phen, in like manner, when demonstrating that it said nothing against the true greatness of Jesus Christ, that he was rejected by his contemporaries and his countrymen, since Moses himself, in whom they boasted, was almost as barbarously treated by their fathers in his lifetime, mentions it as a most eminent feature in the greatness of Moses, that he was educated at the court of Pharaoh, and was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, a statement with which he immediately connects the fact of Moses being mighty in words and in deeds.* Let us not, therefore, think too meanly of the Egyptians -let us not fancy that the descent of the Israelites into Egypt was a mere accident. It was designed by God to serve great purposes.

But whatever may be said in favour of Egypt, there, too, as in every populous country all over the East, the purity of religion was lost. The land was overrun with a priesthood, if not in every respect the same, yet in spirit the same as that from which Abraham was called. And the whole of the popular religion at least, as is usual in such a case, had degenerated in their hands into unedifying ceremonial. We must not, indeed, form our opinion of the religion of the ancient Egyptians from the Roman satirist, who ridicules their onion-worship; or from our own superficial conceptions. As commonly represented, the rites and ceremonies, and even the objects of worship of the ancient Egyptians, seem absurd and even ridiculous; but when viewed in a certain light, which. however, we have lost, they seem, on the contrary, to have been so engaging that even Joseph speaks of the cup whereby he divined, as if he too had been carried away by the mystic divinations and allurements of priestcraft.

• Acts vii. 22.

THE ISRAELITES.

But if even Joseph himself, so pure and so heavenlyminded, and who had learned in his youth the true patriarchal religion of his father's house-if even Joseph had already felt the mystic charm of the rites and ceremonies which the sacerdotal art everywhere invents to advance its own ascendancy, what will have become of the Israelites when they shall have been domesticated in Egypt for generations, when their fathers, who brought the true religion with them from Syria, shall have been dead and forgotten; especially when we consider that, as might be expected, they are now slaves of the powerful Egyptians, and must of course be kept in a state of ignorance as complete as possible, which the Egyptians were too politic not to know to be the state most favourable to subjection? If the Egyptians really were the learned, powerful, and politic people, which there is every reason to believe they were, are we not to expect that they shall have damped, in every conceivable way, the minds of the Israelites until they have quenched all true knowledge and every noble sentiment? And, more especially, since the religion of the true God must doubtless have been an object of terror to them, as every thing is which is not understood; are we not to expect that the priesthood shall have practised upon the successive generations of Israelitish children till they have replaced the truth of God with their own superstitions, and brought the Israelites both soul and body into bondage? To do this were doubtless very bad on the part of the Egyptians. Still it is only what all people in the like circumstances would have attempted. And if the Egyptians succeeded while others have failed, it was only because they were more equal to their attempts than others, not because they were more wicked.

GOD'S CHOICE.

But let the Israelites be now immersed in all the degradation which hereditary slavery entails, and in all the lowest superstitions which an Egyptian priest can teach,-let them be naturally a rebellious and stiffnecked race, these are no difficulties to God,--no obstacles in the way of his purposes regarding his people. Nay, their moral weakness and degradation, instead of forming a reason why God should decline them or cast them off, forms rather a reason why He should select them as a race, and choose them at that very moment, both to preserve the true religion, when all other nations had lost it, and to give birth to the Redeemer of all mankind. God is not like man, under the necessity of choosing the best and most competent to effectuate His plans. He can make any one do all His will. Were He, indeed, to choose the best and most competent, it would always leave it a question, how much of what was achieved was to be ascribed to God,-how much to man. And in this case, as men's prepossessions are naturally in their own favour, but little would generally be ascribed to God; and thus the truth of the matter would be obscured, a sense of God would be lost, and consequently all true piety along with it. Therefore, in the forcible language of St Paul, "God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the things that are mighty, and base things of the world, and things that are despised, doth God choose ; yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." * Nor was it only in the choice of the Israelites that this great principle was illustrated. It was remarkably illus1 Cor. i. 27.

trated in all that relates to the Redeemer himself. Though truly the Son of God, a woman was chosen to be his mother; and that not a princess, but a virgin in humble life, betrothed to a carpenter. And as to his death, not a bed of state, or the glorious hour of victory was his. He died the death reserved for felonslaves. He was crucified. And so, in all that was His between his birth and his death, God chose the things which were most despised among men for his walk. Need we wonder, then, if, in the former dispensation, the Jews were chosen as God's peculiar people? Was their present degeneracy, now that they were so reduced in all but number under Egyptian policy, a reason why God should fail to fulfil the promise made to their magnanimous progenitor? Nay, rather let them be beloved for their father's sake. Nothing is difficult to God. The necessities of the case do, indeed, always give the form to His manner of proceeding. But never can the case of man become so desperate, as to prevent God from doing all His will.

It is altogether wonderful what He has done by the Jews already; and yet it is not unwarrantable to believe that by them He will do greater wonders still. Surely it is well that Christians are now bending their sympathies, in good earnest, to the forlorn Israelites. How many prophesies, full of the promise of their glory, still remain unfulfilled! How high the privilege to help their fulfilment forward!

Meantime, let us return to the land of Egypt.

THE NECESSITY.

The Israelites must no longer be bondsmen. Jehovah is a God who breaketh the bands of the yoke of His

people, and MAKETH THEM TO WALK UPRIGHT.* The chosen race must be rescued, and carried out of Egypt. And to secure their perpetuity as a nation, till the time arrive when the Messiah may be born, they must be built up into a nation apart, and in a manner, be hid from all other nations, except those whom they shall be able to subdue. With their rescue the true religion must also be restored to them, and by its side a heroic spirit must be awoke in their breasts; which, in the first instance, must take its outgoings, in devoting the enemies of that religion to destruction; and afterwards, when the Messiah is come, must be transformed into a spirit of self-devotion to the service of God and the love of man.

But since their rescue is a measure of necessity, and since the true religion admits of a form suited to every state of the human soul, from the most abject to the noblest, are we not to expect some new dispensation, suited to the peculiar circumstances of the afflicted and degraded population whom it is designed to encourage, to regulate, and to save? The patriarchal religion, adapted to the contemplative lives of the fathers of individualized rural families,-a religion all simplicity, all spirituality, all consisting in the exercise of reflection, and in the spontaneous devotion of the heart, would, plainly, never do for a mass of human creatures just emancipated from a state of slavery under idolatrous masters, who had lorded it over them for many generations.

That the Israelites actually were in a most degraded state in religion, not less than in natural spirit, Scripture,‡

* Lev. xxxii. 13.

+ This is, indeed, language in which Josephus, their great historian, describes them.

Josh. xxiv. 14. Ezek. xx. 7.