were permitted to depart; and their enemies, the Egyptians, having followed them to the shores of the Red Sea, a passage through the sea was miraculously opened for Israel; and Pharaoh and his host essaying to follow them, were overwhelmed by the waters returning to their channel. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians;

and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. And Israel saw that great work ' which the Lord did upon the Egyptians; and 'the people feared the Lord, and believed the 'Lord and his servant Moses.' (Exod. xiv.)

Being thus redeemed from the hand of their inveterate enemies, by the out-stretched arm of God himself, it might have been expected that nothing remained, but that the children of Israel, under the same almighty protection and guidance, should march in triumph, and take possession of the promised land. But the ways of God are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. None of the generation which came out of Egypt were accounted worthy to

enter the promised land, excepting Joshua and Caleb. (Numb. xiv. 26-45.) Even Moses, the servant of the Lord, was not permitted to enter the land of promise; he only saw it from Pisgah, where he died. (Deut. xxxii. 49.xxxiv. 4, 5.)

The forty years during which Israel wandered in the wilderness being at length elapsed, and Moses being dead, Joshua, the son of Nun, was commanded to lead the children of Israel over Jordan, into the land of promise. And during the life of Joshua they were safely settled in Canaan; the greater part of the nations which previously occupied it being put to the sword.

But it is certain, that though, at this time, God began to give effect to the promise made to Abraham, that he would give the land of Canaan to his seed for their possession, yet the promise, in its full extent, was not fulfilled under Joshua. To satisfy ourselves of this, we need only compare the original promise, as recorded in Gen. xv. 18., with the third chapter of the book of Judges, which contains an

enumeration of the nations who were left in Canaan to prove the children of Israel. Even in the glorious and prosperous reigns of David and Solomon, the promise made to Abraham was not fulfilled in its full literal meaning; for though most of the nations, between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, were either completely subjugated, or rendered tributary to Israel by these monarchs, yet it is clear that Tyre still continued a powerful and independent state; so that the promise recorded in Joshua i. 4., that the whole land, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, was to be given to the children of Israel, was not strictly made good. And it is certain that it never was fulfilled after the reign of Solomon; for, in less than three hundred years after his reign, the ten tribes were carried away captive into Assyria, whence they have never returned. The captivity of Judah in Babylon followed that of Israel, after an interval of nearly a century and a half; and it is well known, that only a small part of Judah returned to Jerusa

lem, in consequence of the permission granted by Cyrus and Darius, the Persian monarchs. During the period which elapsed between the return from Babylon, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews enjoyed little tranquillity; and were always harassed, and often grievously oppressed, by the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans.

The sum of the whole of what has been said upon the procedure of God towards the children of Israel, is this: More than four centuries elapsed between the giving of the promise to Abraham, and the redemption of Israel out of Egypt. Forty years more elapsed before God began to execute his promise, by giving to the Israelites possession of the land of Canaan ; and neither in the time of Joshua, nor even of David and Solomon, was the promise fulfilled in its full extent; and still less has it been so since the reign of Solomon; so that, though a period of nearly four thousand years has elapsed, since the giving of the promise of the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, the fulfilment of

that promise, in its full extent, is still fu

ture.

I think, therefore, it cannot be denied, that an examination of the procedure of God towards the chosen people, furnishes another strong instance of the analogy which I have endeavoured to trace, in the histories of the patriarchs; and tends to confirm the presumption, that something of the same kind was to be expected in the economy of the Messiah. For with what colour of reason, and upon what grounds, can the Jew assert, that, in the procedure of God towards the Messiah, there is to be a total departure from all those principles, and an entire deviation from those analogies, which are observable in all the other works of God; and in his dispensations towards his most faithful and highly-honoured servants, and towards that people whom he chose for himself, when all the other nations of the earth were sunk in brutish idolatry? It is evident to every enlarged mind, and to those who attentively study the works and the word of God, that there is the closest analogy