"and everlasting contempt." This magnificent announcement was unknown to Isaiah and his patron king Hezekiah; nothing like it appears in Ezra or Nehemiah. Then as to his notions of the human world: he represents each kingdom to hav its guardian angel, who is called its prince. Michael is the great prince of Israel. Another tutelary angel was "withstood" for 21 days by the prince of the kingdom of Persia, until Michael came to aid him in the conflict (x. 13). Afterwards," says he, "I must return to fight with the prince of Persia "(x. 20) and when I am gone forth, the prince of Graecia "will come." These notions certainly ar not Judaic; apparently they ar Persian. One step more, and the guardian angels of Gentile powers were degraded into demons, thus completing the Rabbinical idea of "prin"cipalities aloft," subject to Satan, potentate of the air. Here a vast mass of Oriental mythology corrupted Hebrew simplicity.

In the book of Daniel we also find a Theatrical Tribunal held by the Supreme God. In the Psalms and Prophets hitherto, the throne of judgment was but a metaphor and poetical ornament. The thrones ar cast down (angelic or human), the Ancient of Days takes his seat; a fiery stream issues from him, millions (of angels) minister to him, myriads of myriads (of mankind?) stand before him, the judgment is set, and the books ar opened,—as in an Egyptian trial? Beyond this, a novel annunciation is made. One like unto a son of man* comes with the clouds of heaven, and receives over all peoples, nations and languages a dominion which shall never pass away. This appears to be the earliest state

*By some fatuity our translators here write "one like unto the Son of Man;" and in iii. 25 give us "the Son of God," where the sense clearly needs and the original plainly says, a son of God. [Both now corrected in the Revised Version.]

ment, that some one in human shape, but coming in the clouds of heaven, is to rule permanently over this earth and its inhabitants.-But was it the earliest statement? We cannot be sure; for we do not know the date of the prophecy called the Book of Enoch. Concerning this, a few words may be appropriate.

To some of us the chief interest of the Book of Enoch turns on the fact, that in the Canonical Epistle of Jude it is quoted as the writing of Enoch the seventh from Adam (14) without any suspicion that it was a recent fraud. German critics, whose pride it is to disintegrate ancient books, think it has been interpolated by Christians. When discovered, early in this century, it was translated by our Archbishop Lawrence. Unless large parts of it ar generated by fraud upon fraud, it may have co-operated with the book of Daniel in preparing the Jewish mind for the idea of a son of man who should be a son of God, a Judge of the dead, and a universal Ruler over the living. But the idea of Messiah is so important, as to deserve a chapter for itself.

CHAPTER III.

MESSIAH, THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS.

WHO can read the miserable tale of Western Asia with intelligence and without sympathy? After nations hav begun to be consolidated, cultivated and softened, they ar again torn in pieces by imperial encroachment. Industry is interrupted, families ar broken up, prosperity is wrecked, those tenderly reared ar carried into exile or actual slavery; national as well as personal love is

trampled down and dishonoured merely for the aggrandizement of some foreigner. The Assyrian, after conquering widely both eastward and northward, wielded a vast population of mountaineers as his weapon for western conquest. But the Medes and Persians revolt, and a Median dynasty rears its head. Babylon joins the Medes, and at length lays Assyria prostrate. Babylon clutches Syria and Palestine; indeed invades Egypt, with no advantage to herself. Cyrus the Persian subdues first in a civil war the Medes, next Babylonia and Syria, finally all Asia Minor and its highly cultivated population of many races and languages. His son conquers Egypt: after his death usurpers arise in ten different centres whom Darius conquers, one by one, in complex war. Darius next crosses the Bosporus and conquers all Thrace (the modern Roumelia), Paeonia and Macedonia. Incensed by Athenian attack (for the Athenians had as yet no understanding of his vast resources) he and his son made war on Greece. The Greeks ar saved by their mountains and by the enemy's pride, and forthwith begin an endless harassing of his innocent and injured subjects. This culminates in the irruption of Alexander the Great into Asia, who perpetrates cruelties and horrors unmatched in the Persian invasion of Greece. On his death, his generals carry on civil war for twenty years, till they can agree on a fourfold division of his kingdom. Great standing armies hav become the organ of empire. Greece has now nominally conquered Asia; but this merely means, that her youth ar dragged from home or migrate to be tools of bloodshed, and her population rapidly wastes. Barbarians whose nerves and hearts ar hard may think perpetual warfare the natural state; but with industrious populations, trained to gentleness and proud of nationality, a series of successiv Empires involves intense suffering.

No wonder that lamentation, mourning and woe came forth from many nations, whatever their religion, with aspirations for a Deliverer. What may giv some idea of the suffering of a civil population from capture by even a Greek enemy, (and the Greeks were far from being cruel, in comparison with other nations), we hav definit narrativs concerning more than one town, that when it found longer resistance impossible, then, rather than encounter the fate of being sold into slavery, they killed their wives and children, burned their precious goods, and leapt into the fire themselves, or died on the spears of the enemy. Historians who record such horrors, hav no better comment than to remark,-What madmen and fools they were! As a general fact, whatever the origin of a war, if (as ordinarily) greed of conquest alone impelled the aggressor, yet resistance to his arms was resented and punished as a crime. The nobler the national spirit, the greater the sacrifices it made in defence of its hereditary prince or its rightful independence, so much the fiercer and more unrelenting was its conqueror, both in revenge for his own losses and in the hope of deterring like bravery in others. Thus did ambition in the conqueror demoralize the conquered.

Each nation looked to its own God to support its rights. Each, when vanquished, supposed it had encountered the anger of its God. Not least was this the case with Israel, which never admitted the other alternativ, that its God had proved inferior to his adversary. No Jew could impute to Jehovah military weakness; but every Jew unawares imputed to him the moral weakness of fearing discredit with the heathen, if his chosen people be trampled down. It runs through the whole Hebrew literature, that however much that people may deserve chastisement and get it, yet at last, for the glory of his own name, Jehovah must exalt them over their

enemy. Hence in national misfortunes, repentance for real or imagined sin blended with intense supplication that Jehovah would avenge his own dishonor and send a Deliverer. A like aspiration under other phrases rose in many cruelly oppressed peoples; so this champion, to be sent by God, became the Desire of all Nations.

We hav no chronology for the earliest Greek literature, nor trustworthy remains of any of the Sibyls. It here suffices to go back to Isaiah, who wrote when the Assyrian power in Nineveh had become the formidable enemy, both a little before and after the capture of Samaria and the deportation of the ten tribes. He at once anticipates for Jerusalem herself the direst calamities, that ar to sweep off nine-tenths of the people (vii. 11-13), yet believes that from her all nations shall learn religious wisdom. "Out of Zion shall go forth the law: Jehovah "shall become Judge among the peoples: nation shall "not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Calamity had thus taught the elect of Israel a far higher wisdom than that of King David. Among the latest deeds of Samaria, its king confederated with the king of Syria against Ahaz king in Jerusalem. Isaiah tried to inspire Ahaz with his own belief, that these two enemies were not to be feared. In vain he urged that in a very few years,--before a certain child should have learned to talk (viii. 3)—the king of Assyria would destroy them both. Ahaz could not afford to wait those few years, but at once sent tribute to Nineveh, and bribed its king to a work which he cheerfully undertook and completed, the conquest of Damascus. The prophet was fully aware that Samaria would be the next victim (ix. 8-21) and that the Assyrian would overflow into Judæa; but he believed that, before long, a prince of the house of David would overthrow him, and apparently declares that a child just born was

B