peculiar toils. But, if we possessed an exact account of the progress of the Israelite sufferings, we probably might trace the connexion closer still. Josephus tells us, that one of the first expedients to thin the numbers of the Israelites, was to force them to the unwholesome work of making canals and embankments in the marshes, where they must have been tormented by the loathsome reptiles and insects of the swamp. The forced building of the fortresses of Pithon and Rameses, on the borders of the Desert, must have equally exposed them to the hornet, which, in Arabia, is still a dreadful scourge. The loss of their cattle, and the breaking out of disease among the Israelites, would be the natural consequence of a fiery soil, and of the labours of the Israelite herdsmen in so new and exhausting an employment as serving in the Egyptian brick-kilns'.-The devastation of the Egyptian harvest by the storm and the locust, might have only retaliated the scanty food of the miserable slave. How many of them too must have groaned out their lives in the darkness of the dungeon! for, unquestionably, the tyranny which began with the massacre of the children, would not stop at any minor cruelty which promised to break the spirit of the fathers.

The easing his shoulder of the burthens, and his hands of the making of pots, are among the Psalmist's instances of the Divine relief to Israel.

Philo's remark on the trivial nature of the means by which the Egyptians were punished, has been justly panegyrised. "Why were not the lions and panthers sent to overrun Egypt? Because it was the Divine wish to afflict, but not to destroy. Why were reptiles and insects the instruments? Because they showed that the feeblest means, in the Divine hand, were irresistible '.'

The favourite theory on the subject of the plagues, is that which owes its revival to Bryant; namely, that a prominent purpose was the public humiliation of the Egyptian worship of the Nile, the hornet, the bull, the sun, &c. But the theory is unsubstantial. The Egyptian worship was so unsparing, that if the plagues were to be effected by the use of any natural instruments, they must have made use of some of the national deities; for, from light to darkness, from the eagle to the gnat, and from the crocodile to the worm, Egypt bowed down to every thing; or, as in the passage which seems to have expressly referred to this frenzied universality of homage, to all in "heaven above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth." Besides, the principle, to be available, should be regular: it should be humiliation in all instances, or in none. But, if the worship of the Nile, the bull, the sun, &c. were degraded by the corruption of the river, by the murrain, and the darkness; that of the hornet, or of the elements, or of the locust, was not degraded, but rather invested with additional effect, from the evidence of their extraordinary powers of devastation. Bryant's refuge in those instances is, that the Egyptian was here punished by his deities. But, independently of this being a shifting of the principle, it is still insufficient. The Egyptian never could have worshipped the storm, the hornet, or the locust, as ministers of beneficence. He must have worshipped them as objects of fear, as the African of this

Ꮓ

day worships dæmons. And all accession to their power in this sense must have justified the worshipper, not in sudden contempt, but in increased awe, and its consequent homage. In the plague of the frogs, he gives up the principle altogether, conceiving that "whether the frog, among the Egyptians, were an object of veneration or not, it was equally consistent, to punish them by what they abominated, or what they revered." But it is evident, that unless they worshipped it, the lesson, in a religious aspect, must have been totally thrown away. A system of this unhesitating order is obviously too pliant for solidity.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE LAW OF MOSES.

THE progress

of Israelite restoration supplies continued evidence of the Divine agency. When the first vision was given to Moses in the desert, it was declared, that the spot where he then stood, a lonely keeper of sheep, should see him a leader, should be covered with the myriads of Israel, and be a place for the free worship of Jehovah. "When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain'." On the fiftieth day from their leaving Egypt, the people worshipping at the foot of Horeb, received the Ten Commandments, the principles of the moral law, and distinguished by being the only portion delivered by the voice of God.

The limits of these pages preclude that detailed inquiry into the Mosaic Law, which cannot be candidly pursued by any understanding without producing the amplest conviction that it was the

1 Exod. iii. 12.

work of God in his wisdom, justice, and mercy. The cavils of infidelity on its principles are almost worn away. In our day they are chiefly reduced to its omission of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul." But, those who bring this omission as a charge against the law of Moses, overlook the fact, that Moses was appointed to communicate, not a religion, but a law. The Jewish nation already possessed a religion. For their ritual, they had an initiatory rite, a sacred day, an act of worship, and an act of covenant; for their belief, they had the faith of the Messiah; and the hope of a renewed existence in a state of happiness. We are distinctly told, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that all the patriarchs died in faith, looking for a heavenly country'. Thus they had a religion prior to the law, as much as we have a religion subsequent to it. For what have we, but an initiatory rite, a sacred day, a public worship, and an act of covenant, the

1 The ordinances of the law, relative to sacrifices and festivals, are but the natural work of civil government; matters of ceremonial, founded indeed on the religion, but regulated by the authority of the state.

Even the Ten Commandments, the most solemnly delivered portion of the law, and the ground-work of the whole, are simply prohibitory; the only portion of them which speaks of God, consisting of three prohibitions,—against worshipping a plurality of gods--against idols-and against perjury. The whole three, from the circumstance that God was their King, being civil crimes.