The Bible not of man : or, The argument for the divine origin of the Sacred Scriptures, drawn from the Scriptures themselves

Front matter

THE

BIBLE NOT OF MAI:

OR,

Contents

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.

THE FITNESS OF THE TIME SELECTED BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION.

PAGE.

Chapter I. The Bible Above The Invention Of The Human Intellect

The views which the Scriptures give of the Deity ... 46

The views presented of the Divine purposes 49

The Scripture account of the work of creation 51

The Scripture account of the works of Providence ... 53

The view the Scriptures present of the redemption of man . 56

Everything the Bible reveals, forms a part of one great whole 61

The inexhaustible fulness of the Sacred Writings .... 64 The intellectual character of the writers of the Bible, and of

the age in which it was written 67

4 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER 11.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BIBLE A SUPERHUMAN SPIRIT.

PAGE.

This peculiar spirit appears in its precepts and truths , . 73 It is most emphatically expressed, in all its tenderness, when

and where it is most needed 75

The spirit of those institutions which the Bible establishes . 78 Its spirit of kindness flows out to all classes of tlie human

family 80

The great end and motive of the Divine conduct which it

reveals 84

The spirit of the Bible as expressed in its own wondrous

method of redeeming mercy 86

CHAPTER HI.

THE MORAL RECTITUDE OF THE BIBLE.

The truth and justice of its moral distinctions 97

It furnishes the only perfect standard of moral rectitude . . 100 The solicitude it expresses, and the means it adopts for tlie

promotion of moral rectitude among men 105

The protection of moral rectitude in the dispensations of

pardoning mercy 109

CHAPTER IV.

THE PECULIAR DOCTRINES OF THE BIBLE GIVE EVI- DENCE OF ITS DIVINE ORIGIN.

The character of man 119

The moral transformation indispensable to salvation . . . 120 The method of the sinner's pardon and acceptance witli God 122

The distinctive character of Christian piety 122

The / purpose of God in extending his grace to a chosen

people 123

The eternal punishment of the incorrigible enemies of God 124

CONTENTS. r.

rAou.

The duty of believing* the Gospel 1^>4

No false religion has such frank and unreserved honesty . 126 No false religion would have given tliGse great and peculiar

doctrines such prominence J29

No false religion would have disclosed truths so obnoxious

to the human heart 133

These truths would have been fatal to the success of Christianity, if it had not been from God . 137

CHAPTER Y.

THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE A PROOF OF ITS DIVINE ORIGIN.

It is founded in knowledge . . . . , , • . . . . 15^

It is the religion of the heart c . . . . . 154

Its unearthly tendency 161

It is a progressive and growing religion 163

The religion of the saints of the Old and New Testament is

represented as an imperfect religion ........ 166

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNITY OF THE SCRIPTURES.

The agreement in the facts narrated 172

Unity in the representations of religious truth . . . . . 178 The harmony of doctrine, experience, and practice .... 182 The harmony of the Old and New Testaments 185

CHAPTER Vn.

ADAPTATION OF THE SCRIPTURES TO THE CHARAC- TER AND WANTS OF MAN.

Their adaptation to man as an individual 198

Their adaptation to man in his social relations 211

6 CONTENTS,

PACK.

This adaptation is as extensive as it is minute . . . . . 216 This revelation is adapted to all periods of time .... 220 Illustration from the South Sea Islanders 227

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE SCRIPTURES ATTESTED BY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

The great truths of the Bible fitted to exert an influence on

the heart 233

It is a book of promises . 237

Its instructions on the subject of prayer 239

It gives peace and consolation in death 242

The testimony of the Christian's experience not refuted by

the negative testimony of the infidel 247

The Christian's experience founded on solid reasons . . . 248 The nature of the evidence from experience and consciousness 251

The testimony from the Christian's experience fortified by unnumbered witnesses , 256

CHAPTER IX.

THE BIBLE ACCORDANT WITH HUMAN REASON.

To reason justly, men must have the opportunity and the

means of reasoning 266

May not the Author of the book of nature and of providence

give a more full revelation of his will ? 269

Is there anything unreasonable in the revelation itself? . . 270 It may contain truths which human reason would not have

discovered 271

And truths above and beyond the power of human reason to

comprehend 273

The great truths and principles of the Bible constitute a

reasonable system 276

CONTENTS. 7

CHAPTER X.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.

The nature and importance of the argument from the Bible

itself 288

Relations of the argument to those who reject its Divine

authority 296

The doctrine of the church of Rome respecting the authority

of the Sacred Writings 301

The province of reason in all matters of religious faith . . 304

A common error of modern Rationalists 306

The importance of established religious principles . . . .311 The Scriptures deserve the most serious and patient study,

and afFectionate regard • . . 316

PRELIMIMRY DISSERTATION.

THE FITNESS OF THE TIME SELECTED BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION.

The time was long between the promise given to our first parents in the garden of Eden, and the actual coming of the promised Saviour. The patriarchs Avere looking for him, but his advent was delayed. The prophets were looking for him, and ^^ inquired and searched diligently Avhat, or what manner of time" it would be when He should appear, of whose '' sufferings they testified beforehand, and the glory that should follow." Holy men were watching and waiting ; holy women too were look* mg out in anxious expectation for that highly favored one, who should be the mother of Him who was the ^^ Seed of the woman," and the ^^ Son of the Highest."

But the time was still distant. Four thousand years passed slowly away before this long cherished and eager expectation was fulfilled, and He who '^ thought it no robbery to be equal with God took upon him the form of a servant," and men beheld his glory '^ as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." So long indeed was the pro-

Eible not of Man. 1 ■''

mise delayedj that not a few began to despair of its ever being fulfilled ; nor were there wanting those who questioned the divine origin of the predictions which foretold his advent. But he who ^' sees not as man sees," unto whom ^^ a thousand years are as one day, and one day is as a thousand years/' had nevertheless been preparing the way as fast as his unerring wisdom saw best. Events had been taking place of high interest ; revolution had been succeeding revolution in the earth with a view to his appearing. '' When the fulness of time was come^ God sent forth his Son." It was in every respect the fit season. It was not too soon, nor was it too late, to secure the objects of his incarnation.

The period selected was, in many particulars, a remarkable period; but it was wonderfully fitted to confirm the truth of divine revelation ; to wake the nations from their long-continued stupidity and infatuation, and fix their attention upon the design of his advent ; as well as to show the power of God in extending his Gospel and kingdom through the aarth, in defiance of the powers of darkness, and the stagnant unbelief of men.

In adverting to some of the characteristics of this period, the first that strikes us is, the extreme corruption of religion and manners throughout the pagan world. We have no means of ascertaining for how long a period after the creation men retained the knowledge of the true God. Very soon after the flood, and certainly as early as the foundation of the Babylonian empire, they became idolaters.

From that period, the greater part of mankind had been wandering in paths which resembled an inextricable labyrinth, the deadly vapors of which extinguished the faint light that conducted their footsteps. More especially from the time in which God called Abraham out from Ur of the Chaldees, do the Gentile nations seem to have been given over to a reprobate mind. From one false notion of the Deity to another more false, and from one system of foolish and demoralizing observances to another, they rushed into idolatry of the grossest form, until they lost sight of most of their religious traditions ; and ^' because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge," had become " Atheists in the world." Phoenicia, Egypt, and Thrace, transmitted their absurd mythology to Greece and Rome, and amid the multiplicity of their gods, the one only living and true God had no place. A selected and favored few there were, in whose bosoms something like the miniature resemblance of this great truth was locked up as an inaccessible secret ; while the multitude thought the Godhead ^' like unto gold, and silver, and stone, graven by art and man's device."

Heathen sages had written upon the nature of virtue and the obligations to practise it, while their own vices showed that they had little knowledge of morals, and were very ineffectual teachers of it to others. '^ Across the night of paganism, philosophy flitted on, like the lantern-fly of the tropics, a light to itself, but alas ! no more than an ornament of the surrounding darkness." Thinking minds had proposed to themselves questions of importance to the hfe that now is, and still more important to that which is to come, without being able to give to any one of them a satisfactory answer. Everywhere they saw mysteries ; and withal, so dense a cloud hanging over the vast future, that the farther they pursued their inquiries the deeper were they plunged in painful uncertainty. . Their thoughts of another life were all confused and obscure. Much was written of ^' manes, and ghosts, and shades of departed men;" their poets sang of streams that emptied into the infernal regions, of ^^ Elysian Fields," of the seats of the blessed, and of nectar quaffed by the gods ; but they were fables got up for the vulgar, and in which the very inventors of them had no confidence. With all her fascinating beauty and tenderness, poetry herself believed not what she wrote ; and though in accordance with the spirit of the age she publicly rehearsed the absurdities of her mythology, in her hours of loneliness and reflection she scarcely ventured to echo the strains of her own lyre. The popular and civil theology, established by the laws, ^^ worshipped everything as god except God himself," and gave its sanction to rites in which there was such a mingling of absurdity, lasciviousness, and cruelty, that they may not be recited. Conscience was not so obdurate and silent, as to be prevented from uttering her admonitions'; nor yet so benighted, as not to have some strong, though indistinct apprehensions of a terrible recompense. Nor

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 1-j

was reason, in the midst of all her degradation, so absolutely stupefied and brutalized, as not sometimes to assert her own greatness, and grasp realities of terrible import. And the more they did this, the more they both stood in frightful perplexity, lest the labyrinth in which they were wandering should border on the verge of the precipice. The state of the pagan mind, however well informed on other subjects, on the subject of religion and morals was to the last degree degraded and melancholy. Among other facts which illustrate this remark, it may be noticed, that the Senate of Rome itself did not pass the decree for the abolition of human sacrifices, until the consulship of Publius Lucius Crassus and Cneius Lentulus, which was but about ninety years before the coming of Christ. Nowhere is so much information upon this point contained within so small a compass, as in the first chapter of PauPs Epistle to the Romans. It is difficult to read the description there given without putting a veil upon one's face. The schools of virtue had des-enerated into the merest sinks of vice and immorality ; theii religion itself had consecrated all sorts of crime , while the best that can be said of their gods is, thai they were the finest representations which the ingenuity and skill of the sculptor could furnish of the basest of human passions.

Such had long been the religious and moral state of the heathen world ; and when the Saviour came it was at its maturity. We cannot delineate the scene, nor tell its darkness. It was the gloom of pervading error, and almost universal crime. It could not be seen, for it enveloped men like the mist of midnight, and was ^^ darkness that might be felt." It penetrated the halls of science and the schools of philosophy ; it shrouded the palaces of kings, threw its dark pall over the chambers of legislation, and overlaid, with its broad mantle, the whole pagan world. Temples, with their shrines, victims, and priests, were wrapped in it ; their vestal fires became flickering, grew pale, and were extinguished. Men there had been, and were, who had erected stupendous monuments in honor of the human intellect ; but on the relations of man to his Maker, they reasoned and wrote like children. In the darkness that overshadowed them they walked at random ; they had an aim, they were conscious there was something to seek after ; but they groped about, '^ if haply they might feel after God, and find him." Here and there, at long intervals, the human mind cast forth a ray of light, but it was fleeting and gone ; like the sudden lightning, it served only to render the gloom which followed more intense and appalling. Night is not darker than the dark day which then overhung the earth. If the deep and dire exigences of men could constitute a fitting season for His coming who was to be the ^^ light of the world," the time had come to interpose either for exterminating or saving it. There could not have been a more seasonable period for God's unfolding his own divine method of mercy. The nations could no longer be left in this fearful degradation ; the prince of darkness could no longer be permitted to roam the earth without restraint ; the God of love could no longer withhold his Son.

Nor was the religious and moral condition of the Jewish nation more enviable than that of the pagan world. The Hebrew race were, from the beginning, designed to be subservient to the introduction of the Gospel to all mankind. Lying as they did upon the borders of Asia, Europe, and Africa, they held a position which signally qualified them to be made use of for this purpose. But by their guilty sympathy with the character of the pagan nations, they became partakers also of their wants and woes. The apostle, after having given the humbling descrij)- tion of other lands, to which we just now referred, applies the same description to the Jews. His epistle was more especially directed to Jews ; and his language to them is, '-^ Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man that judgest, for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things?'' The Jews had long enjoyed the knowledge of God, as it was revealed from heaven; they had been educated amid rites and sacrifices that were prefigurative of the great redemption ; they had come to maturity under^ the instructions of a lawgiver, of holy men, of poets, and of seers who had miraculous intercourse with heaven, and whose great theme was the advent of the predicted Deliverer. But they were an arrogant and proud people, an unbelieving, hard-hearted people, and profited little from their distinguished privileges.

IG THE BIBLE NOT OF MAN.

Until ^^ the carrying away into Babylon" they were an idolatrous people — nay, ^^ mad upon their idols." Wise as their system of religion was, and fitted as it was to answer great and important ends, and of divine origin as it was, it was not designed to be the universal, nor perpetual religion. It was but the commencement of those more complete discoveries of religious truth, which subsequent revelations were to supply ; a sort of preparatory school, that was introductory to a more perfect dispensation. The apostle, in his Epistle to the Galatians, dwells upon this thought in its relations to the truth we are illustrating. ^' Now I say that the heir^ so long as he is a child^ differeth nothing from a servant^ though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, w^hen we were children^ were in bondage under the elements of the world : but lohen the fulness of time tvas come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of

SOJIS^

The Jewish dispensation, at the time of the Saviour's coming, was an old and worn out economy ; it bore the marks of decay and dissolution ; it had accomplished its object without making the nation holy: because it had done its work, it was ^^ ready to vanish away." It ^' could not make the comers thereunto perfect."

But it was important that its inefficacy should be proved ; and the actual condition of the Hebrew nation was now such as to convince them, and the worldj how Httle it could accomphsh. When the Saviour came, their moral depravity was fast adirancing to the last extremities of human wickedness. The cup of their iniquity was full. ^^ Never," says their own historian Josephus, speaking of them but a few years after the birth of Christ — ^^ never was there a time since the beginning of the world more fruitful in wickedness." Their national history, from the days of Malachi to John the Baptist, furnishes the most painful and affecting proof that the condition, even of this favored people of God, demanded the interposition of some great Teacher who should speak '^ with authority, and not as the Scribes." Portions of them Avere sunk in great and disheartening stupidity ; and while the minds of other portions were moved and excited, they were in a state of perplexing doubt, cruel fear, and terrible agitation. For four hundred years, the people who had been wont to enjoy habitual intercourse with the Deity, and to receive frequent and repeated instructions from his lips, had not heard the voice of the God of Abraham, nor had a single messenger from heaven visited them. As a nation, they slept the sleep of death, and seemed to be fast verging towards absolute destruction. The nation was not absolutely broken up ; their religious and civil economy were not actually dissolved ; but they were '^ without form and void."

But the Creator's purposes were not completed in this dark chaos. Already was his Spirit silently and gently hovering over the face of the waters. Rays of truth began to be evolved, which had long been latent, and here and there a few faint beams emerged from the distant horizon. Minds that had been waiting in anxious expectation, caught the coming day as its first light kissed the hill-tops of Judea, and rose brighter until it fell upon its vales, to ^^give light to them that sat in darkness and dwelt in the shadow of death." Lowly cottages were cheered by it, and John saw it in the wilderness. The shepherds of Bethlehem beheld it as they watched their flocks, and heard the cheerful voices that announced its rising : till, at length, the eastern Magi discovered it in the star that led them to the place where the holy child Jesus was cradled.

It is a fact, in several respects of deep interest, that the age in which the Saviour of men became incarnate, was also an age of great intellectual vigor and refinement. This was important, in the first place, for the sake of showing that ^^the world by wisdom knew not God." One of the leading infidel objections to Christianity is, that it is needless, and that the lights of human reason and the refinements of philosophy are able to accomplish all that Christianity proposes. This question is to be determined hy facts. It is by appealing to the moral character of our race under the brightest periods of this Avorld's history ; to periods when the lights of reason and nature had made all the discoveries they could make, and when the wise men of this world had taught all, and more than they knew, that we can form a just estimate of their instructions. Nor is it by any doubtful or tedious process that we are driven to the conclusion, that the most vigorous and best instructed minds the world has known, themselves knew little of the great subjects of which Christianity treats, and which relate to man's eternal well-being. It was an age of unequalled civilization and learning when Christ came : so far as human influences could render them so, civilization and learning were at the zenith of their glory. The palmy days of Grecian literature had indeed become obscured: the age of Pericles and Alcibiades passed away when Greece was reduced to a Roman province. But for along time after this, Greece maintained a silent superiority over her conquerors ; her arts of peace and her schools of philosophy still gave her the preeminence. Athens was still a great commercial emporium, and the tribunal of the Areopagus, one of the most sacred and reputable courts of law in the Gentile world, was distinguished for its legal research and acumen, and for the weight and irnpartiality of its decisions. Some of the most learned men in Rome were still educated in Greece. Julius Caesar was a pupil of ApoUonius Milo, at Rhodes, and Cicero himself, during the civil wars of Rome, was a pupil of the same scholar, as well as of Philo, a refugee from Athens and then at Rome. The sons of Roman princes and senators to a great extent, either procured Greek instructors in Rome, or were sent to Greece as the favorite habitation of genius, eloquence, and

20 i'"iE BIBLE NOT OF MAN.

fancy, and as the consecrated soil where the arts attained their highest perfection.

Rome, too, then extended her boundaries from the Atlantic on the west, to the Euphrates on the east ; and from the Rhine and the Danube on the north, to the deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south. With the exception of Britain soon after subdued by Agricola, the interior of Africa, and the hardy barbarians of the north of Europe, her proud Eagle had become the standard of the world. It was also the golden age of Rome — ''the Augustan age," — proverbial for its preeminence in literature - and the arts. Augustus Caesar, whose personal ' character might indeed have given him rank with Marius, or Sylla, or Nero, was placed by Divine ; providence in circumstances which extended his reputation as a Avarrior, a statesman and a legislator, _ to the utmost kingdoms, came to the throne about - twenty years before the Saviour was born, and then veigned in the splendor of his power. Whatever learning and civilization could achieve for the world,/] it had the full and unembarrassed opportunity of -1 performing ; while the result shows, that, as the intellect of men became invigorated and accomplished, their morals became degraded, and their religion as degraded and vicious as the human mind can loell conceive it to be. And Avhat more fitting time for introducing the Gospel ; for showing that '' the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men ?" The Scriptures call our attention to this remarkable fact. '' It i3 written, I will destroy the Avisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise ? where is the scribe ? where is the disputer of this world ? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ? For after tliat^ in the wisdom of God, the uoi^ld by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of p^eaching to save them that believe." It is an observable expression of Divine wisdom, that his own decree for the moral elevation of men should not be carried into effect until ^^ after that" human wisdom had made its full, and fair, and best experiment, and demonstration was had that •' the vv^orld by wisdom knew not God." Nor is there to be found at the present day, or at any period in the history of the past, more convincing evidence of the insufficiency of natural religion, than is found in the intellectual refinement of that age in which ^' the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

There was another important object attained by the Saviour's advent at this period of intellectual refinement. It was to silence the objection that Christianity could not endure the scrutiny of learning and refinement. In introducing the new religion, a religion which, from the simplicity of its rites, the diffusiveness of its spirit, and the extent of its offered salvation, should stand abreast with the wants of the race, it was greatly desirable that it should be introduced at a time when its claims could be thoroughly canvassed, and the evidence of its divine origin co^ld be put to the test by the

22 'i^HE BIBLE I^OT OF MAN.

severest scrutiny of the most competent and wellfurnished minds. It had been an inauspicious circumstance, and a triumph to infidelity not easily silenced, had Christianity, like the religion of Mahomet, commenced its progress in an ignorant and uncivilized country, and in a barbarous age. It had been no difiicult matter, in such an age, to have practised the grossest imposition ; nor, at such a period, would men have been qualified for that grave research without which no religion ought to be received, nor for ferreting out those tricks of imposture which are attendant upon all false religions. In this respect Christianity stands upon high ground. Her infant Author first announced himself to an age celebrated in story and immortalized in song. His apostles travelled over classic ground. They established churches in the land of Euclid, of Aristotle, and Longinus ; of Demosthenes, Solon, and Lycurgus ; of Homer and Pindar ; of Terence and Varro, Atticus and Cicero, Sallust and Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil. Lands that had given birth to such men, were not likely to shut their eyes upon the gradual encroachment of a religion that counteracted all their previous notions, and that poured contempt upon their altars and their gods. Rather would they scrutinize, with the utmost severity, every item of the evidence by which a religion, claiming to be from Heaven, was supported. Reckoning from the birth of Augustus Caesar a few years onward, we find a constellation of bright and splendid men throwing their light over the Roman empire. Seneca^ the preceptor of Nero, and perhaps more distinguished for his moral virtues than any other heathen philosopher ; Lucan^ the poet : Quinius Curtius, the historian of Alexander the Great ; Pliny the elder, the celebrated philosopher and natural historian, who perished during an eruption of Mount Vesuvius ; Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian ; Martial, Epictetus, and Quintilian, the last of whom was an orator and critic of great celebrity, was patronized by the emperors, established a school of rhetoric at Rome, and whose work remains a text-book in the modern universities of Europe. These were the men, and such as these, who exerted an influence upon the Roman intellect and character at the period when Christianity began its progress.

It may perhaps be still more to our purpose to remark, that the age was one of great legal acumen, and one in which there were not wanting men who were familiar with the laws of evidence, and were trained in the trade of reasoning. The celebrated law of the Twelve Tables, a system of jurisprudence which served as the root of Roman law, which was subsequently digested under Justinian, and which is deemed of no small value in modern times, had already been selected and arranged. It may be questioned, whether the mind of man was ever better prepared to investigate the claims of the new religion, and the great facts on which that religion turned, than was the Gentile mind at that age of the world. And this was the period when the Saviour came. It was when the lights of varied science cooperated with the deeply imbedded prejudices of men against all unwarrantable and ill-founded innovations, that He came who had nothing to fear from the most rigid and unsparing investigation of his title to human confidence.

It may be remarked in the next place, and as an index of bright augury, that at the time the Saviour was horn the world was at peace. Rome had risen to her proud superiority by conquest. The seven hundred years of the Commonwealth had been distinguished by nothing so much as her conflicts with the nations of the earth, and her internal and civil dissensions and massacres. But by a most kind inter-* position of Divine Providence, these evils were now suspended, and there was a universal armistice between the great conqueror and all the nations of the earth. Antiochus of Syria, and the Galatians o^ Asiatic Gauls, had submitted to Rome on her own terms. The second Macedonian war had terminated the kingdom of Macedon at the battle of Pydna, and the Gre*cian independence was overthrown under the walls of Corinth. Scipio Africanus had terminated the third Punic war by the destruction of Carthage, and the Roman army had been triumphant in Spain and Gaul. T?ie Numidian wars had been brought to a close by Caius Marius, and Jugurtha had been led in triumph to Rome. An efl'ectual clieck had been given to the Cimmerian and Scythian tribes in the north, the revolt of the Italian allies had been happily terminated by the generosity of their conquerors, and the pirates of Sicily had been finally suppressed and colonized by the prowess and wisdom of Pompey. Jerusalem had been taken also by the same accomplished warrior; and the embittered contest between the popular and aristocratic parties in Rome had been brought to a close, by the triumphant arms of Julius Cassar over Pompey at the battle of Pharsalia. The internal dissensions between Octavius Caesar and Anthony on the one side, and Brutus and Cassius on the other, had been terminated at Philippi ; Egypt had been reduced to a Roman province, by the victory of Octavius over the far-famed Glueen Cleopatra ; and Octavius, now Augustus Caesar, was called to the throne. The policy of Augustus was a peaceful policy; his object was to effect the stability, rather than the extension of the empire. This emperor died at the advanced age of seventy-five years, between the birth and the crucifixion of Christ, and on his death-bed left his counsel to his statesmen and warriors to make no further incursion upon other lands, but to cultivate the arts of peace. The Cantabrian war was terminated after he came to the throne, and by his orders the temple of Janus was closed. The disturbances in the Bosphorus were now appeased by Agrippa ; Drusus was recalled from Germany, and the command of the army in that province intrusted to Tiberius. The ambition of Augustus was gratified by the consolidation of the empire, and all his plans were to augment its splendor by its industry, its literature, its wealth, and its arts. A short period after