them to act in a correspondent manner; and the events consequent upon their obedience, manifested the reality of the inspiration. The very important office to which Moses was appointed, with its various and complicated duties, rendered the frequency of a divine intercourse absolutely necessary; and the unparalleled wisdom of all his ordinances, testified that they proceeded from the fountain of wisdom.

To impress the minds of the Israelites with a deep sense of the worship due to the one God, and to him only, and of the obligation to practise every moral duty, was of infinite moment. These were the grand objects to which every other was merely subservient. On the obser

vance of these duties the felicity of each member of the community, in his individual capacity, the felicity of the people as a nation, immediately depended; and upon these does the felicity of the whole human race depend. Therefore was the moral law promulgated from mount Sinai with peculiar solemnity. It was by the voice of Jehovah himself, without an Intermediate, and the people were struck with terror. "And all the people saw the thundering, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it they removed and stood afar

off. And they said unto Moses, speak thou with us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us lest we die. And Moses said unto the people fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin

In every other instance Moses was the sole medium of communication, during the whole of his official character. Joshua was appointed to be his successor in the following manner. "The Lord said unto Moses, take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him, and set him before Eleazar the Priest, and before all the congregation, and give him a charge in their sight; and thou shalt put off thine honour upon him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient; and he shall stand before Eleazar the Priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the Lord; at his word shall they go out, and at his word shall they come in, both he and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation."†

The Supreme Being reserved to himself the right of revealing his will by the mouths of his prophets, or in whatever manner he pleased; whether it was to direct, encourage, admonish

* Exod. ch. xx. 18, 20. † Numbers xxvii. 18, 21.

or threaten; but when it was the design of the people, or of any individual among them, to ask counsel of God, it was ordained to be in a manner similar to the preceding. Application was to be made to the high priest, and an answer was returned from the mercy-seat. It was thus, that Moses himself asked counsel of God. "And when Moses was gone into the tabernacle of the congregation to speak with him, then he heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy-seat, that was upon the ark of testimony, from between the two cherubims; and he spake unto him.”* After the death of Joshua, it was in this manner also that Israel asked the Lord," saying, who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them; and Jehovah said, Judah shall go up, behold I have delivered the land into his hand."

Thus was provision made for the directions which their unsettled state, the multitude of their enemies, and their occasional embarrassments might require; the people were taught their dependence upon the God of Israel, and were rescued from the temptations to consult the fallacious declarations of the heathens, under a plea of necessity. The mode was simple, exempt from those superstitious rites and ceremonies which are a disgrace to human * Numb. vii. 89.

beings. The answers were explicit and unequivocal; nor was it in the power of the priesthood to be guilty of delusion.*

SECT. IV.

ON THE PROPENSITY OF THE HEBREWS TO IMITATE THE IDOLATROUS PRACTICES OF THE PAGANS; THE NATURE AND PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE OF IDOLATRY; THE INJUNCTIONS NECESSARY TO PRESERVE THIS PEOPLE FROM FATAL SEDUCTIONS.

ITS

WHAT has already been advanced is sufficient to evince the fact, that peculiar care was taken, and peculiar means employed, to collect, and preserve as a distinct class, a competent number of people, who should be able to maintain all the principles of Monotheism, in the midst of that polytheism which deluged the world; and our subsequent history will entirely consist in the statement of the various plans adopted by divine providence, correspondent to the dangers and temptations which these people were destined to encounter. The sacred pages inform us that, notwithstanding so many instances of the divine interposition in their favour, and the astonishing

* See Note G.

miracles wrought by the great Jehovah for their preservation, notwithstanding the care which was taken to train them up in a religion so infinitely superior to all others; no sooner had they approached the borders of Canaan, and begun to intermix with the idolatrous people who dwelt in its vicinity, than their propensities to imitate were invincibly strong; and through a series of many ages, the most coercive measures were necessary, to prevent their being absorbed and lost, in the grand mass of depravity. These circumstances render it necessary for us to enquire, whence this strange propensity could be derived? What was the peculiar character of the religions they were so prone to imitate? The evils, of which they were uniformly productive, and the preventives employed?

We do not learn from the earlier parts of the Mosaic history, that the Israelites manifested any particular predilection for the gods of the Egyptians, at the period of their emigration, notwithstanding the Egyptians were more superstitious than any other people, and idolatry had assumed a more systematic form among them: for although some objects of their worship were of the lowest order, others were held in the highest veneration, and their influence was deemed peculiarly beneficent and extensive; which was