exaggerated language than the historian of Jehovah. Neither let it be said that, in the circumstances of the case, the Israelites would have been very willingly and easily imposed upon, and would have been then, and in after times, ready to believe whatever their leader chose to say regarding the events through which they had been led. Their whole character, as exhibited in all their history, was the very reverse of patient obedience and acquiescing credulity. Moses was so well aware of this self-willed obstinacy, that he only undertook, because he durst not refuse it, their deliverance from that severe bondage to which he knew their spirits were inured. From the commencement of their march, though they had every reason to know that the power of Omnipotence was with him, they murmured and were discontented. They often despised his authority and rebelled against him, and proposed to return to Egypt, the land of their slavery, during his command over them, even after their ingratitude and impious rebellion had been severely checked by the immediate interference of God. In the very circumstance of such a strict and burdensome law, and expensive ceremonial being imposed upon, and submitted to by, such a people, we have sufficient evidence that the claims of their legislator were supported by an authority which they could not deny, and durst not controvert. That they did not do so, then, was from no personal reverence or love or fear of him, but because they saw that a power stood around him which none durst question or resist. That terrible power, either for destruction or protection, they never seem for one moment to have doubted, though they seem to have thought that it would have been as well, or better, in any other hands than those of Moses. All these facts give us no very high idea of the intellectual character or moral worth of the people whom God wonderfully chose for this grand demonstration of his attributes and character as the moral ruler of the world, but they are at the same time so many unexceptionable evidences of the irresistible nature of those miraculous facts, that brought their stubborn necks under obedience to this new law.

It would be a subject of interesting inquiry, to consider whether this character of obstinacy and apparent irrationality was peculiar to the chosen people, or whether it was the common moral attribute of all the nations of the world at the time. I am inclined to the latter supposition, and think there is sufficient reason to account for the fact in the kind of moral training, under which the obedience of the world had hitherto been tried; but the discussion of the question will come in more

proper order, when we examine into the details of their government, as it is exhibited in the Old Testament.

We might greatly augment this chapter; and by applying, in a number of instances, all the tests that have been devised for trying the truth of a miracle, might produce a cumulative system of evidence which, in copiousness and power, would increase in geometrical progression, by the addition of every unquestioned or proved interference of God, throughout the widening stream of sacred history. But the oft refuted and cavilling arguments of infidelity are now, in general, become so stale, that ingenious, or at least ingenuous, unbelievers are ashamed to urge them. They will avoid this close kind of argument, and, rather than descend to particular detail, confess that the religion of Moses and of Christ might be very well for their day, and that they have no objection either to the argument or proof; but they still urge that time and circumstances have rendered the whole system of both obsolete, and have elaborated a new set of intellectual principles, and a moral code, new, at least, in many of its details. It is such vague generalities of unbelief as these--it is such negative and undefined hostilities, that are to be encountered in the present day; and if they are to be opposed successfully at all, it must be by views equally wide and general. For this wide generalization of view, the American, Channing, is greatly to be admired. He considers the human mind and the human character, in all its relations, as a whole, and revelation, in all its adaptations and applications, as a whole; and comparing the two together, follows out a train of powerful and convincing arguments for the truth of Christianity, which is worthy of a better cause and a purer system than that which he adopts. Whether we will be able to carry out this generalized method of argument, in its application to the system of doctrines and worship of the Old Testament dispensation, as a religion fitted to train onward the mind and character of man for the reception of divine truth in its spiritual and perfect form, we have great doubts. But this view we intend to take, and will endeavour to embody it in the form of an argument in some of the following chapters. In the meantime, however, it is impossible to pass over the evidence from prophecy, which is the strongest of all, and which is always accumulating, and gaining in strength and clearness.

As a miracle is a work of power, transcending all created might to attempt or perform, in opposition to the will of that being who communicates all power; so prophecy, such as the

Scriptures present, supposes the possession of a knowledge of the events of futurity, which amounts to omniscience. A man of great sagacity, we have said, and of great experience of the characters of men, and the ways of the world, and the history of nations, when proper data are set before him, will sometimes form a very accurate conjecture of the future conduct and fate of individuals or societies. There is a general regularity of working in the moral world, that may be reduced to something like an established law, or course of nature, as there is a fixed constitution of inanimate nature, operating, to a wide extent, under invariable laws, whose principles men have studied, and whose regular effects they can foretel. From a knowledge. of the amazing regularity of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far-glancing science can predict an eclipse of any one of them, or its position in the heavens, at any given period. Such knowledge seems supernatural to the ignorant savage, just as that deep political knowledge which foresees at a distance the coming form and effects of unrevealed events, and can predict the ebb and flow of a nation's prosperity, may seem, even to civilized nations, allied to the supernatural. The supposition of such knowledge being attained, in an unlimited degree, no doubt gave rise and long credit to the pretended oracles of ancient times. The anxious foreboding, or joyous anticipation of the future, has always an immense influence over the mind; and there is nothing which man more anxiously desires than the knowledge of his future destiny. This principle, of great power in the human breast, combined with an easy credulity, which is equally natural, gave ample scope to the cunning and ambitious heathen priesthood to impose upon their votaries. But from what is recorded, we have ample reason to know that these long-trusted oracles were either studiedly ambiguous, or unintelligibly obscure, or perfectly frivolous. Not one of them can be produced, which, even supposing it were a true prediction, is worthy of the interference of God; not one, much less a system and connected chain of them, can be shewn, which could for a moment induce any rational being to believe that they were dictated by infinite wisdom to guide mankind in the path of truth and rectitude.

How immensely different these pretended forms of tradition are from the prophecies of Scripture, will be obvious on the slightest consideration. These unfold to us a regular series of predictions, extending from the beginning of time throughout the lapse of all its ages, and glancing forward, with steady and undazzled look, beyond the close of this world's history to the

glories of a celestial eternity. And they are not detached and unconnected, or illustrative of, or supporting opposite truths and inconsistent principles. From beginning to end, they are connected with one unbroken chain, and all bearing upon one grand event, upon which the destinies of man from the first are represented as hanging. And whenever subordinate predictions diverge, as there is a regular system of subordinate and co-operative events pointed to, it is in proof and illustration of the over-ruling providence of God, who is watching with vigilant care over the maintenance and working of his own dispensation. This universality or generality of plan is one of the most striking proofs of the divine interposition in the matter. When a system of doctrines is once established by miraculous evidence, and unquestionable record of that evidence transmitted, no other divine authentication is requisite. But for the very same reason, the principles of a faith that depends upon a future event, all the efficiency and bearings of which are only to be gradually opened up, as the advancement and extension of the preparatory system call for new interpositions of its author-such a faith requires a succession of divine teachers, to prevent the mind from resting satisfied with its elementary forms, and point forward the expectations of its worshippers beyond the mere painted and temporary frame-work, which, for the time, was all that the human mind or state of religious education could bear, but which was far below what was designed from the beginning by him who planned and who reared it. Such a system is totally different from what the world can any where else contemplate; but this is the grand and characteristic distinction of the prophecies of the Old Testament. All point forward, without one faltering hope or doubtful hint, to the development of a lofty principle, of which they profess to be only the dim shadowings forth, the humble harbingers. The first accents of the voice of heaven to the prostrate and self-convicted progenitors of our race, announce a deed of power to be accomplished by one of their descendants. The successive announcements of that scheme of supreme wisdom and goodness, as time after time they are given forth, continually elevate and expand, and give definiteness to the faith, and hope, and anxious reasonings of the spirit of man; yet, in no one stage of their progressive opening, could human invention or ingenuity ever anticipate them. In these days of the fully developed purposes of God's moral rule, it is a difficult thing to transport ourselves in imagination backward through nearly six thousand years of a progressive training

of the human mind, in matters of faith, and realize the very hopes and wishes of the patriarchs of our race, as they tried to look, with the straining eye of faith, through the apparently dim announcements of a coming deliverance--a full removal of the curse under which they felt that they still groaned—a full restoration of the privileges which they knew they had forfeited --not to be regained by any sacrifice they could make, or any duty they could render. Such was the condition in which the first of mankind were placed-such was the species of hope they could collect from the promises set before them.

It is this grand unity of view in the prophetic system of the Old Testament that is one of the most convincing of all the proofs of its divine authority. As "Christ is the end of law for righteousness" the sole object to which all its symbolic ceremonies pointed-in whom all its ritual observances had their fulfilment and meaning-so "the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus." There is not one of the whole series which is not, directly or indirectly, connected with his person and office, and the perfect system which he was to introduce. It is this lofty aspect of a spirit of prophecy pervading all time, and running down, in the long course of four thousand years, in the line of one people, expressly separated from the rest of the world, to be the receivers of these successive promises the depositaries of these oracles-that compels us to acknowledge it as a voice coming from the bosom of omniscience, and the mysterious depths of eternity. That voice, whenever it was repeated, spoke in louder and distincter accents through Noah and Abraham, and Jacob and Moses. Had it not been thus repeated and limited, even though the promise itself had not vanished from the anxious hopes of the world-as, however, there is every probability that it would-where, on its whole surface, could man have looked for the fulfilment of the promise? Of the multitude of divergent lines in the widely spreading human family, one is chosen, and that constantly limited, till one tribe of twelve is selected, to which the sceptre of rule over the rest was intrusted, till the Shiloh should come, who was to assume it, and extend its power over all nations. A more determinate distinctness is even given: an individual of that tribe is raised to the throne, among whose descendants the Saviour of his people was to be born. Thus, in Daniel, the time of that birth is expressly limited to a certain number of years; and Haggai and Malachi foretel that it should be during the continuance of the second temple, which would thus be filled with a glory, of which the first, with all its gor