ISRAEL. 
17 
From tills period another era commences in the fortunes of the chosen people. The 
Great Covenant by which Judea was to have constituted the foremost sovereignty of the 
Earth was henceforth dissolved. Yet, the judgment was measured; and while the sudden 
and total plunge of the ten tribes into the depths of idolatry marked them for ruin, the 
remaining virtue of Judah was to be warned by suffering. But the division of the kingdom 
of David was irreparable. The moral earthquake was already shaking the foundations of 
the land. 
Even in this rapid glance at the Jewish history, it is impossible to regard without equal 
reverence and wonder the long-suffering of Heaven, and the fine adaptation of the expedients 
employed to retard the guilt of man. A new antagonist. National Apostasy, was rising, 
like the Evil Spirit from the abyss; but the combat was to be changeful and terrible, before 
its hour was come to overshadow the land. 
The division of the kingdom of David under Rehoboam, threatened the total ruin of 
religion in the new kingdom of Israel. The erection of the two idol temples at Bethel and 
Dan, for the express purpose of preventing the intercourse of the people with Jerusalem, 
the general flight or expulsion of the Levites, and the universal degradation of the priest¬ 
hood, by the appointment of “ priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons 
of Levi,” 1 the change of the established feast of tabernacles, and the king’s own assumption 
of the priestly office when “ he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense,” had evidently 
extinguished the habitual means of religious knowledge. To the subjects of Jeroboam, 
Jerusalem, with all its sacred influences, existed no more.—The Temple, the priesthood of 
Aaron, the teaching of the law, and all the solemn and touching remembrances of the 
religion of their fathers, had vanished in the mystic and corrupting ceremonial of an 
Egyptian altar, to which they saw their king leading the worship, and to which they were 
allured, at once, by royal example, the pride of national independence, and the dazzling 
captivations which paganism in all ages offers to the vanity and the passions of man. 
Yet it was in this fearful emergency, that we find a new development of the exhaustless 
resources of the Divine wisdom. All appeal to the memory of the pure religion was 
obviously at an end; and the force of arms was distinctly prohibited, 2 if force could ever be 
a legitimate ground of conviction. But a form of national appeal was suddenly brought 
into action, unexampled in its comprehensiveness, in the nature of its objects, and in the 
variety, vigour, and constant applicability, of its power. 
From the close of the Settlement in Canaan, Prophecy and Miracle had almost wholly 
ceased; in the Conquest their office was completed; and, with a few occasional exceptions, 3 
the people, for the long period of four hundred years, were left to the ordinary guidance of 
human faculties. 
But it was in the declining days of the national history; when the kingdom of David 
was not only shorn of its beams, but seemed sinking into night by the course of nature; 
that a sacred and astonishing splendour was to rise, and, for a time, fill the horizon. For 
the direct purpose, at once of rebuking the national crimes, and leading the way to national 
1 1 Kings, xii. 28—33. 2 1 Kings, xii. 24. 
3 The birth of Samson, the calling of Samuel, the prophecy of the division, &c. 
