As anti quaries. fierce exclusiveness which in the later years burned with a zeal not according to knowledge' in the hearts of those wild assassins who bound themselves together with a curse not to eat bread or drink water till they had slain the greatest of their countrymen of those zealots who fought in a frenzy of desperate tenacity with each other and with their foes in defence of the walls which Nehemiah had raised. But within that narrow sphere Ezra and Nehemiah were the models of good Reformers. They set before themselves special tasks to accomplish and special evils to remedy, and in the doing of this they allowed no secondary or subsidiary object to turn them aside. They asked of their countrymen3 to undertake no burdens, no sacrifices, which they did not themselves share. They filled the people with a new enthusiasm because none could doubt that they felt it themselves. The scene of Ezra sitting awestruck on the ground at the thought of his country's sins, the sound of the trumpet rallying all the various workmen and warriors at the wall to Nehemiah's side, inspire us still with their own inspiration. When we read of the passion, almost the violence, of Nehemiah in cleansing the Temple and clearing its chambers, we see the spark, although the sulphureous spark, of that same Divine flame, of which, when One came who found the house of prayer turned into a cavern of robbers, it was said the zeal of Thine House hath even consumed me.'' They were again the first distinct and incontestable examples of that antiquarian, scholastic, critical treatment of the ancient history and literature of the country which succeeds and is inferior to the periods of original genius and inspiration, but is itself an indispensable element of instruction. Something of the kind we have indicated in the efforts of Baruch the scribe when he gathered together 1 Acts xxiii. 21. 2 Neh. vi. 3. Neh. v. 10. 4 John ii. 17. 5 Lectures XL. and XLI. the scattered leaves of Jeremiah's prophecies, or of the earlier compiler, who during the exile collected in the Books of Kings the floating fragments of the earlier history and poetry of his race. But now we actually see the process before our eyes. Nehemiah, when he came to Jerusalem, not contented with the rough work of building and fighting, dived' into the archives of the former generations and thence dug out and carefully preserved the Register of the names, properties, and pedigrees of those who had returned in the original exile. Some other antiquary or topographer must in other days have done the like for that which we have called elsewhere the Domesday Book of Canaan in the Book of Joshua. But in Nehemiah we first meet with an unquestionable person whose name we can connect with that science whose title owed no small part of its early fame to the Jewish history which was so designated-Josephus's Archæology.' It is Nehemiah's keen sympathy with those antique days which made him so diligent an explorer of the ruined walls and gates and towers and well-worn stairs, and of the legal ancestral documents of the city of his fathers' sepulchres. And not only so, but (if we may trust the first tradition on the subject which can be traced, and which contains the one particle of probable truth in the legends concerning the origin of the Jewish canon) it was Nehemiah' who first undertook in the self-same spirit implied in the authentic notices just cited to form a Library of the books of the past times: namely, of the Books of the Kings, and Prophets, those which 'bore the name of David, and the Royal Letters concerning sacred offerings.' This earliest tradition respecting the agglomeration of the sacred Hebrew literature certainly indicates that it was in Nehemiah's time that the various documents of the past history of his race were united in one col tors of the sacred books. As collec- lection. Then, probably, was the time when the Unknown Prophet of the Captivity was attached to the roll of the elder Isaiah, and the earlier Zechariah affixed to the prophecies of his later namesake; when the Books of Jasher and of the Wars of the Lord' finally perished, and were superseded by the existing Books of Samuel' and 'of the 'Kings.' It is evident from the terms of the description that 'Nehemiah's Library' was not co-extensive with any existing canon. It was not a formation of divine oracles so much as a repository of whatever materials from whatever source might be useful for the future history of his people. It was not the complete canon of the Old Testament' which was then formed, for some even of the earlier Books, such as Ezekiel, had not yet fully established their right; and many books or parts of books now contained in it were still absent. The various treatises of Ezra,' Malachi, the Chronicles, Esther, the Maccabean Psalms, the Maccabean Histories, perhaps Ecclesiastes, probably Daniel, were still to come. Nor was it based on the modern idea of a strictly sacred volume; for one of its chief component parts consisted of the official letters of the Persian kings, which have never had a place in the ecclesiastical roll of the consecrated Scriptures. It was the natural, the laudable attempt to rescue from oblivion such portions of the Hebrew literature as, with perpetually increasing additions, might illustrate and enforce the one central book of the Pentateuch, round which they were gathered. The 'Prophets' were still outside, occupying a position analogous to that filled in the early Christian Canon by the Deuterocanonical writings of the Old Testament, and the doubtful' writings of the New Testament.3 These, in common with all the other books' which followed them, 1 formed a class by themselves, known as the Books,' the 'Bible' (to adopt the modern word), outside the Holy Book' or Holy Bible,' which was the Law itself. 6 And this brings us to the point at which Nehemiah the Governor recedes from view to make way for Ezra the Scribe, who in the later traditions, alike of Jew, Arab, and early Christian, entirely takes his place. preters of There is an almost contemporary2 representation of Ezra As interwhich at once places before us his true historical position in the sacred this aspect. It was on the occasion of that great celebration of books. the Feast of the Tabernacles which has been before mentioned. The whole people were assembled-not the men only, but the women issuing from their Eastern seclusion; not the old only, but all whose dawning intelligence enabled them to understand at all, were gathered on one of the usual gathering-places outside the city walls. On the summit of the slope of the hill (as the Bema rose on the highest tier of the Athenian Pnyx) was raised a huge wooden tower on which stood Ezra with a band of disciples round him. There, on that September morning, just as the sun was rising above Mount Olivet, he unrolled before the eyes of the expectant multitude the huge scroll of the Law, which he had doubtless brought with him from Chaldæa. At that moment the whole multitude rose from the crouching postures in which they were seated, after the manner of the East, over the whole of the open platform. They stood on their feet, and he at the same instant blessed the Eternal, the great 'God.' Thousands of hands were lifted up from the crowd, in the attitude of prayer, with the loud reverberated cry of Amen and again hands and heads sank down and the whole people lay prostrate on the rocky ground. It was then the 1 See Lecture XLVIII. It is not in Nehemiah's own records, but in that by which the Chron icler has filled up the interstices in Neh. viii. 3. early dawn. From that hour the assembly remained in fixed attention till the midday heat dispersed them. The instruction was carried on partly by reading the sacred book, partly by explaining it. Sometimes it was Ezra himself who poured forth a long passionate summary of their history, sometimes it was the Levites who addressed the people in prayer.1 We feel that in this scene a new element of religion has entered on the stage. The Temple has retired for the moment into the background. There is something which stirs the national sentiment yet more deeply, and which is the object of still more profound veneration. It is the 'Law.' However we explain the gradual growth of the Pentateuch, however we account for the ignorance of its contents, for the inattention to its precepts, this is the first distinct introduction of the Mosaic law as the rule of the Jewish community. That lofty platform on which Ezra stood might be fitly called 'the Seat of Moses.' 2 It is from this time that the Jewish nation became one of those whom Mohammed calls the people of a book.' It was but one book amongst the many which Nehemiah had collected, but it was the kernel round which the others grew with an ever-multiplying increase. The Bible, and the reading of the Bible as an instrument of instruction, may be said to have been begun on the sunrise of that day when Ezra unrolled the parchment scroll of the Law. It was a new thought that the Divine Will could be communicated by a dead literature as well as by a living voice. In the impassioned welcome with which this thought was received lay the germs of all the good and evil which were afterwards to be developed out of it; on the one side, the possibility of appeal in each successive age to the primitive, undying document that should rectify the fluctuations of false tradition and 1 1 Neh. ix. 3, 4, 5 (LXX.). 2 Matt. xxiii. 2. |