confuse our speculations upon the subject to which it relates.

The simple account of that subject I take to be as follows. In the time of Moses, God called himself the King of the nation, chiefly because he was its lawgiver. It had thrown off its allegiance to Pharaoh, and for the present had no earthly monarch. Moses was its guide and legislator, but he was only such under the divine miraculous direction. As other nations took their law from their respective governors, the Jews took theirs from the Divine Being, by the ministry of Moses. Other offices, for which communities commonly look to their head, were performed for this nation by God, by constant superintendence, and frequent supernatural interposition. Kings are the leaders of their people in migrations and in war; God, by the ministry of Moses, guided the marches of the Israelites, and gave them victory. It belongs to kings to inflict punishment on offenders; God inflicted it by miraculous agency in such cases as those of Miriam, Nadab and Abihu, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The founder of a state is by virtue of that service its monarch; God in an obvious and peculiar sense was the founder of the Jewish state, and, in that character, he expressly and repeatedly claims the obedience of the people.* The owner of a territory, who gives to others permission to settle on it, is its lord; and this view is urged in respect to the Jewish occupation of Palestine.† The appointment of inferior magistrates belongs to royalty; and this prerogative God had exercised in various particulars. Finally, the people, renouncing all other allegiance, had expressly professed to take Jehovah for their sovereign and lawgiver. The reason of their E. g. Lev. xxv. 23.

* E. g. Deut. vi. 10, 23.

Ex. xix. 4-8.

profession being taken in this form, and the chief reason why God is repeatedly represented to them in the character of their monarch, I conceive to be no other than this; that, when, by their own solemn act, they had acknowledged themselves his subjects, it would be obvious to them, that disobedience to his law would become opposition to the government of the state, and be liable, as such, not merely to visitations of God's displeasure, considered as the governor of the universe, but to civil penalties; and further, that worship of any other deity would then become the highest political offence, and be punishable in its character of high treason. Every one knows, that it was a leading part of the Jewish system to train the people to a religious obedience by the threat of civil penalties. A man was bound to render a prescribed devotional service, under pain of being dealt with as an offender against the commonwealth. But to furnish a basis for such procedure, it was plainly fit, that he, for whom the religious homage was demanded, should at the same time be presented as the head of the commonwealth.

When I add, that the divine acknowledgment of this relation was also an honor to the people, which would naturally be accompanied with a sense of responsibility on their part, I think we have a complete account of the reason why Jehovah is exhibited to the Jews, not only in the character of their divine disposer, as he is of all men, but in the peculiar character of their national ruler. I have admitted, that in Moses' time, while the nation was establishing, other prerogatives of royalty are, with much propriety of language, ascribed to God. But, after that time, there was, in one form or another, a complete organized government, not differing from the governments of other nations in any such way, as to justify its being called by the name theocracy, or

any like it; and, whatever opinion may be entertained concerning the time when miraculous interposition in the affairs of the nation ceased, there seems no good reason for doubting, that, after the government was once arranged, it was mainly trusted, as are other governments, to the management of human agents.

The first step taken in the new organization of the people is, an arrangement for the support of the worship of Jehovah; and this is so made, as to be a memento to them of the circumstances of their emancipation from Egypt. As, when a divine judgment had been executed upon the Egyptians, the first-born of man and beast were the victims, while the ravage was not permitted to extend to the Israelites, the nation, in token of their gratitude, were now to sequester their first-born to God's service; yet not so, that the firstborn of all the families were actually to be taken for priests, and the first-born of all animals to serve as victims, but that, they being held liable to be so used, the nation should the more cheerfully acquiesce in an arrangement, more convenient to itself, by which the whole tribe of Levi, as was afterwards directed, should be substituted for the sacred office in the place of the first-born of all the tribes, while (with reference to a distinction which we are by and by to consider) the first-born of unclean animals, being unfit for sacrifice, were to have their places supplied by victims of other species. And as this seems to be in the nature of an incomplete and progressive arrangement,* it affords a

* I have spoken of the arrangement in xiii. 1-16, introductory to that in Numbers i. 47-54, as being in the nature of a progressive arrangement. But it was so only in a qualified sense. It is at least doubtful, whether Moses' original intention was to form a priesthood from the first-born of every family, an intention afterwards relinquished in favor of the tribe of Levi. The language (verse 2) is "Sanctify to me all the first-born among the children of Israel, both of man and

convenient opportunity to make two remarks on the nature of such arrangements, which sometimes seem to be viewed as being unsuitable for God to make, inasmuch as he knows from the beginning all that will ultimately be found necessary or fit.

It is true, in the first place, that "God does not make himself wiser by trying experiments." But it is also true, that his administration always has regard to the benefit and satisfaction of those whom it concerns; and that (for a like reason to that, for which a more complete law was given in Christianity than in Judaism, viz. because there was a more mature preparation for the former than for the latter) it was fit that the same generation should be led on, by successive arrangements, from one step to another, each preparing the way for that which was next to follow.

But, in the second place, I apprehend, that when a law is announced, prefaced by such words as "the Lord spake unto Moses," it is by no means necessary to understand the arrangement to have been originated (so to speak) in the Divine Mind, and then dictated to the Jewish leader, to be by him promulgated. In my view, the force of the language is equally well met, if we understand, when other considerations would incline us so to do, that the plan was a plan of Moses, who, by

beast." But "sanctify," wp, means simply to sequester, particularly to a sacred use. The first-born might well be said to be "sanctified," sequestered, set apart to God, if, from the first, the intention was to\ cause them to provide a sacred order by a substitution of the Levitical family, in their place. Ultimately, the first-born of men, thus sequestered, } were exchanged, so to speak, for the Levites, and the first-born of unclean animals were exchanged for clean animals, that is, those which were fit to be used as victims. (xiii. 13; compare Numbers xviii. 15.) Unclean animals were certainly not intended, in the first arrangement, to be "sanctified" in the sense of being used as victims. No more can it be argued, ex vi termini, that the first-born were intended to be so sanctified, as to be employed as servants of the sanctuary.

being encouraged to act on this kind of responsibility, would be in all respects better qualified for his office as leader of the people; that, having been devised by him, it was submitted for the divine approval; and that (this approval obtained) it was announced, in such words as I have quoted, as resting on the divine authority.

This view of the force of those prefatory words is fully borne out by a comparison of two passages in the Pentateuch. In the book of Numbers we read, without any qualification, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Send thou men that they may search the land of Canaan.""* Arguing from these words, as is commonly done when they occur in other places, we should understand the arrangement to have been dictated in the first instance by God to Moses. But, where the same incident is related in Deuteronomy, we find quite a different aspect put upon it. There we see Moses represented as saying to the people; "Ye came near unto me every one of you and said, 'We will send men before us, and they shall search out the land'; — and the saying pleased me well, and I took twelve men of you, one of a tribe." There is no discrepance between the two statements. The people proposed the measure to Moses. He waited for leave to execute it; and when such authority had been given, then he properly announced to the people, "The Lord said unto Moses, send men" &c. If such, by a subsequent explanation, is shown to have been the case, on an occasion where the words, taken alone, are naturally supposed to indicate that the arrangement was first communicated by God to Moses, there is no good reason to doubt that such was the process in other