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Rh of sixty-two thousand volumes, to his student. This was in 236 I also remembered that the works of Homer were more than five hundred years older than Christ, and that we had the laws of Shammai, Abtalian, and the works of the Hillels all before us; and if Tischendorf, in the convent of St. Catherine, could find slips and pieces of the Septuagint that were declared at Leipsic to be of the fourth century, I thought there might be a great deal more somewhere in the vast libraries in those old countries that have thousands of years the advantage of America. The literati could all tell how the manuscripts of the Church might be, and were, preserved; but the records of its enemies, even the records of courts and crowns they could not see into.

Now the reader must remember that there never was anything that created so much excitement in the land of Judea as the preaching of John the Baptist and Christ. This will be readily understood if we take into consideration the structure of the Jewish Commonwealth. The great Sanhedrim legislated for the souls and bodies of men; that is, their religion and their politics were one and the same thing. In the capitulation made with Augustus Cæsar it was understood and agreed that the Jews were to pay a tax to the Romans, but the Romans were not to interfere with the Jewish religion. This took the executive power out of the hands of the Jews and put it into the hands of the Romans. This is the reason Jesus was sent to Pilate to be executed. The Romans had to carry out and execute the