1.]

FINAL RUIN OF THE TEMPLE.

S. Luke

27

is such as revolts human nature; while it discovers what the ancient people of God had become. With Trajan and Hadrian, the days of vengeance' so (inois. mournfully spoken of by Christ, return once more. xxi. 22.) The Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, what fearful Savage criminality memories are these! We see, as we look back, de- of the next generation." moralized Paganism and frantic Judaism grasping each other in fierce and pitiless death-struggle". It seemed as if all conscience had perished among this people, even more than among their heathen foes. Imperial Edicts, forbidding their religious assemblies and even the practice of circumcision, (in consequence of the conspiracies of the people), precipitated the last dreadful revolt, under Bar-cochab, the pretended A.D. 135. Messiah who had the sanction of the Sanhedrim.

overthrow of Jeru

salem.

Then came the second overthrow of Jerusalem,-the The second 'cup was filled with the iniquities of the people.' Seventy years had passed since the legions of Titus had fired the sacred house of the God of Israel then rising in its marble splendour on the hill of Sion 'the joy of all the earth.' But there had been a kind of stern consolation for the people in that first overthrow, when the news quickly reached them that the central home of Roman heathenism was smitten, as at the same hour, by a stroke from heaven. For a cry of terror had rung through affrighted Rome while on the Tarpeian rock the ancient temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was then burnt to the ground. But there was no such bitter alleviation now, when Israel's second judgment had

o Basnage, vi. c. 8, 9; Dio Cassius, lxviii. and lxix.

come.

Heathen Rome, so recently in flames, seemed all triumphant. By Hadrian's decree, no child of Abraham might henceforth set foot in Jerusalem, nor come The second near enough to see it. Its very name was changed. contrasted No longer was it the vision of peace,' but Ælia, a On the spot where the presence colony of Romans.

destruction

with the

first.

Judaism still survives,

of Jehovah so long had been worshipped, the relentless idolatry reared its rival fane; and Ælia Capitolina defiled in Jupiter's name the Moriah of Abraham 'the friend of God,'-the sacred mount where Solomon the typical King of peace had prayed his wondrous prayer, while 'glory filled the house.'

Not that the heathen had really prevailed. Though temple, priests, and sacrifice were overthrown, the nation of God could not be absorbed, nor Judaism perish. It had a mission still. Even yet, while the terrors of the conqueror were all around, three or four Rabbies, escaped from atrocities never equalled, met in a lonely vale of Palestine, at a place called Ussa, and in that extreme moment of their people's fate had the courage to elect a new patriarch' (a youth at the time), to choose new members of the Sanhedrim, and reconstruct the shattered synagogue of Tiberias, and even of Jamnia.

Soon after this, all the dreary fragments of the past gravitated to their centre. In another generation we find the Talmud, that lifeless conglomerate of fossilized tradition and law, the monument alike of the wisdom and the frivolity, the learning and the moral ignominy of the nation. A long unwritten past, teeming with so much of blasphemy, baseness

in form.

29

and feebleness, was not allowed by Providence to sink, like the literature of Egypt or Babylon, into oblivion. It had provoked Heaven's justice more deeply. Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh, the best of their sages, and is fixed as if perforce, began to arrange what the schools of Babylon were afterwards to complete. Thus the moral code of that Judaism which prophets had con- Isa. i. 10fronted of old, remains for all time, the nation's witness against itself.

17.

IV.

IV. And now, pausing upon all this ruin of the religions and moralities of the world, Jewish and Review. Gentile, we see the Field' in which our Gospel was sown. We have not noticed the Philosophy of the Jews, for it had no wide influence on their nation, or on the world at that time.

cannot

with the

The Alexandrian Judaism may seem an exception Judaism to this statement, but is not so on examination. intermingle It is as isolated as the Spanish Judaism of a later world. century; and indeed more so. Two hundred years before Christ, the encouragement of the Ptolemies had borne fruit; and a noble temple was raised at Heliopolis, served by priests and Levites, on the model of that at Jerusalem. The translation of the Old Scriptures helped to bring together the Hebrew and Gentile mind, and a foundation was laid for that eclectic Jewish philosophy which at a later day opposed a formidable front to Christianity. This is all that was done. The Judaism did not elevate Heathenism; it rather tended itself to subside into Platonism, (as in Syria also before the time of

Early recognition of Christianity.

the Maccabees), or to adopt the obscurities of the oriental Gnosis. In such a Jew as Philo, for instance, we seem to have at once the Academic, the Magian, and the Essene. Whether from mystic Alexandria, or from Tarsus the home of Stoics, the influence which went forth was destructive on the one hand to the faith and hope of the ancient people of God, and failed on the other to touch the civilization of the world.

The Augustan period in its greatness and its weakness is all before us. But as it passes, and a new century is rising on our vision, there are, as we have already seen, signs of another life on every hand.

The thirty years after the fall of Jerusalem passed so far peaceably that there was little of violent interference with those principles of the new social life which Pliny found in such a state of advancement. Some intermittent resistances there were, giving warning that a penetrating work was going on; but the growth was greatly beneath the surface, and only attracted imperial notice when at times it broke up Its contact some public way. The first hostile contact of the Judaism, Gospel with the social system around it had been necessarily in the synagogues of Judaism. Though the Jews themselves had been constantly harassed by persecutions, they had been able to offer a powerful opposition to Christianity, until they were forced to silence by their great national overthrow; but during that ensuing peace the growth of the Gospel was rapid.

with

The new Religion and the old Philosophy had also

1.]

NOT WITHSTOOD BY PHILOSOPHY.

31

come face to face, very soon after the first attempt and with philosophy. to evangelize Europe, if not indeed before it: but philosophy, whether at Athens, or Corinth, or Alexandria, or Tarsus, was inclined to despise Christianity, and let it alone P. The message of a new order of things, the coming Kingdom of Righteousness, was in all cases a message to conscience. It scarcely asked for converts to opinion, as opinion. It spoke of Resurrection, and a Judgment to come, as facts. Proclaiming truth, it trusted truth to find its own. Some consciences trembled'-divers' were hardened and went their way.' It taught with authority,' and not as the Scribes or the Sophists; and it was felt as a power. Sometimes the common people listened. gladly.'

And thus, notwithstanding 'the darkness that covered the earth, and gross darkness the people,' 'that generation passed not away' without seeing the beginning of the mighty change, the coming Renewal. Some even of those who once had stood near the Divine Master in Galilee did not taste of death' till His Kingdom had come with powerr.' Virtues and graces had silently appeared in the world amidst the Society of Christians that the heathen saw; and while in the prolonged peace this Society kept spreading, we may see faltering philosophy, and smitten Judaism, and baffled statesmanship, waking periodically to the growing fact. Men slept and rose, night and day, and the seed grew, they knew not how.' 'The Kingdom of Heaven was like unto this.'

P Lect. III. p. 79. a Lect. VIII. p. 256. r Lect. VII. p. 217.

The silence

of its grow

ing success.