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He also, together with two of his sons, was treacherously murdered by his son-in-law Ptolemy, who aspired to the exalted office of high-priest, leaving his son John Hyrcanus to reign in his stead, in the year 136 B.C. The rule of the Maccabees, the five sons of Mattathias, lasted thirty years. They were the founders of the Asmonean princes, who ruled both as kings and high-priests.
At this time there were 175 suffrage centers. The members reaffirmed with enthusiasm their determination to carry on the fight for ratification. An important feature of the year had been the endorsement of the amendment by the State Teachers' Association, the State Federation of Women's Clubs and the Women's Benevolent Association of the Maccabees.
The career of David could not be unfamiliar to a youth who was within easy reach of the haunts of the shepherd-psalmist. And the story of the Maccabees would stir his soul, as his parents recounted the exploits of Judas and his brethren, in which the ancient Hebrew faith and prowess had revived in one last glorious outburst. How ineffaceable are the impressions of the Home!
And it is vain for you to think that you, at least, will escape torture and death by resigning yourselves into their hands; for their hearts are like the nether mill-stone, and they find an evil pleasure in hearkening to the groans of those who perish under their torments. Therefore defend yourselves, as did the Jews in the days of the Maccabees!
For, from the time that Cyrus first gave leave to build the temple, till its completion, was twenty-one years; and its duration, four hundred and twenty; in the whole, sixty-three weeks, or four hundred and forty one years. And even after finishing it, they were almost continually in trouble, and persecuted, as is evident from the books of Maccabees, and from Josephus.
Aristobulus, the son of Hyrcanus, was called King, as well as High Priest of the Jews; but the mixture of worldly policy with the sacred office did not suit well, and the Asmonean Kings were not like their fathers, the Maccabees.
"Thy grandfather was a servile attendant upon the temple of Ascalon!" she went on, with fury. "Thy other ancestors were shepherds, bandits, conductors of caravans, a horde of slaves offered as tribute to King David! My forefathers were the conquerors of thine! The first of the Maccabees drove thy people out of Hebron; Hyrcanus forced them to be circumcised!"
But the Waldenses were a primitive and simple people; they had neither king nor leader; their only sovereign was Jehovah; their only guides were their Barbes. The struggle under the Maccabees was a noble one; but it attained not the grandeur of that of the Vaudois. It was short in comparison; nor do its single exploits, brave as they were, rise to the same surpassing pitch of heroism.
Whether Persia or Greece was more directly the source of the new hope which crept almost unperceived into the stern bosom of Judaism is not certain. But the first clear voice of that hope comes from the time of the martyrs. In the second book of the Maccabees is told probably by an Alexandrian Jew the story of the men and women who faced a dreadful death rather than disobey the Law of their God.
The hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an adequate community of feeling as well as widespread need in the Jewish race, and the hope that among its finer specimens there may arise some men of instruction and ardent public spirit, some new Ezras, some modern Maccabees, who will know how to use all favouring outward conditions, how to triumph by heroic example, over the indifference of their fellows and the scorn of their foes, and will steadfastly set their faces towards making their people once more one among the nations.
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