chief priests, not a motion from a single Scribe, not a murmur from one Pharisee. They wondered at the deformity of each other, but each retained his own features. They seemed for a moment to forget the painter, to contemplate the picture. The Scribe revolted at the moral aspect of the Pharisee, while the Pharisee turned his eye upon the chief priests, and the latter, in their turn, upon both of the others.

It was no doubt a novel scene, to behold a man, whose romantic life and mysterious pursuits readily raised a suspicion of enthusiasm or of imposture, boldly, in the character of a reformer, enter that temple, which the Jews, either from policy or superstition, con

tended was the favourite earthly resi dence of the Uncreated. It was, no doubt, a novel scene to the hierarchy, to behold this man, not only usurp their office, but turn upon themselves with an unexpected violence and indig nation. Doubtless, truth and convic tion must have pointed every expres sion, or Jesus must have raised a cor respondent violence and indignation ; instead of which, the eyes of the whole hierarchy, fearful of the obscure Nazarene are turned on themselves. Had Moses himself appeared in the temple, treading on sunbeams, his head concealed in the dark cloud which once appeared on Sinai, and holding in hist hands a scroll of the decalogue, they had not been more embarrassed, they had

not been more fixed statues. Never in Greece, or Rome, did any orator so readily triumph over his adversaries; and never did any orator, no, not Cicero, nor Burke, venture to exhibit a public criminal in such repellant colours, as this carpenter's son presumed to portray the fairest reputed characters in Jerusalem. It was an overwhelming attack, not only on their system, but on themselves, unprepar ed with the least apology, and the charges were brought so completely home, that all reply was precluded.

THIS was one of those moral risks, which no less discover the man, than the more brilliant actions of the hero ; and perhaps this moral experiment on

I

the Jewish hierarchy was at once the most sublime and successful effort of indignant virtue which the world ever witnessed. Let us contemplate it for a

moment.

Ir demanded an uncommon firmness, I had almost said, a madness of mind, to pronounce in the face of the nation the fiercest judgment on those, who still arrogated the seat of Moses, and whom ages had rendered sacred in the eyes of the people. There was in the public opinion, both in that, and in all preceding ages, such an intimate connexion between the emblem and the substance of religion, between the priest and the object of the national divinity, that a contempt of the god

was more readily pardoned than an impiety to his priests. This indeed was natural, as the priests governed the gods, not the gods the priests. Hence, no less a man than Alcibiades, who, at various periods of his life, was the most. popular man at Athens, excited the public horror from a bare suspicion of his having wantonly broken some of the statues of Mercury, and at the conclusion of an entertainment, of his hav ing acted, in mockery, the awful Elusinian mysteries: not to mention Anaxagoras, and after him Protagoras, famous philosophers, who were thought to merit banishment for want of faith, Socrates, reposing in his old age, on a life as venerable for its virtue, as were his locks for their whiteness, was hur