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able an extent a code of external religious rites and of national worship. The moral law indeed was copious and exact, but this belongs chiefly to individuals; and the obedience or disobedience of men as individuals could not usually be recorded upon a great scale. But over and above the moral law, and in addition to those parts of the ceremonial law which related chiefly to individuals, even the political law of the Israelites was made a part of their religious code; their civil polity belonged to their religion; the state itself was a church. And, further, the greater part of the ceremonial law related not to the religious rites and observances of individuals, but to the worship of the nation as a nation. The daily, weekly, monthly, annual, sacrifices, for example, were all of them the services of the state, offered up not by the people, but for them. Hence, what at first sight appears to belong to the civil history of the Israelites, is in reality the record of their religious conduct; of their observance or non-observance of the national religious worship; of their loyalty or their disobedience to Him who was at once their God and their King. And hence also, even when they had grown into a considerable kingdom, or when they had divided themselves into the separate kingdoms of Judah and Israel, it was still possible within the compass of these sacred records to comprise a clear and comprehensive view

of the obedience or the disobedience of the people to their law. On the other hand, it should also be observed, that the law had been committed to them when they were not so numerous, but that the whole people and every individual among them might become personal witnesses of all those mighty wonders, which established at once its truth and its importance. Of their redemption from Egypt, the passage of the Red sea, the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, the terrors of Sinai, the accumulated miracles, and chastisements, and judgments of the wilderness, all compressed into the brief period of forty years-and again, of the passage of the Jordan, the fall of Jericho, the miracles of Gibeon and Ajalon-of all these things in every instance had the whole congregation of Israel been actual witnesses, at the time when each of these signal events occurred; and of several or most of these miracles had those very individuals been witnesses, who entered personally into covenant with their God and King either in the wilderness or at Shechem.

In a word, to recapitulate some of these particulars, as the Israelites never to the last became so numerous a people but that their national conduct might be without difficulty observed and recorded

See Graves's Lectures, Part II. Lect. i. (vol. i. p. 214. ed. 2d.) and some valuable extracts in the note from Rev. Newcome Cappe's "Idea of Judaism, and its peculiar End and Object."

and, again, as they never, probably, were so nume. rous even from the Exodus to the Captivity at Babylon, but that the warnings and reproofs of the prophets might reach the ears of every family in Judah or in Israel-and as, without doubt, the extraordinary Providence which attended them, although never strictly equal, was always evident and palpable, always sufficient to shew them clearly that their national calamities were national judgments, and that to the immediate favour or displeasure of God they must ascribe either their adversity or their prosperity-so likewise must it be recollected, that at the first delivery of the Law, and at the entrance into the promised land, their numbers and their situation were such as to permit every individual among them to enter into a personal covenant of obedience to the Law, whilst every individual also had been an eye and ear-witness of divine mercies and divine judgments the most signal, with only one exception, that the world has known.

And none of these circumstances must pass unobserved, if we would estimate correctly not only the guilt, but the various aggravations of the guilt of that portion of the human race, who, partly for their own instruction, but much more for ours, were tried under the peculiar advantage of a written and positive law.

It was thus at length that the preparatory trial

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of mankind was completed. And the whole human race, as well Gentile as Jew, with a written law or without one, was "concluded under sin "." "All the world was become guilty before Gods." The proof of the need of redemption and sanctification, so far as it can be derived from the record of human weakness and human guilt, was completed. ' All had sinned, and come short of the glory of God," and could only be "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus'."

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II. Upon the whole, then, we may safely rest in the twofold conclusion: first, that the Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament do in point of fact supply a large and important portion of the proof of the need of redemption and sanctification, by displaying the weakness and the guilt of men, as individuals, as families and nations, under various trials and advantages, but especially under the advantage of a positive and written Law; and, secondly, that to discharge this sad office was one of the leading purposes of these sacred records.

1. But, if this be so, why that surprise which is occasionally expressed, because these Scriptures

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record offences without censuring them? These writings never stood alone. They were never otherwise than a part of the sacred Scriptures. Those who possessed these records had always at hand, in aid of reason and the moral sense, the advantage of other parts of revelation, the Law at first, and the Prophets afterwards, whose more especial province it was to furnish "reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness;" and these might sufficiently teach men how to censure what the Histories, in conformity with their appointed purpose, simply recorded.

Again, to advert once more to that feeling of repugnance and disgust sometimes excited by these undisguised narratives of guilt", this is a feeling which will die away in the mind of the serious believer, who understands the appointed uses of these faithful histories. Painful, afflicting, humiliating, he will find them still; and so they were designed to be yet this also he will observe, that naked and undisguised as these sad histories may be, they will not, like some profane descriptions of vice, be tempting or seductive; neither will they, like some pious but exaggerated accounts of human sinfulness, go too far. They describe human nature as it is

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See Miller's Bampton Lectures, Lect iv. 118. et seq.

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* "The Bible does not exhibit an unmixed image of evil; if it

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