6 
ISRAEL. 
encumbered with infancy and age, with flocks and herds, and with the provisions for their 
journey to Palestine. But this incalculable event only coincides with the general purpose 
of the interposition; that of impressing man with a sense of providential power. The 
people were wholly passive. The Ten Plagues, a series of miracles, fought the battle; 
in all displaying the might of God alone; completed by the signal and final overthrow of 
the crowned oppressor, and his troops, the instruments of his tyranny; at once displaying 
to the chosen people the divine wrath against incorrigible crime, and securing their march 
unmolested across the wilderness. 
But another and an illustrious development of the divine power was now to begin. The 
lesson of the Israelite in the wilderness was to commence, by the proof “ that man does not 
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” He 
was to be taught, by those appetites which appeal most immediately to his feelings, that God 
is alike the sovereign of nature and society; that the hourly provision of his creatures 
is wholly the work of his will; and that instead of the corn, and wine, and general subsist¬ 
ence of man, his will might have substituted a totally different constitution of things, and 
provided for every want of the human frame, independently of the invention or the industry 
of the human species. 
The Israelites marched into the wilderness, prepared to reach Palestine by a direct and 
short route. An act of disobedience was visited by the divine declaration, lengthening 
their journey to forty years. But miracle then only began a grander development. In 
the midst of a region of rock and sand, where a flying troop of Arabs can now scarcely find 
water and herbage for their rapid march, the twelve tribes, with their cattle, were subsisted 
for forty years. Nothing can be conceived more decisive than the change, or more demon¬ 
strative of supernatural will. The food of Egypt, earned with stripes and toil, was replaced 
by food rained upon them from heaven; and rained in that exact proportion, which no 
human arrangement has ever been able to accomplish among large bodies of mankind—that 
no man should have a superfluity, and that no man should want. The descent of a double 
portion on the day before the sabbath, still more strongly tended to fix the mind on the 
source whence it came. But the miracle was not limited to food. It is expressly declared, 
that during their sojourn in the desert, even their clothing was supernaturally provided for . 1 
The mere magnitude of the supply was overwhelming, it was the provision of food and 
clothing for millions. 
The desert, without being changed in its nature, underwent the same stupendous power. 
Streams not merely burst from the rock, but in such copiousness as to supply the wants of a 
nation. The brackish pools were not merely changed into refreshing waters, but into 
' “ I have led you forty years in the wilderness ; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and 
thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. (Deuteronomy, xxix. 5.) . . . . That ye might know that 
I am the Lord your God.” (Ver. 6.) 
It has been suggested that the Israelites might have procured their raiment from the bordering 
nations. But how was this possible ? They had nothing to give in return: the ground produced 
nothing to them ; their flocks and herds, the property of a slave population, must have been few 
in Egypt, and could not have much increased in the scanty pasturage of the desert. On every side 
too the bordering clans seem to have shrunk from them with alarm, or met them with open hostility. 
Nor was this miracle more astonishing than the manna. 
