wretched monarch, "that for this cause, these troubles have come upon me, and, behold, I perish through great grief in a strange land." Could this ambitious king, no less powerful than he appears to have been unprincipled, have early learned to appreciate the force and excellence, taught in the following stanza of the "Universal Prayer," immortalized in Pope's popular translation, he might have lived a useful, and died an innocent, or, at least, an honest man:

"What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do,

This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heav'n pursue."

When Judas Maccabeus, the son of Mattathias, and valiant defender of his distracted country's rights against foreign aggression and domestic treason, fell mortally wounded in the disastrous battle of Mount Azotus, Jonathan and Simon, his patriotic brothers, buried his remains "in the sepulcher of his fathers in Modin," and then, joined by "all Israel," they "made great lamentation for him, and mourned many days," saying, "How is the valiant man fallen that delivered Israel!" Nothing is here said of Sheol, its nature and purpose, or the future life and expectation of the dead. Mourning and lamentation absorb all the passions of the bereft and prostrate soul, and bind it in fetters of brass to the scenes and the trials of earth and the grave.

Simon, the only surviving son of Mattathias, built a magnificent mausoleum over the venerated and sacred remains of his distinguished and heroic family, thus attesting the worth of the dead, and proclaiming the irrepressible and undying conviction, that what is so carefully preserved

and tenderly watched over, contains imperishable elements, or at least gives earnest of a life and activity beyond the grave, and is, in short, the swelling bud, from which shall unfold the fair and fragrant gnaphalium, always fresh, and ever blooming in the Paradise of God. This noble specimen of one of the fine arts, erected in memory of the worthy dead, is thus graphically delineated by the author: “Simon also built a monument upon the sepulcher of his father and his brethren, and raised it aloft to the sight, with hewn stone behind and before. Moreover, he set up several pyramids, one against another, for his father and his mother, and his four brethren; and in these he made cunning devices, about which he set great pillars, and upon the pillars he made all their armor for a perpetual memory, and by the armor ships carved, that they might be seen of all that sail on the sea; this is the sepulcher which he made at Modin, and it standeth yet unto this day."

PARAGRAPH VII.

The Second Book of the Maccabees, vii. 1-42; the Martyr Family, or the Soul's Triumph over Death. God's Retributive Justice.

Though the Book, in which the Jewish martyr-family, composed of a magnanimous mother and her seven indomitable sons, is classed by the Jews and the Protestants among the apocrypha, it appears that this sad and most affecting tragedy in Jewish life, is authentic, or, at least, not singular in human vicissitudes, and therefore merits respectful attention. For though the horrible outrages which this heroic family endured, were so atrocious and appalling as to seem almost incredible, they were not—as the sequel will show, without striking counterparts in the

bloody annals of the Chosen People, embracing the same eminently calamitous period as that in which they lived and became the victims of an ungovernable tyranny. An example borrowed from "The Antiquities of the Jews," 3d Volume, page 117-118, by Flavius Josephus, will at once confirm and illustrate the assertion. Speaking of Alexander Janneus who-after the death of Aristobulus, his father, was proclaimed King of Judea, he says: "Now as Alexander fled to the mountains to avoid falling into the hands of Demetrius, the King of Syria, six thousand of the Jews hereupon came together to him: deserted to him from Demetrius, out of pity for him on account of the adverse change in his fortune. Upon which Demetrius was afraid, and retired out of the country; after which, the Jews fought against Alexander, and, being beaten, were slain in great numbers, in the several battles which they had and when he had shut up the most powerful of them in the city of Bethome, he besieged them, and when he had taken the city, and gotten the men into his power, he brought them to Jerusalem, and did one of the most barbarous actions in the world to them; for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified, and while they were still alive, he commanded the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes.

Beside the foregoing instance in proof of the repetition of similar atrocities in those days of deep humiliation and flagrant wrong, Doctor Prideaux in his "Connections

*He was, hence, nick-named Alexander the Thracian, or the Barbarous.-G.

of the Old and New Testaments," 2d Volume, page 417418, furnishes another parallel case of enormous cruelty, inflicted upon the descendants of the Father of the Faithful," and thus still further confirms and strengthens the evidence in behalf of the credibility of the extreme suffering of the brave and pious martyr-family: "And, whereas two women were found at Jerusalem to have circumcised their male children, of which they had been lately delivered, they hanged those children about their necks, and having led them, in this manner, through the city, cast them headlong over the steepest part of the walls, and also slew all those who had been accessory with them in the performance of this forbidden rite. And with the same severity, they treated all others who were found in the practice of any one of their former religious usages, contrary to what the king had commanded."

The admirable faith-perhaps obstinate zeal, of the illustrious martyr-family, which raised their aspirations infinitely above the narrow confines of the present world, and rendered their fidelity to God and the religion of their ancestors, invincible amid the most excruciating tortures and cruel taunts, was not limited-as we have seen, to this extraordinary family-the model-sufferers, no doubt, of the Jewish race, but had its parallel: as we shall presently still further learn, from the reiterated testimony of the celebrated Jewish historian already quoted, in the conviction and professions of other devout and steadfast contemporary Jews, and was, in fact, the common faith among the orthodox believers of the period.

* Athenæus, the king's overseer or lieutenant, and his subalterns.-G.

In the third volume of his Antiquities of the Jews, page 43-44, our attention is solicited to the following solemn and pathetic address: “O my fellow-soldiers," thus speaks the heroic and devout Judas Maccabeus, "no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by affording us the liberty of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at present, that you must either recover that liberty, and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws, and the customs of our country, or submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain, if you should be beaten in this battle. Fight, therefore, manfully; and suppose that you must die though you do not fight. But believe, that beside such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory," etc.*

Again referring to Doctor Prideaux, it may be remarked, that apparently he entertains not the least doubt that the account of a series of the most diabolical cruelties, inflicted upon the doomed martyr-family, as we find it recorded in 2 Maccabees, vii. 1-42, is genuine, and that, accordingly, it deserves the respect and confidence of posterity. His words, in the 2d Volume, page 420, of the valuable Work

* I must confess that I do not feel quite satisfied with the authenticity of this harangue, when I remember that authors-once in awhile, make the speeches which they ascribe to their heroes!-G.