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trous deviations: since both the ancient Israel, ites, and the ante- Mahometan Arabians, professed to cultivate their idols only under the character of angels or companions, subordinate and subject to the one supreme God. Their rites, too, appear to have been the same: consisting in meat-offerings and drink-offerings to stones; in dances performed around trees; and in causing men, or inferior animals, to pass through fires, in honour of their false deities.2

To the foregoing historical agreements, it will suffice, for the present, to add one coincidence more a specimen of the historical analogy which has been purposely reserved for this place in the argument, because it unfolds and elucidates the parallel chains of events which will hereafter be shown to have sprung from the covenants of Isaac and Ishmael, so as to constitute the connecting link between the whole providential history, of the Jews and Arabs, and of the temporal and spiritual empires of Christianity and Mahometanism.

The following is the hitherto unnoticed coincidence in question:

Jacob left twelve sons; the pre-appointed fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel: but the everlasting covenant established with Isaac (the right of primogeniture being waived a second

time) rested on Judah, one of the younger sons of Jacob; and on the tribe deriving from him. The twelve tribes long partook alike of the temporal prosperity of the Abrahamic covenant: but, as its spiritual accomplishment drew nearer, the name and nation of Israel passed utterly away; the ten tribes were lost in captivity; the remnant merged in the ascendency of the tribe of Judah; and this tribe became, thenceforward, invested with the whole privileges, temporal and spiritual, of the covenant of God with Isaac. The covenant with Isaac was fulfilled, when, from the house of Judah, and the royal line of David, there came forth the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ.

These are historical facts, belonging to one of the two covenants: let us try if there be any facts corresponding with them, in the providential history of the other.

Now Ishmael also left twelve sons; the preappointed fathers of the twelve tribes of Ishmaelitish Arabia. These tribes, as we learn from Scripture and Jewish history, long flourished together in the peninsula; and partook all in the temporal privileges of their father's covenant. In process of time, however, according to the uniform, and, in this matter, high authority of Arabian tradition, the other tribes descended *K 6

VOL. I.

from Ishmael melted gradually away; and the entire privileges of his covenant centered in the single surviving tribe of Kedar, the posterity

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of Kedar, a younger son. The covenant of Ishmael, according to its lower standard of privileges, would seem to have had a strictly analogous accomplishment with that of Isaac, when, from the house of Kedar, and royal line of the Hashemites, there came forth the arch-antitype of all preceding "false Christs," the spurious messiah, Mahomet.

With the advent of Jesus Christ on the one hand, and with the rise of Mahomet on the other, there commences a wholly new era in the fulfilment of the two covenants; which, thenceforward, were successively accomplished on a scale before altogether unprecedented. For, in Christianity alone was literally realized the promise in behalf of Isaac, that in his seed should all families of the earth be blessed and by Mahometanism alone was literally brought to pass the promise in favour of Ishmael, that he should become a great nation; and that he should dwell in the presence of all his brethren.*

An interpretation has been given to this promise, of the more importance to the present argument, because it is established, as the true interpretation, by results which certainly had not at all entered into the contemplation of the learned interpreter. "Sensus est, Ismaëlem fratres suos omnes, POTENTIA, IMPERIO, TYRANNIDE, longe superaturum; necnon

Let the character of each promise be now compared with the character of the accomplishment assigned to it. Isaac's was the covenant of the legitimate, Ishmael's, of the spurious, seed the one was the covenant of the Spirit; the other the covenant of the flesh: the former tended to liberty; the latter to bondage. Such, as Saint Paul has explained them, were the opposite characters and conditions of the original covenants themselves *; and the whole analogy of their enlarged fulfilments, through Christ and Mahomet, is according to the tenor of this

contrast.

Christ sent the sword of the Spirit throughout the world: Mahomet, that of the flesh. Christianity was characteristically the religion of peace: Mahometanism, the religion of war. Under the rule of the Gospel, enslaved nations became freemen; under that of the Koran, free nations were made slaves: and the spirit of freedom in the one system, and the spirit of bondage in the other, were equally characteristic of them, in their temporal and in their spiritual relations with mankind. The Gospel, in fine, by its peaceful influences, diffused the blessing

et adversus eosdem peculiarem immanitatem er omni latere declaraturum.” Gualtperius, ap. Crit. Sacr. in loc.

See Gal. iv. 22-91.

promised to Isaac, and accomplished in Christ, through all the kindreds of the earth; and the Koran, in virtue of its subjugating sway, set the inheritance of Ishmael, every where, over against that blessing.

But to do any justice to the analogy which here obtains between the two systems, it will be right to dispose the leading facts of the respective accomplishments in a connected order; and to lay Mahometanism side by side with Judaism as well as with Christianity; since it is properly a spurious compound of both revelations, and can be correctly judged of, only by keeping in constant view the admixture.

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The original covenant with Abraham comprised, as has been already mentioned, two promises perfectly distinct from each other, and marked accordingly by separate characters: 1. "I will make of thee a great nation ;" and, 2. "In thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed."

The latter promise could not rationally be received in the sense in which the Jews pretend to understand it, as denoting a universal dóminion over the earth, for the posterity of Isaac: for, as a distinguished writer on prophecy unanswerably observes, "this had been a strange blessing to all nations, that they should fall from

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