In this last dispersion they again hoped for a deliverer; and under Adrian, whom they curse in their prayers, there arose one Barcochebas, who called himself a second Moses-a Shiloh-a Christ. Having assembled many of these wretched people under his banners, which they believed to be sacred, he perished with all his followers. It was the last struggle of this nation, which has never lifted its head again. Its constant opinion, that barrenness is a reproach, has preserved it the Jews have ever considered as their two first duties, to get money and children.

From this short summary it results, that the Hebrews have ever been vagrants, or robbers, or slaves, or seditious. They still are vagabonds upon the earth, and abhorred by men,* yet affirming that heaven and earth and all mankind were created for them alone.

It is evident, from the situation of Judea, and the genius of this people, that they could not but be continually subjugated. It was surrounded by powerful and warlike nations, for which it had an aversion; so that it could neither be in alliance with them, nor protected by them. It was impossible for it to maintain itself by its marine; for it soon lost the port which in Solomon's time it had on the Red Sea; and Solomon himself always employed Tyrians to build and to steer his vessels, as well as to erect his palace and his temple. It is then manifest, that the Hebrews had neither trade nor manufactures, and that they could not compose a flourishing people. They never had an army always ready for the field, like the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Syrians, and the Romans. The labourers and artisans took up arms only as occasion required, and consequently could not form well-disciplined troops. Their mountains, or rather their rocks, are neither high enough, nor sufficiently contiguous, to have afforded an effectual barrier against invasion. The most numerous part of the nation, transported to Babylon, Persia, and to India, or settled in Alexandria,

*Not so at present: princes and rulers sit at their feasts, and christian emperors make barons of them.-T.

were too much occupied with their traffic and their brokerage, to think of war. Their civil government, sometimes republican, sometimes pontifical, sometimes monarchial, and very often reduced to anarchy, seems to have been no better than their military discipline.

You ask, what was the philosophy of the Hebrews? The answer will be a very short one: they had none. Their legislator himself does not anywhere speak expressly of the immortality of the soul, nor of the rewards of another life. Josephus and Philo believe the soul to be material; their doctors admitted corporeal angels; and while they sojourned at Babylon they gave to these angels the names given them by the Chaldeans-Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel. The name of Satan is Babylonian, and is in somewise the Arimanes of Zoroaster. The name of Asmodeus also is Chaldean; and Tobit, who lived at Nineveh, is the first who employed it. The dogma of the immortality of the soul was developed only in the course of ages, and among the pharisees. The sadducees always denied this spirituality, this immortality, and the existence of the angels. Nevertheless, the sadducees communicated uninterruptedly with the pharisees, and had even sovereign pontiffs of their own sect. The prodigious difference in opinion between these two great bodies did not cause any disturbance. The Jews, in the latter times of their sojourn at Jerusalem, were scrupulously attached to nothing but the ceremonials of their law. The man who should have eaten pudding or rabbit, would have been stoned; while he who denied the immortality of the soul might be highpriest.

It is commonly said, that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other nations, proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more likely, that the manner in which they at the first exterminated some of the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighbouring nations conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they knew no nations but their neighbours, they thought that in abhorring them

they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the enemies of all men.

One proof that this hatred was not caused by the idolatry of the nations is, that we find in the history of the Jews, that they were very often idolaters. Solomon himself sacrificed to strange gods. After him, we find scarcely any king in the little province of Judah, that does not permit the worship of these gods and offer them incense. The province of Israel kept its two calves and its sacred groves, or adored other divinities.

All

This idolatry, with which so many nations are reproached, is a subject on which but little light has been thrown. Perhaps it would not be difficult to efface this stain upon the theology of the ancients. polished nations had the knowledge of a supreme God, the master of the inferior gods and of men. The Egyptians themselves recognised a first principle, which they called Knef, and to which all beside was subordinate. The ancient Persians adored the good principle, named Orosmanes; and were very far from sacrificing to the bad principle Arimanes, whom they regarded nearly as we regard the devil. Even to this day, the Guebres have retained the sacred dogma of the unity of God. The ancient bramins acknowledged one only Supreme Being: the Chinese associated no inferior being with the Divinity, nor had any idol until the times when the populace were led astray by the worship of Fo, and the superstitions of the bonzes. The Greeks and the Romans, notwithstanding the multitude of their gods, acknowledged in Jupiter the absolute sovereign of heaven and earth. Homer himself, in the most absurd poetical fictions, has never lost sight of this truth. He constantly represents Jupiter as the only All-mighty, sending good and evil upon earth, and with a motion of his brow striking gods and men with awe. Altars were raised, and sacrifices offered to inferior gods, dependent on the one supreme. There is not a single monument of antiquity in which the title of sovereign of heaven is given to any

secondary deity-to Mercury, to Apollo, to Mars. The thunderbolt was ever the attribute of the master of all, and of him only.

The idea of a Sovereign Being, of his providence, of his eternal decrees, is to be found among all philosophers and all poets. In short, it is perhaps as unjust to think that the ancients equalled the heroes, the genii, the inferior gods, to him whom they called "the father and master of the gods," as it would be ridiculous to imagine that we associate with God the blessed and the angels.

You then ask, whether the ancient philosophers and lawgivers borrowed from the Jews, or the Jews from them? We must refer the question to Philo: he owns that before the translation of the Septuagint, the books of his nation were unknown to strangers. A great people cannot have received their laws and their knowledge from a little people, obscure and enslaved. In the time of Osias, indeed, the Jews had no books: in his reign was accidentally found the only copy of the law then in existence. This people, after their captivity at Babylon, had no other alphabet than the Chaldean: : they were not famed for any art, any manufacture whatsoever; and even in the time of Solomon they were obliged to pay dear for foreign artisans. To say, that the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, were instructed by the Jews, were to say, that the Romans learned the arts from the people of Brittany. The Jews never were natural philosophers, nor geometricians, nor astronomers. So far were they from having public schools for the instruction of youth, that they had not even a term in their language to express such an institution. The people of Peru and Mexico measured their year much better than the Jews. stay in Babylon and in Alexandria, during which individuals might instruct themselves, formed the people to no art save that of usury. They never knew how to stamp money; and when Antiochus Sidetes permitted them to have a coinage of their own, they were almost incapable of profiting by this permission for four or five years; indeed, this coin is said to have

Their

been struck at Samaria. Hence it is, that Jewish models are so rare, and nearly all false. In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them.

SECTION II.

The Jewish Law.

Their law must appear, to every polished people, as singular as their conduct; if it were not divine, it would seem to be the law of savages beginning to assemble themselves into a nation; and being divine, one cannot understand how it is that it has not existed from all ages, for them, and for all men.*

But it is more strange than all, that the immortality of the soul is not even intimated in this law, intitled "Vaicrah and Addebarim," Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

In this law it is forbidden to eat eels, because they have no scales; and hares, because they chew the cud, and have cloven feet. Apparently, the Jews had hares different from ours. The griffin is unclean, and fourfooted birds are unclean, which animals are somewhat rare. Whoever touches a mouse, or a mole, is unclean. The women are forbidden to lie with horses or asses. The Jewish women must have been subject to this sort of gallantry. The men are forbidden to offer up their seed to Moloch; and here the term seed is not meta phorical. The text even calls this offering fornication. In this particular the book of the Vaicrah is very curious. It seems that it was very customary, in the desarts of Arabia, to offer up this singular present to the gods; as it is said to be usual in Cochin and some other countries of India, for the girls to yield their virginity to an iron Priapus in a temple. These two cere. monies prove that mankind are capable of everything. The Caffres, who deprive themselves of one testicle, are

* See MOSES.