hardened in their apostacy.  The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnazar, and the captivity in Babylon, had the most corrupting influence on the purity of the Mosaic doctrines, and on the laws.  The original writings discovered by Hilkiah, were retrenched, added to, and the order of the events displaced.  From the long residence amongst, and a great intercourse with strange people, all the frightful prejudices, all the fanciful dreams of our rabbins, were introduced into the sacred books.  We learn from the second book of Chronicles, chap. xxxvi. verse 17, “that the king slew the young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man or him that stooped for age.  And all the vessels of gold, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king and all the princes, these he brought all to Babylon; and they burnt the house of God, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire.”

    [6] The greater part of the kings, both of Israel and of Judah,
        served strange gods.  Under Josiah, as he cleared out the
        Temple, the book of the laws of Moses was found by Hilkiah the
        priest, and was delivered to the king, who was much struck
        with the threatenings it contained.

During the seventy years that this captivity lasted, only a few old men survived who had retained any recollection of the laws of Moses.  Esdras collected, as far as was possible, the doctrines of Moses; but they were mingled with too many principles which were foreign to them, and some of them may be traced to Zoroaster.  The existence of the three sects of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Essenes, each of which give a different interpretation of the word of God, abundantly prove this.  Hillel and Schamai, a little before the time of Vespasian, had a school.  The Rabbi Jonathan Sillai, a pupil of Hillel, exalts his master by saying, “If every tree were a pen, and the whole ocean ink, I should not be able to describe the wisdom I have received from Hillel.”  What extravagant expressions!  How well do they paint the fanaticism of sectarianism!  It was not, however, long, before this blind zeal drew down on the people a punishment from Heaven, by the destruction of Jerusalem under the Roman chief, Titus.  Read the work of Flavius Josephus, and you will behold the noble firmness and perseverance of the Israelites on one side, and on the other the melancholy truth, that raving enthusiasm and blind obstinacy precipitated the ruin of the most flourishing people in the world.  The last siege and capture of Jerusalem will ever be memorable in the history of mankind.  How violent was the exasperation between the two sects of the believers!  What firmness and obstinacy in each party, who preferred death and the destruction of the whole nation to yielding up the smallest particle of their different opinions!  At that time, there fell, by famine and the sword,