In this account of the "communicativeness," as to temporal wealth, of the third sect, it is hardly necessary that we should point out the mirror which it holds up to the habits of the very first Christians in Jerusalem, as we see them recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. This, the primary record of Christian history, (for even the disciples were not in any full sense Christians until after the resurrection and the Divine afflatus,) is echoed afterwards in various stages of primitive Christianity. But all these subsequent acts and monuments of early Christian faith were derived by imitation and by sympathy from the Apostolic precedent in Jerusalem; as that again was derived from the "common purse carried by the Twelve Disciples.

They have no certain city, but many of them dwell in every city; and if any of their sect come from other places, what they find lies open for them just as if it were their own : and they go in to such as they never knew before, as if they had been ever so long acquainted with them."

All Christian antiquity illustrates and bears witness to this, as a regular and avowed Christian habit. To this habit points St Paul's expression of "given to hospitality;" and many passages in all the Apostolical writings. Like other practices, however, that had been firmly established from the beginning, it is rather alluded to, and indirectly taken for granted and assumed, than prescribed; expressly to teach or enjoin it was as little necessary, or indeed open to a teacher, as with us it would be open to recommend marriage. What Christian could be imagined capable of neglecting such an institution ?

"For which reason they carry nothing with them when they travel into remote parts."

This dates itself from Christ's own directions, (St Luke, x. 3, 4,) "Go your way. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes." And, doubtless, many other of the primitive practices amongst the Christians were not adopted without a special command from Christ, traditionally retained by the Church whilst standing in the

same civil circumstances, though not committed to writing amongst the great press of matter circumscribing the choice of the Evangelists.

"As for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary: for before sun-rising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers.'

This practice of antelucan worship, possibly having reference to the ineffable mystery of the resurrection, (all the Evangelists agreeing in the awful circumstance that it was very early in the morning, and one even saying, "whilst it was yet dark,") a symbolic pathos which appeals to the very depths of human passion as if the world of sleep and the anarchy of dreams figured to our apprehension the dark worlds of sin and death-it happens remarkably enough that we find confirmed and countersigned by the testimony of the first open antagonist to our Christian faith. Pliny, in that report to Trajan so universally known to every class of readers, and so rank with everlasting dishonour to his own sense and equity, notices this point in the ritual of primitive Christianity. However," says he, they assured me that the amount of their fault, or of their error, was this, that they were wont, on a stated day, to meet together before it was light, and to sing a hymn to Christ," &c. The date of Pliny's letter is about forty years after the siege of Jerusalem; about seventy-seven, therefore, after the crucifixion, when Joseph would be just seventy-two years old. But we may be sure, from collateral records, and from the entire uniformity of early Christianity, that a much longer lapse of time would have made no change in this respect.

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"They neglect wedlock; but they do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage."

This is a very noticeable article in his account of the Essenes, and powerfully illustrates the sort of acquaintance which Josephus had gained with their faith and usages. In the first place, as to the doctrine itself, it tallies remarkably with the leanings of St Paul. He allows of marriage, overruled by his own moral prudence. But evidently his bias was the other way. And the allowance is notoriously a concession to the necessities which experience had taught him, and by way of preventing greater evils: but an evil, on the whole, it is clear, that he regarded it. And naturally it was so in relation to that highest mode of spiritual life which the apostles contemplated as a fixed ideal. Moreover, we know that the apostles fell into some errors which must have affected their views in these respects. For a time at least they thought the end of the world close at hand: who could think otherwise that had witnessed the awful thing which they had witnessed, or had drunk out of the same spiritual cup? Under such impressions, they reasonably pitched the key of Christian practice higher than else they would have done. So far as to the doctrine here ascribed to the Essenes. But it is observable, that in this place Josephus admits that these Essenes did tolerate marriage. Now, in his earlier notice of the same people, he had denied this. What do we infer from that? Why, that he came to his knowledge of the Essenes by degrees; and as would be likely to happen with regard to a sect sequestrating themselves, and locking up their doctrines as secrets: which description exactly applies to the earliest Christians. The instinct of self-preservation obliged them to retreat from notoriety. Their tenets could not be learned easily; they were gathered slowly, indirectly, by fragments. This accounts for the fact that people standing outside, like Josephus or Philo Judæus, got only casual glimpses of the truth, and such as were continually shifting. Hence at different periods Josephus contradicts himself. But if he had been speaking of a sect as notorious as the Pharisees or Sadducees, no such error, and no such alteration of views, could have happened.

"They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace."

We suppose that it cannot be necessary to remind any reader of such characteristic Christian doctrines as"Blessed are the peace-makers," &c.; still less of the transcendent demand made by Christianity for singleness of heart, uprightness, and entire conscientiousness; without which all pretences to Christian truth are regarded as mere hollow mockeries. Here, therefore, again we read the features, too plainly for any mistake, of pure Christianity. But let the reader observe keenly, had there been this pretended sect of Essenes teaching all this

lofty and spiritual morality, it would have been a fair inference to ask what more or better had been taught by Christ: in which case there might still have remained the great redemptional and mediatorial functions for Christ; but, as to his divine morality, it would have been forestalled. Such would have been the inference; and it is an inference which really has been drawn from this romance of the Essenes adopted as true history.

" Whatsoever they say is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them; and they esteem it worse than perjury."

We presume that nobody can fail to recognise in this great scrupulosity the memorable command of Christ, delivered in such unexampled majesty of language, "Swear not at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool," &c. This was said in condemnation of a practice universal amongst the Jews; and if any man can believe that a visionary sect, of whom no man ever heard except through two writers both lying under the same very natural mistake, could have come by blind accidents into such an inheritance of spiritual truth as is here described by Josephus, that man will find nothing beyond his credulity. For he pres sumes a revelation far beyond all the wisdom of the Pagan world to have been attained by some unknown Jewish philosopher, so little regarded by his followers that they have not even preserved his name from oblivion.

Amongst the initiatory and probationary vows which these sectarians are required to take is this" that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance." Here, again, we see a memorable precept of St Paul and the apostles generallythe same precept, and built on the very same reason, viz. that rulers are of God's appointment.

"They are long-lived also: insomuch, that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet."

Here we are reminded of St John the Evangelist: whilst others, no doubt, would have attained the same age, had they not been cut off by martyrdom.

In many other points of their interior discipline, their white robes, their meals, their silence and gravity, we see in this account of the Essenes a mere echo of the primitive economy established among the first Christians, as we find it noticed up and down the apostolical constitutions.

It is remarkable that Josephus notices, as belonging to the sect of the Essenes, the order of " angels" or messengers. Now, every body must remember this order of officers as a Christian institution noticed in the Apocalypse.

Finally, in all that is said of the contempt which the Essenes showed for pain and death; and that "although tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, yet could they not be made to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear, but that they smiled in their very torments," &c., we see the regular habit of Christian martyrs through the first three centuries. We see that principle established amongst them so early as that first examination of Pliny's; for he is so well aware how useless it would be to seek for any discoveries by torture applied to the Christian men, that he resorts instantly to the torture of female servants. The secrecy, again, as to their opinions, is another point common to the supposed Essenes and the Christians. Why the Essenes, as an orthodox Jewish sect, should have practised any secresy, Josephus would have found it hard to say; but the Christian reasons will appear decisive to any man who reflects.

But first of all, let us recur to the argument we have just employed, and summon you to a review of the New Testament. Christ, during his ministry in Palestine, is brought as if by special arrangement into contact with all known orders of men,Scribes, and Doctors, Pharisees and Sadducees, Herodians and followers of the Baptist, Roman officers, insolent with authority, tax-gatherers, the Pariahs of the land, Galileans, the most undervalued of the Jews, Samaritans, hostile to the very name of Jew, rich men clothed in purple, and poor men fishing for their daily bread, the happy and those that sate in darkness, wedding parties and funeral parties, solitudes amongst hills or seashores, and multitudes that could not be counted, mighty cities and hamlets the most obsure, golden sanhedrims, and the glorious temple, where he spoke to myriads of the worshippers,

and solitary corners, where he stood in conference with a single contrite heart. Were the subject or the person different, one might ascribe a dramatic purpose and a scenical art to the vast variety of the circumstances and situations in which Christ is introduced. And yet, whilst all other sorts and orders of men converse with him, never do we hear of any interview between him and the Essenes. Suppose one Evangelist to have overlooked such a scene, another would not. In part, the very source of the dramatic variety in the New Testament scenes, must be looked for in the total want of collusion amongst the Evangelists. Each throwing himself back upon overmastering remembrances, all-glorified to his heart, had no more need to consult a fellow-witness, than a man needs, in rehearsing the circumstances of a final parting with a wife or a child, to seek collateral vouchers for his facts. Thence it was in part left to themselves, unmodified by each other, that they attained so much variety in the midst of so much inevitable sameness. One man was impressed by one case, a second by another. And thus, it must have happened amongst four, that at least one would have noticed the Essenes. But no one of the four gospels alludes to them. The Acts of the Apostles, again, whether by a fifth author ornot, is a fifth body of remembrances, a fifth act of the memory applied to the followers of Christ. Yet neither does this notice them. The Apocalypse of St John, reviewing the new church for a still longer period, and noticing all the great outstanding features of the state militant, then unrolling for Christianity, says not one word about them. St Peter-St James, utterly overlook them. Lastly, which weighs more than all the rest, St Paul, the learned and philosophic apostle, bred up in all the learning of the most orthodox amongst the Jews, gives no sign that he had ever heard of such people. In short, to sum up all in one sentence, the very word Essene and Essenes is not found in the New Testament.

Now, is it for one moment to be credited that a body of men so truly spiritual in the eternals of their creed, whatever might be the temporals of their practice, should have won no Prach word of praise from Christ for that by which they so far exceeded other sects-no word of reproach for that by which they might happen to fall short of their own profession-no word of admonition, founded on the comparison between their good and their bad -their heavenly and earthly? Or, if that had been supposable, can we believe that Christ's enemies, so eager as they showed themselves to turn even the Baptist into a handle of reproach against the new teacher, would have lost the overwhelming argument derived from the Essenes? " A new command I give unto you."

"Not

at all," they would have retorted"Not at all new. Every thing spiritual in your ethics has been anticipated by the Essenes." It would have been alleged, that the function of Redeemer for Israel was to be judged and tried by the event. The only instant touchstone for the pretensions of Christ lay in the divine character of his morality, and the spirituality of that worship which he taught. Miracles were or were not from God, according to purposes to which they ministered. That moral doctrine and that worship were those purposes. By these only they could try the soundness of all beside; and if these had been forestalled by the Essenes, what remained for any new teacher or new founder of a religion? In fact, were the palpable lies of this Jewtraitor built on any thing but delusions misinterpreted by his own ignorant heart, there would be more in that one tale of his about the Essenes to undermine Christianity, than in all the batteries of all the infidels to overthrow it. No infidel can argue away the spirituality of the Christian religion: attacks upon miracles leave that unaffected. But he, who (confessing the spirituality) derives it from some elder and unknown source, at one step evades what he could not master. He overthrows without opposition; and enters the citadel through ruins caused by internal explosion.

What then is to be thought? If this death-like silence of all the evangelists, and all the apostles, makes it a mere impossibility to suppose the existence of such a sect as the Essenes in the time of Christ, did such a sect arise afterwards, viz. in the Epichristian generation? Or, if not, how and by what steps came up the romance we have been considering? Was there any substance in the tale? Or, if

positively none, how came the fiction? Was it a conscious lie? Was it a mistake? Was it an exaggeration?

Now, our idea is as follows:- What do we suppose the early Christians to have been called? By what name were they known amongst themselves and amongst others? Christians? Not at all. When it is said" the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch," we are satisfied that the meaning is not this name, now general, was first used at Antioch; but that, whereas we followers of Christ generally call one another, and are called by a particular name X, in Antioch that name was not used; but from the very beginning they were called by another name, viz. Christians. At all events, since this name Christian was confessedly used at Antioch before it was used any where else, there must have been another name elsewhere for the same people. What was that name? It was "The Brethren," [οἱ αδελφοι;] and at times, by way of variety, to prevent the awkwardness of too monotonously repeating the same word, perhaps it was "The Faithful," [oi πιςοι.] The name Christians travelled, we are convinced, not immediately amongst themselves, but slowly amongst their enemies. It was a name of reproach; and the meaning was"We Pagans are all worshippers of gods, such as they are; but this sect worships a man, and that man a malefactor." For, though Christshould properly have been known by his name, which was Jesus; yet, because his crime, in the opinion of the Jews, lay in the office he had assumed in having made himself the Christos, the anointed of God, therefore it happened that he was published amongst the Roman world by that name: his offence, his "titulus" on the cross, (the king, or the anointed,) was made his Roman name. Accordingly Tacitus, speaking of some insurgents in Judea, says" that they mutinied under the excitement of Christ, (not Jesus,) their original ringleader," (impulsore Chresto.) And no doubt it had become a scoffing name, until the Christians disarmed the scoff of its sting by assuming it themselves; as was done in the case of "the Beggars" in the Netherlands, and "the Methodists" in England.

Well: meantime, what name did the Christians bear in their very birthplace? Were they called " the brethren there? No. And why not?

Simply because it had become too dangerous a name. To be bold, to affront all reasonable danger, was their instinct and their duty; but not to tempt utter extinction or utter reduction to imbecility. We read amiss, if we imagine that the fiery persecution, which raged against Christ, had burned itself out in the act of the crucifixion. It slept, indeed, for a brief interval: but that was from necessity; for the small flock of scattered sheep easily secreted themselves. No sooner did they multiply a little, no sooner did their meetings again proclaim their "whereabouts," than the snake found them out, again raised its spiry crest amongst them, and again crushed them for a time. The martyrdom of St Stephen showed that no jesting was intended. It was determined that examples should be made. It was resolved that this revolt against the Temple (the Law and the Prophets) must be put down. The next event quickened this agency sevenfold. A great servant of the persecution, in the very agony of the storm which he was himself guiding and pointing, working the very artillery of Jerusalem upon some scent which his bloodhounds had found in Syria, suddenly, in one hour passed over to the enemy. What of that? Did that startle the persecution? Probably it did: failure from within was what they had not looked for. But the fear which it bred was sister to the wrath of hell. The snake turned round; but not for flight. It turned to fasten upon the revolter. St Paul's authority as a leader in the Jewish councils availed him nothing after this. Orders were undoubtedly expedited from Jerusalem to Damascus, as soon as messengers could be interchanged, for his assassination. And assassinated he would have been, had he been twenty St Pauls, but for his secret evasion, and his flight to Arabia. Idumea, probably a sort of Ireland to Judea, was the country to which he fled; where again he might have been found out, but his capture would have cost a negotiation; and in all likelihood he lay unknown amongst crowds. Nor did he venture to show his face again in Jerusalem for some years; and then again not till a term of fourteen years, half a generation, during which many of the burning zealots, and of those who could have challenged him per

NO. CCXCI. VOL. XLVII.

sonally as the great apostate, must have gone to their last sleep.

During the whole of this noviciate for Christianity; and in fact throughout the whole Epichristian era, there was a brooding danger over the name and prospects of Christianity. To hold up a hand, to put forth a head, in the blinding storm, was to perish. It was to solicit and tempt destruction. That could not be right. Those who were answerable for the great interest confided to them, if in their own persons they might have braved the anger of the times, were not at liberty to do so on this account that it would have stopped effectually the expansion of the Church. Martyrdom and persecution formed the atmosphere in which it throve; but not the frost of death. What, then, did the fathers of the Church do? You read that, during a part of this Epichristian age, " the churches had peace." True, they had

so.

But do you know how they had it? Do you guess what they did? It was this: They said to each other - If we are to stand such consuming fires as we have seen, one year will finish us all. And then what will become of the succession that we are to leave behind us? We must hide ourselves effectually. And this can be done only by symbolizing. Any lesser disguise our persecutors will penetrate. But this, by its very nature, will baffle them, and yet provide fully for the nursing of an infant Church. They proceeded, therefore, thus: " Let there be darkness" was the first word of command: "let us muffle ourselves in thick clouds, which no human eye can penetrate. And towards this purpose let us immediately take a symbolic name. And, because any name that expresses or implies a secret fraternity -a fraternity bound together by any hidden tie or purpose-will instantly be challenged for the Christian brotherhood under a new masque, instantly the bloody Sanhedrim will get to their old practices - torturing our weaker members, (as afterwards the cruel Pliny selected for torture the poor frail women-servants of the brethren,) and the wolf will be raging amongst our folds in three months, therefore two things are requisite; one, that this name which we assume should be such as to disarm suspicion, [in this they acted upon the instinct of those birds, which artfully construct

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