priests, judges, advocates, writers, and physicians, they were of important service in the community, and fully earned the tenth of the produce which was allotted to them. Their division into priests and Levites was a wise provision against that too sharp distinction which in Egypt and India prevailed between the sacerdotal and the other castes. The Levites, being assigned some lands, formed a connecting link between the priests and the cultivators. Agriculture being the destination of the Israelites, trade was discouraged; for the fairs and markets were held in the neighbourhood of the heathen temples. But to compensate them for the prohibition against sharing in the joyous festivities of the surrounding nations, feasts were held three times in each year to commemorate their emancipation, the giving of the law, and their abode in the desert. At these festivals, all Israel was required to attend, that the bonds of brotherhood might be kept up among the tribes by participation in social enjoyment. Thus, many years before Con-fu-tsee gave the Kings to the Chinese, long ere any lawgiver arose in Greece, Moses, directed by God, gave to Israel, in the wastes of Arabia, a constitution, the wonder of succeeding ages, and ever memorable for the influence it has exerted on the minds and institutions of a large and important portion of mankind. During forty years, till all the degenerate race who had left Egypt had died off, Moses detained the Israelites in the deserts of Arabia, accustoming them to obey their law, and preparing them for the conquest of the land assigned as their possession. At the end of that period their inspired legislator led them to the borders of the promised land, and having appointed Joshua to be his successor, he ascended a lofty mountain to take a view of the country he was not to enter: he there died in the 120th year of his age. Under the guidance of Joshua, Israel passed the Jordan: the God of Moses was with them, and inspired them with valour to subdue their foes. A speedy conquest gave them the land. No fixed go vernment had been appointed; the people gradually fell After the time of the judges, the temporal and spiritual dignities were, contrary to the intention of the lawgiver, united, and the high-priest exercised the sovereign power. This lasted but a short time: in the B. C. person of the upright Samuel, a prophet, the temporal 1156. was again divided from the spiritual dignity. The sons of Samuel trod not in the steps of their virtuous father. The prospect of being governed by them, and the want of a military leader to command them in their wars with the surrounding nations, made the people call on Samuel to give them a king. He complied with their wishes, 1095. warning them of the consequences of their desire, and appointed Saul. This monarch was victorious in war; but he disobeyed the voice of the prophet, and misfortune ever after pursued him. It pleased Jehovah to take the kingdom from him, and Samuel anointed the youthful David to occupy his place. Saul was seized with a melancholy derangement of intellect. David, who was his son-in-law, won the affections of the powerful tribe of Judah; but while Saul lived, he continued in his allegiance, though his sovereign sought his life. At length, Saul and his elder and more worthy sons fell in battle 1055. against the Philistines, and the tribe of Judah called their young hero to the vacant throne. The other tribes adhered during seven years to the remaining son of Saul. His death, by the hands of assassins, gave all Israel to 1048. David. David was the model of an Oriental prince, handsome in his person, valiant, mild, just, and generous, humble before his God, and zealous in his honour, a lover of music and poetry, himself a poet. Successful in war, he reduced beneath his sceptre all the countries from the borders of Egypt to the mountains whence the Euphrates springs. The king of Tyre was his ally; he had ports on the Red Sea, and the wealth of commerce flowed during his reign into Israel. He fortified and adorned Jerusalem, which he made the seat of government. Glorious prospects of extended empire, and of the diffusion of the pure religion of Israel, and of happy times, floated before the mind of the prophet-king. The kingdom of Israel was hereditary; but the monarch might choose his successor among his sons. Solomon, supported by Nathan, the great prophet of those days, and by the affection of his father, was nominated to succeed. The qualities of a magnificent Eastern monarch met in the son of David. He, too, was a poet; his taste was great and splendid; he summoned artists from Tyre (for Israel had none), and, with the collected treasure of his father, erected at Jerusalem a stately temple to the God of Israel. He first gave the nation a queen, in the daughter of the king of Egypt, for whom he built a particular palace. He brought horses and chariots out of Egypt to increase the strength and the glory of his empire. Trade and commerce deeply engaged the thoughts of this politic prince: with the Tyrians, his subjects visited the ports of India and eastern Africa: he built the city of Tadmor or Palmyra in the desert, six days' journey from Babylon, and one from the Euphrates a point of union for the traders of various nations. Wealth of every kind flowed in upon Jerusalem ; but it alone derived advantage from the splendour of the monarch: the rest of Israel was heavily taxed. On the death of Solomon, the tribes called upon his B. c. son to reduce their burdens: he haughtily refused, and 975. ten of the tribes revolted and chose another king. An apparently wise, a really false, policy, made the kings of Israel set up the symbolical mode of worship practised in Egypt. Judah, too, wavered in her allegiance to Je B. C. hovah. A succession of bold, honest, inspired prophets, reproved, warned, encouraged the kindred nations, and a return to the service of the true God was always rewarded by victory and better times. At length the ten tribes, by their vices and idolatry, lost the divine pro- 721. tection: they were conquered and carried out of their own country by the king of Assyria, and their land given to strangers. A similar fate befell the kingdom of Judah the house of David declined, and the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, carried away the people to 585. Babylonia. On the fall of that state, seventy years afterwards, Cyrus king of Persia allowed to return to their own land a people whose faith bore some resemblance to the simple religion of the Persians, and whose country secured him an easy access to Egypt. Restored to their country, the Israelites, now called Jews, became as distinguished for their obstinate attachment to their law as they had been before for their facility to desert it. But the purity and simplicity of their faith was gone; they now mingled with it various dogmas which they had learned during their captivity. The schools of the prophets, whence in the old times had emanated such lofty inspiration, simple piety, and pure morals, were at an end; sects sprang up among them, and the haughty, subtile, trifle-loving Pharisees, the worldly-minded Sadducees, and the simple, contemplative Essenes, misunderstood and misinterpreted the pure ennobling precepts of the Mosaic law. Medes and Persians. In the west of Asia the ancient sacerdotal constitutions had been now almost wholly abolished. To them succeeded despotism; and from the erection of the first great Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies to the present day the saine appearance has been repeated with little alteration. One people has constantly succeeded another in the dominion over the lands between the Indus and the Mediterranean. So long as its military virtue has re mained unenervated by luxury and pleasure, it has retained its sway: cach dynasty has sustained itself till it sank in sloth, and a bold and powerful usurper tumbled it from the throne for his own descendants to undergo a similar destiny. The Assyrian power flourished and ruled over Asia. In the country south of the Caspian, named Media, the people, as did Israel in the days of Samuel, called for a king; but for a judge, not a warrior. Dejoces, distinguished for his wisdom and justice, was the first monarch: his grandson Cyaxares was allied to the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, and beneath their united efforts Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and with it the power of the empire, fell. At this period the Scythians spread their swarms over Lesser Asia, Iran, Syria, and even Palestine. The king of Media freed Asia from their destructive hordes. In Lesser Asia there had been hitherto numerous little states, attached to temples of different gods; at these temples were held fairs and markets, and they were all closely connected with each other. At the period of the Scythian invasion these states were dissolved, and the kingdoms of Cilicia, Phrygia, and Lydia, were formed from them. Of the history of the two former we are totally ignorant. The two first dynasties of the Lydians, the Atyades and the Heracleides, are 730. mythic: the history of Gyges, the first king of the Mermnade dynasty, is in part fable. In his time began the connexion between the Greeks and Lydians, who differed not much from each other in manners and religion. His successor, Ardys, warred with the Grecian colonies planted on the coast of Asia before there was any extensive monarchy in Asia Minor; and the Cimmerians, a horde from the Black Sea, poured over Lydia and Phrygia, and possessed them during the reign of his successor, Sadyattes. Alyattes, the next king, drove the Cimmerians from Lesser Asia at the time that Cyaxares expelled the Scythians from his dominions. The Lydian monarch ruled Lesser Asia, the Median from Bactria to the Tigris: war arose between them, B. C. |
