--- XXIV. The Fourth, or Roman Empire, continued, (from 145 to 78 B.C.)-The First Great Internal Con- flicts.-Tiberius Graccus, Marius, and Sylla, XXV. The Fourth, or Roman Empire, continued, (from 78 to 44 B.C.)-The Revolution.-Pompey the XXVI. The Establishment of the Roman Empire, (from 44 B.C. to 14 A.D.)—Octavius and Antony, BETWEEN SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY. CHAPTER I. THE RACE OF ISRAEL, GOD'S PECULIAR PEOPLE. ELATION of mind on account of the antiquity, rank, or applauded deeds of ancestors, prevails more or less among all men: this coufessedly has in no small degree been visible among the Jews, or the race of Jacob, and if the cherishing of this feeling be admissible and proper in any people, it is incontrovertibly so in them. The descendants of the faithful patriarch are the only people on the face of the earth who can, on satisfactory evidence, trace their genealogy up to Adam, the first man. Except that preserved in the Sacred Writings, every written history of mankind, or of any race of men, which ascends much higher than the era of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is justly deemed fabulous by all who have thoroughly investigated the subject. The Arabs may trace their descent from Abraham, and others may conjecture that one or other of the sons of Noah was their great ancestor; but the Jews alone can name the father or chief of each successive generation of their race, from Seth the third son of Adam down to David their most exalted king; and the name of the chief of every generation of his race is distinctly recorded till Mary became the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, who was recognised by his people as the son and, by consequence, the royal heir of David. The Jews can not only contemplate their remote ancestors as the most ancient, but also as the most excellent and most honourable race who have inhabited the globe. They were not, so far as the Divine Record teaches, distinguished above other men by superiority of natural qualities, physical or intellectual, great scientific acquirements or immense wealth, nor by the possession of vast political or commercial power, or by warlike pursuits; an unspeakably nobler destiny was theirs,-they were the chosen worshippers of the True and Living God. The brief notice of the antediluvians by Moses may originate innumerable speculations, at once useful and entertaining; but a mere allusion to the general delineation of their personal character presented us is enough for our object. They consisted of two races, the Cainites and Sethites, the chiefs of whom received, in common, the most important instructions on religion which were communicated before the deluge, that is, during the first sixteen hundred and fifty-six years of the world. The Cainites, as a race, appear to have cast off the fear of God, and wholly renounced the institutes of his worship. Individuals or families among them may have retained the truth revealed by God to their father Adam; but we perceive no indication in the community of religious principle or practice. They lived without reverence for God, without hope of immortality, and without belief in the promise that an Almighty Saviour should be born, and live to destroy the works of the deceiver and destroyer of man. Their strong and daring spirits bowed not to idols, images, or superstition; they were unmoved by apprehensions of the invisible world; and by ambition, violence, and sensuality, they filled the world with blood; and had not omnipotent power and just vengeance shortened their course, they would have extinguished human life, or rendered the benevolent and ample provision of Heaven to impart human felicity vain. It is not unworthy of notice that tradition harmonises with the Sacred Record in its description of the first great apostacy of mankind. Hesiod remarks of the generation who perished by the deluge, that" they could not abstain from mutually inflicting violence on each other; nor would they worship the immortals, nor sacrifice to the blessed ones on their altars. Therefore Zeus (the Deity) removed them, because they would not give honour to the blessed gods." The Sethites continued, probably, nearly one thousand years consecrated to the worship and service of God; for they were accounted and treated by Him as his sons. That none of them joined the apostates we have no reason to assert or deny; nevertheless, the record concerning them justifies the opinion that they generally feared God and trembled at his word; and may have given rise to the tradition that the age of gold was the first age of the world. The oldest of each generation was the chief ruler and priest, and several of these were also prophets, as may be learned from the register of them preserved in the fifth chapter of Genesis. Their religious principles and rites were few and simple, but consummately adapted to sustain, strengthen, and cherish in them dependance, gratitude, submission, and obedience towards God. He made himself known to them as the Creator and Possessor of the heavens and the earth, and as God, the Saviour of man, pledged by his word to raise up for them One, almighty to destroy by his personal sufferings the works of the serpent the devil; and, by consequence, to restore to them all the life and blessedness which they had forfeited by sin. Of the work of the divinely ordained Deliverer, and its inconceivably happy results, they were, every morning and evening, by sacrificial rites, symbolically instructed, so that they might have them ever present to their minds. A little reflection will, we apprehend, produce full persuasion in the minds of all believers in revelation, that the ritual of sacrifice was instituted by God. We have no evidence that Adam and his sons were accustomed to take the life of any animal for their own use; and is it not therefore probable that the skins of which the dress of the first pair were made, were those of animals offered in sacrifice? From the permission to use animal food granted to Noah, it seems reasonable to infer that mankind had been restricted from killing animals, except for religious purposes. Now, if they were not accustomed to feed on animals, we have no reason to believe that they could imagine, unless divinely instructed, that the blood of animals could be acceptable to God as a present or offering to expiate their sins. It is scarcely conceivable that such an idea originated in the human mind. Though we may clearly perceive the suitableness of animal sacrifice to symbolise an expiation for sin, in consequence of Divine revelation given us on the subject, yet no one can show that, without that instruction, it would have naturally risen in the human mind. And had even the sentiment been conceived by Adam or Abel, they would not have presumed to act on it, and testify their homage to God by consuming his creatures by fire, without his authority. Having recently learned the awful effect of doing what he had prohibited, is it reasonable to suppose that they would have presumed to consider themselves qualified to devise, or believed themselves possessed of a right to prescribe a form of worship worthy of His approbation? That he approved of animal sacrifice is, however, unquestionable; and it is equally certain that he has always said to those who worshipped him according to forms of human invention, "Who hath required this of your hand?" Hence we may conclude that the institution of sacrifice is of Divine origin. This is not indeed taught us in plain language in the Sacred Oracles, but it seems fully implied in the announcement that the cherubim were placed at the east of Eden, immediately on the expulsion of Adam and Eve; for the whole his tory of that marvellous emblem proves that the altar for sacrifice always accompanied it. Every worshipper of God, in every act of worship, looked towards the cherubim; but he never expected acceptance, except for the sake of his sacrifice. This alone elevated his soul above the dreadful apprehension that the burning flame issuing from the cherubim should consume him. This form of worship Noah established after the deluge; and it was propagated over the world, more or less perfect, by all his descendants. The faithful report of the tremendous catastrophe which destroyed the bold and presumptuous sinners of the old world, by Noah and his family, was indelibly fixed in the hearts of the three races of the postdiluvian renovated world. And we have strong evidence that, wherever they wandered, they carried with them deep impressions of the existence of spiritual and invisible agency, powerful and active to protect the just, and inflict vengeance on the profane and profligate. And this may probably account for the fact that the atheism and infidelity of past ages were buried with their advocates in the waters, and have never recovered vigour to erase from any great community the entire form of religion. The races of Japhet and Ham became idolaters. But who has examined idol and image worship, in all its forms, and not perceived that it carried strong marks of its original derivation from the religious worship of the patriarchs? Every false religion is a perverted imitation of the true. Divine truth, in every age and country, has been, to the extent judged necessary by the rulers of this world, whether kings, philosophers, priests, or sovereigns, incorporated with falsehood. The god of the world, who first attempted to reign under the form of a lion, found it expedient, after the deluge, to assume the form of an angel of light, or to assume his ancient disguise of a serpent. The race of Shem, it is generally believed, were the chosen of God, Ordained to preserve the Divine revelations to their ancestors, and to maintain his worship. They were favoured with the ministry of Noah three hundred and fifty years after the flood, and consequently till Abraham was nearly sixty years old. During the intervening period, there were nine subordinate chiefs over the Shemites, the fathers of as many generations. Many think that Noah accompanied not the multitude that emigrated from Armenia, till they came, doubtless by a circuitous route, (which may have had many temporary stations,) to the plains of Shinar. It is, however, probable that some of the Shemites were among the emigrants, and adopted the corrupt religion of Nimrod; for the ancestors of Abraham are said to have served "other gods" east of the Euphrates. The brief record of the chosen race from Seth to Abraham and Moses suggests that they were placed under a supernatural administration, resembling that by which the race of Jacob were afterwards governed. Thus we know that the gift of inspiration and of prophecy was conferred on Enoch, Lamech, and Noah; and the translation of Enoch and the deliverance of Noah were remarkable examples of miraculous interposition, to testify that Jehovah loved righteousness, and with a very pleasant countenance beheld the upright. Nor are we without decisive proof that the public worshippers of God were, as a community, governed by the law of just retribution in this life. They enjoyed temporal prosperity when they faithfully served God, and endured signal punishment when they publicly dishonoured his name. It was evidently this that occasioned Job's friends rashly to inter that because he was greatly afflicted he was certainly a hypocrite. In proof of this, one of them appealed to the most celebrated maxims of the wisest of the ancients, who distinctly taught the doctrine of retribution; Job xv. 17-35. This law, indeed, appears to have been enforced by the rulers; hence the fearful apprehensions of seventy-seven fold greater punishment for killing a man, perhaps accidentally, than that denounced on Cain. Judah and Job attest that the adulterer was sentenced to suffer death, and the latter teaches us that the worshipper of the heavenly bodies subjected himself to the same sentence. When Abraham intimated to his nearest relations that God had appeared to him, and called him to leave Chaldea, they evidently prepared to accompany him, for his father took the lead of the party; and they fixed on Haran in Mesopotamia for their future residence. They were all worshippers of the True God; but, after the lapse of about one hundred and eighty years, their form of worship was debased by the use of images, as we find in the family of Laban, the grandson of Nahor, who remained in Haran after the departure of Abraham for a country which Jehovah promised to show him. That land was named Canaan, from one of the sons of Ham. Few spots of it seem to have been appropriated by any one at the time of Abraham's arrival. He and his sons and grandsons sojourned in it for a number of years; and because God had promised that their descendants should possess it, and especially because their families seem to have been more numerous or more distinguished than the other inhabitants, it came to be known under the name of "The land of the Hebrews." During their absence in Egypt for several hundred years, this country was fully peopled by |