pain of death, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, as the means of keeping them in their duty. So that it is very wonderful, that this law should have been preserved for so many ages, amidst a people so rebellious and impatient of the yoke; whilst all other nations have repeatedly changed their laws, though much more easy of observance.

2. This people must also be admired for their sincerity. They keep with affection and fidelity, the book in which Moses declares, that they have been ungrateful to their God, and that he knows they will be still more so, after his death; but that he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, that he had given them an ample warning: that at length God, becoming angry with them, would scatter them among all the nations of the earth; and that as they had angered him in worshipping those as Gods who were no Gods, he would anger them in calling a people who were not his people. Yet this book, which so copiously dishonors them, they preserve at the expense of their life. This is a sincerity which has no parallel in the world, and has not its radical principle in mere human nature.

Then, finally, I find no reason to doubt the truth of the book, which contains all these things; for there is a great difference between a book which an individual writes and introduces among a people and a book which actually forms that people.

There can be no doubt that this book is as old as the nation. It is a book written by contemporary authors. All history that is not contemporary, is questionable, as the books of the Sybil, of Trismegistus, and many others that have obtained credit with the world, and in the course of time, have been proved to be false. But this is not the case with contemporary historians.

3. How different this from other books! I do not wonder that the Greeks have their Iliad, or the Egyptians and Chinese their histories. We have only to observe how this occurs. These fabulous historians are not contemporary with the matters which they re

cord. Homer writes a romance, which he sends forth as such; for scarcely any one doubts that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed, than the golden apple. His object was not to write a history, but a book of amusement. It was the only book of his day. The beauty of the composition preserved it. Every one learned it and spoke of it. It must be known. Every one knew it by heart. Then four hundred years afterwards, the witnesses of things have ceased to exist. No one knew by his own knowledge whether it was truth or fable. All they knew was, that they learned it from their ancestors. It may pass then for truth.

CHAPTER XII.

THE JEWS.

THE creation and the deluge having taken place, and God not purposing again to destroy or to create the world, nor again to vouchsafe such extraordinary evidences of himself, began to establish a people on the earth, formed expressly to continue till the coming of that people whom Messiah should form to himself by his Spirit.

2. God, willing to make it evident that he could form a people possessed of a sanctity invisible to the world, and filled with eternal glory, has exhibited a pattern in temporal things, of what he purposed to do in spiritual blessings; that men might learn from his excellent doings in the things which are seen, his ability to do his will in the things which are not seen.

With this view, in the person of Noah, he saved his people from the deluge; he caused them to be born of Abraham; he redeemed them from their enemies, and gave them rest.

The purpose of God was not to save a people from the flood, and to cause them to spring from Abraham, merely that he might plant them in a fruitful land; but

that as nature is in a measure symbolical of grace, these visible wonders might indicate the unseen wonders which he purposed to perform.

3. Another reason of his choosing the Jewish people is, that as he purposed to deprive his own people of carnal and perishable possessions, he would shew by this series of miracles, that their poverty was at least not imputable to his impotence.

This people had cherished these earthly conceits, that God loved their father Abraham personally, and all who descended from him: that on this account, he had multiplied their nation and distinguished them from all others, and forbidden their intermingling with them; and that therefore he led them out of Egypt with such mighty signs; that he fed them with manna in the wilderness; that he brought them into a happy and fruitful land; that he gave them kings, and a beautiful temple for the sacrifice of victims, and for their purification by the shedding of blood; and that he purposed ultimately to send them a Messiah, to make them masters of the whole world.

The Jews being accustomed to great and splendid miracles, and having considered the events at the Red Sea, and in the land of Canaan, but as a sample of the great things to be done by Messiah, expected from him the accomplishment of wonders far more brilliant, and compared with which, the miracles of Moses should be but as a spark.

When the Jewish nation had grown old in these low and sensual views, Jesus Christ came at the time predicted, but not with the state which they had anticipated, and, consequently, they did not think that it could be he. After his death, St. Paul came to teach men that all the events of the Jewish history were figurative; that the kingdom of God was not carnal, but spiritual; that the enemies of men were not the Babylonians, but their own passions; that God delighteth not in temples made with hands, but in a pure and penitent heart; that the circumcision of the body was unavailing, but that he required the circumcision of the heart.

4. God, not willing to discover these things to a people unworthy of them, but willing, nevertheless to announce them that they might be believed, did clearly predict the time of their fulfilment, and did sometimes even clearly express the truths themselves; but ordinarily he did so in figures, that those who preferred the things which prefigured, might rest in them; whilst they who really loved the things prefigured, might discover them. And hence it followed, that at the coming of Messiah, the people was divided. The spiritually-minded Jew received him; the carnal Jews rejected him; and have been ordained to remain, to this day, as his witnesses.

5. The carnal Jews understood not either the dignity or the degradation of Messiah, as predicted by their prophets. They knew him not in his greatness; as when it is said of him, that Messiah, the son of David, shall be David's Lord; that he was before Abraham, and had seen Abraham. They did not believe him to be so great as to have been from everlasting. Neither did they know him in his humiliation and death. "Messiah," they said, "abideth ever; and this man says that he must die." They did not believe him to be either mortal or eternal. They expected nothing beyond an earthly carnal greatness.

They so loved the material figure, and so exclusively devoted themselves to it, that they knew not the reality, even when it came both at the time and in the manner foretold.

6. Sceptical men try to find their excuse in the unbelief of the Jews. If the truth was so clear," it is said, "why did they not believe?" But their rejec tion of Christ is one of the foundations of our confidence. We had been much less inclined to believe, if they had all received him. We should thus have had a much ampler pretext for incredulity and distrust. It is a wonderful confirmation of the truth, to see the Jews ardently attached to the things predicted, yet bitterly hostile to their fulfilment; and to see that this very aversion was itself foretold..

7. To establish the Messiah's claim to confidence, it required that there should be prophecies going before him, and that these should be in the hands of men altogether unsuspected, and of diligence, fidelity and zeal extraordinary in their degree, and known to all

To attain this object, God chose this sensual nation, to whose care he committed the prophecies which foretel the Messiah as a deliverer, and a dispenser of those earthly blessings which this people loved. They felt, therefore, an extraordinary regard for their prophets, and exhibited to the whole world those books in which Messiah was foretold; assuring all nations that he would come, and that he would come in the mode predicted in those books, which they laid open to the inspection of the world. But being themselves deceived by the mean and ignominious advent of Messiah, they became his greatest enemies.

So

that we have the people which would be, of all mankind, the least suspected of favoring the Christian scheme, directly aiding it; and by their zeal for the law and the prophets, preserving with incorruptible scrupulosity, the record of their own condemnation, and the evidences of our religion.

8. Those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, as an offence to them, are they who possess the books that bear witness of him, and that testify that he would be rejected as an offence to them. Thus by their rejection of him, they marked him as Messiah; and he has received testimony both from the righteous Jew who believed, and from the unrighteous who rejected him both those facts being foretold in their scriptures.

For the same reason, the prophecies have a hidden sense-a spiritual meaning, to which the people were adverse, concealed under the carnal meaning which they loved. Had the spiritual meaning been evident, they had not the capacity to love it and as they would not have approved it, they would have had little zeal for the preservation of their scriptures and