gress, and rebel, though they never called in question the divine commission of Moses, nor the sanction of God to the whole system, nor the reality of his continual presidency in the administration of his own laws. This was a severe and a terrible test to try of the divine authority of the system; and had that announced sanction been a mere pretence and the unwarranted assumption of an impostor, it could not have stood the test of a single age. The whole of the very varied and minute history, however, of the Israelites, is nothing but a minute and complete proof that God was felt by them to be their ever present king, and observer, and judge. And we say, in addition of that history, pervaded as it is by a regular series of warnings and threats, of predictions to be executed soon, at specified dates, or in remote ages, never could have been written by fallible man, least of all by a prejudiced Jew, without immediate access to the councils of the eternal-without the direct superintendance and inspiration of the God who foreordained, who administered, and who executed all.

From the copiousness of the materials for substantiating the truth of our argument, that lie before us in every page almost of that wonderful history, it is obvious that we can do nothing more than merely glance at them, and point out their application. The principles upon which that divine and most striking government was to be conducted, are laid down particularly in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. Here we find, most minutely pointed out, the blessings, the prosperity, and universal happiness that were the promised and assured consequences of obedience; and here also we see pourtrayed, in terrible particularity, the misery and disappointment, and pestilence and disease, disgrace and defeat, and captivity, in case of disobedience. We think it perfectly clear that no legislator of any age-none in those days, especially, when nations were so young, and the records of national experience and the voice of national history non-existences in the earth-could possibly have ventured to assume such high prophetic attitude, and speak with such unhesitating certainty of the unconditional fiat of heaven's eternal decrees, without immediate intercourse with God-without his direction and the assurance that he was speaking the dictates of an eternal law, the unchangeable purpose of him who rules among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. Had Moses, as a mere human lawgiver, taken the data of these prophetic declarations-had the people formed their inductive conclusions from the known and previous history of the nations of the earth, every record was almost in direct contra

diction to any human chance of his being supported by future facts in assuming such a lofty bearing, and a tone of such assured and prophetic certainty, as he there assumes. In the unflattering voice of that most ample promise of unexampled and unmingled happiness, and in the dark and aggravated description of almost inconceivable misery, there is not one doubtful misgiving, not a single appearance of hesitation or hypothetic contigency, not one condition or exception to save the credit of the utterer, in case of non-fulfilment. Had he spoken from the divinely honoured top of Sinai, from the presence of the visible throne of God, in words dictated by the mouth of the Eternal, he could not have uttered what he spoke with more unswerving and unwavering certainty. He had, indeed, an appeal to their own knowledge, in the well-remembered history of their fathers from Abraham-he had an appeal to their own experience in their forty years' pilgrimage-march in the wilderness, and he hesitates not to give the most unqualified assurance that the God who had selected them from all nationswho had hitherto led, and instructed, and judged them, would thenceforth be to them alone, of all people in the earth, a king, and judge, and instructor. Now, the question to be decided is, does the history of this people bear out and substantiate this most extraordinary declaration-a declaration, taken in all its extent and minuteness, unexampled in the history of this world's legislation? If it be found from the future history to have failed, we would be obliged to set down this lofty prophetic style as the unauthorised vaunting of a self-deceiving enthusiast, or a bold and reckless impostor-if it be thoroughly borne out by the future national experience, then unquestionably it was God who spoke, who threatened, and who promised all-and who was ever present to accomplish his threats and make good his promises. A brief historic review will be sufficient to settle the question.

We observe, then, that from the commencement of the history of the peculiar people of God's choice, there is the very same mode of discipline and instruction followed out, in immediate application and particular detail, which we have remarked upon as convincing proof of the reality, of the wisdom, and goodness, and holiness of the divine government of the world, before the particular selection of that nation of witnesses. When they were so constituted and separated from all the rest of the world into that most striking relation, they had been long under the direct influence of the contamination of idolatry, of false worship, and of unchecked wickedness, on their

minds and moral habits. From what appears in their after history, we have every reason to believe that both their minds and their moral habits had suffered greatly from the pestilential contagion. If our previous theory, then, of the necessity of enforcing upon the world an acknowledgment, and conviction, and practical belief of the character and government of God, and of the fundamental, religious, and moral truths under which man must act, under universal or general judgments, be correct, we would naturally look for a repetition of the same method of disciplinary instruction, in the very similar circumstances of the first period of their history; the subduing, the breaking in, as it were, of their minds to an acknowledgment of, and submission to, that new and extensive and terrible law under which they were placed. In that divine history this expectation is thoroughly substantiated ;—the whole of their forty years' wandering in the wilderness is a discipline of goodness and severity. It is evident that they were not capable of interpreting aright, and of applying to practical obedience those laws given from Sinai, clear, and simple, and explicit as they were. Nothing could be clearer or more direct than such laws as these "Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." Yet no sooner had Moses, at their request, retired into the mountain as their mediator, to receive the laws by which they were to be governed, in particular detail of conduct, than, with one accord, they began to engraft upon these sacred laws the idol rites of Egyptian worship. Such conduct could now less than ever pass unchastised and unpunished; and the consequence was an immediate and terrible manifestation of divine displeasure a confounding of the inexcusable idolators an execution of the leaders of their religious revolt. We need not particularise the well-known judgment upon Nadab and Abihu, the nephews of Moses-upon Korah and his company of discontented and seditious Levites; Miriam and Aaron, and even Moses himself, under the strict severity of that initiatory and necessary discipline, were made to feel the utmost displeasure of their offended sovereign. High as these individuals were in office; favoured as they were by the directness of divine communication, their murmuring, and discontent, and rebellion, were so much the more deserving of exemplary visitation. These were particular instances of the divine judicial instruction, and they must have been the more forcibly impressed upon the minds of the people, from the high rank in the chosen army of the individuals who suffered as an example. But the system was general--was universal; it ex

tended over the whole people, and through the long period of the teaching and probation of the wilderness. At Taberah, at Kibroth, when the people murmured, and complained in loathing of the manna, and longed for flesh-on the borders of Canaan, when they mutinied at the report of the spies, who had been sent to examine and report upon the promised land -on their capricious disobedience, when again commanded to resume their wilderness march-on their wide discontent and general sedition against Aaron on the destruction of his enemies at Hormah, when the fiery serpents were sent and in the affair of Achan, when the whole host suffered for the sinful disobedience of an individual-in fact, through the whole of the forty years, the discipline under which they were taught was one in which God pressed forcibly and terribly home upon their minds the truth of that unbending law which applied to all their actions-which showed, as it was intended to show, that God was ever among them, to observe and recompense every individual, as well as the whole people, according to the nature of their conduct. We cannot suppose that the whole mighty host who came out of Egypt were altogether callous and unmoved by these manifestations of the divine mind, and rebellious and unbelieving to the end. On the contrary, these exhibitions of discontent and mutiny, partial or universal, seem only to have been capricious fits of unsettled principle-the extravagant operation of an ardent and excessive longing-the diseased and unwarranted impulse of delayed hope and ungratified expectations. Nevertheless, for this restive impatience, this foolish and determined obstinacy in dictating to, or anticipating the wise ordination of their visibly present and divine conductor, all that host which came out of the iron furnace of Egyptian bondage, under the protection and guidance of the outstretched arm of Omnipotence, were wasted away in the wilderness, with the exception of two high and faithful witnesses of the whole, whose duty it was, after this long and severe proof, to lead them on to conquest, and finally settle them in the land of ancient promise and eager hope.

Now, we say, it must be evident that this initiatory discipline toward that people, in their acquired character of more than half heathenism, proves itself to have been necessarythe circumstances and inveterate habits of the people prove it to have been wise-and it is so clear as to need no proof, that had it not been administered by a hand and power which they felt that they durst not and could not resist, it must have failed --it could not by any human means have been carried through.

To our mind that most simple and most unflattering narrative, written by their chief, both toward the people and toward the leader himself, is the strongest, the most unsuspicious of all proofs, that the undertaking throughout was one of divine power and wisdom, which could never have been attempted-at least which never could have been accomplished, by any human ingenuity or any human power. The narrative itself, therefore, is one that could emanate alone from the divine mind that contrived the scheme, and carried it into execution. View it, for the sake of argument, merely as a human undertaking, and interpret, or try to interpret, all its circumstances as we will, we will be forced to come to the conclusion at last, upon all known principles of human nature, that, as a human task, it was altogether beyond the means which man, in all his ingenious wisdom or political power, could possess or calculate upon.

But we must observe again, as a most essential element of our argument, in proof that the whole scheme was one worthy of, and consistent throughout, with the divine character, that this wise and necessary discipline of chastisement and judgment was mingled and accompanied throughout with an almighty protection, with an exuberant goodness, with longsuffering patience. That unwarlike and undisciplined multitude of rescued slaves could never of themselves have faced the marshalled might of the proud chivalry of Egypt; they could not have ventured with the slightest chance of success to encounter the giant and mail-clad strength of the Emim and Anakim, and all the disciplined warrior nations that surrounded them, and occupied the land to which they were marching. Their spies were seized with this natural terror, arising from the contrast between them, and represented themselves as grasshoppers in presence of those gigantic foes, whose cities, according to them, were walled up to heaven. But they forgot, as did the people, in their sympathetic terror, who was the captain of their host, under whose triumphant banner and resistless arm they were led. Before its advance, when they put their trust in it, seas and rivers dried up their waters; at the feeble shout of human voice, walls of towering height and impregnable strength fell down; at the request of their human leader the sun and moon paused in their heavenly course; all the elements of nature fought for them; and the heart of the hostile nations, dauntless in bravery and veteran in war, melted like wax at the approach of that heaven-led host. We see the same goodness, in a different manner, extended to them, in showering from heaven food for their whole multitude, in

1