undertake any thing whatsoever, but will always return into the road which Nature has once for all prescribed to him. And so it happened with me in the present case. My pains about the language, about the substance of the sacred writings themselves, all ended at last in producing a livelier picture in my imagination of that fair and celebrated land, and of all that lay around it, as well as of the peoples and events which through thousands of years ennobled that spot of earth.

This small space was to see the origin and growth of the human race. Thence were to come our first and only accounts of primitive history; and this locality was to lie before our imagination, no less simple and conceivable than varied, and suited to the most wondrous migrations and settlements. Here, between four recorded rivers, rises a small delightful space, set apart from the whole habitable earth for youthful man. Here was he to develop his first capacities; and here, at the same time, was the lot to befall him, which was appointed for all his posterity, of losing peace by striving after knowledge. Paradise was forfeited; men increased and corrupted themselves; and were utterly destroyed by the wrathful Elohim. Only a few were saved from the general inundation; and scarcely scarcely had this horrible flood disappeared, when the well-known ancestral soil lay once more before the eyes of the grateful survivors.

Two rivers out of four, the Eu. phrates and the Tigris, still flowed in their beds. The name of the former remained, the other seemed marked by its course. More accurate traces of the Paradise could not be expected after such a revolution. The renewed race of man went forth from hence a second time. They were impelled to nourish and employ themselves in many different ways; but chiefly to collect about them great herds of tame animals, and to wander with them in all directions.

This mode of life, as well as the increase of the families, compelled the peoples soon to separate from each other. They could not immediately resolve to bid farewell for ever to their kindred and friends, and they struck upon the thought of building a lofty tower, which, from a great distance, would mark to them the way back. But this attempt failed like that

former enterprise. They were not to be at once happy and wise, numerous and united. They were put to confusion; the building stopped; the men dispersed; the world was peopled, but divided.

Our gaze, our interest remain, however, still fastened on these regions. At last a founder of a race comes forth from hence anew, and impresses a decided character on his descendants, thereby to combine them for all time into a great nation, holding toge. ther through all changes of fortune and of country.

From Euphrates, Abraham, not without Divine guidance, wanders towards the west. The desert opposes no final hinderance to his march. He reaches the Jordan, passes over the river, and spreads himself in the fair southern regions of Palestine. This land had been taken possession of before, and tolerably peopled. Mountains, not of extreme height, but stony and unfruitful, were cut through by many watered valleys, favourable to cultivation. Cities, towns, single settlements, lay scattered over the plain, and on slopes of the great valley which pours its waters into Jordan. Thus peopled, thus tilled was the country; but the world was still so wide, and the men so little careful, necessitous, or laborious, that they did not at once occupy all about them. Between their possessions large spaces spread, in which pasturing herds could move freely hither and thither. In these spaces Abraham disposes himself, with his brother Lot near him. But they cannot remain long in such spots. That very mode of settlement in the land, with a population that shrinks and swells, and productions which never remain in equipoise with the wants, brings unexpectedly a famine, and the stranger suffers with the native, whose own support his accidental presence has made more difficult. The two Chaldean brothers remove towards Egypt; and thus the stage is pointed out to us on which, for some thousands of years, the most important events of the world were to take place. From Tigris to Euphrates, from Euphrates to Nile, we see the earth peopled, and in this space a man, beloved of Heaven, and whom we already esteem worthy, moves to and fro with his herds and possessions, and in a short time amply increases them. The brothers return; but, taught by the distress they had suffered, they - take the resolution of separating from each other. Both indeed remain in southern Canaan; but while Abraham stays at Hebron, by the wood of ■Mamre, Lot goes towards the vale of Siddim. If our imagination is bold enough to give to the Jordan a sub: terranean outlet, so as to gain, instead - of the present Dead Sea, a dry soil, this place will appear to us a second - paradise; the more because the inha- bitants and neighbours, notorious for effeminacy and crime, lead us from this to suppose their life commodious and luxurious. Lot lives among them, - but apart.

But Hebron and the wood of Mamre appear to us as the dignified spots where the Lord speaks with Abraham, and promises him all the land so far as his gaze can reach in all directions. From these quiet regions, from these pastoral peoples, who associate with - the celestials, receive them as guests, and hold many dialogues with them, we are compelled to turn our eyes once more towards the East, and to think of the state of the surrounding world, which, on the whole, may per haps have resembled that of the single land of Canaan.

Families stay together; they combine, and the mode of life of the tribes is determined by the locality which they have appropriated, or now appropriate. On the mountains which pour their waters into the Tigris we find warlike peoples, who even thus early foreshow those future conquerors and rulers of the world; and in a military expedition, prodigious for those times, give us a prelude of their coming exploits. Chedorlaomer, king of - Elam, has already a powerful influence over his allies. He reigns long; for twelve years before Abraham's arrival in Canaan, he had made the peoples as far as Jordan tributary. They resisted at last, and the allies prepared for war. We find them unexpectedly on a road by which probably Abraham also reached Canaan. The peoples on the left and lower side of Jordan were subdued. Chedorlaomer directs his march southwards to the peoples of the wilderness, then, turning north, strikes the Amalekites; and when he has also mastered the Amorites, reaches Canaan, falls upon the kings of the Valley of Siddim, strikes

and scatters them, and moves with great booty up the course of Jordan, in order to extend his conquests as far as Lebanon.

Among the prisoners, plundered and dragged along with their property, Lot is one, who shares the fate of the country where he lives as a stranger. Abraham hears it, and at once we see the patriarch as a warrior and hero. Hedraws together his servants, divides them into bands, falls upon the cumbersome load of spoil, confuses the victors, who could not suspect an enemy in the rear, and recovers his brother and his goods, together with much of those of the conquered kings. By this short expedition Abraham takes, as it were, possession of the land. He appears to the inhabitants a protector, a rescuer, and by his disinterestedness a king. The kings of the Valley receive him with thanks; Melchisedec, the king and priest, with blessings.

The prophecies of an endless posterity are now renewed, nay, take a wider and wider extension. From the waters of Euphrates to the river of Egypt all the land is promised him. Yet there seems a failure of his immediate offspring. He is eighty years old, and has no son. Sarah, trusting less in the Divine power than he, becomes impatient. She wishes, in the Oriental fashion, to have a descendant through her maid. But scarcely has Hagar been committed to the master of the family, scarcely is there hope of a son, before dissension breaks out. The wife treats her own dependant harshly enough, and Hagar flies, in order to find a better fortune among other tribes. She turns back, not without signs from on high, and Ishmael is born.

Abraham is now ninety-nine years old, and the promises of a numerous posterity are constantly repeated, so that at last both the pair think them ridiculous. And yet is Sarah at last pregnant, and brings forth a son, to whom is given the name Isaac.

On the legitimate continuation of the human race, history, for the most part, depends. It becomes necessary to trace the most important public events up into the secrets of families; and thus also do the marriages of the patriarchs suggest some peculiar con. siderations. It seems that the Divine power which loved to guide the destiny of man, had wished to represent here, as in an archetype, connubial events of all kinds. Abraham, so long united in childless marriage with a beautiful woman whom many coveted, finds himself, in his hundredth year, the husband of two women, the father of two sons, and at this moment his domestic peace is broken. Two women side by side, and two sons by two mothers, cannot possibly agree.

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side least favoured by law, usage, and opinion, must give way. Abraham must sacrifice his regard for Hagar and for Ishmael. Both are dismissed, and Hagar is now compelled, against her will, to enter on a road which she once pursued in voluntary flight. At first it seems as if both her child and she must perish; but the angel of the Lord, who had before sent her back, now again rescues her, that Ishmael also may become a great people, and the most improbable of all pro phecies may have even an overflowing fulfilment.

Two parents in advanced years, and one son of their old age-here at last, at all events, we may look for domestic quiet and earthly happiness! Not at all. Heaven is still preparing the heaviest of trials for the patriarch. But of this we cannot speak, without first proposing several considerations.

If a natural universal religion were to arise, and a special revealed one to be developed from it, then the countries in which our imagination has been lingering, the mode of life, and race of men, were the very fittest for the purpose. At least, we do not find that in the whole world any thing equally favourable and encouraging existed. Even natural religion, if we suppose that it had arisen before in the human mind, implies much sensibility; for it rests upon the persuasion of an universal providence, which con. ducts the course of the world as a whole. A particular religion, revealed by Heaven to this or that people, brings with it the belief in a special providence, pledged by the Divine Being to certain favoured men, families, races, and peoples. It seems hard for this to develop itself in men from within. It requires tradition, usage, assurance from of old.

It is therefore beautiful that the Israelitish tradition represents the very first men who confide in this providence as heroes of faith, following all the commands of that high Being,

whose servants they profess themselves as unreservedly as they undoubtingly persevere in expecting the final fulfilment of his promises.

As a particular revealed religion lays for its ground the idea that one man may be more favoured by Heaven than another, it arises also pre-eminently from the separation of classes. The first men appeared nearly allied; but their employments soon divided them. The hunter was the freest of all; from him arose the warrior and the ruler. Those who tilled the field, bound themselves to the soil, and raised dwellings and barns to preserve what they had gained, might also thus early think themselves of some importance, because their condition promised continuance and security. To the herds. man in his employment, there seemed given the most unlimited condition, and a boundless heritage. The increase of the herds proceeded without end, and the space which was to support them expanded on all sides. These three classes seem from the very first to have regarded each other with dis like and contempt; and, as the herdsman was an abomination to the townsmen, so in turn he avoided them. The hunters vanish from our sight among the hills, and re-appear only as conquerors.

The patriarchs belonged to the class of herdsmen. Their manner of life upon the sea of deserts and pastures, gave breadth and freedom to their minds. The vault of heaven, under which they dwelt, with all its mighty stars, elevated their feelings. They had more need than the active, skilful huntsman, or the secure, careful, householding husbandman, of the immovable faith that a God walked beside them, visited them, cared for them, guided and protected them.

We are compelled to make another reflection in passing to the rest of the history. Humane, beautiful, and cheering as is the religion of the patriarchs, yet traits of savageness and cruelty are mingled with it all, out of which man may either rise or again sink in it, and be lost.

That hatred should appease itself by the blood, by the death of the conquered enemy, is natural. That men concluded a peace upon the battle-field among the ranks of the slain, may easily be conceived. That they should similarly think to strengthen a com

pact by slain animals, follows from what has been just said. Nor can it more be an object of wonder, that by slaughtered beasts they believed they could call down, propitiate, and prevail upon the heavenly powers, whom they always regarded as partisans, either opposing or assisting them. But if we consider only the offerings, and the way in which they were performed in that primeval time, we find a strange usage, - to us altogether abhorrent, which probably had been derived from war: this, namely thesacrificed animals of every kind, however great the number, had to be hewn in twain, and laid on either hand, and in the space between those -placed themselves who wished to make a covenant with the Deity.

Another fearful trait passes wonderfully and awfully through all that fair world-that all which was consecrated and devoted must die; probably also a war custom, transferred to peace. The inhabitants of a town which defends itself strongly, are threatened with such a vow. It falls by storm or otherwise, and nothing is left alive; men never, and often not the women, the children, even the cattle. Precipitately and superstitiously such offerings are, with more or less distinctness, vowed to Heaven; and thus those whom the votary would fain spare, even the nearest to him, his own children, are exposed to perish as the sin-offerings of such a madness.

So barbarous a kind of devotion could not arise in the mild, truly patriarchal character of Abraham. But Heaven, which often, in order to tempt us, seems to exert those qualities which man is inclined to attribute to it, lays monstrous commands on him. He must sacrifice his son as a pledge of the new covenant; and if usage is followed, must not only slay and burn him, but divide him into two parts, and between the smoking members expect anew promise from the benign Power. Without delay, and blindly, Abraham prepared himself to execute the command. But the will is sufficient. Abraham's trials are now over, for they could not be carried to a higher point. But Sarah dies, and this gives occasion for Abraham taking possession typically of the land of Canaan. He wants a grave, and this is the first time when he concerns himself for any possession on this earth. He had probably before sought out a double cavern

at the wood of Mamre. This he buys with the field about it; and the legal form which he observes in the purchase, shows how important is this possession to him. It was so, perhaps more than he could himself imagine. For he, his children, and his grandchildren, were to rest there; and the chief claim to the whole land, as well as the ever-increasing wish of his descendants to gather themselves in it, was thereby to be most appropriately grounded.

Henceforth the manifold family scenes continue to vary. Abraham still keeps himself severely apart from the inhabitants; and if Ishmael himself, the son of an Egyptian woman, has moreover married a daughter of that country, so Isaac, too, must wed a kinswoman and an equal.

Abraham sends his servant to Mesopotamia, to the relatives whom he has left there. The prudent Eleazar arrives unknown, and, in order to take home the right bride, he tries the serviceableness of the damsels at the well. He begs to drink himself, and Rebecca, unasked, gives drink also to his camels. He gives her presents, and demands her in marriage; norissherefused him. Thus he takes her home to his master, and she is united to Isaac. In this case, also, the offspring must be long waited for. Not till after years of trial is Rebecca blessed; and the same division which arose from Abraham's double marriage is here produced by one. Two boys of opposite characters struggle even in the mother's womb. They come to light; the elder lively and strong, the younger mild and prudent. The former is the father's, the latter the mother's favourite. The strife for the precedence, which begins even with their birth, always continues. Esau is quiet and indifferent in his possession of those rights of the first-born which fate has given him; Jacob does not forget that his brother thrust him back. Attentive to every opportunity of gaining the desired advantage, he buys the right of the first-born from his brother, and overreaches him as to their father's blessing. Esau is enraged, and vows his brother's death, and Jacob flees to seek his fortune in the land of his forefathers.

Now, for the first time in so noble a family, appears one who has no hesitation in seeking by prudence and cunning the advantages which nature and circumstance refused him. It has often enough been noticed and expressed, that the sacred writings by no means aim at representing the patriarchs and other divinely favoured men as models of virtue. They, too, are men of the most different characters, with many defects and failings. But there is one chief quality, which these men after God's heart could not want an immovable faith that God had special regard to them and theirs.

General, natural religion, requires, properly speaking, no faith. For the persuasion that a great, productive, regulating, and guiding Being, as it were, hides himself behind Nature, in order to make himself conceivable by us-a persuasion of this kind impresses itself on every one. Nay, if one often lets go the thread of it, which conducts him through life, yet will he be able immediately and every where to resume it. But it is quite otherwise with a particular religion, which announces to us that this great Being distinctly and preeminently loves some one individual, one race, one people, one country. This religion is grounded on faith, which must be immovable if it is not to be instantly levelled with the ground. Every doubt of such a religion is mortal to it. One may return to persuation, but not to faith. Hence the endless trials, the delay in the fulfilment of so often repeated promises, by which the capacity for faith of those great forefathers is set in the clearest light.

It is in faith, too, that Jacob begins his expedition; and if, by his cunning and deception, he has not gained our liking, yet he secures it by his lasting and inviolable love for Rachel, whom he himself on the moment sues for, as in his father's name Eleazar had sued for Rebecca. In him was the promise of a countless people first to be fully unfolded. He was to see many sons about him, but through them and their mothers was to suffer many pangs of heart.

He serves seven years for his beloved, without impatience and without wavering. His father-in-law, resembling him in cunning, and disposed, like him, to consider this means to his end legitimate, deceives him, and so repays him what he had done to his brother. Jacob finds in his arms a wife whom he does not love. In order

The

to appease him, Laban indeed, after a short time, gives him his beloved also, but under the condition of seven more years of service. So now there comes vexation on vexation. unbeloved wife is fruitful, the beloved brings no children. The latter wishes, like Sarah, to become a mother by means of her maid. The former grudges her even this advantage. She, too, presents a maid to her husband; and now the good patriarch is the most troubled of men-four women, children from three, and none from the beloved one! At last she too is favoured, and Joseph comes into the world, a late offspring of the most passionate love. Jacob's fourteen years of service are past. But Laban will not part with his chief and most faithful servant. They form a new contract, and divide the herds between them. Laban keeps the white ones as the more numerous; Jacob must be content with the spotted-as it were with the refuse. But he too is able to secure his own advantage; and as he gained the rights of the first-born by a bad decision, and his father's blessing by a disguise, so now too he is able, by art and sympathy, to appropriate the best and largest part of the herds, and in this way also becomes the truly worthy ancestor of the people of Israel, and a model for his descendants. Laban and his dependants remark not perhaps the stratagem, but the results. Vexation arises. Jacob flees with all his family, with all his possessions, and escapes from his pursuer Laban, partly by fortune, partly by cunning. Rachel is now to bear him a son; but she dies in giving him birth. The son of sorrow, Benjamin, survives her; but the old father is to feel yet greater sorrow from the apparent loss of his Joseph.

Some one may perhaps ask, for what reason these well-known and oftrepeated and explained narratives are here again circumstantially told. Such an enquirer must be satisfied with the answer, that I could no otherwise exhibit how it was that, in my scattered life and desultory instruction, I yet collected my mind and feelings on one point, and in one kind of quiet activity; and no otherwise could paint the peace which surrounded me, even when the world about me was in the wildest and strangest commotion. When an ever-busy imagination, of