intermarried with the priests of the tribe of Levi; and they assisted
at the worship and sacrifices,--'standing before the Lord' (as
Jeremiah had foretold) 'in the temple,' but living (as some say)
outside the walls in their tents. And it is worth remembering, that
we have one psalm in the Bible, which was probably written either by
one of these Rechabites, or by Jeremiah for them to sing, and that a
psalm which you all know well, the old man's psalm, as it has well
been called--the 71st Psalm, which is read in the visitation of the
sick; which says, 'O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and
hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old
and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy
strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to
come.'

It was, moreover, a Rechabite priest, we are told--'one of the sons
of the Rechabim spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet'--who when the Jews
were stoning St. James the Just, one of the twelve apostles, cried
out against their wickedness.

What befell the Rechabites when Jerusalem was destroyed, we know not:
but they seem to have returned to their old life, and wandered away
into the far east; for in the twelfth century, more than one thousand
years after, a Jewish traveller met with them 100,000 strong under a
Jewish prince of the house of David; still abstaining from wine and
flesh, and paying tithes to teachers who studied the law, and wept
for the fall of Jerusalem. And even yet they are said to endure and
prosper. For in our own time, a traveller met the Rechabites once
more in the heart of Arabia, still living in their tents, still
calling themselves the sons of Jonadab. With one of them, Mousa
(i.e. Moses) by name, he talked, and Mousa said to him, 'Come, and I