meditation and prayer. From the roof there was an extensive view over the city of Alexandria; on the north to the Mediterranean, on the south to the lake Mareotis, and on the east to the Nile and the Delta. Here he had often stood when a boy, and with restless longing had looked towards the Holy Land. It was a clear, calm night of spring. Refreshing odors arose from the surrounding gardens. The countless stars shed down their twinkling radiance upon him, and the moon's new light was mirrored in the lake and the canals of the Nile. Before him lay the city of Alexander, justly styled, in the days of her highest prosperity, the Queen of the East and the Chief of Cities. In what stillness she now reposed, with her towering obelisks! How deep the silence and the rest which wrapt her six hundred thousand inhabitants, and her five harbors, by day so full of activity and noise! The house was near the Panium, from which the whole city could be seen at one view. There stood the Bruchium, which, besides the royal palace, contained the Museum, rendered the chief seat of the learning of the times, by its library of four hundred thousand volumes, and by being the residence of the learned men, whom the munificence of the Ptolemies had collected around their court. Here Helon had sat for several years, at the feet of the philosophers. He thought on those years, and, as he compared them with his present hopes, he exclaimed: Better is a day in thy courts than a thousand! I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord "Truly the tents of sin," said he to himself, as he paced the roof, "even when I think on my own people, who live here in high favor. Let them be called Macedonians if they will; let the sons of the high priest be the commanders of the army; let them hope for still greater distinctions from Cleopatra's favor; it is still an exile, and Israel is in affliction. Their schisms in doctrine and laxity of morals are too plain a proof of it." He went into the Alijah, and brought out his harp: the plaintive notes resounded through the still air of night as he sung, By the rivers of Babel we sat and wept When we thought on Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.-Ps. cxxxvii. "Here we ought to hang them upon the pyramids," continued he. "The controversy which destroyed the harmony of our social meal this evening still jars upon my soul. Praised be God that Jeremiah sojourned with my forefathers, that they like myself have continued Aramæan Jews, and have not gone over to the Hellenists." The Diaspora, or body of the Jews dispersed in foreign countries, was divided at this time into Hellenists and Aramæan Jews. The Hellenists had adopted the Greek, at that time the universal language of the civilized and literary world; the Aramæan Jews used, in foreign lands, the Hebrew, or rather a dialect of that language, called the Aramæan. The latter attached themselves to the temple at Jerusalem, the former worshipped at Leontopolis in Egypt. A division once begun is easily extended to other points. With the Greek language the Hellenists had adopted Grecian culture, yet wished still to continue Jews, and hence arose the necessity for uniting philosophy with the law. The only way in which this could be accomplished, was that which they adopted, of attributing the doctrines of Grecian wisdom to the law, as its inward and spiritual meaning. In this undertaking the Egyptians had led the way for them. Egypt is the native country of allegories. For a long time past the popular religion had been very different from that of the sacerdotal caste, and they stood to each other in the relation of the letter to the spirit; of the image to the reality. The Hellenistic Jews had adopted this Egyptian mode, and three classes had been formed amongst them. One party openly renounced both law and allegory, living without the law, which indeed it was impossible to observe exactly anywhere but in Judea. Another outwardly conformed to the law, but did so for the sake of its hidden and spiritual meaning. A third set were contented with this spiritual meaning, which they arbitrarily annexed to it, and concerned themselves no further with the literal observance. No little confusion had arisen from this variety of opinions, and the incessant controversies to which they gave rise.. Helon had been hurried by the prevailing spirit of his age and country for some years into the vortex of allegory. A youth of such an ardent temperament and high intellectual endowments, connected with the most considerable families of the Alexandrian Jews, could scarcely escape this temptation. Had his father been alive, he would have been a constant monitor to him against the danger- but since his death on the journey to the Holy Land, Helon's danger had increased, with the increase of his liberty. It seems too, as if it were necessary that those master spirits, who are destined successfully to oppose the errors of their times, should themselves for a while be involved in them. The scattered intimations which the law itself affords opened to him a new and attractive field which he was eager to explore completely. He was advised to make himself acquainted with the Grecian philosophy, as the source of the knowledge which he desired, and for this purpose he resorted to the Museum. His first instructor here was a Stoic, who demanded from him a greater rigor than even the law had required, but at the same time taught him, that the knowledge of God was not necessary. Helon forsook him, and applied himself to an acute Peripatetic; but his thoughts seemed more occupied with his pecuniary remuneration, than with the high rewards of wisdom and philosophy. Helon lost no time in seeking another teacher. A Pythagorean required, as a preliminary, a long study of music, astronomy and geometry, and Helon thought that the knowledge of the truth might surely be obtained by a less circuitous process. At last a young and lively Greek, of the name of Myron, whom he had known as a child, introduced him to a Platonic philosopher. In him he seemed to have found all of which he had been in search. He perused with Myron the dialogues of him whom his disciples called the divine. Those were hours never to be forgotten, in which his doctrine of reminiscences, of virtue that is not to be taught or learned, of That which is, first irradiated his mind. About this time he became acquainted with a wise Jew, who was also a Platonist, and profoundly skilled in the interpretation of the law. He could answer every question which Helon wished to ask, respecting the sense of scripture. He explained to him the seven days of creation, and the ten commandments, in their spiritual import; and taught him much respecting the world of ideas, which he had not found even in Plato. His new teacher represented the divine intelligence, not as an attribute of God, but as a being having a distinct existence, and called it the image of God, his first born son, the highest of the angels and the primeval man. For a long time his fancy rioted in these speculations, to which he was so entirely devoted, that if he continued to observe the law, it was owing to the pure and simple manners to which he was accustomed in his father's family. But every thing which only gratifies the understanding loses its charm, especially with men of lively and ardent temperament, when it loses its novelty. When Helon's first transport at the enlargement of his views had subsided, and cool reflection began to resume her sway; when he perceived that Myron could, with equal ease, explain and vindicate the worship of Jupiter, Bacchus and Apollo-the Orphic and Dionysian mysteriesand all the idolatries of polytheism, by the aid of the same principles which his teacher had applied to the interpretation of scripture; suspicions were awakened in his mind that these principles could not be true. That which converts falsehood into truth, he thought, can never increase the force and evidence of truth. The promises which were given to Israel, the threatenings and warnings of Jehovah against participation in idolatry, reeurred to his mind. The image of his deceased father was daily held up to him by his mother, as one who had abhorred the system of the Henelists. A feeling of pride in his own nation as the chosen people of Jehovah, was awakened in his bosom, and he could no longer take pleasure in the society of Myron. He began now to remark the endless varieties and inconsistencies of these allegorical interpretations. Every one, full of the persuasion of his own wisdom, expounded the divine word according to his own fancy. Helon could not but perceive that all this wisdom was an arbitrary, selfinvented, human system of doctrine respecting divine things, in opposition to which, not only Plato but the whole tenor of scripture taught him, that God only can be our instructer in things relating to himself, and that human reason must here rely upon revelation. This revelation he found in the law delivered to his nation upon mount Sinai, under circumstances the most impressive and sublime. While this train of thought, tended to alienate him from the Hellenists and their system, his mother one evening remarked to him with sorrow his slowness in fulfilling the divine precepts. At first he was so much offended by it, that he replied to her remonstrances only by a sarcastic look, and retired to his books. But conscience did not allow him to rest. Suddenly the divine denunciation occurred to him, "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it."* He was deeply moved, and now saw with opened eyes the abyss of immorality, to the edge of which his new wisdom had conducted him. He had long desired to be free from the burthensome duties of the law, and he had now transgressed against the first commandment with promise. He felt to what this heathen philosophy, this partial culture of the mind, was bringing him; and in the lives of its professors he saw, in all their rank maturity, the vices, of which he discovered the seeds in his own heart. They lived without a law, sunk in heathen vice and immorality. He now perceived that nothing but the most faithful obedience to the law could make him truly happy, * Prov. xxx. 17. |