PREFACE.

THESE LECTURES, begun at Oxford, and interrupted by the pressure of inevitable engagements in a more laborious sphere, have been resumed during the leisure of an enforced seclusion-under the impulse of an encouragement which overbore all obstacles in the hope of finding relief from an anxiety which forbade all external occupations. The first volume was dedicated, thirteen years ago, to a dear and most sacred memory, fresh at the time and fresh forever. This last is bound up with another like memory, if possible, still nearer, still more dear, and no less enduring.

It had been my hope to have comprised in this volume the last stage of the Jewish history from the Captivity to the final destruction of Jerusalem, so as to complete the cycle contemplated in the original plan. Such an arrangement alone would accord with the logical sequence of the narrative and with the due proportions of the subject. To conclude that history without embracing the crowning scenes and characters of its close would be as unjust to the Jewish race itself as it would be derogatory to the consummation which gives to this preparatory period, not, indeed, its

only, but unquestionably its chief, attraction. But it appeared to me that the argument allowed, if it did not invite, a division. I have, therefore, broken up the twenty Lectures which, according to the arrangement of the former volumes, would be due to this period, and have confined the present series to the interval from the Exile to the Christian era, leaving, at least for the present, the momentous epoch which involves at once the close of the Jewish Commonwealth and the birth of Christendom. The name of Lectures could properly be applied only to the substance of these pages in the rudimentary form in which they were first conceived, but it has been preserved as most nearly corresponding to the framework in which the whole work has been cast. Their unequal length has been the natural result of the disproportionate amount of materials in the different parts.1

I. A few remarks may be permitted in explanation of the method which here, as in the previous volumes, I have endeavored to follow.

1. As before, so now, but perhaps even to a larger extent, the vast amount of previous historical investigation precludes the necessity, and forbids the desire, of again discussing questions or relating facts, which have already been amply treated. The elaborate Jewish researches of Jost, Herzfeld, Grätz, and Salvador, the dry criticism of Kuenen, the brief and lucid narrative of Dean Milman, exempt any later author

1 I have once more to express my obligations to my friend Mr. Grove for his revision of the press.

from the duty of undertaking afresh a labor which they have accomplished once for all, not to be repeated. But on two works relating to this period, very different from each other, a few words may be added.

No English scholar, certainly no English Churchman, can rightly pass through the interval between the Old and New Testament without a tribute to the merit, rare for its age, of Dean Prideaux's "Connection of "Sacred and Profane History." It has, no doubt, been in large part superseded by later research and criticism; its style is heavy, and the management of the subject ungainly. But, for the time when he lived, it shows a singular amount of erudition; its manly and direct treatment of the controversies that he touches breathes the true spirit of the sturdy band of Anglican divines to which he belonged; the selection of so large, and at that time so little explored, a field, and the accomplishment of so laborious a task, as a relief under the stress of severe suffering, indicate both a grasp of mind and an energy of will which theological students of later days may well be stirred to emulate.

Of altogether another order is the volume of Ewald's History which covers this time, and to which it is difficult to over-estimate my obligations.1 He, since these Lectures were begun, has, after a long and eventful life, been called to his rest. Of all those who have treated of the Jewish history, he alone or almost alone,

1 In the translation begun by Mr. Russell Martineau and continued by Mr. Estlin Carpenter, Ewald's History is now accessible to any English b

reader; and to this must now be added the like translation of the Antiquities of Israel, by Mr. Henry Solly.

seems to have lived (if the expression may be used) not outside, but inside, the sequence of its events, the rise of its characters, and the formation of its literature. Erroneous conclusions, unreasonable judgments, unwarranted dogmatism, no doubt, may abound; but these do not interfere with the light which he has thrown, and the fire which he has enkindled, throughout the passages of this dark and intricate labyrinth. By his removal the Church, not only of Germany, but of Europe, has lost one of its chiefest thelogians; and his countrymen will not refuse to a humble fellowworker in the same paths the privilege of paying this parting testimony of respect to one to whom Christendom owes so deep a debt. It is now more than thirty years ago since I, with a dear friend, sought him out, and introduced ourselves to him as young Oxford students, in an inn at Dresden; and it is impossible to forget the effect produced upon us by finding the keen interest which this secluded scholar, as we had supposed, took in the moral and social condition of our country; the noble enthusiasm with which this dangerous heretic, as he was regarded in England, grasped the small Greek Testament which he had in his hand as we entered, and said: "In this little book is con"tained all the wisdom of the world." We spoke to him of the great English theologian then lately departed; and of all the tributes paid to the memory of Arnold none is more full of appreciation than that which appeared shortly afterwards in the preface of the second volume of the "History of the Jewish People."