line of march extending for several thousand paces, and to see men and beasts travelling onward through the night by their ruddy gleam. Their journey lay this night and every night, as far as Gaza, along the sea, whose distant thunder was occasionally heard, mingling with the songs of the slaves and the bells of the camels. Helon felt no desire to accomJerusalem, and in his present nothing less than a sin to visit In the morning our travellers found themselves in the neighborhood of Casium. The march had not been long, but the situations of the wells determine the halts of the caravans. Near the town a large sand-hill extended into the sea, on the point of which was built the temple of Jupiter Casius. The active Greek set off, though the distance was considerable, not for the purpose of worshipping there, but of examining it as a work of art. pany him, for on a journey to state of mind, it seemed to him a heathen temple, even for the gratification of his curiosity. Elisama praised his determination, and reminded him of the reproof delivered by the mouth of Jeremiah, "Thou hast always broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and hast said, I will not be restrained, but on every high hill and every green tree thou hast gone after idolatry."* In the mean time Elisama began, and Helon devoutly joined in singing the hundred and sixth psalm, which describes the journey, the wilderness, and the disobedience of Israel. "It is well," said Elisama, when they had done, "that our Greek is not here, or his nascent reverence for our people might be stopped in its growth. I must confess his society was at first very burthensome to * Jer. ii. 20. me, but he is more open to the reception of the truth than I had given him credit for being, and I have hopes that he may become a stranger of the gate." Myron returned full of admiration of the precious works of art which he had found in the temple of the Casian Jupiter, in which however, as a connoisseur, he found of course, something to blame. At the meal the discourse of Helon and Myron (for Elisama was too oriental in bis habits to talk at such a time) turned upon the ancient Goshen, in whose limits they now supposed themselves to be. They agreed that at the distance of fourteen hundred years it was very difficult to identify it, but that probably it was the district of Lower Egypt which is bounded by the sea, by the eastern branch of the Nile at Pelusium, and by the river of Egypt, and that it perhaps ascended as far as Heliopolis to the south. When they awoke towards evening, refreshed by their sleep, the conversation respecting Goshen was resumed. Elisama, seated upon his carpet, thus took up the discourse: "It seems then that we are at least on the skirts of that fruitful district of pasturage, in which the children of Abraham sojourned, and where they grew from a family to a people. Thou hast already heard, Myron, that our father Jacob came down to Egypt, with seventy persons, to his son Joseph, who had preserved the land of Pharaoh, by his wise precautions, from the miseries of famine; that two hundred and fifteen years after Jacob went down into Egypt, and four hundred and thirty years after Abraham left his native country at God's command, six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty fighting men of the Israelites quitted Egypt, without reckoning the twentytwo thousand Levites, or the women and children. During these four hundred and thirty years Israel grew into a nation. "In order that the promise of Jehovah, 'that all nations should be blessed in Abraham,' might be accomplished, it may easily be conceived that it was necessary that Abraham should become a people. But there was no country where it could have been accomplished in so short a time as in this. Canaan was already fully peopled, but in Goshen there was ample room for them to increase and spread. The Canaanites would not have looked on quietly for so many years, and have witnessed their increase, whereas the Egyptians would feel themselves bound by gratitude to Joseph, at least during the first century after his death, to abstain from any injury towards his nation. Nowhere else could Israel have been kept so free from mixture with other nations, as in the neighborhood of the Egyptians, whose religion inspired them with a horror of pastoral tribes. The land was at the same time fruitful, and facilitated the existence of numerous families. Finally, Egypt already possessed a civil polity more perfect than existed at that time in any other country; and though no human means were necessary to form a lawgiver for Israel, yet by constantly observing a people living under a constitution which regulated the rights and duties of even the lowest of the people, the Israelites were prepared to value and receive a similar constitution themselves. "When therefore Israel had become a numerous people, and began to feel the want of a system of laws, Divine Providence so arranged circumstances, as to awaken in them a longing for freedom and for the promised land. The Pharaohs inhumanly oppressed them, and made their lives bitter to them, by labor in brick and tile, and in all manner of service in the field. At length it was even given in command to the midwives to kill all the male infants. This was indeed, in one point of view, only a just punishment for the guilt of Israel, in worshipping the sacred animals of the Egyptians, and leaving the service of the true God: but as calamity, by the wise ordinance of Jehovah, serves at once for punishment and deliverance, the cruelty of the Egyptians proved the means of Israel's deliverance and exaltation. “God raised up Moses and laid his spirit upon him. After the command of Pharaoh for the murder of the male infants, he was exposed by his parents among the reeds of the Nile, and rescued in a wonderful manner by the king's own daughter. At the royal court, where he was brought up, he became ac quainted with all the wisdom of the Egyptians. When forty years of age, hurried away by sympathy for his suffering countrymen, whom even at Pharaoh's court he had not forgotten, he slew an Egyptian who was committing an outrage upon an Israelite, and was compelled to flee. He took refuge in the wilderness, and by a pastoral life of forty years formed his mind in solitude and amidst the sublimities of nature, where only a faint remembrance of the world remained to him, and thoughts of God filled his soul. Here God appeared to him in mount Horeb, in a bush that burned with fire and yet was not consumed, and called him to be Israel's leader and deliverer. "His apprehension of his own unworthiness was removed, and the Lord made known his name unto him; I WILL BE THAT I WILL be. He began the great work, and at the first step had to contend with the unsteadiness of Israel, which, during the remaining forty years of his life, occasioned him no less trouble than the assaults of their enemies. Pharaoh refused to let the people go, and nine plagues in succession, which Jehovah denounced by Moses, and then brought upon the land, were able only for a time to overcome Israel's fickleness and Pharaoh's obstinacy. At last the tenth was inflicted, and on the fourteenth of the month Nisan, Israel, with their wives and their children, and all their possessions, came out from the house of bondage in Egypt, and passed through the Red Sea, in which the Egyptians, following them, were drowned. This is, of all the events in the history of our nation, the most important, from its connexion with the giving of the law which immediately followed. We keep the feast of the Passover in remembrance of this event. Our great leader was also a poet, and sang the following song, the oldest and the noblest ode of victory that the world cau show: I sing unto the Lord for he is great — Chariot and horse he hath thrown into the sea. My father's God, and I will exalt him. Jehovah is mighty in war, Jehovah is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea, His chosen captains are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them, They sank to the bottom as a stone. Thy right-hand, O Jehovah, is become glorious in power, Thy right-hand, O Jehovah, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. In the greatness of thy might thou overthrowest them that rise up against thee, Thou sendest forth thy wrath which consumeth them as stubble. With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, The floods stood upright as a heap, The waves were congealed in the depths of the sea. The enemy said,— I will pursue I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, My desire shall be gratified upon them, I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy breath, the sea covered them, They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto thee, O Lord, ainong the gods? Who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy right-hand the earth swallowed them. Thou hast led forth in thy mercy thy redeemed people, Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy place; The people hear and are afraid, Anxiety taketh hold on the inhabitants of the land of the Philistines; The princes of Edom quake, Terror taketh hold on the mighty men of Moab, All the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Let fear and dread fall upon them, by thy mighty arm, Let them become stiff as stone, Till thy people pass over, O Lord, Till the people which thou hast purchased pass over. Bring them in, plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, To the place of thy dwelling which thou thyself hast prepared, Jehovah reigns for ever and ever.-Exod. xv. "Israel was now made free. But this was scarcely accomplished when it was made also a holy nation, and on the |