statutes. Yet so we find them in scores of places." Ye are a stiff-necked people, an evil nation;-I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee; therefore now put off thine ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee."5

A most explicit and particular caution against the indulgence of national pride is given by the Leader of the Hebrew tribes when, on the very borders of the promised land, he announced to the people the terrible part they were to act as executioners of the divine displeasure upon corrupted occupants of the soil.-Can we read it without admiration of the courage of Moses; -or without conviction of his divine legation?

66

the

Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast out the nations from before thee, saying-For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land. But for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land.Understand therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people. Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came into this

5 Exod. xxxiii. 5.

place, ye have been rebellious against the Lord. -Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you." "

Or if it had been the intention of their Leader indirectly, yet effectually to allay the pride and youthful exultation of the people, just bursting as they were upon the stage of political existence, and just setting foot upon the career of conquest, nothing could have been done, or thought of, more conducive to such a purpose, than the uttering that tremendous comminative prediction of the ultimate miseries of the nation, with which he takes leave of them. On any ordinary principles it might justly have been supposed that those prophetic curses, upon which history has made so long and sad a comment, would have operated either to break the heart of the people, or to have utterly disaffected their minds to a religious system that entailed penalties so dreadful. And the more so, when a confident or positive announcement of the actual issue was subjoined to the exhibition of blessings and curses. "I call heaven and earth to record against you.--For I KNOW that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days.""

In terms then, such as these, was it that the seclusion and the sacred privileges of the

6 Deut. ix. 4-7, 24.

* Deut. xxxi. 27-29.

race were, in the first instance, sanctioned! And the tone set by Moses was chimed-in with by each of the seers and poets in the long succession of ages. The buddings of religious antional insolence we find to be nipped at once, and with a stern severity, by each divinely-commissioned personage, as he comes on the stage of sacred history. Reproof, reproach, if not contempt, is the characteristic of the Jewish canonical writings. Nor is so much as one passage to be found there, the tendency of which is to cherish the feeling that might naturally have sprung from a conscious enjoyment of prerogatives and honours conferred upon the nation by the Sovereign of the Universe. Joshua, captain and conqueror, like Moses the legislator, surrenders his charge and dies, with language on his lips of discouragement and

mistrust.8

A particular and yet remarkable instance of the care taken to damp the arrogance of the people is found in the form of thanksgiving that was put into the mouth of the Israelite when summoned to offer the first-fruits of the year to the Lord. "And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days," with the basket of fruits in hand, "and thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned

"Josh. xxiv. 15-27.

9

there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous." Let it be observed, as we pass, that the entire profession, including as it does all the elements of piety and benevolence, might with much effect be placed by the side of the festal liturgies of other nations, wherein the exorbitant absurdities of national vanity have usually been indulged without restraint.

But to that venerable book of sacred odes and public anthems, of which the founder of the Israelitish monarchy was the chief author, we ought naturally to look for the evidence we are in search of.-Was, we ask, that spiritual superciliousness which religious privilege and seclusion are wont to engender, cherished, or was it repressed-was it authenticated, or was it mortified, by the divinely-sanctioned poetry of the Hebrew people, and by the choruses of the Temple? First let the peculiar circumstances of the people and of their prince at the juncture when the Psalms came into general use, be considered. -- After four centuries of political disquiet and distress ;-centuries of long depression and transient triumph, and just after the failure of the people's first essay at royalty, the nation had rallied, had mustered its spirits, had become invasive, had imposed fear in turn upon all its neighbours, had trodden on the necks of its ancient oppressors, and was now fast coming

Deut. xxvi. 4-10.

into quiet possession of the signal advantages of its soil and position:-the Hebrew people was rising from the dust and putting on the attire of the bridegroom, and was soon to abash its rivals by the splendours, as well as by the strength of national prosperity. And all this dazzling advancement was taking place under the hand of an obscurely-born captain, whom, in the style of common history, we should call an adventurer, and whose unstable power demanded the support of all available means of popularity.

At the very same moment the primitive wor ship, as enjoined to the people by Moses, was restored and settled, and its services expanded and adorned. This then assuredly was the season in which the politic and heroic founder of a monarchy would endeavour to exalt to the highest pitch the national enthusiasm, and would labour to exacerbate all well founded pretensions; and especially to throw into the shade, or utterly to blot out, if possible, the anciently recorded dishonours of the nation. Shall we not find him avoiding, as by instinct, the obsolete themes of the people's dishonour? His discretion surely will impel him-king and poet as he is, to strike another wire. No, it is quite otherwise, for this man of incipient and uncertain fortune, this nursling of the sheepfold and the desert, employs the powers of song no such purposes whatever. David wielded

for