his readers not only that their offerings are not needed by Him whom they seek to propitiate by them, but that from the farthest East, where the sun rises above the earth, to the remotest western horizon, where he sinks beneath it, the Eternal name, under whatever form, is great; that among the innumerable races outside the Jewish pale, not only in Jerusalem, but in every place over that wide circumference, the cloud of incense that goes up from altars, of whatever temple, is, if faithfully rendered, a pure, unpolluted offering to that Divine Presence, known or unknown, throughout all the nations of mankind. It is a truth which met with a partial exemplification, as we shall see, in connection with the great religious systems which, in the vacant space on which we are now entering, pressed upon the Jewish creed and ritual. It is a truth which was raised to the first order of religious doctrine by Him who declared that "many should come from East "and West, and sit down in the kingdom;" and by the disciples, who repeated it after Him almost in the words of Malachi, though without a figure, that: "In "every nation he that feareth Him and worketh right"eousness is accepted of Him;" and that "not the "hearers of the law, but the doers of the law, who have "not the law, shall be justified." It is a truth which, after a long period of neglect, and even of bitter condemnation, has become in our days the basis of the great science of comparative theology, and has slowly reentered the circle of practical and religious thought.

In the entire vacancy in the annals of the Jewish nation which follows the times of Nehemiah there is one single incident recorded which is an exact comment on

1 Mal. i. 11.

2 Matt. viii. 11.

8 Acts x. 3, 4.

4 Rom. ii. 13.

Story of

the contrast which Malachi draws between the degenerate Priesthood of his own day with the purer elements of the Gentile world. In that corrupt family Bagoses. of Eliashib, which occupied the High Priesthood, there was one deed at this time darker than any that had preceded it,—"more dreadful," says the historian who reports it in terms which seem almost the echo of Malachi's indignant language-"than any "which had been known among the nations, civilized or "uncivilized, outside the Jewish pale." His two sons both aimed at their father's office, which then, as before and often afterwards, was in the gift of the foreign Governor residing at Jerusalem. John was in possession. But Bagoses, the Governor, favored Joshua.1 The two brothers met in the Temple, and the elder, stung by jealousy, murdered the younger on the floor of the sanctuary. The Governor, filled with just anger, descended from his fortress-tower, like Lysias in later days, and burst into the Temple. The sacerdotal guardians endeavored to resist the sacrilegious intruder, as he advanced, reproaching them with the crime. But he thrust them aside, and penetrated, it would seem, into the sacred edifice itself, where the corpse lay stretched upon the Temple pavement. "What," he exclaimed, "am I not cleaner than the dead carcass of him whom 66 ye have murdered?" The words of Bagoses lived in the recollection of those who heard them. They expressed the universal but unwelcome truth, "Is not a "good Persian better than a bad Jew?"—or, to turn it into the form of the indignant question of a great modern theologian, "Who would not meet the judgment of "the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nesto"rius rather than with the crimes of Cyril?'

1 Josephus, Ant., xi. 7, § 1.

2

2 Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, i. 145.

Gentile

world.

IV. It is in the light of this principle, clearly foreshadowed by the Evangelical Prophet of the Relations Captivity, that we may proceed to ask the to the question, which naturally forces itself upon us, before we leave this period of the Jewish history: What traces were left upon it by the circumstances of the new sphere which had opened upon them through the connection of Israel with the Persian Empire? We have seen what elements in the development of the national religion were due to their stay in Babylon. We have now to ask what elements, if any, were added by the other forces now brought into contact with them in the Eastern or Western world.

I. The first influence to be considered in the retrospect of this period is the general effect of The Persian the Persian Monarchy on the manners and the Empire. imagination of the Jewish race. If, with all the alienation of exiles, almost of rebels, there had yet been an attraction for them in the magnificent power of the Babylonian Empire, there could not have been less in the forms, hardly less august, and far more friendly, that surrounded the successors of their benefactor Cyrus. We have seen how closely they clung to that protection; how intimate their relations with the Persian Governor, who resided almost within the Temple precincts; how complete1 his control over their most sacred functionaries; how the letters and decrees of its kings were placed almost on the level of their sacred books. From the exceptionally kindly relations between the Court of Susa and the Jewish colony at this time, it has come to pass that even to this day the King of Persia is the only existing 2 Potentate of the world 1 Neh. xiii. 4-9; Josephus, Ant., xi. 7.

2 This was beyond doubt the one main reason of the extraordinary

whose name appeals to the common sentiment as a Biblical personage.

There is one writing of this period in which these relations are especially brought out. Even more than The Book the Book of Job is Idumæan, and the Book of of Esther; Daniel Babylonian, is the Book of Esther Persian. It is the one example in the sacred volume of a story of which the whole scenery and imagery breathes the atmosphere of an Oriental Court as completely and almost as exclusively as the "Arabian Nights." We are in the Palace at Susa. We are in that splendid hall of Darius, of which no vestige now remains, but which can be completely represented to our sight by the still existing ruins of the contemporary hall at Persepolis, that edifice of which it has been said that no interior of any building, ancient or modern, not Egyptian Karnac, not Cologne Cathedral, could rival it in space and beauty. The only feature found at Persepolis which was wanting at Susa was the splendid staircase "noblest example of a flight of stairs to "be found in any part of the world."2 All else was in Shushan" the Palace fortress the colossal bulls at the entrance; the vast pillars, sixty feet high, along its nave; the pavement of colored marbles, as the author of the Book of Esther repeats, as if recalling color after color that had feasted his eyes—

Its local interest.

royal residence. The word (Bireh) is elsewhere only used for the Persian Governor's residence at Jerusalem as (like the Prætorium in the Roman camps and provinces) each such residence was regarded as Susa in miniature.

2 See Fergusson on "Susa" in the Dict. of the Bible. Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, iv. 269-287.

2

"red, and blue, and white, and black - and the curtains hanging from pillar to pillar, "white, and green, "and purple," fastened with cords of "white and "purple." There it was that, overlooking from the terraced heights on which the hall was built, the plains of the Ulai, Ahasuerus, whose name was Græcized into Xerxes, gave, in the third year of his reign, a halfyear's festival. There, in the gardens within the palace, on the slope of the palatial hill, was the banquet, like those given by the Emperor of China, to the whole population of the Province. Round the Great King, as he sat on his golden throne, with the fans waving over his head, which still linger in the ceremonial of the chief ecclesiastic of the Latin Church, were the seven Princes of Persia and Media which saw the King's face "when others saw it not," and the first in the kingdom -the sacred number seven which pervaded the whole Court. There took place the succession of violent scenes, so thoroughly characteristic of Oriental despotism, but to which the Hebrew historian was so familiarized that they appear to fill him rather with admiration than astonishment and horror, the order for the Queen to unveil herself-contrary to the immemorial 4 usage of Persia, and therefore the sure sign of

1 Esther i. 6.

the violence in which he resembled 2 This seems to be implied in Xerxes, caused commentators to be Esther i. 5. reluctant in admitting his identification with a prince whose memory our sympathy with the Greek historians had so disparaged.

* That Ahasuerus is Xerxes, and that the third and seventh years of his reign (Esther i. 3; ii.) thus coincide respectively with his departure on his great expedition to Greece and his return from it is now generally agreed. It is curious to observe that the halo thrown around Ahasuerus by the Book of Esther, whilst it blinded modern readers to

4 In the annual Persian representation of the tragedy of the sons of Ali an English ambassador is brought in as begging their lives; and to mark his nationality a boy dressed up as an unveiled woman accompanies him as the ambassadress.