the children of our day whose moral education is only beginning. The internal strength of conscience was therefore cherished by external acts, and the people were trained to obedience by the habitual homage which their ritual imposed upon them. The law once received, they were obliged to acknowledge the Supreme daily by various observances, to obtain security by obedience, and to atone for every transgression by a corresponding sacrifice. It is clear that all ramifications of moral duty cannot be displayed in an external ritual; but all may be connected with such a ritual; and this method was pursued with your forefathers, while they were yet too little enlightened to discern the principles of righteousness in the midst of the institutions in which they were embodied. They could be and were taught to avoid idolatry, and to acknowledge the Eternal by practising the rites of the tabernacle and worshiping according to forms prescribed; but the principles of truth, justice, and charity could not be embodied in any such forms. Specific and ample directions were therefore given to regulate the conduct of men to each other, and arbitrary penalties were attached to the violation of them. Till men became capable of applying principles for themselves, the application was made for them, and their business was to obey the specific directions given to them. Thus it would not have been enough to command that charity should be the rule of conduct from one to another; but this rule was applied in a large body of laws respecting the claims of the distressed, the poor, the widow, the orphan, and all towards whom charity could be exercised. There were also penalties ordained for all who should fall short of ready obedience to these laws. Again: The people were not only exhorted to be of clean hands and a pure heart, but specific directions were given for purification in every case in which defilement could be incurred, and a penalty was connected with every violation of these laws. A body of laws so specific, exhibiting perfect unity of design and strictness of detail, could not be essentially misunderstood or perverted, and was therefore peculiarly

adapted to a people whose spiritual education was commencing.

Nor were the sanctions of the law less wisely ordained than its nature. These sanctions were sensible and immediate rewards and punishments. A people insufficiently practised in obedience to form a notion or a rule of systematic duty, required of course an immediate and perpetual impulse to obedience. Till they could discern the identity of human duty and happiness, they could know little of the natural rewards of righteousness; and that little would be insufficient to support their obedience in temptation, or to engage their perpetual interest in doing their duty. Neither would the promise of these natural rewards have been much valued by those who had not yet ceased to regret the flesh-pots of Egypt, or learned to trust implicitly in the promises of the true God. Their hopes and fears were therefore excited by the appointment of such a retribution as they could understand, and which at first followed immediately upon the act of obedience or transgression. The divine wisdom was again shown in causing this retribution to be more frequently national than individual. As long as it was administered invariably, its efficiency was as great to each individual as if it had been appointed to himself; while the vicissitudes of the nation were at the same time brought home to the bosom of every man, and the minds of all were enlarged by the extension of their hopes and fears to national objects. The conviction that God was their Moral Governor was thus impressed on each and shared by all; all became interested in the obedience of each; a community of interests established a greater equality, temporal and spiritual, among this vast family than has ever subsisted elsewhere in a community so numerous, and the bond which united them as subjects of moral discipline proved indissoluble.

While your nation was thus brought to a full recognition of a moral government, a faint conception of the great truth began to spread among the observant neighbouring people. The Hebrew institutions afforded subjects of speculation;

your national privileges, of awe; your national chastisements, of a short-lived triumph. When they moreover perceived that your national prosperity or degradation could not only be anticipated but hastened or averted with infallible precision by certain modes of conduct, they could not but conclude, (however little conversant with the particulars of your law,) that the lawgiver was powerful and consistent in enforcing its observance. The less they were aware of being themselves the subjects of moral government, the greater would be their curiosity about the peculiar people who were so; and whether they regarded subjection to such discipline as a privilege or a hardship, they would naturally watch its operation with unremitting interest, and thus be visited by a dim reflection of the light which was shed with apparent partiality upon the people whom the Allwise had chosen.

The retribution by which God made himself known as a Moral Ruler was not the less invariable because it might be averted by relapse or repentance. Such relapse or repentance altered the position of the moral subject, and became a new occasion of punishment or reward; so that the sanctions of the law were not impaired, while room was left for the exercise of emotions which could have found no entrance had repentance been powerless to save. By the occasional delay of punishment, and the declared possibility of escaping it by repentance and atonement, the people were convinced of the long-suffering and mercy of God, as well as of his justice. Hope and therefore love was united with fear; so that they were enabled to acknowledge in him their Father and Friend, as well as their Lawgiver and Judge. They had beheld such awful displays of his power, were so fully convinced of his perpetual and discerning presence, and entire national obedience to the whole law was so impracticable, that they would have regarded him with unmixed terror, and have been carried back by this slavish terror into barbarism, if their fear had not been counterbalanced by the experience of his tenderness and benignity. As it was, the opposite motives were so pro

portioned as to strengthen their faith and advance their spiritual progress by impulses perpetually renewed; till, from ignorant and barbarous in comparison with some heathen nations, they became, not only a spectacle but a guide to the rest of the world from their remarkable superiority in wisdom and piety.

What, then, can be clearer than that the design of God in his dealings with the Hebrew nation was to enlarge and improve the mind of the human race by means of the peculiar dispensation with which he favoured his chosen people?

Another purpose was answered by the occasional delay of the retribution which was yet invariable. The people were by this means taught to look forward. They were made interested in the remote as well as the immediate consequences of their actions. Whether the blessing and the curse were reserved for themselves at some distant day, or appointed to their children of the third and fourth generation, their attention was carried on from present objects to future, and their first attainments were now made in that comprehension of mind which it is the great end of all revelation to extend. The commandment to refrain from image worship was sanctioned by a threat of punishment to a future generation; and that which inculcates duty to parents contains a promise of long life to the obedient; and from this time the promises and denunciations reached down to a more and more remote period of time, as the people became more accustomed to extend their views, and therefore to ennoble their principles of action. It is interesting to remark the progress of this extension o views, and to perceive how remote objects are connected with immediate, so as to make hope and fear of the future influential on present conduct. With the blessing in basket and store, in the fertility of the field and the abundance of the stall, is coupled the curse of distant captivity and protracted wanderings in a strange land. While Balaam pronounced that the tents of Israel were goodly, he declared that a sceptre should be raised in Israel, that a star should arise out of Jacob, before which the nations should bow down. The lustre of David's

reign was in part derived from an anticipation of the glory which the Messiah should shed back on his ancestor; and the woes of the captivity were aggravated by the fear that the great national promise had been forfeited. Thus a definite hope, however remote its objects, became gradually strong enough to supersede lower motives, to expel meaner desires, to inspire an energy victorious over pain and temptation, and by these means to testify to the spiritual superiority of the chosen people, and to the Divine character of that guardianship under which they had made a progress so unprecedented.

Though as a nation their advancement was unprecedented, their attainments were rivalled by individuals among the heathens; but this fact only furnishes a new evidence of the objects and the power of revelation, since such instances were few and uninfluential. A philosopher arose here and there among pagan nations, who had attained to the conception of the Divine unity and even of a future life; who had, in fact, equalled the wisest of the Israelites in spiritual discernment. But to the race it mattered little what such individuals had effected; for while the philosopher was exercising his perceptions from some astonishing height of speculation, or pondering some newly discovered truth, too awful to be communicated to the unprepared, or striving to render the conduct in some degree correspondent to the convictions, the multitudes were wandering in darkness, neither perceiving nor desiring the dawn of Divine truth, and ready to persecute any who would have directed their attention to it. The wisest of the heathens were usually the least safe and happy in society; they lived in loneliness of spirit, and died despised, calumniated, or martyred. Socrates lived traduced, and died by violence for having discerned the Unity of the Divine nature and the probability of a future state, and cherished the hope of an ample revelation from above. The Hebrew nation, at the same period, were familiar with these great truths, and rejoicing in a revelation which the wisest of heathen philosophers could only conceive and hope for. By means of the spiritual equality established