argument of our third part. Meanwhile, in the year of the world 3841, of the Greek dynasty 170, before Christ 143, Simon succeeded his brother Jonathan, who had been slain. Having secured the alliance and protection of Demetrius, king of Syria, he stormed Gazara, Bethsura, Ammaus, and the other cities I have just named, and put their Greek garrisons to the sword. By this the prophecy of Zechariah was fulfilled : “And I will raise up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and I will make thee like the sword of the mighty.' By this, too, the declaration of the author of First Maccabees: "The yoke of the Gentiles is removed from Israel," after a servitude of 190 years to Greek rule. Rabbi Jose is mistaken in making the period 180 in the Sedar Olam.‡ § 14. The Jews adopted the Greek Philosophy also. About the same time, or, as others will have it, under John Hyrcanus, the son of Simon Maccabeus, the Jews adopted the Greek sects of philosophy, namely, the Stoic, Epicurean and Pythagoric, known however among them by the names of Pharisaic, Sadducean, and Essenian. From these philosophies, we are informed, they received not only general habits and a rule of life, but also their peculiar doctrines, which they blended with the wisdom of their own ancestors. 66 In the first place, we find the sect of the Pharisees embracing the principles and laws of the Stoics. This we receive on the authority of Josephus himself, a Pharisee, who thus writes: Εννεακαίδεκα δ ̓ ἔτη ἔχων, ἠρξάμην τε πολιτεύεσθαι τῇ φαρισαίων αἱρέσει κατακολουθῶν, ἡ παραπλήσιός ἐστι τή παρ' Ελλησι Στωϊκῆ λεγομένη. Being about nineteen years old, I began to conduct myself according to the sect of the Pharisees, which is near neighbor to that called Stoic among the Greeks."|| Like the Stoics, the Pharisees attributed all events to fate. They studied astrology with fervor, and gave new names to the planets and signs of the zodiac. They believed in the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls from body to body. (Merεμчywoir admittebant.) This opinion led to the supposition that Christ was * Zach. cap. 9, v. 13, et interpretes ibi. + Lib. 1 Mach. cap. 13, v. 41. L. Chronicon Hebræor. p. 91, et p. 3 et seq. Jeremiah, or Elias, or John the Baptist, as though the soul of one of these prophets animated the body of Christ.* The Sadducees differed from these about as much as the Epicureans from the Stoics. Philastrius happily says, "The madness of Epicurus was more palatable to them than the sanctions of the divine law."+ Following the Epicurean dogmata, they admitted no providence. They considered man so independent of divine interference, as to have his happiness or misery entirely in his own keeping. They believed that the soul died utterly with the body-consequently that there were no rewards or punishments after death. Their natural inference was, that the chief good consisted in the unlimited enjoyment of earth. The Essenes are reported by Josephus to have shaped their course of life much after the Pythagoreans: Γένος δὲ τοῦτ ̓ ἐστὶ διαίτη χρώμενον τὴ παρ' Ελλησιν ὑπὸ Πυθαγόρου καταδεδειγμένη. "This class of persons leads the same kind of life as that prescribed by Pythagoras among the Greeks.”‡ The Essenes, therefore, after the pattern of the Pythagoreans, observed a perfect community of goods and fellowship. So complete was the denudation of property on the part of the rich, who came among them, that they received no more than the very poorest. Silence was had in high repute among them, and they imposed upon their novices (veoσvorazo) a four years' observance of it before admitted to full brotherhood. Their life was frugal in an extreme degree. They considered all things under the dominion of fate. They believed the body alone to be mortal, the soul surviving imperishably. From these various points of agreement it is evident enough, that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, received their tenets and habits respectively from the Stoic, Epicurean, and Pythagorean philosophies. Much additional information, concerning these three sects may be gathered from Josephus|| of the ancients, and of the moderns from Serarius and Drusius, and from Scaliger, in his books, "De trihæresi Hebræorum." If, then, Hellenism had made such progress among the Jews, that they even embraced the Grecian philosophy, and adulter Matthæus, cap. 16, v. 14. + Philastrius de Hæres. cap. 5, p. 16, ex edit Fabric. Joseph. in Antiq. lib. 15, cap. 10, p. 777, § 4. Jos. de Bello, lib. 2, cap. 8, p. 160 et seq. ated with it, nay, in some instances, rejected for it the traditions and doctrines of the fathers of the nation, are we not bound to confess the evidence to be very strong indeed in favor of a general adoption of the Greek language among them at the same period? [To be continued.] ARTICLE IX. INFANT BAPTISM.-EXPOSITION OF 1 COR. 10: 1-11. By Rev. C. A. Hollenbeck, Athens, New-York. "We should like to know how a discerning Baptist would succeed in replying to your argument."-[Letter from Profs. Stuart and Woods.] "MOREOVER, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that ALL OUR FATHERS [that came out of Egypt by Moses] were under the cloud, and ALL passed through the sea, and WERE ALL BAPTIZED."-1 Cor. 10; 1-11. ALL OUR FATHERS, i. e., those who were overthrown in the wilderness, and those who came in with Joshua into the possession of the Gentiles. What, at the time referred to, were these latter? They were 'LITTLE ONES, children, which in that day had no knowledge of good and evil,' Ex. 10: 9, 10, 11. 24: 12, 37. Numb. 14: 28, 31. Deut. 1: 39. 5: 3. Moreover, the apostle would not that we should be ignorant that these "LITTLE ONES,' " and their fathers, WERE ALL BAPTIzed. But why would not the apostle that we should be ignorant of this circumstance? Because this thing (i. e., the baptism of "LITTLE ONES") happened unto the fathers for our example, upon whom the ends of the world (or the gospel dispensation) are come. Verses 6th and 11th, "Now ALL these things (the things mentioned in the first four verses which were exemplary, and the others admonitory) happened unto them, and were our examples."Túno, here translated examples, generally implies some institution under the Old Testament, appointed to represent or prefigure something future under the New; and may therefore be, in some measure, referred to the head of prophecy, foretelling by things, as the latter does by words. Therefore, when the apostle says that he would not that we should be ignorant that ALL the fathers were baptized-for this thing happened unto them for our example-his meaning probably is, that the baptism of the fathers under the Old Testament, was a preintimation; the sense, substance or solution of which is, that as the fathers and their " LITTLE ONES," under the former dispensation, were baptized unto Moses, and thus made members of the church in the wilderness; so believers and their CHILDREN, under the gospel dispensation, should be baptized unto or in the name of the Lord Jesus, and thus be made members of the general assembly and CHURCH of the first BORN,"-Ex. 13: 2. Heb. 12: 23. As if the apostle had said, Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant that the baptism of our fathers unto Moses, not only bound them to legal obedience, but also served unto the example and shadow of Christian Baptism for the time then present, and was imposed on them until the reformation; but Christ being come, that baptism is superseded by the baptism of Christ; but think not that the practice of baptizing "little ones" is now to surcease. No, my brethren! Christ is the same yesterday over the Old Testament, to-day over the New, and forever over the church triumphant in Heaven; therefore your children are to have the same relation to God and his people under the Christian dispensation, as under the Mosaic economy; and God hath confirmed the truth of this declaration by baptizing the fathers and their "little ones," and actuating me by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit to record the same for your edification, as an example which you are to imitate unto the end of the world. If such is not the literal and obvious import of the passage under consideration, there can be no adequate reason assigned for the mention of the baptism of the fathers as our example; and the apparently deep and anxious solicitude of the apostle, lest he should keep back something from the Corinthians that was profitable for them to know, for the furtherance of their spiritual culture, evaporates at once into mere unmeaning grandiloquence and empty verbiage. Here, then, you see we have adduced the very example and precept, which have so often and so loudly been demanded, of a single instance recorded in the New Testament of an infant baptized, or of a commandment that it should be so done unto infants: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" but when ye baptize, see that ye do it according to the pattern showed unto you in the practice of God himself, Heb. 8: 5., viz., baptize the children with the fathers, even though they be so young as to have no knowledge between good and evil. ARTICLE X. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1.-Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. I. No. 1. Boston: Little & Brown. 1843. pp. 78. Ir may strike our transatlantic cousins with some surprise to learn that an Oriental Society has been formed in Boston. They will, doubtless, regard it as a characteristic instance of Yankee presumption. What do we know of the East? Do the States of Massachusetts and New England* really contain any vestiges of oriental lore? Has New York any body who thinks of aught besides dollars and cents? What have the barbarous regions of the West, including the renegades in Texas, and the Titans of Patagonia, to do with the palmy Orient, the seats of ancient civilization, the cradles of the human race? Much, we reply, in many ways. First, we are endeavoring to send back the light of true religion and science to the regions where it first dawned. We are trying to pay the great debt which we, in common with Europe, owe to Asia. One of our Missionary Societies is, at this moment, employing on the continent of Asia and its islands, more than seventy collegially educated and ordained missionaries, who are opening the fountains of human knowledge as truly as they are the fountain of salvation. Some of them have mastered the language of China; others are skilled in the philosophy of the Hindoos; one has acquired an European reputation by his acquaintance with the difficult Arabic; another has translated the Old Testament Scriptures into the Hebrew-Spanish dialect, in a manner which has drawn forth the commendation of the most learned Rabbies. Now these various intelligent missionaries may be regarded as so many purveyors for the Oriental association at home, collectors of ancient MSS., coins, and whatever goes to form an Ori. ental museum, besides being themselves authors of valuable translations from the various languages of the East. Second, our extensive commerce in all the Eastern seas may be subservient to the cultivation of Oriental studies, and the collection of valuable monuments at home. The East India * Vide Alison's History of Europe, Vol. IV. p. 483. Harpers' edition. |