This governor seems to have been a generous-hearted man, and desirous of ameliorating the abject condition to which the people were reduced; Jeremiah was a helper in his benevolent efforts, and with him sought to reconcile the Jewish remnant to the Babylonish sovereignty, as resistance, under existing circumstances, was worse than vain.

We noticed that a few nobles, at the time of the siege, sought safety from the foe by flight. When the Babylonish army retired, such of those persons as had escaped capture returned to the ruins of their old city; not, however, to aid Gedaliah and his illustrious companion the prophet, but to sow dissension and concoct conspiracy. Jealous of the governor, one Ishmael, a prince of royal blood, plotted against his life; and the noble Gedaliah, too disingenuous to harbor suspicions, and confiding implicitly in the honor of his unprincipled fellow countryman, was treacherously slain at a banquet, with his Hebrew and Chaldean associates, which he had provided at Mizpah. The day following the perpetration of this atrocity, he heard of the approach of eighty men, who were on their way to the ruined temple with offerings; having met them at the entrance of Mizpah, he falsely pretended a wish to present them to Gedaliah, and hypocritically expressed himself ready to join in their lamentations. But watching an opportunity, he caused them also to be massacred, excepting ten, who, having stores of wheat, barley, oil, and honey concealed in pits, as it is still customary to store grain in the East, were spared, doubtless on condition of giving up their wealth to his followers. The bodies of the victims were cast into a large excavation made by king Asa, during his wars with Israel. Alarmed at the prospect of Babylonian revenge for the crimes he had thus committed, Ishmael fled to the Ammonites; and Johanan, a friend of Gedaliah, with the few persons of influence remaining, repaired to Egypt and sought protection there a step against which Jeremiah protested, though he was compelled to accompany the fugitives. Nebuzaradan soon appeared as an avenger of the atrocities committed by Ishmael and his party; but such was the forlorn condition of the country, that only seven hundred and forty-five individuals were found therein, who were immediately sent beyond the Euphrates.

God had instituted for the Jews sabbatic years. During every seventh annual period, according to his law, the land was to lie fallow. The command, however, had long been set at naught. Avarice had stifled faith; the disobedient people could not trust a righteous and unchangeable God; and now, accordingly, he is seen vindicating the honor of his government by leaving the land desolate, that she might enjoy her sabbaths. The desolation was most literal; the land lay untilled and without inhabitant. The toils of the husbandman and of the vine-dresser ceased. All was a wilderness, tracked by nomadic tribes, except that here and there, in the southern parts, some bands of Edomites had taken up a settled abode. In the seventh chapter of Isaiah occurs a passage vividly describing the wild state of the land once so fertile and richly cultivated. Large tracts, formerly occupied as vineyards, rented after the rate of a piece of silver for each vine, were overgrown with thorns and briars. The thinly scattered inhabitants no longer went forth with the implements of husbandry, but carried bows and arrows to destroy the wild animals that lurked in the underwood and bushes. Gardens and fields were no longer fenced; the produce was not regularly carried to the store-house or the barn ; but the few kine and sheep belonging to the poor occupiers were left to enjoy the full benefit of an abundant and spontaneous pasturage. The early prediction of Moses (Lev. xxvi, 34), and the later one of Jeremiah (2 Chron. xxxvi, 21), that the land should enjoy the rest of which it had been defrauded, are very remarkable, when we consider that, as exemplified in the case of Israel, it was not the general policy of the conquerors to leave the conquered country in desolation, but to replenish it by foreign colonists, by whom it might be cultivated.

"The ransomed of the Lord," said the prophet Isaiah, "shall return and come to Zion." That prediction was fulfilled. But it was not one single event, any more than was the deportation into exile. History records a series of events as constituting the return; indeed, a succession of restorations-party following party homeward at considerable intervals-the whole chain of facts stretching through little short of a century. In our limited space, it will of course be impossible to

THE KING AND VESSELS.

dwell at large on all the circumstances of the transaction. The most that we can do is to present a popular outline of the leading facts.

Babylon was taken by Cyrus in 536 B. C., after a siege of not much less than two years. The stratagem of the Persian conqueror in diverting the waters of the Euphrates, and the occasion of riotous festivity during which the decisive blow was struck -so clearly described by Herodotus and Xenophon are foretold, as well as the subsequent desolation of the city, with wonderful plainness by the prophet Jeremiah, in the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters of his inspired writings. The decree of Cyrus, recorded at the beginning of the Book of Ezra, was the authority and signal for such of the Jews as longed for the home of their fathers, to adopt measures for their return. In consequence, about fifty thousand, including seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven servants or slaves, under the leadership of the prince Sheshbazzar and the priest Zerubbabel, started from the banks of the

Euphrates, to seek once more
the land of Canaan. This
was in the year 536 B. C.
They assembled from differ-
ent parts, and formed one
great caravan, with camels,
horses, and other beasts of
burden, amounting to above
eight thousand.
The most
precious of the treasures they
bore back to their own city,
were the temple-vessels which
Cyrus had restored. Some
time was spent in making prep-
arations, and the long and
wearisome journey over the
desert occupied them four
months. It was the move-
ment of a host, reminding one
of the march of their fathers,
who had passed under the
shadow of Sinai centuries be-
fore.

A month after their return they met among the ruins of the temple, reared an altar, and celebrated the feast of tabernacles. A month later, they laid the foundations of the new house for the wor ship of Jehovah, when there occurred the touching scene recorded in the third chapter of Ezra. The Persian governors aided the restored exiles; but the Assyrian colonists located in Samaria did all they could to hinder them. The latter, indeed, so far succeeded in their malicious purposes, as to cause the work of rebuilding the temple to be stopped for a while. Thus thwarted, the zeal of the Jews also flagged. They thought more of providing houses for themselves than a suitable place for the worship of God. Zechariah and Haggai reproved and exhorted them in reference to this matter; in consequence of which they resumed their hallowed enterprise, and under Zerubbabel, the work begun in earnest in 520 B. C., was finished in 516 B. C. The feast of the dedication was instituted to celebrate the event, and that festival became a permanent memento of the Captivity and the Restoration.

It was not until the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, that the people began to surround Jerusalem with walls, in which employment they were again molested and interrupted by their old enemies, the Sa

pany of those who followed Zerubbabel, but most, we consider, would follow after ward at different times; at any rate, the history of later periods mentions Israelites as settled in Galilee and Perea long before the time of Christ. Many, however the great majority we should suppose-of the people forming the nation of Israel never returned at all, and the subsequent history of the lost tribes, as they are termed, has been of late, especially, a subject of much inquiry and speculation. We cannot enter upon it here, yet it will not be foreign to our purpose to observe, that not only did a large proportion of the ten tribes remain in foreign lands, but a considerable number of the Jews in Babylon actually declined to avail themselves of the Persian decree of liberation. We know that the Jews of Babylonia, in after ages, included some of the élite of the Hebrew nation, and were regarded with much respect and honor by those who dwelt in Palestine. Among those who remained under the Persian dominion, some even submitted to torture rather than deny their religion by assisting in the erection of a heathen temple. We trace Jews in Babylonia under the Roman supremacy, and we find them involved in rebellion and civil war.

Hebrew travelers visited Babylon in the third century, and recorded their observations. The Babylonian Talmud belongs to the sixth century, and contains notices of the Jews at that period, mentioning not less than two hundred towns, in the Persian empire, inhabited by Jewish families. In the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tuleda found twenty thousand Jews dwelling within twenty miles of Babylon.

We have not yet touched on the chronological question of the SEVENTY YEARS, nor can we now enter upon it at any length. As both the carrying captive and the return of the Jews were events involving a succession of circumstances, and as each of them covered a considerable period of time, some learned men have fixed upon one date as the commencement of the Captivity, and some on another; these authorities varying accordingly in opinion as to the date when the calamity might be said to close. It is remarkable that the destruction of the first temple was in 588 B. C., and the finishing of the second was

"Because ye have not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about," &c. "And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years." Jer. xxv, 8–11.

Here, then, we have a plain fulfillment of prophecy, and one which of all others is the most convincing; because, in reference to the future, there is nothing more remote from human ken than the exact period of time when any line of eventssuch as those before us-shall have run out their course. And while the pillar of divine prophecy stands at the head of that pathway of calamity, through which for seventy weary years we track the steps of the sinning Jews, the hand of divine providence is no less plainly seen in the whole treatment of the nation. Nor should this chapter of Hebrew history be read as if it exhibited a phase of the Almighty's government belonging only to an age of miraculous or extraordinary interpositions. We miss the most important practical instructions of the annals of our holy Bible, if we do not remember that the displays of righteousness and mercy they contain are not exceptional, but representative-representative of what the Lord and King of all the earth is ever doing among the children of men. as well as to them, the story of Israel's chastisement speaks with a voice of warning, and shows how great privileges increase responsibility and aggravate punishment. It shows how in wrath he remembers mercy, and how he makes suffering a means of correcting his people. According to the beautiful words of the prophet: "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of his east wind. By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit-to take away his sin."

To us,