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was assured that his descendants should suffer a long bondage, and afterwards become a numerous nation. Abraham was their common ancestor, one whom they remembered with reverence and pride; and each individual felt himself honoured by the fact that the blood of the "father of the faithful" circled in his veins. The tie of consanguinity in their case was bound in the strongest manner, and encircled the whole nation. In Egypt, their circumstances and employments were the same; and, in the endurance of a protracted and most galling bondage, they had a common lot. Their liberation was likewise a national deliverance, which affected alike the whole people; the anniversary of which was celebrated by distant posterity with strong and peculiar national enthusiasm.

Now, it has been said, that the events of our colonial servitude, and the achievement of American independence, are points in our history which will ever operate upon our national character, impressing clear views of the great principles of republicanism, and uniting all hearts in support of those principles: how much more affecting and indelible, then, was the impress made upon the national heart of the Israelites by their bondage and deliverance! They were bound by blood, by interest, feeling, hopes, fears, by bondage, and by faith.

And how firmly did these providences weave into one web the sympathies and views of the Jewish people! It is a fact which is the miracle of history, and the wonder of the world, that the ties which unite this people seem to be indissoluble. While other nations have risen and reigned and fallen; while the ties which united them have been sun. dered, and their fragments lost amid earth's teeming population, the stock of Abraham endures, like an incorruptible monument of gold, undestroyed by

the attrition of the waves of time, which have dashed in pieces and washed away other nations, whose origin was but yesterday, compared with this ancient and wonderful people.

In this manner was this nation prepared for peculiar duties, and to discharge those duties under peculiar circumstances. Many of the nations by which they were surrounded were more powerful than themselves; all were warlike, and each had its peculiar system of idolatry; waich corrupted all hearts that came within its influence. Hence the necessity that this people should be so united as to resist the power and contagious example of surrounding nations, while they were fitted to receive and preserve a peculiar national character, civil polity, and religious doctrines; of all which they were to be the conservators, amid surrounding and opposing heathenism, for many ages.

Other facts might be added to the induction, which would make the design, if possible, more apparent. If the Jews were to be the recipients of new instruction-to obey new laws, and to sustain new institutions, it would be desirable that their minds, so far as possible, should be in the condition of new material, occupied by little previous knowledge, and by no national prejudices against or in favour of governmental forms and systems. Now, in the case of the Jews, the habit of obedience had been acquired. They had no national predilections or prejudices arising from past experience. In relation to knowledge of any kind, their mind was almost a tabula rasa. They were as new material prepared to receive the moulding of a master hand, and the impress of a governing mind.

Now, as this discipline of the descendants of Abraham was the result of a long concatenation

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PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION.

of events, and could not have been designed by themselves to accomplish the necessary end; and as the whole chain of events was connected together and perfectly adapted, in accordance with the nature of things, to produce the specific purpose which was accomplished by them, it follows as the only rational conclusion, first, that the overruling intelligence of God was employed in thus preparing material for a purer religious worship than the world then enjoyed; and, second, that a nation could have been so prepared by no other agent, and in no other way.

CHAPTER III.

CONCERNING MIRACLES-PARTICULARLY THE MIRACLES WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE DELIVERANCE OF THE ISRAELITES FROM BONDAGE IN EGYPT.

THERE has been so much false philosophy written concerning the subject of miracles, that it is difficult for those conversant with the speculations of writers upon this subject, to divest their minds sufficiently of pre-formed biases, to examine candidly the simple and natural principles upon which are based the evidence and necessity of miraculous interposition.

The following statement is true beyond controversy-Man cannot, in the present constitution of his mind, believe that religion has a Divine origin, unless it be accompanied with miracles. The necessary inference of the mind is, that if an Infinite Being act, his acts will be superhuman in their character; because the effect, reason dictates, will be characterised by the nature of its cause. Man has the same reason to expect that God will perform acts above human power and knowledge, that he has to suppose the inferior orders of animals will, in their actions, sink below the power and wisdom which characterise human nature. For, as it is natural for man to perform acts superior to the power and knowledge of the animals beneath him, so, reason affirms, that it is natural for God to develop his power by means, and in ways, above

the skill and ability of mortals. Hence, if God manifest himself at all-unless, in accommodation to the capacities of men, he should constrain his manifestations within the compass of human ability-every act of God's immediate power would, to human capacity, be a miracle. But, if God were to constrain all his acts within the limits of human means and agencies, it would be impossible for man to discriminate between the acts of the Godhead and the acts of the manhood. And man, if he considered acts to be of a Divine origin, which were plainly within the compass of human ability, would violate his own reason.

Suppose, for illustration, that God desired to reveal a religion to men, and wished them to recognise his character and his benevolence in giving that revelation. Suppose, further, that God should give such a revelation, and that every appearance and every act connected with its introduction, were characterised by nothing superior to human power: could any rational mind on earth believe that such a system of religion came from God? Impossible! A man could as easily be made to believe that his own child, who possessed his own lineaments, and his own nature, belonged to some other world, and some other order of the creation. It would not be possible for God to convince men that a religion was from heaven, unless it was accompanied with the marks of Divine power.

Suppose, again, that some individual were to appear either in the heathen or Christian worldhe claimed to be a teacher sent from God, yet aspired to the performance of no miracles. He assumed to do nothing superior to the wisdom and ability of other men. Such an individual, although he might succeed in gaining proselytes to some particular view of a religion already believed, yet

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