130 132 The Mother's Dream, on the Death of her First-Born. By W. M. HETHERINGTON, A.M. 207 Spirit of Primitive Christianity." By the Author of "The Pastor of Blamont," 'The Penitent Thief. BY RICHARD HUIE, M.D. By the Rev. THOMAS ABIJAH, THE SON OF JEROBOAM; CONTAINING A SKETCH OF THE STATE OF RELIGION IN THE KINGDOM OF THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL, AFTER THEIR SEPARATION FROM THAT OF JUDAH. BY WILLIAM M'GAVIN, Author of the Protestant, &c. THE first words which God spoke to his people Israel from Mount Sinai, were, "I am the Lord thy God who out of the land of Egypt: brought thee up thou shalt have But Israel were no other gods before me. a stiff-necked and rebellious people. From the very day that they came out of Egypt, they had an inveterate propensity to idol worship. They had learned this practice in A Egypt,-See Joshua xxiv. 14; and perhaps it was for their conformity, in this respect, to the practice of their heathen neighbours, that God gave them up to such bondage and misery. There is nothing that he regards with greater abhorrence than the worshipping of creatures, especially by persons to whom he has graciously made known his own name and character, as he had done to Israel. But they were not many weeks out of Egypt, till they returned to the Egyptian idolatry; for the golden calf which they made in the wilderness, was an imitation of the great Egyptian idol, the Apis, or bull. And how horribly insulting it was to their own true and living God, to have his mighty work of delivering them out of Egypt ascribed to that lifeless image! but such was the fact. They said, "these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." When God gave them the land of Canaan to live in, it was on the express condition, that they should never suffer it to be polluted with idol worship. While they abstained apsit from this accursed practice, every thing went t, to well with them. They enjoyed the fatness that of the land; and no enemy could stand beand fore them. But when they set up any idol, ards God left them to suffer famine, discomfiture, hip and misery. When they mingled with their sheathen neighbours, and served their idols, his the wrath of the Lord was kindled against eto them, insomuch that he abhorred his own inout heritance, and gave them into the hand of anthe heathen; and they that hated them ruled over them.-Psalm cvi. 28-41. of In the reign of David the land was entirely cleansed from this pollution. Indiviiduals even then may have had their idols in ty secret; but David would not have suffered any public act of idolatry. It was on this S account that he was called a man after God's own heart, which does not mean that his conduct in every other respect was faultless ; but with respect to the besetting sin of the people, their proneness to idol worship, his heart was perfect with the Lord his God. Hence the great prosperity of his reign, and the glory and happiness of the early part of |