66

thine eyes may be open towards this house night and day, even towards the

place of which thou hast said, My name "shall be there: that thou mayest hearken "unto the prayer that thy servant shall "make towards this place*."

It is evident from the whole of this sublime hymn, that the ideas impressed by Moses at the first institution of the Jewish polity, had lost none of their clearness by the lapse of five hundred years. It is evident that the belief implanted in them of the immediate presence of God with their armies and in the ark or tabernacle, had in no degree produced an erroneous notion of his attributes; that they could believe the immateriality and omnipresence of the Creator, notwithstanding the peculiar character he had condescended to assume, as going forth with the armies of Israel.

This, then, was the language of prospe rity, "Blessed be the Lord that hath given rest unto his people Israel†:" and if we turn to the language of adversity, we find it continuing unchanged in tone, and unshaken in confidence. The Old Testa

* 1 Kings, viii. 22, et seqq. +1 Kings, viii. 56.

ment abounds with proofs in point, and the book of Psalms, in particular, contains alone a series of overwhelming evidence ; but on a subject so familiar and indisputable, it will be sufficient simply to adduce the prayer composed by Hezekiah at the time when Jerusalem was endangered by the invasion of Sennacherib,'

"Hezekiah received the letter from the "hand of the messengers, and read it; "and Hezekiah went up into the house of "the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. "And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, "and said, O Lord God of Israel, which "dwellest between the cherubims, thou "art the God, even thou alone, of all the "kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made "heaven and earth. Lord, bow down thine

66

ear, and hear; open, Lord, thine eyes, "and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath set him to reproach "the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, "but the work of men's hands, wood and "stone; therefore they have destroyed

"them. Now therefore, O Lord our God,

66

save thou us from out of his hand, that "all the kingdoms of the earth may know "that thou art the Lord God, even thou only *",

66

It is evident, from these comparisons, that the superiority of the Hebrews in their practical worship of the Supreme Being is no less decisive than their abstract conception of his essence. Hezekiah neither consults an oracle, nor appeals to a variety of discordant deities; but, with equal consistency and confidence, resorts, on the sudden appearance of danger, to the aid of that God whom he had learnt from his forefathers to venerate as both the Creator of the world, and the peculiar protector of his

nation.

In this respect, again, all is conformable. What was the prevailing sentiment concerning the divine character was seen in the former Section; and it appears from this, that the practice did not contradict the theory. Indeed, from the whole ac

Isaiah, xxxvii. 14.

count which we possess of the Jewish his tory, which for the most part is sufficiently minute, it appears that that people never lost sight of the peculiar relation in which they stood towards the Creator. Their national prosperity is the divine blessing: their national misfortunes are the judg ments of Heaven upon their disobedience*, Had there been no closer connexion, or no stronger assurance of connexion between national faith and national success, than we may suppose established by the ficti tious assertions or vague promises of a le gislator; misfortune, it is probable, would

* See the whole history: and particularly Judges, ii. 22; where the preservation of a remnant of the idolatrous nations is expressly attributed to the necessity of keeping a check upon the people who had " transgressed "the covenant commanded unto their fathers." Ahijah's denunciation against Jeroboam is in this strain: "The "Lord shall root up Israel out of this good land which "he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond "the river, because they have made their groves, pró

voking the Lord to anger." 1 Kings, xiv. 15. The same spirit pervades the prophecies made to Manasseh : "I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and "deliver them into the hand of their enemies, and they "shall become a prey and spoil to all their enemies; be"cause they have done that which was evil in my sight," &c, 2 Kings, xxi: 15.

have had the contrary effect, would have diverted them from dependence on their law, instead of reviving their obedience. Such has been the case in other instances. Thucydides relates that during the plague which desolated Athens, the people finding no advantage from the public worship and ceremonies to which they had commonly resorted, at last abstained from them altogether, and gave themselves up to a desperate and unrestrained lawlessness *. But so effectually was the belief of divine interference impressed upon the Hebrew nation, that general distress and any remarkable calamity always served as a sort of signal to rally them round the faith of their forefathers. This is the outline of their whole history. And at the close of the theocracy, when the threatened vengeance upon repeated rebellion was accomplished by the destruction of the temple and captivity of the people, this event, which must have proved the confutation of any unfounded reliance upon divine support, was deemed by the nation itself a confirmation of their whole history and peculiar

Lib. ii. s. 47.