Note (return) — THE SELECTOR, AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

The most ancient of all the written histories of the human race, of their deeds and condition, is undoubtedly that of the people of Israel: a people to whom God himself was both leader and lawgiver—for whom the sea was divided, and the stony rocks poured forth fountains of water—-whose food descended on them from heaven—for whom angels from above fought—and whom all nature cheerfully obeyed,—in short a people, who, through a course of many centuries, though surrounded with numerous Heathen nations, bore constant testimony to the existence of one God alone. It is not wonderful that such a people should think themselves exalted far above all others. Moses, the first of all instructors and legislators, desired to raise his people above the fate which had ruined other nations, by communicating to them firmness and perseverance in their adherence to such institutions, as should keep them a distinct nation from all others. These institutions were peculiarly appropriate to the time, to the situation, and the circumstances of the people for whom they were prescribed. It was not his design that the Children of Israel, when freed from their misery, after wandering forty years in the wilderness, should mix themselves up with the Heathens, and adopt their morals and principles. He desired that they should continue a distinct and holy people, that strangers should be extirpated, and their country be possessed by Jews alone. Their bounds were marked out by God himself, and extended from Lebanon and the Euphrates to the sea; and he commanded them to keep his commandments in the land which he had bestowed upon them, so that he alone should be their Lord. Hereupon, as I have before observed, Moses delivered such laws as were adapted to their situation. But these wanderers of the desert adhered not to the law delivered to them. We find even during the life of Moses much obstinacy, and an unbridled inclination to Heathenism was manifested, by their making objects of idolatrous worship. After the death of Moses, the seventy-two interpreters collected his doctrines; but they added to them some, withdrew others, and confused several, by which the pure Mosaic opinions must have been obscured. And we read accordingly, in the tenth chapter of Judges, “that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.” They served Baal and Ashtaroth, the deities of the Syrians and Moabites, and even the gods of the Philistines, whom God had commanded they should not serve.6 Their hearts became hardened in their apostacy. The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnazar, and the captivity in Babylon, had the most corrupting influence on the purity of the Mosaic doctrines, and on the laws. The original writings discovered by Hilkiah, were retrenched, added to, and the order of the events displaced. From the long residence amongst, and a great intercourse with strange people, all the frightful prejudices, all the fanciful dreams of our rabbins, were introduced into the sacred books. We learn from the second book of Chronicles, chap. xxxvi. verse 17, “that the king slew the young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man or him that stooped for age. And all the vessels of gold, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king and all the princes, these he brought all to Babylon; and they burnt the house of God, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire.”