Mahometanism gained its ascendency. He would have begun with enlisting in his cause the Herodian, the Scribe, and the Pharisee: he would have chosen, not the Matthews, but the Nathaniels: he would have attempted to obtain the advocacy of some of those learned and eloquent Gentile philosophers who were at that time engaged in treating the great questions of man's moral duties, and of his greatest happiness; but he would not have chosen as a promulgator of his doctrines, and as the first historian of his life, Matthew the publican. Socrates had Plato and Xenophon for the narrators of his acts, and expositors of his opinions; Plato chose Speusippus, and Aristotle appointed Theophrastus, as his But Jesus Christ chose not successor. a Plato, or a Xenophon, or a Theophrastus, as the interpreter of his sayings, and as the annalist of his life. We read the sermon on the mount, and the narrative of our Lord's passion, in the pages of one whom the Gentile would despise for his country, and the Jew hate for his profession. Nor is this all. If Christianity had been of human, and not of Divine origin, and had been committed to such instruments as St. Matthew, the design of its promulgation must have speedily ended in failure and contempt. But what was the actual result? While the wisdom of the wise has come to nought, while the voice of learning and eloquence is dumb, while the greatest glory of ancient philosophy is, that it discovered to the world some faint glimmerings of the light to be revealed hereafter in the Gospel; while the religion of kings and emperors, of dictators and consuls, of senates and fleets and armies; the religion of poetry, of painting, of architecture, and of sculpture ; the religion of public banquets and of private and household meetings; a religion consecrated by time and confirmed by custom; woven into every transaction of life; ministerial to pleasure, flattering to pride; indulgent to bad passion, stimulant of good; one favourable to luxury, laudatory of courage; divinising vice, and yet encomiastic of virtue; at once every thing to all men; a religion delighting the eye and ear with beautiful sights and sounds, identified with the history and the language of the greatest nations of the world, and incorporated on the very soil of their country, dwelling in consecrated groves, and streams, and hills: whilst this religion, I say, has no sacrifice, no temple, no altar, and has not left a single tongue to plead its cause ;*-the voice of Matthew the publican is heard and revered in every nation under Heaven. He is beloved in more countries than the name of the greatest conqueror was ever feared; he has enlarged the world by giving it a knowledge of what it will be hereafter." There is in the volume one very pleasing chapter (the twentieth), containing a brief account of that very remarkable person the author of the History of the Jews. The materials which form the narrative of Josephus are so interesting that we should express our surprise at its being so much neglected, were it not that few works of the ancient authors are read in these days, except those which are recommended and distinguished by purity of style and grace of expression. This is all that can be effected at school or college, and after that golden period of study, as Hurd used to call it, has passed away, the claims of society prove too strong for the attractions of ancient literature, and the vast and valuable body of knowledge bequeathed to us, from the days of Socrates to those of Tully and Tacitus, is left to the undisputed possession of a few studious and contemplative persons, who, in the engagements of the present, are not willing to forego the recollection of the past, and who, on the flowery and platane-shaded banks of Isis, or in the suburban shades of Welwyn, are endeavouring by a truly critical use of extensive erudition to throw light on the history and philosophy of the most enlightened portion of mankind. Let us now turn to Josephus. *Supposing the Christian religion to have been given to the world in the days when Greece was most eminent in knowledge, reasoning, and intellectual powers-in the days of Aristotle and Plato, it would be a curious speculation to know how it would have been received by them. It was a pretty fiction mentioned by Nicetas, that when Christ descended into Hades to preach the Gospel to the dead, the first who believed in him, and converted-was Plato,-REV. "He affords us a remarkable instance of a Jew amply furnished with the social and intellectual advantages which were not possessed by the first preachers of Christianity. His circumstances, in this respect, were the opposite of theirs; he was younger than any of the apostles and evangelists of Christ, being born four years after Christ's Ascension; he was born not in any obscure village of Galilee, but in the capital of Judæa. And thus, we cannot doubt that from his earliest infancy he enjoyed opportunities of studying the collective history of the Birth, Miracles, Preaching, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and of hearing from eye-witnesses a faithful account of those mighty works which were not done in a corner. He was a descendant of the Maccabean princes, and born to opulence; he was instructed in all the wisdom, both Jewish and Gentile, of his age. Like John the Baptist, in whose doctrines he proves himself to have been conversant, he was of a sacerdotal family, and, like him, he meditated and fasted in the wilderness. Like St. Paul, he sat at the feet of Jewish doctors, and was of the strictest sect, a Pharisee. His acquaintance with Gentile literature was so extensive that it has called forth the admiration of the most learned of the Christian fathers, St. Jerome. Mihi miraculum subit, quomodo (Josephus) vir Hebræus, et ab infantiâ Sacris Literis enutritus, cunctam Græcorum Bibliothecam evolverit.' As an orator, he was deputed to plead before the emperor Nero at Rome, in behalf of those Jewish priests whom Felix had imprisoned. As a statesman, he was panegyrised by the national council of the Jewish Sanhedrim, on account of his wise administration of the province of Galilee. As a general, he was distinguished by his skilful and intrepid defence of the garrison of Iotapa against Vespasian, the leader of the imperial forces of Rome in the reign of Nero. In the camp of Titus, he was an eye-witness of the dreadful chastisement which God inflicted on the devoted city of Jerusalem, and thus he became qualified to describe with his pen, as an historian, those grievous afflictions which it then endured, and which he has narrated in such terms as to afford the fullest and most circumstantial attestation to the words in which our Lord pre dicted them. Designing to write the annals of his own nation, he was necessarily led to study diligently the Scriptures of the Old Testament, from which he has derived, as he declares, the materials of his own historical work. He was, also, a chosen instrument in the hands of Almighty God for preserving the integrity of the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Scriptures; for he was permitted, through the signal favour of Titus, to rescue with his own hands the authentic copy of the Sacred Volume from the Temple of Jeru salem, a little before its destruction by the Romans. He was intimate with the most learned and powerful men of his own nation, and especially esteemed and beloved by King Herod Agrippa the younger, whom St. Paul testifies to have been expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews, and who read, revised, and approved the writings of Josephus." 64 Unhappily this worldly wisdom of Herod, though offensive to the great mass of the Jewish people, had infected the minds of the wealthy and noble of the nation with the contagion of a most pernicious principle. Alas! it exerted too much influence on Josephus. A struggle arose in his heart between Jerusalem and Rome. He could not, indeed, divest himself of the proud recollection that he was descended from the Asmonean princes, and yet he aspired to be the friend of the Roman emperors who subjugated his country. He was dazzled by their favour and won by their munificence. By them he was honoured with statues in imperial Rome. His History of the Jewish War was given to the world under the high patronage of the imperial authority, and a copy of it was received with honour within the dignified and regal walls of that great intellectual temple of the world, the Palatine Library at Rome. He was presented by the Roman power with large domains in Judæa. But, alas! having gained all the good things of this world, he lost himself. His freedom of thought and action was gone. He had sacrificed his conscience. He became in succession the familiar associate and client of Poppaa, of Titus, and of Domitian.* Observe to what bondage he was now reduced. made mean compromises in politics, he contrived contemptible shifts and adjustments in morals, and weak and worldly He Josephi historiam vulgo videmus non satis suo prætio et pondere æstimari: alii enim viri auctoritatem aspernantur: alii evangelistis tantum non anteponerent. Nos ita existimamus Flavium Josephum judiciosissimum essa scriptorem; nisi quod, dum Judaicam doctrinam ad literaturam Græcam, forte in gratiam Vespasiani et Titi accommodat a genuino illo Judaismi colore videtur alicubi recessisse," &c. Gausseni Diss. de Stud. Theol. ratione, p. 26.-REV. GENT. MAG. VOL. XXIII, 3 P accommodations in religion. Let us open his National History of the Jews. You will there see that he dedicates it to Epaphroditus, a Roman, the freedman of the savage Nero, the master of the stoic Epictetus. Commence its perusal, and you will observe that he professes that he cannot perceive any internal spiritual meaning in the primeval prophecies of the inspired volume; with him the bruising of the serpent's head hath nothing spiritual. Proceed in his history, and you find that he sends Abraham to learn philosophy in Egypt. He parallels the crossing of the Red Sea with an event in the Asiatic campaigns of Alexander. He passes over in silence the idolatry of the golden calf in the desert. He says not a word of the brazen serpent in the wilderness. He makes David assert that God commanded the Israelites to build a temple as soon as they entered Canaan, and, by falsely accusing his countrymen of having neglected the divine command in this respect, he vindicates them from the Gentile objection, that they had for many hundred years a religion without a temple. He is unwilling, indeed he is afraid, to interpret Daniel's prophecy concerning the universal kingdom of the Messiah, lest he should offend the powers of Rome. He He is fearful of avowing his belief in the We may refer, as no unfit conclusion, to one of Isaac Barrow's copious and eloquent discourses "On Industry in our particular calling as scholars."."Our business (he says) is to attain knowledge, not concerning obvious and vulgar matters, but abont sublime, abstruse, and knotty subjects, remote from common observation and sense, to get sure and exact notions about which will try the best forces of our mind with their utmost endeavours; in firmly settling principles, in strictly deducing consequences, in orderly digesting conclusions, in faithfully retaining what we learn by our contemplation and study. And if to get a competent knowledge about a few things, or to be reasonably skilful in any sort of learning, be difficult, how much industry does it require to be well seen in many, or to have waded through the vast compass of learning, in no part whereof a scholar may be conveniently or handsomely ignorant. Seeing there is such a connexion of things, and dependence of notions, that one part of learning doth confer light upon another, that we then can hardly well understand anything, without knowing divers other things; that he will be a lame scholar who hath not an insight into many kinds of knowledge; that he can hardly be a good scholar who is not a general one. To understand so many languages, which are the shells of knowledge; to comprehend so many saiences, full of various theories and problems; to peruse so many histories of ancient and modern times; to know the world both natural and human; to be acquainted with the various inventions, inquiries, opinions, and controversies of learned men; to skill the arts of expressing our mind and imparting our conceptions with advantage, so as to instruct or persuade others; these are works, indeed, which will exercise and strain all our faculties, our reason, our fancy, our memory, in painful study. Consider, if you please, what a scholar Solomon was; besides his skill in politics, which was his principal |