It will perhaps be expected, by the reader of the following pages, that something should be said of the history of the chosen people previous to the captivity of Babylon; and the first thing that suggests itself is the question, Why God should have chosen any people, among the millions of the earth's inhabitants, as the depositaries of his Word and the recipients of his especial favor.
"God's ways are not as our ways;" and it does not become us to inquire into what he hath seen fit to withhold from our finite faculties and understandings. When, in a spirit of pride or of vain curiosity, we proceed to investigate the motives which influence the Infinite mind, and boldly entering the sanctuary, amid the mysteries of which He enshrouds his lofty designs, inquire, "What doest thou?" an indignant voice from the oracle replies, "Secret things belong unto the Lord our God." God owes no account of his motives and intentions to man.
Among things revealed, however, we may properly push our inquiries; the lessons we have been taught belong to us. It does appear that it was God's will that man should walk uprightly, and that, in a brief space, this truth was utterly forgotten; the whole race, with a solitary exception, being sunk in the lowest depths of depravity. Nor did the manifestation of his detestation of wickedness in the destruction of mankind, with the exception of one family, make any abiding impression on that family's descendants. To preserve mankind from moral ruin, therefore, and to prepare them for the coming of the Christ, it seems to have been necessary that a people should be selected as the depositaries of certain truths, to whom other nations might turn for instruction; and for this high trust and dignity Abraham and his seed were chosen. From what has come down to us of the patriarch's character,