one of the great epochs of the world. A man was introduced upon the stage of action, who by his personal endowments, as conqueror and statesman, was, in a career of twelve years, to do more to effect the future condition of the world than any uninspired man that has ever lived. There are but too men who can be compared to him, Cæsar and Napoleon. Of these the first accomplished nothing for mankind, for civilization and letters, but the conquest of Gaul and a part of Britain. His final exploit was the destruction of the liberties of his country. The last left little behind him as the memorial of his career, but heaps of bones, and the earth fattened with the blood of the slain. But Alexander, in no respect better than his modern rivals, and animated by no better motive than personal ambition, was used as an instrument in the hand of God of lasting good to mankind. Endowed with an intellect of unusual power and comprehension, he received an accomplished education from one of the greatest minds that have ever lived. At the age of eighteen he began to mingle business with study, and became a soldier as well as a scholar. At the age of twenty, when summoned to assume the reins of empire, the sovereign in fact of the Greeks, he stood before the world a perfect representative of his nation. He combined their genius and learning with their valor and conduct, and entering Asia with the sword in one hand, and the poems

of Homer in the other, he came the armed missionary of Grecian learning, art, and civilization. Wherever he went Greece went with him. His conquests were not so much those of Macedonian arms as of Grecian letters. Wherever he went there went with him the genius of Homer, the sublime soul of Plato, and the practical wisdom of Socrates; and not only monarchies sprung up in his path, but schools of philosophy and academies of learning. Entering Asia with an army of thirty-five thousand men, in the space of twelve years he made himself master of the whole Persian empire, and of many nations which had never been subjected to the Persian yoke. He carried the Grecian language and manners to the Indus, and subjected to his power nearly as large a portion of the human race as now inhabit the whole of Europe. His first battle gave him Asia Minor; the second all of Syria to the Euphrates. Egypt, the whole valley of the Nile, surrendered without striking a blow. The third great battle on the banks of the Euphrates opened to him the whole extent of the Asiatic plains to the mountains which bounded the habitations of the Scythian tribes. Wherever he went the Greek language and literature took up their abode, and every city on this side the Euphrates in a few ages became the residence of Greek philosophers, poets, rhetoricians, grammarians, historians, till the whole circuitous shore of the Mediterranean became almost as

Grecian as Greece herself. Palestine of course came under his sway, and the influence of his career on the fortunes of the Jews was more decisive perhaps than upon any other people. It was his conquest alone which introduced the Greek language into the Holy Land, and so much do the most important events turn on the slightest causes, that on the chances of one life almost daily exposed to destruction by the dangers of war, depended the issue whether the records of the new dispensation should be committed to the world in the language in which they are now found.

It is related by Josephus, though his account is to be received with some caution, that when Alexander approached Jerusalem, Juddua, the high priest at that time, came out to meet him in solemn procession, and that Alexander was so struck by his appearance, that he not only spared the city, but granted the Jews many important privileges, giving as the reason of his conduct that he had seen the same person in a dream before he left Macedonia, who had assured him of the conquest of the Persian empire. From Syria Alexander passed on to Egypt, and his conquest of that country had a greater influence upon the future condition of the Jews than that of Judea itself. For on his return from Ethiopia he sailed down the Western, or Canopic branch of the Nile, and with the instinct of genius, fixed upon the site of a city between the lake Mareotis and the sea, which he called

after his own name. It rose immediately to be one of the most magnificent cities of the world, reigning as a sort of Queen of the East, as the mart of commerce and the seat of wealth and luxury for nearly eighteen hundred years, down to the very time when the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope opened to Europe an access by sea to the trade of the Indies. To people this new city, the Jews were invited among other nations, by the most liberal offers. A large colony in consequence was removed thither, where in a few years the emigrants lost in a great measure the knowledge both of the Hebrew and the Chaldee, and it became necessary for them to have their Scriptures translated into Greek, or lose all knowledge of their religion.

It is said, on very slender authority it is true, that the occasion of translating the Old Testament into Greek was the desire of Ptolemy Philadelphus to have a copy for the famous Alexandrian library, which was begun not long after the death of Alexander. However that might be, such a version we know was made, about two hundred and seventy-seven years before Christ, and thus opened the Jewish theology, hitherto shut up in an obsolete dialect, to the whole heathen world. We know moreover, that this was the translation made use of by Christ and his apostles, as almost all their quotations from the Old Testament are found in it nearly word for word.

Thus we have arrived at a most important era in the Providential preparation of the world for the advent of the Redeemer, the diffusion of the Greek language and literature through colonization in the West, and the conquests of Alexander in the East, from Spain to the Euphrates, the adoption of that language by the Jews themselves, and the translation into it of their sacred writings. That the Greek soon became the current language of Judea we may be sure from the Apocrypha, which is wholly written in that tongue. We have described the causes by which this state of things, so important to the spread of the Gospel, was brought about. The conquest of Grecian arms was transient, that of Grecian mind was substantial and enduring. The wide empire of Alexander was dissolved at his death, which happened at the age of thirty-two, his own dissipation and folly closing his career at that early period, before he had time to consolidate his conquests, or perpetuate in his own family his dominion. The consequence was, that his empire fell to his generals, divided, according to the language of prophecy, "to the four winds of heaven." They soon fell to quarrelling among themselves, and the whole history of their reigns, and those of their successors is but one tissue of wars and treasons, murders and crimes, till they were all swallowed up and lost in the Roman empire.