the water of reparation and purification for sin, though the animal herself was required to be of the accursed colour. In like manner the goat was, among the Egyptians, sacred to Pan, and worshipped by the most atrocious rites, as his emblem. Jehovah, on the other hand, required his people to offer up this Egyptian deity as a sacrifice to himself, and on one occasion to send him away into the wilderness loaded with maledictions. Thus it was throughout the whole law of sacrifice. Every victim offered, was offered in direct opposition to the superstitious notions of the heathen, between whom and the Israelites a wall of partition was thus raised, not to be broken down except by the apostacy of the latter people.

The very same principle which actuated the Almighty (if we may venture thus to express ourselves) in the selection of victims to be offered in sacrifice upon his altars, directed him in the regulation of those more minute occurrences, of which impious and ignorant men have chosen to speak in terms of ridicule. The injunction not to seeth a kid in its mother's milk, for example, will indeed appear a strange one, if it be received without any reference to the religious practices of the idolaters of those times; but when the reader is informed that to feast upon a kid so dressed formed an essential part of the impious and obscene ceremonies which were celebrated in honour of a god, believed to have been suckled by a goat, he will cease to consider the prohibition as useless in itself, or at all unworthy of him who pronounced it. In like manner, the Israelites were charged not to wear a garment of linen and wollen mixed, because such a garment was always worn by the heathens during their nocturnal acts of worship, and because they believed that the act of wearing it protected its owner and his property from malign influence, and promoted exceedingly the increase of his wool and flax. Again; fields were not to be sown with different kinds of seed at once, because the heathen were in the habit of thus acting, under the persuasion that each grain could boast of its protecting deity, and that the more mixed their seed, the greater number of divine guardians they should secure for their crops throughout the season. So was it as to coupling the ox and the ass together in the same harness. That was not only done superstitiously by the Canaanites, but it was, in itself, a cruel arrangement, inasmuch as two animals of very unequal strength became thereby subjected to the same degree of labour; and it was prohibited among the Israelites, as well because cruelty formed no ingredient in their law, as to place

xacted for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, cannot be defendd by any one who considers the forgiveness of injuries to be moral duty.

There is no question that several of the laws delivered to he Israelites in the wilderness would, if enacted now, be pronounced impolitic, if not unjust; but it by no means folows that they displayed either a want of policy or justice hen. Let it be remembered, that as the individual man has is stages of childhood, youth, and maturity, during each of which a different system of discipline is required, so has the whole human race, as well as every one of the nations belonging to it, the same course to run, and, to a certain degree, the same variety of training to undergo. The Israelites, at the period of the delivery of their law, were, as their annals prove, in the very first stage of their national existence; they were exceedingly rude, exceedingly barbarous, exceedingly wayward, and exceedingly capricious. To subject such a people to the more perfect moral restraints, which prevail among the polished nations of modern Europe, would have been impracticable: and as God always adapts his dispensations to the capabilites of those who receive them, he did not attempt it. But let the Jewish laws be compared with the laws of other nations of antiquity, with those of the twelve tables at Rome, with those of Sparta, Athens, or any other state, of whose wisdom we are accustomed to think with excusable partiality, and what will be the result ?-that the Levitical code, in point of strict justice, of mercy, of humanity, and a concurrence with right reason, stands pre-eminently conspicuous, presenting every where glaring and palpable proofs that it could not possibly be the invention of man in a stage of society so barbarous. It is worthy of notice, moreover, that in point of antiquity, the Levitical code far surpasses any with which we are acquainted: yet Solon, and Lycurgus, and Draco, and other legislators, with all the advantages of experience to assist them, failed in producing any thing to be compared with it, for wisdom, purity, or fitness. But how are we to reconcile the repeated apostacies of the Israelites with the fact that God's power, both to defend and

T

to punish, was so frequently and conspicuously displayed be fore them. It seems hardly possible to believe that any tribe, however rude, would commit so flagrant an act of folly, as that recorded against them in the matter of the golden calf, or plunge again and again into idolatry and vice, in spite of the numerous punishments to which, in consequence, they became subject.

There is, no doubt, a good deal here to excite our surprise; but before we pronounce the facts either impossible, or hard to be received, let us look to occurrences, precisely similar in their nature, which are daily and hourly taking place among ourselves. The drunkard is repeatedly warned, not by his medical attendant only, but by personal experience, that if he persist in the pernicious habit to which he is addicted, his health and eventually his life must fall a sacrifice. He sees his affairs thrown into confusion, his family in poverty and distress, and he is himself, from time to time, the victim of violent remorse; yet this man, in the enlightened nineteenth century, possessed of an excellent understanding and a liberal education, runs headlong, against every imaginable inducement of conscience and feeling, into ruin. With such a fact staring us in the face, why should we hesitate to believe that a nation of illiterate barbarians, just emerged from the most degrading slavery, and vitiated in their moral not less than in their intellectual being, should, in despite of all the displays of God's power, to which they were witnesses, fall away, as often as a strong temptation occurred, from their allegiance to Jehovah. If it be urged, that such spectacles as those described by Moses, must have acted more powerfully than any restraints of conscience and reason, we answer, that taking into consideration the relative conditions of society, we entertain a directly opposite opinion. We are strongly disposed to believe, that the enlight ened and well-educated man who cannot be restrained from the commission of crime by the reproaches of his own heart, and the spectacle of his children's ruin, would not, even now, be cured of his folly, by a repetition of such a scene as occurred on Mount Sinai; and we entertain no doubt at all, that the scene in question produced upon the grovelling barbarians who witnessed it, a far less enduring, if not a less vivid effect, than one night of bitter self-upbraiding produces now upon the drunkard, to whom we have compared them.

One point only remains to be noticed, ere we bring this chapter to a close; we allude to the story of Baalam and his

speaking ass, with the consequences attendant on his visit to Balak's encampment.

Of the miracle of the speaking ass, we have no more to say than that it rests its title to credibility on precisely the same authority with the plagues of Egypt and the passage of the Red Sea. In our extreme self-complacence we are indeed dis posed to think that the poor ass was but an unworthy instru ment, in the hands of the Most High; whilst the faculty of speech seems so perfectly incompatible with the organic arrangement of the creature's parts, that our scepticism is almost involuntarily excited. But the latter disposition will cease to operate at once, if it be remembered that the ass here, like the pillar of cloud in the camp, was the mere shell, if we may so speak; and that the words, though issuing from the creature's mouth, were the offspring of Almighty volitions. The power which is able to create, may surely be admitted to be competent to the accomplishment of any minor operation; nor is it one whit more surprising that the ass should have conversed with Balaam, than that the serpent conversed with Eve in Paradise. Besides, it is not difficult to discover a motive for the display of this exercise of power under the peculiar circumstances of the case before us. Balaam was on his way for the avowed purpose of cursing those whom God had blessed, and God, by opening the mouth of an animal naturally dumb, and causing it to rebuke its master, taught the sorcerer that whatever his will might be, his power extended no further than Jehovah should sanction.

Of Balaam himself different opinions are held by different commentators; some supposing him to have belonged to the number of true prophets, such as Melchizedek, Job, &c., whom we find apart from the twelve tribes; others contending that he was a mere pretender to supernatural gifts, like the magicians or sorcerers in Egypt. We confess ourselves inclined decidedly to favour the latter opinion. His entire behaviour, indeed, as well in his own house as in the high place beside Balak, indicates, that though he was not ignorant of the existence of the God of Israel, nor indisposed to acknowledge his power, he was by no means an exclusive worshipper of him, as the Creator and Governor of the universe. His sacrifices were all offered upon altars sacred to Baal; they were arranged in the order to which Baal's devotees attended; and without a doubt he went apart with the expectation of receiving no divine communication, but merely in continuation of that system of deceit which he was accustomed to practise.

His blessings and prophecies were accordingly poured forth under the very same influence which granted speech to the ass; in other words, though sublime and of fixed accomplishment, they were purely involuntary. They relate, as the most competent judges have clearly shown, to the events to which we have referred them; and they have all, as far as time has permitted, been strictly fulfilled.

Note.-It will be seen that no notice has been taken, in the preceding pages, either of the personal history, or of the book received into our Canon, as proceeding from the pen of the patriarch Job. Two motives have directed us in the adoption of this course, either of which will, we presume, operate as a justification in the eyes of our readers. In the first place, the events recorded in that sublime poem, being in no degree connected with the history of the Bible, it would have been totally inconsistent with the plan which we had chalked out for ourselves, to have given of them, even a brief account. In the next place, the opinions which have been held respecting the nature of the book itself, as well as the cra of the patriarch's trial, are so varied and so contradictory, that we feel by no means disposed to attempt the arduous task of determining among them. It is enough for us to know that Job was a real and not a fictitious person; that he was severely tried and found worthy; and that the book, which bears his name, as it is full of beauty and lessons of piety, has been admitted as canonical in all ages of the church; but whether it be an exact history, penned by himself, or a dramatic poem composed by somebody else, the learned are by no means agreed. Nor is the question one of any importance whatever.

CHAPTER XII.

Joshua assumes the guidance of the congregation.—Invades Canaan.-His wars and general government.-Objections stated, and answered.

A. M. 3803 to 3829.-B. C. 1608 to 1582.

On the death of Moses, Joshua, by divine command, as sumed the chief direction of the affairs of Israel; and cheered by a promise of the same miraculous assistance which