pray, "I beseech thee, Lord God and Father, for them; for they know not what they do. In the mean time the infatuated Jews preparing to stone him, a Rechabite, whom Hegesippus declares to be the subject of this memoir, cried out, " Cease, what do you mean? This just man is praying for you." At length a person, more mercifully cruel than the rest, came behind, and striking him on the head with a fuller's club, completed his martyrdom. This apostle is supposed to have written his epistle but a very short time before his death. On account of his singular innocence and integrity he was distinguished by the exalted title of THE JUST: and the universally admitted excellence of his character made his execution to be abhorred, and his murderers to be censured, even by those who were far from being favourable to the Christian name. Upon the martyrdom of James, those of the apostles who were still alive, and several of the most eminent disciples of our Lord, are said to have come to Jerusalem from all parts, to consult together respecting a proper successor. It was their general opinion, that, if possible, a relative of our Lord ought to be appointed to the situation; and at length they unani mously determined to confer the honour upon Simeon, as a man of eminent piety, and a near relation of the Saviour. He was accordingly ordained bishop of Jerusalem. We have little information of the manner in which Simeon fulfilled the important duties of his sacred office. We may, however, be confident that his charge was a most trying one, both on account of the turbulent temper of the Jewish people, and because his presidency fell in with that gloomy period, when their city and temple were overthrown, and their very name as a nation blotted out by the victorious Romans. "To give a particular account of all their iniquities," remarks their own celebrated historian, "would be endless: thus much in general it may suffice to say, that there never was a city which suffered such miseries, or a race of men from the beginning of the world who so abounded in wickedness. I verily believe," he continues," that if the Romans had delayed to destroy these wicked wretches, the city would either have been swallowed up by the earth, or overwhelmed by the waters, or struck with fire from heaven as another Sodom, for it produced a far more impious generation than those who suffered such punishment." This tremendous scene of carnage is very particularly described by this historian, who was, during the greater part of the time, an eye witness of all its attendant horrors. The destruction of Jerusalem at once s remarkably displays the veracity of our Lord's predictions respecting it, the hatred of the Almighty against sin, and his distinguishing care of his people, that a brief account of it may here be properly introduced, and may not prove uninteresting. The tyranny of the Roman governors, and especailly the oppressive and vexatious conduct of Gessius Florus, occasioned in the first instance that opposition of the Jews to the Romans which ended in the final destruction of that unhappy people, who, without piety, still confided in their claim to peculiarity. Goaded by insults and severities, of which they had in vain solicited redress, this wretched people at last broke out into an open rebellion, which only tended to accelerate their ruin. At the very commencement of the insurrection, 20,000 Jews were cruelly massacred at Cæsarea; and shortly after, a sedition arising in Alexandria, 50,000 more were slain in one day by two Roman legions. In the mean time the insurrection became universal, and every place was full of blood and violence. For some time the war was conducted with apparently equal success by Jews and Romans. length Vespasian was sent by Nero with a large body of veteran troops, who immediately marched to Gadara, took it on the first assault, and afterwards burnt it and the adjoining villages to the ground. From thence he advanced to Jotopata, a place strongly At fortified by nature and art, to which a great number of Jews had fled for security. This place also, after an obstinate resistance, fell into his hands through the treachery of one of the inhabitants; and Josephus, the famous, Jewish general and historian, was taken prisoner. Vespasian now pursued his conquests with unwearied diligence, victory every where attending him. At length he determined to attack Jerusalem; but for the present was prevented by the short tumultuous reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and afterwards by his being actually compelled by his soldiers to accept of the crown. His son Titus, being now appointed to carry on the war, made every pre paration for an attack upon the capital. At this time Jerusalem was broken into factions; one party raging against another, and committing such cruelties under John, Simon, and Eleazar, the leaders of the opposite parties, as surpassed all the miseries inflicted upon them by their public enemy. At length Titus approached, and after much difficulty battered down one of the three walls by which the city was defended, and took possession of the northern quarter. At the same time he showed great compassion to the besieged, and assured them of pardon if they would submit. But the Jews still obstinately rejecting all conditions, Titus broke through the second wall, and prepared to attack the third. Before, however, he commenced the attack, he caused the whole city to be surrounded by a strong entrenchment, the more effectually to prevent the inhabitants from departing from the city, or receiving any relief from their friends. Thus began to be fulfilled that very explicit prophecy of our Lord, which in the subsequent overthrow of Jerusalem was so fully accomplished:" And when He was come near, He beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass : thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."* And now is the whole vial of God's anger about to be poured out upon this devoted people. Their rejection of Messiah, their Prince, is punished by a senseless opposition to a human power too great for them to overcome, without the aid of that Prince whom they had renounced-their persecution of His faithful disciples by the most lamentable divisions, when unity was most wanted-their infidelity by a false confidence in misinterpreted prophecies-and their contempt of that Bread which cometh down from heaven, by a terrible famine of that common bread, of which, as well as every temporal blessing, all must be at last deprived, who refuse to feed upon the blessed word of God. For besides the Roman army without, and the numerous factions within, the want of provisions was so great in consequence of the multitudes which had flocked to the passover, that thousands were famished, and died so fast as to render it impossible to observe the common rites of sepulture. Some, who fled from the city to Titus, related that the famine was so excessive as to compel the soldiers to eat girdles, shoes, skins, and hay. A bushel of corn was sold for six hundred crowns. Sinks and holes were continually raked to find the vilest offals to satisfy hunger. Wives took the meat out of their husbands' mouths, children from their parents', mothers from their infants”. Nay, a certain lady, descended from noble and rich parentage, actually boiled her own child, that, according to the language of ancient prophecy, she might "eat it secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith the enemy distressed them."+ Titus was filled with horror at the relation of this enormity. He called upon God to witness that he was not * Luke xix. 41, 42, 43. Deut, xxviii. 53-57. the author of these calamities, since he had repeatedly offered peace to the Jews; and concluded by declaring that he would bury this abominable crime in the ruins of their country, and not suffer the sun to shine upon a city, where mothers ate their own children, and where fathers reduced them to that extremity by refusing to surrender. Being now convinced that neither kind nor harsh methods could produce any effect upon this obstinate genera tion, Titus gave directions that all things should be made ready for a storm; and at length finding that he could not prevail against the walls of the inner temple, he set fire to the gates, a step he had hitherto religiously avoided. The porches were soon in a flame, and continued burning all that day and the following night. Titus, however, still resolved, if possible, to save the temple; but on the tenth day, a Roman soldier, of his own accord, threw a flaming fire-brand through the golden window into the chambers, which were presently in a blaze; and the fire, spreading through the whole fabric, consumed the most glorious structure that the world ever saw. Titus in the mean time employed every effort to extinguish the flames. He called, entreated, and even threatened, his men; but without effect. So great was the confusion, and so pertinaciously were the soldiers bent upon destroying all within their reach, that he was neither heard nor regarded. Throughout the whole history of the human race we meet with few, if any, instances of carnage and devastation that can be compared with this. According to their own historian, in the course of a seven years' war there perished of this ill-fated people, in one way or another, no less a number than one million three hundred and thirty-seven thousand four hundred and ninety. Amongst the various observations which this horrible, yet instructive history may suggest, it is worthy of remark, that the Jews, by their obdurate wickedness, and insensibility to the patience and mercy of God, brought upon themselves the punishment due to them. They had put to death the Lord of life, and thereby had forfeited their own; and now, behold! not only by a judicial, but by a kind of necessary result, they are found to be their own murderers. Thus died the Jewish people; nor will they rise again till they own Him to be risen, whom they crucified and slew; till they "look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him, as one that mourneth for his only son."* Whilst, however, the Jewish nation in general experienced this dreadful destruction, the Christians, with their venerable bishop, Simeon, were wor derfully preserved. The account of their escape has been hitherto omitted, that the thread of the preceding narrative might not be broken. We may now, therefore, briefly notice it. Almost at the commencement of the war, Cestius Gallus broke into the lower part of the city, and used such measures, as, humanly speaking, would have ensured his taking the upper part and the temple, had he continued his attack. But at this moment he unexpectedly, and without any assignable cause on his part, raised the siege. The Christians took advantage of this circumstance. Recollecting that our Lord had warned them to leave Jerusalem when they should see it encompassed with armies, and to flee when they should behold the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, they embraced the opportunity, and universally retreated to Pella; so that none of them perished in the common desolation. The place of their retreat was a little town beyond Jordan, about one hundred miles from Jerusalem, belonging to Agrip, pa, and inhabited by Gentiles. How long Simeon and his flock continued in this sanctuary, and when they returned to Jerusalem, is unknown, though it is generally supposed that they came back about the beginning of the reign of Trajan. It is certain that they returned before the time of Adrian; for upon that em * Zech. xii. 10. peror's coming to Jerusalem, forty years after its destruction, he found there a few houses and a little church upon Mount. Sion. In the mean time Simeon discharged the important duties of his office with great diligence and fidelity. At length, in the middle of Trajan's reign, he was charged with being a Christian, and a descendant of the kings of Judah. In consequence of this accusation he was sentenced by the proconsul to be first put to the rack and severely scourged, and afterwards to be crucified. The venerable bishop endured his severe sufferings with such composure of mind and invincible patience as astonished the proconsul and all that were present. But neither his age nor resignation could induce them to reprieve or mitigate his sentence, for he still persisted in pleading guilty to what was considered the most offensive of all crimes, his being a Christian. Simeon suffered martyrdom in the tenth year of the reign of Trajan, in the hundred and twentieth year of his own age, and in the hundred and seventh of the Christian æra. It is not a little remarkable, that during the dreadful persecutions which made such havoc in the Church, most of the eminent Christian teachers, of whom we have any account, lived to a very advanced age. Simeon, as has been said, was a hundred and twenty years old, Ignatius eighty, Polycarp considerably older, Tertullian ninety, and Justin, Irenæus, Origen, and Cyprian, were also all far advanced in years at the time of their deaths. Doubtless we may attribute their preservation for so long a time, as well from the fatal effects of disease and decay of nature, as from the fury of the persecutor's sword, to a special Providence, cherishing and prolonging their lives for their work's sake. Still, however, as God generally accomplishes His benevolent purposes by natural means, we may reasonably suppose that their very religion, by inculcating on its possessors the great est temperance and sobriety, so conducive to health, was under the divine blessing, one especial cause of their longevity. The discourses of Dr. CHALMERS being republished in this country, we are induced to insert a Review of them from the British Critic. A Series of Discourses: or the Christian Revelation viewed in Connexion with the Modern Astronomy. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. Minister of the Tron Churck, Glasgow. A season scarcely ever passes in England without the irruption of some comet from the unknown regions of the air, which rushes athwart the system, overpowering the eyes of all with its superior splendour, and threatening destruction to the dull and humdrum planets of the regular system. The present year has been rather productive in these eccentric dazzlers. With referance indeed to the author of the Discourses now before us, he did not rise quite so unexpectedly on our view. A thousand little Lucifers, in the shape of puffs and panegyrics, prepared our weak eyes for the burst of the comet itself upon our horizon. Not even of Dr. Solomon's Guide to Health were there so many copies sold in the first year, as of the Doctor's Discourses in the first day. Five editions (sold as we have heard) in as many days, were the avant couriers of the Doctor's fame. The Post and Chronicle, the Times and Day, vied in their eulogiums, in every varied form, on the Doctor's powers. "Wonderful occurrence."" Surprising fact."" Unparalleled demand:"all lent their aid to usher in the Doctor and his Discourses. Sometimes his reputation shrouded itself under the modest form of "A Letter to the Editor:" sometimes insinuated itself in the specious form of " A Caution to the Public." Under whatever form or dress, there it always was, till Mr. Bish himself grew jealous, and Mr. Goodluck ceased to advertise. At last the Doctor himself appeared, and since the days of Master Betty, no place of public exhibition has been ever thronged with so desperate a crowd. Ins and Outs, Ministry and Opposition, Atheists and Fanatics, those who never were in a church before, and those who never will be in a church again, were all jostled together in the heterogeneous mass. Those whom the doors would not receive, the windows were opened to admit, and happy were the individuals who could get a footing upon the ladder, which in their estimation was to lead to heaven. Now as no personhalf so little as we unfortunate critics, could even gain admission into the adjoining street, we sat ourselves down contented with the volume before us, taking for granted that we could not judge of the Doctor's powers by any fairer criterion. ages The design of the Doctor in these Discourses, is to answer the following hacknied objection of the infidel to the general system of Christianity," that God would not have sent down his Son from heaven to die for the salvation of so insignificant a speck in the creation, as the globe which we inhabit." To which Dr. Chalmers has well answered: Christianity makes no such profession. That it is designed for the single benefit of our world is altogether a presumption of the infidel himself." If the Doctor had added, "that of other worlds we can know nothing in our present state, because it is not expedient for the purpose of our present state of existence that we should," and had here concluded the whole, we are of opinion that he would have consulted much more wisely both for himself and for his subject. We should not indeed have grudged him the follow ing argument in favour of the plurality of worlds. It is eloquently, ration ally, and scripturally expressed; and as it is by far the best specimen of Dr. Chalmers's power, we shall extract it entire. "Now, what is the fair and obvious presumption? The world in which we live, is a round ball of a determined magnitude, and occupies its own place in the firmament. But when we explore the unlimited tracts of that space which is every where around us, we meet with other balls of equal or superior magnitude; and from which our earth would either be invisible, or appear as small as any of those twinkling stars which are seen on the canopy of heaven. Why then suppose that this little spot, little at least in the immensity which surrounds it, should be the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence "But this is not all. We have some thing more than the mere magnitude of |