The massacres and reforms of Jehu
Extermination of idolatry
Last days of Elijah
His translation
ISAIAH.
NATIONAL DEGENERACY.
Superiority of Judah to Israel
A succession of virtuous princes
Syrian wars
The prophet Joel
Outward prosperity of the kingdom of Judah
Internal decay
Assyrian conquests
Tiglath-pilneser
Fall of Damascus
Fall of Samaria
Demoralization of Jerusalem
Birth of Isaiah
His exalted character
Invasion of Judah by the Assyrians
Hezekiah submits to Sennacherib
Rebels anew
Renewed invasion of Judah
Signal deliverance
The warnings and preaching of Isaiah
His terrible denunciations of sin
Retribution the spirit of his preaching
Holding out hope by repentance
Absence of art in his writings
National wickedness ending in calamities
God's moral government
Isaiah's predictions fulfilled
Woes denounced on Judah
Fall of Babylon foretold
Predicted woes of Moab
Woes denounced on Egypt
Calamities of Tyre
General predictions of woe on other nations
End and purpose of chastisements
Isaiah the Prophet of Hope
The promised glories of the Chosen People
Messianic promises
Exultation of Isaiah
His catholicity
The promised reign of peace
The future glories of the righteous
Glad tidings declared to the whole world
Messianic triumphs
JEREMIAH.
FALL OF JERUSALEM.
Sadness and greatness of Jeremiah
Second as a prophet only to Isaiah
Jeremiah the Prophet of Despair
Evil days in which he was born
National misfortunes predicted
Idolatry the crying sin of the times
Discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy
Renewed study of the Law
The reforms of Josiah
The greatness of Josiah
Inability to stem prevailing wickedness
Incompleteness of Josiah's reforms
Necho II. extends his conquests
Death of Josiah
Lamentations on the death of Josiah
Rapid decline of the kingdom
The voice of Jeremiah drowned
Invasion of Assyria by Necho
Shallum succeeds Josiah
Eliakim succeeds Shallum
His follies
Judah's relapse into idolatry
Neglect of the Sabbath
Jeremiah announces approaching calamity
His voice unheeded
His despondency
Fall of Nineveh
Defeat and retreat of Necho
Greatness of Nebuchadnezzar
Appears before Jerusalem
Fall of Jerusalem, but destruction delayed
Folly and infatuation of the people of Jerusalem
Revolt of the city
Zedekiah the king temporizes
Expostulations of Jeremiah
Nebuchadnezzar loses patience
Second fall of Jerusalem
The captivity
Weeping by the river of Babylon
JUDAS MACCABAEUS.
RESTORATION OF THE JEWISH COMMONWEALTH.
Eventful career of Judas Maccabaeus
Condition of the Jews after their return from Babylon
Condition of Jerusalem
Fanatical hatred of idolatry
Severe morality of the Jews after the captivity
The Pharisees
The Sadducees
Synagogues, their number and popularity
The Jewish Sanhedrim
Advance in sacred literature
Apocryphal Books
Isolation of the Jews
Dark age of Jewish history
Power of the high priests
The Persian Empire
Judaea a province of the Persian Empire
Jews at Alexandria
Judaea the battle-ground of Egyptians and Syrians
The Syrian kings
Antiochus Epiphanes
His persecution of the Jews
Helplessness of the Jews
Sack of Jerusalem
Desecration of the Temple
Mattathias
His piety and bravery
Revolt of Mattathias
Slaughter of the Jews
Death of Mattathias
His gallant sons
Judas Maccabaeus
His military genius
The Syrian generals
Wrath of Antiochus
Desolation of Jerusalem
Judas defeats the Syrian general
Judas cleanses and dedicates the Temple
Fortifies Jerusalem
The Feast of Dedication
Renewed hostilities
Successes of Judas
Death of Antiochus
Deliverance of the Jews
Rivalry between Lysias and Philip
Death of Eleazer
Bacchides
Embassy to Rome
Death of Judas Maccabaeus
Judas succeeded by his brother Jonathan
Heroism of Jonathan
His death by treachery
Jonathan succeeded by his brother Simon
Simon's military successes
His prosperous administration
Succeeded by John Hyrcanus
The great talents and success of John Hyrcanus
The Asmonean princes
Pompey takes Jerusalem
Accession of Herod the Great
He destroys the Asmonean princes
His prosperous reign
Foundation of Caesarea
Latter days of Herod
Loathsome death of Herod
Birth of Jesus, the Christ
SAINT PAUL.
THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
Birth and early days of Saul
His Phariseeism
His persecution of the Christians
His wonderful conversion
His leading idea
Saul a preacher at Damascus
Saul's visit to Jerusalem
Saul in Tarsus
Saul and Barnabas at Antioch
Description of Antioch
Contribution of the churches for Jerusalem
Saul and Barnabas at Jerusalem
Labors and discouragements
Saul and Barnabas at Cyprus
Saul smites Elymas the sorcerer
Missionary travels of Paul
Paul converts Timothy
Paul at Lystra and Derbe
Return of Paul to Antioch
Controversy about circumcision
Bigotry of the Jewish converts
Paul again visits Jerusalem
Paul and Barnabas quarrel
Paul chooses Silas for a companion
Paul and Silas visit the infant churches
Tact of Paul
Paul and Luke
The missionaries at Philippi
Paul and Silas at Thessalonica
Paul at Athens
Character of the Athenians
The success of Paul at Athens
Paul goes to Corinth
Paul led before Gallio
Mistake of Gallio
Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians
Paul at Ephesus
The Temple of Diana
Excessive labors of Paul at Ephesus
Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians
Popularity of Apollos
Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Paul again at Corinth
Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans
The Pauline theology
Paul's last visit to Jerusalem
His cold reception
His arrest and imprisonment
The trial of Paul before Felix
Character of Felix
Paul kept a prisoner by Felix
Paul's defence before Festus
Paul appeals to Caesar
Paul preaches before Agrippa
His voyage to Italy
Paul's life at Rome
Character of Paul
His magnificent services
His triumphant death
VOLUME II.
The Wailing Wall of the JewsAfter the painting by J.L. Gerome.Abraham and HagarAfter the painting by Adrian van der Werff.Joseph Sold by His Brethren.After the painting by H.F. Schopin.Erection of Public Building in the Time of RamesesAfter the painting by Sir Edward J. Poynter.Pharaoh Pursues the Israelites Across the Red SeaAfter the painting by F.A. Bridgman.MosesFrom the statue by Michael Angelo, Rome.David Kills GoliathAfter the painting by W.L. Dodge.DavidFrom the statue by Michael Angelo, Florence.Elijah's Sacrifice Consumed by Fire from HeavenAfter the painting by C.G. Pfannschmidt.IsaiahFrom the fresco in the Sistine Chapel, by Michael Angelo.A Sacrifice to BaalAfter the painting by Henri Motte.The Jews Led Into Babylonian CaptivityAfter the painting by E. Bendeman.St. Paul Preaching at the Foot of the AcropolisAfter the painting by Gebhart Fügel.
RELIGIOUS FAITH.
From a religious point of view, Abraham appears to us, after the lapse of nearly four thousand years, as the most august character in history. He may not have had the genius and learning of Moses, nor his executive ability; but as a religious thinker, inspired to restore faith in the world and the worship of the One God, it would be difficult to find a man more favored or more successful. He is the spiritual father equally of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, in their warfare with idolatry. In this sense, he is the spiritual progenitor of all those nations, tribes, and peoples who now acknowledge, or who may hereafter acknowledge, a personal God, supreme and eternal in the universe which He created. Abraham is the religious father of all those who associate with this personal and supreme Deity a providential oversight of this world,--a being whom all are required to worship, and alone to worship, as the only true God whose right it is to reign, and who does reign, and will reign forever and ever over everything that exists, animate or inanimate, visible or invisible, known or unknown, in the mighty universe of whose glory and grandeur we have such overwhelming yet indefinite conceptions.
When Abraham appeared, whether four thousand or five thousand years ago, for chronologists differ in their calculations, it would seem that the nations then existing had forgotten or ignored this great cardinal and fundamental truth, and were more or less given to idolatry, worshipping the heavenly bodies, or the forces of Nature, or animals, or heroes, or graven images, or their own ancestors. There were but few and feeble remains of the primitive revelation,--that is, the faith cherished by the patriarchs before the flood, and which it would be natural to suppose Noah himself had taught to his children.
There was even then, however, a remarkable material civilization, especially in Egypt, Palestine, and Babylon; for some of the pyramids had been built, the use of the metals, of weights and measures, and of textile fabrics was known. There were also cities and fortresses, cornfields and vineyards, agricultural implements and weapons of war, commerce and arts, musical instruments, golden vessels, ornaments for the person, purple dyes, spices, hand-made pottery, stone-engravings, sundials, and glass-work, and even the use of letters, or something similar, possibly transmitted from the antediluvian civilization. Even the art of printing was almost discovered, as we may infer from the stamping of letters on tiles. With all this material progress, however, there had been a steady decline in spiritual religion as well as in morals,--from which fact we infer that men if left to themselves, whatever truth they may receive from ancestors, will, without supernatural influences, constantly decline in those virtues on which the strength of man is built, and without which the proudest triumphs of the intellect avail nothing. The grandest civilization, in its material aspects, may coexist with the utmost debasement of morals,--as seen among the Greeks and Romans, and in the wicked capitals of modern Europe. "There is no God!" or "Let there be no God!" has been the cry in all ages of the world, whenever and wherever an impious pride or a low morality has defied or silenced conscience. Tell me, ye rationalists and agnostics! with your pagan sympathies, what mean ye by laws of development, and by thenecessaryprogress of the human race, except in the triumphs of that kind of knowledge which is entirely disconnected with virtue, and which has proved powerless to prevent the decline and fall of nations? Why did not art, science, philosophy, and literature save the most lauded nations of the ancient world? Why so rapid a degeneracy among people favored not only with a primitive revelation, but by splendid triumphs of reason and knowledge? Why did gross superstition so speedily obscure the intellect, and infamous vices so soon undermine the moral health, if man can elevate himself by his unaided strength? Why did error seemingly prove as vital as truth in all the varied forms of civilization in the ancient world? Why did even tradition fail to keep alive the knowledge of God, at least among the people?
Now, among pagans and idolaters Abram (as he was originally called) lived until he was seventy-five. His father, Terah, was a descendant of Shem, of the eleventh generation, and the original seat of his tribe was among the mountains of Southern Armenia, north of Assyria. From thence Terah migrated to the plains of Mesopotamia, probably with the desire to share the rich pastures of the lowlands, and settled in Ur of the Chaldeans. Ur was one of the most ancient of the Chaldean cities and one of the most splendid, where arts and sciences were cultivated, where astronomers watched the heavens, poets composed hymns, and scribes stamped on clay tablets books which, according to Geikie, have in part come down to our own times. It was in this pagan city that Abram was born, and lived until the "call." His father was a worshipper of the tutelary gods of his tribe, of which he was the head; but his idolatry was not so degrading as that of the Chaldeans, who belonged to a different race from his own, being the descendants of Ham, among whom the arts and sciences had made considerable progress,--as was natural, since what we call civilization arose, it is generally supposed, in the powerful monarchies founded by Assyrian and Egyptian warriors, although it is claimed that both China and India were also great empires at this period. With the growth of cities and the power of kings idolatry increased, and the knowledge of the true God declined. From such influences it was necessary that Abram should be removed if he was to found a nation with a monotheistic belief. So, in obedience to a call from God, he left the city of his birthplace, and went toward the land of Canaan and settled in Haran, where he remained until the death of his father, who it seems had accompanied him in his wanderings, but was probably too infirm to continue the fatiguing journey. Abram, now the head of his tribe and doubtless a powerful chieftain, received another call, and with it the promise that he should be the founder of a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed.
What was that call, coupled with such a magnificent and cheering promise? It was the voice of God commanding Abram to leave country and kindred and go to a country utterly unknown to him, not even indicated to him, but which in due time should be revealed to him. He is not called to repudiate idolatry, but by divine command to go to an unknown country. He must have been already a believer in the One Supreme God, or he would not have felt the command to be imperative. Unless his belief had been monotheistic, we must attribute to him a marvellous genius and striking originality of mind, together with an independence of character still more remarkable; for it requires not only original genius to soar beyond popular superstitions, but also great force of will and lofty intrepidity to break away from them,--as when Buddha renounced Brahmanism, or Socrates ridiculed the Sophists of Attica. Nothing requires more moral courage than the renunciation of a popular and generally received religious belief. It was a hard struggle for Luther to give up the ideas of the Middle Ages in reference to self-expiation. It is exceedingly rare for any one to be emancipated from the tyranny of prevailing dogmas.
So, if Abram was not divinely instructed in a way that implies supernatural illumination, he must have been the most remarkable sage of all antiquity to found a religion never abrogated by succeeding revelations, which has lasted from his time to ours, and is to-day embraced by so large a part of the human race, including Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews. Abram must have been more gifted than the whole school of Ionian philosophers united, from Thales downward, since after three hundred years of speculation and lofty inquiries they only arrived at the truth that the being who controls the universe must be intelligent. Even Socrates, Plato, and Cicero--the most gifted men of classical antiquity--had very indefinite notions of the unity and personality of God, while Abram distinctly recognized this great truth even amid universal idolatry and a degrading polytheism.
Yet the Bible recognizes in Abram moral rather than intellectual greatness. He was distinguished for his faith, and a faith so exalted and pure that it was accounted unto him for righteousness. His faith in God was so profound that it was followed by unhesitating obedience to God's commands. He was ready to go wherever he was sent, instantly, without conditions or remonstrance.
In obedience to the divine voice then, Abram, after the death of his father Terah, passed through the land of Canaan unto Sichem, or Shechem, afterward a city of Samaria. He then went still farther south, and pitched his tent on a mountain having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east, and there he built an altar unto the Lord. After this it would appear that he proceeded still farther to the south, probably near the northern part of Idumaea.
Wherever Abram journeyed he found the Canaanites--descendants of Ham--petty tribes or nations, governed by kings no more powerful than himself. They are supposed in their invasions to have conquered the aboriginal inhabitants, whose remote origin is veiled in impenetrable obscurity, but who retained some principles of the primitive religion. It is even possible that Melchizedek, the unconquered King of Salem, who blessed Abram, belonged to those original people who were of Semitic origin. Nevertheless the Canaanites, or Hametic tribes, were at this time the dominant inhabitants.
Of these tribes or nations the Sidonians, or Phoenicians, were the most powerful. Next to them, according to Ewald, "were three nations living toward the South,--the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites; then two in the most northerly country conquered by Israel,--the Girgashites and the Hivites; then four in Phoenicia; and lastly, the most northern of all, the well known kingdom of Hamath on the Orontes." The Jebusites occupied the country around Jerusalem; the Amorites also dwelt in the mountainous regions, and were warlike and savage, like the ancient Highlanders of Scotland. They entrenched themselves in strong castles. The Hittites, or children of Heth, were on the contrary peaceful, having no fortified cities, but dwelling in the valleys, and living in well-ordered communities. The Hivites dwelt in the middle of the country, and were also peaceful, having reached a considerable civilization, and being in the possession of the most flourishing inland cities. The Philistines entered the land at a period subsequent to the other Canaanites, probably after Abram, coming it is supposed from Crete.
It would appear that Abram was not molested by these various petty Canaanitish nations, that he was hospitably received by them, that he had pleasant relations with them, and even entered into their battles as an ally or protector. Nor did Abram seek to conquer territory. Powerful as he was, he was still a pilgrim and a wanderer, journeying with his servants and flocks wherever the Lord called him; and hence he excited no jealousy and provoked no hostilities. He had not long been settled quietly with his flocks and herds before a famine arose in the land, and he was forced to seek subsistence in Egypt, then governed by the shepherd kings called Hyksos, who had driven the proud native monarch reigning at Memphis to the southern part of the kingdom, in the vicinity of Thebes. Abram was well received at the court of the Pharaohs, until he was detected in a falsehood in regard to his wife, whom he passed as his sister. He was then sent away with all that he had, together with his nephew Lot.
Returning to the land of Canaan, Abram came to the place where he had before pitched his tent, between Bethel and Hai, unto the altar which he had some time before erected, and called upon the name of the Lord. But the land was not rich enough to support the flocks and herds of both Abram and Lot, and there arose a strife between their respective herdsmen; so the patriarch and his nephew separated, Lot choosing for his residence the fertile plain of the Jordan, and Abram remaining in the land of Canaan. It was while sojourning at Bethel that the Lord appeared again unto Abram, and promised to him the whole land as a future possession of his posterity. After that he removed his tent to the plain of Mamre, near or in Hebron, and again erected an altar to his God.
Here Abram remained in true patriarchal dignity without further migrations, abounding in wealth and power, and able to rescue his nephew Lot from the hands of Chedorlaomer the King of Elam, and from the other Oriental monarchs who joined his forces, pursuing them even to Damascus. For this signal act of heroism Abram was blessed by Melchizedek, in the name of their common lord the most high God. Who was this Prince of Salem? Was he an earthly potentate ruling an unconquered city of the aboriginal inhabitants; or was he a mysterious personage, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning nor end of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, an incarnation of the Deity, to repeat the blessing which the patriarch had already received?
The history of Abram until his supreme trial seems principally to have been repeated covenants with God, and the promises held out of the future greatness of his descendants. The greatness of the Israelitish nation, however, was not to be in political ascendancy, nor in great attainments in the arts and sciences, nor in cities and fortresses and chariots and horses, nor in that outward splendor which would attract the gaze of the world, and thus provoke conquests and political combinations and grand alliances and colonial settlements, by which the capital on Zion's hill would become another Rome, or Tyre, or Carthage, or Athens, or Alexandria,--but quite another kind of greatness. It was to be moral and spiritual rather than material or intellectual, the centre of a new religious life, from which theistic doctrines were to go forth and spread for the healing of the nations,--all to culminate, when the proper time should come, in the mission of Jesus Christ, and in his teachings as narrated and propagated by his disciples.
This was the grand destiny of the Hebrew race; and for the fulfilment of this end they were located in a favored country, separated from other nations by mountains, deserts, and seas, and yet capable by cultivation of sustaining a great population, while they were governed by a polity tending to keep them a distinct, isolated, and peculiar people. To the descendants of Ham and Japhet were given cities, political power, material civilization; but in the tents of Shem religion was to dwell. "From first to last," says Geikie, "the intellect of the Hebrew dwelt supremely on the matters of his faith. The triumphs of the pencil or the chisel he left with contemptuous indifference to Egypt, or Assyria, or Greece. Nor had the Jew any such interest in religious philosophy as has marked other people. The Aryan nations, both East and West, might throw themselves with ardor into those high questions of metaphysics, but he contented himself with the utterances of revelation. The world may have inherited no advances in political science from the Hebrew, no great epic, no school of architecture, no high lessons in philosophy, no wide extension of human thought or knowledge in any secular direction; but he has given it his religion. To other races we owe the splendid inheritance of modern civilization and secular culture, but the religious education of mankind has been the gift of the Jew alone."
For this end Abram was called to the land of Canaan. From this point of view alone we see the blessing and the promise which were given to him. In this light chiefly he became a great benefactor. He gave a religion to the world; at least he established its fundamental principle,--the worship of the only true God. "If we were asked," says Max Müller, "how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the Divinity, as he has revealed himself to all mankind, but passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the One God, we are content to answer that it was by aspecial divine revelation."[1]