they had no history, and without their history no religion. Thus, history, patriotism, religion, and

hope alike pointed to Jerusalem and the Temple as the centre of Israel's unity.

Nor could the depressed state of the nation alter their views or shake their confidence. What

mattered it, that the Idumæan, Herod, had usurped the throne of David, expect so far as his own

guilt and their present subjection were concerned? Israel had passed through deeper waters,

and stood triumphant on the other shore. For centuries seemingly hopeless bondsmen in Egypt,

they had not only been delivered, but had raised the God-inspired morning-song of jubilee, as

they looked back upon the sea cleft for them, and which had buried their oppressors in their

might and pride. Again, for weary years had their captives hung Zion's harps by the rivers of

that city and empire whose colossal grandeur, wherever they turned, must have carried to the

scattered strangers the desolate feeling of utter hopelessness. And yet that empire had crumbled

into dust, while Israel had again taken root and sprung up. And now little more than a century

and a half had passed, since a danger greater even than any of these had threatened the faith

and the very existence of Israel. In his daring madness, the Syrian king, Antiochus IV.

(Epiphanes) had forbidden their religion, sought to destroy their sacred books, with unsparing

ferocity forced on them conformity to heathen rites, desecrated the Temple by dedicating it to

Zeus Olympios, what is translated by `shewbread.' a constant sacrificial and even reared a

heathen altar upon that of burnt-offering.2 Worst of all, his wicked schemes had been aided by

two apostate High-Priests, who had outvied each other in buying and then prostituting the

sacred office of God's anointed.3 Yet far away in the mountains of Ephraim4 God had raised for

them most unlooked-for and unlikely help. Only three years later, and, after a series of brilliant

victories by undisciplined men over the flower of the Syrian army, Judas the Maccabee, truly

God's Hammer5 had purified the Temple, and restored its altar on the very same day6 on which

the `abomination of desolation'7 had been set up in its place. In all their history the darkest hour

of their night had ever preceded the dawn of a morning brighter than any that had yet broken. It

was thus that with one voice all their prophets had bidden them wait and hope. Their sayings

had been more than fulfilled as regarded the past. Would they not equally become true in

reference to that far more glorious future for Zion and for Israel, which was to be ushered in by

the coming of the Messiah?