of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States take substantially the same view. Other Protestant churches reject them entirely. The character of these books is very diverse; some of them contain wise and good thoughts, very well expressed, though not comparable to similar books of the Old Testament; such are the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus; some contain historical narratives, either like the first book of Esdras, compiled from Nehemiah, Ezra and Chronicles, or the work of some chronicler of his own times, like the first book of Maccabees, which contains some veritable history; others, like the second book of Esdras, the rest of the chapters of the book of Esther, and the second book of Maccabees, though professing to be historical, are mere trash, and of no value or authority whatever. Baruch is a pretended prophecy, but is mostly borrowed from Jeremiah; the Prayer of Manasses is sufficiently penitent, but is undoubtedly spurious. Tobit, Judith, the Song of the Three Children, the History of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon, are all oriental fictions, and most of them very poor and absurd fictions. Taken as a whole, it may be said that those, whose Bibles do not contain the Apocrypha, suffer no loss.

There are several other of these apocryphal books written within a century and a half before the birth of Christ, some of which possess considerable merit, though attributed to authors who could not possibly have written them; but which, for some reason, failed to be included in the collection, which we know as the Apocrypha. Among these were "The Book of Enoch," to which reference is made in the Epistle of Jude, and which, though based on an older tradition, was probably first issued as a whole about one hundred and ten years before Christ; "The Book of Jubilees," from 110 B. C. to 64 B. C.; "The Jewish Sibylline Books," about 140 B. C.; and "The Psalms of Solomon," about 40 B. C. Of these, all except the Jewish Sibylline Books were probably written in Palestine, and although spurious, so far as their professed authors were concerned, they manifest, for the most part, a penitent and devotional spirit, and throw much light on the religious condition of the Jews of that day, and on their expectations of the coming of the Messiah. Nevertheless, "we have a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts."

HISTORY OF THE JEWS.

From the Captivity to the Destruction of Jerusalem.

HAT is known in Jewish history as "the captivity" was not accomplished in a single month or year. The first, though not perhaps the largest, company of captives was taken from Jerusalem in the reign of Jehoiakim, 606 B. C., when Daniel and others were carried away: the second at the commencement of the reign of Jehoiachin over Judah, B. C. 599. At this time many of the princes of the royal family, and the greater part of the nobles and priests, were among the captives. Zedekiah, a feeble prince, was left in charge of the kingdom as a vassal, or tributary of the king of Babylon. He, after a time, rebelled, trusting to receive aid from the king of Egypt. In 588 B. C., eleven years later, Nebuchadnezzar returned, besieged Jerusalem, captured it, and, having slain the sons of Zedekiah in his presence, put out his eyes, and carried him and all the more wealthy and influential of his people captives to Babylon. There still remained, however, a considerable body of people, of the middle and lower classes in Judæa, who tilled the soil, dressed the vines, cared for the olive crops, and reared their scanty herds. These were under the care and superintendence of one of Nebuchadnezzar's officers, but were directly governed by one of their own countrymen, Gedaliah, whom, however, one of the princes of the royal family, Ishmael, soon after assassinated, when a large body of these Jews fled into Egypt.

Six years later, in 582 B. C., a fourth deportation of the inhabitants of Judæa was made at the direction of Nebuchadnezzar; and thus the land was left almost without inhabitant. This captivity was not one of so great suffering as would perhaps be supposed; many of the Jews lived in comfort in Babylonia, and some of them were advanced to positions of high

responsibility. Their temple was destroyed, it is true, and their opportunities for religious worship were but few; but they had not prized their privileges in their own land, but had followed after all the idolatries of the heathen. Now they mourned over their wickedness, and many of them abandoned idols forever, and taught their children to do so. There is no question that the Jews in exile were a much more godly and righteous nation, than they had ever been in their own land. Forty-four years after the last deportation, and sixty-eight after the first, when Daniel and his companions were carried captive, in 538 B. C., the Babylonian kingdom fell before the army of Cyrus, and the captive Jews and their descendants became the subjects of the Medo-Persian empire. Two years later, in 536 B. C., when Daniel's seventy years were accomplished, Cyrus, having probably been informed of the prophecies which had been uttered by Isaiah concerning him, two hundred and thirty years before, and perhaps also prompted by the aged Daniel, who was his prime-minister, issued his decree for the return of the Jews into their own land, and for the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem; for this purpose, he bestowed upon the Jewish leaders vast sums of money, and the precious vessels of the former temple. But seventy years of exile had wrought great changes among the captives; most of those who had come to Babylonia as captives had died; their children had been born in the land where they were, and though they had been taught to pray toward, and for, Jerusalem, yet they had but slight attachments there. The exiles had numbered hundreds of thousands; those who returned at this time were not quite fifty thousand, all told; but among them were many choice spirits, such men as Zerubbabel, their chief, one of the royal lineage of David; Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high-priest, and many others, like minded.

The first care of these returned exiles was to rebuild the temple; and they had made commendable progress in this work, when the death of Cyrus, 529 B. C., and the representations of their enemies to his successors caused the work to cease. At the accession of Darius the Persian (Darius Hystaspes), 521 B. C., the prophets Haggai and Zechariah encouraged the people to go on again with the rebuilding of the temple. Application was made by their enemies to Darius to prohibit this work, but his answer was positive and decided that they should be allowed to go on, and aided in carrying out the decree of Cyrus, and that these Samaritan rulers should render them ample assistance, from the tribute due to the king, and should also furnish them. the animals needed for sacrifice. Thus helped and encouraged, the Jewish

leaders pressed forward to the completion of their work, and in 515 B. C., twenty years after its commencement, the second temple was dedicated.

It was not, however, till long after this time, that the Jews were allowed to rebuild the walls of their city. In the year 457 B. C., Ezra, the learned scribe and priest and the historian of his nation, was sent by Artaxerxes Longimanus to visit Jerusalem; and was armed with authority to rectify a l abuses and to govern the people. Nearly 2,000 Jews, many of them of priestly families, went with him, and he was intrusted with a large amount of money, and golden and silver vessels for the use of the temple. The value of these has been variously estimated; the lowest valuation exceeding four millions of dollars. Ezra did all that he could, but he was a scholar, a priest, and not a man of affairs; and after thirteen years of his administration, there were still gross abuses, and the walls were not built. Artaxerxes then sent Nehemiah, his cup-bearer, a man of deep and earnest piety, but also a man of great executive ability, who came to Jerusalem with the authority of a Tirshatha or governor, and by his zeal, tact, and courage, the walls were completed, the temple worship organized, and evils and abuses corrected, although the jealousy and enmity of the Samaritans were constantly exerted to their injury.

Nehemiah returned to Persia, to resume his duties at the court, about 435 B. C., but after the lapse of some years, possibly as many as twenty-four, he visited Jerusalem again, to find that the old sins and crimes were again rife; that his old enemies, the Samaritans and Ammonites, had gained a foothold in Jerusalem, and even in the temple; and that Eliashib, the highpriest, and one of his grandsons were allied with them in marriage. He found also that the temple tithes were not paid; that very many of the people had married heathen and idolatrous wives; and that there was a general falling away from the pure worship of Jehovah. Though an old man, yet with the assistance of the prophet Malachi, he succeeded in reforming these grievous errors, and at his death left the people in a better condition, spiritually and temporally, than they had been since their return from exile.

Still the people, as well as their leaders, were perverse, and ready at the first opportunity to lapse into the crimes which had polluted their national life before the captivity, and they needed and received abundant chastisement, during the four hundred and seventy years which followed before their existence as a nation was blotted out by the Romans. There was little desire on their part to have kingly government again; they had felt too

severely the oppression of their monarchs in former times; but from the restoration from captivity onward to the time of Herod, their high-priests were their potential rulers. At times these were princes as well as priests; military leaders, as well as the representatives of Him who was to come, and make the atonement once for all; but not by their own will did they acknowledge any ruler as of higher authority than their own high-priest:. Yet during most of this time they owed allegiance to one or another foreign power-to the Persians till the end of the Persian empire under Darius Codomannus, 331 B. C.; to the Greek empire in Asia (Alexander the Great and his successors), from 331 to 167 B. C.; to their own Asmonæan princes, with varied fortunes, during which they were now under Syrian, now under Egyptian, and anon under Roman rulers, from 167 to 63 B. C.; and finally under Antipater, Herod and his descendants, from 63 B. C. to A. D. 70, the Romans during most of this period maintaining a controlling authority, and looking upon the family of Herod as vassals whom they could remove at pleasure. The seventy years, more or less, from the time of Nehemiah to the end of the Persian empire, were not marked by many prominent events; the mild administration of the Persian satraps gave them ample opportunity for the development of their internal resources, and their religious institutions. The high-priests during this time were, possibly, Eliashib, certainly Joiada, Jonathan or Johanan, and Jaddua. It was a son of Joiada, called Manasseh by the Jews, who had married, in Nehemiah's time, the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite, the Samaritan chief. For this offence, Nehemiah expelled him from Jerusalem. He went at once to his Samaritan friends, carrying with him, it is said, a copy of the Pentateuch, or the Books of the Law. This was probably the first copy of the Pentateuch which the Samaritans had had, and from it, though the text was frequently tampered with, the various copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch have been made. Manasseh was made the high-priest of the Samaritans, by his father-in-law, Sanballat, and worship according to the law, established on Mount Gerizim. About 400 B. C., or perhaps a little later, Manasseh obtained permission from Darius Nothus to erect a temple on Mount Gerizim, and the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans became thenceforth more bitter than ever. The Samaritans had fabricated traditions, which represented them as being the genuine descendants of Jacob, and branded the Jews as impostors; they claimed, when it suited their purpose, to keep the law more strictly than the Jews, and once or twice defiled the temple at Jerusalem with dead men's