and which never afterwards quits the Messianic theory, is the grand league of Pagan kings and tribes against the "holy people," and the siege of Jerusalem by their united forces.* Closely investing the city, the unbelieving battalions will offer their wicked sacrifices within sight of the temple: and so vast will be their host that, did not God fight for his people, resistance were vain. But the patience of the Most High is at an end. A tempest of supernatural destruction bursts upon the invaders; flinging down among them fire and brimstone, hail and floods, torches and fiery swords; filling the ravines with dead and the streams with blood; causing the hills to yawn and Erebus to appear. Lamentation and a cry will go forth over the earth; and for seven years the shields and weapons of the annihilated foe will supply fuel, so that no wood will be cut from the forest.t

In proportion to the horrors of the struggle will be the peace and glory which succeed. The spectacle of the faithful nation, fenced round with Divine protection, and served by the favouring elements themselves, will turn the hearts of the remaining gentile peoples: and they will burn their idols and bend the knee to the universal Lord; who thenceforth will erect one empire amongst men to last for ever, and have one temple to which all shall bring their offerings and incense. Physical nature will sympathise with the restored moral harmony of the world: the flock, the beehive, the orchard, the vineyard, and the field will yield a thousand-fold, and blight and earthquake will be unknown. Every store shall be full; every gain shall be righteous; every realm accessible; and every fruit of peace secure.‡

So far we seem to meet with no Personal Head to this Messianic age. And it is singular that the obscurity on this point which we have noticed in the book of Daniel repeats itself, and in much the same form, in the announcements of the Sibyl. When she says, "Then will God from heaven send a King, who shall judge each man in blood and a flash of fire,"§ it seems at first sight certain that here we are in presence of a superhuman Messiah. But when we scrutinise the context, and find ourselves in the heart of the Jewish history, at the turning-point between the Babylonish Captivity and the Restoration; when we read on, that "a certain royal race, whose descent shall not fail (David's continued in Zerubbabel), will begin to raise a new temple of God, favoured by contributions of gold and brass and iron from Persian kings,"—it is plain that the heaven-sent King is not in the author's future, but in his past, and is no other,iii. 727 seqq. § iii. 286.

* iii. 657 seqq.

Comp. iii. 620, 702-727, 743-758.

as Friedlieb has pointed out, and Hilgenfeld has not disproved, -than Cyrus "the Shepherd," "the Anointed" of God,* who was the instrument for executing the Divine judgments, "saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid."+ Still more positive appears the prediction of a superhuman Messiah in the words, "Then will God send from the Sun a King, who shall put an end to frightful war upon the earth, destroying one set, and fulfilling covenants with another." But here again, though the personage described is undoubtedly the Head of the future age, the epithet “from the Sun" means simply, according to Friedlieb, "from the East," and only applies to the expected deliverer the terms used of Cyrus; of whom it is said that God "raised up the righteous man from the East, and called him to his foot, and gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings." Thus interpreted, the lines do but express the belief, attested by Tacitus as prevalent in Palestine, that the East was at last to turn the tide of conquest which had so long set in from Europe.§ It perhaps deserves remark that, according to Ktesias and Plutarch, and apparently the general opinion of the ancient world, the name Cyrus (in the old Persian Qur'us') meant "The Sun :" and though Lassen has thrown doubt on this interpretation, its common acceptance might well lead to some play upon the word, and associate with the sun that Messianic Prince of whom Cyrus was regarded as the prototype. It is not unlikely that, in dealing with the language of such vague ideal beliefs, our criticism attempts to define too much; and that it is the indeterminate state of the writer's own thought which has left his terms ambiguous. Certain it is that, whilst an indistinct cloud of glory invests the Person of Messiah, rendering its human or superhuman nature undiscoverable, the conception of his kingdom and age is far less indefinite. Its time, its place, its providential function, its preliminary signs, its method of introduction, and the conditions of entrance to it, are all laid down with the precision of a stereotyped expectation. But its Agent, its duration (not adequately settled by such large epithets as "everlasting"), and its relation to realms beyond the historic world, are left as open questions.

We have thus exhibited, side by side, the two pictures,-by the pseudo-Daniel, and by the Sibyl;-the one drawn in Palestine, the other in Egypt. Both of them take the same general view of the Providence of history: the divine end,-the constitution of a perfect Humanity,-is never lost sight of: and its

*Is. xliv. 28, xlv. 1.

† Ibid.

‡ Ibid. xli. 2.

§ Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri, eo ipso tempore fore, ut valesceret Oriens, profectique Judæa rerum potirentur. Hist. iv. 13. Comp. Sueton. Vesp. 4, and Orac. Sib. iii. 350.

postponement, by the long succession of Pagan empires and humiliation of the true worshipers, is a disciplinary proceeding to bring both the evil and the good to a final head, and render a erisis of clearance inevitable. Both writers,-at a date not far from B.C. 160,-regard the crisis as at hand, and feel themselves in presence of the last desperate struggle of evil for supremacy. Both, in spite of their different geographical position, see in Jerusalem the metropolis of the approaching theocracy, and look upon the age to come as the simple continuation of terrestrial history, true at last to its pure idea. And though both refer to some Vicegerent of God who is to establish the kingdom, they alike leave his personality in the dark.

This general agreement does not preclude great and striking differences between the two writers. The celestial beings who appear as dramatis persona in Daniel, the Gabriel, Michael, and angels of Persia and Græcia, whose contests on a higher stage cast their shadows down and make human history, never cross the Sibyl's vision. Equally beyond her view are the depths of Hades and the secrets of departed souls: nor is there any resurrection of pious Hebrews from earlier generations to share the glorious age. This is one of the marks distinguishing the third and really ancient book from the later accretions by which it is surrounded: in the second book, for instance, and in the eighth, the Messianic realm includes and reunites the living and the dead. It is due to the different positions of the writers that the Hellenic race, the object of ultimate antipathy, occupying the place of Antichrist in Daniel, is regarded with unmistakeable sympathy by the Sibyl; while the Romans receive all the vials of her wrath. Their downfall, as of a mere barbaric power, is unconditionally and pitilessly announced: but the Greeks are encouraged to repent of their idolatries; are exhorted to aid in restoring the Hebrews to their rights in Palestine; and invited to join in the offerings at the temple and enter the blessings of the theocracy. Thus, while the sacerdotal cultus is regarded as perpetual, the limitations of nationality are overpassed: and the idea is reached, if not of a spiritual, at least of a universal worship.

But by far the most surprising novelty in the Sibyl's vision is found in that siege of Jerusalem by Pagan armies, on the eve of the Messianic advent. It is vain to speculate on the precise origin of so definite a feature in a picture purely ideal: perhaps it is enough to say that the heroic and pathetic passages of Jewish history had linked themselves so often with attacks on Zion, as to render any supreme crisis of the nation inconceivable without them. The interest, however, of this element in the oracle attaches not to its source, but to its effect. The gospels of Matthew and Luke (chapters xxiv. and xxi. respectively) pre

sent the same events,-a siege of Jerusalem and the Messianic parusia, in the very same conjunction, which here we find established two hundred years before. They express, it is plain, a settled national expectation, with such modifications as the conditions of the time required. Had the Sibylline lines been written towards the close of the first century, when the times of Vespasian and Titus lay in the past, they, like the gospels, would have given the city a disastrous fate. That it emerges in triumph bears conclusive witness to the earlier date of the prediction; and nothing is more conceivable than that, in the very agony of the siege, these same verses or prophecies of similar import may have circulated among the people, and sustained the desperate hope of supernatural victory. Here was the siege itself already come true: Jerusalem was surrounded, as had been declared, by idolatrous armies: and did not the calamities of the hour, befalling as it was written, guarantee the conquering sequel? To the Christian evangelist this illusion was over. But to him also the siege of Jerusalem, though with reversed catastrophe, was still "the beginning of the end;" and it kept him on the watch for the Advent. What that "coming of the Son of Man" meant; how it was understood by the first Christians; why the gospels make Palestine the scene of it, and before its judgment-seat gather "all nations," but no dead,-are questions perplexing enough to those who apply these images to the human life beyond the grave; but receiving great light from the corresponding delineations of an earlier literature. Christendom has incurred severe penalties by its narrow scripturalism, incorporating in its creed many an element due not to the divine individuality of Christ, but to the conditions of his nation and the accidents of his time; and carrying up into the highest and most solemn themes conceptions borrowed from apocalyptic romances of Asmonæan Judaism. If the pure revelation is to be freed from these extraneous adhesions, and to stand clear in its own essence, it can only be by comparative study, along with its memorials, of the vestiges of antecedent and contemporary belief, with a view to relieve the gospel from responsibility for what is clearly referable to prior historic causes. It is in the interests of this analysis, in the desire of disengaging the imperishable truth from the transitory form, that we have traced the first lines of the Messianic faith, and that we hope, in a future paper, to follow down its development to the verge of Christian times. Though the documents are scanty, and the evidence precarious, they require a fuller treatment than our present space permits, and will reward a further patience by the curious picture they present of an obsolete type of literature and faith.

ART. X.-THE ATTITUDE OF PARTIES-THIS SESSION. THE causes of the weakness of the Liberal cabinet-the feature of the session-have been two,-the content of Englishmen with the internal administration of England, which is called by some the Conservative reaction, and the chaotic condition to which new and varying forms of sympathy with the politics of the Continent have reduced all party organisation.

The root of Conservatism is content; and the middle classes of Great Britain, who, since the Reform Bill, have been the depositaries of power, are, as respects internal affairs, contented. They have found in that measure an instrument exactly suited to their feelings, as well bad as good, to their love of practical improvement and their distrust of broad ideas, their antipathy to visible misgovernment, and their selfish dread of any policy based on principle rather than expediency. Aided by accidental circumstances, a long cycle of peace, the accession of a female sovereign, her marriage to an able and temperate statesman sincerely devoted to the constitutional experiment, tolerable prosperity among the people, and the spread of a series of sound economic ideas,-the new governing power has in one generation changed the aspect of English political life. The old motive powers have lost their potency. The mingled dread and dislike of the throne which, from the accession of George III. to the death of William IV., permeated all classes, and lingers still, it is said, among the greater nobles, has been replaced in the popular mind by a sentiment curiously compounded of loyalty and of thankfulness that the subject of loyalty is outwardly so quiescent. The jealousy of a privileged class, which, in 1831, threatened the peers with extinction, has given way to a secret conviction that the old aristocracy of birth and wealth now serves as an outwork for the new aristocracy of political power. With the exception of those which impede the easy transfer of land, all the laws obnoxious to the middle class have been steadily cleared away. The draconic laws against crime, which they hated, partly from benevolence, partly from an exaggerated idea of the importance of death as an incident in the soul's career, but chiefly from an instinctive belief that they were part of the old oligarchical scheme, have been swept away with a completeness which has begun to produce a reaction towards a severer discipline. Every restriction on commerce, from the elaborate code devised to keep up the price of corn, to those laws which, by forbidding partnerships en commandité, kept capital out of trade, have been one by one removed. The ancient claims of the poor, which threatened small proprietors