Abraham ministered to angels and Jacob dreamed of Heaven were favorable to the preservation of the faith committed to their charge. Their birthright, more precious than any other of humanity, was transmitted from father to son through centuries and generations that are no longer to be numbered; and any disposition which might have been shown amongst the favored line to wander after the idols and the occupations of other nations was long restrained. But it was not then, any more than it now is, possible for truth to be maintained on earth, without some sacrifice in return from those to whom it was mercifully confided. The faithfulness of the Patriarchs was first tried; their people, with whom faith was not equally habitual, though even more necessary, being then subjected to a longer ordeal. Years, rolling by, bring out the herdsmen of Canaan as a horde of Egyptian slaves, who, though yet professing, through their elders, 3 the faith of their fathers, were so weighed down by chains and hardships, that the only human beings with whom the light yet lingered seemed powerless to shield it against gusts or even breaths of contrary air.

A lonely and a stricken man was keeping the flocks of his father-in-law in the deserts bordering upon Horeb and Sinai. To these spots, barren of fruits or springs, and hidden amongst mountains of sandy sides and awful peaks, Moses had fled from Egypt, embittered by the injustice of oppressors and the unkind

3 Exodus, III. 16.

ness of brethren.4

It was to this saddened spirit and in these forbidding scenes that the words from the bush, which burned with fire, yet was not consumed, were uttered:-I AM THAT I AM: THE LORD GOD OF YOUR FATHERS: THIS IS MY NAME FOR EVER.5 The herdsman hid his face, and would have shut his ears; but the miraculous proofs, with which the voice he could not hush and the flame he could not quench were accompanied, compelled him, not only to believe, himself, but to return to his countrymen in bondage, that their fainting faith, like his, might be revivified. The message he carried on his lips and in his heart was the repeated revelation of the unity and the eternity of Almighty God.

The visions opened through the words which Moses heard near Horeb have since been cleared of much of the uncertainty by which, to his eyes, they must have been obscured. All that can make man happy upon earth and bear him rejoicing up to Heaven has its beginning and its end in the worship of his Creator. On this depends whatever he can do for himself through liberty, as well as whatever is done for him through religion; and so far as it became the faith and the practice of the Jews, we can seek amongst them the germs that have not yet been made to bloom with the life and the fruitfulness of which they are susceptible. The development of liberty is secondary, so to speak, to the revelation of religion, and the wisdom to be pure and humble must

4 Exodus, II. 11 - 15.

5 Ibid., III. 14, 15.

precede the strength to be great and free; but wherever faith is given through the one, power will, through the other, sooner or later, succeed. It is in this view that we may propose to investigate the liberty of the Jews.

The two great principles upon which all liberty as well as all religion relies are the common origin of man and the common government of God.

8

The first of these was repeatedly imparted, at various seasons, to the Jews. Their traditions, like those of many another people, bore witness to the individual spared with his family, in order that mankind might be preserved from the condemnation otherwise universal; and the bow then set in the cloud above the faithful Noah was in token of a covenant to all flesh upon the earth. Another covenant with Abraham,7 and the still later declaration of Moses, proclaimed the same truth, -that, though one branch after another might wither and fall into error, the stock was always common to the sound and to the decayed. But instead of following the truth of human brotherhood, which was thus again and again disclosed, the Jews were overweighed by the extension of the chain, and would have supported only the links that bound themselves.

It fared the same with the second principle, concerning the universal government of God. No people could have more literally believed that in the Deity they had their judge, their lawgiver, and their

6 Genesis, IX. 13, 17.

7 Ibid., XVII. 2, 4.

8 Numbers, XV. 16.

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10

king; none could have paid their homage to a mortal monarch with more devotion or greater splendor than they worshipped Him who made their sanctuary His dwelling, and by whom their separate interests of every day were as much regulated as their doctrines or their national destinies." Yet the Divine government was obeyed only because visible in outward and miraculous appearances; and in such a spirit, that, could its subjects have had their will, it would have been confined for ever to themselves, within the limits of their own Judea.

Neither, therefore, of the principles defined as the foundation both of liberty and of religion was developed to its full proportions among the Jews. It is this, indeed, that reduces the nation commonly arrayed in holiday attire, and portrayed as keeping with serious zeal the festivals of their faith or the injunctions of their laws, more nearly to the level of the toiling and the tempted races which dwelt with them upon the earth. Yet there were men amongst them to stand upon the mountains through their lives, and to assist their people at times to ascend them like

9 Isaiah, XXXIII. 22. 10 Exodus, XXV. 8.

11 The striking testimony of the great pagan historian is true: "Non regibus hæc adulatio, non Cæsaribus honor." Tacit., Hist., V. 5. The theocracy of the Jews is the one undisputed point in history. "Deus profecto erat Rex Israelitarum." Jahn, Arch. Bibl., Sect. "Non tantum generali provi

219.

dentia, sed speciali imperio, gentem Judaicam regeri et moderari." Spencer, Dissert. de Theoc. Jud., De Legg. Hebræor., Cap. V. sect. 1. "Wherever the Israelite turned, he was reminded," says one of their descendants, "of the presence of his God and of his king. His king was in heaven; his God was on earth." D'Israeli, Genius of Judaism, p. 35.

wise; these times and these men, therefore, are for us, if we may, to follow.

Moses returned from Horeb to communicate 12 the revelation he had received to his countrymen, and to lead them forth from bondage. Had the people of the earth known what was passing, they would have ceased from labors and wars, to watch, on bended knees, the wanderings of the Israelites through Egypt and across the desert sands. But it was in solitudes, unseen by human eyes and uncheered by human prayers, that the band of slaves was saved from their pursuers and brought into the wilderness which still separated them from the homes whither they were called.

It sometimes seems as if they were not altogether unconscious of the magnitude of the service in which they were engaged. After those hours of dreadful terror and alarming deliverance in which the fugitives walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and were led in safety to the other shore, while their pursuers were overwhelmed in the waves, it was Moses who first sang a "song unto the Lord." 13 But there were none, apparently, who did not join with him in his thanksgiving, and even the women went out with timbrels and with dances to swell the praise which had never before, if we are informed aright, arisen from so many voices upon the earth. The form of Miriam, the prophetess, as she led the He

12 In language how earnest and how solemn! See Exodus, VI. 2-8.

13 Exodus, XV. 1 et seq.