Canaan; he laid before them in detail a moft encouraging catalogue of the bleffings which would accompany them as long as they should remain faithful to Jehovah; and prophetically denounced, in terms equally circumftantial, the miferies, with which Divine juftice would pursue the difobedience of themselves and their pofterity. Having performed this concluding office of duty and affection to his countrymen ; and having appointed, as the Lord directed him, Joshua to be their leader in his place; having committed the Book of the Law, which he had written, to the care of the Levites, that it might be preserved by the fide of the Ark; he afcended to the top of Mount Nebo: and having from that station surveyed the promised land, which he was not to enter, died before the Lord. His body was buried by the Lord in a valley in the country of the Moabites, in a spot not difclofed to the children of Ifrael; left, as it fhould feem, their reverence for the memory of their departed lawgiver, concurring with their inherent pronenefs to idol

atry,

atry, should afterwards lead them to pay religious honours to his remains.

Such was, as to this world and its labours, the end of Mofes, the fervant of God. In every instance, except in that which was punished, for an awful proof of the impartial dealings of the Supreme Being with men, by his being forbidden to enter the land of promise; he appears to have difcharged with unabated zeal the commiffion with which he was entrufted. The law which through his inftrumentality was communicated to the Ifraelites, confifted partly of inftructions and precepts in themselves of a moral and religious nature; partly of ceremonial ordinances, and directions, respecting points originally indifferent. The former branch contained a clear revelation of the eternity, the power, the wisdom, the goodness, and the other infinite perfections, of the only God, the Maker, the Preferver, the Governor, and the Judge of the universe. In the ten commandments, the fum of moral duty may truly be faid to be compre

F

comprehended; fince the prohibition of the chief crime in each clafs of offences evidently includes, by parity of reasoning, the prohibition of all inferior crimes of that class, as partaking of the finful nature, and tending ultimately to produce the guilt, of the greatest. The fubordinate duties thus implied in the commandments were afterwards in a great variety of cafes detailed and exemplified at large in other parts of the books of Mofes. This branch of the law is manifeftly of universal and perpetual obligation; and is repeatedly mentioned as fuch by our Saviour. The other branch was defigned to be obligatory on the Jews only; and on them no longer than until the coming of the Meffiah, whose fufferings and atonement many of its rites. and ceremonies prefigured. If in this part of the law we should meet with fome directions, the object and utility of which should not at first fight be apparent to us; let us beware of fetting up the conclufions of our ignorance against the unbounded wisdom of the Deity. A clofer confideration of

the

the fubject will teach us humbly to acknowledge, that all these inftitutions anfwered the purposes of exercising the Ifraelites in faith and obedience; of preferving them a diftinct and feparate people; and of training them by a peculiar mode of difcipline (7), wifely according with their habits, prepoffeffions and circumstances, for the reception of the new dispensation to be revealed under the Meffiah. It will teach us also that many of those directions, which rashness and prefumption are fometimes heard to cenfure as trifling, and unworthy of the Divine attention, were specifically calculated to guard the people of Ifrael from being betrayed into certain particular modes of idolatry and wickedness prevalent in the nations among whom they were to dwell.

(/) Gal. iii. 23-25•

F 2

CHAP. III.

SUMMARY VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS FROM THE DEATH OF MOSES TO THE PRESENT TIME.

JOSHUA, OSHUA, having received from the Almighty a promise of unfailing fupport (a), and a grant, in behalf of the Ifraelites, of the whole region extending from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and from the mountains of Lebanon on the north to the Wilderness of Sin on the fouth (6); prepared to put the twelve tribes into poffeffion of their inheritance. The hand of God was ftretched out to aid him. The waters of the river Jordan, at that time overflowing, like the Nile, with its annual inundation, were miraculously parted afunder to afford a paffage on dry ground to the host. The

(a) Joshua, i. 5.

(b) Joh. i. 4. See alfo Numb. xxxiv. 3. Deut. xi. 24. and Gen. xv. 18.

walls