supplicating look above to the unknown God. Fire and hail, storm and inundation, famine and drought, earthquake and tempest, executed, from time to time, the message of God to men; and certainly this message was understood by one and another at various times. How often has God, by pestilence, given the nations witness of his dissatisfaction with them! This was of frequent occurrence in the Jewish history. On one occasion, seventy thousand men died in a few hours, 2 Sam. xxiv. 15; Assyria lost one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in one night; in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, the pestilence carried off the greatest part of the Roman people; about the time when Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, in the second year of the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 430, the pestilence extended over Ethiopia, Lybia, Egypt, Judea, Phenicia, Syria, the whole Persian and Roman empire, Greece and the neighbouring countries, and raged for fifteen years together. From the putrefaction of the ruins of Carthage, a pestilential sickness ran through all North Africa, and destroyed in Numidia alone eight hundred thousand persons. This pestilence was so dreadful, that in one day, in one city, and through one gate, more than fifteen hundred human carcasses were borne to the pit; and, in the same city, within a few days, above two hundred thousand persons died. Two years before the birth of Christ, the pestilence pervaded all Italy, and left but few persons to cultivate the ground. Who can suppose that all these

visitations of God were utterly in vain! that some, at least, did not become sobered by them, and awakened to submit themselves to God!

There were also, besides, found here and there individuals in whom a special efficacy of the Spirit of God became visible in the midst of pagan darkness, and who were not without influence upon those around them. Let us think only of Socrates, the Greek philosopher, who, in the very focus of blinding heathen idolatry, found his way to the knowledge that there can be only one true God; and who expressly asserted that a guardian spirit stood by him, to assist him in obtaining this purer knowledge. Let us think of his disciple Plato, who has received into his philosophy so many fundamental lineaments of truth. At the same time we cannot overlook the certainly not inconsiderable influence which the dispersion of the Israelites, and hereby the diffusion of their purer knowledge of God, had upon the ideas of the heathen with whom they came in contact. This dispersion of the Israelites was not confined to Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, where they dwelt in greater numbers, and, as it were, in mass; a whole circle of other countries are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, ch. ii. 9-11, as places of their dispersion. How could the heathen, with all the various intercourse the Jews thus had among them, have failed to become acquainted with their God and religion, their history, and their laws? Indeed, there was, even in the temple of Jerusalem, a special quarter reserved for the heathen themselves, which was called "the court of the

Gentiles," where those Gentiles worshipped the God of Israel, who had become acquainted with him through their Israelitish neighbours. Meanwhile God's purpose, to stir up by the leadings of his providence a desire among the nations for a mighty Deliverer, was in some measure answered; and the severe oppression, which had only continued to increase by the ever frustrated attempt of the great successive empires to better the condition of the world, so sensibly burdened the spirits of men, that the longing for a deliverance sought every where to give itself vent. The obscure predictions which were propagated either in the esoteric doctrine of philosophers, or among the popular legends of the vulgar, and which were found preserved either in the enigmatical sayings of their ancient writers, or in deep-thoughted chronological computations, all marvellously coincided respecting that one and the same period, the period of the Messiah's birth. About the time when Augustus the emperor of the Romans was born, "a prophet of their own" (see Tit. i. 12) announced that the period was come for the birth of Him who should be Lord and King over all. Similar predictions were at that time brought to light, and circulated in Italy and other countries: and not only the journey of the eastern magi to Jerusalem, but also the great stir among the then inhabitants of North Germany, who had been put in commotion by the eastern rumours, appears to be in connexion with them. In general, the remarkable commotion which had already then commenced among the hordes of western Asia, and

which subsequently broke out in their great national emigrations, seems only to be explained by that expectation of a change in the state of the world, which pervaded all nations at the period abovementioned. This change of the world was, however, of quite another kind from what the nations imagined, and was to be looked for rather in its gradual consequences and effects, than in its external commencement and character. It set out from a little point; it began its work from within, herein differing altogether from preceding empires of the world; and the great King and universal Renovator, "the Desire of all nations," was born into the world in the stable of a poor inn in Judea.

FOURTH PERIOD.

FROM THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS, TO THE IRRUPTION OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS.

[B.C. 27. A.D. 375.]

I. THE BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST.

IN the year 39 B. C. Herod the Idumean, also named the Great, was appointed king of Judea by the Roman senate. Two years after this, he took Jerusalem, extirpated all who remained. of the Maccabean dynasty, and maintained his tenure of the crown chiefly by becoming an early adherent of Augustus. As he was of heathen descent, he resolved to prove the sincerity of his attachment to his adopted religion, by repairing and beautifying at great expense the temple of Jerusalem, which had suffered much damage under the Syrian government. This reparation, or rather rebuilding of the temple, which was continued by the Jews after his death, was not completed till A.D. 64. In the latter period of the work, eighteen thousand men were employed about it.

But

Herod was, nevertheless, hated for his tyranny; and it was his part to increase and strengthen more and more among the people of Israel, who for a long time had seen nothing of good