and the nations inhabiting Canaan at the time in which the Jewish exodus took place; for the correct refutation of the deistical objections on this subject rests upon a distinct appreciation of these conditions.

We have already adverted to the Scripture statements, that the earlier post-diluvian nations had gradually forfeited the privileges pertaining to the covenant relations recognized by God between him and the patriarch Noah and his descendants. During these times mankind had established themselves as nations under arbitrary forms of civil government, and systems of idolatrous worship; accompanied with the recognition of polygamy, slavery and conventional modes of life and conduct, which gradually had become permanent institutions.

Though many of these observances were fundamentally contrary to the appointments of God, and involved great practical ill consequences, yet inside of the limitations thus established by these different nations for the regulation of their social state, the essential principles of moral conduct were not only distinctly recognized by some of them, but they were enforced by penalties, as far as they could be made to operate on transgressors, or by the ban of public opinion where the law could not reach the offender. Hence, as being inseparable from human associations, temperance, truthfulness, justice, benevolence, and their kindred virtues have been always applauded; and the opposite practices censured. Every sane heathen was necessarily aware of the excellency of the one mode of living, and the evil and odious character of an opposite one.

At the time of the Jewish exodus, the institutions and customs of the heathen nations were characterized by very different degrees of moral or immoral observance. The Egyptians, though exceedingly idolatrous, were, comparatively speaking, a moral or virtuous people; and the fundamental principles of temperance, truthfulness and righteousness being distinctly recognized among them, individuals, consequently, had sufficient opportunities, in their free agencies, to live in the exercise of all moral and domestic virtues, since these observances were held in religious estimation among them.* The Assyrians and Babylonians on the other

* This fact, I apprehend, is sufficiently established by the Book of the Dead, a work of such extreme antiquity that no precise date can be assigned to it, for portions of it are found in connection with the most ancient mummies hitherto discovered. The most perfect copy of the whole book, as yet known, was written about B. C. 700.-(Osborn Monumental History of Egypt, p. 425.)

As Osborn's work is not readily procurable by general readers, and as the exposition he makes from the Book of the Dead are important, I subjoin the v. 1.

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hand, were generally very corrupt and debauched, according to all heathen testimony. But of all nations at these times, those who inhabited the land of Canaan seem to have exceeded other nations in the sensual depravity of their lives, a condition of things most probably ensuing from their idolatrous systems, which in recognizing rites and festivals of licentious tendencies as a part of their religious institutions, were so grateful to their population as to render moral reformation on their part impossible, through the operation of mere natural inducements. Such corrupt and vicious conditions of human societies, we have already stated, God never overrules or supercedes, either by preventing grace, or by the exercise of his omnipotence; since such interference would subvert the probationary condition of mankind as free agents. Hence, the Canaanites, as having become utterly irreformable through natural means, God determined to destroy them. But, instead of doing this by the intervention of supernatural agencies, as in the case of the ante-diluvians, or the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he commissioned the Jewish people as the instruments of this judg ment, to exterminate the Canaanitish population, and to take possession of the land as their own peculiar inheritance.

But before God effected the emancipation of the Jews from the land of Egypt, he saw fit to make an exhibition of his sovereign power, both to the idolatrous Egyptians and the Jews, by which they both, as rational creatures, might be instructed as to certain important particulars pertaining to the true character of the supreme God of the universe.

In the first place, that the Jews should be convinced through the supernatural modes by which their deliverance would be accomplished, that Jehovah their God was the actual sovereign of the earth, (Exod. x. 1, 2,) and, consequently, they would thus have every intellectual inducement to implicitly comply with the

following quotations from it, as stated by him, where the soul of the deceased person justifies himself when brought to his ultimate judgment. Omitting certain matters of mere ritual or idolatrous observances, the deceased affirms:

I have done no sin, nor omitted any duty to any man; I have committed no uncleanness; I have done no act of rapine; I have not prevaricated at the seat of justice; I have not acted perversely; I have not shortened the cubit; I have not sullied my own purity; I have not made men to hunger; I have not made men to weep; I have not forged deeds of sluices, houses or lands; I have not committed adultery; I have not falsified the weights of the balance; I have not forged signet rings; I have not stolen; I have not lied; I have not been a glutton nor drunkard; I have not committed the sin of Sodom; I have not oppressed the weak.

terms of the covenant he would appoint to be observed by them. in the future regulation of their conduct. For, notwithstanding the supernatural interferences of God in behalf of the Jewish people, they were never released in the smallest degree from the common probationary conditions of human nature. They, as intellectual and moral free agents, were still required to perfect themselves through their voluntary exertions, a fact which is abundantly illustrated in all their after history, as recorded in the Scripture writings.

In the second place, that the Egyptians might see through the exercise of Jehovah's supernatural judgments upon them, the utter impotence of the Gods worshipped by them, but to whose superintending power and providence not only they, but all the conterminous nations attributed the prosperity and dominion to which the Egyptian monarchy had eminently attained at these early times.

The controversy of God with Pharaoh on this occasion is not generally correctly appreciated, the ordinary notion being that he demanded the emancipation of the Jewish people from bondage. The message that Pharaoh received through Moses and Aaron was an entreaty (Exod. iii. 18) that the Jews should be permitted to go three days journey into the wilderness, to hold a festival and sacrifice to their God Jehovah; which special request was constantly reiterated by them afterwards.

To this solicitation, Pharaoh replied, (Exod. v. 2,) "Who is Jehovah, that I should let Israel go," (i. e. to hold this feast.) "I know not Jehovah," (i. e. have never heard of him,) "neither will I let Israel go." That Pharaoh did not understand their emancipation to be required is clear from his reply to Moses and Aaron (Exod. v. 4, 5) that they hindered the Jews from their work.*

Since Pharaoh and the Egyptians, in consequence of their idolatry, had entirely lost all remembrance of the original revelation. of the true God and sovereign ruler of the Universe, Jehovah now saw fit to vindicate his sovereignty by the successive plagues enumerated in Exodus, in order to convince them that he was a God against whom all those Gods they worshipped were wholly unable to either protect or deliver them. Having humbled Pha

The Jews in Egypt were not domestic slaves, but were as a nation held to render whatever service the ruling Pharaoh might require from them. The Egyptian task masters set over them, instructed the elders or officers of the Jews as to these matters, and made them responsible for the amount of work required, as is clear from Exod. v. 14, &c.

raoh and his people by the exhibitions of his power as supreme God of the Universe, the Egyptians themselves ultimately thrust the Jews out of the land; see Exod. xi. 1-xii. 30–33.

That the agencies of God in Egypt were formally directed against the superstitious confidence of the nation in the Gods they worshipped, is expressly stated in various places of the Scripture. Thus it is said in Exodus viii. 10, "that thou" (Pharaoh) "may know that there is none like unto Jehovah our God." Again, in same chapter, 22d verse and ix. 14; "that thou" (Pharaoh) "may know that I am Jehovah in the midst of the earth;" i. e. implying the superiority of Jehovah to all the gods worshipped throughout the world. On the same principle it is stated, Exod. ix. 14, "none like me in the earth;" and in verse 16, "that through thee," (i. e. by Pharaoh's history,) "my name may be declared throughout the earth;" and in verse 29, "that thou mayst know the earth is Jehovah's;" i. e. that it is not Amun-re's, or Ptha's, &c., as you have hitherto supposed. And finally, as the consummation of the whole matter; it is stated in Exod. xii. 12, “against all the Gods of Egypt," i. e. in opposition to your reliance on them, "I will execute judgment;" (i. e. upon the Egyptians who worship them.)

That the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt was the result of an apparent controversy between Jehovah and the Gods of Egypt, appears to have been distinctly so regarded by the adjacent nations; for such were their own remarks on the subject, as is stated by Jethro, (Exod. xviii. 11,) by Rahab, (Joshua ii. 9-11,) by the Gibeonites, (Josh. ix. 9,) and by the Philistines, (1 Sam. iv. 8.)

The whole history of God's transactions in the emancipation of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, is, therefore, perfectly consistent with the theory of the probationary condition of mankind. Both the Egyptians and the Jews were thus furnished with abundant evidence of the power and sovereignty of Jehovah over the earth; from which they, as intelligent creatures, ought to have deduced rational conclusions as to the modes in which they should henceforth regulate their conduct. God does not control or influence the understandings of mankind by secret operations of his spirit so as to make them reason rightly. He affords them evidence and principles as data to themselves to make the proper inferences. For it must be clear that any direct operation of the spirit of God on the human understanding as influencing their determinations by his power, would wholly subvert the scheme of human probation under which mankind, as intellectual and moral

free agents, are required to regulate their conduct by their own voluntary resolutions.

The deists have made a great outcry against the Scriptures on the ground that God is represented to have hardened Pharaoh's heart against all convictions, and then punished him because he was hardened. But this is a misrepresentation of the relation. God did not punish Pharaoh personally in the matter, his chastisements were upon the whole population of Egypt and their idolatrous institutions, to the end that they might see the utter impotence of those supposed great and powerful Gods whom the whole land worshipped.

The direct way to accomplish this national judgment, must necessarily be through the instrumentality of Pharoah; for he not only ruled over Egypt with absolute authority on the principle. of Louis the 14th, as being himself the state, but he was furthermore regarded by the nation at large as the especial object of the favor and protection of the great Gods of Egypt. The communications therefore of Jehovah to Pharaoh, came to him necessarily as the recognized lord and master of the whole institutions of Egypt, in all their mingled civil and idolatrous features.

This phrase of hardening Pharaoh's heart on the part of God is idiomatic; founded on his attribute of Omnipotence that nothing can take place contrary to his purposes; and hence the Jews continually ascribed acts to God which he simply permitted to take place as the following passages shew.

David says (2d Sam. xvi. 10) that the Lord said to Shimei; curse David. Now he assuredly did not mean that God had literally told Shimei to do this, for even if he had, David could not have known it; but he merely meant that God permitted it to be done for David's transgressions.

In 2d Kings, v. 1st, God is said to have given deliverance to the heathen Syrians through Naaman. This certainly does not mean that God had interfered in the matter; but as the writer believed that nothing in the world could take place contrary to God's purposes, so any success or triumph of a heathen prince was virtually from God.

But the strongest illustrations of the Hebrew idiom on this subject is in Isaiah lxiii. 17, where the prophet says, "O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our hearts from thy fear," (the reverence due God.)

Also in Ezekiel xx. 25. After having recited the great disobedience of the Jews to God's covenant requirements, he says,