 at point of sword compelled its people to circumcision and the whole cult of Judaism, till "hereafter they were no other than Jews."

So through Iturea on the north swept his successor, Aristobulus, (B.C. 105), welded the district to Judea, and transmuted the Ishmaelites into Jews.33 By conquest the kingdom of the Homerite Arabs became Jewish subjects and believers.85

From Agrippa II., the last king of Judea, and in the war sider with the Romans, there went over to Josephus, while still leader reluctant of the Jewish revolt, two men of note, Not Jews, they were, likely, chiefs among the mercenaries of Agrippa. The Puritans of Josephus clamored for their cir cumcision. And only by huddling them off in secret did ho save his volunteers from mutilation.36

Farther on in the war, to a captured centurion the zealots barely spared life at price of circumcision.35 In Rome itself they seized and stamped revolting Gentiles into twofold more sons of Gehenna than themselves.37

81 In Rome a whole population might be trembling lest they might be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn ship." Farrar's Early Days of Christianity, 140 82 B.C. 106. 83 Josephus, Antiquities, xiii. ix 1 and xiii. xi. 3.

84 Merivale's Rome, iii. 286, 287. 35 Josephus, "Life," xxiii. and xxxi. 1, 2.

36 Josephus, "War," ii. xvii. 10.

87 Matthew xxiii. 15. "If you will not concede like Jews, we will force you to come over to our party." Horace B. i. Satire iv.

Spurts of fanatacism were these, denounced by every decent Jew. Still at this time, even in such an one, stirred the yeast spuming over in such outrages in the vulgar. Over his old type of exclusiveness there had passed on the Jew a change. Exclusive as ever, he was now what hitherto, since at the Return when he rebuffed the Samaritans, he had never been, comprehensive. Formerly shutting door against the Gentiles he had repelled them. But now, in fervor of Messianic hope, eager to multiply his numbers and "make ready a people prepared for the Lord," (Luke i. 17), even the wariest of his number set at least the wicket gate ajar, and under scrutiny of his wisest and best, invited all who would to enter and be at one with him. For "our wise men teach that when a heathen comes to enter into the Covenant, our part is to stretch out our hand to him and to bring him under the wings of God.38 Flinging himself abroad, too, among the hesitating and kindly, he essayed, nor vainly, to coax them to his usages; chiefly to the rest and festivity of his Sabbath. Could he attract them to it and its meanings, idol worship might grow absurd to them, and their prejudice weaken against the religion of Jehovah.

Outwardly he was widely successful. The vaunt of Joscphus, that there was "no city, Greek or barbarian," where the Jewish Sabbath with its "lighting of lamps " was "not observed," is confirmed by the rage of Seneca, that "the (Sabbath) usage of that most villainous race pervades all lands," and that "the vanquished give laws to the victors." 40 "Let us prohibit lighting candles on Sabbath." 41

66

Something with me, would you," of a friend, asks Horace ? Yes, but it is the Sabbath; would you affront the Jews?" "No religion of mine, theirs," replies the poet. Response of the other, "to me it is; I am one of the many; pardon me; another time.”42

At Rhodes, Diogenes, grammarian, gavo lectures "every 38 Smith's Biblical Dictionary, Proselytes.

39 Against Apion, B. ii. 40.

40 Lecky's European Morals, i. 248 note 2. 41 Seneca, as quoted by Huidekoper in his "Judaism at Rome," 228. 42 Satires i. 9.

Sabbath day." Coming late, Emperor Tiberius is bidden return "the seventh day.48 Imperially, Roman, in race and sympathy, Rhodes was Greek. And, doubtless, as at Rhodes, through the Greek citics of Asia prevailed every where the Sabbath, a borrow from the Jews.

Aside from the local rites and ceremonies," says Tacitus, "their other institutions (though) tainted with exce.able knavcry 44 have been extensively adopted." His anger at their ubiquity stamps the seal of a foc on it as fact.

Less visible than his institutions, secretly spread every where the central idea of the religion of the Jew.

As he had interpenetrated the customs of the Gentiles with his Sabbath, so had he lined their disintegrating idolatrics with his monotheism.

The sprightly gols of Greece were dead. Their clumsy parodies, at Rome officially paraded by the State, to all but the groundlings were puppets in a farco. Every where thoughtful men were on watch for a religion at once of reverence and

reason.

To their want one sole God, Creator and Providence of the Universe, offered Himself in the religion of the Jew. And before its offshoot, Christianity, came into notice, it had begun to occupy the minds of multitudes.

In high places at Rome its early conversions were not creditable. Never was itself creditable any where when its monotheism was grasped by superstition barely as a dogina.

Of such recipients of it, highest in rank (about 64 A.D.) was Poppea, first, wanton, next, wife, of Nero.45. Vile but beautiful, she charmed Nero into favors for the Jews. Josophus" received costly presents from Poppea." He calls her"a religious woman," otherwise a Jewess. He had speech of her through Aliturus, a comedian, by profession infamous, a minion of Nero, and by birth a Jew.

47 Public opinion branded actors as infamous." Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, i.

287.