ished traditions. And why were they, the children of Israel, to change from the practices of their fathers? Their fathers had worshipped in no temple built by hand of man. The Tabernacle was a tent and above all, movable. . A temple identied itself with one place, the tabernacle was the equal heritage of every tribe. Jerusalem was not the only holy place ordained by God; Bethel was sacred, as well as Salem. And they saw, and perhaps with reason, the arrogance and pride. of their Jew brother and not the hand of God in this departure. To many it was concession to paganism pure and simple. It was the "nations who worshipped in buildings of brick and stone, not the faithful. Solomon always had leaning to idolatry. What merit that in its building there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house. This only proved that they knew they were workers of evil in giving up the tent prescribed by God Himself. And the evil it brought on the race in their subsequent divisions is undoubted. On their part the children of Judah thus first to wrong had sought to justify their evil conduct with a crusade of calumny against those they had injured. We injure a man, then lie about him. 'Tis human experience. There are charges and counter charges of mixing with alien blood. But a terrible past; the common appalling sufferings of both has at last banished these old feuds into the background of memory alone, and as a race they are beginning to consolidate. And we see inter-marrying taking place. It seems to have been amongst those claiming a common ancestry, and in any case races are not seriously affected by a few odd alliances with other people. Probably with the destruction of Nineveh many an Israelitish captive, with the homing instinct strong upon him, had again sought the land of his fathers, though with no flourish of trumpets as in the case of the Jew returning from Babylon. And now there seems a prospect of peace amongst this distracted people. Then we have the arrival of Ezra and his cortège, with all the pomp and panoply of

pride and power. We cannot but admire him, but also, we cannot help but ask, was he a happy selection to act as judge of his people. He was the literary man, the historian, the antiquarian, the dreamer, the man to whom the past of his people was far more a reality than was their present. And he lives in that past with all its fierce animosities and feuds, and he is heir to all the rancour and family hate which was then generated. And thus disposed to the neighbouring peoples he commences his mission of purification. In his story mankind rarely knows more cruel scourge than the untutored idealist with unbridled power. And with Ezra the facts almost approximated to these conditions. We see him in his work. He has no sense of actualities; he is confident in the purity of his motives, and he goes forward supremely unconscious of any suffering he may occasion. And he is to initiate a great reform; he is to initiate a policy that is to be a new era in ethical conception; he is now to mould the religious outlook of the Jew in the form that has survived to this day; but withal we cannot but ask, had it of necessity to be accompanied by reviving all the vendettas of a past? Rather might not his reforms have been more widespread, more effectual if in their initial stages they had comprised and not excluded those of his own kin? In particular the Samaritans were anxious as descendants of Jacob to identify themselves with the Jews, and they revived their bitter animosities only when their advances were repudiated with insolence and scorn. And urged on by his Babylonian contingent he speaks winged words; he carries conviction; there is wailing and lamentation, for has he not behind the commission, the might of the great Persian Empire itself? And nothing will satisfy, but wives must be divorced, children sent away, and homes broken up. Thus he awakes all the fierce animosities of the past. The die is cast and the policy is to be persisted in, and Nehemiah, a few years later, is to be as furiously fanatical. Thus we see him, with all the new arrivals,

violently out of sympathy with their first-returned brethren, and, above all, spurning their neighbours. No doubt, in their want of polish, they jarred exceedingly, but it was fatal for the race when they thus drove home their differences. Many would not. give up their domestic life at the bidding of these proud upstart foreigners with more Persian refinement than was good for plain and simple people, and there was a general secession to Samaria. We know the insistent claim of the Samaritans that they were quite as much the descendants of the patriarchs as the Jews themselves, and that their blood was every whit as pure, but we are not in a position to judge between them. We have only the account of the Samaritan defection as found in the books of Ezra's editing, not likely to be too impartial, and a Samaritan. purist might have waxed as eloquent over the marriage of Queen Esther and the terrible laxity it revealed. But the bitter feud between the two cities, and the resulting horrors of war which followed whenever the strong arm of a foreign master was removed is historical. Disdained by the Babylonian coterie, the Samaritans pursued their own fortunes, and at last, with the advent of Alexander their fortunes were equalized, and with his consent they built their rival temple on Mount Gerizim, of which the Manasses we have referred to became High Priest, and who was supported by the many other priests and Levites who had been similarly alienated from their own people. In their faith the Samaritans were the same as the Jews, though they severely limited their sacred books to the law alone. Of this their version is one of our most valuable possessions, and one of the earliest authorities for the ground it covers. But with the other sacred books which were collected or dictated they would have nothing to do whatever. Probably that Ezra was their dictator was more than ample warrant for their rejection. And the temple!-which they built; in which they worshipped the same God as did the Jews-it was their crowning crime to fan the

wrath of these implacables to a blaze of fury. And later on when, under the Maccabees, victory followed their arms and they triumphed over these miserable Samaritans, they razed their temple to the ground and destroyed their city with unspeakable ferocity. Then, that its place should be known no more they turned the waters of the streams upon it until it became as the wild or desert itself.

Thus terrible the denouement of the reign of hate once more established. It is the sowing of the wind; the reaping of the whirlwind is but postponed.

16. Many will rightly ask could Ezra have acted otherwise? Could he have carried out his scheme of reform without being ruthless as well? We cannot judge. At best we can say that such was not the attitude of our Lord to the Samaritans. Ezra was fervent in his conviction that his race had a divine mission, but it was for a greater than Ezra to teach that its mission was to the world and not to itself alone.

And thus we find Ezra mournful and distressed for the falling away of his people. It is not the mere intermarrying that grieves him, but it is what that intermarrying connotes. His people have forsaken the faith of their fathers; they are indifferent to the worship of their God. They have not got His law, in the great troubles it had been burnt; but they make no effort to replace it. Nor do they realize their loss. The very language in which it has been given them is becoming an unknown tongue, and their hearts are far more with the prevailing cults of the land. This he attributes to the influence of the alien tribes. anger flames out against them. He does not realize that the causes of the defection are deep-seated in human nature, and that his people fall away not because others delude them, but because they delight in being deluded. And with him all is disappointment. With what expectations had he left Babylon! We see him there. His delight is in the records of their past. He boasts a pedigree to Aaron himself. He is a great

His

antiquarian and scholar, but he has no complete copy of their holy book. And in the Temple at Jerusalem surely he will make good his deficiency. Instead, there they were not even interested in it, and a hopeless indifference cankers the faith of prince, priest, and people alike. Nor in their culture or refinement does he find any redeeming feature. Mostly herdsmen and petty farmers, their thought rises but little above their vocations. And he muses on the Babylon he has left. Its very atmosphere was more congenial. In the days of the Assyrian it had been otherwise. In those days, despised, humiliated, enslaved, and cruelly treated, the slightest variance between them they magnified into a mountain of difference. Captives, they treasured their old faith as their one precious possession, and delighted in accentuating all that divided them from their hated oppressors. With the Persian, courted, beloved, and honoured, all was the reverse. Cordially they welcomed and incorporated in their thought everything they approved which was not inconsistent with their own beliefs. And between the two races there was no little in common. The Persian was near accepting the faith of the Jew in its purest conception, whilst in his turn the Jew was fortified in his belief by the great teaching of the Persian. With both we find the same. vigorous note of life being a fight for the right. Superstitions were not and never will be wholly eradicated, but in their religion the ecstatic and the morbid had and was to have but little part. And as in the hands of Ezra we find the religion of the Jew more and more taking definite form, one great truth is ever thundered forth from which there is to be no departure -God is a God of righteousness, and is to be served and only served by a righteous life. In all the prophets alike rings out this same clarion note. "These are the things that ye shall do: speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates; and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath; for all these are things that I hate, saith