in the temple of Jerusalem; whilst the meanest of the
posterity of Abraham, who should have paid the same homage to the
Jupiter of the Capitol, would have been an object of abhorrence to
himself and to his brethren. But the moderation of the conquerors was
insufficient to appease the jealous prejudices of their subjects,
who were alarmed and scandalized at the ensigns of paganism, which
necessarily introduced themselves into a Roman province. The mad attempt
of Caligula to place his own statue in the temple of Jerusalem was
defeated by the unanimous resolution of a people who dreaded death much
less than such an idolatrous profanation. Their attachment to the law of
Moses was equal to their detestation of foreign religions. The current
of zeal and devotion, as it was contracted into a narrow channel, ran
with the strength, and sometimes with the fury, of a torrent.

This inflexible perseverance, which appeared so odious or so ridiculous
to the ancient world, assumes a more awful character, since Providence
has deigned to reveal to us the mysterious history of the chosen people.
But the devout and even scrupulous attachment to the Mosaic religion,
so conspicuous among the Jews who lived under the second temple, becomes
still more surprising, if it is compared with the stubborn incredulity
of their forefathers. When the law was given in thunder from Mount
Sinai, when the tides of the ocean and the course of the planets were
suspended for the convenience of the Israelites, and when temporal
rewards and punishments were the immediate consequences of their piety
or disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the
visible majesty of their Divine King, placed the idols of the nations in
the sanctuary of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was
practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia. As
the protection of Heaven was deservedly withdrawn from the ungrateful
race, their faith acquired a proportionable degree of vigor and
purity. The contemporaries of Moses and Joshua had beheld with careless
indifference the most amazing miracles. Under the pressure of every
calamity, the belief of those miracles has preserved the Jews of a later
period from the universal contagion of idolatry; and in contradiction to
every known principle of the human mind, that singular people seems to
have yielded a stronger and more ready assent to the traditions of their
remote ancestors, than to the