and a single test of his obedience was instituted: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Gen. i. 28, 29. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." ii. 16, 17. The prohibition was soon violated; the fruit was eaten, and man was driven from his easier employment in Eden, the garden of the Lord, to earn his bread by "the sweat of his face," from out the land cursed with the spontaneous and rapid growth of the thorn, the thistle, and all kinds of weeds, until he should himself be consigned to the earth which he had cultivated. The seasons were changed, and the cattle, partaking of the disobedient nature of their lord and master, were to be held in subjection by the rod of power.

Agricultural writers usually make a distinction between gardening and agriculture, though both of them are, in fact, the cultivation of the soil. But that is usually called gardening which is on a small scale, in a piece of ground near to the dwelling; and to raise, by the labour of man alone, vegetables for the use of the family. Agriculture is carried on upon a larger scale, with the help of cattle, and for the sustenance of cattle as well as man. And, in comparing the two, gardening still seems to bear much of its original character, of an employment and opportunity of meditation, in a state of comparative tranquillity and innocence. In agriculture there is more of the sweat of the brow to subdue the turbulent passions of rebellious man, and those turbulent passions are likewise called into action from the often untractable dispositions of the once obedient, but now rebellious animals, our servants.

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Of the immediate offspring of our transgressing progenitors, one was a keeper of sheep," the other "was a tiller of the ground." The one offered in sacrifice to God, as an emblem of an atonement afterwards to be made," the firstlings of his flock;" the other "brought of the fruit of the ground," an emblem of " the first fruits" of them that were to arise from the earth at THE GREAT AND AWFUL HARVEST OF ALL. (1 Cor. xv. 20-23. Rev. xiv. 15.)

In process of time, the earth being filled with violence

and wickedness, God was pleased to drown the whole with an overwhelming flood, preserving only eight persons, together with some of each kind of animal, alive, in an ark which floated on the waters; and, on the subsiding of these waters, a blessing of fruitfulness and multitude was pronounced upon the survivors, and a promise was made, that, "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." The animal, as well as the vegetable creation, was granted to man as his food; and then Noah, the head of the remnant of the old world, the head also, and progenitor of the new, "began to be an husbandman, and planted a vineyard." The wealth of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, consisted chiefly in their flocks and their herds: they were temporary sojourners, in tents, in a strange land; but that land was promised to them, that is to their posterity, in after times, as a settled habitation, as “a land flowing with milk and honey,”—“ a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive; a land wherein they should eat bread without scarceness," where they should "not lack any thing;" "a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills they should dig brass:" Deut. viii. 7—9. Accordingly, in the due time, the children of Israel were established in this country, with this blessing upon them, if they should observe the commandments of God: "The Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.— The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy store-houses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto.And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground. The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand." (See Deut. xxviii. 1-14.) The contrary of all this, and much more, was denounced against them in case of disobedience.

The land of Israel lies considerably within the temperate zone, from about 311°, to about 331°, of north latitude, and

is about 11° across at its greatest breadth, and about 1° in the narrowest part; so that it cannot, at the most, be considered as containing above three square degrees. Fleury, in his book on "The Manners of the Israelites," the edition by Dr. Adam Clarke, (3d edit. 8vo. p. 59), says, that "It cannot be computed as less than five degrees square, according to the maps." But five degrees square would give twenty-five square degrees; so that he must surely mean, but five square degrees, and that seems to be greatly too much. The computation here made is from the maps in "Wells's Geography of the Old and New Testament, in 2 vols. Oxford, 1801." Three square degrees will give 4,800 square miles, and 3,072,000 square acres. This is supposing it to be a flat surface,, but its hills and mountains will make it considerably more. If we consider the land of Israel, then, as only two degrees, or 120 miles, in length, it is but about ten miles more than the space in England from London to Norwich, or to Bath, with a breadth varying from 90 to 30 miles. England may be said to be about 50 in length from north to south, with a breadth varying from one to three degrees; that is about 300 miles in length, by from 60 to 180 broad. England alone, not including Wales, contains 86,129 square miles, and 63,719,695 square acres. The total population of England alone is 8,331,434. When David numbered the people, (2 Sam. xxiv. 9.) there were 800,000 fighting men in Israel, and 500,000 men of Judah, or 1,300,000. We must reckon nearly as many women as men, or at least, 1,200,000, and of old men, old women and children at least five to every couple, which would make 6,500,000, or a total population of 9,000,000, much exceeding that of England, upon not a tenth of its space. And this may be easily credited, if we take several particulars into consideration, as, first, the general fertility of the land. We consider it not bad wheat land in England, which, from a sowing of 2 'bushels to the acre makes a return of from 20 to 30 bushels. Suppose we take 25 as the medium, that is tenfold; whereas the sower in the parable, from his "good ground," received a return of thirty, sixty, and an hundred fold. They had, secondly, no horses for war, for agriculture, for carriages, or for pleasure, the maintenance of which with us takes up so large a portion of our land. Their parks and useless pleasure grounds must have been but small, and their general habits were more plain and frugal than ours *.

"For the

* Maundrel, in his Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, says, husbanding of these mountains, their manner was to gather up the stones,

The land of Israel was bounded on the north and northeast by the mountains of Lebanon and Hermon, which kept off the cold winds in that direction, while the mountains on the south equally defended them from the scorching winds from the Deserts of Arabia; and the Mediterranean Sea, on the west and north-west, supplied it with refreshing breezes.

In respect to tenure, each Israelite had his own portion of arable land, which was the same as that which had been allotted to his forefathers at the first settlement under Joshua: and to each district were assigned common pastures for the support of their numerous flocks and herds. They could neither change their place, nor enrich themselves to any great degree. The laws respecting the jubilee had provided, that all alienations should be revoked every fifty years; and it was forbidden to exact the payment of debts, not only in the forty-ninth, but also in every sabbatical year. This very much prevented both selling and borrowing: and thus every man was confined to the portion of his ancestors, and took a pleasure in improving it, knowing it could never go out of the family. If, by the increase of a family, it was necessary

and place them in several lines, along the sides of the hills, in form of a wall. By such borders they supported the mould from tumbling, or being washed down; and formed many beds of excellent soil, rising gradually one above another, from the bottom to the top of the mountains. Of this form of culture you see evident footsteps wherever you go in all the mountains of Palestine. Thus the very rocks were made fruitful. And, perhaps, there is no spot of ground in this whole land, that was not formerly improved, to the production of something or other ministering to the sustenance of human life: for, than the plain countries nothing can be more fruitful, whether for the production of corn or cattle, and consequently of milk. The hills, though improper for all cattle, except goats, yet being disposed into such beds as are afore described, served very well to bear corn, melons, goards, cucumbers, and such like garden stuff, which makes the principal food of these countries for several months in the year. The most rocky parts of all, which could not well be adjusted in that manner for the production of corn, might yet serve for the plantation of vines and olive trees, which delight to extract, the one its fatness, the other its sprightly juice, chiefly out of such dry and flinty places. And the great plain joining to the Dead Sea, which, by reason of its saltness, might be thought unserviceable both for cattle, corn, olives, and vines, had yet its proper usefulness, for the nourishment of bees, and for the fabric of honey; of which Josephus gives us his testimony, (De Bell. Jud. lib. v. cap. 4.) and I have reason to believe it, because when I was there, I perceived in many places a smell of honey and wax, as strong as if one had been in an apiary. Why, then, might not this country very well maintain the vast number of its inhabitants, being in every part so productive of either milk, corn, wine, oil, or honey, which are the principal food of these eastern nations; the constitution of their bodies, and the nature of their clime, inclining them to a more abstemious diet than we use in England and other colder regions ?"-P. 65.

to divide an estate into shares, the smallness of each of them was compensated by breeding large flocks of cattle in the common pastures.

The soil of the land of Israel must have been, in general, light and rich, from the abundance which it produced, and from the circumstance of its agriculturists plowing usually with a yoke, or pair, of oren to a plough, as was the case when Elijah came and found the great farmer Elisha with his twelve ploughs and yokes of oxen before him, and he himself, like a thrifty husbandman, holding the twelfth. (See 1 Kings, xix. 19.)

In respect to mines, the Israelites seem not to have had any gold and silver of their own: that appears to have been furnished from Arabia, especially from Ophir, whilst Solomon was supplied with what he had for the temple by Hiram, King of Tyre, who probably imported it from Ophir: (see 1 Kings, ix. 11. x. 2-14. xxii. 48. Psalm xlv. 9. lxxii. 15.) and, indeed, it was forbidden to them "greatly to multiply gold and silver." (Deut. xvii. 17.) But, in the more useful metals employed in agricultural and domestic purposes, in those, as we have before seen, it was promised that the country should abound; it was to be " a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass," or copper. (Deut. viii, 9.) We read of coals with which they made fires, as if they were mineral coals; we hear of them used at the altar, by the refiner, by the smith, and by the baker; and the high priest's servants" had made a fire of coals," at which they warmed themselves, when Peter" stood with them and warmed himself." (Levit. xvi. 12. Prov. vi. 28. xxv. 22. Isa. vi. 6. xliv. 12. John, xviii. 18. Rom. xii. 20.) But, on farther examination, we shall find that these coals were from wood. (Deut. xxix. 11. 1 Kings, xviii. 23. Psalm cxx. 4. Prov. xxvi. 21. Isa. xxx. 33. xliv. 9-20.) It might, however, perhaps, for some purposes, be first converted into charcoal. The Israelites had a festival called Xylophory, in which every one brought wood to the temple in great solemnity, for feeding the sacred fire, kept continually burning on the altar of burnt-offerings. This feast is no where mentioned in Scripture; but Josephus speaks of it, De Bell. Jud. lib. ii. cap. 17. § 6. It was on the fourteenth of Lous or Ab, the fifth month, or July. Sandys, indeed, in his Travels, speaking of the Dead Sea, says, "At the foot of the bordering mountaines, there are certaine blacke stones which burne like coales, (whereof the pilgrimes make fires) yet diminish not therewith; but only become lighter and whiter." P. 142. They sometimes burnt