Further, the Jewish ritual appointed three great feasts, all of which were commemorative of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt. The Passover expressly commemorated, and every ceremony of it indelibly recorded some circumstance of that memorable night, when the destroying angel slew the first-born of Egypt, and passed over the houses of the Israelites. The month in which it took place was, from being the seventh, reckoned as the first month of the year, to mark it as the era of this illustrious deliverance; it was eaten with bitter herbs, to remind them of their severe bondage and servile food in Egypt: with unleavened bread, because the Egyptians in their terror urged them to depart, and would not allow them time to leaven their bread, for they said, We be all dead men. It was eaten in the posture of travellers just prepared for a journey, to mark its having immediately preceded their sudden and final departure from the house of bondage. Another great feast was that of Tabernacles, accompanied with this singular ceremony: "Ye shall take, saith the Lord, "on the first day, the boughs of goodly trees to make booths: “for all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths seven days, "that all your generations may know that I made the Children "of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the "land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."+ A third great feast was the feast of Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover: to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the Law from Mount Sinai, which took place fifty days after the destruction of the first-born, and their consequent march rom Egypt, at a time of the year when the harvest usually closed. And the Law prescribed, that each head of a family should take of the first-fruits of the earth, and bring it to the place which the Lord should choose, to set it down before the altar of the Lord, with this solemn acknowledgment of the whole series of peculiar and miraculous providences which the nation had experienced: "thou shalt say and speak before the "Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and "he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and “became there a nation, great, and mighty, and populous: and the "Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us “hard bondage: and when we cried unto the Lord God of our Levit, xxiii. 40, &c. * Exod. xii. "fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, " and our labour, and our oppression: and the Lord brought us "forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretch"ed arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with "wonders and he hath brought us into this place, and hath 'given us this land, even a land which floweth with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the first-fruits of "the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me.”* 66 : Thus the three great annual feasts, when all the males of the nation assembled at the house of God, were solemn commemorations of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt; of the miraculous promulgation of the Law from Sinai: and of the manifold displays of divine protection and assistance, by which the Hebrew nation were put in possession of the promised land. But the miraculous deliverance from Egypt was not commemorated by these great feasts alone; it was assigned as one reason for the observance of the Sabbath day; it was the ground-work of the whole Jewish ritual which was established in honour of God, who was the peculiar God of the Jews; "be"cause he had brought them forth from the house of bondage, "from the land of Egypt."+ The observances of this ritual, its new moons and feasts, and periodical sacrifices, were all directly or indirectly commemorative of this great event, which was thus recalled to the memory of the Jews, monthly, weekly, daily, while a vestige of their religion remained. In addition to this, it must be recollected that the civil government of the Jews, the distribution and the tenure of property, and the most important regulations which affected it (about the grounds and authority of which men are always sufficiently solicitous, however indifferent they may be as to religion;) these were all founded on the belief of the Mosaic miracles, and many on a direct acknowledgment of them. Jehovah was acknowledged, not only as the God, but as the temporal King, of the Hebrew nation. Their religious and civil system were inseparably combined; God was the author of their laws, which could not be altered without consulting him. The judges and kings were his viceroys, enjoying only a delegated authority.§ The High Priests and the Levites were civil magistrates and judges, as well as + Exod. xxxiv. 23. * Deut, xxvi. 5—10. Deut. iv. 1, 2. | Deut. xvii. 8--12. ministers of religion. The Sanhedrim, the princes of the congregation, the elders, the heads of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, of tens, all traced their authority to a divine appointment.* The original distribution of property in the Jewish nation was founded on this principle, that the Lord Jehovah having been the sole power which gave them possession of the land of Canaan, each individual was to consider himself as holding his portion of it directly by a divine grant, on such tenure and under such conditions as that grant prescribed. And these conditions were many of them of such a nature, as implied a direct acknowledgment of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, and a full conviction of a perpetual and peculiar providence over the Jewish race; a conviction which could be grounded only on the belief of these miracles. Thus the land was originally divided by the divine command; and all property alienated from any family, was to be restored to its original proprietors every fiftieth year, or year of jubilee. Mark now the reason assigned by the Law as authorising this regulation:+ "The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine: "ye are strangers and sojourners with me, saith the Lord." Again, every Jew was to be released from all personal servitude every seventh year. "Then shall he depart from thee (says the Law,) for they are my servants whom I brought forth out of "the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as bondmen.” 66 But the most extraordinary injunction of all, with respect to property, and the most decisive on the present point, was that of the sabbatical year. Every seventh year," says the Law,‡ "shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the "Lord; thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vine"yard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest, "thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine "undressed; for it is a year of rest unto the land.” We may well ask what sanction or authority could induce any nation to receive so singular an ordinance? The sanction which enforced it on the Jews was this: "If ye shall say, What shall "we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather "in our increase: Then will I command my blessing upon you " in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. † Lev. xxv. particularly ver. 23, 42, 55 Lev xxv. 4, 5. Numb. xi. 16, 17. Deut. i. 15. my it."* "Ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; "and the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, "and dwell therein in safety. But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; I also will set face against you, and I will bring the land into desolation, "and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at "it; and I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw "out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in "your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon How incredible is it, that any legislator would have ventured to propose such a law as this, or any people have submitted to receive it, except in consequence of the fullest conviction on both sides, that a divine authority had dictated this law, and that a peculiar providence would constantly facilitate its execution. When this law, therefore, was proposed and received, such a conviction must have existed in both the Jewish legislator and the Jewish people. Since, then, nothing could have produced this conviction, but the experience or the belief of some such miraculous interposition as the history of the Pentateuch details, the very existence of this law is a standing monument, that when it was given the Mosaic miracles were fully believed. Now this law was coeval with the witnesses of the miracles themselves. If then the facts were so plain and so public, that those who witnessed them could not have been mistaken as to their existence or miraculous nature, the reality of the Mosaic miracles is clear and undeniable. Let me now very briefly RECAPITULATE the process of the ar gument which I have adduced in this series of Lectures, to establish the certainty of the Mosaic miracles, and by consequence, the divine original of the Jewish religion. The relation of them is found in a work which contains the Religion and Laws of a numerous and not uncivilized nation; and which it has been shown they have ALWAYS RECEIVED as written by their legislator himself, at the time the facts took place, and as the only authentic code of their Religion and their Laws, as well as the only sure record of their history, and the authority fixing the tenure on which private property was held, and the regu+ Vide Lecture I. * Lev. xxv. xxvi. particularly xxvi. 34, 35. iations affecting it established. Now I think I may venture to assert, that there occurs not in the history of mankind, a singl instance of any nation being so grossly imposed upon, as universally to receive a forged book of Laws, and submit to its authority not only as genuine, but divine; especially when the tenor of these Laws is such (as I endeavoured to prove) that no period can be assigned in the history of the nation, when their introduction would not have been likely to excite great opposi tion; and that no body of men, nay, no individual, can be pointed out, whose interest it was to form such a fabrication, or gain it that universal credit it certainly acquired, with the divided subjects of the kings of Judah and Israel, and the hostile tribes of the Jews and the Samaritans. To give further satisfaction on this important point, and to evince that the Pentateuch was not a compilation of Laws which were indeed acknowledged, but which were combined with a fictitious history and this implicitly received from the influence of national vanity, or party and personal interest; I have examined the INTERNAL STRUCTURE of the Pentateuch,* and from this (the most unerring criterion, whenever it can be applied) I endeavoured to evince, that the facts it relates, so far at least as they were not miraculous, were undoubtedly true; and that the relation it delivers may be depended on, as exact and faithful even in the most minute particulars: because it is evidently written with the most perfect artlessness and simplicity; with such particularity of time and place, and person and circumstance, as none but an eye-witness can be reasonably supposed to have preserved; and with such strict impartiality, as leaves no room to doubt that it delivers every circumstance without any attempt to disguise or alter it. The relation may therefore be depended on, as faithfully drawn up by some EYE WITNESS. In the third Lecture I went further, and endeavoured to prove, that as the Pentateuch had been shown to be the relation of SOME EYE-WITNESS TO THE FACTS; so also it carried internal evidence, that this eye-witness was NO OTHER THAN MOSES HIMSELF, and that it was written with the strongest regard to truth: because on comparing the different books of it together, an exact agreement appeared in the different parts of the narrative, as * Vide Lecture II. |