Egyptians were fond of hieroglyphics in their religious service, and even in their sacred edifices. Of some, he himself explains the import,* and thereby puts us upon the track; in following which, however, we must keep to the age of Moses, and the point of view, in which he stood; otherwise, we are in danger of seeing every thing in a wrong and inverted position. The Prophets will furnish occasions for saying something on this point, and something will be indicated in the following poetical sketch, but this is not the place to go into the general character of the whole.

3. The peculiar purpose of Moses, in giving the law, was not sacrifices, nor the forgivness of sins, but the prosperity of the State, the political welfare of the people of Jehovah, The most enlightened of the Prophets, especially Samuel and Isaiah, proceeded on the same plan, and there is no one of them, who did not make this a leading object in his discourses and plans. If, therefore, in far later times, particular sayings and customs were separated from their true relations, and more importance attached to them, than Moses and his followers gave them, in the relations which they held with others, if in regard to the so called penitential Psalms, and the goat, that was sent into the wilderness, systems were invented, of which David and Moses never thought, this is yet but the common and necessary result, to which the revolutions of time subject them. It is to be considered, that those later ages had a number of different books, whose different sentiments they confounded together, and whose language, moreover, they employed for clothing their own thoughts. Here, too, it was a matter of importance what kind of men made use of them, what ideas they had in their own minds, and what would particularly find favour with them; finally, in what regard they were themselves,

* Thus Moses speaks of the circumcision of the heart, that the priest, when he goes into the sanctuary, bears the sins of the people, &c. The latter gave occasion, perhaps, to the beautiful 53d chapter of Isaiah, as the 11th verse shows.

held by the succeeding age, and what kind of style its taste approved. This was sometimes the poetical, then the philosophical; and the best course, therefore, is to leave every thing to its own age, and its own author, and go to the original form of Moses, the ancient Israelitish Egyptian.

4. If any one institution has more especially tended to preserve the poetry and the laws of Moses, it is the Sabbath. To this are we indebted for the preservation, in the freshness of living beauty, of all these treasures of the poetic art. Not only was it owing to this, that the remembrance of the Creator of the world, (itself an idea in the highest degree productive to the human race), retained and associated with their national blessings, was celebrated in prayers and songs; not only that in somewhat more enlightened and quiet times, passages of the law, with or without reflection, were read and expounded; chronology, reading, writing, history, political order, ancient ideas, and new hopes, in short, the intelligence and cultivation of the people, were held at least, in reserve by this simple institution, and by means of it were, after they had fallen into neglect, revived in better times. With the sabbaths and festivals were associated the order of the state, and the regulation of the calender, and with these their freedom, and the year of jubilee. Can we, then, find fault with the Prophets, that they clothe in images derived from these so many golden dreams of future happiness, and express, in joyful songs, ideas of endless freedom and perpetual jubilee, with obvious reference to sabbatical institutions and forms? What man becomes thus animated without hope, and is it not the greatest, the noblest, and the most steadfast soul, that amidst the corruptions of the times, and from the ruins of former prosperity, foresees and celebrates in song the greater prosperity and happiness, that is still to be attained.

V.

OTHER REGULATIONS OF MOSES.

1. Of the mode, in which Moses preserved and honoured the paternal authority. Effects of it observed in idiomatical expressions, in the tone of history, in the maxims of morality, and the moral poetry of the Hebrews.

2. Relation of the wife to her husband and to the family. Proofs of it in passages of poetry, and of the Mosaic laws. Figurative represen tations respecting family discipline, marriage, fruitfulness, love, and wisdom. Moral precepts of the mother of Lemuel to her son.Praise of a country housewife among the Hebrews. 3. Union of families in a tribe. Independent freedom of the individual tribes. Whether Moses took into view the existence of distinctions of rank in the capital city, the luxury and warlike glory of his nation. Form of Hebrew poetry, as derived from the rural simplicity of the people.

4. Why the Prophets were so zealous against luxury and oppression. The purpose, which they aimed to attain, marked out in the Mosaic economy, their right and authority.

5. Connexion of all the tribes through their relation to the promised land and to the Patriarchs. Confinement of the people and of the law of Moses to the local boundaries of the country. Local character of all the Hebrew writings, hopes and poetic inventions. Of the peculiar providence of God over Canaan. Origin of this kind of representation. Use of it in Moses and in the poets.

6. Second bond of connexion among the tribes from the Theocracy. General principle of the government. Dignity and beauty of it for rational beings. Proofs from the tribunals, punishments, taxes, revenues, &c. Most of the Hebrew poetry of a political character. 7. Objection against the tribe of Levi as being the chief support of the Theocracy. Why this tribe was placed in that condition. First plan of Moses. The manner, in which the lawgiver limited this tribe, the duties imposed upon it, and how far it was injurious to the general or. ganization.

8. Of the Prophets, on whom the hopes of Moses were placed. Sad

fate of Moses, that he could not himself establish his laws in Canaan. Causes and consequences of this, and his own regret on account of it. End of the 90th Psalm. Hope of Moses.

9. Of the reference to God in the laws of Moses. Necessity and use of this. Whether it was merely pretented. Whether we can or ought to decide on this point. The law of God and Moses, a Jewish fable.

It will be necessary to say yet a few words respecting the customs of the nation, of whose poetry we are treating, respecting the cultivation, which they received through the laws of Moses, and generally respecting the political design of these laws. For we can attain a distinct knowledge of the fruit only through a knowldedge of the tree, on which it grew.

1. The relations of father and child, constituted the primitive forms of government among men, and with a race of herdsmen, such as the Hebrews were, these remained for a long period the firmest bonds of union. As the Israelites had before them as examples, in the patriarchs of their tribes, no other than a paternal government, so were these inherent rights of humanity held sacred by the law of Moses. It prescribed to children the reverence of their parents, as the condition, on which they were to enjoy the land of promise, and the same lesson is enforced by the moral poetry of the nation. Their language has no more favourite expression, by which to designate even a king, a priest, a Prophet, the director or inventor of a thing, than the word father. Their history had an expression of childlike simplicity in its style, because its earliest productions were from the times, when they were still a race of herdsmen, and these served as a model for those which followed. So too are their proverbs and preceptive instructions peculiarly marked by a tone of paternal kindness and unaffected sincerity, of which scarcely any other people can furnish an example, because the poetry of no other people goes back to so early a period of the human race. The first chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon, which serve as an introduction to the book, are written with a style of engaging earn

estness, and from the lips of the teacher, alluring his son to the paths of wisdom and virtue, flows as it were milk and honey. Even the rigorous and precise laws of Moses do not abandon this tone, wherever they enforce human obligations, and the book of Deuteronomy has the dignity and impressiveness of a sage imparting the lessons of wisdom to his children. Let one collect what is said, of the relation of children to their parents of and domestic happiness, in the Proverbs, Psalms, and Prophets, and he will have a summary of the earliest and most delightful moral sentiments. The ethical poetry of the Persians is refined, that of the Arabians subtle and discriminating, that of the Hebrews simple and childlike; the delicate nourishment of the primitive age of humanity.

2. The wife according to Oriental notions was subjected to the husband. They had no thought of a sovereign and reposing elevation of this sex, and celebrated in it only chastity, industry, modest, domestic, and matronly virtues. Customs, such as the luxurious poetry of later times ascribes to them, would in that age of the world have been folly or shame. It is therefore absurd to look for the gallant poetry of fashionaable conversation among a people, when the female sex, shut up in retirement, either bloomed as a flower in the garden, or bore fruit like the vine.

Blessed is he that feareth Jehovah,*
And walketh in his ways,

Thou shalt eat the labour of thy hands,
Happiness and prosperity are with thee.
Thy wife is like the fruitful vine,

That spreads on the sides of thy house;

Thy children around thy table

Like plantations of young olives.

Thou shall see thy children's children,

And peace upon Israel.

*Ps. cxxviii,