shall the joyful anthem be sung, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh to judge the earth; he shall judge the world with righteousness, and his people with his truth."

CHAPTER FOURTH.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPEMENTS.

In the course of the preceding discussions, we have so often had occasion to refer to the greater events in Israelitish history, that it would be alike needless and unprofitable, as regards our present object, to go at any length into the consideration of its particular parts. It will be enough to take a brief survey of the more prominent points connected with the state of the covenant-people, while under the law and the promises. And in doing so, it shall be our chief object to mark the successive stages, by which either some peculiar developement was given in respect to their typical relationships, or these relationships themselves were loosened in order to make way for the larger grace and higher realities of the Gospel.

SECTION FIRST.

THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN.

The conquest and actual possession of Canaan by the children of Israel, both in point of time and importance, deserves the first place. The possession of that land formed one of the things most distinctly promised in the Abrahamic covenant; and as matters actually stood, when the fulfilment came to be accomplished, the possession could be made good only by the overthrow and destruction of the original inhabitants. This mode of entrance on the possession has been often denounced by infidel writers as cruel

and unjust; and has not unfrequently met with a lame defence from the advocates of a divine revelation. Even heathen morality is said to have been offended at it; and we learn from Augustine and Epiphanius, that the ancient sect of the Manicheans, who were more Pagan than Christian in their sentiments, placed it among "the many cruel things which Moses did and commanded," and which went to prove, according to their view, that the God of the Old Testament could not be the God of the New. All the leading abettors of infidelity in this country-Tindal, Morgan, Chubb, Bolingbroke, Paine--have decried it as the highest enormity; and Bolingbroke, in his usual style, did not scruple to denounce the man 66 as worse even than an Atheist, who would impute it to the Supreme Being." Voltaire, and the other infidels, with their allies the theologians on the continent, have not been behind their brethren here in the severity of their condemnation, and the plentifulness of their abuse. And it would even seem as if the more learned portion of the Jews themselves had been averse to undertake the defence of the transaction in its naked and scriptural form, as we find their older Rabbinical writers attempting to soften down the rugged features of the narrative, by affirming that "Joshua sent three letters to the land of the Canaanites before the Israelites invaded it; or rather, he proposed three things to them by letters: that those who preferred flight, might escape; that those who wished for peace, might enter into covenant; and that such as were for war, might take up arms.”1

This apparently more humane and agreeable view of the transaction has been substantially adopted by many Christian writers -among others, by Selden, Patrick, Graves-who conceive that the execution of judgment upon the Canaanites was only designed to take effect in case of their refusal to surrender, and their obstinate adherence to idolatry; but that in every case peace was to be offered to them, on the ground of their acknowledging the God of Israel, and submitting to the sway of their conquerors. The sacred narrative, however, contains nothing to warrant such a supposition. Indeed, the supposition is made in despite of an express line of demarcation on that very point, drawn between the Canaanites and the surrounding nations. To the latter only were the Israelites

Nachman, as quoted by Selden de Jure Nat. etc. L. vi. c. 13.

allowed to offer terms of peace: "But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them" (Deut. xx. 16, 17). And as they were not permitted to propose terms of peace, so neither were they at liberty to accept of articles of agreement: "Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land;" "they shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me" (Ex. xxiii. 33, xxxiv. 12). Such explicit commands manifestly did not contemplate any plans of reconciliation, and left no alternative to the Israelites but to destroy. According to the view of Scripture, the inhabitants of Canaan were in the condition of persons placed under the cherem or ban of heaven, that is, devoted to God by a solemn appointment to destruction as no otherwise capable of being rendered subservient to the divine glory. The part assigned to the Israelites was simply to execute the final sentence as now irrevocably passed against them; and in so far as they failed to do So, is charged upon them as their sin, and their failure was converted into a judgment on themselves-a judgment that involved them in many troubles and calamities during the earlier period of their residence in Canaan (Judg. ii. 1–5).

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Another series of attempts has been made to soften the alleged harshness and severity of the divine command in reference to the Canaanites, by asserting for the Israelites some kind of prior right to the possession of the country. A Jewish tradition, espoused with this view by many of the Fathers, claims the land of Canaan for the seed of Abraham, as their destined share of the allotted earth in the distribution made by Noah of its different regions among his descendants. Michaelis, justly rejecting this distribution as a fable, holds, notwithstanding, that Canaan was originally a tract of country that belonged to Hebrew herdsmen; that other tribes gradually encroached upon and usurped their possessions, taking advantage of the temporary descent of Israel into Egypt to appropriate the whole; and that the seed of Abraham were hence perfectly justified in vindicating their right anew, when they had the power, and expelling the intruders sword in hand. This opinion has found many abettors in Germany, and quite recently has been supported by Ewald and Jahn; though the original right of the Israelites is now commonly held to have reached only to the pas

toral portions of the territory. A more baseless theory, however, never was constructed. Scripture is entirely silent respecting such a claim on the part of the Israelites. But there is more than its silence to condemn the theory; for at the very first appearance of the chosen family on the ground of Palestine, it is expressly stated that "the Canaanite was then in the land" (Gen. xii. 6); and in it, not merely as a wandering shepherd or temporary occupant, but as its settled and rightful possessor, to whom Abraham and his immediate descendants stood in the relation of sojourners. Hence the promise given to Abraham was, that he and his seed should get for an everlasting possession "the land wherein he was a stranger." The testimony of Scripture is quite uniform on the two points that Canaan, as an inheritance, was bestowed as the free gift of God on the seed of Abraham, and that the gift was to be made good by a forcible dispossession of the original occupants of the land.

It is plain, therefore, that according to the representations of Scripture, the family of Abraham had no natural right to the inheritance of Canaan. Nor would it be hard to prove, that such false attempts to smooth down the inspired narrative, and adapt it to the refinement of modern taste, instead of diminishing, really aggravate, the difficulties attending it; that if, in one respect, they seem to bring the transaction into closer agreement with Christian principle, they place it, in another, at a much greater, and absolutely irreconcilable distance. For, on the supposition that the posterity of Abraham were the original possessors, why should God have kept them, for an entire succession of generations, at a distance from the region, making their right—if they ever had any-virtually to expire, and rendering it capable of vindication no otherwise than by force of arms? Surely, on any ground of righteous principle, a right at best so questionable in its origin, and so long suffered to fall into abeyance, ought rather to have been altogether abandoned, than pressed at the expense of so much blood and desolation. And if the situation of the Canaanites had been such as to admit of terms of peace being proposed to them, then the decree of their extermination must have been in contrariety with the great principles of truth and righteousness.

It will never be by such methods of defence that the objections of the infidel to this part of the divine procedure can be success