And does it not give a meaning, consistency, and force to the transaction, which would otherwise be wanting to it? The seventh plague was a severe tempest, attended with lightning, thunder, hail, and rain.* This miracle carried the war upon the Egyptian superstition into a new department of it, the vegetable kingdom. The wisdom of Egypt. deified, not only beasts, reptiles, and insects, but trees and plants also. Among the vegetable gods of her impure and grovelling theology were, of trees, the peach, the pomegranate, the vine, the acanthus, the fig, and the tamarisk; and of plants, the onion, the garlic, the papyrus, and the ivy. If these were not all actually worshipped as deities, some of them were, and the others received a superstitious veneration, as sacred and divine. Here, then, in the wide-spread destruction, occasioned by this miraculous storm to the vegetable growth of Egypt, for "the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field," we have a fresh confutation of the Egyptian idolatry. In the address which Jehovah, when about to inflict this plague upon Egypt, directed Moses to make to Pharaoh, there occurs an expression, which confirms the view here taken of the significance and intent of this whole succession of miracles: "That thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth." Here there is a direct comparison between Jehovah and some other beings. To suppose between him and men would be jejune and frigid. It must certainly be between Jehovah and other gods. But if so, then the entire series of plagues was, as here contended, a controversy between true religion and false, a war carried on by the living God against the senseless and impure system of idolatry, weak in every thing, except its power to corrupt and destroy the souls of men. The account of this miracle contains also an intimation of the effect, which the issue of the controversy thus far had had on the Egyptians. Some are described as *Ex. ix. 23, 24. Ex. ix. 14. † Ex. ix. 25. "fearing the word of Jehovah," and, as a consequence, "making their servants and cattle flee into the houses;"* others as regarding not the word of Jehovah," and so "leaving their servants and cattle in the field." From this statement, it is plain that there were some, we may reasonably suppose there were many, of the wealthy Egyptians, whose confidence in their idols had been thoroughly shaken, and who now believed that Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, was the living and the true God. * * * The eighth plague had a similar object with the seventh, and was, as it were, the consummation of it. The miracle consisted in an unprecedented incursion of locusts, brought by a strong east wind. "Very grievous were they. They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left; and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt." Thus was completed the triumph of the God of Israel over the vegetable gods of Egypt. Some writers have supposed, that this miracle was directed especially against the worship of Serapis, whose function it was to protect the country against locusts. If such was the office of this god, his impotence stood conspicuously revealed. At any rate, through the present and preceding penal visitations, Egypt, saw all she held most dear and sacred on earth, crushed, broken, obliterated, and de stroyed, by a power, which seemed armed against the entire range of her idolatrous worship. How galling to a nation so proud of her wisdom, her power, and her gods! But a still more humiliating blow was yet to fall upon the pride of Egypt; a still more signal proof was to be given of the impotence and nothingness of her idols. One class of her deities alone remained yet unabashed and untouched by the power of Jehovah,-the heavenly luminaries. It is against the divinity of these orbs, particularly of the most resplendently glorious of them, that the ninth plague was directed.* "The sun was worshipped throughout Egypt. The sacred emblems of his influence and supremacy were constantly in use. **** The moon was also worshipped under the name of Thoth. *** These sublime objects of their idolatrous worship seemed to be too distant from our earth, too great and too glorious, to be affected by any power which Moses could wield. But Jehovah had arisen out of his place to vindicate his insulted majesty. In the accomplishment of this purpose, no object was so high, no creature so great, as to withstand his will. Moses was commanded to stretch out his hand toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.' So deep was the darkness that during the whole of this time, they saw not one another.' So overwhelming were the amazement and sorrow, that during this period no man rose from his place.' Uncertain whether they should ever again see the light, they lay paralyzed in a darkness that could be felt. Here the triumph of the God of Israel was complete, and the perfect vanity of Egyptian idolatry demonstrated. Egypt, with all her learning and prowess, supported by a gorgeous and almost boundless range of idolatrous religion, is exhibited as convicted, punished, and without any power to escape, or any hope of alleviation."+ Having thus "executed judgment against all the gods of Egypt," and shown himself "greater than all gods," being "above them in the thing wherein they dealt proudly,"§ Jehovah by the tenth and last in this terrible series of penal inflictions, intended to teach the Egyptians, by causing the * Ex. x. 21-23. Ex. xii. 12. Smith's Heb. Peop. p. 43-44. ? Ex. xviii. 11. iron to enter into their own souls, that to him alone it belonged to execute judgment in the earth. On that direful night, when the first-born of every family in Egypt, "from the first-born of Pharaoh that was on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon,"* became a corpse, all the innocent Hebrew blood that had gorged the monsters of the Nile, was required, to the last drop, of Pharaoh and his people. From all this the conclusion is, that the miracles of Moses were undoubtedly real, and that, as a consequence, his mission was certainly divine. For who but a man commissioned as God's vicegerent, could wield a power like that displayed in the plagues of Egypt, and the subsequent wonders of the Red Sea and the wilderness? Who but a true divine messenger could control the laws and elements of nature? How stands the question, then, of the divine legation of Moses? Let me sum up the argument in one brief sentence. The general credibility of the Pentateuch, the publication of a theology worthy of the true God, the overthrow of idolatry, and the substitution of a better faith and worship in its place, the superhuman purity and excellence of his moral code, and the clear and well established power of miracles,—such is the array of proofs, which concentrate their force, in a blaze of demonstration, around the warrant of Moses to publish laws in the name of Jehovah. * Ex. xii. 29. CHAPTER VI. Objections considered and answered. NOTWITHSTANDING these clear and irrefragable proofs of a divine legation, the inspiration of Moses has been both denied and ridiculed by men, who claim the character and authority of philosophers and historians, and who arrogantly assume, as their exclusive right, the title of free thinkers; as if all the rest of the world, besides themselves, were fast bound in the chains of prejudice and priesteraft. These writers ground their denial of inspiration to Moses on certain internal evidences of imposture, contained in his laws themselves. They allege, that many of his statutes are trivial, absurd, and unworthy the wisdom and majesty of Deity; that the spirit of his legislation is sanguinary and cruel; that his code permits many things, now commonly regarded as social evils; that it recognizes what they are pleased to stigmatise as the monstrous principle of retaliation; that it omits the doctrine of future rewards and punishments; and that his laws respecting the extermination of the Canaanites violate the plainest dictates of religion, and the most sacred rules of justice. Most if not all of these objections will be sufficiently refuted in that general exposition of the Mosaic code, which it is the object of these pages to offer; yet it may be well, in advance of such a confutation, which must of necessity spread itself over the entire treatise, and at the hazard of |