Jehovah. Thousands of individuals no doubt did live righteously,* but the majority not only sinned by acts of immorality or wickedness, but they forsook him and worshipped the gods of the heathens. Even the more religious portion alienated themselves from him by gradual and insensible perversions of the institutions and precepts he had appointed them to observe; and substituted in place of his appointments, a religious system of their own devising: for under the seeming appearance of a most scrupulous observation of the laws of Moses, the Jews so entirely explained them away by far-fetched inferences that induced a mere superstitious observance of ceremonial and ritual particulars without intellectual or spiritual profit. The gradual progress of such a system as gradually grieved the spirit of Jehovah; until he finally withdrew his providential superintendence over them, and they then fell under all those calamitous conditions that follow those whom Jehovah no longer protects.

The historical and prophetical books of the Old Testament are full of indignant expressions against the folly and perverseness of the nation as to the manner they conducted themselves before Jehovah. He is continually represented as inveighing against the multiplied fasts, services and sacrifices which they had in their will-worship substituted to the righteousness or morality that he required from them. But no remonstrances could prevail with the mass of the Jewish people, they ultimately became so infatuated through their perverse constructions of the laws of Moses, as to consider the divinely commissioned prophets who opposed their innovations had not been sent by Jehovah. Hence they despised and persecuted them, and maintained their own system of inventions to the utmost degree of obstinacy, so that the Scripture at last said "there was no remedy;" i. e. in the natural order of things, and Jehovah having forsaken them they became subject to the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs. Ten of the tribes who constituted the kingdom of Israel were transported by Shalmanezer king of Assyria, to his own dominions, where they were either absorbed into or scattered abroad among his heathen subjects, in which region of the earth their posterity still remain, for they never afterwards returned to Judea.

The other two tribes, constituting the kingdom of Judah, about one hundred and thirty years after the deportation of the king

*Thus even in the reign of Ahab, God told Elijah (1st Kings xix. 18) he had seven thousand faithful men in Israel. Obadiah also, though governor of Ahab's house, was an eminently pious man.

dom of Israel, were carried by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, where they were retained in subjection for seventy years. At the end of that time, as had been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah, Cyrus, king of Persia, issued his decree permitting them to return to Judea, and to rebuild the temple and re-establish themselves under their ancient institutions. But so little had the Jews been influenced by the chastisements they had endured for their transgressions before God, whether prior to, or during the captivity, that only a small portion of them returned to Judea. The great mass of the nation preferred to remain in Babylonia, though surrounded with a heathen population, eminent at the time for the licentious profligacy of their idolatrous institutions and customs.

CHAPTER TENTH.

INVESTIGATION CONCERNING THE TRANSGRESSIONS OF THE JEWISH

PEOPLE UNDER THE JEWISH DISPENSATION.

As it would be impossible for us to investigate the subject of the disobedience of the Jewish people before Jehovah by any extensive detail of particulars, we shall digest their sins and disobedience under a few heads, and thus succinctly exhibit under the guidance of a few leading principles, the peculiarities of the acts that indicated their intellectual or moral misconduct.

The religious direlictions of the Jews may be classed as follows: 1st. Transgressions against the moral requirements of God's covenant with them.

2d. Idolatry, or participation in the idolatrous festivals of the heathen nations around them.

3d. Corruptions, and departures from covenant institutions that had been appointed by God for their observance; by which proceeding they gradually substituted a system of their own devising in its place; a sin technically denominated will-worship.

We have already shewn at pages 220, &c., what was the intellectual and moral condition of the Jewish people at the time that God delivered them from their thraldom to the Egyptians; and we have, I apprehend, given a sufficient explanation as to the cause of their mistrust in the sovereign power of Jehovah, notwithstanding the many miracles he had exhibited in their behalf in the land of Egypt, and during their sojournment in the desert of Arabia.

This mistrust concerning the power of Jehovah to protect and preserve them was ultimately removed, at least with the more devout portion of the Jews, before entering the land of Canaan. It however still existed in the minds of the mass of the people, and continually exhibited itself among them throughout all their after history down to the time of the Babylonian captivity.

If we consider the supernatural circumstances under which the Jews had been delivered from Egypt, how they had been sustained in the Wilderness, and ultimately put in possession of the

land of Canaan; it must be abundantly evident that every thing had been done on the part of God that could appeal to their understanding as rational creatures, that he was the supreme God and ruler of the universe.

They were now established in the land which God had promised to them as the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the enjoyment of great temporal blessings, and under laws which God himself had prescribed for their government. He further promised he would protect them and their children after them in this prosperity of condition, if they would faithfully observe the covenant he had condescended to make with them and whose whole tendency was the promotion of their own happiness.

After the Jews had become settled in the land of Canaan, the miraculous agencies ceased through which Jehovah had previously exhibited his immediate providence over the nation. The remembrance of the past was only to be preserved by the care with which parents should impress such information on the minds of their children as stated in the books of Moses, where these things had been recorded in connection with the terms of that covenant which Jehovah had made with them as a nation. According as parents discharged their duties in these respects, so we may estimate the reverence with which Jehovah was regarded by the children. That many parents were careless or remiss in the discharge of their duties we need not doubt, for the misconduct of the Jews towards their offspring in these respects, is familiarly exhibited to us by that large portion of nominal Christians among ourselves, who neither study the Scriptures nor give any religious instruction to their children. They comply indeed with the prominent external forms of Christianity, but in connection with an equal compliance to the worldly occupations and gratifications of those. persons who do not. profess to be under any religious restraint, beyond avoiding openly immoral actions.

If we add to the above exposition, that as it is with us of the present day, and ever will be under the probationary conditions of human existence, so there was among the Jewish people a greater or less number of unprincipled and immoral individuals, who believed neither in God nor providence and acted accordingly. We can therefore readily comprehend that irreligious, immoral and sinful practices existed among the Jews from the very time God established the nation in the land of Canaan.

The personal transgressions or immoralities of the Jewish people, were, therefore, neither more nor less than what we see daily

exhibited around us. Every desire of gratification that induces sin on our part, acted in like manner on them, nor is there any false reasoning or self-delusion employed by us on that subject, that we may not comprehend was used by them. Human nature being the same in every age and clime, the same phenomena will be always exhibited in such particulars. There being, therefore, nothing in the personal immoralities of the Jews that requires any special elucidation, we pass on to the consideration of other matters.

SECTION FIRST.

ON THE IDOLATRY OF JEWISH PEOPLE.

HAVING thus recognized the existence at all times of a careless and irreligious class of persons among the Jews, we may naturally anticipate there would be no difficulty with such persons to become entangled in the idolatrous practices of their heathen neighbors, if any sufficient inducement could be held out to them; and that there was something in the idolatries of the heathen that was very attractive in the estimation of the Jews, is evident from the continual reproaches that the writers of the Scriptures have recorded against them on the subject.

That we may understand this matter fully it must be remembered, that though the Jews regarded Jehovah as their God, and as such greater or more powerful than the gods of other nations, yet, at the same time we have every reason to believe a large portion of the Jewish people, from their kings downward, never doubted of the actual existence of the deities of the heathen, and that they exercised a protection and providence to their votaries. There is no difficulty in understanding how such a doctrine prevailed among the Jews, for it ever was, and is yet the universal belief of the heathens, that every country or nation is under the superintendence of local deities.

In the appreciation of this circumstance we at once perceive that irreligious Jews felt no difficulty in participating in the idolatrous practices of their neighbors, whenever they became regardless of their duties towards Jehovah, for as they did not doubt the existence of the heathen deities, so the festivals and rites by which they were worshipped, being attended for the most part with