exalt him. Much of his public, and almost all his private nis tory, will be found in the memoir of Mariamne; and, therefore, needs no mention here. We will merely touch on those points important in a national view. Antigonus, the sole surviving son of Aristobulus, still struggled for the crown. He obtained the succor of the Parthians, who overran Syria and Asia Minor, while he himself, with a large native force, entered Jerusalem and took possession of the Temple; the Hyrcanians, under Herod and Phasael, holding the palace. The Jews had, at that season, assembled from all quarters to celebrate the feast of Pentecost, and so thronged the ranks of the contending factions. How little did this national assemblage fulfil the spirit of the beautiful law which had thus called them together! How appallingly they contradicted the spirit of the divine law and social unity; for the encouragement of both which this holy festival had been instituted! They celebrated the delivery of that holy Law which, in the very hour of its commen.oration, they defiled!

The partial success of Antigonus in Jerusalem, through his Parthian allies, was more than balanced by the successful intrigues carried on by his rival Herod in Rome, to which city, after a multitude of adventures, he had safely escaped. His entreaty that the sovereignty of Judea might be conferred on the young son of Alexander gave the much coveted honor to himself; and, conducted to the Capitol by Antony and Octavius, he was there, in a heathen city, and with idolatrous sacrifices, anointed king over the holy people of a Most Holy God!* Will this full the beautiful promises of the prophets? this prove the nationality of the Jewish people at that period? Alas! thi was but the commencement of denationalization!

But though nominally king, and aided by the all-powerful Roman influence, Herod was not universally received as sovereign by the Jewish people until some years afterwards, when Antigonus, entirely defeated, surrendered at discretion; and, in spite of his cowardly entreaties for life, was, at Herod's solicitation, condemned by Antony, and by the axe of a common lictor received his death.

Herod was now, indeed, sovereign of Judea. Never, before ihe Babylonish captivity, had the crown of Judah thus passed

* Josephus; and Jahn's "History of the Hebrew Commonwealth.”

into the family of an alien, who dared not assert himself of royal blood, and whose very birth as a Jew is doubtful. Josephus tells us that Antipater was indeed said, by Nicholas of Damascus, to be of the stock of the principal Jews, who came out of Babylon; but "that assertion of his was to gratify Herod, who was his son, and who came afterwards, by certain revolutions of fortune, to be King of the Jews." It is evident, from this passage, that Josephus himself doubts Herod's Jewish descent and so must every one who reflects on his character and life He thought of and pursued his own aggrandizement alone The kingdom of Judea was no more to him than any other territory; it was no longer a holy land-no longer the land of promise under the direct guardianship of the Most High. Where have we found, since the return from Babylon, that divine interference which, in the worst and darkest periods of the kingdom before the captivity, had been so distinctly visible? Where do we ever read of the throne of Judea being obtained by aid of foreign powers? the holy kingdom allied with, or subordinate to, the heathen and idolator? The word of the Lord had passed, that the line of David (and consequently the tribe of Judah) was the line of kings appointed, and the only line recognisable by Him; and, therefore, every prophecy alluding to the restoration of the kingdom IS STILL TO BE FULFILLED. The very fate of the Asmonæans appears to evince the displeasure of the Eternal in their acceptance of the kingdom; for they were not of His appointed race. As deliverers from the heathen, as restorers of the Temple and the religion, they were accepted individually in His sight; but, from the very hour of their assumption of the royal dignity in the person of Aristobulus the First, only one who bore the Asmonæan name, Alexander Jannæus, died naturally in his bed. And not the guilty alone; the young and innocent-even those connected only by the mother's side with the Asmonæans, shared the same awful doom, which hemmed round, as by an impenetrable wall, the whole of that fated race.

Success the most brilliant crowned every foreign policy of Herod. Ilis marvellous ability extricated him from every difficulty, and pushed forward his successes, till he became the terror of all the surrounding nations. The country was at peace, breathing, as it were, once again, from the dissensions and miseries which, till the accession of Herod, had deluged Judea

with her own blood. But, though thus prosperous and at peace, it was the peace and prosperity of any of the heathen nations, not of the land of the Lord.

Herod, a very doubtful Jew himself, felt that the strong and exclusive principles of nationality were adverse alike to foreign ambition or domestic greatness. The law of Moses undoubtedly circumscribed the regal power. Nor were foreign conquests admissible with the exclusiveness of the Hebrew people. To remove this barrier, and gradually prepare the minds of his subjects for foreign usages, Herod introduced all the Grecian and Roman games. A theatre was built within, and an amphitheatre without, the walls of Jerusalem. Chariot-racing, boxing, the drama, even the gladiators and wild beasts were there introduced. The people submitted, but with silent abhorrence, for such sanguinary exhibitions, as the two last mentioned, were completely contrary to the mild and loving spirit of Mosaic law.

Nor was this all. Building after building, all more or less associated with the Roman and Grecian, rose up at the bidding of Herod. His first magnificent enterprise was a superb palace on Mount Sion; his next was to rebuild and change into a strong fortress, the palace of Baris; to erect citadels at Gaba in Galilee, and at Heshbon in Peræa; and to rebuild Samaria on a scale of extraordinary magnificence, peopling it with his own soldiers, and the descendants of its former inhabitants. At a later period in his reign, he erected a sumptuous palacefortress, in his usual style of architecture, on the spot where he had defeated Antigonus, seven miles from Jerusalem, round which a superb city speedily arose.

He spent twelve years in the erection and decoration of a maritime city, which he called Cæsarea, and alınost entirely colonized with Greeks. It resembled in its sumptuous style of architecture, a city of gorgeous palaces. A great temple, dedicated to Augustus, occupied the centre, with two colossal statues, one of Rome and the other of Cæsar; and, of course, possessing the necessary appendages to a Grecian city, the theatre and amphitheatre, in which the usual heathen games were quinquennially performed.

Was it strange, then, as they beheld this increase of heathen temples with every newly erected city, that the Jews should forget the magnificence of their monarch, in the terrible though

that, slowly but surely, he was carrying out his design of heathenizing their country and themselves? In some parts nationality was still awake, burning to throw off the yoke of one who had sunk them from their proud superiority as the Kingdom of God, to a level with the vassal-kings of Rome; but though their murmurs were loud and deep, though conspiracies were continually forming, Herod retained his power, continuing to support his double character of Jew and Roman to the last.

Hoping to ingratiate his people, and employ the disaffected, he determined to rebuild the Temple, which, from the lapse of 500 years, and its repeated sieges, had become, in some parts, dilapidated and ruinous. At first, the Jews feared that these professions did but conceal the intention of entirely destroying their solemn sanctuary; but the immense preparations before the work of demolition began, removed the apprehension; and with a delight and pride which, for the time, almost gave Herod favor in their sight, the nation beheld a beautiful fabric crowning Mount Moriah, with "masses of white marble, and pinnacles of gold." But at the very time he was thus occupied as a Jewish king, he retained his character of a Roman vassal, by presiding at the Olympic games, making such magnificent donations for their support that he was elected their perpetual president; and this man has been denominated the last independent sovereign of Judea-and the hapless people burdened with his idolatry and sins-as if he were one of them! Who that reflects upon his reign alone, can associate for one moment the blessed promises of the prophets with the kingdom of Judea between the return from captivity and their final disper. sion?

The very sending his two sons to Rome for education, was a measure directly contrary to the law of Moses. Nor did it proceed only from his anxious desire to conciliate the Romans. Herod was seldom actuated by but one motive. Looking upon the sons of Mariamne as his successors, he probably hoped that their Roman education would effectually remove all national prejudices, and render them able assistants in his ardent desire to Romanize his subjects, and gradually do away with all those remnants of that ancient superstition which excluded them from the conquests and ambition of other nations. The Jews, as a nation, were never in greater danger of becoming amalgam

ated with other countries, than in the reign of Herod; but still the God of their fathers watched over them, preserving them for the sake of His changeless word, as his chosen people still; interfering, not visibly, indeed, because of their awful crimes, but making even their threatening chastisement the means of their preservation.

The law issued by Herod, decreeing that thieves should be sold into slavery out of the country, is another manifestation of his anxiety to adopt every measure for the denationalizing of Judea; and from its direct disobedience to the law of Moses, was so obnoxious to the Jews, as to annul their rising gratitude for the rebuilding of the Temple. Nor was his last public act, the placing a large golden eagle over the great gate of the Temple, less offensive. It was torn down by two valiant youths, who were unhappily apprehended, and fell victims to his revenge. The horrible disease under which he labored increased his sanguinary propensities. Execution after execution followed, till scarcely a family was spared the agony of bereavement. His last barbarous order, that all the principal families of the nation should be seized, shut up in the Hippodrone, and murdered the instant of his own death, that he might insure a general mourn ing, was happily disregarded, and the victims spared.

And with such a command, died Herod, misnamed the Great, in the second year of the Christian era, and after a reign of thirty-four years as undisputed monarch.

He has been termed the last independent sovereign of Judea ; but even in this brief survey, we have seen enough to convince us that the Jewish people were never further from national independence than in his reign; that though a strong party of the people still remained zealous and earnest in the national cause, yet the extreme laxity of the Mosaic code, the fearful innovations adopted from heathen and foreign customs, the close intimacy with the Greeks and Romans, must have presented fearful temptations to the people generally, and hastened that day of destruction and dispersion, which the eye of Omniscience saw, could alone preserve His holy law from annihilation, by its complete amalgamation with the surrounding nations.