the inferior ministers of the temple, from the payment of any tribute whatever.

FANNY. The Persians, then, it may be presumed, were not idolaters ?

MRS. M. They were yet idolaters, but not of the baser sort. Their adoration was offered to fire; but chiefly to the sun as the most pure and perfect emblem of the Deity. He, however, was the object of their worship, as you may discover in their desire to conciliate his favour, by their liberality to his people, and their desire to conciliate his favour to the royal family, by commanding sacrifices to be offered, at Jerusalem, in their behalf.

From this commission to Ezra, (B. C, 457) being so much more full and comprehensive than those which had gone before, our best commentators began to compute the seventy weeks of Daniel, at the conclusion of which the Messiah should come.

In consequence of this great indulgence to their nation, seventeen hundred and fifty-four persons repaired to Ezra at Shushan, now the seat of the Persian government, and departed for Jerusalem on the ninth day of the first month. Having before them a long and toilsome journey, and carrying a vast quantity of valuable goods, they encamped at the river Ahava, not far from the city, to implore the protection of heaven from the various accidents to which they might be exposed, particularly the depredations of wandering herds of Arabs, and other hostile tribes of people. They might indeed have obtained from their munificent king, a guard of soldiers, but they had professed to him their confidence in the blessing of God on their undertaking, and therefore they chose rather to attest their sincerity, by committing themselves wholly to his protection. After

three days of prayer and fasting, they left the river, and arrived safely at Jerusalem in the beginning of the fifth month.

The king's letter to his lieutenants being delivered, the gold and silver deposited in the treasury, and sacrifices offered by the returning exiles, Ezra set about the business of his journey.

Enquiring into the state of the colony, he soon learned, to his great grief, that they had already transgressed their law, by intermarriages with the heathens around them, to an enormous extent and even that the priests were among the offenders!

CATHERINE. The very sin that had so largely contributed to the calamities from which they were but just escaped!

MRS. M. No wonder, then, that the pious priest was overwhelmed with astonishment and sorrow, when he heard of their ingratitude to their supreme deliverer; and first set about their reformation in this alarming particular. Assembled at the evening sacrifice, his earnest prayers in their behalf, and solemn deprecation of the wrath they had incurred, so deeply affected the whole congregation, that all present, who had violated the law, came voluntarily to Ezra, and declared their readiness to put away the strange wives they had taken-and the children who were born of them. Taking them instantly at their word, he exacted an oath, that they would abide by their own decision. Judges were then appointed to enquire into the matter, and a proclamation issued, requiring every individual who was implicated to appear at Jerusalem, on pain of confiscation of his property, and excommunication from the church of Israel; and after a careful examination, which consumed

above two months of time, all the aliens were separated from the congregation.

FANNY. The colonists being not generally the individuals who had been carried into captivity, but their descendants-may we not charitably suppose them to have erred through ignorance of the Jewish law?

MRS. M. They were not wholly ignorant on this prominent point, but through the lapse of time, and the destruction of their Temple, where alone they might perform the chief offices of their religion, its whole system had become corrupted by traditions. To restore it to its original purity, and "to teach them that knew it not,' was the chief business of Ezra. For this purpose he performed a work, which, at this day, demands our thankful recollection. He collected all the manuscript copies of the sacred books within his reach, corrected the errors of transcribers, and settled what we now call "the canon of scripture," so far as it had been given in his time-that is, the words and the books, which were the genuine dictates of the Holy Spirit, and rejected such as were spurious. Having done this, he copied them out from the Hebrew, the original language of the Israelites, into the Chaldean, which, since their residence in Babylon, had become the vernacular tongue of the Jews.

We have not the express authority of holy writ, for ascribing this great work to Ezra. It is the account of respectable Jewish writers, and has been always received by the church, both Jewish and christian.

* The subdivision into chapters and verses, an invention for the more convenient reading of the scriptures, is of modern date. -Prideaux.

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Let us now leave the pious priest in the prosecution of his important labours, and return awhile to the court of Persia, where we shall find such events occurring about this time, as contributed to the singular preservation of the house of Israel.

ESTHER.

We have seen, in the preceding history, several remarkable interpositions of Providence, in favour of the banished house of David, which tended not only to the amelioration of their condition, but to their preservation as a nation. The beautiful story of Esther, interesting in itself, and instructive as a lesson to the ambitious, is another instance of that specia! care which has enabled us at this day to produce the Israelites as an incontestible argument for the truth of Revelation.

Somewhere about this period of the Persian history, Artaxerxes made a great entertainment to celebrate his victories. Not less proud of the uncommon beauty of his queen, than of his success in the wars, Artaxerxes commanded her to appear in his apartments on this occasion, to indulge his vanity, in the admiration of all the princes and nobles of his realm. But Vashti refused to make such a public exhibition of her person, and her disobedience incurred the instant sentence of deposition!

Neither the plea of female delicacy, nor the adverse customs of the Persian ladies, nor yet the high dignity of her station, extenuated the crime of poor Vashti: the decree unalterable of the Medes and Persians was registered against her, and a proclamation immediately went forth,