have been the most effectual method to advance the progress of civilization, morality and religion, and forward the gradual improvement of the human race: while any apparent inequality, or severity with respect to individuals, can supply no shadow of objection to the justice and mercy of the Divinity, if we take into account, that all inequality will be perfectly rectified in a future life, for which the present is only a preparatory scene of discipline and trial. Exactly on the same principles, does the advocate for revelation answer the Deist, who objects to the extermination of the Canaanites, and the seizure of their country by the Jews, under an express divine command: that in this event, divine Providence acted in a manner strictly analogous to the general course of that moral government, constantly exercised in the world; with this only difference, that the same measures of divine administration, which in other cases are carried into effect by the secret influence, and, as it were, tacit permission of the supreme moral Governor, were here executed by his avowed interposition and immediate ' authority.

authority. If, then, the general system of events is not inconsistent with the belief of a superintending Providence, neither is this particular fact. If the divine Governor constantly chastises public depravity by public. punishment, and when nations become so impious and immoral, that their further existence is subversive of human virtue and human happiness, destroys them by the hand of some other nation, which is better adapted to forward and assist the views of the Divinity in the melioration of mankind, it is perfectly credible that the same divine Governor should directly assist the extermination of the most signally and incorrigibly impious and depraved nation, that perhaps ever existed; in order to promote, in the most decisive manner, the purposes of the divine œconomy, by planting in their country a chosen people, evidently protected and controuled by divine Providence; expressly appointed to be the depositaries and preservers of true religion and moral virtue, and by whose instrumentality all the nations of the earth have been blessed; blessed by the establishment of the Christian scheme,

which,

which, through this chosen nation, was communicated to mankind.

It is necessary thus to take into our consideration the whole purpose and progress of the divine œconomy, when we would account for and defend the particular part of it we are now considering, (the extermination of the Canaanites, and the seizure of their country by the Jews;) because this is undoubtedly one chief reason of the departure from the usual tenor of the divine government, in directly assisting and authorising what, in other cases, it only silently permits and secretly controuls. The nature of the Gospel scheme required, and its importance justified, a continued and avowed interposition of divine power, to prepare for and introduce it. The establishment of the Jewish nation in this country, and at this period, was undoubtedly an important and essential step of this necessary preparation; and thence it was, that it was effected by the direct assistance and express command of God. This is not taking for granted the divine original of the Gospel, in order to defend Judaism; but requiring that the

whole

whole scheme of revelation shall be considered together, and not in separate parts, and each part condemned; because if thus separately viewed, as unconnected with any preceding dispensations, and unnecessary to any subsequent good effects, it would be strange and unaccountable; whereas, it is by this connection explained and justified.. But this command, it is said, confounds the innocent with the guilty! * "What!

"command to leave

to leave nothing alive that "breatheth. Destroy all the smiling infants, "all the innocent babes!" No, surely it is impossible that God should permit, much less command, the innocent thus to suffer. Let us weigh this objection so far as it relates to the sufferers: (how far such a command can be justified as it regards the Jews, we shall consider hereafter.) Now that God may permit the innocent thus to suffer, is certainly credible, because he constantly does permit it, as well in the regular course of human affairs, as in the progress of those signal and awful judgments, which we do not hesitate to ascribe to a more marked and,

*This is the language of Paine.

and direct interference of divine Providence. Guilty parents frequently entail diseases and poverty on their infant children: the felon and the murderer, who forfeit their lives to public justice, sometimes leave their infant progeny exposed to the severest sufferings; and, to take a more extensive view, when the famine and the pestilence, those dreadful ministers of the divine chastisement, desolate a guilty land, do they spare the smiling infant and the innocent babe? When the deluge, the conflagration or the earthquake, reduce to ruins some flourishing city, do not infancy and innocence sink equally with guilt and age into the common grave? Can this be considered as an imputation on divine justice and mercy, except we forget that this premature, and, to our view, deplorable fate, is really nothing more than a transitory shock, which attends the escape of those innocent ones into another and a better world, where all tears shall be wiped from their eyes, and they shall repose for ever in the bosom of their Father and their God? In a word, admit a future life, and all such difficulties vanish at once: deny it, and the

entire