Christ, traditionally retained by the Church whilst standing in the same civil circumstances, though not committed to writing among the great press of matter circumscribing the choice of the Evangelists.

"As for their piety toward God, it is very extraordinary; for before sunrising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers.'

"This practice of antelucan worship, possibly having reference to the ineffable mystery of the resurrection, (all the Evangelists agreeing in the awful circumstance that it was very early in the morning, and one even saying, 'whilst it was yet dark,') a symbolic pathos which appeals to the very depths of human passion-as if the world of sleep and the anarchy of dreams figured to our apprehension the dark worlds of sin and death-it happens remarkably enough that we find confirmed and countersigned by the testimony of the first open antagonist to our Christian faith. Pliny, in that report to Trajan so universally known to every class of readers, and so rank with everlasting dishonor to his own sense and equity, notices this point in the ritual of primitive Christianity. 'However,' says he, they assured me that the amount of their fault or of their error was this-that they were wont, on a stated day, to meet together before it was light, and

to sing a hymn to Christ,' &c. The date of Pliny's letter is about forty years after the siege of Jerusalem; about seventy-seven, therefore, after the crucifixion, when Joseph would be just seventy-two years old. But we may be sure from collateral records, and from the entire uniformity of early Christianity, that a much longer lapse of time would have made no change in this respect.

666

'They deny wedlock; but they do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage.'

"This is a very noticeable article in his account of the Essenes, and powerfully illustrates the sort of acquaintance which Josephus had gained with their faith and usages. In the first place, as to the doctrine itself, it tallies remarkably with the leanings of St. Paul. He allows of marriage, overruled by his own moral prudence. But evidently his bias was the other way. And the allowance is notoriously a concession to the necessities which experience had taught him, and by way of preventing greater evils; but an evil, on the whole, it is clear that he regarded it. And naturally it was so in relation to that highest mode of spiritual life which the apostles contemplated as a fixed ideal. Moreover, we know that the apostles fell into some errors which must have affected their views in these respects. For a time at least they thought the end. of the world close at hand. Who could think otherwise that had witnessed the awful thing which they

had witnessed, or had drunk out of the same spiritual cup? Under such impressions, they reasonably pitched the key of Christian practice higher than else they would have done. So far, as to the doctrine here ascribed to the Essenes. But it is observable, that in this place Josephus admits that these Essenes did tolerate marriage. Now, in his earlier notice of the same people, he had denied this. What do we infer from that? Why, that he came to his knowledge of the Essenes by degrees, and as would be likely to happen with regard to a sect sequestrating themselves, and locking up their doctrines as secrets; which description directly applies to the earliest Christians. The instinct of self-preservation obliged them to retreat from notoriety. Their tenets could not be learned easily; they were gathered slowly, indirectly, by fragments. This accounts for the fact that people standing outside, like Josephus or Philo Judæus, got only casual glimpses of the truth, and such as were continually shifting. Hence, at different periods Josephus contradicts himself. But if he had been speaking of a sect as notorious as the Pharisees or Sadducees, no such error, and no such alteration of views, could have happened.

666

'They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace.'

"We suppose that it cannot be necessary to remind any reader of such characteristic Christian

doctrines as 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' &c.; still less of the transcendent demand made by Christianity for singleness of heart, uprightness, and entire conscientiousness; without which all pretences to Christian truth are regarded as mere hollow mockeries. Here, therefore, again we read the features too plainly for any mistake of pure Christianity. But let the reader observe keenly, had there been this pretended sect of Essenes teaching all this lofty and spiritual morality, it would have been a fair inference to ask, what more or better had been taught by Christ ?-in which case there might still have remained the great redemptional and mediatorial functions for Christ; but as to his divine morality, it would have been forestalled. Such would have been the inference; and it is an inference which really has been drawn from this romance of the Essenes adopted as true history.

"Whatsoever they say is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury.'

"We presume that nobody can fail to recognise in this great scrupulosity the memorable command of Christ, delivered in such unexampled majesty of language, 'Swear not at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool,' &c. This was said in condemnation of a practice universal among the Jews; and if any man

can believe that a visionary sect, of whom no man ever heard, except through two writers, both lying under the same very natural mistake, could have come, by blind accidents, into such an inheritance of spiritual truth as is here described by Josephus, that man will find nothing beyond his credulity; for he presumes a revelation far beyond all the wisdom of the Pagan world to have been attained by some unknown Jewish philosopher, so little regarded by his followers that they have not even preserved his name from oblivion.

Among the initiatory and probationary vows which these sectarians are required to take, is thisThat he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance.' Here again we see a memorable precept of St. Paul and the apostles generally-the same precept, and built on the very same reason, viz., that rulers are of God's appointment.

"They are long-lived also: inasmuch, that many of them live above one hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet.'

"Here we are reminded of St. John the Evangelist; whilst others no doubt would have attained the same age, had they not been cut off by martyrdom.

"In many other points of their interior discipline, their white robes, their meals, their silence and