dances. 66 He," it was said, "who has never seen this "rejoicing knows not what1 rejoicing is." The whole congregation descended with the Priest to the Spring of Siloam the water was brought back in a golden. pitcher with shouts of triumph, cymbals, and trumpets, which resounded louder and louder as the Priest stood on the altar. "Lift up thy hand," they said, as though the irreverent Pontiff was still before them, and the water was then solemnly poured to the west, and a cup of wine to the east, the song still continuing, "Draw water with joy from the wells of salvation." It is a striking example of a noble meaning infused into the celebration of a miserable party-triumph when, "on the last great day of the Feast" of Tabernacles, a hundred years later, there stood in the Temple courts One whom the Pharisees hated with a hatred .as deadly as that with which they pursued the memory of Alexander Jannæus, and cried "with a loud voice," -piercing, it may be, through the clatter of chant and music, "If any man have thirst, let him come "unto me 2 and drink." 3 The description of these internecine feuds, to which the earlier history of the Jewish Church furnishes no exact parallel, -not even in the angry factions of the time of Jeremiah, -shows how nearly we have approached to those modern elements which, as a great historian of our own day has well pointed out, are found in certain stages of every ancient nation. They present the first appearance of that singular phenomenon of religious party, which, continuing down to the latest days of the Jewish commonwealth, reappears under other forms both in the early and in 1 Derenbourg, 103. 2 John vii. 37 (see Godet). 8 Lecture XL. the later ages of the Christian Church-that is to say, divisions ostensibly on religious subjects, but carried on with the same motives and passions as those which animate divisions in the State. The true likenesses of the scenes we have just been considering are not, where Josephus looks for them, in the schools of Greek philosophy, but in the tumult of Grecian politics. The seditions and revolutions of Corcyra, with the profound1 remarks of Thucydides, contain the picture of all such religious discords, from the Pharisees and Sadducees downwards. The word by which in the later Greek of this epoch they are described, hæresis,2 is the equivalent of the earlier word stasis-neither having any relation to the modern meaning of "heresy," both expressed by the English word "fac"tion." The names of "Pharisee" and "Sadducee," and perhaps "Essene," had, indeed, as we have seen, a moral or theological significance, but this meaning was often disavowed by the parties themselves and was constantly drifting into other directions. The apellations of "the Isolated" and "the Just," and perhaps "the Holy" or "the Contemplative," passed through the natural process to which all party names are liable; first, an exclusive or exaggerated claim to some peculiar virtue, or also a taunt from some opposing quarter; next, adopted or given, heedlessly or deliberately, by some class or school - then poisoned by personal rivalry, and turned into mere flags of discord and weapons of offence. Such in later times has been the fate of the names of "Christian,' "Catholic," "Puritan," Orthodox," "Evangelical," Evangelical," "Apostolical," ""Latitu 66 1 Thucyd., iii. 84. See Keim, I. 14; xxvi. 5; xxviii. 22; 1 Cor. xi. 19; Gal. v. 20; 2 Pet. ii. 1. 322. 2 Acts v. 17; xv. 5; xxiv. 5; xxiv. "dinarian," "Rationalist," "Methodist," "Ritualist, "Reformed," "Moderate,' "Moderate," "Free." Whatever the words once meant, they in later times have often come to be mere badges by which contending masses are distinguished from each other. In these, therefore, as in all parties, the inward and outward, the formal and the real, divisions never exactly corresponded. There were Pharisaic opinions which should have belonged to those who were not "Separatists," and Sadducaic usages which we should have expected to find amongst the Pharisees. The doctrine of Immortality, which the Pharisees believed to have been derived from the oral tradition of Moses, was if not derived, yet deeply colored, from those Gentile philosophies and religions which they professed to abhor.1 In the long and tedious list of ritual differences which parted the two sections, there are many minute particularities on which the Pharisees took the laxer, the Sadducees the stricter side. Yet, further, though it might have seemed as if the whole nation were absorbed by these apparently exhaustive divisions, it is clear that there were higher spirits, who, though, perhaps, nominally belonging to one or other side, rose above the miserable littlenesses of each. No loftier instruction is preserved from these times than that of two teachers who must at least be regarded as the precursors of the Sadducees. One is 2 Antigonus of Socho, whose doubt, if it were a doubt, on future retribution, is identical with that expressed in the vision of the noblest and holiest of Christian kings, to whom on the same shores of Palestine a stately form revealed herself as Religion, with a brazier 1 See Lectures XLVII., XLVIII. 2 See Lecture XLVIII. in one hand to dry up the fountains of Paradise,1 and a pitcher in the other to quench the fires of Hell, in order that men might love God for Himself alone. Another was Jesus the son of Sirach, whose solemn and emphatic reiterations of the power of the human will and the grandeur of human duty helped to fill the void left by his total silence of a hope beyond the grave.2 Of the Pharisees we know that a hundred years later there was, as we shall see, a Hillel, a Gamaliel, and a Saul, who were to be the chosen instruments in preparing or in proclaiming the widest emancipation from ceremonial rites that the world had yet seen; whilst the doctrine of Immortality which it is the glory of the Pharisaic schools to have appropriated and consolidated, was, like an expiring torch, to be snatched from their hands, and kindled with a new light for all succeeding generations. Of the seven classes into which the Pharisees were divided, whilst six were characterized by themselves with epithets of biting scorn, one was acknowledged to be animated by the pure love of God. Even in these first days of the fierce triumph of Pharisaism the Jewish Church at large owed Simeon much to the influence of Simeon the son of Shetach. Shetach, who, during the reign of his sister Alexandra, ruled supreme in the Court and cloisters of Jerusalem. There were, indeed, stories handed down of him and his colleague which showed that the Pharisees could exercise as much severity in behalf of the Written Law as they were fond of alleging against the Sadducees. Eighty witches were executed at Ascalon under Simeon's* auspices, and he persisted, from a legal scruple, 1 Joinville's Life of S. Louis. 2 See Milman's Hist. of Jews, ii. 8 Munk's Palestine, 513. the son of in the execution of his own son, though knowing that he was falsely accused. Nor can we avoid the thought that the advantages which he gave to the legal1 position of women were suggested by the influence of his strong-minded Pharisaic sister, Queen Alexandra. But there are traces of a better and more enduring spirit in some of his words and works. That was an acute saying of his colleague, the son of Tobai: "Judge, "make not thyself an advocate; whilst the parties are "before thee, regard them both as guilty; when they "are gone, after the judgment, regard them both as 'having reason." 2 That was a yet wiser saying of Simeon "Question well the witnesses; but be careful "not by thy questions to teach them how to lie." But his main glory was that he was the inaugurator of a complete system of education throughout the country. Under his influence, for the first time, schools were established in every large provincial town, and all boys from sixteen years and upwards were compelled to attend them. No less than eleven different names 66 : for schools now came into vogue. "Get to thyself a "teacher," said Joshua, the son of Perachiah, "and "thou gettest to thyself a companion." "Our principal "care, "4 such from this time was the boast of Josephus, "is to educate our children." "The world," such became the Talmudical maxim, "is preserved by the "breath of the children in the schools." With nobler tendencies thus recognized on either side we need not wonder, though we may the Jewish stumble, at the startling fact that the Jewish Church and nation, even in its last extremities, Comprehensiveness of Church. 1 Derenbourg, 108, 110. 2 Mishna, Pirke Aboth, 1. 8, 9. & Pirke Aboth, i. 6. 4 Josephus, c. Ap., i. 12. 5 Dr. Ginsburg in Kitto, i. 728. |