cause he gave not God the glory.' It may be that the rays of the sun, which by shining upon his raiment, did, in conjunction with the eloquent beneficence of his speech, call forth this blasphemous adulation, were, in the shape of a sun-stroke, made the appropriate instrument of his punishment. He was seized with horrid torments in the intestines; and he who had just been greeted as a god, was borne forth, in all his splendid raiment, amid groans, and cries, and tears, declaring that he had received his death-stroke, and acknowledging the hand of God in his punishment. He survived five days in extreme torture, being 'eaten of worms,' and then died that horrid and loathsome death, which, as we formerly showed, has so peculiarly been the doom of tyrannous persecutors and blasphemers, as if to manifest what weapons the Lord has reserved with which to bring down into the very dust the loftiness of the most proud.

We have combined, in this account of Herod's death, the statements of Luke and those of Josephus. There is a remarkable agreement between them, although Luke, in his more concise statement, omits some circumstances which Josephus, in his more full account, supplies, and which fit very well into the shorter narrative. Thus they agree that his disease was of the intestines; but Josephus says nothing of the worms, while Luke, as a physician, naturally notices the cause as well as the fact of the tortures Herod endured. They also agree that the real cause of his death was his acceptance of divine honours; for although Josephus was tender of the memory of this king, and gives a more favourable character of him than is warranted by the facts he records, he was too good a Jew to suppress or disguise this circumstance, which, indeed, was acknowledged by Herod's own conscience, and was known to all the people.

Still Herod was not, as times went, a bad ruler; and in the apprehension that a worse condition of affairs might ensue, his demise was deeply lamented by his subjects. The Christians, however, had no cause to deplore it; and it must not escape remark, that the sacred historian, after recording that Herod 1 1 Evening Series: Thirty-first Week—First Day.

'gave up the ghost,' emphatically adds, 'But the word of God grew and multiplied.'

Forty-seventh Week-Fourth Day.

BAR-JESUS.—ACTS XII. 25-XIII. 8.

BARNABAS and Saul having fulfilled their commission at Jerusalem, returned to Antioch, taking with them that John, otherwise called Mark, the house of whose mother, Mary, was first visited by Peter on his deliverance from prison. Mark was nephew to Barnabas; and as his father seems to have been dead, the care of him necessarily devolved upon his uncle, who probably wished to introduce the young man into the labours of the gospel under his own eye, with, perhaps, an ulterior intention of making him acquainted with his relations in Cyprus.

It is to be noted that, from this time forward, the sacred historian confines himself almost exclusively to the proceedings of Saul.

Soon after their return, it was intimated to the church at Antioch by the Spirit, on a day which had been set apart for prayer and fasting, that Saul and Barnabas were to go forth upon a missionary expedition. They were accordingly set apart for this service; and we soon find them, still accompanied by Mark, proceeding down the Orontes, unless they preferred the shorter route by land to Seleucia, which was lately mentioned as the port of Antioch. They went to Seleucia in order to take passage for the island of Cyprus, which, in a clear day, is visible from this place, and with a fair wind might be reached in a few hours. They landed at Salamis, which had formerly, under the Greeks, been the metropolis of the island, and was still its chief port and commercial town, though the seat of government seems to have been removed to Paphos, at its opposite extremity. There, and throughout this journey, it seems that the gospel was only

preached in the Jewish synagogues; and indeed it appears to have been the general practice to make to the Jews the first offer of its blessings. As a maritime commercial town, the Jews probably formed a large proportion of the population of Salamis.

From Salamis the apostles travelled the whole length of the island to Paphos, a place famous for its splendid temple to Venus, who was worshipped throughout the island; whence her designations of Cyprian goddess,' and 'Paphian goddess.' Here was the seat of the Roman governor, who at this time was Sergius Paulus, described as 'a prudent,' or rather, ‘an intelligent or open-minded man.' Notwithstanding this, he had given his confidence to a Jewish impostor named Bar-jesus, who had taken upon him the Arabian title of Elymas, magian, or wise man. This title originally, and then still properly, applicable to sages, learned men, and philosophers, was also affected by charlatans and pretenders to occult knowledge, just as, at this day, quacks in medicine call themselves by the goodly names of 'doctors' and 'professors.' The term is hence used in a good, an indifferent, or a bad sense in Scripture, just as, in our own language, 'a wise man,' which is the highest of characters, does also, in a popular acceptation, denote a fortune-teller-one who professes by his arts to be able to disclose hidden things. This latter sense seems to be reflected from that of wizard (wise-ard), a word of similarly equivocal import, the two expressions illustrating well the indefinite sense of the term magus, which, in both senses, has exactly the same meaning. The scriptural sense is usually indicated by the context; and in the present instance the bad sense appears from the fact that Bar-jesus is expressly designated a 'false prophet.'

But it may well be asked, How could a man of this sort acquire such influence and close connection, as Bar-jesus possessed, with a Roman of the rank and character of Sergius Paulus?

To explain this, it is necessary to point out that such hold upon the Gentile mind as the old systems of heathen philo

VOL. VIII.

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sophy, and the old customs of heathen belief, may have once possessed, had at this time been broken up, for all practical uses of comfort or confidence, and a general disbelief and unrest pervaded the public thought. Cast adrift from their old stays, which gave way before the pressure of advancing intelligence and cultivation, the minds of men floated listlessly upon the dark waters of scepticism, or sank in sullen despair into their depths. But it was not thus with all. Very many minds, still craving for the rest not to be found at home, sought it among foreign gods, and occult rites, and fertile superstitions; and since the ancient oracles were dumb, they sought light for their feet in the astrologies, the necromancies, the soothsayings, the various strange and marvellous beliefs and systems offered in large profusion by the prolific East, so recently opened up to western knowledge by the Roman conquests and consolidations. Hence the writings of this period abound in painful disclosures of the most deadening scepticism, and the most lurid superstition-not always separated, but often united in the same individuals; for, let men say what they will, and however great may seem the contradiction, scepticism has always been more superstitious than faith. In this state of things grew up a multitude of impostors and pretenders, of various descriptions and qualities suited to all classes of people, who swarmed in all the chief places of human concourse. The East poured them forth in abundance, avenging its conquest by material arms by enslaving the minds of the conquerors. Palestine claimed its share of the prey. Very many runagate Jews, trading in the reputation of their ancient prophets, came forth as foretellers of things to come, and disclosers of mysteries. And these, too, were of all sorts-from the grave and scholarly persons who, like Bar-jesus, made emperors and proconsuls their prey, down to the gipsy-like Jewess who whispers in the ear of the Roman lady that she will tell her fortune, for that she, being a high priest's daughter,1 is versed in the arcana of the Jewish law, and well able, therefore, to

1 She might make this claim; but no Jewess could make that claim which, in true Roman haughty ignorance of Judaism, the satirist ascribes

interpret the will of Heaven; for this she needs but to have her hand crossed with money, however sparingly, since the Jews,' adds the satirist,1 to whom we owe the latter description, 'will, for the smallest coin, sell you what fortunes you desire.'

For the confirmation of these positions, and of the picture which Paul himself gives of the heathen world at the commencement of his Epistle to the Romans, a large collection of positive facts and authentic declarations is given in an able and instructive essay by a German theologian of high name, from which we may condense a few particulars.

Already, before the birth of Christ, the belief in a future state appears to have been lost among the cultivated Romans. According to Sallust, Cæsar used expressions in the senate, which Cato, who followed him, clearly understood to indicate his belief that the traditions of a future state were fabulous, and that beyond the grave neither joy nor sorrow was to be found. Cato said, ' Caius Cæsar has just delivered a fine and precomposed speech concerning life and death, believing (as I apprehend) those things to be false which are related of the infernal world, such as that the bad, going a different way from the good, inhabit regions gloomy, desolate, and full of horrors.' From this we may gather, that although Cato himself agreed with Cæsar in repudiating the popular doctrines, he adhered to those vague philosophic notions of a future state which Cæsar had abandoned.

A still more melancholy declaration of despairing unbelief is given by the elder Pliny, who, after scouting the idea of a pro

to her, of being 'high priestess of the tree.' Conscious of this, Dryden translates

'A high priest's daughter she.'

But Gifford

'A priestess she,

An hierarch of the consecrated tree.'

'JUVENAL, Sat. vi. 541-546.

2 PROFESSOR THOLUCK On the Nature and Moral Influence of Heathenism, especially among the Greeks and Romans, viewed in the light of Christianity. Translated by Dr. Emerson, in the American Biblical Repository for 1832. 3 Sallustii Bellum Catalin. ch. lii.