tervening thirty-eight years and some months we have no further record, except a bare list of stations (in ch. xxxiii.) at which they pitched between leaving Sinai and reaching Mount Hor; and in which list it is remarkable that Kadesh Barnea, where they were in the second year and at the death of Miriam, is not twice mentioned, but only once; and "they removed from Kadesh and pitched in Mount Hor," where Aaron died. Is the history of these thirty-eight years lost? Was it ever written? We know not. To us the thirty-eight years are a blank.

The concluding part of the book of Numbers relates the marches of the Israelites along the outskirts of the land of Edom, and through that of Moab, into the plains of Jordan nearly opposite Jericho; the settling of the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half Manasseh on the eastern side of the river; the giving of some miscellaneous laws that seem out of place, and of others that are evidently in place, having reference to the approaching possession of the land. That very remarkable personage, Balaam, figures prominently in this part of the history. A wizard or diviner in high repute (such as the East still possesses under all its various forms of religion, and the West is not totally destitute of), he is invited by Balak, king of the Moabites,-with costly divination presents, of course, -to come and " curse Israel for him." This arch-impostor, who, like all of his profession everywhere, was awake to every passing event and opinion, had of course watched the progress of the Israelitish hordes, and learnt the name of their tutelary God. That he was an inspired prophet of the true God, seems a very needless conclusion from his seeming to acknowledge the LORD. He saw, in the main, the coming destiny of the LORD's people. He believed the land must yield before them. Sorely perplexed between his "love of the wages of unrighteousness" immediately offered by Balak, and his

longer view to his own credit for divination and prophecy, the conflict of his temporizing soul is laid bare at every step. His hesitating so long condemns his setting forth at last, and he hears his very ass reproach him and forbid his mad design; he sees an expostulating angel when his beast runs against a wall, as he goes professedly to curse according to his wages, yet inwardly determines to bless with longer-sighted policy. But presently afterwards, when the Israelites so soon fall into the idolatries of Moab (ch. xxv.), Balaam's policy is again changed; he abets the votaries of Baal-peor, and is slain among them in spite of his divination. Balaam has needlessly perplexed the interpreters, when they have made him a true believer in God and a divinely-inspired prophet. The poetical beauty and vigour of the predictions put into his mouth by the historian can hardly be extolled too highly. They are, indeed, splendid poems, by whomsoever composed. Nor need we doubt that the basis of them was uttered by him, though they may have received many later touches of Jewish patriotism before attaining the state in which they are preserved to us.

DEUTERONOMY (Repetition of the Law) represents Moses as recapitulating the history of the sojourn in the wilderness, recounting the chief provisions of his Law "to all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness," and exhorting them to remain faithful to his institutions; to which he makes a few additions, being conscious of his approaching death. He gives more particular instructions as to what they must do when they shall have entered the promised land; he speaks in the ears of all Israel "a song," and pronounces upon them "blessings,'

99

which are among the finest passages of Hebrew poetry;

and he dies on Mount Nebo, or Pisgah, "opposite to Jericho."

"Such," says Dr. Milman (Hist. of Jews, Vol. I. p. 159), was the end of the Hebrew lawgiver—a man who, considered merely in an historical light, without any reference to his divine inspiration, has exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of his own nation and mankind at large, than any other individual recorded in the annals of the world. Christianity and Mahometanism alike respect, and in different degrees derive their origin from, the Mosaic institutes. Thus throughout Europe, with all its American descendants, the larger part of Asia and the north of Africa, the opinions, the usages, the civil as well as religious ordinances, retain deep and indelible traces of their descent from the Hebrew polity. To his own nation Moses was chieftain, historian, poet, lawgiver. He was more than all these he was the author of their civil existence. Other founders of republics, and distinguished legislators, have been, like Numa, already at the head of a settled and organized community; or have been voluntarily invested in legislatorial authority, like Charondas, Lycurgus and Solon, by a people suffering the inconveniences of anarchy. Moses had first to form his people and bestow on them a country of their own, before he could create his commonwealth. The Hebrews would either have been absorbed in the population of Egypt, or remained a wretched Pariah caste, had Moses never lived. In this condition he took them up, rescued them from captivity: finding them unfit for his purpose, he kept them for forty years under the severe discipline of the desert; then led them as conquerors to take possession of a most fruitful region. Yet, with singular disregard to his own fame, though with great advantage to his design, Moses uniformly referred to an earlier and more remote personage the dignity of parent of his people. The Jews were children of Abraham, not of Moses; they were a distinguished nation as descendants of the patriarch, not as compatriots of the lawgiver. The virtue of pure and disinterested patriotism never shone forth more unclouded. The permanent happiness of the whole people was the one great object to which the life of Moses was devoted; so that, if we could for an instant suspect that he made use of religion for a political purpose, still that purpose would entitle him to the highest rank among the benefactors of mankind, as

having been the first who attempted to regulate society by an equal written law. If God was not the sovereign of the Jewish state, the law was: the best and only safe vicegerent of Almighty Providence, to which the welfare of human communities can be intrusted. If the Hebrew commonwealth was not a

theocracy, it was a nomocracy. On the other hand, if, as we suppose, in the Mosaic polity the civil was subordinate to the religious end, still the immediate well-being of the community was not sacrificed to the more remote object. Independently of the temporal blessings promised to the maintenance of the law, the Hebrew commonwealth was so constituted as to produce (all circumstances of the times, the situation and character of the people considered) as much or more real happiness and independence than any existing or imaginary government of ancient times. Let Moses be judged according to his age, he will appear not merely the first who, by his single genius, founded a commonwealth on just principles; but a lawgiver who advanced political society to as high a degree of perfection as the state of civilization which his people had attained, or were capable of attaining, could possibly admit."

Without going into the minutia of the Law of Moses, it is very desirable to form a correct general

IDEA OF JUDAISM.

THE essence of Judaism, as it stands connected with the religious history of mankind, is its acknowledgment of One Only God, present to human thought, but incapable of being imaged to the senses, the sole Creator and Ruler of all things visible and invisible. This is the central principle of the religion of Moses, derived from the patriarchal times, and (yet further back) from antediluvian and primeval tradition. By virtue of this one leading characteristic, Judaism stood in marked contrast and opposition to all the religious systems of contemporary nations. "The gods of the nations were idols, but

Jehovah made the heavens."

A

This is the national idea, the national distinction. high and honourable distinction truly! Voucher, at once, for some strange specialty in their history! Prima facie evidence of a divine revelation having been made to them!

Idolatry has been described as the "common sense" of unenlightened man. It was the universal belief and practice of all known ancient nations except the Jews, as it is of all uncivilized nations in modern times, except such as are lower still in what is called fetisch superstition, or apparently destitute of the religious sentiment itself.

The history of the Jews may be described as the history of the visible conflict of this great and lofty religious idea-One Spiritual God—with the world's idolatries on all hands; and not only so, but its internal conflict also with the idolatrous tendencies of the Hebrew mind itself. Never is their religious peculiarity long out of sight, whether made prominent to their own credit or the reThis specialty, residing in the broad facts of the case, requires to be accounted for on rational principles; and for my part, I know no satisfactory solution but that supplied by the history of the nation as given by their own Scriptures, in reply to the demands of philosophical inquiry.

verse.

A host of difficulties doubtless encompass the Jewish Scriptures and the history they contain. These are made not less, but virtually greater, to the perplexed inquirer, by suppressing or dissembling them. So far as we have already gone in our investigations, they have been freely granted, and dealt with, I trust, without dogmatism and in à spirit of candour, with how much or little success each reader knows for himself. The writer can but speak his own conviction or confess his own difficulty.

We must not attempt to shut our eyes to the igno