These three sects are each of them representative of certain tendencies of human nature, and against these tendencies the Good Shepherd warns his flock. The teaching of Christ, though it acknowledged good in everything, maintained that evil also lurked in everything, and was directly opposed, therefore, to the evil tendencies of these three sects. And if we mistake not, when our Lord describes the characteristics of his pastoral care, he gives the antidotes to these three evil tendencies. It will be well, therefore, for us briefly to note the particular features of these three sects. I. The Pharisees, taking their rise (as is supposed by some) about 200 years before the Christian era, were minutely jealous of the letter of the law; but their devotion to the letter of God's law did not prevent their asserting its insufficiency, and this insufficiency they supplemented by a mass of oral tradition, enjoining numerous rites and ceremonies. These observances they insisted on with even more energy than they did on the precepts of the inspired word; and not only so, they in many instances made the oral tradition the sole interpreter of the written word. We can readily see, then, that the word of God was made of none effect by their tradition. From the mass of these rites and observances there developed itself, as a natural product, the belief that the most rigid observer of them had the greatest claim on divine favour, or, in fact, the belief in "works of supererogation;" and this receives additional force when we recollect that their reliance on Jewish privileges was so great, that they seem to have held that God was bound to bless the Jews, and could not in justice consign any one of them to perdition. The external privilege of being a Jew they held to avail for salvation. What claim must therefore be theirs who, being Jews, yet scrupulously observed the traditions of the Rabbis?

And the teaching of Christ could not fail to disturb the position of the Pharisees. While they rested their confidence on the privilege of being Jews, Christ taught that if they were Abraham's children, they would do the works of Abraham. While they flattered themselves that they were fulfilling more than the law of God required, Christ declared that they had forgotten the weightier matters of the law-judgment, mercy, and the love of God. While they were looking forward to the chief seats in the kingdom of God, Christ was warning them that there was no necessity that the Jews should be saved; for that God was able of the very stones to raise up children to Abraham, and that "many should come from the East, and from the West, and the North, and from the South, and should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, but the children of the kingdom should be cast out into

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outer darkness, where should be wailing and gnashing of teeth." They were the cleansers of the outside of the cup and of the platter-the champions of the efficacy of external rites. Christ taught the necessity of inward purity, as St. Paul did afterwards: "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God" (Rom. ii. 28, 29). They were the advocates of the opus operatum-the place, the rite, the minister were everything. Christ taught the truth and the spirit as the needful conditions: "The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him” (John iv. 23).

II. The Sadducees, believed by some to be the most ancient of these sects, proceeded on a principle totally different from the Pharisees. Where the Pharisees sought to multiply obligations, and burdens, and traditions, the Sadducees sought to diminish, and exercised their ingenuity in denying everything. While the Pharisees were sustained in their conduct by their unbounded veneration for tradition, their confident expectation of future reward, their firm reliance on their descent, the Sadducees sought to cast away all these supports. Tradition was nothing to them, for God had given them reason, and they needed not to bind themselves by man's decrees. Future rewards or punishments they denied, as being mere undesirable bribes to human integrity; and they deemed it inconsistent that God should have ordained them. The duty of man found its chief expression towards his fellow-men. To be honourable, upright, and just in the civil and social relations of life-this was religion. Of religious feeling, of yearning towards the great Father of all, they knew nothing.

These were bad shepherds-hirelings after allunder whose charge the sheep would be scattered. But Christ's teaching was opposed to this. While he taught men of the boundless love of God, he did not shrink from warning them of the dangers of unbelief, and the fearful consequences of dying in their sins. While he enjoined honest and liberal dealing between man and man, he reminded them of the duties they owed to God; of the turning of the whole heart towards him. While he bade them "love thy neighbour as thyself," he reminded them that the first and great commandment was, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;" and even hinted at the subtle connection which subsisted between these two commandments, the second only deriving its strength from its likeness to the first.

The Sadducees were intellectual; and, hand in

hand with their intellectualism went their hard and meagre morality. Christ, without deposing the intellect, taught a creed which was eminently spiritual and sufficient to satisfy the deepest religious emotions of man.

III. The Essenes. While the Pharisees and the Sadducees were dividing the numbers and the intelligence of Judæa, the principles of a third sect were making themselves felt. The religion of the Pharisees was too formal; that of the Sadducees was too intellectual. True religion does not consist in outward act, nor in intellectual apprehension, but in deep spiritual communion; that abstraction from the world and its cares which enables man to unite his spirit to the great Spirit of the universe. Such a view seems to have led the Essenes to seek a secluded life, and gradually the truth which underlay their error became distorted into monstrous shapes.

As the truly religious ought to have no will but God's, said they, so he must seek to abandon all that savours of the exercise of his will. He resigns himself totally into God's hands without a desire. Even the strong love to the Creator, as it expresses desire and will, must be laid aside. Really to become acquainted with God, there must be total immunity from passion. A sublime apathy is the best preparation for the reception of God. God then, when the soul lies perfectly passive, is mirrored there; nay, the soul rises into assimilation with God, and loses its identity in the fulness of Deity. The body, as it is possessed of instincts and passions, is the gross prison-house of the soul. From this the Essene pants to get free, to leave the earthly tabernacle for ever in the dust, and to become absorbed in the Divine Spirit. The body was accordingly despised and neglected, and all occupations which were calculated to awaken the passions, war, and commerce, were forbidden. This tendency to isolation, to an existence so necessarily useful, the teaching of Christ opposed. Recognising as he did most fully the strong spiritual cravings of mankind, and supplying them with the fulness of a divine love, he yet laid down the social and the practical character of Christianity. Withdrawal from the world to hold converse with God, he himself had practised when he went to the mountain-top to pray; but it was only to whet the weapons, to buckle on the armour, to nerve the courage for the conflict against the world. The isolation which he enjoined, was to be seen in the marks of the believer-the fruits of faith-the love to the brethren-the jealousy of obedience--the manifestation of their religion in the sight of men. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

With all of these then-Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes the teaching of Christ contrasted

strangely; and in this contrast consisted his superiority as the spiritual guide of human kind— as the Good Shepherd. These sects were but thieves and robbers. The Pharisee robbed religion of its reality-of the dependence of man on God, by making man lean on external forms: the Pharisee robbed religion of its faith.

The Sadducee robbed religion of all the prospects which gild the grave-the bright immortality of bliss: the Sadducee robbed religion of its hope.

The Essene robbed religion of the power of circulating her benefits. By his isolation and refusal of lawful callings he deprived religion of the power of ameliorating man's condition and tempering every lawful calling: the Essene robbed religion of its charity.

But Christ, as the Good Shepherd, restored all. The Pharisee recognised only the outward decencies of religion, and ignored altogether the hidden knowledge of God in the soul on which the Essene dwelt so fondly. Christ teaches that there is this hidden knowledge-that a mysterious bond holds his sheep to him. "I am the Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine." And these sheep are not the self-sufficient of any one nation, but the sheep which are scattered abroad throughout the whole world. "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice."

The Sadducees thought only of integrity before man, but forgot righteousness before God, and the severity of his judgment. Christ tells us of the putting away of the guilt of the world before God. "The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

The Essene thought that by abstracting himself from the world, by lying passive in the hands of God, he would attain to the sweets of divine food and the realisation of heavenly life. Christ tells that through him alone can this sustenance and this life be found: "I am the door; by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. . . . I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." And thus Christ showed himself the Good Shepherd-better than the hirelings.

But it is not with Jewish sects that we have to do; it is with men now living, to whom Christ ought to be the Good Shepherd. These Jewish sects are not however to be dismissed, as though we had nothing in common with them. On the contrary, they are only representative of the evil tendencies of human nature, which are to be seen, not in Judæa alone, but everywhere, and which can be corrected only by the tender care of the Good Shepherd.

We are prone to regard every ordinance of religion as possessed of a self virtue, independent

val on a scale of unwonted splendour, and the invading army finding the great gates which opened on the city from the river wide open, entered without opposition. Advancing to the royal palace, they slew the guards whom the king sent out to ascertain the cause of the noise which he heard; and after they had thus opened the two-leaved gates, the soldiers of Cyrus rushed into the palace and slew the king, his princes, and his nobles; and so fulfilled to its minutest and most circumstantial detail the inspired prophecy of Isaiah.

Jeremiah specifies the exact time that should elapse to the destruction of Babylon: "When seventy years are accomplished, I will punish the King of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and will make it a perpetual desolation."

In describing the method of the capture of Babylon, many years before, Jeremiah adds fresh details to those given by Isaiah. 'Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed." "How is Sheshach taken and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised!" Herodotus, the heathen historian, totally ignorant of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, states, "The Persians took them by surprise; they who lived in the extremities of the city were made prisoners, while those living in the centre of the place, ignorant of this, we re dancing and feasting."

Jeremiah writes, long before the event: "The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds: they became as women. One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the King of Babylon that his city is taken at one end." (Jer. li. 30, 31.) History records that the Babylonian soldiers, fearing to encounter the troops of Cyrus, shut themselves up in their retreats-i.e., "remained in their holds." The messengers ran from the opposite sides of the city, at each of which the invaders penetrated-for at one side the river entered, and at the other made its exit -and did "meet one another;" and the intoxicated rulers, unequal to the emergency, perished amid the ruins they had made no effort to avert. "They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and silver, and brass, and iron, and wood, and stone."

Babylon sunk every succeeding year, in spite of the exertions of Darius and others to restore it. The ruins only of this great city still exist, eloquent witnesses to the truth of the Word of

Babylon cries from her grave: "Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." "Wild beasts of the desert," and "doleful creatures," are the chief inhabitants of "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency."

Lieut.-General Chesney, in a manuscript which the late Dean Goode was allowed to copy, presents

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the most recent and reliable portrait of the present condition of Babylon:

"Nowhere have I seen the desolating effects of time so vividly brought before me as when gazing on the remains of this once mighty city; and the realisation of the prophet's words, 'Babylon the Great is fallen,' recur to the mind with thrilling force. The eastern side of the ruins of Babylon presents an uninterrupted monotonous line, of a pale blanched brown colour. The first of these ruins, called by the Arabs 'Babel,' has the appearance of a massive fort, with a tower at each angle. It is an immense pile of unbaked brickwork, having a square superficies of 120,000 feet, and a height of only 28 feet. It was probably the basement on which stood the citadel. I was searching for the tunnel described by Herodotus as having passed under the ruin, when I came upon an arched subterranean passage, constructed of bricks and bitumen, leading to an apartment or pit. It passed for 'the den of lions,' and was evidently the retreat of those animals, one of which I had seen prowling about the ruins a day or two before. The Arabs refused to enter this subterranean passage. I explored it for some distance, but was deterred from penetrating to the end by the strong odour of wild beasts.

"About five miles south-west of Hillah the most remarkable of all the ruins, the Birs Nimrud of the Arabs, rises to a height of 153 feet above the plain, from a base covering a square of 400 feet, or almost four acres. It was constructed of kilndried bricks in seven stages, to correspond with the seven spheres-their respective colours corresponding with the planets to which they were dedicated the lowermost black, the colour of Saturn; the next orange, for Jupiter; the third red, for Mars; and so on. These stages were surmounted by a lofty tower, on the summit of which we are told were the signs of the Zodiac and other astronomical figures, thus having ‘a representation of the heavens,' instead of 'a top which reached into the heavens.' This I believe to have been the original temple of Belus. It was restored by Nebuchadnezzar, whose name it bears on the bricks, and on the cylinders deposited at its angles.

"It seems clear to me that this rain came with. in the limits of ancient Babylon, which, according to Herodotus, embraced an area of 120 stadia, or fourteen miles each way."

To this fresh and most interesting narrative, so minutely justifying Scripture prophecy, by personal and very recent evidence, General Chesney adds:-"It is remarkable that hundreds of owls and numerous jackals dwell among the ruins of Babylon. Babylon is altogether deserted. Arabs regard the place with superstitious dread.” There arose, afterwards, a succession of ardent

The