against the vices of Israel (Am. vii, 10) that turned his attention to the degeneracy of his nation. Therein he saw a striking likeness to his own experience; and, looking into his own heart and reasoning from "Man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete" he pronounced authoritatively in the name of Yahweh: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; . they have not known Yahweh". Yet how should they know without a teacher? Priests and prophets were alike recreant to their duty, and barefacedly committing deliberate crimes. Therefore Hosea revives J's teaching. With even fuller detail than Amos, but without his bitterness, he recounts the sins of Israel for which Yahweh must needs punish them; nay, the punishment is the fruit of their own misdoings; "they have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind". But, with outbursts of passionate pleading, he reviews the benefits they have received from Yahweh, His loving care of them in danger, the preventives and defenses He gave them against their personal weaknesses in His laws. These laws Israel has rejected. "My people are bent upon backsliding; they call to the Most High for help, yet none at all will lift himself up". But as the prophet had pardoned and brought home his erring wife, though shorn of all dignity and honor in the eyes of her neighbors, so he foresees salvation in the end for Israel, and a possibility of her regaining her spiritual heritage. "I will not return to destroy Ephraim, saith Yahweh, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee. I will not come in wrath".

No Hebrew poet, even among the post-exilic writers, has written with greater pathos and with more exquisitely appropriate and delicate figures than Hosea. But it remained for the great prose-writer of the next century, the author of Deuteronomy, to build upon that Knowledge of Yahweh's love and fidelity inculcated by Hosea, and to devise the effectual means of reaching the hearts of the people. There was no time for Hosea's teaching to produce results for Ephraim. As he laid down his pen, Tiglath Pileser was entering the Northern Kingdom, and her punishment had begun.

The accession of Manasseh in the Southern Kingdom in 698 B.C., his disgraceful reign and his relentless persecution of the followers of Yahweh put an end to all attempts at reform. His excesses, however, roused his subjects to the reasonableness of their prophets' strictures; and no sooner was his grandson Josiah established upon the throne than poets and prophets sprang up, even before the finding of the "Book of the Law", who proclaimed Hosea's gospel of the mercy and lovingkindness as well as the justice of Yahweh. First among them was Zephaniah, who extended the threats of Amos and Isaiah to all workers of wickedness in high places, but encouraged the righteous and the meek to expect salvation. The one fine poem of Zephaniah's that has been preserved shows perfect unity of plan and handling, save for two or three interpolated couplets and the final strophe, which were evidently added after the Captivity.

Far different is the case of the "Book of Jeremiah" in which prose and poetry, genuine utterances of the prophet and late additions are closely interwoven. Tradition asserts that it was written down at Jeremiah's dictation by his secretary, Baruch; but there is no evidence to confirm the assertion. Baruch was not Jeremiah's secretary, but his confidential friend and co-worker; and though from stress of circumstances he once acted as his amanuensis, no part of the famous scroll he then wrote has been identified in the extant book. The latest verdict of scholars is that, like Socrates and Epictetus, and like the Greatest

of All Teachers, Jeremiah never wrote at all. His words bear the stamp of immediate, spontaneous utterance. Probably they were taken down, more or less verbatim, at different times and places by enthusiastic disciples, who passed their several booklets from hand to hand during his lifetime; but they were not brought together until the middle of the Persian period. These booklets are distinguishable by their headings; in spite of which clear indications of their proper order they were jumbled together without regard to date, and are also marred by the introduction into their text of marginal glosses and additions by various readers. Interspersed among the booklets are detailed accounts of Jeremiah's personal experiences which seem to have been derived from a Biography.

The greatest aid in revising and rearranging this important book is its translation into Greek as found in the Alexandrian Codex of the Septuagint. Thence we learn that the Hebrew text of "Jeremiah" was shorter in the third and second centuries B.C. than our present text by 2,700 words, or one-eighth of its whole contents. We are thus enabled to state definitely not only how many lines have been added, but just where they were inserted, and to deduce from contemporary history the feelings that prompted their insertion. Their phraseology also shows their authors' full acquaintance with Persian and Greek words and idioms that only crept into Hebrew long after Jeremiah's day.

THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY (586-538 B.C.) was an unexampled humiliation. The nation founded on the principles of Truth, Justice and Fraternity between man and man, and sworn allegiance to a Supreme Ruler of all the world, of whom there could be no similitude among created things, has betrayed its trust and is uprooted. On the acropolis of Jerusalem, Solomon's Temple, which has symbolized for centuries to all the surrounding kingdoms the majesty, power and steadfastness of Yahweh, now lies in ruins. The King, Court, Priests and Notables of Judah are captives far in the East in the midst of the sordid and depraving conditions from which Abraham had turned away; the rest of the turbulent and rebellious leaders of the population have fled to Egypt, almost to the very spot from which Moses had delivered their fathers. Never again shall they be an independent nation. So their prophets have foretold, all of whose other prophets have been fulfilled. This too they must perforce believe. But their religion, the noblest yet seen in the world, remains; they are still the chosen people of a Holy God who will cleanse and heal every faithful heart, and bring back to Zion a chastened and grateful "remnant" to do Him loyal service, whatever that service may be. This is the hope inspiring the noblest minds among the Exiles, and this the Mission whose scope they will strive to foresee. And this it was that carried the Golden Age of their literature through and over the catastrophic downfall of the nation without lapse and to ever higher mountains of vision, as the subjected Israelites passed successively from the depressing but not unkindly rule of the Chaldæans to the sympathetic protection of the Persians and the colder fellowship in philosophic inquiry of the Greeks, until it reached the very threshold of the Christian Era. The first stage, characterized by much beauty, tenderness and pathos, attained force and grandeur. In the second, Hebrew Lyrism will voice every emotion of the heart, towards men, towards God, and towards His handiwork; and Hebrew Philosophy, analyzing the bases of morality, the office of suffering, the possibility of personal communion with God, and the mission of Israel to the world at large, will rise to the Sublime.

EXTANT WORKS IN HEBREW LITERATURE

TO THE

OPENING OF THE GOLDEN AGE, 850 B.C.

THE DECALOGUE

A FIRST COLLECTION OF PROVERBS

A SECOND COLLECTION OF PROVERBS

THE HISTORY OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, BY J.