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CHAPTER XXVI.

DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN.

"Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.' -ISA. lx. 2.

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"A

ND now we have reached the last chapter in the Jewish history before the coming of Him for whom the whole nation had waited so long, with various kinds of hope and expectation.

"I have already given you details about Herod, not actually necessary for our purpose; and I should like to sketch for you the rest of his life, because I think it will help you to follow all that remains of the history."

"And Cleopatra was still reigning; wasn't she?" said Harry. "Somehow one is apt to forget that she was one of the great folks of those days."

"Oh yes! she was living and reigning," returned his mother. "And when you picture Marc Antony, the then master of the world, wasting month after month at her court, you have just an example of what Roman virtue had dwindled down to. And this same queen had

more to do with Jewish affairs than perhaps you ever suspected. Indeed, it is remarkable how many of the great ones of the earth had to do with that same little country of Judea."

"Yes," said Martin, "we have come across a good many already. Why, there was Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy Philadelphus, Antiochus the Great,

Antiochus Epiphanes, the vile! a lot of Ptolemies and Seleucuses, then Pompey and Julius Cæsar, and now Marc Antony and Cleopatra. It's a good list. And then it had Herod the Great for its king, a great villain, but I suppose tremendously clever."

"Oh, yes; his noble bearing won him favour wherever he went; and he had wonderful talents for governing; but then, you see, he stopped at nothing,-like some other of the world's great heroes,” rejoined Mrs. Conway.

“The sceptre was departing from Judah now, for it had passed out of strictly Jewish hands; yet it had not quite departed; for they had in Herod a king of their own, and in a sense lived under their own laws. Besides, there were still the shadows of high priests; so, though going from them, it had not gone yet.

"As for poor weak Hyrcanus, after he was carried into Parthia, the king of the Parthians treated him very kindly, and when he learned from what an old and noble stock he sprang, he set him free, and let him go to Babylon, where there still were a large number of Jews. Indeed, Babylonia was one of the great seats of what is called the 'Dispersion of the twelve tribes scattered abroad;'for though we have been following the history of the Jews in Judea only, yet the nation was now very widely scattered all over the world, as I lately reminded you. I never found a convenient place to tell you about the Egyptian Jews before, or else I ought to have mentioned that in Egypt they even had a temple of their own, and services like those at the temple at Jerusalem."

"They had no business with that though, surely," said Martin; "for God had said long ago that the sacrifices were to be offered in the place which He would choose ; and certainly He chose Jerusalem in Solomon's time."

"Or rather perhaps in David's," rejoined Mrs. Conway. "It was King David who really made Jerusalem the

capital city, I believe and we cannot doubt that God had made known to him that henceforth it was to be the centre of worship in the place of Shiloh, which had been forsaken on account of the desecrations of its altar.

"Nevertheless the Egyptian Jews had this temple, and even in Babylon I suppose they must have had some substitute for one; for Josephus tells us that when Hyrcanus got there, he was warmly welcomed by all the Jews, who treated him as their high priest, and did their best to induce him to stay among them, reminding him that in Jerusalem he would never be reinstated in his office, on account of the loss of his ears.

"Herod, however, seemed just then to feel a want of some support for his authority; so he tempted him back. again, with a promise of a joint authority as king. And Hyrcanus, deluding himself into an idea that Herod regarded him in the light of a parent, was weak enough

to return.

"When he arrived, the king met him with all honour and respect; he called him his father, and set him above himself at feasts and on public occasions; only he was not reinstated in his priestly office. Instead of that, Herod sent for an obscure priest out of Babylon, named Ananelus, and made him high priest in his room.

"At this, as was natural, Alexandra, the daughter of Hyrcanus and mother of Queen Mariamne, took great offence; and she appealed to Cleopatra for help; for she regarded this dignity as her own son's right. Now this son was a very handsome youth of about seventeen; and his sister, Queen Mariamne, so warmly espoused his cause, that at length she prevailed on Herod to bestow the priesthood on him, and to send Ananelus away.

"After that there was a great scene between Herod and his mother-in-law, Alexandra; and then they became, to all appearance, good friends again; nevertheless,

Alexandra was ever afterwards kept in a sort of honourable captivity in the palace. Desperately irritated at this, she again found means to send a letter privately to the queen of Egypt, who straightway advised her to take her son, the handsome Aristobulus, and go right away to her in Egypt. More easily said than done, you may suppose; but Alexandra could plot and plan as well as Herod. She had two coffins made for two persons, servants I suppose, who were said to have died in the palace; and in these the mother and son were being carried away, when Herod, who had been treacherously informed of the design by one of Alexandra's servants, caught them in the act. Yet, for fear of her protectress, Cleopatra, he durst not wreak his vengeance at that time, and so thought it best to make a shew of forgiving as if of mere generosity.

"But he only watched his opportunity, and determined to rid himself of the poor youth as soon as possible, especially as at the feast of tabernacles, while ministering as high priest, the people, struck by his extraordinary beauty, had broken out into loud demonstrations of their affection for him. So when the feast was over, and Herod was being entertained at Jericho by Alexandra, he was, says Josephus, 'very pleasant with the young man, and began playing with him in a very juvenile manner, setting the guests to play too. Thus romping the company got heated, and suddenly, as in a fit of madness, some of Herod's people, no doubt instructed what to do, jumped into the fish-ponds to cool themselves, and were very merry in the water, so that the youthful high priest at length was tempted to join in their sport. It was then evening, and very soon the king's servants, as if in play, seized and dipped the young fellow over and over again, keeping him under water until at length life was extinct. "This looked like a very clever trick, and yet no

man seemed to have any doubt how the young priest came by his death, and Herod got the full blame of it. The mother's grief was excessive; and she determined to have revenge, and once more therefore she appealed to Cleopatra, who gave Antony no rest until he had summoned Herod before him to answer for the murder. But what will you say when I tell you that, before he started, the king left a charge with his uncle Joseph, to the effect that if he did not return alive he should put Mariamne to death, lest she should ever marry another man.

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Cleopatra's influence on this occasion was, however, entirely nullified by Herod's gifts to Antony; so that he returned fully acquitted to Judea; and in a very malicious temper. In a fit of rage and jealousy he first had his uncle put to death; then he bound Alexandra, and scarce restrained himself from giving up the wife whom he really passionately loved into the hands of the executioner, on a charge for which there seems to have been no foundation whatever; but she escaped for that time. You see, a more despotic tyrant, so far as his power went, never lived. His one aim always seemed to be to rid himself by death of any person in the least obnoxious to him; and even Cleopatra herself, when soon after these events she visited Judea, narrowly escaped this fate.

“The old Hyrcanus, of whom he had so long made a tool, was next despatched, having, by Herod's account, at his daughter Alexandra's suggestion, made an attempt to subvert his power; but it is very likely that this was just an excuse hatched up to get rid of him, now that Herod could do without him; yet, strange to say, notwithstanding these crimes, the king's power grew and extended. He engaged in a war with the Arabians, and when victorious was chosen by the Arabs to be their king; such influence had he over the minds of men, and