they yet avoided to oil the skin,-a process like our use of soap,--whether regarding it as luxurious, or because the oils in the market prevalently came from Syria, and were manufactured by idolaters.

The managers of their common property were elected by general vote; and in each establishment a special caretaker for strange members was appointed. Clothes and shoes they wore without change, until useless by time and rents. Among themselves they neither bought nor sold, but freely received and freely gave.

The routine of their work and meals as described in Josephus reminds one of a well-ordered Catholic friarhood or a community of American Shakers. At the common table they hav two meals in a day. Religion is everywhere prominent, and noble moral precepts ar inculcated. Silence, gravity and respect for Elders ar always maintained. They go to various work, under the despotic rule of a director, and hav no free action, save to bring Aid and Mercy to those who ar in need. Before entering the dinner-hall they bathe in cold water and dress in linen coverings, which after dinner they put off as sacred. At the beginning and end of the meal a priest says grace, and the whole company pays honor to God as the provider of food. Neither cries nor tumult pollute the house, but they concede alternate gentle talk. Anger they deal out justly, passion they restrain, good faith they uphold, to make peace they ar activ. Oaths among themselves ar superfluous and forbidden, but from candidates for admission they exact frightful oaths, with a probation lasting for three years. Each candidate swears to keep nothing from the community, and to suffer death rather than reveal its secrets. But these secrets must hav been quite harmless in ordinary times; for Peace, Truth, and Justice were the paramount principles of the Order, and, as it were its normal mottoes.

C

Yet such a community would seem to any Roman officer detestable, the moment he learned that it had oaths of secrecy; and after the insurrection of Judas, called the Galilean, he would think his horror and his hatred to be fully justified. A few words ar needed concerning this Judas, and we take up the tale from the death of Herod the Great.

War, says the earliest of philosophic historians, is a severe schoolmaster. The sufferings of the Jewish people, the hopelessness of revolt, the vehemence of Herod hushed for awhile the outbreaks of religious zeal : but on Herod's death new tumults arose. The dissensions among his children probably awakened in the discontented a hope that a time of redress was come: but the complexity of affairs is far too great here to detail. Archelaus, son of Herod, made promises which were perhaps interpreted as a sign of weakness. Strange movements followed, which frightened the Roman officers in the province; and, to inspire terror, one officer, Sabinus, is stated by Josephus to hav crucified about two thousand Jews as insurgents. (Bell. Jud. ii. 5, 8.) Their action being necessarily that of guerilla, the Romans treated them all as robbers. Yet we may hope that popular report or Roman policy exaggerated the number.

Archelaus, by the decision of Augustus Cæsar, succeeded to about half of his father's kingdom, with the title ethnarch (nativ magistrate); but after ten years of very unpopular rule, he was deposed by Augustus, and the whole of his territory was absorbed in the Roman province of Syria. Thus Judæa, Samaria and Galilee were placed for the first time under direct Roman rule, about A.D. 6 or 7, and Quirinius (or in Greek Cyrenius), governor of Syria, became also chief governor of the western half of Palestine. Augustus ordered the usual

Roman registration of income to be made with a view to taxation. Herod or his son Archelaus may in their irregular way hav fleeced the Jews as much in the past, as was to be feared in the future; but these Idumeans passed as nativ princes, being circumcised. The fact that a forein idolater was registering every field and farm-house with a view to tax it, brought home to the Galileans the completeness of their slavery as never before. Judas, of the city of Gamala, beyond Jordan, in the district of Gaulana, first stirred the hill people to resistance, in company with Sadok, a Pharisee. This Judas was an Essene, a religious devotee; Josephus calls him a sophist, that is, a student of science or wisdom. He not only roused his own sect, but spread revolt through the most thickly peopled part of Palestine, refusing to listen to the prudential counsels of the high priest at Jerusalem. His doctrin was mainly religious. The Jews, having God for their king, were base in enduring mortal lords; but he made also the political addition, that to submit to be registered for forein taxation was a first step to utter slavery. With brave men who were not zealots in religion, he was able to use the very effectiv argument-It is better to die, fighting for nativ law and liberty, than to be forced into the ranks of Rome, and sent abroad to die in fighting against the liberty of other brave nations. In Galilee his revolt was apparently most formidable, therefor he was popularly called Judas of Galilee. Galilee is inferior in acreage to that ultra-Jordan district, the old land of Bashan, Ammon, and Moab, then called the Perca, and included in Palestine; but Josephus says, Galilee was more populous. The soil remained soft in the driest summer, being watered by mountain streams. For fruit and for every kind of crop it was excellently suited. Petty towns or large villages abounded, the smallest

having a population of 5,000. Such a nativ mass of brave agriculturists made a Roman general tremble, if he heard the whisper of religious fanaticism. Though Judas belonged to the very peaceful and righteous sect of Essenes, yet, once launched into insurgency, he could not afford to reject brave and earnest allies from any quarter. Guerilla subject to a local captain ar ill-distinguishable anywhere from banditti and robbers; and when their fanaticism rose to the point of treating Jews who would not join them as partizans of the enemy,* they virtually became robbers and assassins, as the Romans describe them. It was a frightful struggle, but Roman resources gave to Rome the victory. The cruelty of her revenge may measure her losses and her alarm. The Roman commander thought to cut away future insurrection by crushing out the religion of the Essenes; with this object he insisted on their blaspheming Moses and eating food forbidden by their ceremonial law. Josephus summarizes their treatment in a few dreadful lines. After stating their great longevity, many of them living above a hundred years, and their astonishing contempt of pain and death, he adds the following:"The Romans racked and twisted, burnt and broke them, "and passed them through all instruments of torture, to "force them to blaspheme Moses, or eat some forbidden "food. They not only refused; but disdaining to coax "their tormentors, addressed them with irony, and "yielded up their lives cheerfully, as about soon to 66 recover them."

Augustus Cæsar would not have formally sanctioned any such violences against a national religion; but his subordinates well knew that he never punished provincial

*In the Anglo-American war of independence, the insurgents treated the "Tories" as spies and friends of England. But Lord Cornwallis pressed them into English ranks, and in so far exhibited them as marks for attack.

authorities even for enriching themselves unjustly; and that too great zeal in the public service was never resented. In short, while military weakness was a bar to promotion, high-handed cruelties in or after insurrection would be accepted as marking an energetic officer. But on the Jewish nation what must hav been the moral result? Who can blame them, if they more and more abhorred subjection to Rome? No doubt, they did hate Roman rule, as we should; perhaps they hated the sight of a Roman. Thereupon, Roman historians call them haters of all mankind, and believe themselves impartial and philosophic.

CHAPTER VI.

JOHN THE BAPTIST.

CONCERNING John the Baptist we learn not only from the books of the Christian Canon: we hav corroboration from the historian Josephus (Antt. xvii. 5, 1-2). No one has seen reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of all that will be here adduced concerning the career of this singular man.

Some hav plausibly maintained that he must hav belonged to the Essene sect; but whether rightly or wrongly, is of no importance whatever. He did not adopt the Essene costume, nor subject himself in any way to the authorities of that sect. His very partial clothing reminds one of an Egyptian monk. He had a gown of camel's hair and a girdle of leather; very insufficient in a winter of frost and snow: but as the description places him by the side of the river Jordan, probably in the plain of Jericho celebrated in antiquity