to be offered in sacrifice.* Not only were inns and similar establishments put into condition to receive visitants, but almost every family were providing for others besides themselves, and striving to make the most of their spare accommodation.

A glance at rural districts was sufficient to show that the excitement and commotion were not confined to the town. Every footpath had its passengers. They travelled in companies, and carried with them tents and kindred insignia of lengthened pilgrimage. In eyeing them more carefully and extensively, it might be seen that they were moving towards a common centre; and that, although coming from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, they had all their faces 'as going to Jerusalem.'† They had many partial gatherings and comminglings, short of their final destination. As smaller rills of water lose themselves in the larger, and these again coalesce to form more considerable rivers, so the tributary by-ways furnished each its scores or hundreds of pilgrims to the principal roads; and near to Jerusalem the advancing population became as a Nile or a Ganges, rolling in all its accumulative might before emptying itself into the ocean. They go from

6

*Josephus, in his History of the Jewish Wars, B. vi. c. 9, affirms that 255,600 paschal lambs were killed in the temple at Jerusalem, at the feast of the Passover. Their blood, according to Lundius's computation, must have amounted to 1000 hogsheads. See his Jewish Sanctuary, B. iii. c. 46.'-Rambach on the Sufferings of Christ, vol. 2, p. 282. Note.

+ Luke ix. 53.

strength to strength,' says the psalmist, 'every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.'* The marginal reading is, They go from company to company; and if this translation be correct, it conveys the sentiment I have expressed, and represents one band as joining with another, till they presented in Zion one 'general assembly.'†

It appears that they relieved the tedium of travelling by devotional exercises, and more particularly by celebrating God's praises to which allusion may be made in such sayings as these:-Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.'‡ 'They shall sing in the ways of the Lord; for great is the glory of the Lord.'s 'The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads.' When the fatiguing marches were nearly concluded; when their hardships and perils were almost surmounted; and Jerusalem, the object of their longing, the completion of their hopes, burst on the view, we can readily imagine that the ardour of the worshippers would uplift the strains of rapturous salutation. The city of their God was before them! There stood its walls, its gates, its battlements, its palaces, and, most conspicious of all, towered the temple, with its courts and pinnacles,

*Ps. lxxxiv. 7.

+ Some idea may be formed of the numbers convened on these occasions, from the fact that eleven hundred thousand are estimated to have perished in the siege of Jerusalem, besides ninety-seven thousand who were taken prisoners.—See Arrowsmith's Geography, p. 527. Ps. cxxxviii. 5. Is. xxxv. 10.

Ps. cxix. 54.

and holy of holies, from the golden covering of which the sun reflected far and wide its beams, as if to conduct, by messengers of light, to the God of glory." Every Hebrew had his native town or country district; but here was Jerusalem, the mother of them all. Now every pilgrim was at home and, what a home! 'Beautiful for situation, the joy of all the earth, was Mount Zion.' On descrying it, well might their collecting hosts sing and shout, His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God!' As the travellers came from all directions, these accents would break on the city from all sides, so that it would be literally 'compassed about with songs of deliverance.'†

over.

I have now to speak more particularly of the PassThe original institution of that feast was connected with most important events in the history of the Israelites. They were then delivered from a state of thraldom in which they had laboured and groaned for successive centuries. Scripture has been sometimes pleaded on behalf of slavery, but with little

* 'Magnificent as the rest of the sacred edifice was, it was infinitely surpassed in splendour by the Inner Temple, or Sanctuary. Its appearance, according to Josephus, had every thing that could strike the mind or astonish the sight; for it was covered on every side with plates of gold, so that when the sun rose upon it, it reflected so strong and dazzling an efflulgence, that the eye of the spectator was obliged to turn away.'-Horne's Introduction, B. iii. c. 1, sec. 12.

Ps. xxxii. 7.

reason, for it always speaks of such a condition as signally disastrous. It is denounced as a curse; never promised as a blessing; and its grievousness is strongly asserted by implication, in all the glowing passages which extol the blessings of liberty. These inspired representations correspond with modern history and present observation. If some virtues are twice blessed, the vice of slavery is twice cursed, proving baneful alike to the bondsman and his oppressor. It has been a fearful scourge to all the countries in which it has prevailed, and to all the parties and all the interests affected by its influence. Its life has been the death of morality-its prosperity the ruin of domestic relations and comfort-and even the secular advantages for which it has been iniquitously and mercilessly perpetuated have not unfrequently perished in the general wreck it has entailed. To be emancipated from such an evil is a privilege worthy of the place assigned to it in the preface to the ten commandments, where God bespeaks obedience on the plea, 'I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.'* 'I brought thee.' All the blessings we enjoy are derived from him, but he speaks in these words of an extraordinary and supernatural interposition. There is presumptive evidence in the nature of the case, that the rescue of the Israelites was thus miraculous. No enlightened nation was then to be found who might extend to them a helping hand. It was not likely that weapons would be put into their hands to subdue the master *Exod. xx. 2.

who furnished them, and so place them in circumstances to emancipate themselves. Nor is it to be imagined that the Egyptians would voluntarily and spontaneously part with victims whom they regarded as property, and who had been bequeathed to them from father to son through so many generations. At the present time, and in lands called Christian, one of the worst features of bondage is its tenacity of being. Once admitted into a soil, the root of bitterness is hardly to be eradicated. The sentiments of conscience and pity, which argue against the atrocity, become, through the searing influence of sinful custom, feebler and less effective, while the lust of power, and kindred principles, which it engages and gratifies, become constantly more powerful, till any attempt to abolish, or even to mitigate the mischief, seems utterly hopeless.*

*It is impossible to pen the above remarks and not think of America, or to admit the thought without profound lamentation. The strong views of American slavery entertained in this country are sometimes ascribed to national antipathy. No representation could be more unjust. They are the best friends of America, the warmest admirers of its otherwise free institutions, who most deeply deplore its maintenance of a system antagonist to its own principles, and calculated to bring them into reproach among all nations of the earth. Is nothing more to be done by the general body of Transatlantic Christians than is now doing to abolish the fearful evil? I am tempted to name honoured ministers, authors, and philanthropists, not slaveholders, whose fellowship, when they have been in this country, I have found equally delightful and improving, and to put it to them with respectful, yet imploring earnestness, if they are really to content themselves with blaming the measures and the spirit of abolitionists, instead of advancing, after their own manner-a better, if they can find it-the glorious cause of negro emancipation. Let them shame,