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as a means, or medium, of approach to the Deity; or at least signified, as the Urim and Thummim, a real fellowship, through the high priest, between Jehovah and the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus one mode of inquiring the mind of God was by Urim and Thummim. society of the Essen, or the Essenes, then, according to this view, were a secret, mystical fraternity, who professed to have direct and peculiar access to the Deity, and thence claimed a sort of prophetic inspiration. As the Pharisees were the formalists, and the Sadducees the rationalists, so the Essenes were the mystics of the Jewish nation.

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Their principal settlement was on the western shores of the Dead Sea a region favorable, from its lone and desolate aspects, as well as its ancient and thrilling memories, to profound and melancholy thought. From this they slowly and secretly spread themselves through other parts of Palestine, and, it may be, southward as far as Egypt, where, according to some, they reappeared in the Therapeute, or Jewish ascetics of Egypt.

Both Philo and Josephus extol them for their rigid morality; their simplicity and purity of life; their quiet and gentle temper; their hospitality and piety. They generally practised celibacy, regarding all women as unchaste, though

some of them did not altogether disapprove of marriage; paid great attention to the curative properties of plants; practised medicine; and, when not engaged in contemplation or devotion, spent their time chiefly in agriculture, or in other simple and rural employments.

They formed a fraternity, separate, secret, and exclusive a sort of Freemason, or Eleusinian order admitting members only after a novitiate of three years, and gradually passing them through four different stages, or classes, till they arrived at what they deemed the most perfect. Though oaths were strictly forbidden on ordinary occasions, no one was admitted to the society without solemnly binding himself, by the most awful oaths, to observe the rules of the order, and to keep its secrets, particularly those in reference "to the angels," about whom they cherished some superstitious notions. At the close of the first year, the candidate received a small hatchet, a white apron, or girdle, and a white robe, which had a mystical or symbolical meaning. They lived upon the simplest fare; held little converse with each other, except at meals; the four dif ferent classes really forming separate castes, who regarded contact with each other as contamination. They performed frequent ablutions, but held anointing with oil in abhorrence. Philo denies that they offered any sacrifices, but Josephus affirms.

that they only declined offering them at the temple. Among themselves they performed sacrificial rites, with fasting and prayer, at the dead of night, or at early dawn.

Justice and charity were Essenes as cardinal virtues. them was absolutely forbidden. communists, having all things

matter of property and food.

regarded by the Slavery among They were also common in the

They believed in one God, whom they worshipped chiefly in the night, regarding that season, in common with many of the Oriental religionists, as peculiarly sacred. It is said that they worshipped the sun, perhaps as the symbol or image of the divine glory a circumstance which would indicate some connection with Oriental theosophy. At all events, they offered prayer and sang hymns at the dawn, with their faces towards the rising sun.

Their sacred books were kept secret, and used in divination, or prophesying; somewhat, we fancy, after the mode of the Sortes Virgilianæ.

Rejecting the great mass of Jewish traditions and ceremonial observances, the Essenes superstitiously observed some ritual usages of their own, and were distinguished by their rigid manner of keeping the Sabbath. Abstemious and ascetic, they despised and mortified the body, believing it to be the seat of evil. Josephus says

that they wore their clothes till they fell to pieces. Their notion was, that the souls of men had fallen from the regions of purity and light into gross and sinful bodies, from which, in due time, through piety and penance, they would escape, and once more rise into the pure and spiritual state. Hence they rejected the resurrection of the body, and longed for reunion with God, through abstinence and death.

The Essenes have been divided into the theoretical and practical, the former being identified with the Therapeutæ of Egypt, who, as their name imports, devoted themselves, like the Essenes, to the healing art; unless we are to understand the term symbolically, as having reference to the health of the soul. Matter, the celebrated author of the history of Gnosticism, and Neander, the church historian, doubt the connection of these two orders of ascetics, supposing, perhaps justly, that the monastic tendency might develop itself spontaneously in both countries, as it did in various Oriental nations even among the heathen, and, in the middle ages, among Christians.* The Therapeutæ had their principal settlement on the tranquil shores of Lake Maris, not far from

*Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical Commentaries, also doubts the propriety of the distinction. His observations upon the Essenes are remarkably just and discriminating. Both he and Neander give it as their opinion that considerable varieties obtained among them.

the brilliant capital of Grecian Egypt, where they passed their lives in monastic seclusion, shut up in separate cells, devoted to prayer and contemplation. The sacred oracles formed the basis of their studies; but they interpreted them, after Philo and other theosophic writers, allegorically. Their usages were those of the anchoritic life. They exercised themselves in fasting and other ascetic practices, taking only one meal in the evening, consisting of bread and water. Indeed, they sometimes spent whole days without eating. They met together, in solemn assembly, each seventh day and more especially on the seventh week; partaking together of fraternal repasts seasoned with salt and hyssop, listening to theosophic lessons, singing in chorus ancient traditional hymns, and performing certain mystic dances.*

The fact is, the Alexandrian Judaism mingled too readily with the spirit of Oriental and thaumaturgic mysticism; and the usages of the Therapeuta were but a mixture of Jewish and pagan notions, reduced to practice, in monastic seclusion and ascetic severity. Hence, while the Therapeutæ, as well as the Essenes, clearly possessed some noble and even beautiful traits of character, they fell into errors and extravagances,

*The view of the Essenes and Therapeutæ here given is based upon the explicit statements of Philo or Josephus. See Appendix D.

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