ed Moses to forbid them. But what was the answer of the great prophet? "Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake. I would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." An answer in which we cannot fail to observe a resemblance to that which our Saviour gave, in similar circumstances, to James and John.*

And both

of which unite in teaching us, that though exclusiveness in religion be frequently, as in the case of Joshua, James, and John, the error of great and good men, yet it is not the spirit either of Moses or of Christ.

THE JUDGES.

But, besides the Prophets, the people of God were favoured with another institution, calculated in a remarkable manner to prevent all usurpation and all undue influence and authority on the part of the priesthood. After the death of Moses, God gave the Israelites a succession of heroes, under the name of Judges. And these Judges being at once devoted to the honour of Jehovah, and animated by the heroic spirit (which, since persuasion was out of the question, was the only engine that could subdue the abominable idolatry of the priests and worshippers of Baal, which then filled the land of promise), served admirably to attract and engage the hearts of the people, and to sustain them above that superstitious tendency which had already made all the surrounding nations an easy prey to their designing priests. The surrounding nations had nothing but their priesthoods to look to, for guidance in every thing; and they, of course, always acted as men of the world do, that is, chiefly for their own aggrandizement. But for their aggrandizement, nothing could

*Luke ix. 50.

be so favourable as to leave the masses, whose unconditional submission they sought, to plunge as deeply as possible in ignorance, superstition, and voluptuous indulgence; for these things, especially the last, render a people weak and effeminate, and easily governed by authority, however arbitrary. And these base tendencies the surrounding priesthoods did not scruple to encourage. And they succeeded. And hence the wickedness and abominations of the Canaanitish nations, on account of which they were driven out. But such a policy in the Levitical priesthood, though that order had had a mind for it, and such moral abandonment and effeminacy in the masses, were prevented in the case of the Israelites by the existence of the Judges. The calling of these chiefs was to awake and sustain the heroic spirit. But this spirit is, of all possible frames of mind, the most opposed to superstition and effeminacy; and hence its value, in certain circumstances, as, for instance, in the times when it was divinely awoke. For, while the surrounding nations by their criminal indulgences in the impure worship of Astoroth, had become weak and pusillanimous to the last degree (and if easy to be governed by their own idolatrous priests, who served out these indulgences to them, also easy to be subdued by the Israelites, though they were but a handful in comparison), the people of God continued comparatively pure and magnanimous.

The Judges, also, by the infallible tokens of a divine. commission, which they could shew to the priesthood, as the warrant for their heroic designs and achievements, tended many ways to sustain the character of the sacerdotal order; especially by giving it, to feel the necessity of maintaining the spiritual power in a state of as great efficiency as possible, to match the temporal, which was thus careering above their enemies, and near to God.

** Deut. ix. 4.

In a word, each estate in the realm was calculated to sustain another. And thus, as an eagle stirreth up her nest, and hovereth over her young, and spreadeth her wings, taketh them up and beareth them on her pinions, God sustained his people and led them, until he planted them securely in the land of promise. And here let us remark, in passing, that in this promise there was not a blessing to the posterity of Abraham according to the flesh only, as is commonly thought. There was a higher blessing to his posterity according to the faith; for Syria, the land of promise, is as it were the centre of the whole world, the keystone which unites Europe with Asia, the telegraph station between the East and the West, the region above all others desirable for the true light to shine from, for the sun of righteousness to arise in, and thence to spread those beams which were to enlighten the Gentiles all round, and be a salvation to the ends of the earth.*

THE LEVITES.

But a succession of prophets, standing aloof from the priesthood, and teaching the will of God from a higher eminence, and a greater nearness to God than the priests, and a succession of judges, executing the will of God by heroic deeds, and thus securing the admiration of the people, and attaching them to them, were not the only provisions made during the theocracy, for the security of true liberty to the people, and the prevention of a spiritual despotism on the part of the priesthood. Another institution, calculated to produce the same results, was the parting of the sacerdotal class into two orders, viz. priests and levites. Had the whole tribe been priests, their power would have been much greater; and supremacy much

more easily attainable. But the Levites prevented the undue ascendency of the priests. They formed a middle term, a link between the priesthood and the people, their functions continually bringing them into contact with both. And thus they effectually prevented the priesthood from insulating itself from the mass of the people, and from forming a caste; as a priesthood is too apt to do, and has done every where else in the East. In consequence of this arrangement, we do indeed sometimes find no small degree of confusion among the different orders of the state; and more especially, on several critical occasions, we find the priesthood gaining the supremacy; as the spiritual power naturally tends to do, of course, when there is not equal spiritual power on the part of the people. But this was not to be regretted on the occasions on which it occurred. The nation never had chiefs to whom it owed more in the junctures when they lived, than Samuel, and the Asmonean Princes, though both equally were of the tribe of Levi. But such a state of things never continued long, nor had a happy issue. And, to balance it on the other hand, princes who did not belong to the sacerdotal order at all, did sometimes perform functions and actions proper to the priesthood only. Even David, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him, entered into the house of God, and did eat the shew bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priests.*

These events in the history of the Mosaic economy are apt to appear of but little value to us now. But the state of the case is far otherwise when they are viewed in the light of collateral events, and considered by the philosophy of history. In this point of view they are most important. Nothing of the kind that has been men

* Matt. xii. 3.

P

All

tioned, had ever happened in the world before. around and every where else, the slightest interference with the functions of the priesthood, or with their supremacy, was deemed the greatest of crimes, and was punished as such. The details which have been noticed then, in the constitution and history of the chosen people, are most instructive as to the place which God designs that a priesthood should occupy in such a state of society, and of the human mind, as prevailed during the theocracy. They shew, that even where a priesthood, as influential as is at all compatible with the interests of true religion, is most desirable, and where, in fact, it exists by the appointment of God himself, still there must be another authority, which shall not be amenable to the priesthood for its proceedings, which, however just in their cause, and happy in their issue, the sacerdotal order might be disposed to visit too severely, as infringements on their exclusive privileges.

In conclusion, we see in the Levitical priesthood, one of the finest displays of divine wisdom which the history of man presents, at once for investing with high authority, an order of men unquestionably of the greatest value to the well-being of every community; but yet, for so limiting that authority, that, not without open disobedience to God, and a violation of the constitution of the state, as well as at great personal risk, could the priesthood rise into that irresponsible supremacy, which heathen priesthoods have almost every where succeeded in attaining, and which the priesthood of the Church of Rome had all but accomplished, when it was ruined by its own arrogance, which the heroic spirit of the feudal nations could not brook.

And now it would be a not ungrateful task to follow the Israelites in their many wanderings, and to mark the wisdom as well as the goodness of Jehovah, in all that