manity; their rapacity in seizing the property of defenceless widows and destitute orphans; their detestable cruelty and oppression; their deplorable ignorance of the true intention and meaning of their law; their obstinately bigotted and infatuated attachment to the unfounded and ridiculous traditions of their elders; their shocking immorality and atheistical contempt for purity and virtue, so that while they professed "to know God, in works they denied him, being abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate," all combined to justify the utmost abhorrence of their national character, and the most dreadful punishment of their national crimes. "The great men were to an incredible degree depraved in morals, many of them Sadducees in principle, and in practice the most profligate sensualists and debauchees; their atrocious and abandoned wickedness, according to the testimony of their own historian, transcended all the enormities which the most corrupt age of the world had ever beheld; they compassed sea and land to make proselytes to Judaism from the Pagans, and when they had gained their converts, soon rendered them, by their immoral lives and scandalous examples, more depraved and profligate than they were before their conversion." They were, in one word, ready for their doom, they were ripe for the harvest of their

woe.

What effect had the appearance of the Messiah upon the institutions of the Jews?

The advent of the Messiah had a most important influence upon the institutions of the Jews. It was a decisive epoch in their annals; it involved the very design of their national existence; it was the object of every dispensation of God to them as a distinct and peculiar people through all the eventful changes of their condition, in every age of their history; it effected a complete alteration in their relative position towards God and man; and it gave an impulse to their destiny whose mighty influence has been perpetuated to the present hour, and shall be felt through every succeeding generation of their posterity to the conflagration of the world.

SECTION V.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

DESCRIBE the sects which existed among the Jews at the birth of Christ.

Who were the Pharisees?

THE PHARISEES received their name from the Hebrew word Pharas, to separate, and formed one of the most numerous and influential sects among the Jews. Believing in the existence of angels, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future state of punishments and rewards, they considered all events to be regulated by a fate, while at the same time they asserted the free-agency of man. They were distinguished by their scrupulous attention to the ceremonies of the law, and by the publicity in which they performed their acts of devotion. Regarding good works as meritorious in the sight of God, they invented a number of supererogatory duties which they regarded with greater complacency than the ordained observances of the law. Their distinguishing tenet, however, was, that an oral tradition had been delivered from Moses which he himself received upon the summit of Sinai, which was of equal authority with the sacred books. Their fastidious affectation of superior sanctity, their frequent ablutions, their public prayers, their fastings, their penances, their avoidance of reputed impurities, their strict payment of tithes, their punctilious observance of the Sabbath, their enlargement of phylacteries (the pieces of parchment which formed a part of the dress of the Jews, and upon which some portions of the law were inscribed) all these peculiarities, gained for the Pharisees the veneration of the common people, and thus rendered them a formidable power in the state. But with all their sanctimonious appearance, and all their commanding influence, they were vain, haughty, capricious, spiteful, malicious, and capable of perpetrating the most enormous crimes beneath the cloak of superior holiness. Of this sect, insatiable avarice,

insupportable pride, and detestable hypocrisy, were the disgusting characteristics.

Who were the Sadducees?

An account has already been given of the origin of the SADDUCEES. Rejecting all the oral traditions of the Pharisees, and maintaining the exclusive authority of the law, they affirmed that God was the only immaterial being, they denied the being of angels, the existence of spirits, and the resurrection of the dead. Although they believed that God created the world by his power, and regulated it by his Providence, they asserted, that rewards and punishments were confined solely to the present state of existence; and for this reason perhaps it was, that they always passed the severest sentences upon criminals. Although it might be supposed that their principles would lead them to the wildest extremes of Epicurean indulgence and intemperance, yet many of them were distinguished by their probity and virtue, though as a sect, they were morose, savage, cruel, and barbarous.

Who were the Essenes ?

The first of the ESSENES mentioned by the Jewish historian, was Judas in the time of Aristobulus and Antigonus the son of Hyrcanus. Philo says, that they received their name from Osios or holy; and he adds that there were two classes of them, those who lived in society, who engaged in marriage, and applied themselves to agricultural and other occupations, and who were therefore called practical, and others who living in seclusion, and being devoted to meditation, were called contemplative Essenes. They believed that God governed the world by such an absolute predestination as allowed to mankind no liberty of choice in any of their actions. Practical religion they arranged in three heads; I. The love of God, exemplified in the avoiding of every sin which is the object of his displeasure, and in the scrupulous practice of every duty which he has enjoined ;-II. The love of virtue, evinced in the government of their passions, their contempt of riches, their temperance, their chastity, their patience, the simplicity of their language, and the modesty of their deportment ;-III. The love of mankind, which

appeared in their benevolence, justice, charity, and hospitality. They had all things in common, the same houses, habits, provisions, and tables. Their gains were put into the common stock, and they divided among them the care of the sick. They had the greatest reverence, next to God and to Moses, for old men. Josephus informs us, that "they lived in perfect union, and abhorred voluptuousness as poison. They did not marry, (that is commonly) but brought up other men's children as their own, infusing_into them very early, their own spirit and maxims. They had an austere and mortified air, but without affectation. They always drest in white. They had a steward who distributed to each what he wanted. They were hospitable to their own sect, so that they were not obliged to take provisions with them on their journeys." They were subsequently known by the name of angels; but they were so undeserving of the epithet, that they sunk into universal disesteem, and soon became extinct.

Who were the Herodians?

The origin of the name of the HERODIANS is involved in obscurity. They do not appear to have possessed distinctive religious principles, but their distinguishing peculiarity appears to have been, that although they professed Judaism and participated in the general abhorrence of their countrymen against idolatry, yet "to humour the Romans and make themselves easy with their governors," they maintained that it was not unlawful to comply sometimes with their demands, and at least outwardly to become occasional conformists. This sect did not continue long after the time of Christ.

Who were the Gaulonites?

The GAULONITES were so called from Judas the Gaulonite, or Galilean. When Augustus issued his edict for the survey of the provinces of his empire, Judas represented submission to it as an act of profane and impious idolatry, and a violation of allegiance to God as the only sovereign of his people. He soon obtained a number of followers, and the dissemina

tion of his opinions was the source of the most dreadful calamities to the Jews.

Such were the sects among the Jews. And when it is recollected how obstinately they adhered to their speculative opinions, how fiercely they contended with each other, and how completely they all united in expecting a temporal, a warlike, a conquering Messiah, surrounded with the gorgeous display of worldly grandeur and glory, it is easy to perceive, with what contemptuous scorn and inveterate hatred, they would resist the claims of the lowly carpenter's son, whose disciples were fishermen, whose companions were often publicans and sinners, and who opposed all their pretensions to superior sagacity and wisdom, by proclaiming the subversion of their institutions, the extinction of their economy, and the abolition of their law.

Illustrate at length the changes which took place in the Jewish nation on the appearance of the Messiah.

The change, which took place in the situation of the Jewish nation, both as it respects God and man, when Jesus Christ commenced his ministrations, was most decisive and complete. All the dispensations of God to man, from the disastrous æra of the fall have had but one object, the revelation of mercy and the accomplishment of the designs of infinite grace in the mediatorial work of the illustrious Redeemer. This object was sufficiently revealed to the progenitor of the human race in the garden of Eden, and was steadily kept in view through all the duration of what is commonly called the Patriarchal dispensation, which continued to the giving of the law by Moses. The almost universal apostacy of mankind, and the melancholy prevalence of idolatry over the whole habitable globe, rendered it necessary that a new order of things should be instituted, still to be subservient to the same grand and glorious object. To preserve the revelation of mercy from total extinction, and the promise of a Messiah from complete oblivion, a second dispensation was established, and its divinity was proved by the miracles which were wrought by the inspired prophet who was the agent under God of its commencement. "A single people," says an excellent writer upon this subject, was chosen out of the corrupt mass, in order

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