early disciples, and Saul of Tarsus, and others on the day of Pentecost, saw the insufficiency of their own religion, felt the need of a surer guide, and became the followers of Christ; but the mass of the nation were violent and uncompromising in their hostility to the Christian faith. They pursued the infant Saviour from his cradle to Egypt, from Egypt to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to the cross. After having satiated their malignity upon him, they directed it in all its infuriate madness against his disciples. Stephen, James the son of Zebedee, and James the just, who presided over the Church at Jerusalem, were among the early victims of their rage. Sometimes their violence was expressed in threatening; sometimes in rash and headlong counsels; sometimes in the imprisonment of the Christians; and sometimes in stripes and death. Nor were their persecutions limited to Palestine. Wherever they were scattered throughout the Roman provinces, they became the instigators of those feuds among the populace, and that violence of the magistracy which destroyed so many of the harmless followers of Christ.* The early Christians had no more bitter enemies than the Jews. From the highest seat of power in Jerusalem, down to the lowest publican who sat at the receipt of custom, the embodied efforts of the nation, both in the Holy

*Vide. Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History.

land and out of it, were enlisted against Christianity. There was this semblance of apology for the Jews. The God of Abraham had called them out from among the nations with the view of dissociating them from all the varieties and forms of pagan idolatry, and until the coming of the Messiah, of preserving among them the only remnant of the true religion on the earth. They were early taught by God himself to regard all other nations with suspicion; to have no intercourse with them; and to prohibit their residence among them until they had first renounced their paganism, and become proselytes to the faith and worship of the true God. It is a lame apology; but like one of their own misguided countrymen, they often " did it ignorantly and in unbelief." They were strongly attached to their own national, religious peculiarities; and yet nothing could be more contrary to the genius of their own religion, than the pride, envy and malignity, with which they arrayed those peculiarities against Christianity. Nothing could be more contrary to the light of their own symbols, prophecies, and law. Nothing could be more contrary to the overwhelming testimony that Jesus was the Son of God. And yet they have ever been an intolerant people, and have extended their intolerance not less to their own countrymen, who renounced the Jewish religion, than to strangers. Wherever they have been in power, they have always been an intolerant people. When Mordecai was prime minister at the Persian Court under

the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, "many of the people of the land became Jews, because the fear of the Jews came upon them." The Jews had authority and they exercised it so effectually, that the Persians professed Judaism through fear. We know too what an iron sceptre their rulers swayed, and under what a reign of terror the nation groaned in subsequent ages. There was no such thing as religious liberty. If any man confessed Christ, he "was put out of the synagogue;" he was pronounced an outlaw; his property was confiscated; he was denied all the charities of life; his person was put beyond the protection of the government; and the man that killed him was thought to have done God service.

If from the Jews, we turn to the Mahomedans, we have the same melancholy picture. Like a furious torrent, the religion of the false prophet laid waste Asia, Africa, and a great part of Europe. It was introduced at a period of the world, when the corruptions of Christianity and the divisions throughout Christendom invited the enterprise of some bold, and ardent mind, and when the customs and passions of men, and the circumstances of the times were easily made subservient to such a design. The spirit of intolerance also which existed among the Christians proved a favourable event for the advancement of Mahometanism. Justinian had previously commenced his persecutions; he had destroyed the Samaritans in Palestine; and their posterity probably embraced the

new religion out of hatred to the Christians, and in consequence of the severe edicts published against them by the Roman Emperors. The Roman and Persian monarchies were also on the decline; and Mahomet had discernment enough to turn all these favourable opportunities to his own advantage. It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mahomet boldly professed to convert the nations by the sword. It was one of the main pillars of his system, that paradise was the reward of extirpating those who would not become his followers. It was his maxim, that "the sword is the key of heaven and of hell." The Jews were more the objects of his hatred than any other sect. He utterly destroyed them in Arabia, confiscated their property, and subjected them to tortures. He would not condescend to allow them to become his followers, and gave testimony of the hatred he bore them in his last hours. "May God curse the Jews," said he, "for they have made Temples of the sepulchres of their prophets!" With this exception, the alternative he offered to his enemies was, to acknowledge the true God and his prophet, tribute, or death. And with this alternative, he subdued a great part of the world. His first conquests were in Arabia, Persia and Syria. Subsequently his successors subdued Egypt and Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean. After the Saracens became Mahometans, they overran and desolated the Roman empire, and made the most fearful devastation of the Oriental Churches. Not

satisfied with these conquests, they penetrated into Spain and France; subsequently attached the Turks to their standard, became masters of the fairest portions of Europe, and planted the crescent on the walls of Constantinople. The mildest feature in the religion of Mahomet was, that he did not deny that the followers of any religion might be saved, if their actions were virtuous. And yet strange to say, wherever he came in contact with men, he recognized no rights of conscience, no degree of religious liberty. Wherever his followers went, it was Ismalism, tribute, or death.*

The pagan world too has fiercely set itself against the Lord and against his anointed. With few exceptions, the pagan nations cannot be said to have expressed any great degree of intolerance toward one another. They have been bitter persecutors of the religion of the Old and New Testaments, but not often per ecutors of paganism itself. Though plunged in the grossest superstition, and though almost every nation had its own peculiar deities; this variety of gods and religions was rarely the source even of division or animosity. Dr. Mosheim observes, that the Egyptians are an exception to this remark; while at the same time he confesses, that "the Egyptian wars, waged to avenge their gods, cannot properly be called religious wars, not being

* Vide. Sale's Koran-Picart's Ceremonies, and Herbelot's Biblioth. Orient.