ther were they stedfast in his covenant.

But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned He his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.” They were disobedient, and rebelled against the Lord," was the confession of the repentant people after their return from the captivity, when they had experienced the whole course of God's providence from their redemption from Egypt to their great punishment in Babylon; "they were disobedient, and rebelled against Him; they cast his law behind their backs, and slew his prophets which testified against them to turn them to the Lord, and they wrought great provocations ...yet in the time of their trouble, when they cried unto Him, He heard them from heaven; and according to his manifold mercies He gave them saviours, who saved them out of the hand of their enemies... but after they had rest, they did evil again before Him.... yet when they returned, and cried unto Him, He heard them from heaven, and many times did He deliver them according to his mercies "."

y Ps. lxxviii. 37-39. cf. 1 Sam. xii. Hosea xiii. xiv. Dan. ix. 3-19.

2 Nehemiah ix. 26, 27, 28.

Such were the mercies and the love of God confessed and celebrated by the Jewish prophets and people, and abundantly attested by the details of the Jewish history; love and mercies the most uniform and considerate, tender, forbearing, parental.

II. But this, it may be said, was loving-kindness manifested only to a chosen people, or to chosen individuals. Will such a partial history prove also the abstract goodness of the Almighty, or demonstrate His loving-kindness towards mankind in general?

The question affects the whole character and intention of the sacred histories of the Old Testament; and may deserve, therefore, to be distinctly answered.

1. But let the objection itself be confined within its proper limits. The Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament are, it is true, devoted almost exclusively to the fortunes of Abraham, his family, and his race; but they exhibit, nevertheless, numerous traces, both before the call of Abraham and after it, of the universal loving-kindness of "the Lord our God, who hath his dwelling so high, and yet humbleth himself to behold the things which are in heaven and earth."

Witness those eminent proofs of the prospective goodness and wisdom of our Heavenly Father, the primeval institutions of the weekly Sabbath, and of Marriage; the one the prime source of all the dearest charities between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister; the other a gracious boon and blessing to the great majority of mankind in relation to their temporal interests, and to all mankind a principal bond and seal of their spiritual intercourse with their Creator". Witness again the familiar instances of the great condescension of the Almighty towards our first parents after their fall, with relation to their animal wants, their clothing, and their food b. And witness also that striking feature of God's good providence, His blending mercy with judgment; as in the cheering prospect of a restoration accompanying the sentence upon the Fall; and in that gracious promise of the Divine

a Gen. ii. 1-3. 18-24. See Bishop Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ix. vol. vi. p. 239, 240. edit. 1811.

b Gen. ii. 16. iii. 21.

If on the sinner's outward frame

God hath impressed his mark of blame,

And even our bodies shrink at touch of light,

Yet mercy hath not left us bare;

Are to faith's eye a pledge of God's forgiving might.

Christian Year. Hymn for Sexagesima Sunday.

protection with which the new world opens immediately after the terrible judgment of the Flood". The long-suffering, moreover, and the placability of God, (those attributes in which a fallen race are so intimately concerned,) were not displayed towards the chosen seed alone. We all recollect His gracious expostulations with Cain ; the long-suffering with which He "waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing ";" His patient hearing of the Patriarch's intercession for the guilty cities of the plain ; His acceptance of the penitence of Nineveh ; His withholding His avenging arm from the polluted nations of Canaan, (and not without many merciful warnings interposed,) "until the iniquity of the Amorites was full." And those who may not consider themselves justified in adding to these instances the divine institution of the primitive sacrifices, may certainly refer to God's accept

Gen. iii. 15. viii. 21, 22. ix. 8—17.

d Gen. iv.

1 Peter iii. 19. 2 Peter ii. 5. Gen. v.

Jonah iii. 10. iv. 2, 11.

f Gen. xviii. 17-23. 1 Gen. xv. 16. We should further observe the place in which these words are introduced; in the midst of a prediction, namely, which might otherwise appear to indicate only partiality towards a chosen race. In this situation the words have a peculiar propriety, and tend to declare the character and will of the Almighty; one of the leading purposes of the Historical Scrip

tures.

ance of those sacrifices as a signal proof of His placability and His mercy.

In a word, as the great Creator of the Universe, even among those who were the furthest removed from the written revelations of His mercy," left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with joy and gladness';" so does He appear, in the written records of His loving-kindness, the gracious Preserver even of the meaner creatures of His hand; sparing Nineveh not only for her numerous people, but for her "much cattle," "remembering not only Noah, but "every living thing that was with him in the ark ';" enacting laws for the welfare not of the people of Israel alone, but of the dam upon her nest, and of the ox that treadeth out the corn"." Most strange and surprising therefore would it have been if these records had not also displayed, as we have seen, traces of care and love not merely towards the family of Abraham and the house of Israel, but towards all His rational creatures, however wayward and corrupt.

2. These observations, however, only limit the objection, but do not supply the most direct answer

i Acts xiv. 17.

Gen. viii. 1.

Jonah iv. 11.

m Deut. xiii. 6, 7. xxv. 4.