measure by the nation when under heathen rule, and even by those dwelling apart in heathen lands, a restoration to independence and national unity, as it should be realized under the Messiah, was of less moment. To obey the law wherever they might be, was to recognize the supremacy of Jehovah as their King. Hence, we see why many of the scribes and Pharisees were unwilling to rebel against the yoke of their heathen oppressors, and often counselled submission. The law was in a degree a substitute both for the Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom.

It was inevitable that the study of the sacred books, as carried on by the scribes, should tend to foster a spirit of intellectual pride fatal to all true spiritual selfknowledge. The scribe could not take the place of the prophet as a true guide, he could not discern the sins of the people, nor warn them of their dangers; out of the high-minded Pharisees the repentant and humble remnant could not come. The cessation of prophecy in Malachi left the people without the means of knowing their own spiritual condition, and their unpreparedness for the Messianic Kingdom. Testing themselves by a written law, they were their own judges; and the standard of their judgment was their own discernment of its meaning. In its application they naturally justified themselves, and a legal self-righteousness was the necessary result. They became vain in their own conceits, and made void the law by their traditions, which expressed their interpretation and application of it. The teachers, like the unjust steward, diminished the claims of God upon the people; where He demanded a hundred measures, they wrote down fifty. Out of this delusion of their self-righteousness, there was no one able to deliver them. No scribe could call the people to repentance; only a prophet illumined by the Spirit, and

having a message from God, could discern what the sins of the people were, and declare to them His righteous anger. The Jews without a prophet easily deluded themselves into the belief that they were acceptable to God, the just who needed no repentance, a people ready for the Messiah. And no severity of judgment availed to bring them to a true knowledge of themselves, since they misinterpreted the very judgments.

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It was not possible that the Messianic Kingdom could be rightly apprehended as to its spiritual character by those who thought themselves sufficiently prepared for it by an external observance of the law; and who wholly failed to understand the sacrificial ritual as intended to convince them of sin, and prepare them for its true expiation. Ignorant of their own hearts, they said of the Mosaic precepts, like the young ruler, “ All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" As those thinking themselves prepared for His Kingdom by keeping the law, they could not see that it was needful that the Messiah should do any work for their spiritual deliverance at His coming. His work must be one of national deliverance, to free them from their enemies, and to restore their independence. This accomplished, they were ready for the fulfillment of all the promises of God to Abraham and to David. And as their conceptions of the Kingdom were low, so also their conception of the Messiah. He was to be a Scribe of the scribes, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. A great part of His office was to exalt the law, and make the people to obey it. That the Messiah was to suffer for their sins, to redeem them by His expiatory death, was something contrary to all their modes of thought; and the most express words of the prophets respecting His sufferings were easily explained away.

Thus neither the priesthood nor the scribes could

prepare the people for the Lord; but God, who always brings good out of evil, did through them preserve a religious unity, and so kept the people from being swallowed up by the heathen around them. The numerous legal prescriptions of the scribes served as so many barriers to keep them distinct; and the excess of their self-righteousness, their pharisaic pride, which made them odious to all peoples, was as a separating wall of fire. Yet we cannot doubt that there were many in this long period, who, like Zacharias and Elisabeth, "walked in all the statutes and ordinances of the Lord blameless;" and who, with the outward observance of the law, knew something also of its deeper meaning; and who looked for the Messiah, both as the Redeemer from sin, and as the King of Israel. (Luke ii. 38.)

Of the three great religious parties which grew up after the exile, one, the Essenes, had so greatly departed from the sphere of Old-Testament revelations, and of the Messianic hope, as not to be once mentioned in the Gospels. Of the Pharisees we have spoken as those most diligent to keep the law in the letter, but full of self-righteousness, and feeling no need of a Messiah who should be more than a political redeemer and chief. The Sadducees were men of the world, who had no faith in any special covenant relation of the nation to God, or in any thing supernatural. They were eager politicians, who expected to bring about their worldly ends by worldly means; and their denial of the resurrection of the dead followed from their general religious position. If they had any expectation of a Messiah, it was not of one sent immediately of God, and supernaturally endowed, but of one who by his own ability and force of will could place himself at the head of the nation, and achieve its independence.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE MESSIAH IN THE APOCRYPHAL AND APOCALYPTIC BOOKS.

WE are here interested in these books only so far as they cast light upon the Messianic belief of the Jews after the cessation of prophecy in the person of Malachi. They are of various kinds,—historical, prophetic, didactic, poetic, and fictitious. Probably most were composed during the Grecian and Maccabæan periods (332-105 B.C.), or a little later; but exact dates are not for us important.

It was impossible that there should not have been in the long period from Malachi to the birth of Christ (some four hundred years), some development of religious ideas among the people, both among those dwelling in Judæa, and those scattered in other lands. Many influences from without were acting upon them to modify their beliefs, both through their subjection to hea then masters, and the close intercourse into which they were brought with intelligent foreigners; and the repeated reading of the law and the prophets in the synagogues kept the fact of their Divine calling continually before them, and incited them to reflection upon the unfulfilled promises of God. Thus there were two processes going on in the popular mind, the reception and assimilation of foreign ideas, and the doctrinal interpretation of their own scriptures; the latter being

necessarily affected by the former, and by the historical progress of events. It is the interpretation only of their Messianic scriptures that here concerns us.

Turning to the Apocryphal books, we are at once struck with the fact, that of the three elements already spoken of as entering into the general Messianic conception, the universal Kingdom under Jehovah, the place of the Jews in that kingdom as the ruling people, and the kingship of the Messiah, - there is frequent mention of the first two, but little or none of the last. All nations are to be subjected to Jehovah, and the Jews are to be restored to their own land, and to dwell in peace; but it is Jehovah, and not the Messiah, who reveals Himself in Jerusalem, and is Ruler and Judge. A brief examination of the Apocryphal books will clearly show this.

The Book of Sirach -Ecclesiasticus- speaks of the judgments to be inflicted on all nations, of the coming of Elijah, and of the gathering of all the tribes of Israel together to their own land. Mention is also made of the perpetuity of the Abrahamic covenant: "The days of Israel are without number." Earnest wishes are often expressed for deliverance from the sore evils of the times, both political and religious, and the hope of better days. (xxxvi. 12.) Although there is no mention of the personal Messiah, there is an allusion to the covenant with David as yet to be fulfilled in his descendants: "The Lord gave David a covenant respecting kings;" i.e., that his descendants should be kings. (xliv. 13, xlvii.)

The Book of Baruch expresses strong confidence, that as the nations around Zion had seen the captivity of the Jews, so they should shortly see their deliverance, which should come with great glory. (iv. 23.) The enemy that had persecuted Zion should be destroyed, and