ISRAEL. 
3 
of nature and man are placed under palpable control. The patriarch and the people 
are protected, tried, and delivered, by miraculous interposition. From the eailiest period, 
their future existence is displayed with the clearness of history; and yet, with that sublime 
consistency, which in its broadest displays of power and wisdom wastes nothing, each 
successive illumination is distinctly adapted to the necessities of the time. To Abraham, 
the founder of the race, the prediction gives an outline of the fortunes of his descendants, 
until their liberation from Egypt. To Jacob, with whom another era of the national 
existence began, as the father of the twelve tribes, the prediction is renewed, but fuither 
extending over their possession of the promised land. To Moses, with whom a third 
era began, in the redemption from Egypt, the prediction extends further still, com¬ 
prehending the whole period of conquest, possession, and decay; and reaching even 
beyond the final fall of the nation, into that vast and obscure region of time, when 
Judah was to be absorbed and hidden in the oppressions and conflicts of Gentilism; 
like the site of Paradise, covered by the swamp, and trampled by the barbarian, yet 
still retaining a melancholy reverence in the memory of mankind. 
The history of the Jews commences with Abraham, the son of Terah, in the tenth 1996 
generation from Noah, at a period when the earth was sunk in idolatry; when even the 
patriarchal family had bowed down to the work of men’s hands, and perhaps he alone 
retained the unpolluted worship of his fathers. It pleased the Almighty to interpose, in 
this last extremity of man, and once again to reveal His worship to the world. 
Nearly two thousand years before the birth of our Lord and Saviour, the word 
of God came to Abraham in “ Ur of the Chaldees,” commanding him to leave his 
country, and go forth; with the promise that he should be the founder of a nation. 
All the ways of Providence exhibit consistency. They are a series of profound 
analogies. The training of Israel closely resembles the training of the individual mind. 
In both, faith precedes sight; and the nation and the man are alike taught full reliance 
and solemn submission, before either is led into consummate reward. Faith was the 
discipline of the patriarchs and the people for the long period of four hundred and thirty 
years. The life of Abraham was a powerful and unwearied exercise of faith. But to 
estimate his trial, we must remember his time. The member of a civilised community, 
he was suddenly commanded to abandon the fertile soil of Chaldea, in which his fathers 
had dwelt for ages, and go forth “he knew not where,” to what wild region of the 
earth; and this pilgrimage was to be made at a period when all beyond Chaldea, with 
perhaps the single exception of Egypt, was either a wilderness, or traversed by bands of 
warlike savages. Nor had he the common stimulants of barbarian enterprise. He was 
not the chieftain of a horde; he had neither ambition nor rapine befoi’e him; he was a 
keeper of sheep. 
He reached Haran, on the borders of the desert; and there the divine guidance 
suffered him to remain until he was verging on old age. Suddenly, at a period when 
man naturally looks for rest, at the age of seventy-five, he was commanded again to 
