The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1892-07-08

hood of today we open the fountains of that
past herOism to which history points us, and
unless you modern AsamOnians bear your
name in vain, nothing will quicken the Mac
cabean blood as that history made against
the Syrians in the mountains of Judea by
Mattathias and his sons, especially Judas
Maccabeus. To initiate the Maccabean lungs
with the mountain oxygen of that ancient
herOism Is the fitting purpose of today.
When SavOnarOla was placed on the rack
to extort from him some scheme which
his enemies declared he concealed, he re-
piled "My secrets are few because my pur-
poses were great"
Originally the simplicity of the AsamOnean
purpose was go great that it made Macca-
bean history unique. The temple of JehO-
vah and the welfare of the nation covered
their whole purpose.
When the Syrians under Antiochus Epip-
hanes enforced the tyranny of brutal power,
enslaving the Jews and desecrating the
temple, there at last arose a single voice
and one diyinely nerved arm in defense of
liberty. A deyOut priest, Mattathias, said
20, that am born to see the temple OF my
fathers DETAINED, and doomed to sit in
silence while strangers desecrate the sacred
place. If even all the people shall yield at
the word of Antiochus, and deny the God
of their fathers, yet will not l and my sons"
This heroic voice rang through the streets of
the city and went re-ecboing through the
mountains. This priest and his sons had it
declared throughout Judea that "Heaven
and earth shall witness that when we the
descendants of Asamonius forsake the ways
of our fathers it will be by the Out-number-
ing power of our enemies" This heroic
| .,xtl Al.
religious liberty in the second century b. c.,
out of which was born to you the name we
bear today. 1t was i'm the white heat of
that religious persecution that the name was
forged, literally forged. The son of Matt
athias and the descendant OF AsamOnius as
Josephus tells, Judas, the third of five sons
who followed and fashioned the destiny of
! their father; this father in his dying hour
/ said to his sons You shall receive from
Jehovah some sort of an Immortality for the
remembrance of your actions, and | want
you so in love with this immortality that
you may pursue its glory" Instantly this
Judas flung himself into the conflict against
Samarians and Syrians, and the first
speech with which he rallied his soldiers
sounds like the speech of our first independ
ence day-"O my fellow soldiers if you now
fight manfully you may recover your liberty,
which is thing agreeable to all men, and
to us much more so because it offers us
liberty to worship Jehovah" At the head
of this growing Asamonian power this in
d0minitable leader continued to rain down
his blows, like mighty forging hammer,
whose power proved the Providence of
nations, until reduced TO pieces the bar
barians were kept In check, and the devout
Jews secured the sacredness of their temple.
Judas, the leader, became known as
Judas Maccabeus from Mdccdbi-the ham,
meier, ieducer, eXtinguisher-and since,
his family, and the history they made, with
two sacred books have taken this name.
We do well to recall this name especially
because 1t links us to one of the earliest
struggles for intelligent human liberty, and
il points toward that sacred element in the
race from which was born that Carpenters
Son who opened that liberty which gives us
our civilization of human freedom; for in
| the days of the coming of Christ, no history
shed greater lustre on the past than the
history of that band whose name is today
slightly commoner than their heroism.
The Maccabean history deserves to be
memorialized; they were poor, oppressed,
but pious. devout, reverent, heroic, and
when the infue..c .ce of the eastern states Of
| the Macedonian powers came in upon them
| through the Syra2s tyranizing their politics
and Hellenizing their religion, they shew a
divine resistance, from which we may draw
helpful lessons.
| When Caracen and Catholic came in con-
| flict the Moors in Spain made mild history
| compared with the desertion, persecution
and martyrdom of the Jews under the
cruelty of Antiochus. The charm of mill
tary power and the poetry of Hellenic
philosophy led thousands of young Jews
into desertion; fear and cowardice seized the
Samarians, they fell before the Barbarians'
and denied all allegiance with Israel. Their
cowardly letter to Antiochus reads "Tt
King Antiochus, the god Epiphanes; me
mortal from the Sidonians who live In
Shechem. While we have kept the Sabbath
and have worshipped at Mt. Gerizzim, similar