chil

but let us attend to the words of Moses himself, when he commanded the children of Israel to the continual repetition of the ceremony of the passover:-" And it shall come to pass when your dren shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses *."

Now, what appearance would Moses make as a man of understanding, if he could continually have set before the eyes of the people a ceremony, to commemorate circumstances and prodigies, which had their origin only in his own invention. If the wonders, which he relates as performed in Egypt, had indeed been only fables, he took the very way to be convicted of imposture; and had he been conscious of practising deceit, instead of having instituted the passover he would have thrown a veil of mystery over his relations calculated to confound falsehood with truth, and which would have rendered it, in the course of a few ages, extremely difficult, if not utterly impossible, to have distinguished the one from the other.

Thus we see that even the ceremonies of the Jewish religion add proofs in favour of revelation, instead of giving arguments against it, as the

*Exod. xii. 26, 27.

infidel would endeavour to assert. With regard to these, we have already said sufficient for our purpose; but in the next chapter we will add some few more reflections still further to demonstrate, that the Law of Moses did indeed proceed from God.

CHAPTER X.

REFLECTIONS, FURTHER TO SHEW THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE LAW OF MOSES.

WE have before observed, that it has been the design of lawgivers of all ages, to compose and enact laws calculated to contribute to the good order, comfort, and happiness of those, for whom they legislated. The people, by whom they were invested with authority, expected this of them, and to this end all their endeavours were directed. Free and independent states can have no other object in their laws, than their own preservation and happiness; and no prudent legislator would be inclined to make his laws both inconvenient and penal, any further than it might be absolutely necessary to do so for the peace and safety of society. Yet, behold this Moses, to whom even the infidel allows great abilities, without consulting the inclinations of the Jewish people, publishing a code of laws, many of them hard and difficult to be borne, and some of them in the highest degree penal; instituting the punishment of death for many offences, and bringing on the Israelites the

hatred of the surrounding nations, by the absolute manner in which he forbad any union or connection with them.

Let us for a moment, in imagination, divest ourselves of all knowledge of the history of the Jewish people. Let us, under this supposition, open the Books of Moses, and read those ponderous, those burdensome ordinances, to which he commanded the Israelites to pay exact obedience: what would unassisted human reason exclaim? We know from the example of the infidel, that it would be too ready to reject these laws with contempt. We should be too easily inclined to accuse the Jews of folly in submitting to so heavy a yoke. But let us beware of determining in haste. The facts of the promulgation of these laws by Moses, and the reception of them by the Israelites, when properly considered, are of themselves strong presumptive proofs in favour of their Divine origin. We find, that these harsh, these highly penal statutes were received with the profoundest reverence, by the whole Jewish nation; that they were preserved and persevered in, not only by those to whom they were first given, but by their posterity, with singular veneration and attachment, in the most sorrowful times, as well as during the prosperity of Judea; and though the stiff-necked Israelites were often disobedient, and continually falling

idolatry, we do not discover, that it ever

entered into the imagination of any one among them to propose an abrogation, or even the slightest alteration of the Mosaic code. As these laws were first formed, so they continued; and such they are to this day to the unhappy Israelite, who blindly refuses to participate in the freedom proclaimed by the Gospel of Christ. Must there not, then, be something very extraordinary in all this? Is it not resisting common sense, to deny that this veneration of the Jews for their laws could only have arisen from the full belief and entire conviction of their Divine origin?

Surely, no one who reflects will attempt to say, that the Jews were not themselves persuaded, that God was the author of their laws. From whence, if not from this conviction, could they have denied that inflexible rigour with which they punished the worshippers of idols? What other cause could have led them to consent to condemn to death without considering the ties of friendship, or of blood, those Jews who turned from the worship of Jehovah, and bowed the knee to false gods of wood and stone? How else could they have been led to such unrelenting severity against the idolatrous inhabitants of the land of Canaan, but from the command of Him, who had declared himself to be "a jealous God?" And what other than their full persuasion, that the word of Moses was His word, could have kept the Israelites in