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النشر الإلكتروني

For he (Abraham) looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Here the inheritance of Canaan is clearly seen not to be the realization of the promise of God to Abram and his seed, but a mere shadow of "an enduring substance," and of "a better inheritance." The modern writers on the prophecies claim that Palestine is all that God ever promised to Abram, and thus they circumscribe the promises of the world's regeneration within a nutshell, and carnalize them all. For such narrow and antiscriptural tenets we have no charity; they are earthy, sensual, supercilious, heady, and degrading; they are too derogatory to the character of the Savior of a world to be entertained for a moment.

As Abraham had a claim on Palestine when he had no family to occupy it, so Christ had a claim to the world when he had no seed as yet to possess it; and as the accursed seed of Ham in the mean time piratically occupied Canaan, so the accursed seed of the serpent possessed the world.

To occupy Canaan, the seed of Abraham must increase in numbers sufficient to be organized into a nation; and so to possess the world, the children of Messiah must increase in numbers sufficient to be organized into a nationality strong enough to conquer and govern it; and as God expressly promised nationality to Abraham's carnal seed, so did he equally promise nationality to the seed of Christ, or Abraham's spiritual seed. The division of Abraham's seed into a confederacy of twelve states, or tribes, seems to have conformed to the twelve divisions of the world, and of the material and spiritual universe, and of the final kingdom.

To keep the seed of Abraham unmixed with foreign blood, the rite of circumcision was instituted, and the race was of a fair, or white complexion.

A rapid increase of population was also desirable, and also a firm unity of the confederate tribes.

These two great ends were readily accomplished by the four hundred years' bondage in Egypt.

When the family of Abraham was small, and wandered in Palestine and claimed its territory, the hostility of powerful foes would easily be engendered, and they might easily have become the prey of powerful adversaries, or their unity might have been early lost. To prevent these evils, and "to save much people alive," God provided them a shelter and protector in the powerful monarchy of Egypt. In Egypt the climate was highly favorable to fecundity, and to the support of a large population; it being a tropical country, and luxuriant in food. In addition to these things, they were made the slaves of the country, and thus, from the effects of labor, they multiplied but the more rapidly.

Such was the rapidity of their increase, that seventy persons had a posterity of three millions in four hundred years. No other instance of such rapid multiplication of our species can be found in any age.

Again, as the Hebrews were originally shepherds, they were an abomination to the Egyptians, and, of course, an amalgamation of Hebrew and Egyptian blood would not take place while a mutual antipathy existed between them. In addition to this, as the Hebrews were foreigners, and spoke a different language, had a widely different religion, and rites, and mode of worship; as they hated idolatry, and were of a different color from

the Egyptians, and as the Egyptians were exceedingly cruel to them, they must have despised each other most cordially, so that a common fusion between them was rendered morally impossible. The Hebrews being common sufferers, would naturally possess common sympathies, and, of course, would be confederated by the strongest of all human ties, and would be ready to make common cause against their oppressors. The very existence of the Hebrews having grown more and more bitter as they multiplied, they at length became ripe for revolt from bondage, and ready to set up an independent government of their own.

Had their condition been an easy one in Egypt they would never have consented to leave it for Canaan. We find that few of the Babylonian captives ever returned to Canaan, on account of the ease they enjoyed in Babylon. The Hebrews in Egypt had also learned to hate every thing in the shape of monarchy, and longed for unrestrained freedom, so that they were in a pretty good state of mind to embrace a democracy. Their religion had been very simple in its ordinances, and in connexion with their great exodus from bondage they were prepared to receive one that was more gorgeous and imposing than that of the hated Egyptians.

Prepared as they were in feeling and wishes for a free commonwealth, they were yet unfitted for it practically. It was therefore needful that a provisional republic should be established under a dictator, and that they should serve a probation under the new constitution and under the oversight of a wise and truly patriotic leader. Hence we easily see the reason for the forty years' proba*ion in the wilderness.

In the early part of this period the people were wild and extravagant in their action, and were at times ready to return to Egyptian despotism, but in the end the ultraists were calmed down, and all found the new "yoke easy and its burden light." As soon as the experiment had proved successful they were ready to enter Canaan and sustain the republic permanently. As Canaan was full of squatters and land-pirates, its possession was necessarily to be gained by force. Now as Israel had a divine right to the soil, they had an unquestionable right to occupy it, and as there was no arbiter in the case, an appeal to force was right and expedient and absolutely necessary. When states belong to a common confederacy they must appeal to the general government to secure their rights, but when no such general government exists, then nations must gain their rights by their own arm; they must redress their wrongs by the sword when none will arbitrate justly. Israel had a right to the soil of Canaan, a divine and unrelinquished right; he had been forced by famine to quit it for a season, and while gone after bread he had been seized and enslaved, and therefore his title to Canaan was strictly valid, and as none would give him possession of his patrimony it was righteous in him to lay hold of it vi et armis.

To such as deny God's right in the soil, our view will seem preposterous: and some would say, "Let Israel do without his patrimony rather than go to war, and leave the matter with God and he will settle it at last." Such talk is all fustian. Nations are temporal existences, their rewards and rights and punishments are as nations, all this side hell and heaven, and as God pointed out the sword to Israel to gain his divine rights as a nation,

so he points it out to all other nations in the same condition.

The bible teaches us as individuals under the same government to do good to our enemies, and yet it requires us to have them brought to punishment for the common good of society. To make an enemy do right is no evidence of a want of love to him, provided we do not do it from pure hatred of him, rather than of his wickedness. So to make wicked nations and tyrants do right is no proof of want of true love to their souls, even if we have to break their power to atoms. God commands us to sanctify war.

As the commonwealth of Israel was composed of two departments, viz., the church and the state, and as like typifies its like, the church of Israel typified the Christian church, and the Hebrew state typified the Christian state, and both together typified the Christian commonwealth that was to rise in 1776, and to be completed by the Millennium. If we trace the rise of Christianity into a great free government in America we shall find the philosophy of its history in a fac-simile of the rise of the Hebrew confederacy in its great elements.

As the Hebrew people were at first few and feeble, so were the Christians; as the twelve families of Jacob were united into a family confederacy, so were the different branches of the family of Christ united into a great confederacy as early as the third century, and as a social government existed in embryo among the Hebrew families, so did a great social government in like manner exist among the Christians.

As the Hebrews found protection from destruction, and enjoyed repose for a while from union with the

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