Up to the breaking out

any of the citizens, nor

he was a maniac, set him at liberty. of the war, he neither associated with was he seen to speak to any one; but as if it were a prayer that he had been meditating upon, daily uttered his lament, "Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem. He neither cursed those that beat him from day to day, nor gave his blessing to such as supplied him with food: to all, the melancholy presage was his one reply. His voice was loudest at the festivals; and though for seven years and five months he continued his wail, neither did his voice become feeble nor did he grow weary, until during the siege, after beholding his presages verified, he ceased. For as he was going his round on the wall, crying with a piercing voice, "Woe! woe! once more, to the city, to the people, and to the Temple;" when at the last he had added, "Woe! woe! to myself also," he was struck by a stone shot from the ballista and killed upon the spot, still uttering with his dying lips the same portentous words.

If we reflect on these events, we shall find that God exercises care over men, in every way foreshowing to their race the means of safety; but that they perish through their own folly and self-incurred evils. Thus the Jews, after the demolition of the Antonia, reduced their Temple to a square, though they had it recorded in their oracles that "the city and the sanctuary would be taken when the Temple should become square." But what chiefly incited them to the war was an ambiguous prophecy, likewise found in their sacred writings, that "about this period some one from their country should obtain the empire of the world." This they received as applying to themselves, and many eminent for wisdom were deceived in the interpretation of it. The oracle, however, in reality indicated the elevation of Vespasian- he having been proclaimed emperor in Judæa. But it is not possible for men to avoid their fate, even though they foresee it. Some of these portents they interpreted according to their pleasure, others they treated with contempt, until their folly was exposed by the conquest of their country and their own destruction.

Traill's Translation.

WHAT

THE HEBREW FAITH, WORSHIP, AND LAWS

From the Treatise Against Apion'

IAT form of government then can be more holy than this? What more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God than we pay, where the entire body of the people are prepared for religion; where an extraordinary degree of care is required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered as if it were a certain religious solemnity? For what things foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe for a few days' time, and call them mysterious and sacred ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure and an unshaken resolution during our whole lives. What are the things then that we are commanded or forbidden? They are simple, and easily known. The first command is concerning God, and affirms that God contains all things, and is a being every way perfect and happy, self-sufficient, and supplying all other beings; the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. He is manifest in his works and benefits, and more conspicuous than any other being whatsoever; but as to his form and magnitude he is most obscure. All materials, let them be ever so costly, are unworthy to compose an image for him; and all arts are unartful to express the notion we ought to have of him. We can neither see nor think of anything like him, nor is it agreeable to piety to form a resemblance of him. We see his works: the light, the heavens, the earth, the sun and the moon, the waters, the generation of animals, the production of fruits. These things hath God made, not with hands, not with labor, not as wanting the assistance of any to co-operate with him; but as his will resolved they should be made and be good also, they were made and became good immediately. All men ought to follow this being, and to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of worship of God is the most holy of all others.

There ought also to be but One Temple for One God: for likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple. ought to be common to all men, because he is the common God of all men. His priests are to be continually about his worship; over whom he that is the first by his birth is to be their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices. to God, together with those priests that are joined with him; to see that the laws be observed; to determine controversies, and

to punish those that are convicted of injustice: while he that does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself.

But then, what are our laws about marriage? That law owns no other mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed, of a man with his wife, and that this be used only for the procreation of children. But it abhors the mixture of a male with a male; and if any one do that, death is its punishment.

Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at the births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drinking to excess; but it ordains that the very beginning of our education should be immediately directed to sobriety.

Our law hath also taken care of the decent burial of the dead; but without any extravagant expenses for the funerals, and without the erection of any illustrious monuments for them.

The law ordains also that parents should be honored immediately after God himself; and delivers that son who does not requite them for the benefits he hath received from them, but is deficient on any such occasion, to be stoned. It also says that the young man should pay due respect to every elder, since God is the eldest of all beings.

It will be also worth our while to see what equity our legislator would have us exercise in our intercourse with strangers. Accordingly, our legislator admits all those that have a mind to observe our laws so to do, and this after a friendly manner, as esteeming that a true union which not only extends to our own stock, but to those that would live after the same manner with us; yet does he not allow those that come to us by accident only to be admitted into communion with us.

The greatest part of offenses with us are capital. Now, as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell of so many, nay, not more than one or two, that have betrayed our laws; no, not out of fear of death itself. . Now I think those that have conquered us have put us to such deaths, not out of their hatred to us when they had subdued us, but rather out of their desire to see a surprising sight, which is this, whether there be such men in the world who believe that no evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or to speak anything contrary to their own laws!

Whiston's Translation.

ORIGIN OF THE ASAMONEAN OR MACCABEAN REVOLT

From the 'Antiquities ›

HEN the emissaries of the King [Antiochus] came to Modin to compel the Jews to offer [pagan] sacrifice as

WHEN

the King commanded, they wished Mattathias [priest, great-grandson of Asamoneus, and father of Judas Maccabæus and four other powerful sons]-a person of the highest consideration among them on all grounds, and especially as having so large and meritorious a family- to begin the sacrifice; because the populace would follow his example, and the King would bestow honors upon him for it. But Mattathias said "he would not do it; and if every other people obeyed Antiochus's orders, either from fear or self-seeking, he and his sons would not desert their country's religion." But when he had finished speaking, another Jew came forward and began to sacrifice as Antiochus had commanded. Mattathias was so incensed that he and his sons, who had their swords with them, fell on the sacrificer, and slew both him, Apelles (the King's general who had enforced the sacrifice), and several of the soldiers. Then he overthrew the pagan altar, and cried out, "If any one has zeal for the lands of his country and the worship of God, let him follow me;" and fled to the desert with his sons, abandoning all his property in the town. Many others followed him, and dwelt in caves in the desert with their wives and children. When the King's generals heard of this, they took the troops in the citadel at Jerusalem and went in pursuit of the fugitives; and having overtaken them, tried first to persuade them to take counsel of prudence and not compel the soldiers to treat them according to the laws of war. Meeting with a refusal, they assailed them on the Sabbath, and burnt them unresisting in the caves. Many of those

who escaped joined Mattathias and appointed him their ruler. So Mattathias got a great army about him, and overthrew their idolatrous altars, and slew those that broke their laws, all he could lay hands on.

JOSEPH JOUBERT

(1754-1824)

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

OSEPH JOUBERT, who has now succeeded to the place long held by La Rochefoucauld as the best author of aphorisms, was first introduced to the general world of English-speaking readers by Matthew Arnold in 1865: but he was known to many, at least in America, through what Sainte-Beuve had said of him; and Mr. Stedman thinks that Edgar Poe, whose French reading was very discursive, had known him even before Sainte-Beuve wrote. Joubert, who was born in 1754, died May 4th, 1824; and a tribute was paid to his memory, a day or two after his death, by Châteaubriand, which might well have arrested the attention of Poe. In 1838 Châteaubriand edited his works. It is, however, fair to say that as Ruskin vastly expanded the reputation of Turner, though he did not create it, so the present renown of Joubert is due largely to the generous tribute of Arnold.

With the praise due to generosity the recognition of Arnold's service must end. It was hardly possible to set readers more distinctly on the wrong track in respect to an author than to compare, as Arnold does, Joubert to Coleridge; making this comparison indeed the keynote of his essay. It is difficult-were not Arnold so emphatically a man of whims-to find common ground between the tersest writer of his time and the most diffuse; the most determined and the most irresolute; the most clear-cut and the most misty. With all the great merits and services of Coleridge, and the fact that he had occasionally the power of making an incisive detached remark, the fact remains undisputed of the wandering and slumberous quality of his mind, and of the concentration in him of many of the precise qualities that Joubert spent his life in combating. The best course to be adopted by any reader of Joubert is therefore to cut adrift from Arnold, and turn to the original book,-not the volume of letters, which is less satisfactory, but to the original volume of 'Pensées,' which contain within four hundred pages more of the condensed essence of thought than can be found anywhere else in a series of volumes.

Joubert was born in 1754 in Montignac, a small town of Périgord, France; studied and also taught at the College of Toulouse; went in XIV-525