mon acts of life, and of the will and spirit of Him who, by one decisive sacrificial act, destroyed the value of all Jewish and all heathen sacrifices forever. The "Priesthood," with all its princely magnificence and venerable usages, became, as it were, a halo of glory for One who both in life and death dealt against it the heaviest blow that any earthly Priesthood ever sustained. The original idea of the royal Priesthood of the whole nation, of which the Levitical Priesthood had been a limitation and faint representation, was revived by the Apostles in its application to the whole Christian society, and has been, to a certain degree, preserved in the "chrism," or consecration as with the sacred oil of Priesthood, which in the Eastern Church indicates at Confirmation the Priestly consecration of every member of the Christian family.1

Even the last waving of those Priestly vestments, by which the office was handed on by the Roman governors to the Asmonean family, has left its trace in the language of the new dispensation which swept them away from the world. To be "clothed" with the moral graces of the new faith,2 to "endue," that is, to "enrobe" the justice which alone is the true priestly consecration of every Christian soul, whether layman or minister, is the precept of the Christian Apostle, the prayer of the Christian Church.

Thus it is that the long endurance of the most formal and material of all the institutions of Judaism was at once rewarded and rebuked, as in a kind of sublime paradox, by being made the vehicle of the most eternal

1 See Quelques Mots, par un Chrétien Orthodoxe, p. 53.

Rom. xiii. 14; Col. iii. 9, 10; 1

Peter v. 5.

3 English Prayer Book, Prayer in the Ember weeks.

and spiritual of all Christian truths. No new sense was ever won for old words, at once more alien to their outward sound, or more consonant to their inward meaning, than that which saw in the decaying Priesthood of the Jewish race, the anticipation of the universal consecration of the whole world by Christ and His Apostles. There was a secret correspondence of thought which made this application possible athwart the vast differences of time, and place, and circumstance. The Levitical Priest may have been the least divine of all the Mosaic institutions. The Levitical Book of Chronicles may have been the last and least of all the sacred books. Caiaphas may have been the impersonation of all that was narrowest and basest in the Jewish character. But the loftier purposes to which the Priesthood at times ministered, the occasional strains as of a higher mood that break even through the ceremonial narratives of the Chronicles, the indomitable determination, hereditary in the highest characters of the tribe of Levi, from Phinehas to Caiaphas, go, far to justify

the sacred homage paid to an institution in itself so local and transitory, "Let Thy light and Thy truth be "with Thy holy one."-"He said unto his father and "unto his mother, I have not seen him, neither did "he acknowledge his brother, nor know his own chil"dren." So the greatest of the tribe of Levi described their stern disregard of any human affection, — the source at once of their strength and of their weakness, of their faith and of their fanaticism. So he described the virtue of a religious ministry in language which may rise far above its original meaning, to denote that high impartiality which rises beyond all earthly and family connections, in consideration of the greater claims of justice, mercy, and truth; and through the long con

tinuance of their power and of their name, the benediction upon them, couched in language almost as fierce as their own deeds, has received a fulfilment beyond that which has fallen to the lot of any other earthly organization: “Bless, LORD, his substance, and accept the work "of his hands: smite through the loins of them that rise against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise "not again."

1 Deut. xxxiii. 8-11. Compare Michaelis's Laws of Moses, Art. 52.

LECTURE XXXVI.

ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES.

1. "Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel" (Amaziah), 2 Chr. xxv. 26; Ibid. (Ahaz) xxviii. 26; or "of Israel and Judah" (Jotham), xxvii. 7.

·

2. "Book of the Chronicles" (literally words of the days') of the Kings of Judah (Amaziah), 2 Kings xiv. 18; Ibid. (Azariah) xv. 6; Ibid (Jotham); xv. 36; Ibid. (Ahaz) xvi. 19.

8. "Acts (literally 'words') of Uzziah, first and last," by Isaiah, 2 Chr xxvi. 22.

4. Joel; Amos; Micah; Zech. ix.—xi. ; Isaiah i. 6; ii. 2; iv. 6; v. 1–14.

LECTURE XXXVIL

THE AGE OF UZZIAH.

THE century on which we now enter represents a vigorous struggle of three able sovereigns, to raise the kingdom from the state of depression into which it had fallen since the death of Jehoshaphat, - -a struggle partly successful, but partly frustrated by calamities beyond the control of human power.

B. C.

The first step was the reconquest of Edom by Amaziah. A victory was gained in the neighbor- Amaziah. hood of the Dead Sea, Petra was taken, and the 837-808. prisoners thrown down from the cliffs of their own city. This enterprise had been deemed so important, that Amaziah had, in the first instance, hired Israelite mercenaries to assist him; and when it was accomplished, he was so elated as to challenge the King of Israel to fight for his own.1 But the proud House of Jehu was not thus to be dealt with. Israel was just beginning to recover from its misfortunes. It could still, as compared with the little kingdom of Judah, take the attitude of the lofty cedar looking down on the humble thistle. A decisive defeat at Bethshemesh reduced Amaziah to submission. The northern wall of Jerusalem was dismantled by the conqueror, and, as usual, the sacred treasures carried off. For fifteen years Amaziah survived the disgrace; but it rankled in the hearts of his

2

1 2 Chr. xxv. 6-17; 2 Kings xiv. 7, 8.

2 2 Chr. xxv. 18-24; 2 Kings xiv.

9-14.