DISPLACEMENT AND EXTINCTION OF BACES. 



his possession, and the remnant of the degraded Canaanite his bond- 

 servants. For another period of like duration, a period of more than 

 eleven hundred years, the Semitic Israelites made the land their own. 

 The triumphs of David, the glory and the wisdom of Solomon, and 

 the vicissitudes of the divided nationalities of Judah and Israel, pro- 

 tracted until the accomplishment of the great destiny of the princes 

 of Judah, constitute the epos of those who supplanted the settlers in 

 the historic lands lying between the mountains of Syria and the sea, 

 when first " the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, 

 when he separated the sons of Adam, and set the bounds of the 

 people." Then came another displacement. The Semitic Hebrews 

 were driven forth from the land, and for eighteen hundred years, 

 Eoman and Saracen, Mongol Turk and Semitic Arab, have disputed 

 the possession of the ancient heritage of the Canaanite. 



For very special and obvious reasons the isolation of the Hebrew 

 race, and the purity of the stock, were most carefully guarded by the 

 enactments of their great Law-giver, preparatory to their taking pos- 

 session of the land of Canaan ; yet the exclusive nationality, and the 

 strictly defined purity of race admitted of exceptional deviations of a 

 remarkable kind. "While the Ammonite and the Moabite are cut off 

 from all permissive alliance, and the offspring of an union between the 

 Hebrew and these forbidden races is not to be naturalized even in 

 the tenth generation, the Edomite, the descendant of Jacob's brother, 

 and the Egyptian, are not to be abhorred ; but the children that are 

 begotten of them are to be admitted to the full privileges of the 

 favoured seed of Jacob in the third generation. 



This exception in favour of the Egyptian is a remarkable one. The 

 ostensible reason, viz., that the Israelites had been strangers in the 

 land of Egypt, appears inadequate fully to account for it, when the 

 nature of that sojourn, and the incidents of the Exodus are borne in 

 mind, and would tempt us to look beyond it to the many traces of 

 Semitic character which the language, arts, and civilization of Egypt 

 disclose. Mizraim, the son of Ham, and the brother of Canaan, is 

 indeed ordinarily regarded as the first inheritor of the Nile valley, 

 and this on grounds fully as conclusive as those on which other 

 apportionments of the post-diluvian earth are assigned ; but along 

 with the direct evidence of Scripture, we must also take the monu- 

 mental records of Egypt, which shew that that land was speedily 

 intruded on by very diverse races, and that by the time its civilization 

 was sufficiently matured to chronicle by pictorial and ideographic 

 writings the history of that cradle-land of the world's intellect, its 

 occupants stood in a relation to each other precisely similar to that 



