plague, or any national calamity. These might not have been attributed to Divine agency at all, or not to the interposition of the God of Israel.

Another reason which made this destruction both more necessary, and more general, than it would have otherwise been, was the consideration, that if any of the old inhabitants were left, they would prove a snare to those who succeeded them in the country; would draw and seduce them by degrees into the vices and corruptions which prevailed amongst themselves. Vices of all kinds, but vices most particularly of the licentious kind, are astonishingly infectious. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. A small number of persons, addicted to them, and allowed to practise them with impunity or encouragement, will spread them through the whole mass. This reason is formally and expressly assigned, not simply for the punishment, but for the extent to which it was carried; namely, extermination: Thou shalt utterly destroy them, that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods.'

In reading the Old Testament account, therefore, of the Jewish wars and conquests in Canaan, and the terrible destruction brought upon the inhabitants thereof, we are always to remember that we are reading the execution of a dreadful but just sentence, pronounced by Jehovah against the intolerable and incorrigible crimes of these nations; that they were intended to be made an example to the whole world of God's avenging wrath against sins, which, if they had been suffered to continue, might have polluted the whole ancient world, and which could only be checked by the signal and public overthrow of nations notoriously addicted to them, and so addicted as even to have incorporated them into their religion and their public institutions; and that the Israelites were mere instruments in the hands of a righteous Providence for effecting the

extirpation of a people, of whom it was necessary to make a public example to the rest of mankind; that this extermination, which might have been accomplished by a pestilence, by fire, by earthquakes, was appointed to be done by the hands of the Israelites, as being the clearest and most intelligible method of displaying the power and the righteousness of the God of Israel; his power over the pretended gods of other nations; and his righteous indignation against the crimes into which they were fallen."

While Abraham sojourned in the Land of Promise, as in a strange country, God promised him that his posterity should afterwards receive it for an inheritance. "And the Lord said unto Abram, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever." (Gen. xiii. 14, 15.) By a series of great and marvellous occurrences, extending through several centuries, the fulfilment of this promise was brought about. During the 430 years the Israelites remained in Egypt, (though during a great part of that period they were grievously harassed and oppressed,) they "increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them;" so that at the time of their departure from Egypt, they numbered 603,550 males capable of bearing arms, that is, above twenty years old. (Numb. i. 45, 46. Exod. xii. 37.)* After a tedious and

• The increase of the Hebrews during 430 years, from seventy persons to 603,550 males over twenty years of age, besides 22,000 males of a month old and upwards among the Levites, (Exod. xii. 37. Numb. i. 45, 46; iii. 39,) has appeared to many incredible. The number of 600,000 men capable of bearing arms, necessarily makes the whole number of people amount to 2,400,000, or about two and a half millions. An anonymous writer in the Literarischen Anzeiger, 1796, Oct. 4, s. 311, has demonstrated that the Hebrews, in 430 years, might have in

circuitous march through the wilderness, which occupied forty years, they at length pitched their tents on the banks of the Jordan; whose waters, deep and rapid, were divided for their passage. And thus this extraordinary journey terminated with a miracle similar to that with which it had commenced.

creased from seventy persons to 977,280 males over twenty years old. He supposes that of those seventy persons who went to Egypt, only forty remained alive after a space of twenty years, each one of whom had two sons. In like manner, at the close of every succeeding period of twenty years, he supposes one-fourth part of those who were alive at the commencement of the period, to have died. Hence arises the following geometrical progression :

After twenty years, of the seventy there are forty living, each having

Therefore the expression for the whole sum will be,

aba 80 × 342-80 80 × 6109-80

=977,280

n

According to the American ratios for each period of ten years from 1790 to 1820, the population had, in these thirty years, increased 144 per cent. or had doubled itself in about twenty-three years: see Brewster's Encyc. 1830, article Population. But, on the average, it appears that, taking all the States together, they may fairly be considered as doubling their population in twenty-five years, from their own resources, exclusively of immigration: see Supplement to Encyc. Britann. vol. vi. pp. 308, 310.

Now the Hebrews were in a state of freedom and prosperity favourable to population, for the space of between three and four centuries previously to the rise of the dynasty under which they were oppressed; and their exceedingly great increase is distinctly spoken of in the books of Moses. (Compare Gen. xxxii. 17, and Exod. i. 7.) If we allow them, during 430 years, to have doubled themselves in periods of not

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less than twenty-nine years; then 2 × 68 the other sex are not reckoned among the 68,

1,977,227 males; for (Gen. xlvi. 26.)