2 
ISRAEL. 
observances forming the habitual occupation of the people; its influence shaping their 
minds, their manners, and their fortunes; the national prosperity declared to depend on 
the public reverence for its principles, the national ruin involved in its desertion. Its 
conception was lofty, pure, and spiritual in the highest degree, while its ceremonial 
exceeded in strictness and splendour all that mankind has ever seen of worship — a 
whole tribe was devoted to the attendance of the temple—the whole people stood among 
nations as a general priesthood; religion, the unrivalled, perpetual, and inspired impulse 
of the dominion of Israel. 
The contrast is not less distinct in the polity of paganism. The codes of the most 
civilised nations were the result of time, accident, and the common necessities of public and 
personal life. Beginning in a few maxims, they grew with the exigencies of growing 
society, until they accumulated into substance, and were shaped into form. But the 
defects of their birth adhered to them still; and their purest legislation exhibits barbarian 
cruelties, violent transgressions of right, and a general rude inadequacy to meet the claims 
of man in his intercourse with man. 
The political history of the pagan world is an exclusive display of human agency. 
Man is always in front. States rise by his virtues, and perish by his crimes; human 
energy, genius, and passion, are the universal instruments of national change. The hand 
of Heaven is seen only when it comes to write the sentence of empire, and then seen 
only in clouds. 
To the eye of the pagan, the vicissitudes of nations formed scarcely more than a vast 
game of chance. Beyond a few principles all was conjecture. The clearest foresight was 
circumscribed by the events of the day. No intelligence, however vigorous, could securely 
penetrate into the future fates of empires. 
In all those essential features, the distinction of the Jewish people was entire, and 
was divine. 
Their law was no tardy, obscure, and jarring compilation; it was a System; at once 
authoritative, adequate, and complete; transmitted with a grandeur of circumstance which 
pronounced it the work of Heaven; and fixed in the national mind by every motive which 
can bind men or nations; by the promise of prosperity and the dread of suffering; by 
the awe of the senses, the homage of the heart, and the conviction of the understanding. 
In the career of the nation. Divine Providence is the guide, the sustainer, and the 
sovereign. The popular fortunes are openly moulded by its will. Man looks on, while 
the mightiest events make then' progress before him, scarcely more governed by his 
influence than the tides or the thunderstorm. Heaven holds the scale, man is but the 
dust of the balance. Battles are lost and won, conquests are achieved, and national 
punishments of the deepest kind, amounting to revolutions which extinguish the hope 
of Israel, are the work of Providence, openly proclaiming its resolves, in total 
contradiction to human expectancy, and as openly fulfilling them in total independence 
of human power. 
Two great agents wholly unknown, but by name, to pagan antiquity. Miracle and 
Prophecy, are the especial instruments of the Divine government among this extraordinary 
people. From the beginning of their existence, in the person of Abraham, the faculties 
