kind, as revealed to us in Scripture, is ever found to be in strict conformity and adaptation to the machinery of human passions. In other words, that God's dealings with mankind are fitted for mankind. The mere punishment of the Canaanitish idolaters, we have reason to believe, was not the sole nor the main object of the awful executions now alluded to. Other nations, both in ancient and modern times, have, we know, grievously sinned as they had done, and yet have been allowed to await the ordinary and procrastinated course of the Divine judgments. The real end aimed at on that occasion was, no doubt, the warning and example afforded by these means the wavering Israelites themselves. And most fear. ful and appalling must that example have proved to their own chiding consciences. Whether the lesson thus practically taught them, respecting the grievous crime of idolatry, was more severe than the actual circumstances required, is best shown by considering to what degree, after all, they did really escape the contagion of irreligion, communicated by their neighbours. Now we know that the apostasy of even these chosen delegates of Divine retribution was, at everal periods of their history, all but complete. As, during their wanderings in the desert, they looked back, with regret and longing, to the coarse servile fare of Egypt, so, during a large portion of their residence in the promised land, they envied and imitated the gross worship of their idolatrous neighbours, and were retained within the limits of something resembling the pure religion taught from Mount Sinai, only by an external circumvallation of rites, and isolating usages, too well contrived for even their wayward obstinacy to break through. In the latter period of their history, immediately preceding the Chaldean captivity, to such an extent had the principle of irreligion prevailed, that if a remnant of true believers still existed, it was a remnant in the strictest application of the term; men chased from society

and herding in woods and rocks, from the persecution of their apostate sovereigns. Still it is remarkable that the surrounding darkness never completely closed over that remarkable country, to the total extinction of the light from heaven. The machinery employed by Providence for the furtherance of its purpose exactly performed the work required and no more. Had one degree less of severity been adopted, had the Mosaic ritual been rendered less exclusive, and the spirit of nationality less earnestly forced upon them, it cannot be doubted but that the principle of evil would have finally prevailed over them, and our blessed Saviour at his coming, would have had to preach noly doctrines of the Gospel to a people unimbued with the first notions of sound theism. "When ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ve nollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you. And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone. As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you." Before, then, we charge the denunciations of the Mosaic code against acts of idolatry, as sanguinary and unjustifiable, or its ceremonial institutions, for the furtherance of the same object, as vexatious and trifling, let it at least be shown, that a slighter effort, on the part of the legislator, would have attained the required object. If this cannot, as assuredly it cannot, be proved, then the only conclusion to which we can arrive, from the whole bearings of the case, is, that after all, the means adopted were only just adequate to the emergency, and that what has been set up as an accusation against the truth of revelation on this occasion is, in reality, an additional argument of the wisdom in which its various integral parts have been arranged.

CHAPTER X.

Of the Moral Tendency of the Levitical Institutions.

BUT the defender of the inspiration of the Mosaic writings will not be content to rest his cause solely upon exculpatory arguments. Those compositions profess to be the dictation of almighty wisdom; and if that assertion be correct, we may reasonably expect to find, in the character of their precepts, some internal proof and indication of the pure source from which they emanated. Now, on this point, the course before us is an easy one. Christianity, we know, was not introduced into the world until after the expiration of at least four thousand years from the time of its creation. During that long period, with the single exception of the patriarchal families, previous to the era of Moses, and of the Jewish nation, subsequently to that time, the human mind had to form its own opinions upon the great questions of religion and morals, from the conclusions of the light of nature only, unless we admit also the not improbable supposition, that some remnants of original tradition contributed their aid towards the formation of the schools of ancient philosophy. Let, then, the infidel give us, in support of our argument, the single book of the Old Testament, or even the writings of Moses only, and let him take the full benefit of all the occasional sublime morality, and all the theology, which he can find in the works of the philosophers and moralists of heathenism, from the earliest period of history down to that of the ministry of Christ. No doubt he will find there much which every Christian will admire and approve, for we have St. Paul's own warrant for the assertion, that there was enough of

soundness in the wisdom of those remarkable men, to render the plea of ignorance unavailable to those who, notwithstanding such helps, continued in the commission of sin. Still, however, we may confidently challenge the Augustan age itself to produce, if it can, by selection from all the works of all the ancients, a code of morals and theology, at all approaching in excellence to that contained in the single law of Moses, written, be it remembered, almost in the world's very infancy, and when Greece and Italy lay, as yet, immersed in the deepest barbarism. Had we, in fact, nothing to produce but the Decalogue itself, we should feel no anxiety for the issue of the challenge. It may be said, indeed, with reference to this last observation, that the doctrine of the unity of the Godhead, and the great laws of social morality, may be found as fully and explicitly stated in the works of the better heathen ethical writers, as in those Two Tables. But, admitting that the more obvious injunctions and prohibitions may be as clearly expressed elsewhere, the existence of the second and tenth commandments would, we think, completely bear out our case. Other legislators may have asserted the unity of the supreme Being, and his claim to priority of worship: but we very much doubt whether any precept, excepting that of Moses, can be quoted, which anticipates the first commencing germ of the principle of idolatry within the heart, by pointing out and guarding against the tendency to polytheism, produced by the toleration of a more limited veneration of inferior beings; or which, after denouncing the various overt acts of positive and practical immorality, proceeds to subject the mere latent wish, the unripened, and, as yet, unoperative desire to the same uncompromising censure. We learn, from Josephus, the strong effect produced upon the Jewish nation, even at the latter period of their existence, by the prohibitive injunction of the second commandment of the Decalogue, in the case of the

resistance which they made to the innovations of Herod, upon the mere introduction by him of trophies, bearing a very rude resemblance to the human form, within the walls of Jerusalem; and we cannot but contrast the beneficial result of this feeling of extreme caution on so nice a point in that people, with the gross abuses which have eventually attended seemingly harmless deviations from the strictness of this rule in the instance of the Church of Rome. It was surely no human wisdom which, at so early and dark an era as that of Moses, detected one of the most deceitful principles of the human breast, and anticipated the coming mischief by a cautious and effectual prospective enactment. Let us take another instance in point. Even in the writings of Cicero we find the Stoic Balbus introduced, as maintaining the theory of the divine nature of the sun, and the other heavenly bodies, and of their claim to our reverence as such." Such was the purest form of theology at Rome, at a period little antecedent to our Saviour's nativity. Nor can any one read the alleged conversations of that truly remarkable man now alluded to, with his contemporary philosophers, on these sublime subjects, without perceiving how much more the great questions of religion appear to have been considered by them rather as matters of curious and abstract discussion, than as any thing in which they, as responsible beings, had a vested and most momentous interest. In opposition to such cold and unprofitable skirmishing of the intellect, let us quote the surprisingly vivid and soul-stirring appeal of the Jewish legislator on this self-same point. "Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation