traiture of the waywardness of human nature, and of the impenetrable surface presented by the heart of man to the operation of the principle of holiness; but they suggest any idea rather than that of a successful instructer of mankind attempting to exemplify the importance of his own religious and moral precepts, by showing their practical success in the amelioration of the parties to whom they have been addressed.

But a principle of self-denial, and an unwillingness to make the most of the means, obviously placed within his reach, for the furtherance of his object, if that object were to promote his own personal aggrandizement by the assumption of the legislative character, pervades alike every part of the writings of Moses. Arguing upon mere human feelings and motives, this fact were perfectly inexplicable. The silence, for instance, observed by him, with regard to the hopes and fears of a future state, has given rise to one of the most elaborate and ingenious arguments contained in the whole compass of English literature. And what makes his neglect of this great influential argument the more remarkable, is the certainty of the fact, as appears incidentally by his own allusions to the sin of witchcraft and necromancy, that the doctrine of the separate existence of the soul was familiar to the minds of the people with whom he had to deal. Why, then, did he abstain from urging a dogma of which he could not be ignorant, and which, as an inducement to obedience, is so far the most powerful one that a legislator or moralist can possibly advance? Had self-interest or human policy been his spring of action, it is quite impossible that he should have exercised this forbearance. Admitting, however, his inspiration to have been real, this remarkable fact explains itself. This self-same omission, which would present a strange anomaly in any other code of religion and morals, is, if Christianity be true, an absolutely necessary consequence of the peculiar relative position which Ju

daism held, as connected, prospectively, with the covenant of the Gospel. If eternal life be (as we are assured that it is) the exclusive result of the expiatory sacrifice of Christ, communicated to mankind through the medium of faith, it is evident that no incomplete and merely preparatory system of doctrine could consistently hold out the promise of that reward whh is reserved as the especial sanction of the higher and more perfect revelation. "If," says St. Paul," there had been a law given which could have given life, verily, righteousness should have been by the law; but the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." Had, then, Moses inserted in his own legal code a promise of eternal salvation as the reward of obedience to its injunctions, that very promise would be fatal to its authority as an integral portion of the entire machinery of Divine revelation. Taking it, on the other hand, precisely as we find it, the remarkable omission now alluded to is a striking evidence of the strict consistency of the various component parts of Scripture one with another, and consequently a strong internal confirmation of their joint authenticity.

Another very remarkable instance of the forbearance, and (if we were to suppose him to have been actuated only by human motives) of what might be justly deemed the imprudence and inconsistency of Moses, may be observed in the fact, that though legislating for an infant people, whose future national character was intended to be moulded entirely upon the pattern of his institutions, and doing so under the alleged sanction of Divine dictation, he still asserts the mere provisional character of his own institutions, and expressly declares that they were to be eventually superseded by the enactments of some future and more perfect legislator. Here is a contradiction which it were quite impossible to reconcile with any

admitted and ordinary principles of action. What could possibly suggest to any reasonable person, professing to be armed with the Divine authority, and denouncing the most tremendous preternatural visitations against any contingent breach of his enactments, so strange an idea as that of asserting that, after all, the rules which he thus peremptorily lays down are destined to perish, not from the me destructive influence of time, but from their own comparative inferiority to others which are to be subsequently introduced? The anomaly, upon every view of the question but one, is quite inexplicable. Admitting, however, the truth of the whole series of revelation, as contained in the entire Bible, not only are we obliged to admit the necessity of such an explicit declaration; but, also, we cannot but be struck with the nicety and delicacy of arrangement with which it is introduced. It was obviously desirable at the time of the first promulgation of the Mosaic law, that no slur should appear to be thrown upon the sanctity and solemnity of an institution, which, however temporary in its purpose, was still intended to form the habits and to command the respect of the Israelites, for the space of fifteen centuries, and, during that long period, to serve as a substitute for the more spiritual dispensation, which was eventually destined to occupy its place. Now, a prominent declaration of its merely provisional character would have been, in great measure, destructive of this necessary degree of deferential respect; and yet, on the other hand, had it been held out as a system complete and perfect in itself, such an assertion would have been inconsistent with the truth, whilst, also, it would have operated as a complete vindication of the later Jews in their eventual rejection of the promises of the Gospel. This difficulty appears to have been met with that exact degree of wise caution, which marks deliberate and consistent contrivance. The introduction of the Mosaic law, accordingly, was accompanied by the

most astounding miracles, and its obligatory character established under the most terrific sanctions; and yet the fact of its being intended as a provisional substitute only for a covenant, which was ultimately to supersede it, though never brought prominently forward, is still announced with a sufficient precision of assertion to produce conviction in the mind of any person, who, not content with a mere general survey, would take the trouble of examining its less palpable declarations. In this circumstance we recognise the usual characteristic of prophecy: that is to say, we find a statement not calculated to attract much attention before its completion, and yet which, when completed, is found to be sufficiently precise to satisfy us that its insertion was the result of deliberate foreknowledge.*

* That the future advent of Christ was foretold by Moses, as well as by the later prophets, is not an assumption derived from any forced and over-ingenious construction of those parts of the Mosaic writings which are thus interpreted by Christians. The Samaritans, who acknowledged no canonical books besides the Pentateuch, looked forward to the coming of the promised Messiah no less confidently than the more orthodox Jews. The inferences, therefore, which they derived from these respective passages, were the same with our own. "I know," said the woman of Samaria, in conversation with our Lord, "that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, he will tell us all things." We find, also, in another passage of St. John's gospel, the Apostle Philip bearing a like testimony to the prophetic declaration of Moses on this point. "Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write." And, yet, notwithstanding this undoubted explicitness of allusion to that important event, so guarded is the language of the several passages which bear upon the point, that it may be doubted whether any person unacquainted with the books of the New Testainent, and perusing the Mosaic writings for the first time, would necessarily be led by them to cherish the same anticipation. That conclusion would, upon a repeated perusal, be probably found to be a necessary one, but still it would require a certain effort of the attention, and a balancing of consequences, to arrive at it.

CHAPTER XI.

Of the miraculous incidents recorded by Moses.

THE many miraculous incidents which are so inseparably interwoven with the whole series of events recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament, and more especially in the writings of Moses, as to leave no possibility of accounting for them from natural causes, without destroying the whole history itself, have ever, as a matter of course, been a mark for the assaults and ridicule of infidelity. Nor is this all. They have also been a subject of surprise to many sincere believers in Christianity, under the idea that, as the admitted system of Providence is to govern the world by the operation of secondary causes, such seemingly gratuitous instances of deviation from that rule would appear at first sight to convey the idea of the fictitious and exaggerated traditions of a barbarian period, rather than of the strictly accurate detail of real occurrences.

But it will be right, on this occasion, to observe, as a preliminary fact, that with regard to the question respecting the possibility or probability of miracles, it is not within the power of even the strongest minds, at this period of the world, to discuss the matter fairly. All our established associations, derived from our unbroken experience of the uniformity of the existing operations of nature, are directly in the way of an impartial conjecture as to what may, under peculiar circumstances, and in a strong emergency, be most probable in the dispensations of Providence. It is a point completely established by metaphysicians, that by a wise adaptation of the constitution of our minds to the phenomena of the world in which we are placed, we all of us have an instinctive tendency to take as our standard of probability, with reference