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ISRAEL. 
But the noblest of all celebrations, one totally unexampled among mankind, and 
worthy of the Supreme beneficence alone, was the Jubilee, the Great Sabbath, returning 
at the end of every seven sabbaths of years. On the tenth day of the month Tisri 
(September), on the evening of the Day of Expiation, the trumpets sounded, and 
the day of universal liberty began. From that moment, all debts were cancelled; 
all slaves free; all families, whom chance had thrown into poverty, joyously prepared 
for a return to the houses and lands of their ancestors. Even no arm was to be 
wearied by sudden labour, for the land in this year also rested, its provision was 
given in the miraculous produce of the year before; all was to be unmixed enjoyment, the 
full sense of restoration, unalloyed gratitude to the Eternal Source of all virtue, happiness, 
and mercy. 
The human intellect is probably unequal to a full knowledge of the purposes 
for which the arm of Heaven had been thus distinctly revealed; yet may not a 
conjecture be hazarded, that the division of Palestine was intended to give the world 
some image of what it might have been if the original design of the Creator had 
been accomplished? If the first man had not fallen, the Earth must have been only 
a more extended Paradise. There could have been no vice, no violence, no war, no 
mortality. The provinces of the world would have been divided without force, and 
retained without fear. Mankind would have multiplied, until the earth was replenished; 
and the number might have then been kept within the bounds of safety, by some 
of those mysterious limits which belong to the law of human increase, or met by 
some of those countless expedients which lie hid in the treasury of Omniscience. 
All mankind would have been one great family, circle extending beyond circle, of 
filial reverence and sacred love; Paradise, still the garden of God, the place of the 
Divine glory, the central throne and temple to which all the eyes of earth were 
turned; to which all its worship, tribute, and homage, were brought; and to which 
all the families of mankind approached in succession, to behold the face of Adam, the 
immortal, at once the priest and the king, and to pay their grateful and solemn 
allegiance to the Almighty Lord of all. Imagination sinks under those memories; 
it can only fold its wings and adore. But they shall yet be realised, and more than realised. 
The promise is given, and Paradise shall return. 
It is impressive, to observe how closely the chief features of this original state 
were retained in the Jewish system. We thus see the land distributed, not by chance 
or violence, but by the Divine will, and the distribution declared to be unchangeable 
by man; we see a central, holy region, the city of the Lord, the especial place of 
national veneration; where the Divine glory was enthroned above the cherubim: we 
see the appointed ascent of the tribes three times a-year to the Temple; the spiritual 
father of the nation, the high-priest, by an unchangeable office and descent, exercising 
the, functions of priest and ruler; the population secured against all the hazards of 
war during their absence at Jerusalem; the whole occupation of the people, like 
that of Adam, to “ dress the garden and keep it;” and, by a not less memorable 
similitude, that singular limitation of popular increase, which, for fourteen hundred 
years, suffered it scarcely to fall below, or to exceed, the numbers during the first 
ages of the possession. 
