body politic, namely, an increasing indifference to the institutions which warmed the heart-blood of their forefathers, became, from year to year, more manifest. Though professedly subsisting upon a principle of miraculous interference, their invocations of the Divine protection seem gradually to have become less and less earnest, and their reliance upon human means of support, in spite of the strong remonstrances of the law and of the later prophets upon those points, more uniform.* When we say that such conduct was, at least, natural, and that, in proportion as such prodigies as those which accompanied their first growth became less frequent, their zeal might be expected to decline from its original fervency, we are, in fact, only adding the sanction of our judgment, as to the internal probability of the narrative which asserts it of them. The second book of Kings and the second book of Chronicles bear every mark of their own authenticity, from the striking delineation which they afford of a nation, whose patriotism and religion were on the wane, from the mere ordinary tendency to degeneracy which is the fate of all human institutions. In the history of the later kings of Judah we read of occasional attempts made by the sovereigns of the day to revive the dormant spirit of the religion of Moses, by removing the pollutions of

The book of Malachi, the valedictory remonstrance of the departing spirit of Jewish prophecy, consists of little more than an eloquent and indignant delineation of the extreme selfishness and worldliness of feeling which at that late period, had succeeded in quenching all the higher principles of devotion in the Israelitish nation. "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master. If, then, I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of Hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar, and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of Hosts. Who is there, even among you, that would shut the doors for naught? Neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for naught. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand." Malachi i. 6. &c.

But

the temple, and reestablishing the sacrifices according to the form prescribed by that legislator. these very attempts obviously mark the almost complete disuse into which that religion had fallen. They were not the mere correction of such abuses as, in the course of time, might be supposed to have crept in through the occasional ignorance or superstition of the worshippers, but they were, in fact, the reconstruction of ancient usages, which had, for a long course of time, been completely lost sight of. It is evident that the prevailing principles of the day were those of total irreligion; and though the influence of a few well-disposed monarchs might succeed, for a moment, in giving an external and transitory animation to the extinct spirit of true devotion, there was no corresponding feeling on the part of the people. We read of Hezekiah, that he celebrated a passover far exceeding, in the solemnity of the ceremonies, and in the assemblage of the worshippers, any which had been known since the days of Solomon: but we do not find the slightest proofs that the devotional excitement, thus created, was attended with any permanent or substantial effect. On the contrary, we read of his son Manasseh, that he polluted himself with the grossest idolatry; and what is still more remarkable, only two reigns later, from the surprise and consternation which a discovery of a copy of the original law created in king Josiah, and Hilkiah the high-priest, by reference to which they learned how widely they had deviated from the religion of their ancestors, we find that that complex system of sacred legislation had, for the space of one generation at least, been preserved only in the form of general oral tradition. In this last-mentioned circumstance we cannot but remark the striking analogy which existed between the neglect of the written law of Moses, which prevailed in the latter period of the Jewish history previous to the captivity, and the disregard of the Holy Scriptures in general, which so strongly characterized

that languid and worn-out state of the Church of Rome, which immediately preceded the establishment of Protestantism. It was not, as we are informed, until the second year after his entry into the monastery of Erfurt, that Luther accidentally met with a Latin Bible, and commenced that study of original revelation which shortly afterwards produced such important effects upon mankind: so like is human nature in all ages to itself. In such a state of moral lethargy as that which prevailed among the Jews at the period now described, it was, clearly, not within the power of the sovereign, however well disposed, to stimulate his subjects into a substantial reformation. He seems, indeed, to have done all that which the best principles could suggest; "He sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the Levites, and all the people, great and small. And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul; to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book; and he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabit

ants of Jerusalem." But the effort thus made was only like the last convulsive struggle which precedes dissolution in an exhausted frame. The next generation saw the extinction of the kingdom of Judah, and the commencement of that series of tremendous inflictions, which from that day to the present, with the exception of a few more prosperous intervals, have marked the fortunes of that singular and devoted people.

CHAPTER XIV.

The same subject continued.

THUS, then, there is from first to last a consistency in the chain of events recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, which would seem to be perfectly inexplicable upon any other principle than that of their entire genuineness and authenticity. The later writings, whether we look to them for information on questions of natural polity, religious belief, or the ever varying shades of manners and habitual impressions, all pre-suppose the existence of the earlier; and the earlier, as obviously stamped with a prospective character, were incomplete without the addition of the latter. But as no hypothesis with which we are acquainted will allow us to assign the date of their respective compositions to one and the same period, of course the theory that they were forged for a specific purpose of imposition falls at once to the ground. That from the miraculous incidents which they relate they are unlike all other authentic historical documents, is readily granted; but it by no means follows that the peculiarity of character which attaches to them argues any real improbability in the facts themselves. The abstract question of probable or improbable, on those points, must rest entirely

upon the degree of our assent to the primary propositions with which we commenced this discussion. If we deem an express revelation of the Divine Will, in some form or other, as not inconsistent with the arrangements of Providence; if we admit, also, that of all presumed revelations, Christianity is the one preeminently borne out by a vast weight of external and internal evidence; and if we grant, also, that from the late period at which the acknowledged circumstances of human nature required that the Christian dispensation should be communicated to mankind, a previous provisional and less perfect system of discipline might reasonably be looked for, surely, with these warrantable admissions, the preternatural character of the fortunes connected with the Israelitish family present no very formidable objection to the really candid mind. It may sound paradoxical to assert that the probability of the truth of that remarkable portion of human history would be actually diminished, were it found to be more analogous than it actually is with that of other nations. Considered, however, as an abstract proposition, unconnected with that habitual bias and predisposition forced upon us by our own individual experience, such undoubtedly would appear to be the legitimate assumption. Certainly, if we are reduced to the alternative of either discarding the momentous and cheering hopes held forth by the Gospel, with its accompanying practical rule of life, or, on the other hand, of admitting the fact that a visible Providence did, from the world's beginning, prepare the way for that sublime dispensation, and only ceased finally to interfere when such interposition was no longer needed, the latter supposition, independently of the vast preponderance of external testimony by which it is guaranteed, is a thousand times the most intrinsically probable. With this view of the question, then, we may surely be content, without seeking to shelter ourselves in that intermediate and most unphilosophical scheme which,