The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, & Nubia.
Roberts, David, 1796-1864 | Croly, George, 1780-1860 | Brockedon, William, 1787-1854 | Day & Son
a*..' "• '': •'■■ ■'•• •**• ,▼ ff.yy^ iTi^ i^i'y t* i^<T.ty^gjgi?>i'r-.>,y:j^ .i-y ^ ■ x^r* i— i.i \t V V '♦'' '«' V' \' '<;' JAjLAJlA^A-^A ' • -v • .'■•-',:" • • .■ . ■, ; pr*frwr*r^r"ir,v"V^r"VV',U"ir7Vr3r",vr'< ' Cmttoir ft&Ll, y§4Mct ■ //,'■<,,;//■ t/, . ■ - I TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. Madam, The cultivation of the Fine Arts has been regarded by all civilised nations as an ornament of the Diadem, but by England in the hisrher lio;ht of an essential instrument of her intellectual supremacy. Your Majesty's ancestors, distinguished as they were by the triumph of fleets and armies, never lost sight of the milder, but not less permanent lustre reflected on the throne and the people by the triumphs of the national mind. Yet, while your Majesty's known taste and royal munificence have already given new animation to the arts, the present work solicits your approval by higher claims than mere elegance of design or skill of execution. Illustrative of scenes once hallowed by the steps of the prophet and the apostle, possessing in all ages the highest interest for the scholar and the philosopher, and now opening the most sacred contemplations and most glowing prospects to the philanthropist and the Christian, these volumes are dedicated to your Majesty, as the Defender of the Faith of a great Christian empire, by, Madam, Your Majesty's most faithful Subjects and dutiful Servants, THE PUBLISHERS. L I 8 T 0 F SUBJEC T S Vol. I. JERUSALEM AND GALILEE. 1 PORTRAIT OF DAVID ROBERTS, ESQ., R.A. 2 ENTRANCE TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE— Title Vignette. 3 THE DAMASCUS GATE. 4 THE GREEK CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 5 TOMB OF ST. JAMES. 6 JERUSALEM FROM THE ROAD LEADING TO BETHANY. 7 ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF THE KINGS. 8 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR, ON THE ANCIENT SITE OF THE TEMPLE. 9 THE TOMB OF ZECHARIAH, VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. 10 JERUSALEM FROM THE SOUTH. 11 CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, EXTERIOR VIEW. 12 THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 13 THE TOWER OF DAVID. 14 THE SHRINE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 15 GOLDEN GATE OF THE TEMPLE, SHOWING THE ANCIENT WALLS. 16 JERUSALEM— THE CHURCH OF TILE PURIFICATION. 17 UPPER FOUNTAIN OF SILO AM— VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. 18 JERUSALEM FROM THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 1!) STONE OF UNCTION— CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 20 CHAPEL OF ST. HELENA— CRYPT OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 21 FOUNTAIN OF JOB— VALLEY OF HINNOM. 22 JERUSALEM FROM THE NORTH. 23 LOWER POOL OF SILO AX — VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. 24 THE ENTRANCE TO THE CITADEL OF JERUSALEM. 25 ABSALOM'S PILLAR— VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. 20 CALVARY— HOLY SEPULCHRE. 27 MOUNT TABOR, FROM THE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON. 28 NAZARETH, GENERAL VIEW. 29 FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN, NAZARETH. 30 CONVENT OF THE TERRA SANTA. NAZARETH. 31 THE SHRLNE OF THE ANNUNCIATION, NAZARETH. 32 CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION, NAZARETH. 33 FOUNTAIN OF CANA. 34 CANA, GENERAL VIEW. 35 TOWN OF TIBERIAS, LOOKING TOWARDS LEBANON. 36 THE SEA OF TIBERIAS, LOOKING TOWARDS BASHAN. 37 TIBERIAS, FROM THE WALLS ; SAFED IN THE DISTANCE. 38 TIBERLVS, LOOKING TOWARDS HERMON. 30 THE TOMB OF JOSEPH AT SHECHEM. 40 JACOB'S WELL AT SHECHEM. 41 ENTRANCE TO NABLOUS. 42 NABLOUS. ANCIENT SHECHEM. 43 RUINS OF THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN". SEBASTE. 44 SEBASTE, ANCIENT SAMARIA. NOTICE OF MR. ROBERTS'S JOURNEY IN THE EAST. To visit the Holy Land and make drawings of the scenes "of sacred history and the antiquities of Egypt, had been, long before this journey was undertaken by Mr. Roberts, the brightest of his anticipations as an artist. He had already acquired so high a reputation for his skill and judgment in the treatment of architectural subjects, that the service of his pencil was sought, to make us acquainted with the structures of the Moors in Spain, and to make drawings from, and adapt for the use of the engraver, many of the sketches furnished by travellers in Palestine, of the buildings and objects of interest published in the "Illustrations of the Bible:" these studies, and his journey to Spain and Morocco for his Spanish scenery, excited in him an irrepressible desire to visit the East. The drawings of the French Commission in Egypt had been declared very incorrect, and De Laborde's Petra was charged also with inaccuracy. To go and draw for himself scenes and objects of such intense interest could alone satisfy him ; the result has been his richly-stored portfolios, from which the subjects for this work have been selected. Having made himself thoroughly acquainted with all matters reqxiisite for the journey, and such works as were published on the countries and objects he was about to visit, and having prepared himself with letters and introductions, especially from the Foreign Office to Colonel Campbell, our Consul-General in Egypt and Syria, he left London August 31st, 1838, and reached Alexandria on the 24th of September following. Every facility was kindly and readily given by Colonel Campbell for the accomplishment of our Artist's objects. The Nile was at its height, and therefore visited at the most advantageous time. He ascended to Cairo, with introductions from Colonel Campbell, and there, by the aid of those to whom he had been recommended, Mr. Roberts was furnished with a guard to accompany him everywhere, and protect him from interruption or insult whilst sketching: be even obtained permission to enter every mosque he desired to visit, a privilege never before given to a Christian, but to which one condition was attached — that in the instruments he used in making his studies, for he was allowed to paint there, he was not to desecrate the mosque by the introduction and use of brushes made of hog's biistles. From Cairo Mr. Roberts, with an Arab servant, ascended the Nile in a boat commanded by a captain with a crew of eight men, provisioned for three months. He was entirely master of the party, and carried the British flag at the mast-bead. He thus ascended to the second cataract, Wady Haifa, and before he returned to Cairo, he had made drawings of almost every edifice from the extremity of Nubia to the Mediterranean. NOTICE OF ME. ROBERTS S JOUKXEY IX THE EAST. While at Cairo, lie made the acquaintance of M. Linant, who had been De Laborde's companion in his visit to Petra; he kindly showed Mr. Roberts the original sketches which had been made in that excursion, and thus added stimulants, which were unnecessary, to his undertaking the interesting journey to Wady Moosa, or Petra. He immediately made preparations for crossing the Desert by the route of the Israelites to Mount Sinai — by Akaba, and through the great valley of El Ghor to Petra, and thence to Hebron, instead of entering Palestine by El Arish and Gaza, as he had intended. On the 8th of February, 1839, having been joined by Mr. Pell and Mr. Kinnear, (the latter of whom has since published an account of this journey,) they assumed the Arab dress, and, with their servants well armed, left Cairo : taking with them twenty-one camels, and escorted by nearly as many Bedouin Arabs, of the tribe of the Beni Saids. On the 27th they reached the Fortress of Akaba, on the Red Sea; here they parted with the Arab tribe hitherto their friends and guides, and put themselves under the escort of the tribe of Alloeens, who were to conduct them to Petra and thence to Hebron. On the 6th of March they reached Mount Hor, upon which rests the tomb of Aaron : at its base, deeply seated in its ravines and bounded by its precipitous sides and lofty peaks, lies the excavated city of Petra, the Idumea of the Greeks, the Edom of the prophet Jeremiah — the city of impregnable position, which gloried hi its strength, but which strikes the traveller, who is fortunate enough to visit it, as an awful realisation of the prophetic denunciations : — " Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that boldest the height of the hill : though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord."1 Mr. Roberts and his companions were the first who had been permitted to pitch their tents within Petra; it was the result of a long and violent altercation between the Arab tribe inhabiting Wady Moosa and the Alloeens, with whom an old grudge remained unsettled. At length a sufficient amount was agreed upon as a peace-offering for a truce, and the occupation of an encampment within the city for five days without molestation ; during this time our Artist, fortunately, worked incessantly on his studies, for on the fifth night the little party was assailed and some of their amis were carried off; but it was suspected by our travellers, that the attack of the Arabs of Wady Moosa was connived at by their guides, who were impatient to return ; the next morning they struck their" tents, and bade farewell to Petra, the wonder of the Desert. On the 16th, the party having reached Hebron, and learnt that the plague had barred access to Jerusalem, proceeded to the coast, visiting Gaza, Askelon, and Jaffa; but being informed here that no recent case had occurred in the Holy City, and that the quarantine would shortly be removed, they set out for Jerusalem, and arrived there on the 29th of March, the day before Palm Sunday, a day held by the Christians in the East in great veneration. While at Jerusalem, Mr. Roberts received much ' Jeremiah, xlix. l(j. NOTICE OF Ml!. ROBERTS S JOURNEY IN THE EAST. kindness and assistance from the then governor, Achniet Aga, whom he accompanied with above four thousand Christian pilgrims to Jericho and the river Jordan. He afterwards visited the Dead Sea, the Lake of Tiberias, the sea-coast and mountain-range of Lebanon, and the -ruins of Baalbec; such exertions, and the severe privations which he suffered on the journey, produced intermittent fever, which compelled him to abandon his projected excursions to Damascus and Palmyra. How entirely he had been devoted to the great objects he had proposed to himself before he left England, this work will abundantly prove. The extraordinary merit and interest of his drawings, when seen after his return, created a sensation not easily forgotten ; the fidelity of his accurate pencil, his skilful and rigid adherence to the truth of costume, his attention to just and characteristic effect, were acknowledged by all travellers and artists competent to judge. The demand for this work sprang out of the interest thus excited. Commissions from royalty and the chief patrons of art crowded upon him for pictures from the subjects he had studied in the East, and his contemporaries in art acknowledged his merits by the honour of electing him into the Royal Academy. ISRAEL. r I ^HE history of the Jews is the most characteristic, the most important, and the most sublime, in the world. For, to this people alone were given the primitive knowledge of the Almighty ; the trust of preserving it unstained while the earth was bowed down in idolatry; and finally, the magnificent privilege of dispensing it, in the appointed time, through all the families of mankind. For the declared purpose, at once of enabling the nation to fulfil this high office, and of distinguishing the divine commission, the whole existence of the people affords the most total contrast to that of all other nations. It differs from them all in its origin, its religion, its civil construction, and its historical career. The origin of the chief nations of pagan antiquity is proverbially lost in fable, acts of impossible heroism, transformations of imaginary deities, and dynasties of imaginary kings. At the point to which history ascends, they were simply gatherings of rude wanderers, formed into tribes by force or famine, and seizing upon territory by emigration or the hand of the stronger. But, the Jews, like the first dwellers in the earth, were the descendants of one pair ; their descent registered by the clearest and most authentic of all records; their ancestors leaving their original place of birth, neither urged by necessity nor tempted by the desire of possession ; those ancestors wholly alien in their habits to war, and in their persons wholly excluded from earthly sovereignty ; living and dying in the acknowledgment that they were " strangers and pilgrims upon the earth," though looking forward to mysterious promises mightier than the world could fulfil; and the people, when at last they came into possession, openly acknowledging that the triumph was gained not by their own prowess, but by the hand of Heaven. In the pagan world, religion was a tissue of traditions, without authority and without effect ; important to the priest as a matter of maintenance, and interesting to the people as a source of festivity or display ; but secretly despised by the philosopher, practically disregarded by the government, and performing altogether an obscure and secondary part among the general impulses of society. But, in the Jewish system, Religion was the grand object of the national existence, the prime mover of the whole machine of state ; its ministers holding the highest rank, its 2 ISRAEL. observances forming the habitual occupation of the people; its influence shaping their minds, their manners, and their fortunes; the national prosperity declared to depend on the public reverence for its principles, the national ruin involved in its desertion. Its conception was lofty, pure, and spiritual in the highest degree, while its ceremonial exceeded in strictness and splendour all that mankind has ever seen of worship — a whole tribe was devoted to the attendance of the temple — the whole people stood among nations as a general priesthood; religion, the unrivalled, perpetual, and inspired impulse of the dominion of Israel. The contrast is not less distinct in the polity of paganism. The codes of the most civilised nations were the result of time, accident, and the common necessities of public and personal life. Beginning in a few maxims, they grew with the exigencies of growing society, until they accumulated into substance, and were shaped into form. But the defects of their birth adhered to them still ; and their purest legislation exhibits barbarian cruelties, violent transgressions of right, and a general rude inadequacy to meet the claims of man in his intercourse with man. The political history of the pagan world is an exclusive display of human agency. Man is always in front. States rise by his virtues, and perish by his crimes; human energy, genius, and passion, are the universal instruments of national change. The hand of Heaven is seen only when it comes to write the sentence of empire, and then seen only in clouds. To the eye of the pagan, the vicissitudes of nations formed scarcely more than a vast game of chance. Beyond a few principles all was conjecture. The clearest foresight was circumscribed by the events of the day. No intelligence, however vigorous, could securely penetrate into the future fates of empires. In all those essential features, the distinction of the Jewish people was entire, and was divine. Their law was no tardy, obscure, and jarring compilation ; it was a System ; at once authoritative, adequate, and complete ; transmitted with a grandeur of circumstance which pronounced it the work of Heaven ; and fixed in the national mind by every motive which can bind men or nations ; by the promise of prosperity and the dread of suffering ; by the awe of the senses, the homage of the heart, and the conviction of the understanding. In the career of the nation, Divine Providence is the guide, the sustainer, and the sovereign. The popular fortunes are openly moulded by its will. Man looks on, while the mightiest events make their progress before him, scarcely more governed by his influence than the tides or the thunderstorm. Heaven holds the scale, man is but the dust of the balance. Battles are lost and won, conquests are achieved, and national punishments of the deepest kind, amounting to revolutions which extinguish the hope of Israel, are the work of Providence, openly proclaiming its resolves, in total contradiction to human expectancy, and as openly fulfilling them in total independence of human power. Two great agents wholly unknown, but by name, to pagan antiquity, Miracle and Prophecy, are the especial instruments of the Divine government among this extraordinary people. From the beginning of their existence, in the person of Abraham, the faculties ISRAEL. 3 of nature and man are placed under palpable control. The patriarch and the people are protected, tried, and delivered, by miraculous interposition. From the earliest period, their future existence is displayed with the clearness of history ; and yet, with that sublime consistency, which in its broadest displays of power and wisdom wastes nothing, each successive illumination is distinctly adapted to the necessities of the time. To Abraham, the founder of the race, the prediction gives an outline of the fortunes of his descendants, until their liberation from Egypt. To Jacob, with whom another era of the national existence began, as the father of the twelve tribes, the prediction is renewed, but further extending over their possession of the promised land. To Moses, with whom a third era began, in the redemption from Egypt, the prediction extends further still, com- prehending the whole period of conquest, possession, and decay; and reaching even beyond the final fall of the nation, into that vast and obscure region of time, when Judah was to be absorbed and hidden in the oppressions and conflicts of Gentilism; like the site of Paradise, covered by the swamp, and trampled by the barbarian, yet still retaining a melancholy reverence in the memory of mankind. The historv of the Jews commences with Abraham, the son of Terah, in the tenth 1996 generation from Noah, at a period when the earth was sunk in idolatry ; when even the patriarchal family had bowed down to the work of men's hands, and perhaps he alone retained the unpolluted worship of his fathers. It pleased the Almighty to interpose, in this last extremity of man, and once again to reveal His worship to the world. Nearly two thousand years before the birth of our Lord and Saviour, the word of God came to Abraham in " Ur of the Chaldees," commanding him to leave his country, and go forth; with the promise that he should be the founder of a nation. All the ways of Providence exhibit consistency. They are a series of profound analogies. The training of Israel closely resembles the training of the individual mind. In both, faith precedes sight ; and the nation and the man are alike taught full reliance and solemn submission, before either is led into consummate reward. Faith was the discipline of the patriarchs and the people for the long period of four hundred and thirty years. The life of Abraham was a powerful and unwearied exercise of faith. But to estimate his trial, we must remember his time. The member of a civilised community, he was suddenly commanded to abandon the fertile soil of Chaldea, in which his fathers had dwelt for ages, and go forth "he knew not where," to what wild region of the earth ; and this pilgrimage was to be made at a period when all beyond Chaldea, with perhaps the single exception of Egypt, was either a wilderness, or traversed by bands of warlike savages. Nor had he the common stimulants of barbarian enterprise. He was not the chieftain of a horde; he had neither ambition nor rapine before him; he was a keeper of sheep. He reached Haran, on the borders of the desert ; and there the divine guidance suffered him to remain until he was verging on old age. Suddenly, at a period when man naturally looks for rest, at the age of seventy-five, he was commanded again to 4 ISRAEL. uproot himself, to throw away the fruits of his labour during so many years, and begin a journey which might be interminable. But the injunction had grown stricter still. He was now not merely to leave his home, but to separate himself from his kindred: and thus at once doing violence to his natural affections, and divesting himself of the protection of all allied to him by blood, again begin his journey, and advance into Palestine, a country possessed by turbulent clans, and apparently, at that period, convulsed by recent invasion. Yet he obeyed, still unknowing in what portion of the world his journey was to terminate; nor was it until he had actually arrived within the borders of Palestine, that he received a knowledge of the promised land. Even there he found himself tried alike by the sterility of the soil and the violence of the people. He was successively, a fugitive in Egypt from famine, and a captive in the hands of one of the chiefs of Palestine. Released from both onty by miracle, he continued still to " dwell in tents," a stranger in the land. The birth of the promised son was retarded, until he was a hundred years old. Even this blessing but increased his trial. He was commanded to sacrifice Isaac ; and thus, by a single act, to extinguish at once the life miraculously given, the stay of his old age, the sole pledge of magnificent possession and countless posterity, and above all, the prophetic ancestor of that mightiest offspring, the Son alike of man and heaven, on whose brow was to be laid the perpetual diadem, and whose reign was to be the rejoicing of all generations. But, in this trial, of which the force is now beyond all calculation, (for in what human existence have interests and objects so vast ever been since combined ?) the patriarch was not simply submissive, he was confiding. In defiance of the strongest obstacles, he believed that the promise would be eventually fulfilled ; gave his entire con- viction to the divine words, and in solemn reverence and unhesitating belief, made his journey to the place of sacrifice, " accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead."1 It was not until he was on the point of consummating his obedience, that his trial was complete ; and he received his reward in the most illustrious acknow- ledgment of faith ever given to man. " By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea- shore ; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."3 On the same scene, nineteen hundred years after, and on the eve of the fall of Israel, a more stupendous sacrifice was to be offered; the Supreme Father was to give up his Firstborn to death. The same great truth, that He could not be held by the bonds of the grave, was to be the essential faith of that most solemn of all sufferings : and the trial was to be followed by that promise of universal sovereignty and imperishable happiness, which constitutes the hope, as it will consummate the grandeur, of Christianity. The discipline continued for centuries. Abraham finished his course, still a pilgrim in the land, where the divine promise had foreordained the temple and the throne. Isaac, 1 Hebrews, xi. 19. s Genesis, xxii. 16-18. ISRAEL. 5 the especial son of promise, died like him, a pilgrim, yet confiding hi the future kingdom. Jacob bewail his career a fugitive and ended it an exile, yet with his last breath uttering a memorable prediction of the ample fulfilment of the divine words. The discipline extended to the nation. The Israelites were not only forced to abandon Palestine, but they were thrown into the power of a great and despotic kingdom, which gradually changed protection into tyranny ; and, by actual bondage, threatened to raise a perpetual barrier against their return. Yet faith survived. Neither the famine which drove them into Egypt, nor the violence which retained them there, could overcome their conviction. Joseph, the first minister, the monarch in all but name, refused to die an Egyptian, and enjoined that his remains should be borne away with his people on the day of their future march to Palestine. Even when they were fettered, generation after generation, to the soil, and a deepening slavery of two hundred years, must have seemed to set the seal to their exclusion, the principle sacredly survived. The parents of Moses preserved the infant, in the strength of a supernatural hope. Moses himself, when his fame ami his genius had grown to maturity, " mighty in words and deeds," the statesman and the soldier, with all the temptations of royal rank and opulence before him, refused to abandon his hope in the promise ; " refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God."1 But, his individual trial was to grow still more severe. In an attempt to arouse the spirit of his countrymen he failed, and made the bitter discovery, that they had lost all the feelings essential to freedom. He was pursued by the vengeance of the king, fled into the desert, and there, relinquishing for ever the hopes and habits of a life of distinction and command, took the staff of the shepherd. Yet, from this period, the supremacy of Providence only ascends with broader splendour. Means, the most utterly below human calculation, produce effects the most utterly above it; all is inadequacy on the part of man. To raise a nation of slaves into a nation of freemen, proverbially a task requiring the most extraordinary union of ability and ambition, is the task laid upon a man eighty years old, and still more disqualified by circumstances than by age3 a fugitive in the desert, sunk into the monotonous life of a keeper of sheep, totally cut off from the country of his birth, and calmed into "the meekest man on earth." Even when the divine call conies to him, he exhibits reluctance, pleads personal inability, and finally yields only to miracle, But the conditions of this great achievement place it still more beyond the range of human faculties. In the face of the most civilised and powerful kingdom of their time, the deliverance of the Israelites was to be effected, without the sword. The slave-born was to be rescued from the slave-master by an act of public will; and not merely to obtain his freedom, but a portion of that master's wealth, as a compensation for his slavery. The deliverance was not to be an escape, but a triumph. The people were to march out in the open day ; with the king, the nobles, and the troops of Egypt looking on, yet not darhig to lift a weapon against the most helpless of all multitudes, a moving nation, 1 Hebrews, xi. 24, 25. 6 ISRAEL. encumbered with infancy and age, with flocks and herds, and with the provisions for their journey to Palestine. But this incalculable event only coincides with the general purpose of the interposition ; that of impressing man with a sense of providential power. The people were wholly passive. The Ten Plagues, a series of miracles, fought the battle ; in all displaying the might of God alone ; completed by the signal and final overthrow of the crowned oppressor, and his troops, the instruments of his tyranny ; at once displaying to the chosen people the divine wrath against incorrigible crime, and securing their march unmolested across the wilderness. But another and an illustrious development of the divine power was now to begin. The lesson of the Israelite in the wilderness was to commence, by the proof " that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He was to be taught, by those appetites which appeal most immediately to his feelings, that God is alike the sovereign of nature and society; that the hourly provision of liis creatures is wholly the work of his will; and that instead of the corn, and wine, and general subsist- ence of man, his will might have substituted a totally different constitution of things, and provided for every want of the human frame, independently of the invention or the industry of the human species. The Israelites marched into the wilderness, prepared to reach Palestine by a direct and short route. An act of disobedience was visited by the divine declaration, lengthening their journey to forty years. But miracle then only began a grander development. In the midst of a region of rock and sand, where a flying troop of Arabs can now scarcely find water and herbage for their rapid march, the twelve tribes, with their cattle, were subsisted for forty years. Nothing can be conceived more decisive than the change, or more demon- strative of supernatural will. The food of Egypt, earned with stripes and toil, was replaced by food rained upon them from heaven ; and rained in that exact proportion, which no human arrangement has ever been able to accomplish among large bodies yf mankind — that no man should have a superfluity, and that no man should want. The descent of a double portion on the day before the sabbath, still more strongly tended to fix the mind on the source whence it came. But the miracle was not limited to food. It is expressly declared, that during their sojourn in the desert, even their clothing was supernaturaHy provided for.1 The mere magnitude of the supply was overwhelming, it was the provision of food and clothing for millions. The desert, without being changed in its nature, underwent the same stupendous power. Streams not merely burst from the rock, but in such copiousness as to supply the wants of a nation. The brackish pools were not merely changed into refreshing waters, but into ' " I have led you forty years in the wilderness ; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. (Deuteronomy, xxix. 5.) . . . . That ye might know that I am the Lord your God." (Ver. 6.) It has been suggested that the Israelites might have procured their raiment from the bordering nations. But how was this possible ? They had nothing to give in return : the ground produced nothing to them ; their flocks and herds, the property of a slave population, must have been few in Egypt, and could not have much increased in the scanty pasturage of the desert. On every side too the bordering clans seem to have shrunk from them with alarm, or met them with open hostility. Nor was this miracle more astonishing than the manna. ISRAEL. 7 reservoirs vast enough to slake the thirst of the moving multitude. The natural perils of the march were counteracted "by a still more expressive miracle ; in the tract infested by serpents, the sufferers under their poison were instantly healed by looking on a brazen serpent raised by their leader, an emblem of the future triumph of the Messiah over the original adversary of mankind. To consummate all those wonders ; the Divine Presence, in a pillar of cloud by day and of flame by night, shone on high in front of the tribes, marking where the camp was to be pitched, and advancing when it was again to be put in motion; a visible and unanswerable proof to the most doubting among the people, that the host were under the hourly guidance of Heaven. But a still more striking connexion was to be established ; God was to declare himself their actual king. One of the most astonishing features of Scripture is the divine conde- scension. The natural idea of Deity is that of lofty, abstract, unapproachable grandeur. But Scripture acknowledging all, and more than all the grandeur, continually mingles with it a human interest, an ultimate intercourse with human feelings, and even an association with human beings, closely resembling that of man with man. The Eternal condescends to meet Abraham as " friend with friend," He converses with Moses ." face to face," He is the peculiar " God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ;" all prefiguring that still more intense condescension and measureless mercy, by which the Messiah finally took upon Him our nature, and even submitted to the death of a slave. He now condescended to offer Himself to the election of the people as their sovereign, in almost the lano-uacre of a human candidate for a throne.1 In the third month after the departure from Egypt, and on the day of their entrance into the wilderness of Sinai, Moses was summoned to hear the divine command. " And the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel ; " Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. " Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people : for all the earth is mine : " And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel."2 Moses returned to the host and proposed the terms of the covenant of royalty. It was publicly accepted. " And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do."3 On this national acceptance, Jehovah put the first act of temporal sovereignty in practice, and proclaimed his will as the national legislator. The tribes were led by the fiery pillar to the front of the mountain range of Sinai, a noble elevation, in itself an object of natural astonishment to a multitude whose lives had been spent in the level country of Egypt ; and rendered more awful by the command which made a nearer approach to it death. On the third morning they were aroused by thunders and lightnings, and the sound of the angelic trumpet, " so that all the people that was in 1 Jahn, Hebrew Commonwealth, c. ii. § !). 2 Exodus, xix. 3-6. 3 Ibid. v. 8. 8 ISRAEL. the camp trembled." They then marched forth, to take their stations round the mount, and await the descent of God. " And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire : and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. " And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai."1 The Law was now given in three portions ; the first the Ten Commandments, openly proclaimed by the Divine voice, as the great principles of universal order; those principles, which our Lord and Saviour has declared permanently binding on all ages, and incapable of being changed in even an iota.- The two remaining portions, the law of worship, and the law of society, applicable chiefly to the Jew alone, were transmitted through Moses. This was the most majestic demonstration that was ever given to Israel, or perhaps will ever be given to man ; until that close of Christianity which it so singularly resembles — the Second coming, when " the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the tramp of God."3 And " the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty ansrels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."4 In both, the leading features are the same, the grandeur, the wrath, the irresistible power, the flame, the trumpet, the voice of the angelic world, and the descending Deity. But all the past is eclipsed by the new glory of the second coming, the splendour of the Resurrection. It has been objected to the Mosaic Law, that it omits the doctrine of immortality; but the objection arises from confounding the nature of a religion and a law. The Israelites had the religion before. The patriarchs bowed down to Jehovah, worshipped Him with sacrifice, and looked forward to the advent of the Messiah. Their religion had the doctrine of immortality ; " they all died in faith," the hope of a resurrection. The object of law is the order of society. But society ends at the edge of the grave ; and the rewards and punishments of the future world are no more within the contemplation of its tribunals, than they are within its power. Yet the distinctions of the Mosaic code still raised it incomparably above all the efforts of human wisdom. It met, with an amplitude till then unknown, the threefold objects, of religious ceremonial, the privileges of the sovereign, and the rights of the people ; it exhibited the contrast of a law incapable of addition, diminution, or change, to the helpless perplexity, narrow principles, and perpetual changes of human legislation ; it brought forward the thunders of Omnipotence to assert its authenticity ; and, finally, it stamped all its provisions with a pledge beyond the highest reach of human power. Unlike human law, which knows only crime and penalty ; the Mosaic Law extended itself to righteousness and reward; it prepared expiation for offence to man and heaven; ' Exod. six. 18-20. » Matt. v. 18. 3 1 Thess. iv. 16. "2 These, i. 7, 8. ISRAEL. 9 and it proposed the most direct, intelligible, and impressive order of human recompense for virtue. While the doctrine of immortality raised the individual heart to its Maker; temporal happiness, in all its most touching, noble, and permanent forms, filled the national eye with beauty. To the allegiance of the Israelite were promised immediate blessings ; in salubrity of climate; in the richness of his corn, olive, and vine; in personal health, strength, and freedom; in the increase of the herd and the sheepfold; in length of life; in the succession and obedience of children ; in the security of the land from conquest ; in resistless triumph over all foreign hostility; in the endless duration of the national throne; in the boundless advance of his country in wealth, wisdom, and influence among nations ; and, to crown all, in seeing that country the sacred central light of the earth, Palestine, the chosen kingdom, and Jerusalem, the glorious city, of the King of kings. That a people so gifted, so honoured, and so blessed, should have cast all away, and fallen as Israel has fallen ; might make us in shame and sorrow wring our hands, and, with heads humbled in the dust, wonder at the unutterable weakness of man. 