1 "/^n i //^ % Wk ■ /'- / J^ ^m fra K J )■ \ i -^ / -„•!,--) ,.:-K f: '^'^I&'V m r- ■*- J \ \ ' :< - '■: :■ -'"s ,^'.-,, ;,:;:-L/ , / \ . , y^-^ te||f :l'r 'y^ - y ■ C;^ .^ .-— — ~ ;_-'"_ — — '-■ \ •i^s v^: '*-» 'n MtfRICAM UTMWiUmK CO,N' " Neither cast ye your pearls before swine." — St. Matt, vii : 6 BEAUTIFUL PEARLS OF CATHOLIC TRUTH CONTAINING THE Teachings of the Holy Catholic Church AND THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE BIBLE AS INTERPRETED BY THE ONE TRUE CHURCH FOUNDED BY OUR DIVINE SAVIOUR INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE: LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN: GOSPEL STORY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD; GROUNDS OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE: LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ST. PETER: FAITH AND HOPE; FAITH AND REASON, ETC. TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHIES OF ILLUSTRIOUS SAINTS THE STATIONS OR HOLY WAY OF THE CROSS: DISCOURSES UPON THE SACRAMENTS, THE HOLY ANGELS, TEACHINGS OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES, THE HOLY ROSARY, THE CONFESSION, INVOCATION OF SAINTS, ETC., ETC. FROM THE WRITINGS OF THE FOLLOWING DISTINGUISHED AUTHORS: Rt. Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, LL.D., His Eminence Cardinal Henry Edward Manning. Rt. Rev. Thomas O'Gorman, D.D., Rev. Arnold Damen, S.J. AND OTHER EMINENT CATHOLIC WRITERS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA TO WHICH IS ADDED A SKETCH OF THE APOSTLE OF TEMPERANCE, FATHER MATHEW AND TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM A CATHOLIC POINT OF VIEW PROFUSELY EMBELLISHED WITH SUPERB ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS, PHOTOTYPE AND WOOD ENGRAVINGS 1^ • r'Vl HENRY SPHAR .s, CO. CINCINNATI, OHIO Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by THOMAS M. FITZGERALD, In the office of the Librari:in of Congress, at Washington, D. C. All Rights Reserved. lOAt) STACK SPECIAL NOTICE. The publishers will not offer this book for sale in Book-Stores. It is published exclusively for subscribers, and can only be obtained by or- dering it of our authorized representatives who have secured agencies for this great work. It will on no account be sold at less than regular sriuted orices. r t ini.W'i iii.:;iriuii,n,.;,u.iiyi' Ijil ^h^Uh ct5tbi897 J(i.Jr.K.ii2k6ad. Cer^son Depiitaliis. §ct6t!?i897 Arc\ih\^liop offlewMovk. f 403 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/beautifulpearlsoOOoreirich Krom Catholic Church News, Washington, D. C. We have received a copy of " Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth," from the writings of Cardinal Manning, Bishop O' Gorman, Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, Rev. Arnold Damen, S. J., and other eminent writers of Europe and .\merica. The volume is profusely embellished with illustrations in colors, phototypes, and wood engravings. Among the colored illustrations are the Stations of the Cross, which occupy a page each. The life of the Blessed Virgin by Rev. Bernard O'Reilly is illustrated with woodcuts as are many other articles. Apostolic Delegation, 201 I Street N. W., Washington, D. C. Dear Sir : I received the copy of the " Catholic Pearls " which you so kindly sent to me. I feel very grateful to you for your kindness, and I hope your book will be of great utility for the Catholic people. With esteem, I remain Yours sincerely, Y//^' a> -SB m CHRIST TAKING LEAVE OP HIS MOTHER HOLY WOMEN AT THE TOMB OF CHRIST SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST THB STATIONS;. OR. THH HOLY WAY OF THB CROSS. THE ANTIPHON. T.'B beseech Thee, O Lord ! to assist and direct our actions by Thy powerful grace, and all our prayers and works may always btgin and end with Thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. A PREPARATORY ACT OF CONTRITION. O Jesus, treasure of my soul, infinitely good, infinitely merciful, behold me prostrate at Thy sacied feet! Sinner as I am, I fly to the arms of Thy mercy, and implore that grace which melts and converts — the grace of true compunction. I have offended Thee, adorable Jesus I I repent; let the favor of my love equal the baseness of my ingratitude. This Way of the Cross, grant me to offer devoutly in memory of that painful journey Thou hast travelled for our redemption, to the Cross of Calvary, with the holy de.v,^jH /^^^^^^^^^T '^'^^^wH^ ( \^^mj£^:u^m^ IWr^/' ^^^^J^HL. ^F^^NI^iA ^^^^^^^^H ^ -iilP^^^^'Hi 1 1 "^^^« V^ls-----^ v^^h/JKIIHL ^^ JFI^IPm w / / I—:: :: i : — ■ — i^ Jesus falls the fir,st time undef^the Gnoss. Station IV. Jesus carrying the Cross, meets his most afflicted Mother. » Station VIII. Ghf^ist consoles the Women of Jerusalem who wept over him. Station Vni. Christ consoles the Women of yerusalem, who wept over Him. V . We adore Thee O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee, rv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world. !HIS Station represents the place where several devout women meeting Jesus, and beholding Him wounded and bathed in His blood, shed tears of com- passion over Him. Consider the excessive love of Jesus, who, though languishing and half dead through the multitude of His torments, is nevertheless attentive to console the women who wept over Him. They merited that tender consolation from the mouth of Jesus, " Weep not over me, but over yourselves and your children." Weep for your sins, the sources of my affliction. Yes, O my soul I I will obey my suffering Lord, and pour out tears of compunction. Nothing more eloquent than the voice of those tears which flow from the horror of those sins. Address Him the following Prayer* JESUS, ONLY BEGOTTEN SoN OF THE Father ! who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes, that I may day and night weep and lament my sins ? I humbly beseech Thee by these tears of blood Thou didst shed for me, to soften my flinty bosom, that tears may plentifully flow from my eyes, and contrition rend my heart, this hardened heart, to cancel my crimes and render me secure in the day of wrath and examination, when Thou wilt come to judge the living and the dead, and demand a rigorous account of Thy blood. Amen, Jesus. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us ! With tears of love the women they did weep. Compassionating our Redeemer sweet ; Weep for your sins who caused Him here to be O Lamb of God Thy mercy show to me. ^tattan IX. yesus falls under the Cross the third time. V . We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. rv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world, (EI?c IHystcry, ^HIS Station represents the foot of Mount Calvary, where Jesus Christ, quite destitute of strength, falls a third time to the ground. The anguish of His wounds is renewed. Consider here the many Injuries and blasphemous derisions thrown out against Christ, to compel Him to rise and hasten to the place of execution, that His inveterate enemies might enjoy the savage satisfaction of beholding Him expire on the Cross. Consider that by your sins you daily hurry Him to the place of execution. Approach Him in thought to the foot of Mount Calvary, and cry out against the accursed weight of sin that prostrated Jesus, and had long since buried thee in the flames of hell, if His mercy and the merits of His passion had not preserved thee. Prayer* CLEMENT Jesus ! I return Thee infinite thanks for not permitting me, ungrateful sinner, as Thou has permitted thousands less criminal, to die in their sins. I. who have added torments to Thy torments, by heaping sin on sin, kindle in my soul the fire of charity, fan it with Thy continual grace into perseverance, until, delivered from the body of this death, I can enjoy the liberty of the children of God and Thy co-heirs. Amen, Jesus ! Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us ! On Calvary's height a third time see Him fall, Livid with bruises that our sight appal. O gracious Lord, this sufferedst Thou for me. To save my soul from endless misery. Station IX. AftmtMi UTHOORAPHtC CO.N Jesus falls under the Gf^oss the third time . Station X. Jesus is stripped of his Gaf^mentsand offef^edVinegaf?, and Gall. ^taiwn X* yesus is stripped of His Garments, and offered Vinegar and GaM. V . We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. rv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world. £Ct?e ttlystery. !HIS Station represents how our Lord Jesus Christ ascended Mount Calvary, and was by His inhuman executioners stripped of His garments. The skin and congealed blood are torn off with them, and His wounds renewed. Consider the confusion of the modest Lamb, exposed naked to the con- tempt and derision of an insulting rabble. They present Him with vinegar and gall for a refreshment. Condemn here that delicacy of taste, that sensual indulgence, with which you flatter your sinful body. Pray here for the spirit of Christian mortification. Think how happy you would die if, stripped of the world and its attachments, you could expire covered with the blood and agony of Jesus. Prayer. Buffering Jesus ! I behold Thee stnpt of Thy garments, Thy old wounds renewed, and new ones added to the old. I behold Thee naked in the pres- ence of thousands, exposed to the inclemency of the weather ; cold, tremb- ling from head to foot, insulted by the blasphemous derisions of the spectators. Strip, O mangled Lamb of God ! my heart of the world and its deceitful affections. Divest my soul of its habits of sensual indulgence. Embitter the poisoned cup of pleasure, that I may dash it with contempt from my lips, and through Christian mortifica- tion arrive at Thy never fading glory. Amen, Jesus. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us ! O Queen of angels, how thy heart did bleed To see thy Son stripped naked here indeed, And to the vile and cruel throng exposed, Who round Him now in furious hatred closed 3ttttwn XL Christ is nailed to the Cross. V • We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. Iv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world. (n?e JTtystcry* .HIS Station represents the place where Jesus Christ, in the presence of Hia afflicted mother, is stretched on the Cross, and nailed to it. How insufferable the torture — the nerves and sinews are rent by the nails. Consider the exceeding desolation, the anguish of the tender Mother, eye-witness of this inhuman punishment of her beloved Jesus. Generously resolve then to crucify your criminal desires, and nail your sins to the wood of the Cross. Contemplate the suffering resignation of the Son of God to the will of His Father, while yoa are impa- tient in trifling afflictions, in trivial disappointments. Purpose henceforth to embrace your cross with ready resignation to the will of God. Prayer. PATIENT Jesus ! meek Lamb of God ! who promised, " When I shall be exalted from earth I will draw all things to myself," attract my heart to Thee, and nail it to the Cross. I now renounce and detest my past impatience. Let me crucify my flesh with its concupiscence and vices. Here burn, here cut, but spare me for eternity. I throw myself into the arms of Thy mercy. Thy will be done in all things Grant me resignation, grant me Thy love, I desire no more. Amen, Jesus. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us I You Christian hearts now join with Mary's grief; Heaven and earth behold! deny relief; Hrr heart was pierced with bitter grief to see H»r loving Jesus nailed unto a tree. Station XI. AMCniCAM UTHOGRAmiC CO.N Jesus is nailed to the Cross. Station XII. AMfMCM UTHOMAFHtC CAItV Christ is exalted on the Cross and dies. Station Xn. Christ is exalted on the Cross, and dies. V . We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. fv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world. !HIS Station represents the place where Jesus Christ was publicly exalted or. the Cross between two robbers, who, for their enormous crimes, were executed ?)^ with the innocent Lamb. Consider here the confusion of your Saviour, exposed naked to the profane view of a blasphemous multitude. Imagine yourself at the foot of the Cross. Behold that sacred body streaming blood from every part. Contemplate the divine countenance pale and languid, the heart throbbing in the last pangs of agony, the soul on the point of separation ; yet charity triumphs over His agony ; His last prayers petition forgiveness for His enemies : "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." His clemency is equally extended to the penitent thief: " This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." He recommends in His last moments His disconsolate Mother to His beloved St. John. He recommends His soul to His heavenly Father, and bowing down His submissive, obedient head, resigns His spirit. Turn your eyes on the naked, bloody portrait of charity. Number His wounds. Wash them with tears of sympathizing love. Behold the arms extended to embrace you. Love of Jesus I thou diest to deliver us from eternal captivity. Prayer, SUFFERING Son of God ! I now behold Thee in tlie last convulsive pangs of death — Thy veins opened. Thy sinews torn. Thy hands and feet, O Foun- tain of Paradise ! distilling blood. I acknowledge, charitable Jesus, that my reiterated offences have been Thy merciless executioners, the cause of Thy bitter sufferings and death. Yet, God of mercy, look on my sinful soul, bathe it in Thy precious blood ! Let me die to the vanity of the world, and renounce its false pleasures. Thou didst pray, my Jesus, for Thy enemies. I forgive mine. I embrace them in the bowels of Thy charity. I bury my resentment in Thy wounds. Shelter me in the day of wrath in the sanctuary of Thy side. Let me live, let me die, in my crucified Jesus. Amen. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us I Behold the streams of blood from every part, Behold the sharp lance that pierc'd His Sacred Heart ; On Calvary's Mount behold Him naked hang, To suffer for our sins pain's utmost pang. Christ is taken down from the Cross. V . We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. Iv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the worlH d?e mystery. >HIS Stition represents the place where Christ's most sacred body was taken down from the Cross by Joseph and Nicodemus, and laid in the bosom of His weeping Mother. Consider the sighs and tears of the Virgin Mother, with what pangs she embraced the bloody remains of her beloved Jesus. Here unite your tears with those of the disconsolate Mother. Reflect that your Jesuj wouM not descend from the Cross until He consummated the work of redemption ; and that at His departure from, as well as at His entrance into the world, He would be placed in the bosom of His beloved Mother. Hence learn constancy in your pious resolutions ! cleave to the standard of the Cross. Consider with what purity that soul should be adorned which receives, in the blessed Sacrament of the Eucliarist, Christ's most sacred body and blood. Prayer* T LENGTH, O Blessed Virgin 1 Mother of sorrow ! thou art permitted to embrace thy beloved Son. But alas ! the fruit of thy immaculate womb is all over mangled, in one continued wound. Yes, O Lord ! the infernal fury of the Jews has at length triumphed ; yet we renew their barbarity, crucifying Thee by our sins, inflicting new wounds. Most afflicted mother of my Redeemer, I conjure thee by the pains and torments thou sufferedst in the common cause of Salvation, to obtain for me, by thy powerful intercession, pardon of my sins, and grace to weep with a sympathizing feeling, thine and thy Son's afflictions. As often as I appear at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, let me embrace Tliee, my Jesus, in the bosom of my heart. May I worthily receive Thee as the sacred pledge of my salvation. Amen, Jesus. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us I When from the Cross they took this blessed fonu. His Mother cries, my Son, I am forlorn ; My child is dead, you virgins join with me. Bewail in tears my love's sad desiiny. Station XIII AMCmCM UntOCHAMIC CO.MV Christ is taken down ff^omthe Cross. Station XIV. m-fHitiH i.r.-ji;i»*WiiCa).1 Christ is laid in the Holy Sepulchre. Station XIV. Christ is laid in the Holy Sepulchre, V . We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee. Iv. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the uond. d?e IHystcry, .HIS Station represents Christ's Sepulchre, where His oiessed body was laid with piety and devotion. Consider the emotions of the Virgin — her eyes streaming with tears, her bosom heaving with sighs. What melancholy, what wisttul looks she cast on that monument where the treasure of her soul, her Jesus, her all, Jay entombed. Here lament your want of contrition for your sins, and humbly adore your deceased Lord, who, poor even in death, is buried in another's tomb. Blush at your dependence on the world, and the eager solicitude with which you labor to grasp its. perishable advantages. Despise henceforth the world, lest you perish with it. Prayen "HARITABLE Jesus, for my salvation Thou performedst the painful journey of the Cross. Let me press the footsteps marked by Thee, gracious Redeemer — the paths which, through the thorns of life, conduct to the heavenly Jerusalem. Would that Thou wert entombed in my heart, that being united to Thee, I might rise to a new life of grace, and persevere to the end. Grant me, in my last moments, to receive Thy precious Body, as the pledge of immortal life. Let my last words be Jesus and Mary, my last breath be united to Thy last breath on the Cross ; that with a lively faith, a firm hope and ardent love, I may die with Thee and for Thee ; that I may reign with Thee for ever and ever. Amen, Jesus. Our Father, &c. Hail Mary, &c. Glory, &c. Jesus Christ crucified, have mercy on us ! You pious Christians, raise your voices, raise, And join with me to sing your Saviour's praise. Who shed His blood for us and died in pain. To save our souls from hell's eternal flame. (lortclusion. ^ ^ ^,|i^ OMPASSIONATE Jesus ! behold with eyes of mercy this devotion I have endeavored to perform, Jm Vy)^#r in honor of Thy bitter passion and death, in order to obtain remission of my sins, and the pains ^1 (WfM) incurred by them. Accept of it for the salvation of the living and the eternal repose of the J ^^^^ faithful departed, particularly for those for whom I directed it. Do not, my Jesus, suffer the ineffable price of Thy blood to be fruitless, nor my miserable soul ransomed by it, to perish. The voice of Thy blood is louder for mercy than my crimes for vengeance. Have mercy then, O Lord 1 have mercy, and spare me for Thy mercy's sake I Amen, Jesos. CONTENTS. Comprehensive History of the Books of the Holy Catholic Bible. The Parables of our Lord Jesus Christ. Illuminated Plate of the Ten Commandments. Scripture Illustrations of Scenes in the Lives of the Patriarchs, Prophets and Kings of the Old Tes- tament. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Christ. Cities and Towns of the Bible. Scenes in the Life of St. Paul. Life of the Blessed Virgin Marv. Illuminated Plate of the Seven Sacraments. Illuminated Portrait of Pope Leo XIII. Fourteen Illuminated Plates of the Stations or Holy Way of the Cross. Family Record of Births, Marriages and Deaths. Life and Writings of St. Peter. Illuminated Plate of the I,ord's Prayer. Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, Contained in the Profession of Faith. Faith and Hope. — Meditations for a Month. Gospel Story of the Passion of Our Lord. The Blessed Sacrament, the Centre of Immutable Truth. The Holy Rosary. The Holy Angels. The Ceremonies of Holy Week Explained. Four Illuminated Tabernacle Plates: — The Furniturk OF THE Tabernacle ; The Tabernacle in the Wil- derness; The Molten Sea; High Priest in "Linen Robes " and in " Garments of Beauty and Glory." The Teaching of the Twelve. Invocation of the Saints. Practical Advice on Confession. How TO Help the Sick and Dying. The Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order. Legends of St. P'rancis. St. Antony of Padua. St. Ignatius Loyola. St. Thomas Aquinas. Father Damien, the Apostle of the Leper.<;. Father Mathew, the Apostle of Temperance. Total Abstinence from a Catholic Point of View. The Little Sisters of the Poor. Faith and Reason. Sayings of Brother Giles, one of the First Disciples OF St. Francis of Assisi. How Catholics Come to be Misunderstood. The Church or the Bible : Which was Appointed by Christ to Teach Mankind the True Religion ? The One True Church. — The Only Church that Christ Established k the Catholic Church. The Great Truths — Short Meditations for the Season of Advent. Pearls from the Hidden Treasures of Holy Mass The Reunion of Christendom. The Sacred Heart. The Ministry of Jesus. Saint Mary Magdalen and other Women of the New Testament. Bible Atlas — Showing the Countries Mentioned in THE Bible. INS i A Comprehensive History OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE Written Expressly for this Edition BY REV. BERNARD O'REILLY, L D. (LAVAL.) Author of '• . -I^roic Women of the Bible and the Church," "A Life of Pius IX.," "The Mirror of True Womanhood," " True Men as we Need Them," etc., etc. The Whole Beautifully Illustrated with Appropriate and Select Scripture Subjects. Copyright, 18&4. INTRODUCTORY. Most dear to the hearts of children in a family blessed with the i>est of parents and brought up to the practice of all that is most ennobling, is every monument of the dead or absent father's love. Were it so to happen that such a father, whose whole life had been one of self-sacrifice and incomparable devotion to the interest of his dear ones, should bequeath them in dying, not only a share forever in his wealth and honor, but his last will and testament to be kept continually before their eyes in the home he had created for them — how would they not reverence this ever-present memo- rial of their worshipped parent's loving care? How would they iiot, in perusing every line and word of this last declaration of a father's tender forethought, find their own hearts moved by its un- dying eloquence — as if a hidden fire lived in each word to warn their own souls to gratitude, to generosity, and to all nobleness of life? This is precisely what we have in that Book of books, the Bible.* What we know of God's dealings with man proves Him to be much more of the parent than of the lord and master. Indeed when the Son came down in person to redeem and to teach the world. He taught us to call the Infinite God, with whom He is eter- nally one in the unity of the Godhead, by the sweet and endearing name of Father. This was only restoring the supernatural relation which existed between God and man from the beginning of the latter's creation. For it is a doctrine of the Catholic faith, that Adam was raised by his all-bountiful Creator to the aivine rank of adopted child of God. This rank with its privileges and prospective glory Adam forfeited by his sin; and this rank Christ, the Second Adam, restored to us, thus repairing the ruin caused by our first parent. And because the Heavenly Father's purpose was, from the begin- ning, to raise us all up in Christ to the dignity from which we had fallen in Adam, therefore His wisdom provided means by which Adam and his descendants could still recover a claim to their lost rank and inheritance. A Saviour was promised them in Christ; *The word "bible" is of Greek origin. The Egyptian reed papyrus (ancient Egyptiat V/») was called pj^xoj, i}'i/os, by the Greeks, and from its inner- most bark or cuticle, covering the p^j<, was made the papyrus or paper which, when written upon, was denominated /JijSjloj. A bundle of these scrolls was given Ihe name of 3i/3j.tov — and the nomin.ntive plural /3tf3xta, was adopted by the Latins, and employed to designate what we now call the BiBLE, that is, the col •ction of inspired books of both the Old and the New Testaments. and they were required to believe in that Saviour, to hold fast to that promise, to profess that faith openly, and fulfil all the other condi- tions required by their Divine Benefactor as distinguishing those who were to have a share with the future Redeemer and Restorer. This new covenant or testament, made by our merciful Father between Himself and Adam with his posterity, was preserved and cherished among the descendants of Seth, who were, in view of their living faith in the one true God and the promised Saviour, called '■ the Sons of God " in the midst of a sinful world. It was this same living faith that saved Noe and his sons from the flood which swept their guilty brethren off the face of the earth. And when they came forth from the Ark, or ship, in which the hand of God had guarded them, their Preserver renewed His covenant with them, and once more enjoined, with increased solemnity, the duty of holding on invincibly to the Faith of Adam, of Abel, of Seth, and of Henoch. When, in the course of time, the great bulk of mankind, now spread over the earth, forgot God and the faith in His most mer- ciful Promise, Abraham was raised up as Noe had been to keep that faith alive in his family and descendants. To that family, become a people — God's own chosen people — the covenant was renewed more solemnly than ever before on Mount Sinai; and Moses, the deliverer and guide of that psople, was inspired to write, for the instruction of all future time, the story of the creation of the world, of man's origin, of his elevation and fall, and of the Promise thus successively committed, like God's will and testa- ment, to Adam, to Seth, to Noe, to Abraham, and to Moses in behalf of our fallen and disinherited race. To the five books (Pentateuch) left us by Moses others were added age after age, completing the story of God's dealings witli mankind, till God's own Son at length came down on earth, uniting our human nature with His Godhead, and to all who receive him as their Redeemer He giveth "power to be made the Sons of God." Of Him — the Saviour, the Promised One — the Old Testament is full as well as the New. What wonder, then, seeing that God's faithful servants under the law of nature, and God's chosen people under the Mosaic law, were alike, upon earth, the Family of the Almighty Father — what wonder, if in that family, men and women, generation after generation, loved to make of the Sacred Scriptures the subject of devout and most profitable meditation ? Before the coming of Christ, how believing and yearning souls were wont to weigh the words of the oft-repeated Promise, and tf a) HISTORY Or THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC feed their hopes upon the study of the succession of events which, each as it happened, foreshadowed His redemption, and made the heart, sick with the spectacle of contemporary degeneracy, look ff)rward to the establishment of the Kingdom of God, to His sweet sovereign sway over the spirits and lives of all men ! And since His coming and His return to Heaven, how earnestly do His followers the whole world over bathe their souls in the light of that everlasting glory into which He has entered to pre- pare us a place, and the ravishing perspectives of which lift man heavenward and enable him to bear every most bitter trial, to undertake the most arduous labor, and to fulfil the most painful "sacrifices in view of the eternal reward and of the Infinite Love which bestows it ! In the immense Christian family, spread all over the earth, there is not a household in which " the words of eternal life" (St. John vi. 69) do not thus furnish sweetest food to the souls of young and old. For it is most sweet for enlightened and pious Christian parents to select from the Prophetical Books of the Old Testament the passages in which, so many centuries in advance, the Holy Spirit had prompted the inspired writers to describe the manner of Christ's coming. His sacred person, the labors, persecutions and death by which He was to redeem the world ; His miracles, His wisdom, and the immortal society He was to found. It is still, as it ever has been, most sweet to contemplate in the mighty events recorded in the Historical Books, the types of the great realities to be accomplished in the life of Christ, or in that of His church. Even the personages whose characters and deeds are recorded therein, when viewed with the eye of faith, all seem to point to Christ, whom they resemble in many wondrous ways, while still preserving their own identity, their own littlenesses and weaknesses. Nor is it less delightful and refreshing to the soul to take up any one of the merely didactic or moral Books. Job still teaches the world and stirs the soul of every reader from amid the ruins of his home and the utter wreck of all his greatness and prosperity. Sol- omon still instructs princes and peoples, the highest and the lowliest, in the pregnant works which reflect his wisdom, and contain the manifold lessons of his long experience, of his days of innocence and wide-spread earthly dominion, and of his maturer years obscured by ingratitude to God, by boundless sensuality, and that worship of self which so easily leads to the worst forms of heathenish idolatry. The author of Ecclesiasticus, Jesus, the son of Sirach, sings a hymn in praise of all the virtues, private and public, most dear to the heart of God, and sets before us, in succession, the images of the godlike men, who, since' Adam, have glorified the Creator of mankind as well as human nature itself. But sweeter than all the other inspired writers of the Old Law is the King-Prophet, David, the ancestor of Mary and her Divine Son, "the sweet singer of Israel." The church, spread all over the earth, uses his Psalms of prayer and praise in her solemn offices ; and her children, in their private devotions, ever find in these heart-cries of the nnx:h-tried David the very sentiments and words most suited to their needs in good and ill fortune, in trial and in temptation. And so has the word of God, coming to us through the inspired books of the Old Testament, borne to every household, and to every soul within it, both during our darkest and during our sun- niest days, comfort and peace, light, and warmth, and unfailing strength from the all-loving heart of our Father in Heaven I Butj oh, what shall we say of the books of the New Testa- ment ? Of the Gospels, which set before us the simple and soul- stirring narrative of Christ's incarnation, birth, labors, miracles, sufferings and death ? Of the Acts of the Apostles, relating the birth of Christ's Church, and the struggles, sufferings, labors and triumphs of His two chief apostles, Peter and Paul ? And finally, 0^ the other divinely beautiful instructions left to the Christian IIBLE. glorio'is parents under God, thk world by these same Apostl'"', i fathers of the new "people of|God,'' to be made up of all the and held in the bonds of a true brotherhood by the one faith in|Christ and the all-pervading love of the Father ? Do we not all remember, we fiiildren of Christian parents, how we hung in childhood and youlh on the lips of father and mother as they read to us the sublime story of Christ's life and death ? how we fancied ourselves to be kneeling with the Sh'ipherds around His crib, or travelling jrith Him and His parents across the desert to Egypt and back a|ain to Nazareth ? How we loved to behold Him in imagination's He grew up in the carpenter's shop — the lovely child, the gBU:eful and modest youth, the son lovingly obedient to Mary and Joseph during all these years of obscure toil and patient preparation for His great missionary work? And then how we followed the Mighty Teacher, during the three years of His public-life, as He ran His giant race — preaching, healing, enlightening the whole land as with the steady, but brief splendors of a heaverwent meteor, till the young life was quenched amid the dark and shimeful scenes of Calvary ? Have we not, in our turn, reid to our dear parents in their hour of darkness and trial — in poverty, or sickness, or when the shadow of death was over the home — sane one sweet passage, more pregnant with heavenly light and consolation than the others, which made once more sunshine in their louls, which lifted up the fainting heart, which filled the spirit of our sorely-tried dear ones with re- newed hopes and strength to doandto endure, which enabled them to bear the bitter pang of pBsent losses in view of the eternal reward — or which made the passage from this life to the next bright, lightsome, joyous and ixultant, like the blessed bridals of the children of God? And see how wonderfully thit all-wise Providence, which clearl) seeing things from end to end ordereth all things sweetly and surely, has taken means for piteerving these sacred writings amid the rise and fall of kingdoms ind empires, amid the revolutions, the destruction and the decay, which lift one hitherto obscure or barbarous race into power and long rule, while other races, till then prosperous, irresistible |nd enlightecgd, disappear forever from history. Here we have, at this very m^ent, the same Hebrew descendants of Abraham, to whor\ Moses jcommittcd, with the Tables of the Law delivered on Sii:c.i, the Hntateuch or five volumes written by himself, subsisting in our mist, clinging to their ancient faith with heroic tenacity, and chfishing not only the five books of Moses, but what they conceiveto be the original Hebrew Scriptures with a religious fervor tha*; wil tolerate no change in substance o' in letter. Have we often reflected onlthe miraculous co-existence, side by side, and in every part of thejglobe, of the children of the Syna- gogue and of those of the Chuith — the former bearing undying tes- timony to the divinity of the Old Testament Scriptures — the latter vouching for the authority o^ fhe New? Only think of the sin- gular phenomenon which th«| presence of Abrahamite Hebrews amid the peoples of Christendoin offers to the historian and philoso- pher 1 They remain distinct J'om all other peoples while living among them ; 'mingling with Europeans, Africans, Asiatics and Americans in every walk of Ijfe and field of industry, and yet preserving their own national Characteristics and physical type as clearly and persistently as th^ preserve their ancient religious faith and time-honored custorife. In the tents of the Moham- medan Bedaween they protest against the monstrous reveries of the Coran and the pretenslpns of the Arabian visionary; amid the crowded cities of (Hiina and India they uphold, as against idolatry, the doctrine of the one living God ; ind in ou' midst, in the temple of Christian civilization, they bear witnes» unceasingly to the dwinity of the Old Testament Scripture& HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. 3 tnd to the abiding faith of their ancestors and themselves in the promised Redeemer. The conquering and widely dominating races of Babylon, Nine- veh, Persia, and Egypt have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth. We can dig up from the Mesopotamian plains gigantic statues — the ornaments of palaces and temples contemporary with Heber and Abraham — and we discover far beneath the surface of the ruin-strewed earth whole chambers crowded with inscribed bricks and cylinders, the fragmentary annals of kingdoms grown old before Rome had been founded. But the wild nomadic tribes who aid the discoverer in his researches are not the descendants of the mighty races who ruled there upward of three thousand years ago. These have left upon earth no lineal heirs to the land, to its ruins, or to its glories. So is it with Egypt. Modern curiosity and modern science have found their way into the very heart of the Pyramids, and rifled the tombs of the monarchs who ')uilt them ; we have penetrated the deepest cave-sepulchres of the Valley of Kings at Thebes the Mag- nificent and Incomparable. Bu\. the sordid Arab and ignorant Fellah, who serve as guides and workmen to the explorer, have no thought of claiming descent from or kinship with the ancient people who inhabited the Nile Valley in its days of surpassing glory. The descendants of Joseph and Aaron do, indeed, still live and thrive amid the modern cities along the shores of the great river ; but of the warlike people who went forth under the Pharaohs to enslave the surrounding nations, no trace is left save in the tombs where the mummies of princes, priests, and warriors have slept for three thousand years beside the remains of the dumb animals they had, in life, worshiped in place of the living God ! Even so is it in the once imperial Rome. Not even the proudest of her living nobles, much less the lower and middle classes of her actual population, can establish any claim to direct descent from the families who dwelt there under the consuls or under the emperors. Thus, in every civilized country beneath the sun, and every day on which that sun rises, we have these two immortal societies stand- ing before us, side by side — the Jewish synagogue and the Catholic Church — and presenting to us the Old and the New Testaments as the Revealed Will of the one true and living God who is the Creator and the Judge of the whole race of man. For the divinity of the Old Testament Scriptures and the faith in the Promised Messiah the Jewish race has borne unfaltering and heroic witness for three thousand years ; to the divinity of the New Testament and the fulfillment of all these promises in the person of Christ Jesus the Catholic Church has borne her witness during eighteen cen- turies. And this twofold testimony fills all historic time with a light as self-evident as the radiance of the noonday sun. What a spectacle to the religious mind ! What a consolation to the Chris- tian who sets more store on the promises of the eternal life and the glories of Christ's everlasting kingdom than on all the greatness and the glories, the possessions and the enjoyments of time ! THE OLD TESTAMENT. Of the inspired writings thus committed to the care of the people of God before the birth of Christ the first in importance, as well as in the order of time, are five books of Moses, therefore called The Pentateuch* or The Law. Then come the historical books, comprising : Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four Books of ^Kings, first and second Paralipomenon, first and second Esdras, first and second Machabees, together with Tobias, Judith, and Esther. Next in order are the doctrinal or didactic books : Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus. Lastly we have the prophetical books, which are subdivided into the greater and the lesser prophets. ♦From the Greek word tivx^i, a vessel. The designation arose, most prob- ably, from the fact that the ancient manuscripts or rolls of writing were pjoced in cylinders or vessels when not in use. Anciently the Jews divided these books into " the Law and the Prophets." Down to the time of our Lord the Jewish teachers had devised various arbitrary divisions of the Old Testament books. They were agreed in giving to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, the appellation of Torah, " the Law." But under the designation of " The Prophets " they included, together with the twelve lesser prophets and the three greater (Isaias, Jere- mias, and Ezechiel), Josue, Judges, and the Four Books of Kings. Under the designation ol Hagiographa (Hebrew, Chetubim, "writ- ings ") they classed all the other Scriptures of the Hebrew canon, whether historical, prophetical, didactic, or poetical. The Jewish authors of the Greek or Septuagint version of the Old Testament deviated from this classification, giving the books of Scripture in the order which we have them both in the Latin Vulgate and in the Douay Bible. However, as modern biblical scholars have agreed to treat of these venerable books in the more convenient order of The Pentateuch, The Historical Books, The Prophets, The Poetical Books, We shall follow this classification in our remarks. I. THE PENTATEUCH. It is most probable that these ' ' five books ' ' formed in the orig- inal Hebrew only one volume or roll of manuscript. The present title — 71 Ttivtdtsvxoi ((3i'j3^o5), "the fivefold book" — was bestowed on it by the Greek translators. To them also may be, in all likeli- hood, attributed the division of the books as each now stands, together with the Greek titles which distinguish them. In the Hebrew manuscripts the only division known was that into small sections called parshijoth and sedarim, which had been adopted for the convenience of the public reader in the synagogue. Of all books ever written, this fivefold book of Moses is the only one that enlightens us with infallible certainty on the origin of all things in this universe, visible and invisible ; on the creation of mankind and their destinies ; on their duties, during this life, to- ward their Almighty Creator and toward each other, and on the rewards and punishments of the eternal life hereafter. In its first pages we see how our Divine Benefactor prepares this earth to become the blissful abode of our first parents and their descendants. We read of the compact or covenant which He makes with Adam and Eve ; then comes the violation of that com- pact ; and then the fall and banishment of the transgressors from their first delightful abode. We see the human race, divided intt faithful servants of God, on the one hand, and despisers of his law, on the other, spreading themselves over the face of the globe, while wickedness goes on increasing to such a pitch that the offended Creator destroys the entire race, with the exception of one good man and his family. With this man, Noe, and with his three sons, God once more renews the covenant made in the beginning. They are the parents of the human family as it now exists. But their descendants, count- ing, probably, on the long life of many centuries hitherto enjoyed by mankind as a privilege not to be taken away from themselves, soon fall into the old self-worship, the abominable sensuality, and the demon-worship begotten of pride, and following it as its sure chastisement. God, to preserve as a living faith the Promise in the Redeemer, and to secure a nation of faithful worshipers of his holy name, separates from the sinful crowd Abraham; and from his grandson, Jacob or Israel, spring the twelve patriarchs, the fathers of God's people. Of the history of this chosen race, their cap- tivity in Egypt, their sufferings, their miraculous deliverance, the new covenant made with them by their divine Deliverer, down to the death of Moses and their arrival on the confines of the national territory reserved to them, the Pentateuch tells in detail. It is a wonderful story. But let us glance rapidly at it, as we review in succession each oi these five books. HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. THE BOOK OF GENESIS.— The Greek word which stands for title means "birth," just as the first word bereschith in the Hebrew text means "in the begin- ning." Genesis, therefore, gives us, in its first chapters, the brief and inspired history of the creation, of the birth and first beginning both of the world and of mankind. St. Paul, in his epistle to the infant church of the Colossians (i. 12-17), tells them that "the Father . . . hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; ... for in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers : all things were created by Him and in Him : and He is before all, and by Him all things consist." Before the coming of Christ the whole pagan world was plunged in darkness impene- trable concerning the origin of man and the world, and the sublime destinies appointed in Christ for Adam and his posterity in the very beginning. Christian teaching dis- pelled this midnight darkness and revealed to all believers both the secret of man's origin and the incomprehensible glory of his supernatural destinies. We,' children of the nineteenth century of Christian civilization, being thus made "partakers of the lot of the saints in light," can find unspeakable pleasure in standing with the in- spired penman at the very first beginning of God's w»ys, and in allowing our souls to dwell on the contemplation of his magnificence — of His infinite power and His infinite love. According to the definition of the late general council 01 the Vatican, renewing the dogmatic decree of another general council also held in Rome, God in the beginning of time created— that is, brought from a state of absolute non-existence into full and complete existence — both the material universe and the world of angelic spirits. Man was only created after these. Moreover, all things were created in and by the uncreated and eternal Son and Word of the Almighty Father, "all things ... in heaven and on earth, visible and in- visible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers.' Thus, together with the world of matter in all its inconceivable variety and magnificence, was created the world of angelic spirits, in their own different orders of greatness, goodness, wisdom, beauty, and loveliness — to be, in the design of their Creator and HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. S jg^'iBai^il King, associated afterward with man and his heavenly destin'.es- They, too — ^befbra man appeared on earth — had their own eventful history. They v/ere created free- free to love their Divine Benefactor and to consecrate to him in dutiful and devoted service the life and exalted powers He had given them — or free to refuse such service to the Highest. Many chose to serve their own pride, and were forever separated from God and from the glorious abode of everlasting bliss, where He reveals His inmost being and shares His inmost life with His faithful ones. Many more yielded rapturous submission and lowly service to their most loving and magnificent Lord and Father, and they were forthwith exalted to the unchangeable possession of Himself and His Kingdom. So, in these first verses and pages of Genesis — the Book of Origins — we are treading on abysses of revealed truth — of truth which explains to us both the world beneath and around us, and that unmeasured world which extends on all sides above and beyond our little globe, both the world we can see with the bodily eye and touch with this hand of flesh, and the unseen realities of that world far otherwise glorious, in which the Lord of Hosts Himself is the central Sun of spiritual beings innumerable, whose brightness and glory is shadowed 'brth dimly in the starry hosts of the firmament above our heads. Man was made "a little less than the Angels" in natural excellence; but he was at the same time raised by the divine adoption to the supernatural rank and destiny of the Angels. He, too, was created free to choose between good and evil : between a loving submission and devoted service to his Maker, and obedience to his own weak will. Raised so high, surrounded with such lavish wealth of gifts and graces, "crowned with glory and honor, and set over the works" of God's hands here below, he ♦oo freely disobeyed and sinned, and was separated from the Most Holy God. Not separated hopelessly and forever; for the merciful Son, whose work man was, took on Himself to expiate, in His own o;ood time, the awful guilt of man's ingratitude and disobedience. The promise that He would do so \/as deposited in the sorrowing hearts of our first parents, when they were justly uanished from their beautiful abode in the earthly para- dise. This is the Promise and tk Hope kept alive in the long line of patriarchs extending from Abel and Seth to Abraham. Genesis, from the end of the third chapter to its close, is but the history of thii immortal Hope, and the other books of the Pentateuch do but describe the national institutions, political and religious, by and through which this Hope was to be pre- served undimmed among the universal darkness cf Heathendom, till the Star of Beth* lehem warned Israel that the Light of the World was come. THE BOOK OF EXODUS.— The title is a Greek word, meaning " a going out " or ■' departure,' ' because its chief purpose is to describe the miraculous means by which God enabled Moses to lead the people of God out of Egypt in order that He might, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, renew more solemnly His covenant with them, and give theso such national laws and institutions as would distinguish them from all other peoples. HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC iilBLE. The sacred historian describes the wonderful increase of the descendants of Israel in the land of the Pharaohs, which had been saved from utter ruin by the genius of Joseph, Israel's youngest son. Then, after the death of the wise minister, the hatred of the idolatrous Egyptians against the worshipers of the one true God was aroused by the spectacle of the latter's wonderful increase in numbers. Egypt was full of enslaved foreign races whom their pitiless masters forced to work both in cultivating the land and in building the beautiful cities and stupendous monuments whose ruins survive to this day. To this slavery the Israelites were con- demned one and all ; and to check effectually their further increase — indeed, to extinguish the race altogether — the male children were ordered to be strangled at their birth. Here comes in the story of Miriam or Mary, a little Hebrew maiden, who succeeds in saving from destruction her infant brother, ever afterward known as Moses, the most illustrious figure of our Lord, and the destined deliverer of his race. Adopted as her own son by Pharaoh's daughter, Moses is brought up amid the splendors of the Egyptian court and in all the varied learning of its schools, till he is old enough to prefer openly God's cause to the service of Pharaoh. He does not hesitaic to cast his lot with his down- trodden brethren, but is repelled with unnatural ingratitude by them. After forty years of exile, he is commanded to return to "the House of Bondage," clothed with authority from on high and commissioned to lead his people forth free in spite of every obstacle. The central fact and miracle in the book is the passage of the Red Sea — so strikingly typical of Christ's pas; n in Jerusalem, and of the manner in which the Cross wrought our redemption. Tlie paschal lamb, whose blood on the Hebrew door-posts saved the believing households from the visit of the devastating angel, had its counterpart in the mystic oblation of Christ on the very eve of His death, and in the divine and ever-present reality of the commemorative sacrifice He then instituted for all coming time. " This is My Blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matt. xxvi. 28), clearly points out fhe identity of the Victim, and of the redeeming Blood, both in the eucharistic celebration and in the fearful consummation of Calvary. The Cross was the instrument of victory used by the Redeemer in His supreme struggle ; it was symbolical of the ex- tremity of weakness and shame in the Sufferer — the Almighty Power thus shining forth in this very extremity. Even so did the aged Aaron's staff in the hand of Moses open a pathway through the waves for God's people in their dire need, and overwhelm in utter destruction Pharaoh and his pursuing hosts. The fatal tree had been in the Garden the occasion of Adam's downfall and of the ruin of his posterity ; a feeble staff in the hands of Moses works out the liberation of the chosen race and effects the destruction of their enemies: even so did our Divine Deliverer tread the Red Sea of His passion with all its abysses of shame and degradation, dividing the waves of the sanguinary multitude by His cross of ignominy, and allowing Himself to be nailed to the accursed Tree and to hang therefrom in death as the true fruit of saving Knowledge and eternal Life for the nations. The Law afterward given to Israel on Mount Sinai, together with the detailed legislation concerning the chosen people's religion and government, all foreshadowed the more perfect Law to be given by Christ to His church and for the benefit of the whole world. Equally typical and prophetic of the sacraments and graces of the New Law were the manna, the water from the rock, the brazen serpent, and, indeed, all the incidents of the people's life during the forty years' wandering in the wilderness. The whole of Exodus must be read in the light of the Christian ievfl"\tion to be understood and appreciated. THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.— This book U so called because it chiefly treats of the ceremonies of divine worship to be performed under the direction of the Levites, the priestly order among the Jews. It is the detailed Ritual of the Jewish church. It must never be forgotten, both in studying the solemn religious worship of the Jewish sanctuary and temple, and in assisting at the sacrificial service of the Christian church, that what God com- manded to be done on earth is only the shadow, the preparation, and the foretaste of what takes place in the Heavenly City above, in that divinest of sanctuaries, where He receives unceasingly the worship of Angels and Saints, and in return eternally pours out on them the flood of His blissful love. The Christian temple with its altar, its one sacrifice, its unchang- ing Victim, and its adorable and unfailing Presence, is but the lively image of that supernal Holy of Holies, in which the Lamb ever slain and ever immortal is the central object of praise and love and adoration {Apocalypse, chapters iv., v., and following). Thus the sweet and ever-abiding Presence in our tabernacles and the Communion in which in the Gift we receive the Giver, are but the foretaste and the pledge of the unchangeable union of eternity, and of that ineffable Possession destined to be the exceeding great reward of all the faithful children of God. This blissful life of Angels and men, made perfect by charity in the City of God on high, being the End for which we are created, has, on earth, its nearest resemblance in the Church. But inas- much as the Hebrew people of old were the forerunners of the Christian people, God so ordained it that the Jewish ritual and worship should be a preparation for the Christian liturgy. Hence, the Mosaic sanctuary, first, and the Temple of Solomon, afterward, were, each in its turn, the House of God, in which He dwelt in the midst of His people — having, between the Cherubim of the Ark, His throne, on which He received their adorations, their hymns of praise, and their petitions, as well as His Mercy Seat for granting special favors in dire need. Thus the Temple, the House of God, was also the house of the nation, who were God's family, just as every family dwelling in Israel was, in God's thought, and in the belief of the people, to be hallowed as God's own house and kept pure from moral evil. Wherefore, holiness in the heavenly as well as in the earthly temple, spotlessness and perfection in the principal sacrificial victims that typified the Lamb of God immaculate ; purity in the pontiffs, priests, and inferior Levites who ministered at the altar, and purity also in the people who offered the victims for sacrifice or assisted at its celebration ; all these are inseparably connected with the notion of worship ; all these form the subject of the various ordi- nances of Leviticus ; and all point most significantly to the far greater moral perfection and far higher purity of heart and hand required of the priests and people of the New Law, when they approach its altar. THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.— It is so named from the double numbering or census of the Israelites mentioned, the first, in chap- ters i.-iv., and, the second, in chapter xxvi. It contains, more- over, the history of their wanderings in the desert, from their departure from Sinai till their arrival on the confines of their promised national territory, in the fortieth year of the Exodus. Both the census and the history are interspersed with various ordinances and prescriptions relating to the divine service and the moral purity of the nation. Among the remarkable incidents which stand out in the narrative are : the sin and punishment of Aaron and his sister Mary (chap, xii.), and their death (chap, xx.); the prophecy of Balaam (chaps, xxii.-xxiv.); and the appointment Df Josue as lieutenant to Moses. THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.— The title comes from t Greek word, meaning " a republication of the Law/' because in it HISTORY OF THB BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. Moses promulgates anew, with extraordinary solemnity, the law delivered on Mount Sinai. The adult peopie whc.i he had brought forth from "the house of bondage" had all died in the wilderness in punishment of their repeated sins and forgetfulness of the divine power and goodness shown in their deliverance. Of the " Three Deliv- erers," Aaron and Mary had been called to their rest; even Moses, because he had once publicly doubted the power of his good God, was not to set foot within the promised land. The new people, who obeyed Moses as they came within sight of the beautiful country of Palestine, were nearly all born in the wilderness; they had not tasted of the bitter- ness of Egyptian servitude, nor had they witnessed the terrible display of Jehovah's power at the passage of the Red Sea. It was necessary, therefore, that he who, under God, had been the guide and parent of the nation in the crisis of its fate, should remind his followers of what God had done for them, and explain how truly the law which He gave them was a law of love — Ihat the Covenant of the Most High with Israel was one pregnant with untold blessings to iM who would faithfully observe it, while its violation was sure to be visited by the most awful chastisements. Hence the Book is mainly taken up with the record of three discourses of the great Hebrew Lawgiver, delivered, all of them, in the plains of Moab, on the lofty eastern side of the Jordan, overlcoiiig the Dead Sea. The country itself, the theatre of the most terrible vengeance of the outraged Majesty of Heaven on a favored but deeply sinning race, was eloquent of the suddenness and certainty of the divine retribution. Abraham, the father of the mighty multitude now assembled around Moses, had in his day witnessed the (uKe of the guilty " cities of the plain " of Jordan. A brackish sea now rolled its sullen waters where they had once stood in their besuty and pride amid all the fairest fruils of earth. Beyond and above toward the north, extended the fertile regions amid which Abraham and Sara had once tarried as pilgrimSj and which had been promi-sed as a lasting homestead to their posterity. How WeU raight Moses, himself about to close his earthly career, urge upon that posterity with all the fervor of a patriot and a parent the duty of being true to the God of Israel, c>f observing lovingly that law which distinguished them from all the peoples of the earth, and fidelity to which should ensure them victory over every U)e, v/ith all the blessings of uninterrupted peace and prosperity I I. The first discourse (chaps, i. to iv. 40) vividly recalls the causes for which their immediate ancestors were not allowed to take possession of the national territory. Then foUows a most touching and eloquent exhortation to the perfect obedience in which ■.<«■. '-"00^. tr^: i'-'^'- ^"^"rjik-^: HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. flie Jordan ; of the prophetic words of blessing poured in turn on each of the Tribes of Israel enc; nped below on the plains of Moab, and, finally, of his holy and mysterious death. One is forcibly carried forward to another age, when He of whom Moses was only a figure and precursor was to tread these same plains, and to prepare the way for the foundation of another kingdom, and then, after having tasted of the bitterness of the most awful death, to appear before His own with His person all transformed by the glories of a heavenly existence, with His transpierced heart all aglow with divinest charity, to ascend to Heaven while blessing them and filling their souls with undying faith and all-embracing love. II. THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. THE BOOK OF JOSUE.— The title of this book is derived both from its being most generally believed to have been written by the great man whose name it bears, and from its containing a faithful record of his government of God's people. The name itself (Hebrew, yi?/wj->'/« 18 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. as had been living in Judaea before the arrival of Esdras and his colony of exiles had either become as heathenish and corrupt as the neighboring Chanaanites, or had made of the little religion they retained a mixture of idolatrous practices and Hebrew super- stitions. They were, at best, but poor auxiliaries to Esdras and his zealous band of restorers. But what shall we say of the non-Hebrew populations, the old enemies of God and of his people ? They used every exertion and every artifice to prevent the restoration of Jeru- salem and the rebuilding of the Temple. Wiien force and fraud failed, they tried on the faithful Israelites the old fascination of their idolatrous customs, of their licentious celebrations, and pom- pous pagan festivals. And they succeeded. Nehemias had to return with Esdras to Jerusalem to begin anew this unfinished labor of social and religious reform and material reconstruction. The story grows in interest from chapter to chap- ter, as the two great men, brother priests laboring together with one mind and one heart, rekindle by voice and example the faith and zeal of their fellow-countrymen. They proclaim the Law anew, and induce the people to celebrate with extraordinary fervor and solemnity the Feast of Tabernacles (2 Esdras viii. and ix.) With one voice priests, princes, and people confess God's infinite goodness in their behalf and their own inconceivable ingratitude. " Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept Thy law . . . And they have not served Thee in their kingdoms, and in Thy manifold goodness, . . . and in the large and fat (wide and fruitful) land which Thou deliveredst before them . . . Be- hold, we ourselves this day are bondmen : and the land, which Thou gavest our fathers, ... we ourselves are servants in it ! . . . And because of all this we ourselves make a covenant, and write it, and our princes, our Levites, and our priests sign it " (Ibid. ix. 34-38). THE BOOK OF TOBIAS.— We have, in the saintly man after whom this book is called, another illustrious instance of the living faith and heroic virtue displayed in exile by so many of God's people. No book in the Old Testament affords such touching examples of filial piety, domestic simplicity and purity, and that unflinching devotion to one's brethren in their darkest days of suffering and oppression. The virtues which shine forth in the life and home of Tobias are those which must be eternally the very soul of domestic happiness and public welfare. The morality of the whole book is a most beautiful commentary on the law of life de- livered through Moses ; a splendid mirror in which even Christians may see what they ought to be and are not, as compared with the saintly men and women of twenty-six hundred years ago. Tobias was born in Cades (Kedesh)-Nephtali, in the northern part of Galilee. It was the native city of Barac, in wliich Debbora had organized the little army that was to prove victorious over the proud hosts of Jabin and Sisara. From time immemorial the place was a famous stronghold, one of the " cities of refuge " established by Josue. Near it Jonathan the Machabee fought against the treacherous generals of Demetrius, changing a disastrous defeat into a glorious victory. Beneath its very walls was shown the spot where the stout-hearted Jael completed Debbora's triumph by slaying with her own hand the cruel Sisara. Tobias, nurtured in this eagles' nest, displayed from earliest boy- hood qualities far superior to those of the soldier and conqueror. He learned even when a child in years, to do " no childish thing in his work," and when his fellow-countrymen and townsmen "all went to the golden calves" of Jeroboam in Samaria, " he alone fled the company of all, and went to Jerusalem to the temple of the Lord." He appears to have been a wealthy youth who de- lighted in devoting generously his wealth to the support of the true religion. What he had been in childhood and youth he continued to be in manhood and all through life. " He took to wife Anna of his own tribe, and had a son by her whom he called after his own name ; and from his infancy he taught him to fear God and to abstain from all sin." Carried with his wife and child into captivity by Salmanasar (Shalman-Ezor) IV., King of Assyria, Tobias shone so pre-eminently above his fellow-captives and the Assyrian nobles and courtiers at Niniveh that he attracted the notice and won the favor of the monarch himself, and was by him loaded with honor and wealth. For in the midst of this idolatrous and sensual race, when his Hebrew fellow-captives shared in the forbidden rites and pleasures of their captors, Tobias " kept his soul and never was defiled," being ever "mindful of the Lord with all his heart." The book, from the first chapter to the end, reads like a glorious epic in praise of exalted piety and patriotism. Two kindred fam- ilies, bound still more closely together by the same deep, practical faith, are the principal personages, while evil spirits and God's own archangel display respectively their baneful influences and healing power. What a picture is that household in the mighty Niniveh, in which the now poor and sightless Tobias is made the butt of his wife's unfeeling sarcasm and headlong temper ! He had risked and spent everything on his persecuted countrymen ; and now as he sits at home, blind and destitute of all earthly comfort, a wo- man's foolish tongue ceases not to lash him. " Where is thy hope, for which thou gavest alms, and buriedst the dead ? " It was in vain that he replied, " We are the children of the saints, and look to that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from Him." The pitiless tongue ceased not for all that to scourge him with the reproof: " It is evident thy hope is come to nothing, and thy alms now appear!" And the poor, helpless sufferer, seeing no further aim in life, would lift his soul to God on high : " Thou art just, O Lord, and all Thy ways mercy and truth and judgment ! . . . Command my spirit to be received in peace ; for it is better for me to die than to live." At the same hour, in the city of Northern Ecbatane, a dear friend and kinsman of Tobias, Raguel by name, was suffering deep afflic- tion in the person of his only child, Sara. This man was both virtuous and wealthy. But, through some mysterious dispensation of Providence, evil spirits were allowed to persecute him and his. Every one who had till then sought the hand of his innocent and pious daughter had fallen a victim to the Evil One. This drew suspicion on Sara, so much so, indeed, that even her servant maid openly and bitterly taunted her with being a murderess. Prostrate before the Divine Majesty in the privacy of her own chamber, the distressed girl was sending up her heart-cry for help: "I beg, O Lord, that Thou loose me from the bond of this reproach, or else take me away from the earth." But Northern Ecbatane (the capital of Cyrus) is on the road to Rages (the modern Rhey, a few miles southeast of Teheran); and in this last city lived one of Tobias' tribesmen, Gabelus, to whom in the days of his great pros- perity the former had lent a large sum of money. This sum, before dying and in the interest both of his wife and of his son, Tobias is now anxious to recover. And here comes in the sweet and loving providence of the Father. Tlie succor needed by the two suffering families will not be delayed. Then is told the marvelous story of the Arcliangel Raphael's undertaking to guide the younger Tobias all the way to the distant home of his kinsman, where God was keeping in store for him the spotless soul of a true woman as well as part of the riches which were to raise his aged parents once more to afiluence. To his father also the angelic guide, on their joyful return to Niniveh, restores the sight so long lost. How magnificent is the hymn of prophetic praise and exultation which goes up from this tried and grateful soul ! " I and my soul will rejoice in Him. Bless ye the Lord all His elect ; keep days of joy, and give glory to Him. Jerusalem, city of God, the Lord hath chastised thee for the works of thy hands. Give glory to the Lord for thy good things, and bless the God eternal ; that He may rebuild His tabernacle in thee, and call back thy captives to thee, and thou mayst rejoice for ever and ever 1 ' ' HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. 19 THE BOOK OF JUDITH. — Here is another thrilling page of sacred history taken from the annals q( that same epoch of partial restoration from captivity and exile. Moses had been saved from the waters of the Nile by the watchful love of his sister, Mary, who also continued to be the angel of his life in the court of Pharaoh, and till her great brother could openly choose between the service of the Egyptian oppressor and that of his own oppressed kinsmen. With him, when sent on his divine mission of liberation, was associated Mary, who thus deserved the name of Deliverer. Then came Debbora and Jael to work out the freedom of Israel during the period of the Judges ; and now Judith stands forth to deliver the restored tribes from the threatened renewal of their subjugation and expulsion from their native land. No mere analysis of the story can give the reader a truthful idea of the condition of things in Palestine or of the desperate extremities from which a woman's inspired heroism treed her country and people. Even those who see in Judith's artifice a something exceedingly like criminal fraud, must remember that Sacred History records more than one deed of the most illustrious personages which the historian does not pretend to excuse or justify. But, to one who calmly considers the circumstances of the age and country — the brutal lust for conquest and plunder which animated the Nabuchodonosors and Holophemes of these pagan times — there can occur no valid reason for refusing to Judith the glorious praise due to a woman, who devotes her own life and imperils her honor in order to save the honor of her countrywomen and the independence of her own nation, then struggling to confirm its long-lost and scarcely recovered freedom. (See the Author's reasoning on this subject in Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, chap. xvii. pp. 180-81.) THE BOOK OF ESTHER.— Just as the God, who watched so lovingly over the destinies of that race which was to give to the world Christ and His Apostles, showed again and again how easily and surely He could employ the hand of a single man to work out the salvation of an entire people, even so does He use again and again a weak and timid woman as His instrument, in order to render still more irresistible the demonstration of His almighty Power. Modern scholars judge it probable, that the Assuerus who raised Esther to the throne, was no other than the blindly proud and blundering Xerxes who attempted, at the head of the united armies and fleets of all Western Asia, to conquer and subjugate the little republics of Greece. The indescrib- able splendor and magnificence of this royal despot forms a kind of background for the picture of Esther's loveliness and piety, of the utter helplessness of her Hebrew fellow-exiles, and of the implacable animosity existing between them and their old Amalekite foes. The book, although affording us but a glimpse of that fairy-like luxury and incredible servility prevailing in these great eastern capitals, enables us, nevertheless, to see the fearful extent of the corruption from which God wished to preserve His people, by keeping them from intimate communication with their heathen "VA >^ ^^iv. /t^r /ff.H-- c a W^ ^ Xr-f" G? ^r 1 ^r mhilm: 20 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. neighbors, and binding them to his own service by inviolable fidelity within tlieir own national territory. Their existence as a free people in Palestine was to be the con- sequence of this fidelity to the law of Jehovah, His overshadowing protection secured them from disaster, defeat, and subjugation, so long as they served Him with their whole heart. And in their exile among the nations, while they were taking to heart the bitter lessons of experience, He ever showed Himself ready and prompt to assist them and to protect them from utter extinction, when the cry of their heart went up to Him. Aman, the all-powerful favorite of Assuerus, has taken every means to annihilate the scattered remnants of the Hebrew race by one fell blow, and throughout the vast Persian empire. The young Hebrew Empress knows, as well as her uncle and foster-father, Mardochseus, that the hand of God alone can arrest the blow about to fall, and that united prayer to Him can make him stretch forth His arm to save the innocent and strike down the guilty aggressor. Trusting in the intervention of that Power and Goodness which will have us entreat it in our direst need, Esther employs mean- while all the means which human prudence suggests to enlighten the Emperor on liis favorite's character and designs. Woman's wit comes to the aid of woman's loveliness and patriotism; iniquity falls into the net it had itself spread for the guiltless, and cruelty perishes by its own devices. These are pages to be read again and again as one reads the most enchanting tale of eastern romance. For here no romance can come up to the reality. FIRST AND SECOND MACHABEES.— The two books bear- ing this title contain the history of a heroic family of priests who conquered the national independence under the Greek kings of Syria, and were also the successful champions of religious liberty. The surname of " Machabee," first borne by Judas, son of the priest Mathathias, arose, according to some, from a Hebrew word signi- fying "hammer" — both the father and his sons having been in the hand of God a hammer for shattering the might of their op- pressors. Others, on the contrary, derive the appellation from the initial letters of the Hebrew sentence in Exodus xv. ii : " Who is like to Thee among the strong, O Lord?" These letters, it is said, were inscribed by Judas on his victorious banners ; and hence the surname. The name is bestowed not only on Judas and his brethren, but on a generous widow and her seven sons most cruelly put to death in Antioch by the pitiless tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes. The first book of Machabees — a manuscript copy of which in Hebrew, or, rather, in the popular Syro-Chaldaic of the Machabean age, was seen by St. Jerome — is the history of forty years, from tlie beginning of the reign of .Antiochus Epiphanes to the death of the High Priest Simon Machabee. The second book is the abridged history of the persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes and Ptolemy Eupator his son, being compiled from a full and complete history of the same in five books, written by Jason, and now lost. This abridgment describes in detail many of the principal occurrences related in the first book. Both historians, however, seem to have written independently of each other, neither having seen the other's work. No history, ancient or modern, contains a more vivid and thrill- ing story of living faith and heroic valor. THE PROPHETS. We must not, if we would form a correct conception of Sacred History, separate the Prophets and their utterances from their proper connection in the series of contemporary events. They, their propiiecies, and their lives, form an integral portion of the annals of the epoch in which they lived. The very historical books we have been just passing in review are incomplete, and, in some parts incomprehensible, if severed from the words and actions of such men as Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, Haggaeus, and other prophets, who acted such an important part under the Kings of Jerusalem and Samaria, while striving, under divine inspiration, to correct and convert bad sovereigns and their sinful people, or to direct and encourage the good. The name of prophets is sometimes given in Scripture to per- sons who had no claim to prophetic inspiration. In classic Greek, the word irpoipf/nK, "prophet," designates any person who speaks for another, especially one who s])eaks in the name of the Godhead, and thus declares or interprets His will to men. The primary meaning of tlie word prophet is, therefore, that of an interpreter. In the Bible the word has several significations : ist. It applies to all persons of superior learning or uncommon intellectual gifts, whether their knowledge regards divine or human things. Tims in I Corinthians xiv. 6, "prophecy" means the supernatural knowl- edge of divine things bestowed as a gift on certain persons, and in the infancy of the Church, to enable them to teach others; whereas, in Titus i. 12, "a prophet of their own," means a Cretan author who had accurately described his own countrymen as "al- ways liars, evil beasts, etc. 2d. He is called a prophet who has either of things past or present a knowledge exceeding the power of nature. Thus Elisjeus knew that his servant Giezi had secretly obtained rich presents from Naaman. Thus also when the soldiers buffeted our Lord the night before his death, they asked Him to " prophesy " who had struck Him. 3d. Again, a man is said to be a prophet when he is inspired to say what he does not understand, as Caiphas (St. John xi. 51) " prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation." 4th. In the proper and primitive sense of the word, Aaron is to be the "prophet;" that is, the interpreter, of his brother Moses {Exodus vii.) Hence both our Lord and St. Stephen upbraid the Jews with having persecuted all the prophets ; that is, all those who had been sent to declare to them the will of God. 5th. The designation of prophets was also given to all those who sang hymns or psalms with extraordinary enthusiasm, so as to seem beyond themselves. In i Kings x. 12, Saul meets a troop of these singers, joins them, is seized with their divine enthusiasm, and it is there- fore said: "Is Saul also among the Prophets?" This same mean- ing applies on several occasions to David and Asaph and to the young men trained as singers for the temple, and who are therefore called " the sons of the prophets." 6th. The word " to prophesy," again, is understood of the power of working miracles. Hence (Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 14) it is said of Elisteus : " After death his body prophesied," because the contact with the holy man's corpse raised a dead man to life. 7th. But this gift of miracles was the seal which stamped with the divine authority the utterances of the Prophet properly so called ; that is, the man to whom God has revealed and enjoined to announce to the world future events which no created mind could of itself have foreseen. (See Bergier, Dictionnaire de Thi-ologie.') Such are the divinely commissioned men whose books we are now to consider. THE FOUR GREAT PROPHETS. ISAIAS. — By the universal consent both of the Jewish Church and of the Christian, Isaias is given precedence in rank over the other propliets, though he cannot claim priority in time. He was of royal birth, and the elevation and beauty of his style are in keeping with his high rank and nobility of soul. He is by far the most eloquent of the Prophets. Besides, he descsibes so minutely the person of Christ and His sufferings, as well as the birth and destiny of the Cliristian Church, tliat one might think he was re- cording past events or describing what was present before his eyes, rather than announcing to the world what was still hidden in the night of ages, and could only be the secret of the divine mind and power. For this reason the book of Isaias has been called a fifth Gospel, so clearly does he perform the task of an evan- gelist. HISTORY OP THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. TT 21 WP h I I I I'h--. The prophetic mission of this great man and great saint runs through the reigns ol four kings of Juda — Ozias, Joathan, Achaz, and Ezechias, his life having been gloriously crowned with a cruel martyrdom under Manasses. Like the Prophet Elias before him, and like John the Baptist long ages after him, Isaias in performing his sublime mission wore the penitential garb of the Nazarites, the long blackish-gray tunic of haircloth fastened round the loins with a rope or girdle of camel's hair. Thus habited, the man of God would, most probably, go into one of the spacious courts of the Temple, while the people were flocking in to some solemn sacrifice, and from one of the lofty flights of steps leading up to the altar of burnt offerings, would pour forth the words of his divine message on the multitude beneath and around. The very first words of these inspired oracles still thrill the coldest reader with emotion : " Hear, O ye Heavens I and give ear, O Earth ! For the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children and exalted them ; but they have despised Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib. But Israel hath not known Me, and My people hath not under- stood ! " No words could more aptly state God's case as against His blind and ungrateful people under the Old Law, as well against the professed or nominal followers of Christ under the New Law of Grace. We are, all of us who believe in Christ and through Him in the Father, the adopted children, the family of God. How He has exalted the sons of Adam ! How tenderly He has provided for the bringing up of the human race to a God-like resemblance with their all-bountiful Parent and Benefactor ! And is not our life one long act of contempt of that Adorable Majesty ? — one long and per sistent ignoring and misunderstanding of that ever-present and patient Goodness ? To understand even the literal sense of these most pregnant chapters, it will be neces- sary to read not only the history of the four kings under whom Isaias preached and taught and performed miracles, but also the two preceding reigns of Amasias and his father Joas. Joas, saved in infancy, and by a miracle, from the slaughter of all the male descendants of David, and brought up by his aunt Josabet in the very sanctuary of the Temple, would, one might think, be sure to be worthy of David and lovingly faithful to God his Protector. And yet, in the very flower and pride of his manhood, he intro- duces among his people the abominable worship of Baal and Ashtarte — murders in the very sanctuary which had sheltered his infancy and childhood his cousin and foster- brother, the High Priest Zacharias, and runs, uncontrolled, his race of wickedness, till he is himself cut off" by the hand of a murderer. Not much better is his son Amasias. He was a cruel king : he caused 10,000 Edomite prisoners to be cast, in cold blood, headlong from the cliffs of Petra, while he hesitated not in the hour of /ictory to cause sacrifices to be offered in honor of the idols worshiped by his victims. A cruel soldier is rarely a brave man ; and a coward is always a vain one. So Amasias provokes his father's namesake, Joas, King of Samaria, to war ; is shamefully beaten, taken prisoner, brought in chains to Jerusalem, which is partially dismantled by the victor, and at length, like his father, is cut off by the red hand of murder. There is no use in teach- ing or warning these purblind princes, in whose veins the heroic blood of David is changed into mud : they will neither be taught, nor enlightened, nor wamed= Such were 22 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. the men who nad ruled the Kingdom of Juda immediately before 'fM ^Ttf "tT*^, r 1. U'^. i^ " The proud man . . . who hath enlarged his desire like hell [the grave] : and is him- self like death, and he is never satisfied : but will gather together to him all nations, and heap together to him all people. Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a dark speech concerning him : and it shall be said, Woe to him that heapeth together that which is not his own ? how long also doth he load himself with thick clay ? Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee? and they be stirred up that shall tear thee, and thou shalt be a spoil to them? . . . Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and prepareth a city by iniquity" (ii. 5-12) ! The third and last chapter contains one of the most sublime hymns to be foimd in the Bible : the Church in her solemn office applies it to the triumph of the Redeemer. III. ABDIAS. — It is quite uncertain when this prophet lived. Pome scholars think that he lived at the same time with Elias. But others, with much more probability, say that he lived during the Babylonian captivity. He denounces the cruel persecu- tions got up against the exiled Jews by their traditional enemies the Edomites, of which we have an instance in the book of Esther. They followed in the wake of the Chal- daean conquerors, watching every road and by-way through which the fugitive Jews could escape, and cut them down mercilessl)'. The prophet predicts that Edom shall in its turn share the fate of its neighbors, without ever sharing their restoration to national independence and prosperity. On the ontrarv^ they are to become the vassals of their restored Jew'ch brethren. IV. AGGEUS, ZACHAAIAS, AND MALACHIAS.— The first two of these pro- phets date their mission from the same year, " the second year of Darius." Both were probably born in exile and returned to Jerusalem with Zorobabel, in conformity with the edict of Cyrus. The building of the temple had been suspended during the space of fourteen years in consequence of the hostility of the neighboring Samaritans and Edomites fMoabites and Ammonites). Aggeus is sent to Zorobabel, the Governor of Judsea, and to Jesus, the son of Josedec, the High Priest, to rouse their zeal for the completion of the sacred edifice, the very symbol and soul of Hebrew nationality. They and their countrymen are consoled for the inferiority of the second temple, as compared to the first, by the divine assurance that the former shall be glorified by the personal presence of the Messiah Himself. The resumption of this great national work was also the first object of Zacharias' prophetic labors. The first six chapters contain visions regarding the events which were then happening in Judaea, mingled with the prospective glories of the Christian Church and the conversion of the Gentiles. The completion of the Temple structure, as a thing essential to the national religion and a vital condition of the national existence, is insisted on in each of these successive visions. "Thus saith the Lord: I will return to Jerusalem in mercies : My house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts" (i. 16). The nations which have dispersed and op- pressed Juda shall see theif power broken, and shall no longer oppose the restoration of Hebrew nationality. Jerusalem shall so increase in extent through the mnltitudes . of returning exiles, that no wall can contain them. " I will be to it. saith the Lord, a Ik HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY UATHOLiC BIBLE. wall of fire round about " (ii. 4). The zealous priests who devote themselves io this grea-> work of reconstruction shall be divinely protected against the calumnies of their enemies and the disfavor of the Chaldaean Kings. Jesus the son of Josedec, to whom this personally applies, brings, by his very name, the vision of the future Jesus before the prophet's mind. " Hear, O Jesus, thou High Priest, thou and thy friends that dwell before thee, . . . behold, I will bring My Servant the Orient" (iii. 8). And so the prophetic visions continue, consoling and encouraging the toilers under Zorobabel, and strengthening their faith with the reiterated promise of His coming, who should reign over the whole earth. " Thou shalt take gold and silver, and shalt make crowns, and thou shalt set them on the head of Jesus the son of Josedec the High Priest. And thou shalt speak to him, saying : Thus saith the Lord of hosts, . . . Behold a Man, the Orient is His Name ... He shall build a temple to the Lord : and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne ; and He shall be a priest upon His throne " (vi. 11-13). To the zealous men who desire to see the great ordained fasts kept solemnly as a means of propitiating the divine favor, Zacharias gives a reasonable answer. In the days of their former prosperity, the solemn fasts were kept in a narrow and selfis'i spirit. God had commanded them, while they fasted, " Judge ye true judgment, and show ye mercy and compassion every man to his brother. And oppress not the widow, and the fatherless, and the stranger and the poor; and let not a man devise evil in his heart against his brother" (vii. 9, 10). Now that they and their fathers have paid so dearly for the violation of these divine precepts, the new generations must observe the spirit of the law while attending to the letter. " These then are the things which ye shall do. Speak ye truth every one to his neighbor : judge ye truth and judgment of peace in your gates. And let none of you imagine evil in his heart against his friend : and love not a false oath: for all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord" (viii. 16, 17). Let true religion but shine forth in these godly virtues, "And many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem. ... In those days . . . ten men of all languages of the Gentiles shall take '.lold, and shall hold fast the skirt of one that is a Jew, saying : ' We will go with you ; for we have heard that God is with you' " (viii. 22, 23). Are we not made to assist at the preaching of the Twelve Fishermen of Galilee among the proud nations of the Roman Empire ? The three succeeding chapters, ix.-xi., are different in character from the preceding. They contain threatening prophecies against HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE H01.Y CATHOLIC BIBI,E. ?? fm.- ' n'> ' r-Ctft' c^ ^-*^ the cities of Syria, Phoenicia, and the Philistine seaboard— threats which soon after- ward found their realisation through the arms of Alexander the Great. Juda iscom- forted with the assurance that, meanwhile, no harm shall befall its children. 'These prophetic utterances, however, are in many cases only applicable to the epoch of the Messiah; for here we find th« very words which the Evangelist St. Matthew applies to our Lord on his last entrance into Jerusalem : "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion ! shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem ! Behold thy King will come to thee, the Just and Saviour: He is poor and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass " (ix. 9) ! There are menaces against guilty priests; a glowing description of the triumphs of Christianity ; a distinct prediction of the final destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple under the Romans, and of the rejection of the Jews. The three last chap- ters, xii.-xiv., have for heading "The burden of the word of the Lord upon Israel." The events of the life of Christ, and the characters of His Person and sufferings, are portrayed with extraordinary vividness. A few pregnant sentences point out the trials of His church : xiii. 8, 9. Zacharias is the most diffuse and obscure of all the Minor Prophets. Malachias, the last of these inspired men, has been thought by some scholars to be an angel in human form — the name itself meaning in Hebrew " a messenger of leho- vah," Malachijah. Some writers have identified him with Esdras. What, how-^ver, seems most probable is that he lived after Aggeus and Zacharias, and during the mle X '\ :;*■?? 5*< ^1^^ 36 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOI^Y CATHOUC BIBLE. of Esdras and Nehemias. In spite of the reformation which thesa great men labored so strenuously to effect in the morals and religious discipline of the restored people, Malachias, like his two elder brother-prophets, was offended by the scandals and abuses which were constantly occurring, and which inspired but little hope of a general and lasting improvement. The leading classes, whose ex- ample was to be the light of the nation, were themselves a prey to corruption even at this early stage of the Restoration. "To you, O Priests, that despise My Name, and have said, Wherein have we despised Thy Name ? You offer polluted bread upon My altar, and you say. Wherein have we polluted Thee ? In that you say. The table of the Lord is contemptible. . . . Who is there among you that will shut the doors, and will kindle the fire on My altar gratis? I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts " (i. 9, 10). And then comes the famous prophecy of " the clean obla- tion,"' to be offered in His Name "in every place from the rising of the sun even to the going down." Besides, the priests, who are the guardians and expounders of the law, were giving at that very time the fatal example of marrying Gentile wives, thereby renew- ing the sin which, more than any other in the past, had led to the national corruption, apostasy, and ruin. To this incurable incon- stancy and unfaithfulness there remains but one remedy, the rejec- tion of the Jewish dispensation and worship. " Presently the Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the Testament whom you desire, shall come to His Temple. Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts" (iii. i). TV. POETICAL AND DIDACTIC BOOKS, THE BOOK OF JOB.— This book— the authorship of which the most respectable Hebrew tradition, that of the Targum, attrib- utes to Moses — is now acknowledged to resemble in style the Penta- teuch and other most ancient Hebrew writings. It is generally believed among scholars that Job, whose name signifies "one persecuted or afflicted," lived in the northern part of Arabia. Indeed, St. Jerome, in his day, remarked, that Job's diction bore a wonderful resemblance to the best Arabic compositions. Be that as it may, the great lesson taught by the life of Job is, that one who had " none like him in the earth, a simple and upright man, and fearing God, and avoiding evil," remains faithful to God and true to his Ovvn conscience, amid the most terrible afflictions. There is also that other sweet and consoling lesson taught at the same time, that the Father who permits His own to be most sorely tried. HISTORY OF IHE BOOKS Of THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBIM >vir7 [1 » 1^ _t> .^^ jn^Wrf W^ 'lii 4Jli ^ ^. ffli?^ Ii' ^-ifc:; ' '' 1 ') 1 J ■ / .jil ^:^M^ Ikjr ■■^--fV' IF ^ f'- i ^^- r."^ 0/ ^11 fj.MLlMSW never allows the trial to be too much for the sufferer. His own Divine Spirit is evei nigh flouding the soul with light from above, even when the night of suffering is darkest, and always warming the heart to love, to bear, to hope, when all human joys fail and all earthly affection is turned into bitterness. He who marks out for each star its fixed orbit in the heavens, and who sets to the ocean the limits beyond which its fury cannot prevail, also knows how to limit our misfortunes, to revisit us even here below with hours of sunshine and felicity that give us an earnest of the eternal joys. Read for yourselves, O children of God, and learn from Job how to bear, and how to hope in the Living God. THE BOOK OF PSALMS.— David, "the sweet singer of Israel," is not only tha great national poet of the chosen race, but the loved songster of the Christian church; whose words of prayer, praise, and triumph all true Christian homes and hearts have ever made thel own These inspired songs reflect the whole personal history of David from the time that he was secretly anointed King by Samuel, called to become the defender of the Kingdom against Goliath and his Philistines, obliged to charm with the sweet sounds of harp and voice the evil spirit of jealousy that possessed Saul, tried by persecution, exile, and treachery all through the remaining years of Saul's ill-starred reign, down to the dark days of Gilboe. The shepherd-lad of Bethlehem, the young conqueror of the Philistines, the son-in-law of Saul, the fugitive among the desert places of Israel, was still the man whose heart " thirsted after God," and whose frequent songs breathe the faith and hope and fervent love of these chequered years. How he delighted, when in possession of ihe throne, to fom. bodies of singers for the service of the Tabernacle, and to compose the most thrilling hymns for the solemn feasts of the nation ! When he brought, . <; length, the Ark in triumph to the city of David, he would himself be foremost amcng the singers, casting aside the warrior's armor and the kingly robes, to sing and dance in a simple linen tunic before the Ark — the visible resting-place of his loved and adored Jehovah in the midst of the people. And when the Queen ridiculed her royal husband for what she thought so unseemly an exhibition, how David's indignation breaks forth ! " Before the Lord who chose me rather than thy father (Saul) and than all his house, ... I will both play, and make myself meaner than I have done : and I will be little in my own eyes." . . . David is still in heart the shepherd-lad of Bethlehem, whom God had so often protected against the assault of beasts of prey prowling in the night, and whose soul even then delighted in singing the praises of his Almighty Protector. So will he contiime to the end. His one dreadful fall in the heyday of his power, only creates in his repentant soul a deeper humility, and calls forth those penitential psalms which are the comfort of "U souls acquainted with sin and sorrow. To the people whom he had made so great and so happy his psalms continued to be the cry of the national heart on all solemn festivals. Even in captivity they found in these inspired and prophetic strains incentives to sincere repentance for their past ingratitude, and the most cheering promises of future restoration to country and free- dom. The Christiai Church, ever since the day of Sion's finai destruction, has 88 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. continued to make of David's psalms her own book ot praise and prayer. Around the altar of the Lamb in Jerusalem, as well as around every altar where He abides from the rising to the setting 3un, we sing evermore the canticles of Sion's prophet-King. Other Hebrew poets, inspired like David himself, have added song after song to his immortal book ; theirs, however, are only a few. David is still rightly called the Psalmist. THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.— This is the production of King Solomon. The first nine chapters excel the remainder of the book in poetic beauty of diction as well as in continuity of thought. The next twelve chapters are composed of separate and, apparently, independent maxims. Chapters xxv.-xxix. were composed under the reign of the best and greatest of Solomon's successors, the saintly King Ezechias, who collected the scattered maxims and utterances of his ancestor and added them to Solomon's book. The last two chapters are of uncertain authorship. THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES.— This is also the work of Solomon, who throughout the book speaks of himself as the Koheleth, "preacher," ecclesiastes in Greek. We know from sacred history how wisely Solomon began his reign, and with what shameful folly and guilt he tarnished its premature close. This book is the composition of a man who has had his fill of worldly greatness and enjoyment, who has drunk to the dregs the cup of life, and found only bitterness and weariness at the bottom. It is as if the Spirit of God had forced the guilty King to confess that all is "vanity of vanities," save to fear God from one's youth and inviolably to keep His commandments. "And all things that are done God will bring to judgment ! " What must have been, at its latest hour, the terrors of that soul so privileged and so guilty! SOLOMON'S CANTICLE OF CANTICLES.— The God of Israel had designed that the chosen nation should be, under Solo- mon (Hebrew, Shelomoh, peaceful, pacific), a living and ravishing picture of the state of the Christian people under the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace. Solomon, on whom had descended in youtn the spirit of supernatural wisdom as well as prophecy, afterward proved utterly unfaithful to the graces lavished on him. Still, just as the unworthy Balaam was forced by the Divine Spirit to prophesy the blessedness and final triumph of the Church, even so was the apostate soul of Solomon forced to sing in this Song the undying mutual love which binds the true Solomon to His Bride, the Church, and the Church to Him through all the struggles and persecutions of ages. THE BOOK OF WISDOM.— The author of this book has for his chief object to teach rulers, statesmen, and judges. By many scholars the work is ascribed to Solomon. The authorship, how- ever, remains uncertain. The first six chapters are a compendium of the first nine chapters of Proverbs. In vii., viii., ix., the writer describes the road by which he attained tht possession of Wisdom, as well as her innate excellences. From the tenth chapter to the end a series of examples are quoted from sacred history to demon- strate the manifold utility of Wisdom, to show the wickedness of sin, the blissful reward of faithful souls, the undying punishment of the wicked. THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTICUS.— This book is also en- titled "The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach," or " Ecclesias- ticus," i. e., preacher. Like the book of Ecclesiastes, the present work contains a body of moral precepts and exhortations tending to enforce the practice of all virtue and to exalt the excellence of wisdom. The author would appear to have aimed at following the plan of the three preceding books in composing his own. Hence we have first a body of maxims in imitation of the Proverbs, then a series of reflexions somewhat in the style of Ecclesiastes, and finally a long poetical panegyric of great and holy men, recalling the style of the Canticle of Canticles. It was written in the second century before Christ under the Asmonean or Machabean dynasty. It gives a very high idea of the culture of the Jewish schools of th< periods Some passages recall the poetry and eloquence of Isaias. THE NEW TESTAMENT Most fittingly does the word " testament " apply to the body of inspired writings which contain the record of His death and last will, who is the great " Father of the world to come." From the lamb, the firstling of his flock, offered up in sacrifice by the martyred Abel in the first age of human history, and whose blood was mixed with the life-blood of the holy priest himself, all the victims offered to God by the patriarchs before Moses and by the sons of Aaron after him, only pointed to the one infinite and all- atoning Victim, Christ Jesus, " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." He came as our true brother, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, to teach us how to sanctify the present life by labor and suffering and God-like charity, in order thereby to make ourselves worthy of the eternal life to come and the everlasting Kingdom that He reconquered for His own redeemed. From His blood sprang up an immortal and world-wide society, the Church, which He made the heir to His Kingdom, the unfailing depositary of His power, the infallible interpreter of His last Will and Testament for tlie sanctification and salvation of the nations. So, then, as the Old Testament was the Will of God solemnly and repeatedly expressed to send us a Saviour and sanctifier, even so is the New Testament this same Will carried out in the death of the Saviour and in the ordinances by which the fruit of His redemption, the means of salvation and sanctification, are secured to the entire race of man in all coming ages. The Second Adam, the Father of the new life, has left us a Mother upqn earth to hold His place, to love us, to teach us, to train us to walk in the royal road of generosity and holiness marked out for us by the precepts «id examples of God made Man. " The Old Testament," says Cardinal Errtt, " sliows God creat- ing the universe by a word ; the New, on the contrary, shows God repairing the world by His death. The former, by repeating the promises relating to a future Redeemer, kept alive, without satisfy- ing them, the ardent hopes of mankind, while shadowing forth dimly the design of Redemption. But no sooner has Christ come into the world, and the new covenant taken the place of the old, than the former obscurities disappear in the light of His coming, and all the ancient figures, all the predictions of the Prophets are verified in His Person. The covenant made on Mount Sinai was only in favor of the single house of Israel ; the covenant signed on Calvary regards all mankind. The one was sealed with the blood of goats and oxen, the other with the blood of God's own Son. The spirit of the Old Law v/as one of fear and bondage ; the glory of the New is the Spirit of Love and adoption. The one was tho covenant of a brief period of time; the other is to be everlasting. Christ's Gospel promises rewards that are to be perpetual, infinite, spiritual, and heavenly ; the law of Moses only held out a perish able, limited, visible, and earthly recompense. The Jews did, in deed, hope for the life to come; but they could only attain to its unspeakable felicity througn faith in Christ." {^Historia utriusque testamenti, lib. xi., chap, i.) The New Testament writings contain twenty-seven books, divided by biblical scholars as follows. Five Historical Books; namely, the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Fourteen Epistles of St. Paul. Seven Catholic or General Epistles. The Ai>ocalypse or Revelation of St. John. HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. BLJi 1 HE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.— Independent of all th« curious learning which fill the books published in our day about the distinctive char* acters of each of the f»ur Gospels, is the exquisite pleasure which the devout Christian mind never fails to find in reading and meditating the history of our dear Lord's life and death. The naked text of St. Matthew, or of any one of his brother Evangelists — take it up wherever you will — affords to the soul athirst for Him who is the Life of our life so much of sweet instruction, so much of consolation and strength, that one arises from the study of the chosen page with a great desire to return to it again. To all who sincerely and humbly seek to know Christ more and more, and to become more and more like to Him in thought and word and deed, God never fails to open, in every page of the Gospels, and sometimes in every verse, springs of thought so abundant, so unfailing, so refreshing, that one can scarcely tear one's lips away from these living waters. St. Ignatius Loyola was but a young and half-educated soldier, when he shut himself up behind the bushes and brambles of the Cavern of Manresa to study the mysteries of eternal life with only two books, the New Testament and the " Imitation of Christ." While there, as he afterward was impelled to declare for our edification, he learned more in a single hour spent alone with God in meditating on the life of our Lord, than years spent in listening to the most learned theologians could have taught him. And ever since his day, all who take up the Mysteries of Christ's life, passion, and resurrection, as laid down in the Saint's book of Spiritual Exercises, and meditate them reverently and humbly as he did, will learn more of Christ and of heavenly things than a lifetime of study could impart. " Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scriptures?" said the two disciples of Emmaus to each Jther, when Christ had disappeared from their sight. To you, dear Reader, remembering our own sweet and frequent experience, we can only say : " Oh, taste and see that the Lord is sweet : blessed is the man that hopeth in Him ! " Let a modern writer, one — we would venture to affirm — who has drawn from this same source his deep knowledge of the Gospel and of its divine doctrines, instruct us on what distinguishes St. Matthew in particular. His Gospel, Father Coleridge says, " is penetrated from beginning to end with the thought that in our Lord were fulfilled all the types, all the anticipations, all the prophecier of the older dispensation. This and other features lie on the surface of St. Matthew's Gospel. It is not so obvious, but it seems »^ially true, )r> o«v that it is penned with a carefulness of design which makes it almost as much a treatbe as a narrative : with a distircf HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE purpose of embodying our Lord's general teaching to an extent and with a complete- ness which can be asserted of no other of the Gospels. It alone contains the Sermon on the Mount, and it gives us a far greater number of the parables and of the. teach- ings of our Lord as to the counsels of perfection than any other. To tliese purposes St. Matthew has frequently, as might be expected in the writer of such a treatise, made the order of time subservient. . . . The plan of this Gospel is very sirnple and very obvious, and explains in a manner quite sufficiently satisfactory that apparent neglect of order which is, in truth, the faithful adherence to an order of a higher kind than that of mere historical sequence." The sections into which St. Matthew's Gospel may be naturally divided are as fol- lows : I. The birth, infancy, private life of Christ at Nazareth; the mission and preaching of the Precursor; the baptism of our Lord, with His fasting and temptation j chaps, i.-iv. ii. II. The first mission of our Lord in Galilee, together with the pregnant summary of His doctrine, known as the Sermon on the Mount ; chaps, iv. ii-vii. III. The seal of our Lord's divine mission in the various displays of His miraculous power: chaps, viii., ix. IV. The mission of the Apostles and the instruc- tions delivered to them by the Master and destined for all future apostolic laborers; chap. X. v. St. John Baptist sends his disciples to Christ, and Christ's formal recog. nition of the Precursor's holiness, as well as the responsibility incurred by rejecting both the Precursor and the Messiah ; chap. xi. VI. The doubts and opposition which neutralized the effects of Christ's miracles and preaching; chap. xii. VII. Christ's teaching by parables ; chap. xiii. VIII. The missionary work in Galilee described, as well as the miracles with which it was accompanied, and opposition of Christ's enemies; chaps, xiv., xv., xvi. 12. IX. The confession of Peter in Northern Galilee, and the solemn announcement of the Passion ; xvi. 13. X. The Transfiguration and the preaching of the mystery of the Cross; xvii.-xx. XI. Christ enters Jerusalem on the Day of Palms, and His teaching in that city till the beginning of His Passion ; xx. 17 ; XXV. XII. The Passion ; chaps, xxvi., xxvii. XIII. The Resurrection ; chap, xxviii. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK.— It is thought that Mark the Evangelist is the same person as "John who was surnamed Mark" (Acts xii. 12). In this case his mother, Mary, is one of the most illustrious and blessed women of the early Church. For, beside being the sister of St. Barnabas, her son would thus have the twofold privilege of being an Evangelist and the associate of St. Paul in his apostolic labors. It is, moreover, a most venerable tradition, dating from the infancy of the Church, that St. Mark the Evangelist was even more closely bound to St. Peter by constant companionship; and that the Gosjiel which bears his name was written in Rome under the direction of the Prince of the Apostles, and at the request of the Roman Christians. Hence it is that St. Irenaeus calls St. Mark "the interpreter and disciple of Peter," inierpres et sectator Petri. St. Mark was, therefore, the son of the heroic and generous woman whose home in Jerusalem was not only that of Peter and his fellow-laborers, the asylum of the faithful in the first persecution, but the house which was the very first temple of the Christian religion in the City of David. It HISTORY OF IHE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. is no wonder that the son of such a mother should have been the loved and trusted companion of the two great Apostles. The Gospel itself, as comparea with that of St. Matthew, is more simple and elementary in its character. Some scholars have even considered it to be only an abridgment of the latter. Nevertheless, although St. Mark omits much of our Lord's teaching, whether discourses oi parables, he dwells at greater length upon His miracles, as being more iitted to strike the pagan mind. " He drops the incidents and sayings which require special knowledge of the Jewish system or customs . . . The departures from the chronological order, which St. Matthew has made . . . are usually corrected by St. Mark" (Father Coleridge). He begins with the missionary labors of John the Baptist, and lis baptism of our Lord, the Temptation, and the first preaching in Galilee. At the close of the second chapter we have, in the controversy about the Sabbath, a key to the opposition which the Pharisees are getting up against the Master and His teaching. In the third chapter Christ's labors and miracles are at once introduced ; then the selection of the Apostles. The multitude drawn by the new Teacher and His wondrous cures is such, and the labor of the little band of work- men is so unceasing and overwhelming, "that they could not so much as eat bread" The Scribes from Jerusalem declare the miracles to be the effect of Satanic power. There is a mighty fermentation of opinion and a pas sionate contention among the masses. There is such danger, too, in the bold speeches of Jesus, that "when His friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on Him. For they said, He is become mad." Presently His mother and His near relatives or " brethren " appear on the scene, anxious about His safety. But He, who knows that His time of suffering has not yet come, and who is solely unxious to impress upon His hearers the divine value of His own message to them, and the renovating virtue of the supernatural truth and grace He brings to His nation, only answers : " AVho is My Mother and My brethren ? . . . Whosoever shall do the will of God, he is My brother, and My sister, and Mother." With the fourth chapter begins the teaching by parables, which, however, is but briefly dwelt on, the Evangelist insisting chiefly in the four follo.ving . ;vapters on Christ's labors and miracles in Galilee. The tenth chapter describes the Divine Master's work in Peraea or "Judaea beyond the Jordan." The remainder of the book, from the eleventh chapter inclusively, recounts our Lord's teaching, trials, and sufferings in Jerusalem down to His death, resurrection, and ascension. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.— St. Luke wrote his Gospel at a time when the faith had spread, and several attempts had been made to compose a satisfactory history of its Author, its origin, and its progress. He had been the companion of St. Paul, as he relates himself in the Acts of the Apostles, which he also wrote. It has been the constant tradition, both of the eastern and the western churches, that St. Luke was by profession a physician. Another but less accepted tradition attributes 42 HISTORY OF THE BUOKS OF THE HOL\ CATHOLIC BIBLE. to him some skill as a painter. He remained the associate of St. Paul till after this apostle's first imprisonment in Rome ; and obtained himself the crown of martyrdom like his beloved master. St. Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius bear witness to the general and early belief that he wrote his Gospel under the direction of St. Paul, as St. Mark had written his under that of St. Peter. Being a native of Antioch, Luke was familiar with the Greek language and culture. Hence the superior purity of his diction. "His work," says Father Coleridge, "is more like a regular history than that of the other Evangelists. He covers the whole ground from the Annunciation to the Ascension, and there is no prominent or im- portant feature in the whole series of the mysteries and actions of our Lord's Life which he has left untouched. At the same time, his Gospel is to a great extent new — new either in the events which it relates or in the fresh incidents which it adds to tho history of what has been already related, and he seems to make it his rule to suppl • omissions, and to illustrate the method and principles of our Lord's conduct by anec ■ dotes or discourses, which resemble very much those which others have inserted, but which are not the same ... If we consider St. Matthew as addressing himself pri- marily to the Hebrew Christians, or rather to their teachers, and St. Mark as turning upon the direct converts from heathenism, we may look upon St. Luke as the Evan- gelist of the Churches in which the Jewish element had been more or less absorbed by the larger influx of Gentiles ... He dwells with particular care upon the sacerdotal character of our Lord, upon the healing and compassionate aspect of His life, upon His love for penitents and sinners, and the like. . . ." The first section, chaps, i., ii., supplies the omissions of the other Gospels, giving le history of the conception and birth of our Lord and John Baptist, together with lis presentation in the Temple, His hidden life at Nazareth, and His appearing among iiie Doctors in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. The incidents of this early portion of ' hrist's career mentioned by the two preceding Evangelists are passed over by St. l-uke. The second section comprises chaps, iii., iv. and v., bringing the narrative down to the first preaching in Galilee. Chaps, vi.-ix. 20 give the entire second period of our Lord's life down to the Confession of St. Peter. From chap. ix. 21 to chap, xviii. 30 St. Luke relates what regards the doctrine of the Cross, the Transfiguration and our Lord's labors in Judaea, a portion of his life — the last year — not mentioned in the other Gospels. From chap, xviii. 31 to chap. xix. 27 are detailed the occur- rences and sayings that took place between Christ's leaving Perasa and His arrival in Jerusalem. The remaining chapters are the history of His labors and sufferings in JerU' ilem, of His resurrection. His manifestation to His disciples, and His ascension. :^ THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.— John, as well as James the Elder or Greater, was by his mother, Mary-Salome, the first cousin of our Lord ; James the Less or Younger and Jude or Thadaeus being the sons of another sister — all four, on account of their near relationship, being designated in Jewish phrase as the brothers of our Lord. John was especially dear to Him ; and this special affection has ever been attributed in the Church to John's virginal purity of heart. Of the life of thi» HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. Evangelist we shall speak more fully when we treat of his Epistles. At present it is very important that the reader should have a clear notion of what is distinctive in his Gospel. St. Irenaeus states that John published his Gospel while he was residing in Ephesus. St. Jerome says that he wrote it at the request of the Asiatic bishops, who besought him to treat in a special man- ner of the divinity of Christ. It is thought that this Gospel, al- though completed and published in Ephesus, was chiefly, if not wholly, written in the isle of Patmos, and, not improbably, after the destruction of Jerusalem. In its contents and scope it is evidently supplementary to the three other Gospels. "In truth, St. John's Gospel touches the Others only at one single point before he comes to the last few days of our Lord's Life, and even as to those, nine-tenths of what he relates are altogether supplementary. St. John is distinguished for the great length at which he relates the words of our Lord, and the large space which he spends upon single incidents or occasions. Thus no Gospel is so easily broken up into its component parts as this ; its arrangement becomes perfectly simple as soon as its supple- mentary character is recognized." Such is the judgment of Father Coleridge. The book may be divided into two very distinct parts ; the first part embracing eleven chapters ending with the recalling Lazarus to life ; and the second, ten chapters, the incidents and discourses pertaining to the Last Supper, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The first part comprises two sections : I. Chaps, i.-iv. describe incidents and events of which nothing is said by the other Evangelists. The time they cover extends from Christ's baptism to the beginning of his first missionary tour through Galilee. The occurrences take place alternately in Judaea — on the banks of the Jordan, in Jerusalem or the adjacent territory — and in Galilee. II. The scene of the next six chapters, v.-x. , is mostly in Jerusalem. Chapter v. recounts the healing on the Sabbath of the man sick for thirty-eight years, and the assertion by Christ of His own divinity during the public discussion occasioned by this miracle. Chapter vi. describes the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in Galilee, just before the second Pasch of Christ's public ministry, together with the discussion relating to the Manna and the Bread of Life figured by the Manna. The next four chapters, vii.-x., relate our Lord's sayings and doings during the last year of His Life, at the Feast of Tabernacles in the beginning of October, and at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple in the December fol- lowing. III. This section, comprising the eleventh chapter, gives an account of the miracle performed in favor of Lazarus. The Second Part of this Gospel gives, chapter after chapter, the Evangelist's additions to what had been already recorded in the other Gospels. To the attentive and devout student of the New Testament, St. John's Gospel will give much light to understand the Life of our Lord as a whole, and much food for pious contemplation. The Beloved Disciple has been called " the Theologian " by the early Church Fathers, because he alone affirms again and again the divin- ity of our Lord. He knew him to be true man, born of his own near kinswoman, reared in his own country among his own kins- folk, and, during the last period of the life ended so tragically, admitted into the closest companionship and loving intimacy with Him who was the true Son of God as well as the true Son of the Virgin Mary. It is the Divine Sonship of the Master that John proclaims in the very preface to his Gospel, lifting our souls up to these eternal splendors amid which the Word dwells evermore in the bosom of the Father. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.— This book, which is also ttie work of the Evangelist St. Luke, is the only inspired history — sven though a very partial one — of the infancy of the Christian Church. The events which it records cover a space of about thirty years. As the verv title, "Acts," indicates, it is the record of an eye-witness. Still it is not, and does not purport to be, a fall and complete history of the acts or labors of all the Apostles during that period. It relates, in the first part, principally the labors of St. Peter, and those of St. Paul in the second. Around these two great figures, indeed, are grouped subordinate laborers; thesa two, nevertheless, stand out in the narration as the central per- sonages. We see, in the very first chapter, the promise of Christ about the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled, and the timid Galilsean fisher- men transformed into the dauntless and eloquent apostles of theii crucified Master. Peter and John, the first in authority and the foremost in love, are also the boldest in confessing Him before the very people who had put Him to death. " Immediately after the Ascension," writes the Protestant Henry Alford, "St. Peter, the first of the Twelve, designated by our Lord as the Rock on which the Church was to be built, the holder of the Keys of the Kingdom, becomes the prime actor under God in the founding of the Church. He is the centre of the first group of sayings and doings. The opening of the door to the Jews (chap, ii.) and Gen- tiles (chap. X.) is his oflSce, and by him, in good time, is accom- plished." L^t us listen to the great Bossuet as he resumes the belief of the Chuich on this point. " Peter appears as the first (among the apostles) in every way: the first to confess the faith (St. Matt, xvi. i6); the first in the obligation of exercising brotherly love (St. John xxi. 15 and following); the first of all the apostles who saw Christ risen from the dead (i Cor. xv. 5), as he was to be the first to bear witness to the Resurrection in presence of the whole people (Acts ii. 14) ; the first to move in filling up the vacant place among the apostles (Acts i. 15); the first to confirm the faith by a miracle {/i. iii. 6, 7); the first to convert the Jews {/&. ii. 14); the first to admit the Gentiles (73. x.); the first in everything." Hear him again tracing out the design of Providence in the career of the two great Apostles. " Christ doth not speak in vain. Peter shall bear with him, whithersoever he goeth, in this open confession of the faith (St. Matt. xvi. 16), the foundation on which stand all the churches. And here is the road the Apostle has to follow. Through Jerusalem, the holy city in which Christ mani- fested Himself; in which the Church was to "begin" (St. Luke xxiv. 47), before continuing the succession of God's people ; in which consequently Peter was to be for a long time the foremost in teaching and in directing ; whence he was wont to go round about visiting the persecuted churches (Acts ix. 32), and confirming them in the faith ; in which it was needful for the great Paul — Paul come back from the third heaven — to go " to see Peter" (Galat. i. 18), not James, though he, so great an apostle, the " brother of the Lord," the Bishop of Jenisalem, surnamed the Just, and equally revered by both Jews and Christians, was also there. But it was not James that Paul was bound to come "to see." He came to see Peter, and to see him, as the original text suggests, as a thing full of wonders and worthy of being sought after. He came to contemplate and study Peter, as St. John Chrysostom hath it (/« Epist. ad Gal., c. i., n. 1 1) : to see him as some one greater and older than himself: to see Peter, nevertheless, not to be instructed by him, for Christ instructed Paul by a special revelation ; but in order to leave a model to future ages, and to establish, once for all, that no matter how learned a man might be, no matter how holy— - were he even another Paul — he must go to see Peter. . , . Through this holy city, then, and through Antioch, the metropolitan city of the East, ... far more than that, the most illustrious church on earth, since in it the Christian name arose ; . . . through these two glorious cities, so dear to the Church, and distinguished by such opposite features, Peter had to come to Rome — Rome still more illustrious, the head of Paganism and of the Empire, and which to seal the triumph of Christ over the world, is predestined to b« the capital of religion, the head of the Church, Peter's own city Thither was he per force to come by Jerusalem and Antioch. Bw 44 HISTORV OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. why do we see St. Paul in it? Th^ inysterious design would take long to explain. Only bear la mind the great division of the world between Peter and Paul, in which Peter, though given the whole world in charge in consequence of his primacy, and charged by an express command (Acts X.) to have a care of the Gentiles whom he admitted in the person of Cornelius the Centurion, did, nevertheless, take on himself the special care of the Jews even as Paul took a special care of the Gentiles (Galat. ii. 7, 8, 9). As a division was necessary, it was fitting that the first of the apostles should have the first-born among the peoples (the Jews) ; that he who was the head, and to whom all the rest must be united, should have the nation on which the others must be grafted, and that the Vicar of Christ should have Christ's own share. That, however, is not enough : Rome itself must fall to Peter's share. For, although, as the capital of Paganism, Rome belonged in a special manner to Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, nevertheless, it was in Rome that PetT, the head of Christendom, was bound to found the Church. Nor is this all : the extraordinary com- mission of St. Paul must die there with him, and thus returning to the supreme Chair of Peter, to which it was subordinated, the power of Paul must raise the Roman church to the highest point of authority and splendor " (Sermon on the Unity of the Church). THE FOUETEEN EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. In the Acts of the Apostles St. Luke describes the first growth of the Church in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine, and, outside of Palestine, in various countries of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. A society arises and rapidly increases around the teaching and ruling body of Apostles so carefully chosen, trained, and instructed by our Lord Himself. They and their successors after them to the end of time were to teach the nations of earth " to observe all things whatsoever" the Master had revealed as the law of life for mankind (St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). This immortal wciety thus springing into existence beneath the shadow of the Cross of Calvary, was np* only 'o teach with the fulnes."! of Christ't HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOUC BIBLE. 4S own authority, but to baptize and administer to the faithful all Christ's saving and sanctifying ordinances; and on the human race who hear this preaching and this call to baptism and newness of life is imposed the necessity of complying under pain of eternal loss. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not, shall be condemned " (St. Markxvi. i6). Bap- tism is but the door by which one enters into this Society : it is the indispensable initiatory rite and new birth in which the children »f the fallen Adam are born again of the blood of the Second — the blood of a God. Other divine ordinances, sacraments of heav- enly origin, and pregnant with divine virtue, are administered in due course, and according to the soul's needs, to maintain, renew, increase, and perfect the supernatural life bestowed in the new birth of Baptism. And so this -..ociety divinely commissioned to teach, to regene- rate, and govern the race of man in all things pertaining to eternal salvation, stands forth in the full consciousness of its power, and speaks to Jerusalem and to the world by the mouth of Peter, its visible chief, on the day of the first Christian Pentecost. Three thousand men baptized and admitted forthwith into fellowship with the preacher and his associates, attest the might of the Spirit who moves both the speaker and his hearers. Thenceforward the mighty movement is propagated far and wide. They teach — these Tathers of the new moral world which Christ came down to create — they baptize, they govern their flocks, with unquestioned authority, both the rulers and the subjects in the infant Church appreciating sensibly and to the full the last utterance of Christ : " Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world " (St. Matt, xxviii. 20). In every one of tne following epistles or levcers addressed by St. Paul to the churches v/hich he had founded or visited, or to the bishops he had set over them, the consciousness of this divinely- given authority is evident in the writer, and evidently supposed in the persons to whom they are written. He is in prison at Rome, and from there writes four of these touching letters, to Philemon, to the Colossians, the Philippians, and to the Ephesians. Just listen to some of the divine lessons of the imprisoned Apostle. To the noble Philemon whose forgiveness and brotherly charity he bespeaks for the fugitive slave Onesimus: " Though I have much confidence in Christ Jesus, to command thee that which is to the purpose,, for charity sake I rather beseech, whereas thou art such an one, as Paul an old man, and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ : I beseech thee for my son, whom I have begotten in my bands, Onesimus . . . Trusting in thy obedience, I have written to thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say. ' ' Thus does apostolic charity address itself to the work of abolishing the inveterate evil of slavery along with the manifold corruptions of the Pagan world. — To the Colossians : " We (Timothy and Paul) . . . cease not to pray for you and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual under- standing ... If so ye continue in the feith, grounded, and settled, and immovable from the hope of the Gospel ^.'hich ye have heard, which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven, whereof I Paul am made a minister Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh for His body, which is the Church ... If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you arc dead, a^-d your life is hid with Christ in God . . . Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth . . . uncleanness, lust, evil con- cupiscence, and covetousness . . . Stripping yourselves of the old man with hia deeds, and putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him." This God-like virtue was the new wine which could not be held in old vessels ; all had to be divine in the Christian man. — ^To the Philippians, who were especially dear to Paul : " My dearly be- loved, my joy, and my crown : so stand fast in the Lo^rd, my dearly beloved ! . . . Let your modesty be known to all men . . . Whatso- ever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatso- ever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame — if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline — think on *hese things. The things which you have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, these do ye ! and the God of peace shall be with you!" — Finally, to the Ephesians: "Blessed be th^ God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings ... in Christ. As He chose us in Him before the founda- tion of the world, that we should be holy and unspot^sd in His sight in charity ... I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . that He would grant you, ... to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man. That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts : that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you.may be filled unto all the fulness of God." "Anyone, in reading the Epistles of St. Paul," says Bergier, " must see that they were written on the spur of some particular occurrence, to clear up some question put to the writer, to correct some dangerous abuse, to inculcate some special duties ; that his purpose, in no one of these letters, was to draw up for the faithful a profession of faith, or an exposition of all the doctrines of Chris- tian belief, or of all its moral duties ; that, while writing to one Church, he never prescribes that his letter shall be communicated to all the others. It is, therefore, perverse obstinacy in Protestants to maintain that whenever St. Paul preached or taught by word of mouth, he confined himself to repeating the instructions con- tained in some one of his letters j and that no truth which is not laid down in writing can belong to the Christian doctrine." On the contrary, it is evident from a cursory glance at the Epistles themselves, that St. Paul refers to a previous body of truths de- livered by oral teaching, and to the acknowledged fact that the members of each church had been thoroughly grounded by such teaching in the great truths of the new Revelation. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.— This was, most prob- ably, written from Corinth, in the 5 8th year after the birth of Christ, two years before St. Paul went to Rome, and twenty-four years after his conversion. During this quarter of a century the Christian faith had grown wonderfully in the capital of the Roman Empire. The church there, as in most other cities of the empire, was composed of Jewish and Gentile converts, among whom a dis' cussion arose as to their relative claims to the esteem of the great body of believers throughout the world. The Jews prided them- selves on their being the descendants of Abraham, on their ances- tors having lived under a theocracy governed by a system of law and religion solemnly revealed to their own nation, while the rest of the human race remained in the darkness and horrid corruptions of idolatry. The converted Gentiles, on the other hand, nursed the belief that they had obtained the grace of conversion as a reward of their fidelity to the law of nature, and pointed out the manj great and pure names of their philosophers, warriors, and states men. Thus the Jewish Christians seemed to think that their faith- ful observance of the Mosaic law had deserved the grace of the divine adoption and justification in Christ, while their Gentile brethren attributed their possessing a like privilege to their having followed the guidance of the natural light of reason. St. Paul, who had been specially chosen to teach the Gentile world, wrote this Epistle to convince both these classes of converts of their serious error, by showing that the supernatural grace of our adoption as children of God, and the whole subsequent train of graces which . lead the soul to believe and to be iustified. are bestowed on vf HISTOR\ OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOUC BIBLE. gratuitously, as the effect of God's pure mercy, without any previous merit of our own. To stop the vain boasting of both Jew and Gentile, St. Paul shows how both were the slaves of sin, and, therefore, unable to merit the gift of justification by their own good deed.^, The condition of the people of God was, indeed, attended with many singular spiritual advantages and privileges, as compared with that of the pagan world. Nevertheless, neither Jew nor Pagan could by their own merits lift themselves up to the supernatural rank and regenerated condition of the Christian people. In order to convey a conviction of this truth to the minds of the faithful at Rome, St. Paul begins by exposing the horrible crimes committed among Pagans even by the most enlightened philosophers — chap. i. In chap, ii. he enumerates the transgressions of the Jews; and concludes, in chap, iii., that in as much as both were thus subject to sin, so the justification vouchsafed them in Christ must be absolutely gratuitous, the effect of grace and not of legal justice or natural virtue, and therefore to be attributed to supernatural faith, which is a gift of God. This position is confirmed and illustrated by the example of Abraham's heroic faith and justification, chap. iv. In chap. v. is set forth the excellence of this grace of Christ ; in chap. vi. the Christian soul is urged to preserve, cherish, and increase this priceless gift. In chap. vii. he teaches that even in the Christian, after baptism and justification, the evil forces of nature still remain with the low animal appetites (concupiscence) that drag the soul down toward sensual gratification : this concupiscence is a force which rebels against the restraints of the Mosaic law or the law of nature, without being put down by them, the victory over it being reserved to the grace received through Christ. St. Paul then proceeds to enumerate the fruits of faith, chap. viii. ; shows in chaps, ix., x., xi., that the grace of justification was bestowed on the Gentiles m preference to the Jews, because the former readily submitted to the preaching of the Gospel, while the latter rejected Christ ; that, whereas the supernatural gift of faith was a thing not due to either Jews or Gentiles, the promises made to Abraham and his posterity do not therefore fail, nor can the divine justice be impugned. In chaps, xii.-xvi., the Apostle inculcates the cardinal precepts of morality so necessary to all who believe in the Gospel (see Picquigny's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans). Vainly have those who reject the infallible authority of the Catholic Church endeavored to build on the words of St. Paul a system of blind and fatal predestination, alike injurious to the divine goodness and destructive of man's free will under the aciion of divine grace. From the passage, chap. ix. 13, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated," we must not conclude that our good God, without any regard to the merits of men and independently of His foreknowledge of their good and evil deeds, predestines some to be the objects of His hate and others to be the objects of His love. On the contrary, we are to believe that this predestination in its twofold ^aspect is based on the foreknowledge God must needs have of the good or evil deeds of every human being. Even so the words, " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," etc. (Ibid. 15), are not to be construed into an absolute election of a certain class of persons destined to everlasting happiness, independently of all prevision of their good or evil deeds. They simply imply that the almighty HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. goodness is ever free to grant the grace of faith and justification to who i^evei it pleases. It is a supernatural gift, one not due to nature or natural /nerits. Hence St. Paul says (Ibid. i6) : " So then it is not of him that willeth,, nor of him that runneth, but of God that shovveth mercy. . . . Therefore iie hatli mercy on whom He will ; and, whom He will, He hardeneth ; ' ' that is. He allows the hard and rebellious heart to persist in its rejection of His graces, as He die in the case of Pharaoh and in that of the apostate Judas. So " to harden " i. not to predestine to eternal damnation, anymore than "to show mercy " or " to have mercy" is to predestine to eternal bliss. Let us Catholics rest sweetly in the assurance that we have in the living voice of the Church an infallible interpreter of the dead letter of Scripture, whether it be the writings of St. Paul or any other book of the Old or New Testament. I. AND II. TO THE CORINTHIANS.— Corinth, situated on a narrow neck of land that separated the ^gean from the Mediterranean Sea, was thus the central point on the very highway of commerce between Italy and Asia. The city was rich and beautiful, and the climate lovely. When it first fell beneath the arms of the Roman Republic, the seduction of its evil arts on that hitherto austere commonwealth was such, that from that time dates the decline of Roman virtue and liberty. The city had been visited by St. Peter before St. Paul came there, and the Christian faith had made such rapid conquests, and operated so extraordinary a change in the manners of the local Christian society, that it was the wonder of all Greece. Still, both because of the great mental activity which prevailed among Corinthians of all classes, and because of the concourse of strangers from the East and the West who met here like two adverse tides, there was a great diversity of opinion and sentiment among the faithful. St. Peter had left there as elsewhere the impress of his authority and the memory of his virtues. After him St. Paul had come, and the eloquence of the Apostle of the Gentiles had, not improbably, cast into the shade the preaching of the poor fisherman of Galilee ; then had come from Alexandria Apollos, more eloquent even than Paul, and one who had the secret of all the philosophies of Egypt, Asia, and Greece. And so, as was the wont in the East, these cultured Christians would discuss the respective merits of their teactie?rs, as the university students in Athens and Alexandria criticised the eloquence and doctrines of their rhetoricians and philosophers. This was one source of contention. Another came from their very imperfect acquaintance with the moral law of the Gospel — the Jewish converts, probably, contending for the maintenance of Jewish customs, while tha Gentile proselytes refused to be goveroed by the <8 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. prescriptions of the Mosaic law. The Corinthians themselves had, besides, written to St. Paul, begging to be instructed on several matters of doctrine and discipline. This letter is an answer to this prayer, as well as a general admonition to the Church of Corinth to discountenance unwise and uncharitable discussions, and to cherish, above all things, union of souls by firm faith and inviol- able charity "Every one of you saith : I indeed arii of Paul ; and I am of Apollo; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided ? Was Paul then crucified for you ? or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" Such are the words of weighty remon- strance with which the Apostle begins his instruction, and they let us into the secret of these lamentable divisions. To the proud and vain Greeks, who sought and prized philosophical wisdom above all else, the Apostle declares that he knows but one wisdom : that by which God has redeemed and is converting the world through the mystery of the Cross, and the humiliations of the Crucified — a means of all the most inadequate according to the judgment of the worldly-wise. " But we have the mind of Christ," he declares, as the sole rule and measure of our judgments in things spiritual. Wherefore, as the merits of their teachers did not bring about the ciiange of heart wrought in the converts, but the hidden virtue of the Cross and the grace of the Crucified, so the labors of Apos- tolic men had been barren of all heavenly fruit without that same grace. "Let no man therefore glory in men. For all things are yours . . . And you are Christ's: and Christ is God's." It is worse than folly, then, to dispute about the personal qualities or merits of the Apostle through whom one has received the word of «>alvation, seeing that the Church and the whole body of the divine ordinances are God's gift to man in Christ, and that one ought to look to the Almiglity Giver and the priceless gift rather than to the earthly channel through which it is communicated. Nevertheless, as the Apostles are the workmen and servants of the Master, to Him alone are tliey amenable in judgment. Hence, chap, iv., the severe reproof given to all who permit themselves to arraign the conduct of God's ministers. To humble these vain-glorious and self-sufficient Corinthians, the Apostle, in chap, v., touches on the festering sore both of Pagan and Christian society in the beautiful city — unbridled licentious- ness. A Christian man had forgotten himself so far as to marry his own stepmother. Him the Apostle excommunicates, and then comes the solemn admonition to the young Church of the place: "Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste . . . Put away the Evil One from among yourselves!" Then follow authoritative admonitions against the unbrotherly practice of bringing their wrongs for judgment before the Pagan tribunals, and against those sins of impurity that are so opposed to the ideal of Christian holiness, chap. vi. ; lessons on marriage, virginity, and celibacy, chap. vii. ; on abstinence from meats offered to idols, chap. viii. ; on his own voluntary poverty, his working at a trade, and his bodily austerities, chap. ix. ; on the abstinertce from certain meats to be observed by the faithful, x. ; on the dress and functions of women in the church-services, and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, xi. ; on the divine economy in the distribu- tion of extraordinary gifts and graces, xii. ; on the incomparable excellence of charity as the great central virtue to be sought and practiced by all, xiii. ; on the preference to be given to the gift or talent of prophesying; that is, of understanding and expounding divine things, xiv. In the xvth chapter he answers the last ques- tion put to him by the Corinthians on the final resurrection, con- cluding, in the last chapter, with directions about collecting alms for the needy churches and varioi» farewell words of admonition and blessing. The Second Epistle, written u few months after the First, was penned by the Apostle to relieve the excommunicated Corinthian of his heavy censure, and to encourage the prompt good-will of all those who had profited by the reproofs and teachings detailed above. St. Paul once more reasserts his apostolic independence of all earthly praise and commendation. The Judaizing faction, instead of yielding to Paul's appeal in favor of union and charity, still per- sisted in accusing him of undue leaning to the Gentiles and of defaming Moses and the law. They evidently went so far as to deny him the rank and quality of a true Apostle, thereby belittling his ministry and destroying his influence with a great number of people. These factious intrigues had, perhaps, induced the Cor- inthians to draw up letters commendatory of Paul and his labors. At any rate, he declines any such commendation, affirms the independence of the ministers of the New Testament, exalts the mission entrusted to liimself and his associates (chap, iv.) ; urges them to be liberal in their charity toward the needy sister churches ; and exhorts them to make a good use of God's liberality toward themselves. From chapter x. to the end he nobly defends himself and his labors against the detractors who had been so busy among the Corinthians. EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.— This Epistle was written from Ephesus, according to the opinion of the best biblical scholars. The Galatians were the Gauls or Celts of Western Asia ; they had been instructed in the faith by St. Paul, but, in his absence, had been, like the Corinthians, sadly disturbed by Judaizing mischief- makers, who persuaded them of the necessity of conforming to the law of circumcision and to other Jewish observances, depreciating at the same time the apostolic rank and services of Paul. He therefore writes to undo what these false teachers and pernicious zealots had been doing among the fervent, hot-headed, and impul- sive Galatians. He establishes his own claim to the Apostolate by relating the fact of his miraculous conversion and his special mission to the Gentiles, a mission received immediately from Christ, and expressly approved by the body of the Apostles and by Peter in particular. He shows, moreover, that Peter as well as his col- leagues had sanctioned the stand that he (Paul) had taken on the questions arising about the Mosaic Law, and the free and sinless intercourse of converted Jews with their Gentile brethren anf the year 52. After expressing his devout gratitude for their progress and perseverance in virtue and piety, he replies to the personal ubuse heaped on him by the Jews by recalling to the minds of his converts with what heroic zeal and disinterestedness he had labored among them, supporting himself the while by the work of his own hands. They have not, therefore, any cause to blush for their spiritual father. In thg impossibility of returning to their city, he beseeches them to increase their fidelity and fervor ; praises their extraor- dinary charity ; urges them to attend, in all peacefulness and quietness, to their respective avocations, and to those steady habits of industry which secure independence. They are not to mourn hopelessly for their dead. They are destined to share in Christ's glorious resurrection. Being certain that this Great Day of awakening shall come for all, " Let us not sleep as others do; but Ht us watch and be ■ober . . . And we beseech you, brethren, rebuke the unquiet, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient towards all men.'- HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. SI THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.— This was also written from Corinth very soon after the First, and for a like purpose. He particularly instructs them not to be alarmed by the predictions of some false teachers who went about announcing that the end of the world was near at hand. " There- fore, brethren, stand fast ! and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle. ' ' THE FIRST AND SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY.— This faithful companion and fellow-laborer of St. Paul was a native of Derbe or Lystra in Lycaonia, the son of a Greek father, and of a Jewish mother, Eunice, to whose careful training as well as to that of his grandmother, Lois, he owed not only his knowledge of the Old Testament writings, but his conversion to Christianity. From his first meeting with Paul at Lystra, the Apostle's soul was drawn to the heroic youth in whom he discovered all the great qualities that go to make the apostolic missionary and ruler of God's church. This was during St. Paul's firct missionary tour, when Timothy was only a stripling. Seven years afterward, during Paul's second tour, Timothy was set apart and ordained for the apostolic ministry. Thenceforward he became Paul's right hand in his gigantic labors, going whithersoever the latter would, to confirm and console the faithful of Europe or Asia, following his master to Rome and sharing, it is thought, his first imprisonment there. After their liberation, Paul and his companion revisited Asia to- gether, Timothy being placed in charge of the Church of Ephesus, while St. Paul went over to Macedonia. The First Epistle, written at some uncertain date after the separation, is, manifestly, an instruction on the duties of the pas- toral office, every line of which has been for eighteen centuries the delightful spiritual food of bishops and priests all over the world. The Second Epistle was written from St. Paul's prison in Rome, md most probably a very short time before his death. " I have a remembrance of thee in my prayers, night and day, desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy ; calling to mind that faith which is in thee unfeigned, which also dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice, and I am certain that in thee also" (i. 3-5). Thus does the fatherly heart of the aged Apostle go out to the young bishop, touching and moving powerfully every heroic fibre in it, before he lays be- fore him the details of the high and holy duties which are incum- bent on him. It is like the eagle encouraging its young to try the loftiest flights. "Only Luke is with me," the imprisoned Apostle says in con- cluding; "take Mark and bring him with thee . . . The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, especially the parchments." Such is the poverty of this glorious apostle of Jesus of Nazareth ! Would you see a further resemblance of Paul with his Master, listen to what the apostle says of his first appearance before the Roman magis- trates, probably of his first trial by torture : "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all forsook me : may it not be laid to their charge ! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me," 2 Tim. iv. 16, 17. THE EPISTLE TO TITUS.— Titus was the son of Greek parents, by birth a Gentile, consequently. He was a fellow-laborer of St. Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and assisted with them at the Council of Jerusalem, in which it was decided that the Gentile converts should not be compelled to receive circumcision. He was employed by St. Paul on various missions to the churches, such as were intrusted to Timothy, and, like the latter, was appointed by the Apostle to discharge the episcopal functions. In the interval between St. Paul's first and second imprisonment at Rome, he visited Crete in company with Titus, and left the latter in the island after him to govern the church there. The Epistle addressed to Titus from Nicopolis (in Epirus, probably, where St. Paul was afterward arrested and carried a prisoner to Rome), after enumerat- ing the chief virtues that should adorn a bishop, points out those which Titus is to insist on among the people he has to govern. THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.— This is a touching plea for a fugitive slave, Onesimus, whom St. Paul had converted in Rome, whom he found a useful auxiliary in his ministrations, and jyhom he sends back to his native city, Colossae, where he expects Philemon to receive him as a brother. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.— The constant belief of the Catholic Church ascribes the authorship of this most beautiful epistle to St. Paul. The doubts which modern critics have en- deavored to cast on its authenticity are of too evanescent a nature to cloud the faith of the true Christian scholar. It was probably written from Rome, and in the year 63. It was addressed, not so much to the Hebrew race in general, as to the Hebrew Christians of Palestine, and, particularly, those of Jerusalem. For many years before this Jerusalem had been held in terror by an organized band of assassins (the Sicarii), and in the year 62 the new High Priest Annas, or Ananus II., a rigid Sadducee, began a formidable persecu- tion against the Christians, and summoned before the Sanhedrim St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, and other leading Christians. The other James had, several years before, been put to death by order of Herod Agrippa, and since then, as if in atonement of this innocent blood, the Sicarii, with the connivance of Felix, the Roman Governor, had killed the High Priest Jonathan at the altar and in the very act of sacrificing. Everything in Judaea portended the near accom- plishment of our Lord's prediction — the utter destruction of Jeru- salem and thp '''"•nple, and the final dispersion of the Jewish nation. It was thus a period of terrible and manifold trial for the Christian Hebrews of Palestine. What was to compensate them for the loss of their nationality, the destruction of the Holy City, the blotting out of the national sanctuary, and the cessation of the worship of their forefathers ? No one better than St. Paul could lift up the soul of these suffer- ing Christians, confirm their faith by showing how the ancient promises were all fulfilled in Christ, how the trials of the Hebrews of old should animate their descendants to heroic constancy, and sustain their hopes by laying before them in the glorious spectacle of Christ's universal Kingdom and everlasting priesthood — the consummation of their most patriotic aspirations? To understand, therefore, both the purpose and the scope' of this epistle, we must recall to mind the objections which non-believing Jews were con- tinually making against the Christian religion and its Founder. Christ, they said, the author of this new faith, was a man put to the most shameful death by a solemn sentence of the magistrates and the people, whereas the Jewish religion could boast of a Law delivered to their nation by Angels acting in God's name, and promulgated by Moses, the holiest and most illustrious of men. Moreover, the Christians, instead of the glorious Temple of Jeru- salem, the splendid sacrificial ritual ordained by Moses, the unin- terrupted succession of priests and Levites descended from Aaron, and the sacred and solemn yearly festivals which assembled the Hebrew people aroiind the altars of the living God, had only ob- scure and mysterious rites celebrated in holes and corners, without any hereditary priesthood or recognized public temple. Where could the Hebrew people go, as of old, in their manifold needs, in their consciousness of sin, to find the Mercy Seat on which Jehovah dwelt, or the altar of holocausts on which to offer the atoning victims of their guilt? St. Paul purposes to show that the Christian Religion is incom- parably above the Jewish, in this, that its Author and Lawgiver is Christ, the Son of God and very God Himself, as superior to the angels and to Moses as the Creator is to His creatures. Moses^ 02 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. no stood as mediator between God and His people, was but a mortal man, whereas in our Mediator Christ, we have an infinite Person. The same tran- scendent excellence prevails in the rites and sacrifice of the New Law, and in the spiritual and eternal goods it bestows on its subjects. In order to follow without confusion the course of St. Paul's demonstration, you have only to examine the natural divisions of this Epistle. I. From chap. 1. to chap, iv., the Apostle shows the superiority of Christ's mediatorship above that intrusted either to the Angels or to Moses. He teaches (chap. i. 1-14) that Christ is above the Angels, although He has only spoken to us after the Prophets. For He is the Son of God, while they are only His messengers and ministers. Nor (ii. 6-8) does the fact of His being man argue His inferiority to the Angels, since even as Man, Christ hath been placed over all things. Be- sides, it was a necessary part of the divine plan of our redemption, that the Son should stoop to assume our human nature. "Because the children are partakers of flesh and blood. He also Himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same, thai iluuugh death He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the Devil." Again (chaps, iii., iv.), Moses did not build the house in which he was a minister, whereas our Great High Priest is the builder and the master of God's House and Kingdom here below — a house and kingdom indeed which are only the figure of the heavenly and eternal. Moses, though fai*hful and true in his ministry, offended, and so did the people he guided, and they entered not into the rest of the Promised Land. Hence we Christians should take warning, and yearn for the eternal repose into which our Divine Leader hath already entered. " We have not a High Priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities ; but one tempted in all things, like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace : that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid " (iv. 15,16). In these two last chapters the Apostle, with the art of a true orator, presses upon his afflicted and wavering brethren the danger and fearful consequences of apostasy or falling away from the faith. Those who followed Moses out of Egypt, who heard the word of the Lord in the wilderness and beheld His wonderful ways, wavered and failed in their faith ; therefore did they not enter into the promised rest. How many perished in the desert ! Even under Josue {Jesus iv. 8) they did not, in the land of Chanaan, obtain that divine and everlasting repose, which it belongs to the true Jesus, the only Saviour, to bestow. But firm faith in Him is already the beginning of possession, the anticipated enjoyment of that rest which gives God to the soul and the soul to God. Let us then give to Him through that living faith our whole heart and soul. " Having therefore a great High Priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." II. St. Paul now proceeds to discuss the dignity and prerogatives of Christ's priesthood and the infinite virtue of His sacrifice, as the One Victim and oblation prefigured by the sacrificial offerings of the Old Law. In chap. v. i-ii, St. Paul proves that Christ per- formed the functions of the priestly office by offering up " gifts and sacrifices for sins." Moreover, He closed His earthly career by fulfilling in His own person and by His last acts the prophecy which likened Him to Melchisedech. "And being consummated, He became, to all that obey Him, the cause of eternal salvation, called by God a High Priest according to the order of Melchisedech." As if the Reality prefigured in the sacrifice of Melchisedech, and consummated in the Bread and Wine offered up by Christ, recalled some formidable practical difficulties, the Apostle here turns aside (v. 11 ; vi. 20) to solve them for his readers. " Of whom (Mel- chisedech) we have much to say, and hard to be intelligibly uttered, because you are become weak to bear. . . . Strong meat is for the perfect, for them who by custom have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil." The Apostle is unwilling to rehearse for these vaccilating Christians the elementary truths delivered to catechumens. And then comes the terrible warning to HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLr CAIHOLIC BIBLt. /ftose who allow their first fervor to cool during a time of persecu- tion and their faith to waver, who have abused the most precious graces, and by this abuse placed themselves on the road to apostasy. " It is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly Gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, have, moreover, tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance!" . . . Woe to "the earth that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it • . . but . . . bringeth forth thorns and briars 1 " . . . "It is reprobate and very near to a curse . . ." Then come words of generous praise for their former noble deeds of piety and charity, and a most beautiful exhortation to constant and increasing carefulness under present trials. Theirs must be the invincible patience and living faith of Abraham, who was rewarded after so much suffering and waiting. Even so must they anchor their faith and hope in Heaven, '- Where the fore- runner Jesus is entered for us." Taking up the thread of his argument where he had left it at the Aiention of Christ's priesthood in connection with that of Mel- chisedech, the Apostle proceeds to show that even as the typical Melchisedech, the King-priest of Salem, was superior in dignity to Abraham, and to Levi descended from Abraham with his sacer- dotal progeny, so and far more so He who is " a Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech," transcends both the priest-King of Salem and the Levitical priesthood. " By so much is Jesus made a surety of a better testament," vii. 22. " We have auch an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the Heavens, a minister of the Holies and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not man," viii. i, 2. This High Priest, this Priesthood, this Tabernacle, this sacrificial worship, are that most perfect and divine exemplar which all pre- ceding types and systems copied and foreshadowed. The blood which flowed in the manifold Mosaic sacrifices was figurative of the blood of the One Infinite Victim ; the sacrifices were many and daily renewed because of themselves inefficacious toward atonement or sanctification, ix. i-io. " But Christ being come an High Priest of the good things to come, ... by His own blood entered once Into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemp- tion," ix. II, 13. The national Jewish religion with its gorgeous worship was thus only " a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things," x. i — could " never make the comers thereunto perfect." Now we have in the Lamb of God the victim of infinite price and merit ; and, therefore, " we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once," x. 10. So, " this [great High Priest] offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth at the right aand of God ... By one oblation He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," x. 12, 14. Thus by the application to Bs of the infinite atoning merits of this one bloody sacrifice of Cal- fary is the guilt of all sin remitted, and through that Blood applied to our souls in every sacrament and every individual grace, are we enabled to go on from degree to degree of spiritual perfection and holiness. O Jews, wherefore, then, do ye weep over the prospect of the near destruction of your Temple and the coming ruin of your Sion? Wherefore refuse to be comforted because with the Temple shall cease forever the sacrificial worship of your fore- fathers? Look up to Jesus promised by Moses and the Prophets, prefigured by Melchisedech and his oblation. He, the Great High Priest of the perfect and everlasting Covenant, hath fulfilled both the unbloody oblation of the King-Priest of Salem and the bloody expiation foreshown by the Levi tic sacrifices. Our Divine Mel- chisedech sits forever at the right hand of the Father, offering ever- more for all succeedmg generations His Body and Blood as the price of their ransom and the source of all saving and sanctifying graces. And on earth, even when your Temple disappears, and '>ot one drop of blood shall reddec the spot where 11 aow stands. there shall continue all over the earth from the rising to the settinj sun the Everlasting Commemoration of Christ's bloody sacrifice, the unbloody offering of Melchisedech. Thus heaven and earth shall ever unite in the divine and perfect offering of Him who is a Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech. Having thus established the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old, St. Paul once more appeals to his Hebrew coreligion- ists to continue steadfast in the faith, x. 19-30. " Let us consider one another to provoke unto charity and good works." The Chris- tian Church may not punish with death apostates and transgressors, as was the wont of the Jewish (x. 28) ; but the spiritual and unseen punishment reserved to the apostate from Christianity is not the less terrible or uncertain, because unseen. " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ! " The bitter trials which the Church has to endure will soon be ended. Meanwhile her sons must arm themselves with faith and the heroic patience faith begets. III. The three remaining chapters are taken up with a descrip- tion of that living faith — the mightiest of moral forces — and its wonderful effects, as exemplified in their own illustrious ancestors (chap, xi.) ; with a stirring exhortation to his Christian brethren to emulate such glorious examples (chap, xii.), and to devote them- selves to the practice of brotherly c'.r.rity and its kindred active virtues — the most efficacious preservative against human respect and loss of fervor (chap, xiii.) III. THE SEVEN CATHOLIC EPISTLES THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.— Although some writers have attributed the authorship of this Epistle to St. James the Elder, the brother of St. John, the great majority of biblical scholars ascribe it to St. James the Less or the Younger, Bishop of Jerusalem, and brother of St. Jude. The former was put to death by Herod Agrippa in the year 44, and the latter suffered martyrdom about 62 or 63 by order of the High Priest Annas or Ananus II. It ii thought that he wrote this Epistle in the year 59, some three years before his death. This glorious relative of our Lord was one of those to whom He deigned to show Himself in a special manner after the resurrection (i Cor. xv. 7). He had his residence in Jerusalem, where he was looked upon as a pillar of the Church, and where he was visited by St. Paul soon after the conversion of the latter (Galat. i. 18); and where also he assisted at the council held by the Apostles, and pronounced a discourse to which the others assented. From his coreligionists, fellow-citizens, and con- temporaries he received the surname of " the Just," and was, be- sides, popularly designated as "Oblias" or "the bulwark of the people," on account of his extraordinary devotion to prayer and his influence with the Divine Majesty. St. Epiphanius says that he was appointed by our Lord Himself to govern the Church of Jerusalem. In his Epistle, which he addressed to all the Christian Churches, St. James insists on the necessity of good works as the proper fruits of a soul filled with a living and active faith. He insisted on this in order to confute the erroneous interpretation given in many places to the doctrine of St. Paul, on the inadequacy of works per- formed in fulfillment either of the Law of Moses or the Law of Nature to merit or effect justification : this was to be the effect of divine grace alone. The false interpreters of St. Paul affirmed that the works performed by charity were not necessary to salvation ; that faith alone sufficed. Hence the declaration of the Apostle : "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving youi own selves" (i. 22). " If then you fulfill the royal law, according to the Scriptures, T/im shall love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well" (ii. 8). "What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works ? Shall faith be able to save him?" (ii. m). "For even as the body without the spirit is dead; 54 HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOI.Y CATHOLIC BIBLE. so also faith without works is dead " (ii. 26). Both St. Paul and t. James taught that in the Christian soul supernatural faith and harity should go hand in hand working out man's salvation under he guidance of the Spirit of God, and producing deeds worthy f an adopted child of God. Both the one and the other taught hat suj)ernatural faith and charity, and all the divine forces that lift the soul of the sinner or the natural man to the state of grace or justification, are the free gift of God through Jesus Christ. Man's part in the vital acts which enter into the process of justifi- cation consists in yielding a free assent to the light vouchsafed him and obeying the impulse of the Spirit who moves his heart. In this Epistle St. James, as is the common opinion, promulgated the doctrine relating to Extreme Unction, which had been insti- tuted by our Lord, and which He taught His disciples to practice as is hinted in St. Mark vi. 13. THE FIRST AND SECOND EPISTLES OF ST. PETER.— These are also termed "Catholic," because addressed to the faithful at large. The First Epistle is dated from " Babylon ; " that is, Rome, according to the common interpretation of Catholics. Its substance, form, and tone remind one forcibly of the doctrinal encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs, Peter's successors. Its purpose evidently is to instruct the Hebrew converts of Asia Minor, while edifying also those of other nationalities. He bids them adorn their Christian profession by holiness of life. Like St. Paul, Peter lifts the souls of his readers to the contemplation of the unchangeable Kingdom which is to be their inheritance in heaven, as the adopted children of the Father in Christ. This, however, is only the prize to be won by long-suffering patience here. This glorious and fruit- ful trial of their faith, as well as its unspeakable reward, has been the subject of the Prophecies so familiar to the Jews and now not unknown to their Gentile fellow-believers; for this trial they have been also prepared by the ministers of the Gospel (i. 1-12). Pur- chased from sin by an infinite price, " the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled," let them be holy even as He is holy (13-25). In chap. ii. the Apostle continues to describe in fuller detail the means by which Christian humanity, regene- rated or born anew of the blood of a God, may form a society of God-like brothers. Laying aside all the passions that are born )f pride and selfishness, they are to be "as new-born babes" desiring earnestly the milk of this heavenly truth which feeds and elevates their rational nature, that thereby they may "grow unto salvation.'- Nay, more than that, the members of this society are likened to "living stones built up, a spiritual house" (ii. 5), the " chief come: -stone" of which is Christ. Anxious to see this glorious edifice brought to perfection and filling the earth, Peter, who is, under Christ, the Rock and foundation on which the whole structure reposes, addresses the faithful on the virtues that are most conducive to edification. " Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul, having your conversation (manner of living) good among the Gentiles : that, whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may, by the good works which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation " (ii, 12). And so, throughout the remainder of the Epistle, he continues to inculcate the practice of the private and public virtues that are ever sure to win Christians the love and reverence of mankind. In the Second Epistle, written, most probably, from prison and shortly before his death, St. Peter insists on the divine rank to which regenerated man is lifted in Jesus Christ. This great and fundamental truth must be, for converted Jews and Gentiles, like a beacon-light placed on high above the road of life and guiding all the followers of Christ to the loftiest aims and the noblest leeds. "All things of His divine power, which appertain to life *nd godliness, are given ys through the knowledge of Him who iw**» cblled us by His own proper glory and virtue. By whom He hath given us most great and precious promises ; that by these yo* may be made partakers of the djvine nature, flying the cor ruption of that concupiscence which is in the world " (i. 3, 4). The supernatural knowledge of Christ, and of the Christian'^ sublime destinies in Him, is not only light in the mind but fir& in the heart, purging it from the dross of all earthly and impure affections. This sacred fire cannot be concealed within the soul, but must needs break forth in one's whole outward life, enlighten- ing all who come within its reach, and communicating to them the ardor of that heavenly charity which is as inseparable from the words and deeds of the true Christian as the sun's radiance and warmth are from the sun itself. Ponder every line and word throughout these too short chapters, and see how the inspired admonitions of the first Roman Pontiff are fitted to the needs of our own nineteenth century, warning Ui against the apostate Chris- tians who put away Revealed Truth from them, because they, too, have " eyes full of adultery and of sin that ceaseth not " (ii. 14) ; ..." Speaking proud words of vanity, they allure by the desires of fleshly riotousness those who for a little while escape, such as converse in error : promising them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption " (18, 19). And how touching is the allusion to the Apostle's own death, so near at hand and so clearly revealed to himself! "I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, being assured that the laying away of my tabernacle is at hand, according as our Lord Jesus Christ also hath signified to me " (ii. 13, 14). The truth which this man, who is already in chains for his faith, and who is about to crown his apostleship by martyrdom and thus to seal his witness by his own blood, has preached throughout the Roman Empire and planted in Rome itself, is neither fiction nor imposture, " For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ : but having been made eye-witness of His majesty . . . And we have the more firm prophetical word, whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day- Star arise in your hearts : understanding this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time : but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost. But there were also false prophets among the [Jewish] people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them . . . And many sha-11 follow their riotousnesses, through whom the Way of Truth shali- be evil spoken of" (ii. 16-21 ; iii. i, 2). THE THREE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE. — ^The first of these bore anciently the title of " Epistle to the Parthians," and was therefore supposed to have been addressed to such Jewish Christians as resided within the Parthian Empire. It is directed against the followers of Simon Magus, Cerinthus, and of Gnosticism. Simon maintained that Christ was not the Messiah, and claimed for himself the glory which he denied to Jesus, affirm- ing that He only bore the semblance of our humanity, and that the body nailed to the Cross was not a substantial body. This was also, to a certain extent, the error of the Gnostics and the Docetse, who denied the reality of Christ's birth and death. Finally, Cer- inthus taught that Jesus was nothing but an ordinary man, the real son of Joseph, on whom, at His baptism by John, the Holy Ghost or Christ descended in the form of a dove, forsaking Him during His death agony. Thus, all of these agreed in denying the divinity of Christ. Against them all, and in favor of the One true Messiah whom he knew to be both very God and very man, John wrote. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our bands have hsndled, of the v>r4 of Ut*; for tb* HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. life was manifested , and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us " (i. i, 2). "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God : and every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God" (iv. 2, 3). On the necessity of good work, especially of brotherly charity and its fruits, St. John insists with the other Apostles, Peter, Paul, and James, while inculcating a firm faith, invincible patience and spotless purity of life. The authenticity of the Second and Third Epistles was denied by some scholars. They be- long, however, to the canon received by the Church, and bear intrinsic evidence of St. John's authorship, besides the external weight of authority which ascribes these two letters to him. THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE THE APOSTLE.— Jude was the brother of St. James the Younger or the Just, Bishop of Jerusalem. He was, consequently, a son of Alpheus or Cleophas, and a near relative of our Lord. It is not known when and where this epistle was written. It warns the faithful against following certain false teachers and sharing their awful doom. The reader will perceive, on an attentive perusal, how closely it resembles the Second Epistle of St. Peter. THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE.— The Greek word Apocalypsis means "ail unveiling;" hence the Protestant translators have called it The Revelation ol St. John. It |.p.Mii is thought to have been written about the year of our Lord 95 or 97, and, most likely, in the Island of Patmos. It is the only prophetic book among the New Testament Scriptures, and its inherent obscurity has exercised, during more than eighteen hundred years, the ingenuity of the most eminent biblical scholars and theologians. It may suffice, however, to tafec up the text of the Apocalypse, and to find in the natural sequence of the chapters themselves the light which will enable one to understand more clearly the history of the Christian Church in the past, to appreciate her struggles in the present, and to look forward with the eye of exultant hope to her certain victories in the future, as well as to that Supreme Day of Judgment which will vindicate the whole mysterious order of God's providence. We can divide the whole matter of this sublime book into two parts. In the first, embracing the first three chapters, St. John addresses himself in particular to the faithful of Proconsular Asia, who were his special charge, and reproves what he finds censurable in the seven dioceses or churches within the Proconsulate. This portion, therefore, is strictly ethical and historical. The second and prophetical portion embraces the remainder of the book from chap. iv. to the end, and describes, under various allegorical and mystical forms, the stages' through which the Church has to pass, especially the last period of her existence, the times of Antichrist. Such is the view presented by the learned and saintly Cornelius a Lapide. The purpose of the Apostle, according to this author, is to animate the faithful of the apostolic age and of all future times to invincible constancy in the faith, to the highest forms of holiness, and more particularly to strengthen the martyrs in the days of persecution to bear their witness with unflinching firmness. Let me add here to the learned Jesuit's thought, that St. John regarded in a special manner the condition and the needs of the numerous Jewish Christians at the close of the first century. St. Paul, in almost every one of his epistles, shows them in the magnificent realities promised in the Gospel a compensation for their loss of caste among their non-Christian countrymen, and a sublime consolation for the dispersion of their race, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the annihilation of their national worship. The spectacle disclosed to the Apostle of the Eternal Temple on high, the Throne with its ineffable splendors, the seventy Elders on their royal seats, the twelve times twelve thousand from the Tribes of Israel forming the glorious nucleus of the beatified multitude which nc naan could Ml HISTORY OF THE BOOKS OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC BIBLE. ^ .^> ^«l m E^i^SSr^ ;.// M 'j^. number, and the Altar with its Lamb ever sacrificed and ever immortal — ah that went home to the hearts of the poor down-trodden Jewish exiles ; all that was calculated to make them find in the daily AgapcB or celebrations of the Eucharistic sacrifice a significance, a divine and blissful Reality that could well make them feel that Heaven was not far from earth, and that the earthly house of God, though but a corner in the Catacombs, had some of the intense and unspeakable enjoyments of the Eternal Home. And so the seed of Abraham continued to be, among the Gentiles, the fruitful seed of Christianity, thanks to the skilful and loving husbandry of Peter and Paul and John and James and Jude. Besides, all throughout Asia Minor, during the age of St. John and lon^ afterward, such heretics as Cerinthus and Ebion denied openly, and in Ephesut itself, the divinity of Christ, although they persisted in calling themselves His followers, as do to this day airjong ourselves Sects ti»at we need not name. They also taught that Christ, even as the Son of God, had no existence before the Blessed Virgin Mary. As it was to prepare an antidote to this heretical poison that St. John wrote his Gospel, and proclaimed "In the beginning was the Word, etc., . . . ." so in the Apocalypse he makes Christ Himself declare : " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, . . . who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (i. 8). Others, again, never ceased to say, amid the horrible and unceasing persecutions with which the young Christian Church was assailed, that she must of a necessity be crushed by the irresistible might of the hostile powers, and that there could be no reward for the Confessors and martyrs of Christ. John shows, on the contrarv, that the tree of the Church waxes strong amid all the fury of the tempest, and that for those who struggle here for the good cause there is laid up an eternal reward. It is this triumph of the »ust which he describes in dvqA- wti and xxi'. B^ THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Well do we know that no portion of the New Testament will be Hore lovingly or fruitfully read in the bosom of the Christian family ihan this, which embraces the divine lessons given us in the Par- ables. We, therefore, abstain from giving any theory of our own to enable the reader to understand thoroughly not only the sublime truths that underlie each parable in particular, but the reason that in- duced our Lord to teach by parables, and the general scope of this portion of His teaching. Fortunately, in our own days one of the most beautiful minds which Oxford has given to the Catholic Church, and one of those who have best caught the spirit of St. Ignatius in interpret- ingthe Scriptures, Father Henry James Coleridge, has found a Key to the Parables. We, there- fore, deem it a precious service to Christian fam- ilies to abridge here for them the pregnant pages taken from "The Life of our Life." Although in the first period of our Lord's teaching there is more than one instance of His conveying instruction in the form of a parable, as in St. Luke vii. 40-48, nevertheless, it is only a short time before the death of St. John the Baptist and the sending of His disciples on their first mission. Tlie op- position of the Scribes and Pharisees had taken a much more violent and malignant form, not only with regard to our Lord's way of understanding how the Sabbath was to be kept, but concerning His miracles themselves; which these wilfully blind men attributed to Beelzebub. It is near Capharnaum or Bethsaida, on the border of the Sea of Galilee, and seated on a fishing-boat near the shore and within hearing of the mixed multitude, that He began to teach in this form. It was, like fables and similitudes, a way of putting truths which the memory seized and retained. The well-disposed hearers bore the parable away with them, like a precious fruit to be eaten with delight in their own privacy. The inattentive did not care to remember and to understand, letting the precious fruit tlropped from the Tree of Knowledge lie unheeded on the ground. While the evil-minded hearers could not find in this indirect and covert mode of teaching or rebuke a subject for formal accusation. " There never seems to have been a time when our Lord lost His wonderful charm and power in their eyes. But the con- tinuance of His preaching in Galilee must have taken away the freshness of His influ- ence, and have been who had without what they there must very many heard Him profiting by heard, with whom, according to the inevitable law which prevails in the Spiritual order, opportunities ne- glected and warnings unheeded, revenged themselves, as it were, in increasing hardness and dulness at heai't. There may also have been some who grew colder towards Him in proportion as it became apparent that He was in. disfavor with the eccles- iastical authorities. The power of the rulers at Jerusalem wasvery great, as we see both in our Lord's own Life and in the history of the Acts, and when this influence was thrown continually and strongly into the scale against Him, there must have been very many whom it would tend to drive away from Him. Our Lord met this difference in the people by a change in the manner of His teach- ing, which is noticed as important by each of the three historical Evangelists. This form of teaching has the great advantage of being in- telligible to those who are attentive and dili- gent, and whose hearts are eager for Divine truth, while it convey.s ; comparatively little or nothing to those who are taken up with worldly cares, or who are the servants of passion. Thus it avoids the danger of which our Lord spoke in His Sermon on the Mount, of what, using at the time a parabolic image, He called casting pearls before swine, and giving that which is holy to dogs. Again, such a method of teaching is a shield against any malevolence which may exist in a part of the audience, and on more than one occasion, as we shall see, must have b*f3ed our Lord's enemies watchful and insidious as tbey were THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. TO 3 ^^ V ♦irf ■5 S.P ■£ .S « THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 09 .a x: .5 (/) ego '3 •" -. t'^ n O E o o T3 E t TO 1> C/) oj be c bo n! u -^ J, 1/5 >,'0 O rt j2 £ c " ^ rt O >~. o «> 0) o •" •^ "S 4J O cj _• £.r •^ Z -S .1 s ^ .S *^ o o ^1 S 2 t^ S S.E *:2 m THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. iji * •= 2 - ^•£^ iS s| 3 60 1) ~ ,3 S v. ^ ^ S s 1 1 1 ^ a -2 <- _ " 'Ed's «~ 9 ■5b-3«- 9 ~ ni ^3 Um O •= & u « 3 u ^ % <" ■Q .a « Is m THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 81 Ui Ut i/i m t-, ^^_ ^- 1:; .- CO ■b-l o .« O) ^ m V7 O ^ H sc ^^T S^ o ga u ^ ■a o 3 O " O 2 S nj O 1) C« -a '■5 c .ti i> »j & >- 2 g £ CI. c — ex o *-> S o .a bo §:-? ni >,_ I) C " oH o o S: 3 C ■£ o fix i? -a I 3 a ox bo oj o c £ ^ E-o oj i2 3 "^ , o <~ o t; ^ a. 1* J3 52 THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRigr. spiritual creation, to waste so many beginnings which do not come to maturity, for the sake, if we may so speak, of the rich and multi- plied beauty and fruitfulness of a few. This law which runs through the whole of God's Kingdom, as far as we know it, suggests many truths concerning Him — His magnificence and liberality, the man- ner in which even imperfect works, as they seem to us, manifest His glory, the dignity which His grace gives to those who co- operate with it, and the like ; while it has a clearer significance when seen working on creations of free beings, who can co-operate with that grace or not, and furnishes a silent commentary on the failure of our Lord's own particular mission of which He had lately been so mourn- fully complaining. The minute details of the parable, giving so vivid a picture that we almost seem to see the spot near the sea-shore from which every feature of the image may have been taken, are explained by our Lord of the differ- ent circumstances under which so much of the good seed of the Word of God is wasted, while only a part of it takes root in good ground . . . •' The next parable, known as that of the Tares or Cockle (St. Matt, xiii.), tells us still more about the mystery of the Kingdom, for in this not only is the good seed wasted, but bad seed is actually sown, and springs up by the side of the good that is not wasted. How many of the difficulties as to God's providence may not be solved by the simple words, ' Suffer both to grow until the harvest?' . . . The six parables — those of the Seed that grows secretly, of the Grain of Mustard- seed, of the Leaven, of the Hidden Treasure, the Precious Pearl, and the Draw-net — which follow those of the Sower and the Tares, may be considered as complet- ing, each by the addition of some special feature, the picture drawn by our Lord in His general dealings in His Kingdom. God addresses Himself to His creatures, and allows them to accept or refuse Him . . . The image of the grain of mustard-seed seems to represent the outward development and magnificent growth of the work of God in the world, while that of the Leaven explains the law of its growth, which is from within, by the silent spread of the influence of grace ... It need not be questioned that these par- ables, like many others, are historical and prophetical. But they come true in history, because they represent the principles on which God works, and these principles are ultimately the echoes and reflections of His character, His wisdom, Hi"- patience, His ^n^ ning ways with His creatures — fhat sweetness with which He ' ordereth all things ' of which the Scripture speaks . . . "In the parables of the Pearl and of the Treasure the holy in- stinct which seeks the pearl comes from Him, and the seeming accident of finding the treasure comes from Him, as well as the grace by which he that finds either pearl or treasure understands its value, and has the courage and prudence to sell all that he has and give it for what he has found . . . Another interpretation of these two parables . . . applies them directly to God, Who seeks or £nds human nature, the human soul, the Church, the great body of His elect, and gives Himself and all that He has in the incarnation to make the treasure or the pearl His own. . . . The primary meaning of the parables may be to rep- resent the action of God in seeking us, the one great ineffable, inexpli- cable outpouring of love of which Creation is the first fruit. Preservation, Providence, Redemp- tion, Sanctification, and Glorification in the pos- session of God by the beatific vision forever, the final ciown ; and the sense which speaks to us of the return of the tide of love from our small and miserable hearts towards God, a return set in mo- tion and guided and maintained by Himself, may be not only true, though secondary, but absolutely involved in and founded on and a part of the first. The parable of the Draw-net comes in at the end of the first series of parables as answering to and in a certain sense balancing the parable of the Sower. For in that first parable we have the image of God scattering His seed at random, as it appears, and submitting to the loss of a great part of it for the sake of the return brought in by that which takes root in good soil. In the parable of the Draw-net we see that God acts thus for His own purposes, and brings both good and bad within the range of His action, in order that in the end He may select His own and reject those who are not to be His . . . Thus, at the beginning of this series of parables, God is represented as freely offering His grace to men who in various ways reject the good seed ; and now at the end of the series, the other side of the truth is put forward, and it is God who rejects and even punishes; for no one is rejected by Him save through fault of his own." The parable of the Unmerciful Servant (St. Matt, xviii, 21-35) comes between the first and second series of parables. •r-.\C-\ v' " vr.1t:>. mm SPAKE ALL THESE UJ0RD5. 1. T £]« the Lord thy * Qod ; thou shalt have no other Qods but me. II. TjiOlJ slialt notta^e ■^ tlie name of tlie Loid thy Qod in tain. III. nE]V[E]yiBEI? that A tliou Ifeep holy tlie ^abbatli day. IV. llorlOlJli thy fatliej P and thy mother. V. TjJoiJslialtiiotyiL * VI. TjiOlJ shalt not com- *■ njit adulteiy. VII. TjiOlT Shalt nob •I steaL YIII. TjJOtJ slialt not A bear false larttness against thy neigh- bour. IX. TjiOli' slialt not A covet thy neigli- boup's wife. X. TjiOlJ slialt not A covet thy ne^lj- hour's goods. 1 thtt ttiliole soult ^nii ti\c second is like to tlv^ Wl\on slt^It loue thy neig(|bour as tlitjself. C^n these two coinmnnd-^ tneitts iepeufietfi tlie Li(|ofe faiu and the ./'./ SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS: BEIIiTG- k Series of Concise and Comprehensive Accounts OF SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE SACRED SCRIPTURES, THE MANNERS. CUS70MS, LAWS, RELIGIOUS RITES, &c., OF THE ISRAELITES. ^WTETH iDEscRiFTioisrs -A.3sriD EXLFL.A.isr.A.Tioasrs OF 7c6n6& In the Lives of the Patriarchs, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament; Scenes and Ijicidents in the Life of Christ; TJie Cities and Towns of the Bible ; The Life of St. Paul, etc. 003i^:E>I3L.E3D mOl^ TliE Is^LOST .A.TJTI3:E3SrTia SOXJUOES. Copyright, b.v J. R. Jones. 1862. THE BUILDING OF SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. The actual building of Solomon's Temple was commenced in the i reign, b. c. 1005. An arrangement was made, by which Hiram, fourth year of the king's reign, and the four hundred and eightieth year from the Exodus, B. c. 1012. So complete were the prepara- tions, that no sound of axe or hammer was heard about the build- ing during its whole erection ; and it was completed in seven and a half years, in the eighth month of the eleventh year of Solomon's C the King of Tyre, gave cedars and fir-trees out of Lebanon, which his servants felled, while those of Solomon squared and fitted them for their places in the building. The prepared timber was brought down to the sea, and floated round to Joppa, whence Solomon undertook the thirty miles transport to Jerusalem. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. Phceitiua was to the ancient what England is to the modern world — the chief commercial nation of the globe. Her ships cov- ered every sea, and brought to her ports the wealth of every land. At the establishment of the Israelitish monarchy, Tyre had brought all the Phoenician cities under her supremacy, and had become the capital of the kingdom. Hiram, King of Tyre, made an alli- ance with David, and became the friend and ally of David's spn And successor, Solomon. At the commencement of Solomon's reign, Hiram sent him rich presents. It was this alliance that enabled Solomon to secure the services of the Phoenician architects, the most skilful of their day, and the wood and stone needed, for the construction of the temple at Jerusalem. The Phoenician architects also constructed a palace for David on Mount Sion, and a larger and more splendid palace for Solomon, which is ftelievii to have stood on Mount Moriah, adjoining the temple. The alii ance with Phoenicia was of the greatest value to Solomon, but of little service to his people. It enabled him to establish a valuable commerce with India and other nations which yielded large sums as profits to the royal treasury. It added nothing to the wealth of the people, who were required to contribute to its expenses without enjoying any of its profits. The connection of Israel with Phoeni- cia had a most pernicious effect upon the former nation. It fas- tened upon it the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, the chief deities of Phoenicia, and led the nation into a deep and most degrading idolatry, from which only the severest punishments could draw it, and then only after centuries of suffering. THE SERVANTS OF HIRAM OF TYRE BRINGING PRESENTS TO KING SOLOMON. The Kingdom of Judah and Israel reached its greatest degree of splendor, prosperity, and strength under Solomon, the son of David. Peace reigned throughout the whole land, and Jerusalem became one of the most attractive and famous cities of the East. The Court of Solomon was conducted upon a scale of magnificence absolutely bewildering ; but all this magnificence was transcended by the personal qualities of Solomon himself He was the wisest man of his day, and to his great mental gifts was added the fasci- nation and the grace of 3 noble presence. Seated "high on his throne of royal state," which shone with " the wealth of Ormuz and Ind," and "exceeding all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom," Solomon dispensed justice, and received the visitors from all parts of the world, who came to hear his wisdom, bring- ing their presents of vessels of gold and silver, garments, armor, spices, horses, and mules. He received tribute from almost the whole of Western Asia, and conducted a great and prosperous trade with India and other Eastern nations. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS, bOLOMOX KLCtlMNG Tllli IIUMAUL Ol' 1 UK I'KINCES OF ISRAEL. FIRE FROM HEAVEN AT THE DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE. The magnificent ceremonies of the Dedication of Solomon's Tem- ple are recorded at length in 3 Kings and 2 Paralipomenon, together with the sublime prayer of the king. This was followed by a miraculous sign of God's presence in the House built unto his name. The fire came down from heaven, and consumed the sacrifices, while the Shekinah again filled the house, preventing the entrance of the priests, as if for that one day God claimed the sanctuary as his very own, to the exclusion of all mere creatures. Then Solomon and all the people offered their sac- rifices on the altar, the priests exe- cuting their office, while the Levites played upon their musical instru- ments and sang in the order and to the words of David. A great feast followed, and lasted fourteen days, seven for the Feast of Tabernacles, and seven for the Dedication, and on the 23d day of the month Solo- mon dismissed the people to their homes, and they departed from Jeru- salem with rejoicing, glad and merry in heart for all the goodness that Je- hovah had showed unto David, and to Solomon, and to Israel, his people. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN OF SAiiA AT THE C(.)URT OF SOLOMON. WILDERNESS OF CADES The Queen of Saba, liav- iiig heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon, nndertook a journey to Jerusalem to see and converse with the wisest of men. She brought with her rich and valuable presents, and was received and entertained by him with a splendid hospi- tality worthy of his great fame. Her kingdom of SabS embraced the greater part of the Yemen or Arabia Felix. Its chief cities, and probably successive capitals, were Seba, San'a (Uzal), and Zafar (Se- phar). The city of Seba was the centre of the ancient power of the Jektanite Arabs. It was named after Saba, the son of Jektan, who was the grandson of the Patriarch Sem. Very little is known with certainty concerning the history of this SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. , 3 Ui *•* Q .2 is J3 c .=• < .5 T3 ■a •s a ,0 'S. E u 0) 13: bo *M t: i> rrt < J2 •C t/; CO r, .^ J3 PL, to c if >. ^ Sr c D t-t S IS 3 > T) c s:: -1 < c ^i, V3 J2 > n J= ^^ ."ti ■n ,r: M ■§ < u 3 e C •T3 bo c be 1/3 <; •_^ > I*- 4-> c/: r -o s fin ■a c s C3 -0 s 1— > 1 X H 12 s c •> T! V U rr i) riJ ;^ J= T3 1) V> bO . K 'Ia li T3 u '*^ .JIX s 1 ^ c 2 bO "0 E n *> § 3 vi >, * Im bo u IH y a P3 .0 IS :/: _o 1 c as fcC 1) n [/I C 15 c E -1 -1 < w^ % ^c 1 bO u n W-. r. T-1 '> < -0 +-> Cfi 0) i^ 1) V to c ri •a c 3 c S IS u IS ^ >. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. 29 champion, but gloried in David's triumph as though it had been his own. When his father, in after years, persecuted David, and drove him from his home and coun- try, Jonathan's attach- ment to his friend re- mained unshaken, and hv gave David warning of his danger and enabled him to escape in safety. Their last meeting was in the forest of Ziph, during Saul's pursuit of David (i Kings xxiii. 16-18). All this while Jonathan ■was aware that David was to be King of Israel in- stead of himself, but it made no difference in his friendship. His gener- ous heart could not har- bor distrust or ill-will. One of the first of the Eastern nations to ai knowledge the royal dig nity of David, and to seek the friendship and alliance of the Israelitish monarch, was the little kingdom of Phcenicia, ■which lay along the coast of the Mediterranean, and adjoined the king- dom of Israel. Hiram, King of Tyre, became the ■warm friend and ally of David, and sent him rich presents, and cedar timber from the forests of Lebanon, with masons and car- penters to build David a palace. This friendship ■was renewed by Hiram with Solomon, the son and successor of David, who, as has been elsewhere related, obtained from Hiram the materials of which the beautiful Temple at Jerusalem was constructed and the artisans by whom it was erected. HIRAM SENDS PRESENTS TO KING DAVID. Sargon was one of the greatest of the Kings of Assyria. He headed a revolt against Shalmaneser, dethroned that king, and seized his crown. He proved himself a great and wise ruler. He built himself an immense palace at Khorsabad, and adorned it with magnificent sculptures and paint- ings. It consisted of a palace, a temple and an observatory, and was famed throughout the Eastern world for its splendor. The engraving represents the great central court-yard upon which opened the state apartments of the palace, and from which pas- sages led to the women's apartments and the private rooms of the king. Sargon was succeeded by his son, the celebrated Sennacherib. COURT OF SARGON'S PALACE. 30 SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB'S ARMY. and he retreated in haste to his own country, where he was slain some- years later by two of his sons in the Temple of Nisroch. The murderers were forced to flee into Armenia^ and their brother, Esarhaddon, suc- ceeded to his father's throne. JACOB SETTING OUT FOR EGYPT. Thb destruction of the army of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, was one of the most terrible punishments ever visited by God upon the enemies of Israel. The Assyrian army was, at the time of the dread- ful event, encamped before Libnah, being on the march to Egypt. Ip a single night 185,000 men were slain by "the angel of Jehovah." This disaster at once put an end to the plans of the Assyrian King, Joseph, after making himself known to his brethren during their last journey to Egypt to buy corn^ addressed himself to the task of bringing his father and family dowrt to Egypt, where he could provide for their temporal wants. He sent wag- ons, provisions, and aHendants to Palestine, in order that his father and the wives and children of his brethren might make the journey in comfort. When Jacob heard that his long-lost son was a rich and ])o\vcrful prince, the Viceroy of the great King of Egypt, who was at that time the sovereign lord of Canaan also, he refused to believe the good news ; but the sight of the wagons and splendid retinue which Joseph had provided for him, convinced him that his sons had not deceived him. He at once resolved to- go down into Egypt, and accept the protection offered him by his beloved son. "And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph, my son, is yet alive; I will go and see him before I die." Having come to- this determination, he set out with his whole family for Egypt, where he was joyfully welcomed by Joseph, and given lands by the king. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. 31 Thb cruel persecutions to which the jiews were subjected by Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, culminated in an attempt to compel the Jews to abandon the worship of God and em- brace that of Syria. Mathathias, a Jewish priest of the town of Modin, determined to resist this effort of the king. He slew the royal messenger, and called on his countrymen to unite with him in an effort to recover the independence of their country. His appeal was readily answered, and he and his party took up arms and fled to the mountains, where they were joined by others. He did not long survive his bold effort, and, dying, left the leadership of the patriot forces to his heroic son, Judas, one of the truest heroes of ancient history. The brilliant exploits of Judas won him the surname of Machabceiis, or "The Hammer." Though Judas was cut short in his great career, his efforts were not lost. Under his successors the independence of Judsea was re- gained, and the Asmonsean monarchy firmly established on the Jewish throne. The engraving represents Judas assembling his handful of warriors on the eve of his last battle, JUDAS M.\CHAB.EUS ASSEMBLING HIS WAKKiuRS. and addressing them in those spiriting, stirring words by which he encouraged his little band in his attack on the Syrian nrmv. The exploits of Judas Mach- abaeus form one of the most brilliant chapters of an»",ient history, and stamp him as one of the greatest heroes of any age. With only a handful of poorly armed men he defeated the powerful and splendidly equipped armies of Syria, and won for his country a proud independence and freedom from persecution. His greatest victory was won at Adasa. The Syrian army was routed with terrible slaughter, and Nicanor, its commander, was killed. This victory practi- cally decided the question of Jewish independence, but it was f6llowed by a severe reverse a short time later. Judas was defeated — his army having de- serted him save a few devoted souls — at Eleasa, the Jewish Thermopylse. His great sac- rifices and labors bore their fruit, however, and the inde- pendence of Judaea was suc- cessfully established under his successors. DEFEAT OF THE SYRIANS BY THE ISRAELITES, UNDER JUDAS MACHAByEUS. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. to him in the symbol of a burning bush, and announced his intention t> £ «i j; s t- "LI O Ji > -o -u o *- 1- ti fci-S ^ « fc g- ., O O — HH — "O - J= ^ 5 '<;* > 3 O O 3 O dj ^^ ^ OJ two •-l 3 o P ^ f/] .*j CJ **- c c % > c u- E u< o o 111 (/3 3 r^ »— . n tyi rt o « -= -C '3 5P '5 5J O c > o l-l *-> 2 "3 H u ^ 5) o r: J= rt ^ it en < n o < a o V bo (A •a - H 3 — • J3 s ^ 1) ■J: ■«-» U J3 3 O K ^ -t-t •c -5 «) o t^ " o t-4 O O -o j: t; > n •a ■*■■ ■o j: o . V 3 3 ■o o u >— , t; D f — ) tS i. ^ Wh 3 'C 0) ZJ 73 >- -a > -C ^ ^ ^ « ^ >i 42 SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 0) 1 C o 1^ 1) o c o < Ji o «< > is 1*- v: IS ■72 ^ o «— . .:2 •5 c o ho o c "3 o > u ^ '5 S 1> S5 < s n n3 B •a c ni 1 3 o c 3 so > ■« ST. «J X. c > -C *-> J' .r: *^ •a D IS < 5 £ o o i (75 4) -a o o a: > en u D 1— > 3 U o C 3 o 1 T3 £ 3 H > >> 3 o s o 1) c ^ O C3 •a t-l CI. 3 3 *-• ^_^ fa J3 •a U 3 O C- o rt c o c tu lU a> l; g: Pi J= J= c C Ul ht bj * ' u ^ B c 1) 3 n» rt E/l 1) ^ 1 . a; V i_ X. J= 'ri .c J3 c & o c! £ c £ t/J t— 1 < tf: c rt tn :/} CI, 13 c 1 ■r. ^ 3 £ 0) "+J 3 1 PQ >— 1 O w. o ^ o o 1^ O i J3 <: "i .£ ■? X. Hi i r > K t y rt 3 I a I— t 2 5 4-> 3 o 1> E X o o _ (1> u c ^ J= 0) 1) -3 (i ^ u fS Li 60 C ^ c ■jf. > •a .■s J. V *-" »— » ai hn ^ u .^ ^ c s 13 s T3 •< T3 13 ■c !_L X c n ^-t n li: u •y: =: o >% T1 c O T2 •j: a> n ^ a r;:; f/j r^ rt ^ t- ^ TI O n; a C hJ O r- .£ tp ■o TJ O X3 •o rt rt 1^ O c >i: J ■*"■ .— rt < is O W c .ti -r # ri [- 1) o O t/) ■ l^ OS cS n a > f= a: s « j= 1 ( o >, £ 1) n tJD ^ ^ u OJ OJ a; •x: K ■ o Z > 3 c o ■^ •TD O ■*^ T3 ^ J= > C/J 3 «J u] 1) J3 1 s SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE IJFE OF CHRIST. 47 Several times during his sojourn on earth, the Saviom exerted his Divine power to restore sight to men who were blind. On one oc- casion two blind men were'given their sight, in the vicinity of Caph- arnaum, as related by St. Matthew, ix. 27-31. Again a blind man was given his sight near Bethsaida, Mark xiii. 22-26. A man born blind was made to see, at Jerusa- lem, John ix. Finally, two- blind men were restored their sight near Jericho, Matt. xx. 30-34. Sight being the gift of God alone, no mere human being could by any power or art of his own bestow it upon one who had never possessed it, or restore it to one who had lost it. In the beautiful parable of the Good Shepherd (John x.) Our Lord teaches us the nature and strength of his love for his fol- lowers. As the shepherd watches over and cares for the safety of his flock, even so the Lord Jesus, who styles himself the "Good Shepherd," takes his ])eople under his own protection, aiding them in their moments of weakness, guarding them from danger, and leading them along the paths of life best suited to them, bestowing' his tenderest and most compas- sionate care upon the weakest and most helpless of his flock. I I It is agreed by the great major- ity of critics that the Revelation of St. John, which forms the last message addressed to his churcli by Christ through the medium of his Apostles, was written a. d. 95-97. St. John was banished by the Emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos for his testimony in behalf of the Gospel, and while there he wrote the book which forms the close of the New Tes- tament Scriptures. THE GOOD SHEPHERD. ST. JOHN WRITING TO THE CHURCHES. Our Lord teaches a most important lesson in the parable of the Talents. It is man's duty to make the best use of the faculties with which his Creator has endowed him, not only for his ad- vantage, but for the advancement of the cause of the Almighty, who will demand an account of the use that has been made of them. Men cannot hope to escape this responsibility by letting their gifts remain unused. Each man has a part to play, and he must act in such a manner as to benefit his fellow-men as well as himself. The parable is also intended to teach another lesson, namely; that all men may learn how they ought to watch and prepare for the last day. It • has a great affinity to the parable of the Pounds mentioned in St. Luke xix. 11; but this last was spoken at a dilterent time, place and occasion. It diff"ers also in some points. The parable of the Talents shows, also, that we can do no good of ourselves, but only by means of God's grace, though he requires our co-operation ; since the servants could only make use of the talents given them to gain others. And we are also taught that only an account will be taken according to what we have received, and that how- ever mean and despicable our abilities may be, we siill have an equal facility with the most learned of entering heaven. 48 SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE I-IFE OF CHRIST. THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. Under tne parable of the Sower, the Saviour explained to his disciples the workings of the Gospel among men. The word of truth is thrown into the world as a sower scatters his grain in a ploughed field. It affects various people differently. In some it takes root for a little while, but the allurements and sins of the flesh overcome it, and it perishes. In others it takes a firm hold, strikes deep into the soil of their hearts, and blossoms and brings forth fruit in their altered and better lives. — Matt. xiii. 11 IK SOWKR. In the parable of the Unjusi Steward, the Saviour points out tc us how we strive and plan, and use our ingenuity to better our temporal condition, and assures us that if w« would put as much energy, and ingenuity, and forethought into the task of saving our souls, we should be very much more apt to reach tht Kingdom of Heaven. "The chil- dren of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light," he declares. They are more prudent and careful, more anxious and circumspect to secure their pos- sessions in this world, than the children of light are to secure in the next an eternal inheritance. It should be noted that in command- ing us to make to ourselves " friends of the mammon of iniquity," our Lord does not imply that we are authorized to wrong our neighbor, to give to the poor; for evil is never to be done that good may come of it. But we are exhorted to make the poor our friends before God, by relieving them with the riches which justly indeed belong to us, but are called the "mammon THE UNJUST STEWARD. of iniquity," because only the iniquitous man esteems them as riches, on which he sets his affections; whilst the riches of the virtuous are wholly celestial and spiritual. By this we see that the poor ser- vants of God, whom we have relieved by our alms, may hereaftet, by their intercession, bring our souls to heaven. SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 4» The subjection of the Jews to Home had deprived the Sanhedrim of the power of deciding questions of life and death, and the chief priests and the rulers, after the ex- amination of the Saviour before the Council, sent him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator or governor, for sentence. Pilate was satisfied that Jesus was innocent of any of- fence deserving death as a punish- ment, and earnestly desired to release him; but he was a time-server and a weak man, and had not the courage to do his duty as an honest magis- trate in the face of the popular fury. Therefore he weakly and sinfully yielded to the people, and con- demned to death one whom he be- lieved to be an innocent and inof- fensive man, and whose words and appearance had convinced him that He was something more than a mere man. The punishment of his sin soon overtook him. The imperial displeasure, to avoid which he sen- tenced Jesus to death, soon over- whelmed him, and sent him into banishment, where it is believed he died by his own hand. CHRIST BEl-ORE PILATE. Our Saviour was crucified and laid in the grave on the day before the Passover. During the Sabbath his body lay in the tomb, but early in the morning on the third day "the three Marys" came to the Sepulchre for the purpose of preparing the body of Jesus properly for the tomb, his burial on the evening of his crucifixion having been too hasty to ad- mit of such service being rendered it. They reached the Sepulchre at sunrise, and found the stone removed ; and entering in, they saw that the body of Jesus was gone. Mary Magdalene, suf)- posing that the enemies of Jesus had stolen his body, ran to tell Peter and John of what had happened, but her companions went far- ther into the Sepulchre. There they beheld an angel, who informed them that the Lord had risen from the dead, and would meet his ^ciples in, Galilee. Returning to the garden later in the day, 4 C THE ANGEL AT THE DOOR ui- THE SEPULCHRE. Mary was eager to discover what had been done with the "Dody, when the Lord appeared to her, and confirmed the announcement of the angel. (HI :JCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. the Lord had risen from the dead as he had promised, notwithstand- ing the assertions of the women who had seen him, and the two disci- ples who had walked with him to Emmaus. As the latter were repeat- ing their joyful story, the Lord himself suddenly appeared in the midst of the disciples assembled in the room, saying unto them, "Peace be unto yon ! " He gave them satisfactory evidence of the reality of his pres- ence, and convinced them that he had in- deed triumphed over the grave. "PEACE BE UNTO YOU!" lilt A.--.L1-..NS1U.\. On the evening of the resurrection, the disciples of the Lord Jesus were gathered together in an upper room of a house in Jeru- salem, and had locked the doors for fear of being molested by the Jews. They were sad and sorrowful, being inclined to doubt that After his resurrec- tion, Jesus appeared to his disciples ten times, upon as many distinct occasions, in order that they might be witnesses to the great and glorious event. On the fortieth day after his passion he appeared to them for the tenth time, and led them (lilt as far as Bethany; and there, as with uplifted hands he gave them his parting blessing, a cloud interposed between him and them, like the chariot and horses of fire that separated Elias from Eli- seus; and upborne on this aerial car he was wafted from their sight through the vault of heaven to his eternal home on high. As the learned Haydock truly remarks, "Like a second Elias, he was taken into heaven, but in a much more glorious manner. Elias was taken up in a mortal and corruptible body; but our Divine Saviour, in a glorious, impassible and immortal state; where now he is our head, having taken upon himself the nature of man, and is crowned with more than angel's glory. . . . Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, to signify that, as man, our Lord is raised to the height of glory, and to that supreme beatitude, than which there is nothing higher, and nothing greater in the whole bliss of heaven ; and that he moreover holds the same sovereign dominion with the Father over all creatures, because, as God, he is equal to the Father in power, in wisdom, and in all perfection, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, was not man only, but truly God, the same God with his eternal Father: and hereby is signified that the person who took upon him human nature, and became man, is equal in dignity with the Father; he who, as man, ascended into heaven," where he reigns in glory and maiesty and power, the SaviOl* of all who truly and faithfully seek him. THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. JERUSALEM IN THE TIME OF OUR .SAVIULR. Jerusalem stands in latitude 31° 46' 35 north, and longitude 35° 18' 30" east of Greenwich. It is thirty-two miles distant from the sea, and eighteen from the Jordan; twenty from Hebron, and thirty- six from Samaria. In several respects its situation is singular among [ the cities of Palestine. Its elevation is remarkable, not from its being I on the summit of one of the numerous hills of Judsea, like most of the i towns and villages, but because it is on the edge of one of the highest 1 table-lands of the country. Hebron, indeed, is higher still by some JERUSALEM IN THE TIME OF DAVID, AS SEEN FROM THE SOUTH. hundreds of feet, and from the south, accordingly (even from Beth- lehem), the approach to Jerusalem is by a slight descent. But from any other side, the ascent is perpetual ; and to the traveller approach- ing the city from the east or west, it must have presented an appear- ance beyond any other city of the then known world. The general elevation of the western ridge of the city, which forms its highest point, is about 2,600 feet above the level of the sea. Jerusalem, if not actually in the centre of Palestine, was yet (51) THE CiriKS AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. ENT J ERUSALEM The accompanying Plan of Ancient Jerusalem will enable the reader to distinguish the localities men- tioned in the Scriptures. Jerusalem is sometimes called Salem in the Sacred narrative. It is first mentioned in Gen. xiv. i8, 1913 years b. c. The principal events of its subsequent history are as follows : Its king was slain by Josue . . . 1455 b. c. Taken by David from the Jebusites, and called the City of David, who made it his capital 1048 " The first Temple founded by Solomon . 1012 " The Temple dedicated. . . . 1004 " The city taken and the Temple pillaged by Shishak, king of Egypt . . . 971 " The city taken, the Temple destroyed, and the Jews carried away captives by Nabu- chodonosor, who burned the city to ashes 587 " The return from captivity . . . 536 " The second Temple completed . . 515 " The Romans, under Pompey, take the city 63 '- virtually so. It was on the ridge, the broadest and most strongly marked ridge, of the backbone of the complicated hills which extend through the whole country, from the plain of Esdraelon to the desert. With regard to the actual position of the city itself, it occupied the southern termination of a table-land, which is cut off from the country round it on its west, south and east sides, by ravines more than usually precipitous. These ravines leave the level of the table-land, the one on the west and the other on the northeast of the city, and fall rapidly until they form a junction below its southeast corner. The eastern one — the Valley of Kidron, commonly called the Valley of Jehoshaphat — runs nearly straight from north to south. But the western one — the Valley of Hinnom — runs south for a time, and then takes a sudden bend to the east until it meets the Valley of Jehosha- phat. Thus while on the north there is no material difference between the general level of the country outside the walls and that of the highest parts of the city, on the other three sides, so steep is the fall of the ravines, so trench-like their character, and so close do they keep to the promontory at whose feet they run, as to leave on the beholder almost the impression of the ditch at the foot of a fortress rather than of valleys formed by nature. Jesus Christ born .... The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Our Lord The city taken by Titus and razed to the ground ...... A city called ^lia built on the ruins by Julius Severus in the reign of Adrian Jerusalem taken by the Persians . " " " " Saracens . " " " Crusaders " " from the Christians by Sa ladin Jerusalem taken by the Turks, who drive away the Saracens . . 121 7 and 1239 Surrendered to the Emperor Frederic II. by treaty 1228 Taken by the Turks . . , . 1 5 1 7 Held by the French under Napoleon Bona- parte, February . . . 1799 Christian Kings of JerusaUm. 4 A. D. 33 70 130 614 637 1099 1187 Godfrey of Bouillon 1099 A. Baldwin 1 1 100 ' Baldwin II 1 1 18 ' Fulk of Anjou 1 131 ' Baldwin III 1 144 ' Amauri (or Almeric) 1 1 62 ' Baldwin IV 1 173 " Sibyl ; then his son, Bald- win V 1 185 A. D. Guy de Lusignan 11 86 " Henry of Champagne 1 192 " Amauri de Lusignan 11 97 " Jeanne de Brienne 1210 " Emperor Frederic II. . . . 1229-39 " Josephus gives the entire circuit of Jerusalem, as it existed in h. day, at 33 stadia, equal to 4^ Roman miles, or ^yi geographical miles, and this agrees pretty exactly with the line of the exterior walls as traced by the most recent explorers of the city. Hecataeus of Ab- dera, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, says that the city was 50 stadia in circumference, and had a population of 120,000; and yet in his day it could not have been by one-third as large as when Bezetha was enclosed by Agrippa. Eusebius quotes two other writers prior to Josephus, one of whom gives the circuit at 40, and the other at only 27 stadia. But Josephus' estimate, perhaps measurement, of 33 stadia appears to be the most accurate. A city of such dimensions — granting that it was densely populated — could not have afforded accommoda- tion to more than 100,000 people; and as we know that a considerable portion of the ground was taken up by the buildings and courts of THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. BS the Temple, and that a part of the newly en- closed quarter was but thinly peopled, the or- dinary population did not, perhaps, exceed 70,000. This number, however, affords no ad- equate idea of the mul- titudes that crowded the houses and streets of the city, and en- camped in the glens and on the hillsides during the celebration of the annual feasts. Josephus assures us that wl^n the city was at- tacked by Titus, vast numbers had assembled to celebrate the feast of the Passover. Of these, 1,100,000 perished b\ pestilence, famine, or the sword ; 40,000 were permitted to go free ; and 97,000 were taken prisoners and sold into slavery . THE CITY AND HARBOR OF LA VALETTA. The island of Malta, or Melita, as it is called in Acts xxviii. i, is noted as tlie scene of tlie shipwreck of St. Paul. It is a rocky island in the Mediterra- nean, containing about 100 square miles. It was seized by the Phoenicians at an earl\ day. Tiiese were dispossessed by the Greeks of Sicily, who were driven out by the Car- thaginians, who in 242 B. c. were expelled by the Romans. It was a Roman possession in the days of St. Paul. The principal city, La Valetta, possesses a fine harbor, and is strongly fortified. St. Paul's bay, which is believed to be the scene of the Apostle's shipwreck, is a small inlet on the north sidc of the island, opening towards the east, which answers well to the description in the 27th chapter of Acts. Tlie Apostle spent three months at Malta, and performed many miracles there. The ancient city of Corinth was the capital of Achaia, and was situated on the isthmus which separates the Ionian Sea from the yEgean. The city stood on a small island, and possessed two ports— one on the east called Cenchrea, and one on the «est called Lechseum. Its location made it of necessity one of the most important commercial cities of Greece, and also a military po.-.t of the greatest strategic value. Besides controlling the trade between the East and the West, it was the key of the Peloponnesus, and the high- way between northern and southern Greece. It was strongly fortified, a prominent feature of its defence consisting of the Acro-Corinth, a huge rock rising 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, with almost perpendicular sides, and room for a town upon its summit. Corinth RUINS OF CORINTH. was one of the largest, most densely populated, and wealthiest cities of Greece. It was noted for its wickedness, and the infamous worship of Venus which was celebrated here. The Romans de- stroyed the city b. c. 140, but Julius Caesar made it a Roman colony, and it speedily regained its former magnificence and prosperity, and relapsed into its old wickedness. The A])ostIe Paul labored here a year and a half, and two of his Epistles are addressed to the church he founded here. The site is now unhealthy, and Corinth is a wretched place with few vestiges of its former greatness. M THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. CANA OF GALILEE. Two sites are claimed as Cana of Galilee, the village which had the honor of being the scene of our Lord's first miracle. The tradi- tional site is at Kcfr Kenna, a small village about four and a-half miles northwest of Nazareth. It now contains only the ruins of a church said to stand over the house in which the miracle was performed. It alsi. contains the fountain, from which it is asserted the water which was made wine was drawn. The claims of the other site are advocated by no less an authority than Dr. Robinson, who places the village of the GEBAL. Gospel at Kana-el-jelil, which is situated farther north, about five miles north of Seffurieh (Sepphoris) and nine miles north of Nazareth, near the present Jefat. It makes but little difference which was the tnie site. Cana was also the native place of the Apostle Nathanael. Gebal was a seaport and district of Phoenicia, and was situated north of Beyrout. It was called Byblos by the Greeks ; but its old Scriptural name has been partially revived by the modern Arabs, who call it Jebail. It was a place of importance in ancient times (Ezech. THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. M THE COAST OF TYRE. xxvii. 9), and the seat of the worship of Thammuz, a Syrian idol generally supposed to be the same as the Phcenician Adonis, and per- haps the Egyptian Osiris. The district of Gebal and all Lebanon were assigned to the Hebrews, but were never fully possessed (Jos. xiii. 5). TvRE, one 01 the most famous cities of ancient times, was capital of Phoenicia, and the seat of enormous wealth and power, was situated on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, within limits assigned the tribe of Aser by Josue (Jos. xix. 29). It was ginally a colony of Sidon, but rapidly became the most powerful and opulent city of the East. Tyre does not begin to figure in the Bible until the reign of David, who formed a close alliance with the famous Tyrian monarch Hiram, which was con- tinued by Solomon. The Tyrians rendered import- ant aid in the construction of David's Palace, and Solomon's Temple and royal residence at Jeru- salem. The Tyrians were gross idolators, and the marriage of Achab, King ^^K '—^ of Israel, with a princess ^^E: of this nation brought many woes upon Israel. The prophecies of the Old Testament abound in de- nunciations of Tyre for her wickedness, and pre- the It the dictions of her punishment. The city was taken and destroyed by Nabuchodonosor, as had been foretold ; but the great body of the inhabitants fled from the mainland to an island opposite, and about thirty stadia from the old city, and which had served as a sort of suburb or port to it. Here a new Tyre was founded, which at 'ength rivalled its predecessor in riches, magnificence and power. It was strongly fortified, and when Alexander the Great summoned it to yield to him, b. c. 332, it was able to resist him in a siege of seven months' duration. Alexander built a causeway of the ruins of the old city from the mainland to the island, and the city was taken. Aftei SIDON. M THE CITIES AND TOWNS OK THE BIBLE. JAFFA, OR JOITA. THE FALL OF JERICHO. various changes, Tyre at length became a possession of the Romans. It was taken by the Christians during the Crusades, and subsequently recaptured by the Turks. It began to decline as a commercial point after the city of Alexandria was founded. Our Saviour once jour- neyed into the region of Tyre and Sidon (Matt. xv. 21). Modern Tyre is a place of no importance, is poorly built, and contains about 3,000 inhabitants. It lies on the east side of what was once the island, one mile long and half a mile from the shore, thus enclosing two so-called harbors separated by Alexander's causeway, which is now a broad isthmus. The true harbor lies to the north of the town, but it is shallow, and will accommodate only the smallest vessels. Sidon, the Zidon of the Old Testament, and now Saida, was situated on the Medi- t-'rranean, 20 miles north of Tyre, and the same distance south of the present city of Reyrout. It is one of the most ancient ( ities in the world, and is mentioned by Jacob in Genesis xlix. 13. It is believed have been founded by Zidon, the eldest >on of Canaan, soon after the deluge. It was once a place of great wealth and im- portance, possessing a splendid harbor and an extensive maritime trade. Its inhabi- tants were famous for their success in com- merce, their skill in navigation, astronomy, architecture, and glass-making. The har- bor is now choked with sand, and Sidon is a wretched, half-ruined town with 5000 in- habitants. It was visited by the Saviour, and many of the inhabitants believed on Him. JoppA, now called Jaffa, is one of the most ancient seaports in tj-.i world. It was in former times the principal port of the Holy Land, because of its nearness to Jeru- salem. It lies on the Mediterranean, 35 miles north-west of Jerusalem, and 30 miles SI south of Csesarea. It was a border town of the tribe of Dan. Here were landed the materials for building both the first and second Temples, which were sent from Tyre and Lebanon. Jonas took ship here for Tarshish, and here St. Peter raised Dorcas from the dead, and enjoyed the heavenly vision which taught him God's intention to save the Gentiles as well as the Jews. The city is still an important port. Its harbor is bad, being shallow and exposed to the winds. The city stands on a promontory jutting out into the sea, rising to a height of about 150 feet, crowned with a fortress, and offering on all sides picturesque and varied prospects. The population num- bers about 15,000, more than one-half being Turks and Arabs. The Latins, Greeks, and Armenians have each a church here. Jericho was a city of Benjamin, lying about 7 miles from the Jordan, and 18 miles east north-east from Jerusalem. It was a very ancient city, and was the first place in the Promised Land taken by| the Israelites after their passage of the Jordan, the capture being accomplished by the miraculous destruction of its walls. A new Jericho was afterwards built on a neighboring site, and became a noted place, second in importance only to Jerusalem. It contained a school of the prophets, and was the residence of Eliseus. Our Saviour visited it, and gave sight to two blind men here (Matt. xx. 29-34), and forgave Zaccheus (Luke xix. i-io). Tradition makes the lofty mountain, called Quarantana, to the north-west of the city, the scene of the fasting and temptation of our Lord in the Wilderness after his baptism. The exact site of Jericho is a matter of dispute. THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. 67 VIEW OK ATHE.XS, SHOWING PIRAEUS AND THE LONG WALLS. The city of Athens was the capital of Attica, in Greece, and the chief seat of Grecian learning and civilization. The modern city stands on the site of its ancient predecessor, and is the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece. The ancient city was situated four miles east of the Saronic Gulf, and four and a half miles from the town of as the most splendid city of Greece, and the fame of its beauty, the magnificence of its public works, and the brilliancy of its literature, will never die. After experiencing various vicissitudes of fortune, it passed under the dominion of the Romans, and during this period was visited by the Apostle Paul in his journey from Macedonia. RUINS OF THE ACROPOLIS— ATHENS. Piraeus, which constituted its port and naval station. In its palmy days Athens was connected with Piraeus by a system of fortifications known as the Long Walls. These enclosed the space between the city and port, and preserved uninterrupted communication between 'hem. In course of time Athens became the most powerful as well THE ERECHTHEUM— ATHENS. St. Paul appears to have remained in Athens some time, and during his residence there delivered his famous discourse on the Areopagus to " the men of Athens." The remark of the writer of the Acts concerning the inquisitive character of the people of Athens is attested by the unanimous voice of antiquity. St. Paul founded a Christian church at Athens during his stay there. The city of Athens was built round a central rocky height, called the Acropolis, an elevation about three hundred feet above the general level of the town, and six hundred feet above the Mediterranean. bs THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. RUINS OF THE PARTHENON— ATHENS. Near this height are several smaller elevations with valleys between. Northwest of the Acropolis is a moderate hill, on which stands the temple of Theseus. At a short distance from the northwest angle is the Areopagus, where St. Paul delivered his memorable address to " the men of Athens." The principal buildings on the summit of the Acropolis were the Propylaea, the Erechtheum, and the Parthenon. The Propylsa served as an ornament to the hill, and also as a military right hand the grand building of the Par- thenon, and on the left the scarcely less beautiful Erechtheum. The Parthenon was by common consent the noblest build- ing of the ancient world, and the most beautiful monument of Athens. It stood on the very summit of the Acropolis, and was constructed of pure white marble. It was a temple erected in honor of Pallas Athene, the protecting divinity of Athens, and was regarded as the most sacred place in the city. It formed the most conspicu- ous object in any view of the town, and vi'as the first thing to greet the eye of the traveller approaching from the sea. It is regarded by modern architects as the most perfect building ever constructed, and was adorned with rare and beautiful sculptures from the hand of Phidias, the greatest of the artists of Greece. It was built in the best period of architecture, and under the inspiration of the highest genius in art. .\fter the introduction of Christianity it was converted into a Christian Church, and used as such until the conquest of Greece by the Turks. In 1687, during a war between the Turks and Venetians, the former converted it into a powder magazine. A Vene- tian shell exploded the magazine and threw down the interior of the temple. During the last century some of its most beautiful sculptures were carried to England by Lord Elgin, and are now in the British Museum at London. The Erechtheum stood on the left or northern side of the Acropo- THEATRE OF DIONYSUS— ATHENS. defence of the approach from the city to the summit of the hill. Among the ancients it was even more admired than the Parthenon for its grandeur and general effect, and for the skill with which the diffi- culties of the site were overcome. The approach to it was seventy feet broad, and consisted of a flight of sixty marble steps. It contained the only gates by which the Acropolis could be entered. Passing through the Propylsea, one entered the Acropolis itself, and saw on the RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VICTORY— .\THENS. lis. If was oblong in shape, with a portico of six Ionic columns at the east end, and a kind of transept at the west, a portico of four col- umns on the north, and the portico of caryatides standing on a base- ment, eight feet high, on the south. It was regarded as one of the most beautiful works of ancient times, and was held in the highest veneration by the Athenians. It was erected in honor of Erechtheus or Erichthonius, a fabulous hero of Attica. THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE BIBLE. 59 Rome, the famous capital of the ancient world, is situated on the river Tiber, at a distance of fifteen miles from its mouth. The seven hills which formed the nucleus of the ancient city stand on the left bank. In the engraving given here the Cathedral of St. Peter's is seen in the background, while on the right is the Castle of St. Angelo, the ancient Mole of Had- rian, with the Tiber in the foreground. Rome is mentioned in the books of Maccabees for the first time in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is also mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, and the Second Epistle to Timothy. The conquests of Pompey seem to have given rise to the first settlements of the Jews at Rome. The Jewish King Aristobulus and his son formed a notable part of Pompey's triumphal procession, and many Jewish captives and emigrants were brought to Rome at that time. Many of these Jews were made freed- men. Julius Cjesar showed them some kindness, and they were favored also by Augustus. Claudius, on the contrary, commanded all Jews to depart from Rome, on account of tumults connected, possibly, with the preaching of Christianity at Rome. This banishment cannot have been of long duration, for we find Jews residing at Rome apparently in consid- erable numbers at the time of St. Paul's visit. The Rome of the Apostle's day was a large and ir- regular mass of buildings unprotected by an outer wall; for it will be remembered that St. Paul's visit lies between two important epochs, viz. : its restora- tion by Augustus, and its restoration by Nero. The streets were generally narrow and winding, flanked by densely crowded lodging-houses of great height. St. Paul's first visit to Rome took place before the Neronian conflagration ; but even after the restoration of the city, which followed upon that event, many of the old evils continued. One-half of the population consisted, in all probability, of slaves. The larger part of the remainder consisted of pauper-citizens, supported in idleness by the miserable system of public gratuities. There appears to have been no middle class, and no free industrial popula- tion. Side by side with the wretched classes just men- tioned was the comparatively small body of the wealthy nobility, of whose luxury and profligacy we hear so much in the heathen writers of the time. Such was the popula- tion St. Paul found at Rome at the time of his visit. The localities in Rome, of interest to the student of the New Testament, are few in number, and rely for their authenticity mainly upon tradition. In the modern city, the grand basilica of St. Peter's is the most conspicuous object. It is by common consent the greatest and grand- est of all Christian churches. The body of the Apostle Peter is believed to have been finally buried on the spot now covered by the dome of the basilica. The large building on the reader's right is the palace of the Vatican, the residence of the Popes of Rome. It stands on the site of the gardens of the Emperor Nero — a site memo- rable in the annals of Christian martyrdom. The other localities in and about Rome connected with the Apostolic era are the Appian Way, by which St. Paul approached the Eternal City; the Mamertine prison, in which he was confined, which was built by Ancus Martius, near the Forum, and which still exists beneath the church of San Guiseppe dei FaUgnami : the scene of St. Paul's martyrdom on the VIEW OF ROME, SHOWING THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO AND ST. PETER'S. .-^T. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN— ROME- Ostian road ; the Ostian Gate, by which he left the city to be ofl'ered up for his faith; the chapel Domine quo Vadis, on the Appian road, the scene of the beautiful legend of our Lord's appearance to St. Peter as he was escaping from martyrdom ; and the Catacombs, which were the places of refuge and the burial-places of the early Christians in the days of tlieir persecution. 60 THE LIFE OF ST. r'AUL. SUPPOSED SITE OF CAPHARXAUM. In the days of Our Saviour Capharnaum was one of the chief cities of Galilee. There is no mention of it prior to the Babylonish cap- tivity. It was situated on the north-wect shore of the Sea of Galilee, about five miles from the entrance of the Jordan into that sneet of speculate concerning it. Dr. Robinson be at Khan Minyeb, on the northern border of the Gennesaret. Wilson, Ritter, and Grove, locate it at Tell Hum, higher up on the lake. water, and on the great route of travel from Damascus to the Mediter- ranean. Jesus seems to have made it his residence during the three years of his minis- try on earth, and it was also the home ofthe Apostles An- drew and Peter. It was the scene of many of the Lord's, miracles, and had thus a glorious op- portunity offered it J but it rejected the Lord Jesus, and its doom was sealed. The name of the city lives only in the sacred narra- tive, and its site is so obliterated that writers can only believes the true site to plain of THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. TARSUS, THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PAUL, One of the most important portions of the New Testament consists of the narration of the labors of St. Paul, the Apostle of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to the Gentile nations. As a man, St. Paul is one of the most remarkable and powerful characters in all history, and as the servant and missionary of the Saviour, he is even more remark- able and interesting. He was a native of Tarsus, a city of the province of Cilicia, " no mean city," he tells us. Tarsus was the chief city of its province, and stood on the banks of the Cydnus, in the narrow, fertile plain between the Medi- terranean and the snow-capped peaks of Tarsus, at the conflux of the com- merce between Asia Minor and the East. Saul, as he was named in his infancy, was a member of a Jewish family of "the Dispersion," living in this city. His father had received the Roman franchise for services rendered the Romans, no doubt during the civil wars. It was the custom of the Jews to teach every youth some trade or useful avocation, and Saul was brought up to the occupation of a tent -maker. The family seem to have been possessed of ample means, for Saul was liberally educated, and was sent to Jerusalem at the close of his Hellenic course, to complete his studies under the learned teacher, Gamaliel, who was the most profound s'tudent of the Hebrew Scriptures of his day. Here he added to that perfect familiar- ity with the Septuagint, which, as an Hellenist, he had been taught from his childhood, a complete knowledge of Hebrew and of the He- brew Scriptures, as well as the whole mass of the traditional lore of the THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. 61 Iharisaic schocL He seems to have been a person of deep religious feeling from his extreme youth, and had already acquired, among "his own people," a reputation for sanctity of life and strict observance of all the traditions of the sect, which he more than maintained at Jerusalem. Being a man of enthusiastic temperament, the young Pharisee became a fierce and uncompromising champion of the tradi- tions of the fathers. The new doctrines of Christianity seemed to Saul an attack upon the religion of the Jews, and he opposed them with great and active zeal. He took a leading part in the persecutions which were directed against the companions and followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and when the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, was put to death, he stood by, "consenting to his death ; " and took charge of the clothing of the witnesses. After the death of Stephen, Saul's zealous fury against the Christians was redoubled, and he became, not merely the chief instrument, but the prime mover in the great persecution for which that event gave the signal ; and it was by his activity that the Chris- tians were forced to fly from Jerusalem. Being determined to carry his efforts still farther, he, of his own accord, obtained letters from the high priest to the synagogues of Damascus, to enable him to seize and bring bound to Jerusalem any "of the way," whether men or women ; and armed with these he set out for Damascus, a. d. 37. On his journey a wonderful occurrence happened to Saul — an event which changed the entire current and purposes of his life. As he and his companions drew near to Damascus, the towers of the an- cient city being in full view, a light, brighter than the noonday sun, blazed down from heaven upon the little band, enveloping it and bringing it to a halt. This brightness was not seen by Saul alone, but was visible to all who were with him, and they were stricken to the earth by it. Of all the company, Saul alone was struck blind by it, and he alone beheld in the blaze of glory the vision of the Son of God, as He appeared to the Three Children in the fiery fur- nace, and to Stephen in the article of death, visible only to his spiritual sense. Jesus revealed himself to Saul, as the One whom he ■was wickedly persecuting, and told him of His purpose to make of him a messenger to the Gentiles. Saul at once rtc(jgnized his Lord, and, submitting himself entirely to the will of Jesus, asked : "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " He was told to go into the city, and await the revelation of the Divine will, which would be made known to him. The vision then faded away, and Saul, totally blind, was led into the city by his companions, who had seen the light and heard the voice, but had not understood what was spoken . He was con- ducted to the house of one of his friends named Ju- das, where he remained three days without sight, spending the time in fast- ing and prayer, and in communion with God. Meanwhile the Saviour appeared to a devout man, and one of the few Chris- tians living in Damascus, THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. named Ananias, and commanded him to go to Saul, and restore him his sight. Ananias, knowing the reputation of Saul, and the nature of his errand to Damascus, hesitated to obey, fearing that the vision was not, after all, from God ; but the Saviour reassured him, and told him that Saul was even then praying, and, moreover, was expecting him, having seen Ananias in a vision. Ananias no longer hesitated, but at once sought out Saul, and in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, restored him his sight and baptized him. Seeing that he was thus called to the Apostleship, Saul, who was afterwards called Paul, began his public ministrations immediately after his baptism. Received into full fellowship with the Christians of Damascus, he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God ; and the more they wondered at the great persecutor's conversion, the more he increased in strength, " and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is the very Christ." From Damascus, Paul retired into Arabia Petraea, by the Divine com- ANANIAS AND SAUL. 62 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. PAUL AND BARNABAS AT ANTIOCH. PAUL PARTING FROM HIS DISCIPLES. mand. Here he spent a season in close communion with God, and was instructed in the truths of Christianity. He himself declares that at this period he conversed not with flesh and blood. After this he returned to Damascus, where he resumed his preaching. A conspiracy being formed against him here, he was obliged to fly. He succeeded in escaping from the city, and at once went up to Jerusa- lem, where he spent fifteen days as the guest of St. Peter, and was jjreseiited to the cliurch. His zeal in disputing with the Hellenist Jews came near costing him his life, and he was hurried away by the brethren to Caesarea, whence he sailed for Tarsus. Before leaving the Holy City he had again seen the Saviour in a vision, this time in the Temple, and it was on this occasion that he was commanded to leave Jerusalem and go and preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. From Tarsus, Paul went to An- tioch, accompanied by Barnabas, and there preached to the church with power. While there a severe famine occurred in Judaea, and the Christians of Antioch made a collection of money for the relief of their bretliren at Jerusalem, and sent it to them by Paul and Barnabas. The Apostles, upon discharging this duty, immediately returned to Antioch, and soon after this the disciples composing the church at Antioch were com- manded by the Holy Ghost to send forth Paul and Barnabas to preach the Gospel to the Gentile nations. Paul and Barnabas, accompanied by John Mark, the cousin of Bar- nabas, set forth, a. d. 45, from Antioch, on what is generally known as the great Apostle's first missionary journey. They em- barked at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and went to Salamis in Cyprus. From Salamis, which is on the east side of the island of Cyprus, they went to Paphos on the west side, passing along the coast. Here they discomfited a famous magician, who sought to defeat the ends of God, and was struck blind for his wickedness. They also converted the Roman Proconsul. From Paphos they went by sea to Perga, in Pam- phylia, thence they crossed the mountain range of Taurus to Pi- sidia and Lycaonia, a journey at- tended with great hardship and danger. Here Mark left them, and returned to Jerusalem. The first halting-place of the Apostles in Pisidia was Antioch, a place, like its Syrian namesake, very im- portant in the history of Chris- tianity. Iconium was next visited, then Lystra and Derbe, in Lycao- nia. From Lystra they returned, through Pisidia and Pamphylia, to Antioch in Syria, the entire journey having occupied a period of about three years. The journey had been one constant round of preaching, and was attended with great success. It was marked also by the jjerformance of several miracles. The Apostles made a re- port of their acts to the church at Antioch, and then resumed their labors at that place. A dispute having arisen in the church, in con- sequence of certain persons insisting that it was necessary for Chris- THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. tians to be circumcised, Paul and Barnabas were sent to Jerusalem to obtain the views of the Apos- tles and elders there on the sub- ject. They made the journey by land, passing through Phoenicia and Samaria, declaring to the brethren on their way what God had done for the Gentiles. The church at Jerusalem sustained the position of Paul, that circumcision was not necessary. The Apostles returned to Antioch. In the year of our Lord 49, St. Paul set out upon his second missionary journey, shortly after nis return from Jerusalem. This journey, besides its wide extent and long duration — covering a period of four years — is memor- able for the introduction of Chris- tianity into Europe ; though the Apostle's labors were still confined to that eastern division of the Roman Empire which was marked by the Adriatic. Beginning at Antioch, it embraced Cilicia, Ly- caonia, Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, and the Troad ; and in Europe, Macedonia, Athens and Corinth ; whence Paul crossed the .i^igean to Ephesus, and thence sailed to Caesarea, and so, after a hasty visit to Jerusalem, returned to Antioch. Paul made this journey in com- pany with Silas and Timothy. Luke formed a part of the little band during a portion of the journey. After a considerable stay at Antioch, St. Paul set out on his third *nd last missionary journey in the autumn of a. d. 54, pursuing his old route. This third circuit included a residence of no less than three years at Ephesus; a journey through Macedonia, and probably as far as Illyricum, which brought the Apostle to Corinth, where he sp\ent the three winter months of a. d. 57-58. To disconcert a Jewish plot against his life, he returned through Macedonia, and em- barked at Philippi, after the close of the Passover; and rejoined his companions, who sailed direct from Corinth, at Alexandria-Troas. At Miletus, just before his final embarkation for the Holy Land, Paul took an affecting leave of the elders of the church of Ephesus, who assembled there at his bidding. He warned them of the dangers which would threaten them in the future, and exhorted them to cling to the faith of Jesus Christ. Finally, " he kneeled down and prayed with them all; and they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more." Although warned of the danger which awaited him at Jerusalem, Paul went up to the Holy City, and was there welcomed by the other Apostles. Upon his appearance in the Temple, he was recognized and assailed by "certain Jews from Asia," probably some of his old opponents at Ephesus, and dragged into the outer court, where he would have been put to death, had not the Roman guard, attracted by the tumult, charged the crowd and rescued him. HeTvas at once tonveyed into the fortress of the Antonia. He obtained the leave of the Roman officer commanding the post to address the people, and, speaking to them in the Hebrew tongue, related the incidents of his early life and his conversion, the throng listening to him in silence. When he told them of his Divine commission to preach to the Gentiles, the people burst into furious cries and rent their clothes. The Roman officer, ignorant of the language in which Paul had PAUL BEIOKE THE COUNCIL. spoken, could only suppose that he had given some strong ground ibr such indignant fury, and, causing him to be brought into the castle, commanded him to be examined by scourging. The soldiers were already binding him with thongs to the post, when the Apostle told them he was a Roman citizen, and reminded them of the danger of inflicting any arbitrary punishment upon one who was under the pro- tection of imperial Rome. The tribune was astonished at this, and alarmed to find that he had inflicted the indignity of chains upon a free-born Roman. Learning that the trouble was a question concern- ing the Jewish religion, the tribune summoned the chief priests and the Sanhedrim to meet on the following day, and having loosed Paul from his bonds, placed him before them. Paul made a defence of his course, but the Council, which had no legal power to decide his fate, broke up in confusion, and a plot against the Apostle's life being dis- covered the next day, the commander of the castle sent Paul, under the protection of a strong military escort, to Csesarea, to be examined by Felix, the Roman Governor of that province. Paul's accusers were also ordered to appear before Felix. Soon after his arrival Felix heard the case. Tertullus made an eloquent speech against Paul, charging him with heresy, sedition, and the profanation of the Temple; but Paul replied with such force that Felix refused to pass any sentence until he could consult the governor of the castle at Jerusalem, who had first arrested Paul. He remanded the Apostle to prison, but allowed him to receive the visits and kind offices of his friends. Some time after this he again sent for Paul to hear him concerning the faith of Christ — this time, it seems, to gratify the curiosity of his Jewish wife, Drusilla, the daughter of Herod Agrippa I. The Apostle spoke to him only of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, and Felix, who was a man stained with crime, "trembled, and answered. Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will send for thee." He kept Paul in prison for two years, often sending for him and conversing with him, not for purposes of repentance, however, but merely with the hope that Paul would bribe him to release him. At the end of this time Felix was removed, and Portius Festus ap- pointed Procurator of Judaea. The case of Paul was at once brought to Festus' knowledge by the Apostle's enemies at Jerusalem, and thejr «« THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. PAUL WRITING HIS EPISTLES IN PRISON. besought the new Governor to have Paul brought to the Holy City for trial, it being their design to waylay and kill him on the route. Festus, however, decided to hear the case at Casarea, and summoned the Apostle and his accusers before him. The charges were brought against him, and Paul, after protesting his innocence, appealed from Festus to Caesar, or, in other words, demanded a trial at Rome, and Festus was compelled by the Roman law to grant the demand. A few days after this, Agrippa and his sister, Berenice, came to Caesarea to congratulate the new Governor on his arrival, and Festus knowing Agrippa to be well versed in matters pertaining to the Jews, had Paul brought before him, in order that the king might hear the case, and advise him (the Governor) as to what precise charge he ought to lay before the Emperor. Paul availed himself of this opportunity to de- clare the truths of his faith, in one of the most powerful and eloquent orations on record. His defence drew from Agrippa the acknowl- edgment to Festus, "This man might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed unto Caesar." Paul had a double object in appealing to Caesar. He desired that his case should be tried at Rome, where justice would be done him, and he would be safe from the murderous plots of the Jews; and he was anxious to preach Christ crucified in the Imperial City itself. Festus did not keep him waiting long, but sent him, with other pris- oners, under the charge of a centurion of the Augustan cohort named Julius. After an eventful voyage, in which the ship was cast ashore on the coast of the island of Malta, the capital was reached about the beginning of March, a. d. 6i. The news of his coming having pre- ceded him, the Christians of Rome met him at the stations of Appi Forum and the Three Taiyngbif itto^. Or Mary the Mother of our Lord and of His reputed father, Joseph, the Gospels only make such mention as connects them with His personal history. But when He had ascended mto Heaven, and when the religion which He had founded spread throughout the East and the West, filling not only Palestine but the sur- rounding countries with flourishing Christian churches, it was both na- tural and inevitable that Every follower of His should feel a deep inter- est in knowing all about these revered parents of His and their entire family. And this inquiry was stimulated by the misstatements and cal umnies of the Jews re- garding Mary and Jo- seph. We need only recall the names of a few of the early Christian writers who record the traditions col- lected in Judsea itself, in the very places where the Mother of Christ and her family had lived — traditions com- ing down to us from the age of the MARY, MOTHER OF GOD. Apostles, put in writing by their disciples, and repeated by the most enlightened and saintly scholars of the four succeeding centuries. Fi-remost among these names stands that of S. Jerome; not, as everybody knows, that he is first in the order of time, but because, in the opinion of all who believe in Christ, he labored most suc- cesstuily in tne native land of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, to gather *~iQ transmit to all coming generations the inspired writings of the Old and the New Testaments, together with all the historical knowl- edge which could throw light on them. After S. Jerome come S. Justin Mar- tyr, the great Origen, S. Epiphanius and S. John Damascene (both natives of Palestine), S. Gregory of Nyssa and S. Gregory Nazianzen, natives of Asia Minor, like Origen ; S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. John Chrysostom (a na- tive of Antioch) ; S. Am- brose and S. Augustine, both contemporaries of S. Jerome. Such are a few of the sainted names which vouch for the ex- istence and the authority of the traditions relating to the parentage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to lier birth and early life lip to the point where S. Luke and S. Matthew take up the thread of the narrative in their Gos- pels. The same respected authorities supply the facts of Mary's life after the .\scension of our Lord. She was too dear to the heart of the early church, to the grateful veneration of the last and best beloved disciple of the Lord, John the Evangelist, not t9 be cared for reverently and tenderly by all these fervent followers of the Master; so that the details of her latest life and of her blessed death must have been remembered and recorded by the first generations of Christians — her own spiritual children all of them — most of them her own countrymen, and many of them 1^3 blood-relations. With these preliminary remarks we may confidently enter xxpm n LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. our task — that of condensing into a few pages the Life of her who is the Second Eve, the Mother of the True Life, most dear to every one who holds Christ to be the Second Adam, the Messiah, the Restorer and Saviour of our race. n. The birth-place of Mary was that same town of Nazareth, in Lower Galilee, where was also the home of Joseph, and where, during the first thirty years of His life, the Word Incarnate was to live in obscurity and toil. S. Justin Martyr, himself a native of Palestine, who defended the faith by his writings and died for it, within fifty years after the death of S. John the Evangelist, says, that Mary was descended in a direct line from King David. Her father's name was Joachim. The Jewish writers give him also the name of Heli ; the Arabic traditions of Palestine and the early commentators of the Koran call him Imram or Amram. His wife's name was Anna or Hanna, according to these same authorities. She was of the tribe of Levi. Of these two venerable personages S. John Damascene writes as one who is only giving utterance to the living, uninterrupted testi- mony of the populations of Lower Galilee, when he eulogizes their virtues. This universal veneration, as soon as the Christian Re- ligion was allowed to be professed openly, found its expression in the churches erected in the East under the invocation of S. Joachim and S. Anna. The Emperor Justinian, in 550, had one built in Constantinople, which bore the name of S. Anna down to the con- quest of the city by the Turks.- The reverence thus paid from the beginning of Christianity to the immediate ancestors of our Lord, is founded both on their own recorded holiness of life and on the ex- quisite jealousy with which the Christian conscience watched over everything nearly related to the great fact of the Incarnation. The early heretics denied its reality ; asserted that the body born of the Virgin and nailed to the cross was only a shadowy body, but no sub- stantial human flesh ; in a word, that Christ was no true man, and only had the outward appearance of one. Hence the scrupulousness with which every circumstance was examined that bore on the all- important fact of His being in very deed, " bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh," as well as " True God of True God." The veneration paid to His Mother and her parents was reflected on Christ Himself, while it strengthened in the mind of the believer the faith in the God made Man. Hence the piety, borne witness to by Justinian at Constantinople and by S. John Chrysostom at Antioch, was the same that inspired the youthful Martin Luther, long ages afterward, to vow to S. Ann to embrace a monastic life. It was that which prompted the populations of Brittany to pay such devout homage to Sainte Anne (TAuray, and the first Canadian colonists to build, on the shore of the S. Lawrence, that famous chapel before which, departing and returning, every vessel cast an- chor, in order that the crew might go thither to worship Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, to beseech, on their journey across the deep, the protection of Mary's sainted mother, or to thank her for their delivery from storm and shipwreck. All this was natural to true believers. It is said that the child Mary was se.n, like Samuel to the pious Anna of the Old Testament, as a reward to ardent prayer after long sterility. The Moslem traditions, echoing those of tlie Galilean populations, aflirm that the mother of the Blessed Virgin, when she first knew that her prayer was heard, knelt in thanksgiving, and said: "O Lord, I vow to consecrate to Thee the child which Thou hast given me : accept graciously my offering, O Thou to whom everything is known." And this same voice of Arab tradition, echoing the constant belief of the early Christians of Palestine, attests also the privilege claimed lor mary oy the Church, and sol emnly decreed as an article of faith on December 8, 1854 — that o( having been, by a special application of the saving grace of hei Son, preserved from the stain of original sin. This is what is called her "Immaculate Conception." It was most fitting that the Second Eve, the humble and self-sacrificing parent of our redeemed humanity, should have been, at the very instant when soul and body were united, as free from every stain of moral evil as the first Eve, when the Almighty hand formed her body from out the substance of sinless Adam, and poured the breath of life into it. Even the Jewish traditions, long before the coming of Christ, affirmed the current belief from the days of the Patriarchs and from the begin- ning, that the stain of Adam's sin was not to touch the Messiah or His Mother. Mohammed himself bore witness to the universal existence of this belief among the nations descended from Abra- ham, whether Christian or not. Anna's blessed child was born on September 8, in the year of Rome 734, that is, twenty years before the Christian era. In the Koran (chapter iii.), it is said that when the babe was born, her mother said : " O God, I have brought into the world a daughter, and have named her Miriam {Mary). I place both her and her posterity under Thy protection ; preserve them from the designs of Satan." The solemn ceremony of naming a new-born babe was per- formed by the Jews on the eighth day after the birth. Hence it is that the solemnity of the Holy Name of Mary is celebrated by the Church on the Sunday within tlie Octave of the Nativity, or that following the 8th of September. When the child had attained her third year, her parents, in fulfilment of their vow to consecrate her to God, took her from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and gave her up to the prie.sts to be educated within the vast precincts of the temple, where other chil- dren, similarly dedicated by vow to the life of Nazarites, were brought up together. From the first age of Christianity a house was pointed out to pil- grims and visitors as the house of S. Ann. Over this spot, as over every other made sacred by memories connected with our Lord and His Mother, the faithful kept loving watch throughout the evil days of Moslem domination. And we should not forget that, inasmuch as S. Ann herself was held in great reverence by the followers of the Koran, so when Jerusalem fell into their hands, they hastened to change into a mosque or place of Mohammedan worship, the ora- tory built on the site by the Christians. So did they manifest their veneration for all other places held most dear by Christians ; their special regard for burial-places forbidding them from ajjpropriating to their own religious uses the church raised over the Holy Sepul- chre by S. Helena. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and established a kingdom in Palestine, their piety led them to build churches and monasteries at all spots in the Holy City and through- out the kingdom hallowed by the memory of our Lord, His Mother, and His ancestors. Thus they erected a monastery with a cluirch on the traditional sit« of the house of S. Ann ; when Jerusalem fell afterward into the hands of Saladin, the church and monastery became a mosque, held in very great respect by its new masters. Even so near the splendid mosque of Omar {El-Aksa), which a this day occupies the site of the temple, is a smaller one, Es-Sakhra ("the Rock"), built on the spot where M=ry and the other maidens, bound by Nazarite vows, lived during their seclusion Thus, we liave monumental records recalling the childhood and girlhood of our Lady. The Crusaders converted the humble chapel which stood on this " Rock," into a splendid church, surmounted by a gilt cupola and a lofty cross. Here, then, was spent the life of the Blessed Virgip LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. hwii her third year upward, ft was during the rule of Herod the Ureat, an Idumean, who had married Mariamne, a descendant of the Machabean line of princes, and thereby conciliated the favor of some of the most influential among the Jews. He restored the ternple with the utmost magnificence, thus still further winning popular applause. He also built Cesarea on the sea-coast of the Mediter- ranean, naming it after the Emperor Augustus, together with other important cities here and there. But, to offset the service rendered to the national religion by the restoration and adornment of the temple, he erected in the cities, by him founded, magnificent houses of worship to the gods of Rome. It was while this clever, but unscrupulous, ijnnce -vas pushing forward the costly works on the temple, thai Mary was oeing edu- cated within its precincts. In what this education con- sisted we can only conjecture from the ascertained Jew- ish customs of that age, and from the fragmentary pas- sages of Eastern fathers. The " Proto-Gospel of S. James," 4. work held in general esteem during the first centuries of the Christian era, describes Mary, as seated before a spin- dle of wool dyed purple. The Jews had borrowed and in- herited from their neighbors, the Phenicians, the art of giving to the fabrics they wove that exquisite purple dye so much prized in the ancient world. Besides this, S. Epi- phanius says that the Blessed Virgin was skilled in embroi- dery, and in weaving wool, fine linen, and cloth of gold. Especially careful were the priests, after the Captivity, to teach these privileged mai- dens, and all the youth of the upper classes, the knowl- edge of the Hebrew Scrip- tures. What the study of these must have been to one "full of grace," like the future Mother of the Redeemer, we need only suggest to the in- telligent reader. In these peaceful studies and useful occupations, varied by the stirring scenes of the gorgeous Jewish worship, passed Mary's girlhood. Meanwhile, as tradition informs us, both her parents closed a holy life by the death of the saints. Her father died first, when his daughter was in her thirteenth year; and she returned to Nazareth to the house of her widowed mother. When the latter was also called to her reward, it became the dotjT of her nearest relatives to find her a protector and a husband among her own tribesmen, in accordance with the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. S, Gregory of Nyssa, who follows the best traditions of the THE ANNUNCIATION.. East, relates that the noble maiden was unwilling to be bound fay the ties of matrimony, and besought her kinsfolk to allow her to re- turn to the temple and continue there the secluded Virginal lite which alone had a charm for her. To this they peremptorily re- fused to consent ; and the orphan had, perforce, to choose the man who should be her husband and protector — one who, in the hidden councils of God, was to be the guardian of the Messiah and Hi» Mother, their devoted companion and support — and, through ail the Christian ages, the Protector, under God, of all those who be- lieve in the Saviour. Here come in the beautiful legends which have inspired Chris- tian art, concerning the rivalry among the unwedded kinsmen of Mary for the honor of claiming her as bride. Among the descend- ants of David assembled in Nazareth, or in Jerusalem, at the town-house of Joachim and Ann, was Joseph, who,, impoverished, as were most of his kinsfolk, supported him- self amid the hills and ol> scurity of Galilee, by follow- ing the trade of what the Gos- jiels call "a carpenter," or what we would more properly call "a cabinet-maker.'' Among the many thriving cit- ies and industrious popula- tions of Galilee, the art of inlaying was much in demand. He too, like Mary, like tb« numerous bodies of Essenes, who practiced a life of self- imposed abstinence and se- clusion, aiming at a moral per- fection above the reach of the multitude — aspired to the Vir- ginal life. By what inspira- tion, then, was he impelled to be a suitor for the hand of his kinswoman? Or were the names of all the persons eligible for that honor sub- mitted to the Maiden in a list, permitting her to draw by lot from among the nam' ber? Having to be so inti- mately connected with the Saviour in His helpless in- fancy and childhood, Joseph was, of course, under a sjjecial providence ; and our own Christian sense must divine and supply many links in the chain of facts that fill up his history. • S. Jerome, recalling the ancient tradition preserved in the nar- rative of the " Proto-Gospel of S. James," tells us that the suitors, after praying to Him in whose hand are our lots, brought each to the temple a rod of almond-tree, and left it over night before the altar. On the morrow, that which bore the name of Joseph had blossomed. It was a renewal of the miracle by which God in the Old Law had confirmed the sons of Aaron in the priestly office. This is the event referred ta i» LIFE OF THE BLfiSSED VIRGIN MARY. R^pnael's fir^t and pure master-piece, " The Marriage oi fhe Blessed Virgin." Mary, become the wife of the blameiess and high-minded man thus selected by Providence, went to reside in her ancestral home at Nazareth. It is six months after the message delivered to S^chary in the temple — that he shall be given a son to be called John. He shall be great before the Lord . . . shall be filled with the Holy Ghost before his birth. He is the precursor of the Messiah, who shall herald the approach of the long-expected Saviour and point Him out, walking the earth in our flesh. The "fulness of time" has come. From before the throne of the Highest the same angelic messenger descends to announce tht ac- complishment of what is God's work above all others. "The Angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a Virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the Virgin's name was Mary. And the Angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee ; Blessed art thou among women ; who, having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be." " The lowly maiden, among the many graces with which her soul overflowed, above all, possessed humility. She was alarmed, not so much by the presence of the angel, as by the reverence with which he addressed her. The divine favors already lavished upon her have not begotten pride. It is a characteristic of Christian sanctity, that its possessors, while intensely grateful to the Divine Goodness for every favor in the natural and supernatural order, are still most painfully conscious of their own shortcomings. The nearer God lifts them to Himself the more exalted becomes their ideal of moral per- fection, the more severely do they compare what they are at the present moment, with what they might and ought to be. But the dig- nity that awaits Mary, singular and incommunicable as it is, had never entered into the visions of attainable holiness presented to her mind by the Spirit of God. "The Angel calms her fears by announcing the object of his mis.sion. She is divinely chosen in the eternal counsels to be the mother of the long-promised Redeemer, Jesus. I/e shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord shall give to Him the throne of David, His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob forever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." The youth of Mary, her voluntary or enforced poverty, and her having placed herself as an affianced bride under the protection of a kinsman, . . . have not deadened in her bosom the yearning for the appearance of • the Orient from on High,' the longing for the restoration of her own royal house. Patriotism and religion were intended by God to be one undivided and absorbing sentiment in the breast of every Hebrew woman as well as man. The daughter of David, then, must have been thrilled by the Heaven-sent assur- ance of the resurrection of David's line, of the coming glory and eternity of the new kingdom. But that it should be through son of hers overwhelms her. Genuine humility is not littleness of soul : it merely gives the soul an intense feeling of the distance which exists between what our own will has made us, and what God wills us to be. It is, therefore, at bottom, a vivid sense of the de- iciency of one's own will in conforming with the Divine. But •rhen it becomes clearly known to the humble soul that God re- quires of her the sublimest efforts of self-sacrifice, her very humility heing a supernatural and irresistible tendency toward accomplishing His purpose, she puts forth a strength and a magnanimity all divine o doing what is most heroic and most painful. •' Did the divine light which must have flooded that favored soul on this occasion — unique in the whole economy of tne ^pematarei government — enable Mary to j?erceive that, to become the Mother of the Second Adam she must fulfil the part of the Second Eve? that His triumph must be through suffering ; that His diadem was to be a crown of thorns, and His death that of an executed criminal, the horror and abomination of His own and of all civilized peoples? If so, her acceptance of such motherhood meant a share in all this shame and torture of soul. Thus was humility satisfied ; it should have its sublimest satisfaction in the cross, in her companionship with the Crucified. " Light having been giveh her to understand the operations of the Divine Power, and the scruples both of her humility and her purity having been removed by the words of the Angel, she bows herself to the Divine Will, and accepts the awful responsibilities of Mother of the Redeemer. Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it dont unto me according to thy word. And the Angel departed from her.^* (Heroic Women of the Bible "and the Church.) She was related on her mother's side, at least, to Elizabeth and Zachary, the parents of the Baptist, whose approaching birth the Angel had revealed to her. Probably these noble relatives had been the comforters of Anna in her widowhood, and the consolers as well of Mary herself in the first period of her orphaned life. Her first thought is to visit their privileged home. It was a long journey to the southern extremity of Juda, and over perilous roads. But the Spirit who henceforth is the very soul of that Blessed Mother's soul, is one of generosity; and Mary goes on her way rejoicing. She is the Ark of the New Covenant, bearing over the mountains and through the valleys of Judaea, not the manna put within the former ark by Moses together with the Tables of the Law. Here is He, who is the true Bread of Life, the Divine Law- Giver, the very "Angel of the Testament" Himself. And as Mary crosses the threshold of Elizabeth, John feels the presence of Jesus; at the approach of "the Bridegroom," His "Friend" is quickened with the pulses of a new life. His mother "cried out with a loud voice . . . Blessed art thou among women 1 . . . And whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?" . . . Mary, unwilling to deny what has been revealed to her saintly kinswoman, only thinks of referring the homage paid to herself to Him from whom every perfect gift descendeth. The light of prophecy floods her soul, as the future ages are spread out before her, and she pours forth the strains of the sublime song, which has ever since been the hymn of Christian triumph and thanksgiving: " My soul doih magnify the Lord, And my spirit haih rejoiced in God my Saviour I Because He hatli regarded the humility of His handmaid ; For behold from henceforth all nations shall call me Blessed. For He that is Mighty hath done great things to me. And Holy is His name." "Three months did Mary abide with Elizabeth, not seeking the public eye, but both of them communing with God in prayer, in obedience to the Holy Spirit who filled them ; and increasing in their own souls the zeal for His glory and for the salvation of His people. So entirely does Mary trust to the divine wisdom to dis« close the secret of her heart, that, on her return to Nazareth, shs makes no mention of it to Joseph. She is rewarded for her abso- lute trust : an angel is sent to this prudent and God-fearing man to apprise him of the Treasure lying hidden beneath his roof. He is thenceforth to be the faithful steward in God's family on earth, guarding and cherishing the two Beings in all creation the mosf precious in the sight of Heaven — that exalted Mother and h«« LIFE OF THE BLESSEjj VIRGIN MARY. babe. Joseph too, if not in very deed a Nazante like Joiin, re- ceired a portion above his trethren : Christ, during His helpless in- fancy and boyhood, was to be his sole care and portion. Christ and His Mother were to look up to him, under God's providence, as their head, guide and support. He could not but anderstand, once the Angel of the Lord had revealed to him Mary's secret, that of all just men whom Heaven had most favored till then, none were 80 privileged as himself. For beneath his lowly roof he now held the new Parents of restored humanity foreshown to Adam and Eve in the Garden. On his head were accumulated the blessmgs prophesied by Jacob to the first Joseph (Gen. xlix. 25, 26): 'the blessings of Heaven above, with the blessings of the deep that lieth beneath, until the desire of the everlasting hills shall come.' He has come ; ere long Joseph shall look upon His face, and hold Him in his arms, and hear His voice uttering words of filial love and gratitude." — (Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church.) ra. The glory of our Second Eve is, that her life, from this period lo the Ascension of her Son, will be identified with His ; and that from His Ascension till her death at Ephesus, her sole care was to lustain and comfort the infant Church, so sorely tried in Palestine. In Bethlehem Joseph was born, and to Bethlehem a mere acci- dent compels Joseph and Mary to go, just as she is about to give birth to her child. They went thither in obedience to an Imperial Decree enjoining on all persons within the Roman empire to be registered in their native places. S. John the Evangelist, a near relative of the Blessed Virgin, ana the disciple so dearly loved by her Son, says of the Incarnate Word, the Light of the World : " He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the World knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own re- ceived Him not." Whatever may have been the circumstances that explain the fact — the fact is recorded by the Gospel, that in Bethlehem, the city of David, where Booz bestowed on Ruth, the Moabite, such kindly countenance and courteous hospitality, no one house was opened, at the hour of her sorest need, to the greatest of David's daughters, the gentle Mother of the Messiah. . . . They arrived, sore-footed and weary, at its gates, when night had already fallen. The town was full. " There was n^ zoom for them in the Inn." They sought, on the outskirts of the town, one of those natural caves, the shelter for the shepherd in stormy weather, the refuge of the poor way-farer at all times. " And she brought forth her first-born Son and wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger." We do not deplore that it so befell both ikiother and Babe. It was meet that He who came to "make all things new" in the world of morality, should have elected to be born in the most ab- ject destitution. He had come to condemn the ill-uses of wealth, and to inculcate the blessedness of that spirit which despises riches in themselves, and sets store solely on the Eternal Kingdom and the supernatural virtues that lead to it. . . . So, she looks, first of all human beings, at that midnight hour, on the face of her Babe and her Saviour. What ecstacy filled her soul as the light of that countenance, that so many generations had vainly wished to behold, made all bright for her and for her saintly guardian, Joseph, in that hillside cavern ! These two were the first worshippers, as they were to be the two inseparable companions and faithful Disciples of the Divine Master — the great Teacher of the Manger and the Cross. They were called " His Parents." And as such they are unspeak- ably dear to the Christian world. Who are those who are first summoned to the presence of the new-born King, the Day-Star of Israel, the Hope of the world? Shepherds guarding their flocks by night. " And behold, an an- gel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the Angel said to them: Fear not. For behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people. For this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger." To these poor folk, the first called to the knowledge of Christ and to the everlasting glories of His Kingdom, a foretaste is there given of the society which Christians are to share here and here- after. " Suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." These first cour- tiers of the Saviour-King, as well as all His followers to the end of time, must accustom themselves to behold with the eyes of faith the splendors of that unseen world, in which Christ reigns, minis- tered to by myriads of these bright angelic spirits. There is one sentence recorded of Mary, in the passage, which recounts the visit of the Shepherds to the new-born Babe. They had found " Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger^ And, seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning the Child. And all that heard wondered . . . But Mary kept all these words, pondering in her heart." The sole study of this Mother of the incarnate God, was to know Him and His mysteries. Knowing Him, therefore, better than all others, she walked more closely in His footsteps, treading, not in the paths where honor and applause might reach her on His account, but in the ways of obscurity, deep enlightened love and heroic suffering. The eighth day came, and the parents, fo„Dwing the guidance of the Holy Spirit, took the Child to the Priest to have Him circum- cised, in conformity with the Law. In every particular both He and they wished to give an example of perfect obedience. He had taken to Himself the flesh of Adam, in order so to hallow it by the union, that it might be our ransom on the cross. In circumcision the redeeming blood begins to flow, and the divine humility that was to shine forth in His Passion, already manifests itself in Beth- lehem. Then was He given the name of Jesus, by Joseph, in com- pliance with the injunction of the Angel. Mary and Joseph were soon afterward gladdened by the coming of the Magi— the "Three Wise Men," or "Three Kings" from the East. It was a memorable event. Jerusalem, where the standards and eagles of Imperial Rome were displayed on the Antonia Tower, overlooking the temple, and where the Idumean Herod was acknowledged as king, knew that the "sceptre had passed out of Juda," and, therefore, that the promised Saviour must be nigh. He had already come, and Jerusalem and Judaea knew it n<*t. I'hey expected a mighty Prince, manifesting himself with more than the warlike genius of David and the far-reaching wisdom of Solomon. And lo ! He lay hidden in a wayside cavern , at Bethlehem, swathed with the clothes of infancy, and laid in a manger ! This was not the Messiah who could challenge the ac- ceptance and worship of the worldly-minded Jews. But in the depths of the mysterious East, through which the Israelites had been scattered, God had ever had among the idola- trous nations men who cherished the universal belief in a future Redeemer and Restorer, and looked anxiously forward to His com- ing. This faith of the Patriarchs, preserved, though obscured, among the Gentiles, was confirmed by contact with the dispersed Israelites, and by the holy lives of such men as the elder Tobias t) LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. and his son and kinsfolk, rfere are three of these noble watchers for the Star that was to " rise out of Jacob," the " Sceptre" that was to "spring up from Israel." They had counted the years as- signed by prophesy for His apparition ; and God had rewarded their faith by an extraordinary light in the Heavens, while His Spirit spoke to their hearts. They had formed a holy companionship in faith and good works amid the surrounding unbelief and corruption ; and now they are companions on the road to Christ. The Gospel admirably tells their story up to their arrival iti Beth- lehem. What joy filled the hearts of Mary and Joseph at the sight of these kingly pilgrims from afar ! Not on shepherds alone, then, had the Day-Star of Bethlehem arisen ; not alone for the poor and lowly was His Kingdom ; nor alone over the minds and hearts of the Israelites was His reign to extend He was to gather all nations to Himself by the irresistible force of Truth and Charity. Herod, alarmed by t.ie coming of the noble Pilgrims, and the tidings that the King Messiah was born, only waited for their re- turn to Jerusalem and the precise information expected from them, to pay his visit to Mother and Babe. We know what fell purpose he entertained. The Three First Worshippers from among the Gentiles are gone as they came — in haste ; their path lies not toward Jerusalem, where a dark and unsparing State-policy is plotting the destruction of the Prince of Peace, and their own as well ; but God's Angel guides them safely towards their own people, whom they are to leaven with faith in the Redeemer. " And after they were departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying. Arise, and take the Child and His Mother, and fly into Egypt ; and be there until I shall tell thee . . . who arose, and took the Child and His Mother by night, and retired into Egypt ; and he was there until the death of Herod." Instantly, in the dead of the night, without hesitation or murmur, and trusting themselves to the ever-watchful care of Provi- dence, Joseph and Mary betook them to flight. Not a moment too soon. For the spies of Herod had warned him of the departure of the Wise Men, and his minions were already on their way to Beth- lehem. The fugitives were yet amid the secret passes of Carmel, when the sword of the first persecutor " killed all the men-children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old, and under." What route Joseph chose along the southern sea-coast we have no means of ascertaining. Doubtless he avoided the most frequented, because, while firmly relying on the angelic guidance in case of great need, he used all his own sagacity in avoiding every danger to his precious charge Nor do we know with anything like an approach to certainty, in what city or village of Egypt the Holy Family fixed their abode while waiting for the order to return to Palestine. It is likely that Joseph, in his prudence, would shun the cities where he might find large colonies of his countrymen, and with them emissaries of Herod. A quiet country hamlet, where his skill in working wood could provide for the sustenance of the two beings he worshipped, would most naturally fix the choice of Christ's de- voted Guardian. As the precise date of Herod's death is unknown, so also is the duration of the Holy Family's stay in Egypt. If by any chance the Blessed Mother learned, while there, the cruel massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem and its neighborhood, how much more keenly her heart felt the wound made by the first mortal peril that threatened the life of her Babe ! Already, even before Holy Simeon prophesied about the sword which was to pierce her on Calvary, she felt its point searching her soul. The Church, m after ages, called her the "Queen of Martyrs." She was in reality such while yet in Egypt. For the babes so inhumanly slain in Bethlehem were only the first glorious band in that great army of Martyrs, who were to bear witness with i.ieir blood to the Divinity of the Lamb. At length, the angelic messenger bade Joseph return to Judaea. "Arise, and take the Child and His Mother, and go into the land of Israel." With the same promptness and unquestioning sim- plicity Joseph executes the divine command. He is the head of God's family on earth ; to him is the divine will intimated ; and to him it belongs to see it executed, both the Word Incarnate and His Mother yielding implicit obedience to Joseph. In these last years, as the nineteenth century draws to its close, the Church has solemnly declared S. Joseph to be, under God, her protector and the guardian of all her interests. Why should he, who made of Christ and His interests, in infancy, childhood and youth, the one absorbing care of his life — not continue in Heaven to be the guar- dian and protector of all those who are dear to Christ? And so, Joseph "arose and took the Child and His Mother, and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus reip^ied in Judsea in the room of Herod his father, he was afraid to go thither; and, being warned in sleep, retired into the quarters O': Galilee. And coming, he dwelt in a city called Nazareth." The death of Herod, and the horror caused by the massacre of the innocents, produced a reaction in the public mind. People were naturally averse to blood and persecution. Moreover, the multitude who did not take pains to inquire minutely into the truth of things, fancied that the Babe mistaken for King Messiah by the Wise Men, must have perished in the wholesale butchery ordered by Herod. Mary, then, once restored with her infant to her obscure and peaceful abode in Nazareth, had no reason to delay the ceremony prescribed by the law, of presenting her Son in the temple of Jerusalem, and making the offering customary on this occasion. Joseph chose the opportune season, and guided the Blessed Mother on her way. They acted throughout in perfect conformity with the divine plan revealed to them, that they shoul4 conceal from the outer world the quality and mission of the Child they called their own. They left it to the Spirit of God to en- lighten privileged individuals concerning the Messiah. Mary, in presenting to the Lord in His temple, her own first- born, offered with Him a pair of turtle-doves. It was the offering of the poor; and she made no apology for it. The priests in attendance performed their function ; no thought about the possibility of this child of poor parents being the Messiah, crossed their mind ; no light from on high disclosed the Emmanuel . . . Two holy souls were there, however, to whom He revealed Him- self — Simeon and Anna ; the former, like the Three Wise Men in the East, yearning to look upon the face of his Redeemer befort he closed his eyes; the latter, a saintly widow, now in her eighty, fourth year, "who departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day." Simeon " came by the Spirit into the temple. And when His parents brought in the Child Jesus, ... he also took Him in his arms, and blessed God, and said : Now Thou dost dismiss Thy ser- vant, O Lord, according to Thy word in peace. Because my eyes have seen Thy salvation. . . . And His father and mother were wondering at these things wh'-h were spoken concerning Him. And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His Mother : Be- hold this Child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, for a sign w!_ich shaU be contradicted. And thy own sow a swofd shall pierce. ' ' Anna also "at the same hour coming in, confessed to the Lord LIFE OF THE bi_ ESSED VIRGIN MARY. 7 and spoke of Him to all that looked for the redemption of Israel." The ceremony of Purification and Presentation ended, Mary and Joseph were not tempted, by this extraordinary occurrence in the temple, to remain in Jerusalem, and expose their Treasure to new perils by attracting to Him the attention even of the devout among the citizens. They hastened back to Galilee, and buried them- selves with ail their hopes and fears beneath the roof which had sheltered Joachim and Anna. "And the Child grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom ; and the grace of God was in Him." Of the life which the Holy Family led in their lowly home at Nazareth, from the Presentation of Christ up to His twelfth year, no other account is given in the Gospel, save only that " His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the solemn day of the Pasch.' The privilege they had of possessing Him who was above the Law, from whom indeed the Law had come, never prevented them from fulfilling in letter and in spirit its injunctions. They were content to bide God's own appointed nme for Christ's mani- festation in Israel. But the sword of which Simeon had prophesied daily probed the bosom of the anxious Mother. She knew that His blood was to redeem the world. The time and manner alone remained a »ecret hidden from her motherly heart. She naturally feared every year's appointed festivals calling them to Jerusalem, lest His visit there should verify Simeon's prediction. This throws a light on the next event recorded in the blended lives of Mother and Son. "And when He was twelve years old, they going up into Jeru- salem, according to the custom of the feast, and having fulfilled the days, when they returned, the Child Jesus remained in Jerusa- lem ; and His parents knew it not. And thinking that He was in the company, they came a day's journey, and sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And not finding Him, they re- turned into Jerusalem, seeking Him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the Temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His wisdom and His answers. And seeing Him, they wondered. And His Mother said to Him : Son, why hast thou done so to us ? Behold Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. And He said to them: How is it that you sought Me ? Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business? And they understood not the word that He spoke unto them. And He went down with them and came to Nazareth ; and was subject to them. And His Mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men." In this most simple and beautiful narrative stand out conspicu- ously, the absorbing love of Mary and Joseph for the Boy-Saviour ; their solicitude for His safety, their keen sorrow at not finding Him *' among their kinsfolk and acquaintance ; " the affectionate freedom .with which tliey remonstrate with Him for having left their com- pan This accords with what we have already written : thai the interests of Jesus are those of Joseph and Mary. The Mother on missing her Divine Son, feels the sword already piercing her soul. Joseph's fatherly heart experiences a different, though scarcely less poignant sorrow, at the thought of his charge being possibly in the clutches of Herod's successor. We are also plainly taught that the Wisdom Incarnate, who astonished the doctors and their audience by His questions and His answers, had already been instructing Mary and Joseph about the supernatural purpose for which He was come down among men. " Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" The liberty which they allowed their Emmanuel to be about this *' business, " whenever the Spirit prompted Him, was one cause of His being separated from theii company. He wished to show that, being the Messiah, He could at any time He thought fit enter upon His public mission, and shed abroad among men the light of His doctrine. Having thus, in the presence of all, and within the temple of which He was the Divinity, asserted His fulness of knowledge. His divine Sonship, and His independence. He at once goes with His parents, and resumes His former position of dutiful obedience in the household of Nazareth. Another suggestion is made in the text. The Holy Family, on their way to and from Jerusalem, have for companions their "kins- folk and acquaintance. ' ' Neither Mary nor Joseph, though of the house of David, are without dear and near relatives in Nazareth and the neighboring cities of Galilee. It was the time for the Evan- gelist to make mention of other children in the home of the car- penter. They only speak of "kinsfolk " or "brethren," as the Jew- ish custom denominated all blood relations. And so, one brief and pregnant sentence describes the remaining years of the Master, till, in His thirtieth. He quitted His home \\\ Nazareth to preach the " good tidings " to His countrymen. " He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And His Mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men." Thenceforward, till His thirtieth year, Christ continued to abide at Nazareth, passing, in the eyes of the people of the place, for the son of Joseph. The veil which covered His origin and dignity was never raised by either parent. ..." We are apt to look upon this portion of His earthly life as lost, and disposed to blame either the influence exercised on Him by His Mother, or the poverty of Joseph ; or, again, to criticize the divine economy for permitting these precious, teeming years of His boyhood and youth to be spent in a little country town. . . . We forget that these long years of obscurity, obedience, progress in wisdom, in every virtue which can grace manhood, and in patient, uncomplaining toil beneath the carpenter's roof, were destined by the Eternal Wisdom to serve as the most eloquent and effective lesson for the immense majority of men in every age and country. •The over-burdened children of toil, to-day as in the days of Christ, as every day till time shall be no more, need the teaching and example of Joseph the son of royal David, and of Jesus the Incarnate Word, to enable them to find obscurity sweet, and obe- dience easy, and the persevering toil of years tolerable. " There is more than that : we are, not unfrequently, tempted to think and say that the life of His Mother, the Second Eve, the model of her sex wherever Christianity prevails, is one of compar- ative nullity. ... Is she then less admirable, because her life at Nazareth is merged in that of her Son T Let every woman who reads these pages, and takes time to ponder what is here intended, lay this truth to heart, that the future of the world, the greatness and happiness of every country, depend on the growth of true man- hood within the obscurity and hallowed quiet of the Christian home. Every natural and supernatural virtue that goes to make up the true man in the home of the laborer and mechanic, as well as in that of the rich, the learned, the noble, and the great, is a fruit of the mother's sowing and ripening. We, in our day and generation, are impatient of home-restraints, of slow and progressive culture : one such son as David or Samuel is glory enough for any mother. When Christ left His loved retreat at Nazareth, and filled Judaea with His name, it was said of Him : ' He hath done all things well.' What mother could desire sweeter praise for her life-labors, or a more complete eulogy on her dearest one ? And since Christ's LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. ' life and examples have become an influence of every day and mo- ment, during the past eighteen hundred years, how many mothers have found light and strength in the virtues which shine forth to the attentive eye within the lowly abode of Mary at Nazareth?" — (Heroic Women of the Bible and the Church, pp. 235, 236.) As to Joseph, the blessed head of that holy household of Naza- reth, the Gospel makes no further mention of him. He lived to rear, to the first years of manhood, that Jesus who loved to call him father. He died, as became one privileged beyond all men, blessed and loved, tended and cheered by the two beings to whom he had given his life. No Christian man and woman can think of the holy and devoted foster-father of the Saviour, and of the vir- tues which shine forth in his conduct, without saying that he was as "blessed among men" as Mary, his beloved companion, was "blessed among women." IV. It was natural that our Lord, during the eighteen last years of His life at Nazareth, should prepare His Mother for the trials which awaited them both in the fulfilment of His public mission. All through these three years it is probable that Mary lived habitually either in her own home at Nazareth, or at Capharnaum among her near relatives, the two sisters, mothers, respectively, of the Apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and of James the younger and Jude, the sons of Alpheus, As to her occupation during this period, a twofold testimony, that of Celsus, an enemy of the Christian name, and that of Tertullian, throws some light upon the matter. The former says that Mary was one who supported herself by manual labor ; the latter affirms substantially the same fact. Like her husband, Joseph, like the Incarnate Word, her Son, Mary helped to elevate, in her own person, the condition of the laborer, to make of labor itself a something sacred and divine. Her first appearance, in the public life of our Lord, was in con- nection with the Marriage Feast in Canna — a town situated a few miles westward of Nazareth. This marriage was the occasion of bringing together our Lord and His Mother with the first disciples, who had openly acknowledged Him as the Messiah : these were Peter and Andrew, two brothers, and Philip and Nathanael — Gali- leans all four of them — and the nucleus of that band of believers, recruited chiefly from Galilee, who were to be, under God, the founders of Christianity in the East and West. The marriage at Cana took place a few months after the Baptism of our Lord by John, the solemn proclamation of His Mission by the Precursor to the crowd near the Jordan, and the public miracle by which the Father and the Holy Spirit manifested His Sonship and Divinity. Then He retired into the wild mountain tracts near the river to spend forty entire days and nights in solitude, prayer, and abstinence from all food — setting to all apostolic men to the end of time an example which they must follow, if they would continue His work with fruit. Christianity, the divinity of Chris- tian life, the spread of God-like Christian holiness — all are based upon self-denial, self-sacrifice, and habitual prayer. Prayer is the very soul of holiness. It has been the sense of the Church from the days of the apostles to our own, that this first miracle of our Lord, performed at the urgent solicitation of His Mother, gave a new and solemn sanction to the institution of matrimony. The sanctity and happiness of family life, the unity and permanence of the tie which, in the Chris- tian home, binds to each other the father and the mother, the pa- rents and the children, is the foundation of Christian society, Chris- tian civilization. Christ, by assisting with His Mother and His disciples, at this marriage ceremony and feasc, and by sanctioning them with a public and stupendous miracle, wished us — the Church teaches — to understand that He thereby raised the primitive matri- monial ordinance to the rank of a Sacrament — " a Great Sacra- ment," as S. Paul calls it — blessing the whole stream of human existence in its source, by infusing into it His own blood and the merits of His passion, and nourishing the souls of regenerated humanity with the spiritual energy divinely connected with His sacraments. It is but the simple truth to say, that Mary by her presence at this Marriage Feast, and by her active part in obtaining the stupend- ous miracle performed on the occasion, showed herself to be the true Mother of the New Life, the Second Eve whose pleading with the Second Adam resulted, not in the ruin, but in the elevation and sanctification of the human family. One word about the seeming rebuke which our Lord addressed on this occasion to her. The festivities, as usual in the country and in that age, had lasted several days, and to them all, the near relatives, at least, of the wedded pair and their families had been invited. The wine — the home-made, wholesome growth of each farm throughout the land — gave out. Mary's watchful eye detected this, and the secret prompting of the Holy Spirit urged her to say to her Son : " They have no wine." It was a womanly and motherly 'act. He, however, for the sake of His future fellow-workers there present, as well as for the instruction of us all, will have her under- stand that what He is going to do, what she evidently expects Him to do, belongs to the Divine Order, in which the claims or obliga- tions of flesh and blood must never influence the dispensers of God's mysteries. " And Jesus saith to her : Woman (lady, rather), what is it to Me and to thee ? My hour is not yet come. His Mother saith to the waiters : Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye." "^he solemn hour, indeed, for proclaiming from the cross, at the ve> / consummation of His mediatorial office, that she is His Mother and that He is her son, has not yet come. That was to be the hour of supreme love for both, of love united in the oblation and consummation of such suffering as the hearts of mother and son never endured before or since. It is clear that she does not take His answer for a rebuke The eloquence of the miracle ac- complished at her suggestion and entreaty should explain the " What is it to Me and to thee?" and do away with the obscurity or apparent harshness of the idiomatic expressions of a foreign language, or the style of address among a people so different in every way from ourselves. On the other hand, the petition of the Blessed Mother has been held up as a model of the confidence and humility which should ever be found in prayer. She knows to Whom she pleads, she states in the simplest terms the need of her friends, and leaves the rest to the Almighty Goodness. Such is also the way in which Martha and Mary represent the case of their brother Lazarus: "Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick. ' ' In both cases, a miracle is asked for ; in both it is granted ; whereas it would have been refused, if the asking it had been deemed an unwarrantable interference with the power of the Man-God. " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. After this He went down to Capharnaum, He and His Mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they remained there not many days. And the Pasch of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." The miracle just performed naturally bound His own kinsfolk to the Master. Accompanied by these " His brethren," and by His LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. 9 disciples, iie takes nis Mother with Him to Caphamaum, then the most important city of Galilee, and the centre of a thriving com- merce, favorably situated on the Lake of Gennesareth. This city was to be the chief centre of our Lord's public labors in Galilee during the three ensuing years. He did not then, however, fix His abode there and that of His Mother. He intended to return and to preach in Nazareth the truth concerning Himself and His mission — only, when His own townsfolk had rejected Him, would He seek a second home for His widowed Parent and Himself Meanwhile, the celebration of the Pasch calls both Him and His Mother to Jerusalem. Hitherto, with the sole exception of His disputation with the doctors in His twelfth year, nothing had been done, or is recorded of Him as having been done, in Jerusalem, to assert His divine mission as the Messiah. On this memorable visit to the capital. He openly asserted His authority. He startled priests and people, indeed, the entire multitude of Jews from Pales- tine and other countries come to the Passover, by casting the traders out of the temple. To those who challenged His right to do such acts. He replied only by affirming that were the temple it- self destroyed, He could rebuild it in three days. This, of course, was an obscure prophesy of His own return to life, three days after His death on the cross. His hearers did not understand Him, and only resolved to punish His temerity. He, however, must have pointed to His own body, the very Reality figured by the temple ; for His disciples present on the occasion so understood His mean- ing, and remembered it three years afterward. But although He refused to perform a miracle to satisfy His enemies, S. John assures us that at this same Pasch in Jerusalem, " many believed in His name, seeing the signs which He did. But Jesus did not trust Him- self unto them, for that He knew all men." Then also took place the secret interview with Nicodemus, as well as the discourse in which our Lord so emphatically asserted His mission and His divinity. His Mother, who closely watched His every movement while in the capital, and who hung upon every word of His, could not help hearing the murmurs and threats of the Pharisees, as well as the praise of such as were drawn to Christ by His miracles and teach- ing. She returned with Him to Galilee as she had come, in the company of His disciples. He at once began, while yet in north- ern Judaea, near the Jordan, with them the work of teaching and baptizing (S. John iii. 22). At that very time John the Baptist was pursuing his holy labors on the banks of the Jordan, at Ennon (or vEnon), not far from the southern border of Galilee. The fame of Christ's teaching in the neighborhood, of His wondrous ■works, and of the many whom His disciples were baptizing, soon reached the ears of John. John's followers questioned him with re- gard to the authority which the Christ had for so doing. The answer of the Precursor contains the most solemn testimony in all the Gospel to the Mission of Christ and to His Divinity. "You yourselves do bear me witness, that I said I am not Christ, but that I am sent before Him. He that hath the Bride, is the Bridegroom • but the friend of the Bridegroom, who standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth with joy because of the Bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above, is above all. He that is of earth, of the earth he is, and of the earth he speaketh. He that cometh from Heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth ; and no man receiveth His testimony. He that hath received His testimony, hath set to his seal that God is true. For He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God : for God doth not give the Spirit by measure [to Him]. The Father loveth the Son; and He hath given all thii.gs into ij'shand. He that believeth in the Son hath life everlasting ; but he tuat believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth in him." How consistent is the conduct of the holy son of Elizabeth with the prediction of the Archangel Gabriel, when he foretold his birth and his mission toward Christ ! And how the echo of this glorious testimony, reaching the Blessed Virgin, who had not yet parted from Christ and His disciples, must have filled her soul with joy ! " I am not [the] Christ. ... I am sent before Him. . . . He must increase,but I must decrease. ' ' The small band of believers who now follow the Messiah must go on increasing, till the society they form fills Judaea and Galilee, till it spreads beyond Palestine and Asia, and fills the whole earth. " I must decrease ; " my disciples are only prepared for the teaching of the Divine Master. He is the Heavenly Bridegroom to whom belongs the Bride, the Church to be redeemed by His blood and born anew of the baptism which typifies it. How can I, His friend and Precursor, not rejoice, when He is so near me, when the voice of His teaching and the fame of His miracles reach my ears ? What am I, what are all the preceding prophets, compared to Him who " cometh from above," and " is above all ?" " He that is of the earth, of the earth he is, and of the earth he speaketh." I am earth-born, a poor child of human parentage, like you all, with the feelings of human nature, and its limited knowledge and still more limited power. " But He that cometh from Heaven," the Word co-eternal with the Father, born of Him before the earth was, who testifieth among us only to what He hath seen in His Father's bosom and what He hath heard from Him who is the Essential Truth and Holiness, who sets the seal of divinity to His teaching by the miracles we be- hold — ^how is it that "no man receiveth His testimony?" It is a tremendous condemnation of Jewish chicanery and in- credulity. From the neighborhood of Ennon our Lord with His company "returned in the power of the Spirit, into Galilee, and the fame of Him went out through the whole country. And He taught in their synagogues, and was magnified by all." So writes S. Luke. But S. Matthew, who was himself a Galilean, adds further particu- lars. " And coming into His own country. He taught them in their synagogues, so that they wondered and said : How came this man by this wisdom and [these] miracles?" The miracles were the credentials, the seal of His mission, th*; attestation that His "wisdom" was not of earth but of Heaven. They were too earthly and grovelling to rise above their own low ideas and preju- dices. But the Messiah wished to preach to the city in which He had spent childhood and youth, before He began the circuit of all Galilee. It is a great event in the History of His blessed Mother, as it seems to have severed her connection with her native place. And He came to Nazareth, where He was brought up ; and He went into the synagogue according to His custom, on the Sabbath day. And He rose up to read ; and the book of Isaias the prophet was delivered unto Him. And as He unfolded the book. He found the place where it was written : The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me ; wherefore He hath anointed Me ; to preach the Gospe! to the poor He hath sent Me, to heal the contrite {broken) of heart ; to preach deliver- ance to the captives, and sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward. And when He had folded the book. He restored it to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them : This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears. And all gave testimony to Him ; and they wondered at the words of grace that proceeded 10 LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. from His mouth, and they said: Is not this the son of Joseph? And He said to them : Doubtless you will say to Me this simili- tude, 'Physician, heal thyself:' as great things as we have heard fthat you have] done in Capharnaum, do also here in Thy own country." This is the same challenge to perform miracles before their eyes, which the Jews made to Him in Jerusalem. The speakers are ani- mated only by a mixture of curiosity and envy. The well-attested miracles performed in their immediate neighborhood, at Cana, as well as in the city of Capharnaum, together with those which her- alded His return to Galilee, should have disposed His own towns- men to listen to that "wisdom," and to bow to the authority of Him who challenged their belief in Him, as the Messiah described in Isaias. And then cotnes the sudden ending of His work in their midst. " Amen, I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country. In truth I say to you, there were many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when Heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the earth. And to none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarepta of Sidon, to a widow woman. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet ; and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue, hearing these things, were filled with anger. And they rose up and thrust Him out of the city ; and they brought Him to the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong. But He, passing through the midst of them, went His way." (S. luuke iv.) The Blessed Mother was a witness of all this scene. Need we describe her agony of apprehension, while the blind and sacrile- gious crowd dragged their Messiah to the cruel death they wished to inflict ? or her grief at seeing her own people rejecting the Saviour, and closing to themselves every road to salvation ? From Nazareth our Lord directed His steps to Capharnaum, where His Mother and His disciples soon joined Him. There He recruited His apostles, Mary, meanwhile, finding a velcome in the family of her "sister" or near kinswoman, Marj .he wife of Zebedee, whose two sons, James and John, attach- ri themselves to our Lord. How far Christ permitted, during His repeated missionary cir- cuits through Galilee and its "hundred cities," His Mother to ac- company Him, we cannot say from the Gospel narrative or from tradition. We know that a band of devoted Galilean women min- istered to His wants and those of His disciples during the three years of His public life. It would be against all probability to sup- pose that His Blessed Mother should have had no sjiare in these ministrations. At any rate, she must have been with Him in Jefllsalem during the celebration of the second Pasch, mentioned by S. John (v. 1-47). After this occurred the Sermon on the Mount, the healing of the Centurion's servant, and the resurrection of the widow's son at Naim, as well as Christ's second circuit of Galilee. The hatred of His enemies, the scribes and Pharisees, was becoming daily more open, and more threatening. Rumors circulated of serious peril to the Master's safety. John the Baptist had already been impris- oned by Herod Antipas, brother of Archelaus, and tetrarch of Gali- lee. So the Blessed Mother, alarmed by these flying rumors, has- tened with some of her kinsfolk to the scene of our Lord's preach- ing. Then happened that incident from which non-Catholic readers of the Gospel draw an inference most injurious to Christ ftnd to His Mother. The multitudes that surrounded Him night and day, and the demands upon His time, were such that He had not even leisure "to eat bread." " And it was told Him : Thy Mother and Thy brethren stand without, desiring to see Thee. Who, answering, said to them. My Mother and My brethren are they who hear the word of God, and do it." We know, by His taking His Mother with Him to Capharnaum, after the Miracle of Cana, and by His appearing in the synagogue at Nazareth, pro claiming Himself the Messiah, without denying that Mary was His Mother — how far it was from the mind of our Lord, by word or act, to deny or to slight His Mother and her relatives. This would not be the act of a dutiful and loving son. But He was on His Mes- sianic work ; and He would have all understand, that its freedom and dignity required of all engaged in it to be above the cares and claims of family or relationship ; just as elsewhere He says to the young man called to follow Him, and asking to go home and bury his father, "Allow the dead to bury their dead." It is in the last stage of His mortal career that we shall find His Mother by His side. She had heard of His utterance about His approaching death : " Behold we go up to Jerusalem ; and all things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man. For He shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and scourged, and spit up)on." Every mother's heart is prophetic of coming sorrow : how much more so the Mother to whom Simeon had foretold suffering unut- terable, incomprehensible? She is not mentioned as having been present during His trium« phant entry into Jerusalem ; although it is most unlikely that she would not, with the pious women from Galilee and His other de- voted disciples, have joined Him on His way to the capital on this last visit. But if Mary was anxious to shun the pageants in her Son's honor, she would be present when the hour of humiliation came. We are never to forget that, in our Lord's Passion, the Godhead personally and inseparably united to our humanity in His Person, eclipsed Itself, as it were, and allowed the Man, as man, to suffer, to expiate, to atone for His brethren of the entire race of Adam. It was only at the supreme moment of desolation and agony that the Son was to be visibly sustained by His Mother. Tradition affirms, and the Church authorizes the tradition, that, on His way to Calvary, He met His Mother, as if she could not be withheld from acknowledging as her own Son, -the Man of Sorrows whom they have been scourging, crowning with thorns, condemning, like the most abominable of criminals, to be crucified between two men, who were thieves and murderers. During the memorable passage through the Red Sea, Moses had by his side Mary, the Deliverer, his heroic sister, the Mother of her people. When Jesus, the true Moses, was treading the streets of Jerusalem, bearing a portion of, at least. His own cross, when the multitude, athirst for His blood, divided on His way, mocking, deriding, cursing; His Mother, that Mary who is mother to us all, walked by His side, setting her foot firmly in every depth of shame and bitterness to which He had to descend. And there she stands beneath the Cross on Calvary I "Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus, His Mother and His Mother's sister Mary [wife] of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus therefore had seen His Mother and the disciples standing, whom He loved, He said to His Mother, Woman, behold thy son. After that He saith to the disciple : Behold thy Mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own." Solicitude for ker weiiare is uppermost in the mind of the Divine Sufferer. Let us read i' LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. 11 the light of these words of His, the narrative of the Evangelists regarding the last three years of His life : is it likely that her wel- fare, her comfort, her happiness ever ceased to be His care ? Of course, to all who believed in Christ, and who, in these first years, risked everything by openly confessing Him, the Blessed Mother was an object of special and filial veneration. This was particularly true of the apostles, who felt like their disciples that in reverencing and honoring the Mother they were honoring and reverencing the Son. S. John was now privileged to hold Christ's place toward her. The last time she is mentioned by name in the New Testament is in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where we find her with her near relatives in the assembly which elected S. Matthias. So long as S.^John remained in Jerusalem Mary was his charge, cherished and reverenced by that Virgin Apostle. When, at the dispersion of the apostles, John went to re- side in Ephesus, thither also Mary went with him. It is probable, however, that as John, like the other apostles, traveled through Palestine and Asia Minor, preaching the Gospel, founding new churches, and confirming in the faith such as already existed, that his adopted mother did not separate from him. Not before the decade intervening between the years 60 and 70 of the present era, did the Beloved Disciple assume at Ephesus the government of all the churches of Anterior Asia. If our Blessed Lady died between these dates, she must have passed her eightieth year. Tradition in the Church always assigned the night of August 14-15 as the date of her passage to a happy immortality. On the 15th of August the Church has always celebrated her Assumption, that is, her being re- ceived into Heaven in body and soul. It was but proper that the body which had known nothing of sin or stain, the body of the Mother of our Ransom on the Cross, should not have been touched by the corruption of the grave. All the bitterness of death had passed over her soul on Calvary : her own death was all peace and sweetness and unspeakable anticipation of the eternal reunion with her Son, her Saviour, her God. It must seem, to every candid and reflecting mind, both natural and logical, that Christians, from the day when Christ first began to have followers and worshippers, should have shown to His Mother a singular reverence. The Apostles, the early disciples, whose faith had never wavered, or had only been temporarily shaken, during the Saviour's brief but necessary period of suffering, must have felt their veneration foi \he heroic Mother very much increased by the preternatural courage she displayed in His hour of bitter and mortal trial. The narrative of S. Jonn is sublime in its simplicity and brevity. It is the tradition of the Eastern Church, derived from the first be- lievers in Jerusalem — from the contemporaries and relatives of our Lord and His Mother, that " the coat without seam, woven from the top throughout," for which the Roman soldiers cast lots, while He, the wearer, was hanging in His death-agony overhead — was the fruit of her labor of love. Like the saintly mother of the child- prophet Samuel, Mary would allow no hands but her own to weave her Son His principal garment. It might be said to be His sole worldly wealth ; and His executioners cast lots for it, while she was looking on, or within reach of their discussion. . . . "And the soldiers indeed did these things. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, His Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary (wife) of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. . . ." Then ensued the be- queathing to the Beloved Disciple of the dearest earthly treasure possessed by Jesus of Nazareth — His widowed and homeless Mother. She, however, had been too willing a learner in His thool, too close an imitator of His divine examples, to repine at her poverty and homelessness. Her sorest trial was her separation from Him. When the short joys of the Forty Days' converse with Him after His resurrection, were ended — she had been too well enlightened by Him not to understand that the divinest work yet reserved to her by Providence, remained to be fulfilled. This was, that, as she had been the Mother of the Body given on the cross as the ransom for the entire race of man, as she had nursed that Body with more than a mother's devotion — so now she should devote the remaining years of her life to forming His mystic body. His church. As the body of the faithful grew, first in Jerusalem and through' out Palestine, and next through all the countries of Asia, Africa, and Eurojie — the divinity of Christ was more openly, more solemnly, more courageously affirmed. Men and women everywhere bore witness to it by suffering imprisonment, stripes, and death. They honored their belief by leading God-like lives, even when these were not crowned by the glory of martyrdom. It is the constant affirmation of Christian writers, that Christ's Blessed Mother, all through these trial-full years of the infant Church, was to Apostles, disciples, and believers of every class a model and a comforter, all that a mother and such a Mother, should be. We find, that when the Apostles returned to Jerusalem, after the Ascension, they went to where our Blessed Lady was staying — in the house of that saintly Mary, " the mother of John- Mark " (Acts xii. 12). This is the house, according to the most venerable traditions, in which our Lord celebrated the Last Supper, which was the first place of meeting and divine worship for be- lievers in Jerusalem. It was the centre and nursery of Christianity in the great city all through this first period of persecution, loving labor, and wonderful growth. "And when they were come in (from Mount Olivet), they went up into an Upper Room, wh»re abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James and Alpheus and Simon Zelotes, and Jude (the brother) of James. All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with His brethren." In the election of S. Matthias, which is next recorded, and which evidently took place in the same spacious Upper Room, as well as in the assembly on the Day of Pentecost, the text indicates that she was also present. It was a matter of course, that His Mother should be the very soul of these meetings, although it was left to Peter and his brother-Apostles to regulate everything that pertained to the doctrine and discipline of the Christian society. All through the triumphs and trials which, alternately, awaited the Apostolic labors, Mary was present to cheer, encourage, and sustain. What joy filled her soul, when on that very day of Pentecost, after S- Peter's inspired address to the multitude, no less than " three thousand souls " were baptized and added to the body of the faith- ful ! " And they were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles, and in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul : many wonders also and signs were done by the Apostles in Jerusalem ; and there was great fear in all. And all they that believed, were together, and had all things in com- mon. Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need. And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they took their meat with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord increased daily together such as should be saved." What a blessed and blissful family was that which daily increased around the Second Eve, the Mother of the New Life 1 Heroic 12 LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. prayer, heroic poverty, heroic charity : one mind, one heart, one faith ; brother sharing with brother earthly goods as well as divinest graces — and the supernatural fervor of all fed and sus- tained by that " Supersubstantial Bread," the " communication " of which, like a heavenly fire kindled in the hearts of the receivers, made men and women the light of the world, and the Gift within ihem shed abroad, wherever they went, the sweet odor of Christ. Surely the sons of the "Valiant Woman " were rising up before the nations and calling her "Blessed" — aye. "Blessed among women." VI. It is usual with Protestants, in speaking of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to show a repugnance to calling her " the Mother of God." In so doing, they are doing, unawares, what Nestorius and his mas- ter, Theodore (afterward Bishop of Mopsuestia), a teacher in the school of Antioch, openly taught people to do in the beginning of the fifth century. In the preceding centuries such men as Origen, S. Alexander of Alexandria, and S. Athanasius, only expressed the common belief and orthodox sense of Christians, by emphatically calling Mary " the Mother of God." Arianism and Nestorianism are the legitimate parents of modern Unitarianisra. Arius denied the divinity of the Son of God, and therefore refused to Christ, the Incarnate Son, the title and quality of true God. Theodore and Nestorius, while admitting that the Son was God, denied that the man Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, was in any sense true God. 'It is madness to say" (such are his words) " God was born of the Virgin ; not God, but the temple in which God dwelt was born of Mary." These false teachers affirmed that the Divine Word had His dwelling in every human soul ; but in Christ He manifested extraordinary power. He participated of the glory of the Word and Son more than any other human being; but it was only, after all, a difference in de- gree. It was, according to them, an error to say " God was born of the Virgin Mary," "God suffered, rose again from the tomb, and ascended into Heaven." These things could only be affirmed of human nature. The whole Nestorian controversy thus turned on the great dogma, or doctrinal fact, whether Mary was and should be called "the Mother of God." On June 22d, 431, a general council assembled at Ephesus — the city in which Mary had spent the last years of her life, and which cherished toward her a deep and tender piety. The cathedral church in which the 160 bishops met, under the presi- dence of S. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who represented Pope S. Celestine I. — was named in honor of "the Mother of God." The session lasted far into the night, and the doctrine of Nestorius and his school was solemnly condemned — the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared to be truly Ototoxof, Mother of God. The city, thereupon, was spontaneously illuminated, and the bishops, on issuing from the cathedral, were escorted to their lodg- ings by the joyous multitude, bearing lighted torches, and breaking forth into hymns of praise and thanksgiving. It must not be forgotten that it was the Person of Christ Him- self, at once both true God and true man, who thus triumphed in this solemn definition of faith. The heretics denied that the Son of the Virgin Mary was God ; the bishops of the East and West assembled affirmed that He was, and that she was most truly Mother of God. Her honor, therefore, was reflected on her Son. But, while He is very God, she is only a human being ; she, the Mother of Christ, is only a creature — the most highly honored indeed of all created beings ; while He is Creator. In going back to the time of the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431 — two years before S. Patrick, sent by the same Pope Celestine I., landed in Pagan Ireland, we are amazed to find, in the writings of such men as S. Cyril of Alexandria, and in the authentic de- scriptions of popular manners among Eastern Christians, how deeply reverence for the Mother of God had penetrated all classes in the community. The great Christian writers of that and the preceding century — these saintly men whom we call the Fathers of the Church, speak of Mary, not only as the Mother of God, but as the "Second Eve." Long before them, one whose doctrine was derived from the immediate disciples of the Apostles — S. Irenseus — draws out an elaborate parallel between Mary and the first Eve. " Mary, by her obedience, became both to herself and to all man- kind the cause of salvation. . . . The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by Mary's obedience. . . . What the Virgin Eve bound by unbelief, that the Virgin Mary unbound by faith. ... As by a Virgin the human race had been given over to death, so by a Vir- gin it is saved." It is also to be remarked here, that just as the title "Virgin Mother " was given to the Church by the early Fathers, so we find them applying the same prophetic passages of Scripture both to the Virgin Mother of Christ, and to His spouse the Church, who is the Virginal Mother of His children here below. Indeed, it is but natural to assume that she who is the Parent of Christ our Head, entertains all a parent's affection for His members, and performs towards them throughout the ages, both in Heaven and on earth, all a Mother's offices of love and watchfulness. Hence, the constant application now to the Church, and now to the Immaculate Mother, of that passage in Apocalypse xii. i : "And a great sign appeared in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign in Heaven : and behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns. . . . And the dragon stood before the woman, who was ready to be delivered, that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. . . . And her son was taken up to God and to His throne. And there was a great battle in Heaven ; Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels. . . . And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world." It is only carrying out the idea of S. Irenaeus, to see the conflict prophesied in Genesis iii. 14, 15, at the very beginning of Revealed History, described as it happened in the last half of the first century of Christianity, as it has continued down to our own day. The Second Eve is foretold to the First in the memorable passage : "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed : she shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. To the woman also He said : I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. ..." The enemy of God and of mankind has never ceased trom that day till now, to make war on God's children here below ; in the Old Law on the Church which God established through Moses — amid what "sorrows" did she bring forth sons to God ! In the New Law, how the battle has gone on, between the Church of Christ and the seven-headed serpent of Heresy — ever watchful to devour each generation of Christians ! It is surely in sorrow, especially in our days, that the Church brings forth her children ; and she needs the embattled hosts of Michael, invisibly aiding her, to cast out the Old Serpent, the Adversary. WHAT GOD HATH lOINED TOGETHER. LET NOT M A N PUT ASUNOfcR. ,/"■-. 1 mi f •v.^ ■*m ■ ri »: If ■^•j ^x ""'el (^^^^ooeyU^e^nr^ /^ ^%