THE PERSIAN DOMINION. CYRUS, B.C. 560. Fall of Babylon, B.C. 538. The Return, B.c. 536. CAMBYSES, B.C. 529. DARIUS I., B.C. 522. Completion of the Temple, B. c. 516. XERXES, B.C. 485. Story of Esther, B.C. 480-490 ? ARTAXERXES, B,C. 4€5. Coming of Ezra, B.C. 459. Coming of Nehemiah, B.C. 415. THE PERSIAN DOMINION. LECTURE XLIII. THE RETURN. THE Return from the Captivity opens the final era of the history of the Jewish Church and Nation. That any nation should have survived such a dislocation and dissolution of all local and social bonds is almost without example. But as in the case of the Greek race centuries of foreign dominion have been unable to eradicate the memory of their distant glory, so the transplantation of the Israelites to another country was unable to efface the religious' aspiration which was the bond of their national coherence. The 2 other Semitic tribes, Moab, Ammon, Edom, felt that with the loss of their home they would lose all. Israel alone survived the shock. The Restoration was an event which, unlikely and remote as it might have seemed, was deemed almost a certainty in the expectations of the exiles. The confidence of Jeremiah and Ezekiel never flagged that within two generations from the beginning of the Captivity their countrymen. would return. The patriotic sentiment, which had existed. as it were unconsciously before, found its first definite See Milman, History of the Jews, i. 404, 405. Jer. xlviii. 11. See the interest ing remarks upon the passage by Mr. Grove in the Dictionary of the Bible, ii. 397, 398. |