unto you for a guide." The arrangement Egypt.) The hidden ways of wisdom are of the Talmud of Babylon differs in many the ten Sephiroth, or attributes of the details from that of the Talmud of Jeru- Divinity, and the twenty-two letters, salem. In twenty-six tracts, the former has no Ghemara, and in the tract Shecalim the Ghemara of Jerusalem is applied in the Babylon Talmud.

We have hitherto spoken of the several tracts of the Mishna, and their accompanying Ghemara, as constituting the Talmud. That word, however, is often applied to designate the whole teaching of the Jewish Law - including the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, together with the books of which we have given a brief précis.

We must not omit to mention the three obscure and mystic glosses on the Pentateuch, which exist under the names of Mekilta, Siphra, and Siphri. The first is a commentary on the Book of Exodus. The second, attributed to Rav, or Abba Aribba, who was rector of the University of Sora until A.D. 243, is also called the Torath Cohenim, or law of the priests, and is founded on Leviticus. The third book, Siphri, is a comment on Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The doctrine of the Talmud, remarks the Abbé Chiarini, like the Tabernacle of Moses, has three veils. Raise the first, and you enter the porch. Lift the second, and the Holy Place is before you. Beyond the third, is the Holy of Holies. With these three stages of devout intelligence correspond the Halaca, the Agada, and the Cabbala. The third of these studies, which is the parent of the alchemy and the magic of the Middle Ages, forms the subject of the extremely obscure books entitled Jetsira and Zohar. We have only space to refer to the master idea of the Cabbalistic philosophy, to which may be traced the origin of the doctrine of the Sephur, or Logos, which has been erroneously attributed to a Platonic source.

God, according to the Jetsira, created the world by three Sephirim; His conception (or idea), His word, and His writing. The archetype of the world was conceived by the Divine Being with number, weight, and measure; it was called from nothing into existence by His word, and it was peopled with creatures, who are His writing; and conception, word, and writing are the same thing in God. The Hebrew language is Divine, because God has made use of it to communicate with man. Its writing is perfect, and the form of every letter involves a mystery. (This points back to the hieroglyphics of

which are types of matter. (In the for mer it is impossible not to recognize, ipso nomine, the ten cyphers, which Europe owes to the Arabic writers.) The letters are, three mother letters, seven double, and twelve single; and in the microcosm and macrocosm — the world, the soul, and the year" all things are ordered by one on three, three on seven, and seven on twelve." We spare our readers any discussion of the four alphabets, and the four species of the Cabbala.

We may perhaps most clearly grasp the tenets of the chief Jewish sects during the early Christian centuries by contrasting the several directions in which they diverged from the common centre of the Written Law.

Most conservative in their views, al though historically uncertain in their origin, were the Karaites, who seem to be the vouкol of the New Testament. The Talmud classes them as a branch of the Sadducees. They regarded the Written Law alone as divinely inspired, and rarely availed themselves of traditional interpretation. Critical remarks on the mode of reading and interpreting the Bible, which are attributed in the Talmud to the Scribes, are of the Karaite school.

In opposition to these literalists, the great sect of the Pharisees, which sprang up during the early days of the Maccabees, esteemed the letter of the Law above its spirit; the Oral above the Written Law, and ceremonies above morality. The description of various branches of the Pharisees, which is to be collected from the Jerusalem Talmud, explains the frequent coupling of the name of that sect with the reproach of hypocrisy. Seven classes of their professors of the Law are named, out of which there is but one who were confessedly actuated in their conduct by the noblest principle, namely the love of God. Among the other six were the Shekamites, who displayed their good deeds to all the world, as if they bore them on their shoulders; the Niephes, or borrowers, who constantly asked for loans in order to give alms or perform other good deeds; the Kizeen, or counters, who reckoned a commandment against every transgres sion; those who feigned to renounce their property in order to bestow it in pious works (represented, in the Acts of the Apostles, by Ananias and Sapphira); those who asked of all men to tell them of any transgression that they had committed,

that they might make expiation; and those The Hellenists took their rise in the who performed their prescribed duties time of the Greek kings; and introduced simply through the influence of fear. much from the philosophy of Greece into The sect of the Sadducees, the follow-both the doctrine and the customs of the ers of Sadok and Baithos, originated about 300 B.C., and disputed the great authority of the Pharisees. The doubts entertained by this sect as to the future life and the spiritual existence are reflected in the Talmud by a frequent indifference as to questions relating to the immortality of the soul.

The opposite pole to the Sadducees was occupied by the Mehestanites, a sect as old as the Captivity, which had drawn from Persian sources a detailed belief in the influence of good and evil spirits, as well as in astrology. Much of the ghost lore of the Talmud has been contributed by this sect, which to some extent influenced the main body of Jewish belief. Nor are the doctrines in question by any means confined to the pale of Judaism.

The Misraimites originated soon after the time of Alexander the Great. They are to be recognized in all those passages in the Talmud which relate to the Numeric or Graphic Cabbala - which was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. They ascribed a divine origin, and hidden teaching, to the very form of the square Chaldaic characters; a doctrine that points back to a period when the phonetic value of the hieroglyphics had not superseded all earlier idiographic significance. Thus the opening left between the stem of the Koph and its curved part is said to intimate that the door of Divine mercy was never closed to the penitent.

The Essenes, or Oraculists, professed to find in the Law a species of allegory. To them is to be attributed a great portion of what is called the Agada and Midrasha of the Talmud, and we trace the influence of their doctrines in such expressions as "the law, having a shadow of good things to come;" and "this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." But the Essenes of the Talmud can hardly be identified with the sect described, at unusual length, by Josephus under that name, in whom it is difficult to recognize any other body than the early Jewish Christians.*

It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that, under the name of the Essenians, Josephus actually describes the early Christians, to whom, if the portions of the works attributed to him as to Christ and as to Hades are genuine, he may be considered to have belonged. His abandonment of the national cause, when actually hopeless, can thus be explained without injury to his character. The points in common between the sects in question may thus be cited.

Jews. They gave a High Priest to Jerusalem in the person of Jason. They were the first sect encountered by Paul after his conversion; and their influence must have been considerable to have induced or enabled a scholar of the Pharisee Gamaliel to quote the Greek poet Aratus.

The Therapeutists may be considered as the natural counterpoise of any philosophical tendency among the Jews; their doctrine that supreme happiness consisted in meditation being one to be met with among the Indian Fakeers.

The name of the Herodians, who allowed political constraint to regulate religious worship, and of the opposing sect of the Gaulonites, or Zealots, who were intolerant of even the payment of tribute to any but the Eternal King, will be recognized by the students of the Evangelists and of Josephus. But it passes the limits of ordinary intelligence to assign any principle, but that of mutual contradiction, to the unresting schism between the schools of Shamai and of Hillel.

troversy. This is a dispute that has been carried on almost entirely on false assumptions. The two main questions raised are, the age at which the rite of baptism should be administered, and the mode in which it should be effected. This is altogether a distinct question from that of the sacramental efficacy of the institution. It may be named the ritual, or ceremonial, dispute, as distinguished from that which is doctrinal or theological. The Romish Church, more suo, cuts the question very short. It relies on its own tradition; and asperses, signs, and anoints every infant, in the name of the Church, within the shortest possible period after birth; thus expediting the passage from this world of many a weakly suckling. It deserves remark, that the one point connected with this rite which is accepted by the whole of Christendom as incontrovertible, is the essential necessity of the material employed. The pure element of water is indispensable. The two Eastern monotheistic rituals admit of the substitution

Such were the sects and schools, and such the main topics of constant dispute, that were rife at Jerusalem during the childhood and the manhood of Christ. There is scarce a page of the Synoptic Gospels on which a clear and instructive light may not be thrown by the study of the topics which are introduced by the writers as too familiar to need explanation. We may even say, that the most obscure passages thus become plain, and that the true meaning of the words of Christ, the meaning which they bore to His hearers, comes out with unexpected of clean sand, for ceremonial abluforce and often with unsuspected beauty. No one who reads the Gospels with a competent knowledge of the Talmud, will admit that they can otherwise be fully understood. On the entire history of the sons of Israel, from the days of Moses to our own, a comment is here afforded without which the text remains an enigma.

tions, where water cannot be obtained. In the greater strictness of the Occidental rubric may be traced a mark of the direct filiation of the Christian rite with the administration of the total plunging bath which the proselyte, and the. Jew and Jewess, subject to certain legal pollution, were compelled to under

In extending the application of the rite to children, the water-dreading Italians have allowed the symbol of aspersion to replace the original practice; although the use of the element necessary for the total bath, but not necessary for a partial ablution, is retained. In the Greek Church, the original total immersion is still applied to infants, to the great furtherance of the survivorship of the strongest.

The diffusion of a competent knowl-go. edge of the Talmud would have a result which might be ungrateful to certain tempers, but which would be most beneficial to the interest of literature, both religious and ethical. It would tend to extinguish controversy. It might, alas ! prove too true that the flames, when stamped out in one place, would break forth with renewed fury in another. But the plain man, who seeks truth for its own sake, would not fail to derive a benefit. As it is, while the clashing views of rival schools are based, in their common ignorance, on imaginary foundations, the unlearned observer may well feel perplexed. But when he finds where the real bone of contention lies, and sees how far the ground can be levelled and swept before the fight fairly begins, it may so chance that he will take but little interest in the contest, and rather leave it to those who are by temperament polemics and disputants quand même.

No subject, for example, has more bitterly divided certain sects of Protestants than what is called the Baptismal Con

Had the controversialists who have vexed our language with the vehement dispute known as the Baptismal Controversy, taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the facts which they were content to infer from one or two indistinct passages of the New Testament, the quarrel, if not absolutely prevented, would at all events have been confined within the limits of rational discussion. All parties must have recognized the universal practice, in the Catholic Church, of an initiatory rite; the legislation affecting which, if it ever had a definite existence, is entirely lost beneath the darkness of the first three centuries of

While disputes that are rather ecclesiastical than religious must thus be narrowed, if not obviated, by a competent knowledge of the mother facts, quarrels of an altogether different order would have been entirely avoided, if the rulers of Catholic Christendom had been enlightened by some of the most rudimentary principles of the interpretation of the ancient Law.

persecution. Further, they would have previously aroused, in cultivated Italy, traced an historic affiliation with an ordi- by the announcements of Galileo. The nary Jewish rite, and especially with the Latin literature of the time of the "Tusperformance of that rite by John the son can Artist" shows that a terror, like that of Zacharias. Thirdly, they must have caused by an actual earthquake, shook seen the absolute contrast existing be- the most intelligent men. They felt as tween the actual Christian, and the an- if the solid earth was falling from under cient Jewish rites, as to person, occasion, them. In our time the fear was, perhaps, and method. With the ground thus more narrow, but it was nevertheless incleared, it is of course possible to enter tense. It was the conscientious opinion on a long and perplexed inquiry as to the of many good men that the hypotheses character and effect of the institution. of the immense antiquity of our planet ; But, for the Baptismal Controversy, as it of the existence on its surface of succesactually encumbers our shelves, there sive forms of life, and of death; and of would have been no room. the long-descended and hoary age of the human species; were in contradiction to the plain words of the Book of Genesis. But the educated Jew would not be content, in this respect, with the enlargement of vision insured by the knowledge that the Divine Law spoke so as to be intelligible to its hearers. His light was yet brighter. He knew that the Mikra had its Agada no less than the Mishna. He knew that all the teachers of his peoThe men who attributed to every word, ple, in long line of associated Sanhedrin and to every letter, of the Pentateuch a ascending to the great Master, Moses, direct divine origin and ordination, yet himself, had shown that the Holy Writadmitted a maxim, inspired by the pro-ings contained allegory as well as prefoundest common sense, the application cept and history. He could have used of which would have prevented the the words of the writer of the Second shameful struggle of the Holy See with Epistle of Peter in the sense in which the immortal Galileo. Loquitur lex, is they were composed - that no prophetic, the rule, phrasibus filiorum hominum. or allegoric, part of Scripture was for the The highest human study, the Rabbins interpretation of idiotai — (idías ¿ñíkvɑews) taught, was that of the Law. But if men unlearned in the Law. He would positive science, in other hands, made have been told in plain terms by his Rabdefinite discoveries, there was an elas- bins that the man who attached a literal ticity in the unchangeable Word that meaning to an allegoric part of Scripture could never permit of any contradiction was a fool. He would soon have been arising between Faith and Science. Cul-made aware that the study of the "work tivated Europe should blush to the very of the Creation," as well as of the finger-nails at her ignorance of such an "work of the Chariot," was specially irenical and philosophical maxim, hidden prohibited to the unlearned. Without in the neglected lore of the Jewish sages. It is true that a legislation like that of Moses might admit of a provision for the organic growth of human intelligence which would be fatal to a legislation like that of the Papacy. But the fact is hardly to the advantage of the latter.

going to the full extent to which this view is carried by the Rabbins, critical discrimination, and due knowledge of the Sacred Books, are enough to show the purely absurd character of a group of English publications of which we may not even yet have seen the last.

We may take a step further in the If we pass from the regions, which are same luminous direction. Men are not yet far from being absolutely deserted, yet very old who can remember the of ecclesiological controversy; if we alacrity with which theologians of differ- shun any outburst of that guerilla warent schools hastened to extinguish, first fare which is yet active on the confines the glimmer and then the glow, which where science and religious opinion was thrown upon the unwritten history march, we shall find that one special of mankind by the discoveries of Cuvier study of our own day, the pursuit of an and his school. The excitement in men's minds in England on the subject

was hardly less keen than that which was

• Gen. i.

↑ Ezek. i.

We may, indeed, well think it inexpli cable that the doctors of the Christian Church should not have been induced by the plain language of Christ Himself to undertake that study of the Hebrew literature which was necessary to a clear grasp of the meaning of His words. It cannot be doubted that Christ gave the full weight of His authority to the sup port of the Oral Law. When He says of those who sit in Moses' seat, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, observe and do," there can be no question of the written precepts, as to which no such enforcement could for a moment be thought necessary. The forms in which the Mikra and the Mishna are severally quoted are so distinct as to leave no pretext for confusion. The line which is drawn by Christ lies between the ancient constitutions, oral handed down, in elucidation of the brief injunctions of the Pentateuch, and those later regulations of the Sanhedrin, which had no such origin. In speaking of the unchangeable authority of the law of Moses, the whole body of written and ancient traditional legisla tion is distinctly accepted by Christ.

exhaustive and determinative criticism, the meaning of the writers can be arhas yet very much to gain from a compe- rived at by persons who are altogether tent acquaintance with the Talmud. The ignorant of the literary history of the very words of the Mishna are often quot-period. ed verbatim by the New Testament writers, as when Paul uses the phrase, "The cup of blessing which we bless."* In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ three times distinctly quotes the Oral Law, by the appropriate phrase, "It has been said by the elders." He proceeds, on that, and on other occasions, to give His judgment on points which we know to have been main topics of dispute between the doctors of the great schools of His day. Such was the controversy between the Beth Shamai and the Beth Hillel as to the causes which would justify a man in giving a Get, or bill of divorce. Such were various points at issue between the Pharisees, who exalted ceremonial observance above doctrine, and the oral above the written Law, and the Karaites and Sadducees, who were the strict literalists of the day; the latter of whom questioned the certitude of the prevalent doctrine as to spirits and a future life, because it was not to be arrived at from the direct words of the Mikra. Such were those between the Herodians, who held that it is lawful to change forms of observance for purely worldly reasons, when constrained to do so by force, and the Gaulonites or Zealots, an offshoot of the Pharisees, who teach, in the Talmud, that the Jews can be subjects or tributaries of no King but the Eternal. Such, again, were the questions as to the observance of the rules laid down in the Seder Tahoroth, as to ablutions and purifications, and the prohibition of eating grains from the ear on the Sabbath. Such were the legal objec-is tions raised by the Pharisees, not to a miracle of healing, but to the breach of the Law of Sabbath by commanding a man to carry his bed on that day. In fact, the whole text of the New Testament is so full of references to the points around which the controversies of the great religious sects of the day revolved, that no distinct and intelligent idea of

I Cor. x. 16.

+ Matt. v. 21, 27, 33- The injuhctions thus cited are taken from the Mishna, where it is explanatory of the Written Law. In v. 31-38, and 43, are references to oral precepts which are not founded on the letter of the Pentateuch. A distinction is made between the two, both in the mode of quoting them, and in the character of the comment. In the first case the injunctions are fortified by the enunciation of their purport; in the second they are contradicted. This distinction pervades the whole teaching of Christ recorded in the Synoptic Gospels.

A striking instance may be adduced of the manner in which important questions of historical criticism may be solved by the aid of the Talmud. One of the most urgent critical questions of the day is that of the collation of the first three Gospels (in our present arrangement of the New Testament) with the fourth. The subject has been recently discussed, in a contemporary journal, in a temper that

creditable to the polemics of the day. The writer, at the same time, expresses a calm reliance on the impregnable character of his own view, which some acquaintance with the literature of the Talmud would tend considerably to modify.

The four Gospels all agree in describing the Crucifixion as occurring on the eve of the Sabbath, that is to say, on the sixth day of the week. The fourth Gospel is singular in including a distinct chronological indication of the year. This is afforded by the reckoning of 46 years from the commencement of the third Temple (which took place in the eighteenth year of Herod), and by the mention of two subsequent passovers. In the year thus determined, the 30th of

* Matt. xxiii. 3.