Religious State of the World at Christ's Birth. 5. All nations, except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition and idolatry. Each country had its peculiar Gods, whom the people were taught to propitiate with various rites and ceremonies. Religious homage was not confined to the natural world, to departed heroes, or to the improvers of elegance or convenience; but was extended to things inanimate, and to persons merely ideal. Most of the wiser people contemned and ridiculed the popular creeds: but they had nothing else to rest upon; consequently an universal corruption of morals prevailed, and crimes which at this day cannot be named with decency were then practised with impunity. Herod the 6. It forms no part of the design of this work to give a history of the Jewish nation: nevertheless one or two matters connected therewith may be profitably noticed before we proceed to speak of the birth of Christ, and the events which followed it. Herod the Great was nominal King 5. What was the religious state of the world when our Blessed Lord was born? 6. Who was nominal King of Judæa at the time of Christ's birth? Give a short occount of him. What was his character? of Judæa* at the time of our Saviour's birth, but the .country was tributary to Rome. This man, an Idumean by birth, obtained the kingdom of Judæa from the Senate of Rome, through the interest of Anthony and Augustus, about 40 B.C. In three years he became master of the *The following table exhibits the Herodian Family, so far as connected with Sacred History : Herod the Great (son of Antipater the Idumean.) Aristobulas, Archelaus. Herod Philip, Philip the Tetrarch. Herod Antipas. m. her uncle Herod, (the younger). King of Chalcis. (1) Archelaus inherited Judæa, Samaria, and Idumea; (2) Philip inherited Batanæa, He (3) Herod Antipas inherited the kingdom of Herod Agrippa (A.D.44) included all the countries governed by his grandfather, Herod the Great. He put to death James the Great, the son of Zebedee and brother of John; and imprisoned Peter. Struck by God with a loathsome disease, he died at Cæsarea A.D. 44 (Acts xii. 20-23). (5) Agrippa the younger was only 17 on the death of his father, Herod Agrippa. Too young to succeed his father in the government, Claudius granted him, when 21, the small kingdom of Chalcis, with the superintendence of the Temple at Jerusalem, and the appointment of High Priests. Before this Agrippa, Paul pleaded. whole country, which he enlarged, and brought to more grandeur and magnificence than ever it had been in since the reign of Solomon; yet at the same time he depressed the priesthood, extirpated the Maccabæan family, which had held the government for 130 years, and miserably enslaved the people. "This man," says Mosheim, "by cruelty, suspiciousness, wars, drew infinite hatred on himself, while he exhausted the wretched nation's wealth by mad luxury, a magnificence beyond his fortune, and immoderate largesses. Under his administration, Roman luxury and great licentiousness spread over Palestine. In religion he was professedly a Jew; but he copied the manners of those who despise all religion.” Jewish } 7. The most considerable of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ's birth was that of the Pharisees, who took their name from the Hebrew word Pharash, to separate, because they separated from all others in their extraordinary pretensions to piety. They affected great sanctity, austerity of manner, and peculiarity of dress; held tradition to be of equal authority with the written law; believed in a resurrection, tainted, however, with the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis; placed great reliance on fastings, ablutions, rigorous payment of tithe, long prayers, and ceremonial observances.-Next came the Sadducees, opposite to the Pharisees both in temper and principles. They derived their name from Sadoc, one of the followers of Antigonus Sochæus, President 7. Which was the most considerable of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ's birth, and what were their peculiar habits and doctrines? Briefly describe the Sadducees-the Essenes the Scribes-the Caballists. Were there any other religious sects among the Jews at this time? Why did the peculiar creed of the Sadducees render it impossible for them to embrace the doctrines of the Gospel? Can you give any reason for the striking difference in the behaviour of the Sadducees towards the followers of Christ, before and after His resurrection ? of the Sanhedrim about B.C. 250, whose doctrines Sadoc and his disciples perverted. They totally rejected the traditions of the elders, to which the Pharisees paid so much deference, but acknowledged the authority of the written law; denied the existence of a spiritual world, and the doctrine of the resurrection, a peculiar creed which subsequently made them directly antagonistic to the propagators of the Gospel; held that God created the world and preserved it by his providence, but denied that the good will be recompensed by any but temporal rewards, or the wicked punished by other than temporal evils. They were the most violent persecutors and oppressors of the Apostles, who in their preaching constantly insisted upon the doctrines of the resurrection, a day of judgment, and a state of retribution.-The Essenes, who are not mentioned in Scripture, differed from the Pharisees in not relying on tradition and ceremonies, and from the Sadducees in their belief of a future state. They affected privacy and solitude, and by their austerities and recluse life are thought to have given rise to monkish practices and superstitions.-The Scribes were originally mere copiers, then expounders, of the law. By their corruptions, misinterpretations, and additions, they may be said to have originated that blindness which led to the rejection of the Messiah.-The Caballists perhaps claim a place in this paragraph. They had their name from a Hebrew word signifying oral tradition, and maintained a mystical mode of expounding the law, revealed to Abraham and Moses, and from them handed down. According to this mode, every letter in the inspired volume contained a figurative, as well as a direct, sense, and each word was to be interpreted according to the arithmetical power of the letters which composed it.—In addition to these religious sects, there were Publicans, Roman officers whose duty consisted in collecting tribute, tolls, and imposts: Herodians, a political sect, who were the devoted adherents of the Herodian family and Galileans, or Gaulonites, a political faction directly opposed to the Herodians. Political State of 8. It will have been observed that at the period of our Saviour's birth Judæa groaned under the tyranny of Herod the Great, by whom the country was harassed, rather than governed. The Jews were not wholly prohibited by their Roman masters from retaining their national laws, and the religion established by Moses. They still had their High Priest, their Priests and Levites, and their Sanhedrim or national council, but the civil power thereof was greatly diminished, With Roman conquest came Roman manners, rites, and superstitions, and these were diffused over the whole of Palestine, and blended more or less with those of the Jews. The narrow limits of Palestine could not contain so numerous a nation. when our Saviour was born, there was hardly any considerable province in which were not found many Jews, who lived by traffic and other arts. Religious State of the Jews at Christ's birth. Hence, 9. The Jews looked for the appearance of some great deliverer*—not a spiritual prince, such as the meek and lowly Jesus, but a temporal and warlike hero, *We learn from Tacitus and Suetonius that the same expectation prevailed among the heathen: -"Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum, literis contineri, eo ipso tempore fore, ut val 8. What was the political state of Judæa at Christ's birth. 9. What was the religious state of the Jews at Christ's birth? *[Note.] Show that the heathen partook of the Jewish expectation of a great teinporal deliverer. 1 |