youths, who frequented these schools, had in view,—the improvement of their minds, growth in piety, and knowledge of the Mosaic law. From among the persons thus disciplined and instructed, the prophets were ordinarily, though not uniformly, selected by God, who communicated to them, in addition to the qualifications for the prophetical office thus acquired, the gift of inspiration. It was of the utmost importance, that the prophets should have an ample and accurate acquaintance with the laws of Moses; and it was, on many accounts, better that they should acquire this by their own study, than by immediate inspiration.

It would naturally be expected, that, under a law like that which we have been examining, the prophets, true and pretended, would form a numerous body in the state. And such was undoubtedly the case. Every city had its prophets, who, says Calmet,* in the public assemblies on the sabbath, at the new moons, and in the solemn convocations, preached to the people, and reproved the various disorders and abuses, which appeared in the nation. Ezekiel has indicated, in a manner extremely elegant and poetical, the duties of a prophet, under the Mosaic economy. The prophets served as a counterpoise to the influence of the priests, the magistrates, and the senate itself, which rarely omitted, on important occasions, to call for the advice of one or more of the most renowned of these inspired men.

Among such a crowd of popular preachers and orators, it will readily be imagined, that multitudes were mere pretenders; and that there was but a feeble minority of divinely commissioned prophets. The mass spake without divine light and guidance. Profaning the name of Jehovah, and sacrificing the welfare of the state to their private interests, they ignominiously sold both their consciences and their discourses. Every page of the prophetical writings proves this. "Thy

* Dissert. on the Schools of the Hebrews, 11.

† Ezek. xxxiii. 2, seqq.

prophets," cries Jeremiah, "have seen vain and foolish things for thee; and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity." In the same strain, Ezekiel inveighs against the prophets who daubed with untempered mortar, and divined lies; and he speaks of a conspiracy of prophets, who ravened the prey like a roaring lion, and filled their hands with treasure and precious things. But what if some abuses grew out of the prophetical institution? It is better, as Salvador says, to give free course to torrents of vain words, than to arrest a single one, about to be uttered by a true messenger from heaven.

CHAPTER X.

Conclusion.

In the foregoing pages, I have offered an analysis of the Hebrew constitution, such as I conceive it to have been, when it came from the hand of the inspired Hebrew lawgiver. The constitution contained a provision that, when the Israelites came into the promised land, it should be submitted. to the people, and formally accepted by them all. They were to be assembled in an amphitheatre formed by two mountains,-Ebal, a bleak, frowning rock, towering on one side, and Gerizim, springing up covered with verdure and beauty on the other. The one height was a prophetic monument of the prosperity and loveliness, which would follow the observance of these institutions; the other, of the barrenness and desolation, which a disregard of the constitution would inevitably bring upon the nation. There the tribes, when the proper time came, were ranged in order, and

listened to its provisions; and there they signified their acceptance of it, by an act of free choice, which was binding on them and their children for ever.*

The Hebrew constitution, in its substance and its forms, in its letter and its spirit, was eminently republican. The power of the people was great and controlling. This point is clear, even on a superficial examination of the subject. But not only so; it had also important and striking analogies with our own constitution, and with that other free constitution, from which ours, in its most essential features, was taken; a constitution, which Montesquieu erroneously represents as drawn from the woods of Germany, but which Salvador, and truly without doubt, regards as derived from the Hebrew fountains. Whoever attentively considers the Hebrew and British constitutions, and still more the Hebrew and American constitutions, cannot but be impressed with the resemblance between them. Their fundamental principles are identical; and many of the details of organization are the same or similar. The rights of every person in the Hebrew state, from the head of the nation to the humblest stranger, were accurately defined and carefully guarded. Even Ahab, an unprincipled tyrant, dared not invade the field of a vine-dresser, though the want of it was so keenly felt as to make him refuse his ordinary food; and his still more tyrannical and unprincipled queen, Jezebel, knew no method of compassing the same end, but through the perverted forms of law and justice.† Every man was, in a political sense, on an equality with the most exalted of the nation. The rulers were raised to the dignities which they enjoyed, by the free suffrages of their fellow citizens. The laws, though proposed by God, were approved and enacted by the people, through their representatives, in the statesgeneral of Israel. The Israelites exercised the right of meeting in primary assemblies, of discussing questions of public † 1 Kings xxi.

* See Chr. Exam. for Sept. 1838.

policy, and of petitioning their rulers for the redress of grievances. Every Hebrew citizen was eligible to the highest civil diguities, even to that of the royal purple. The whole nation constituted a republic of freemen, equal originally even in property, equal in political dignity and privilege, equal in their social standing, and equally entitled to the care and protection of the government.

The Hebrew polity was essentially a system of self-government. It was the government of individual independence, municipal independence, and state independence,―subject only to so much of central control, as was necessary to constitute a true nationality, and to provide for the general defence and welfare. Centralization was eminently foreign to its spirit. The local governments loom out under the Mosaic constitution; the central government is proportionably overshadowed. Herein the Hebrew constitution remarkably resembles our own, and as remarkably differs from other ancient polities. All the ancient Asiatic governments, and most of the European, were great centralizers. With them, almost every thing originated and terminated in a centre. The Greek democracies can scarcely be regarded as an exception to this rule; the Roman commonwealth certainly was not.

Public opinion was a powerful element in the Hebrew government. This gave shape and force both to the national and provincial administrations. Let any one read the Hebrew history with this in his mind, and he will see proofs of it in every page. If called upon for a single decisive proof of the strength of the popular will under this constitution, I would select the change in the government from the republican to the regal form. Samuel was against this change. The oracle was against it.* The council of Moses was against it. The opinion and practice of a long line of illustrious chiefs were against it. It is a reasonable presumption,

* The oracle did, indeed, give its assent; but reluctantly.

The people What more

that a strong party of the wisest spirits of the state was against it. Yet the change was made. How and why? willed it; the people decreed it; and so it was. pregnant argument could there be of the authority and energy, with which the collective will of the nation uttered and enforced its resolves? The quiet submission of the whole nation to the will of the majority, after the intense excitement of the struggle, through which it must have passed, reminds me more strongly than any thing else in history, of a presidential election among ourselves, which is ever accompanied with a like convulsion of the public mind, and a like subsequent acquiescence and repose of the defeated party.

It is an admitted fact, that the tendency of all the modern improvements in government is to equalize the conditions of men, and so to bring about that general social intercourse, by which many of the most important principles and habits are formed and fixed, and the masses of society are elevated, humanized, and refined. To secure these great ends, many bloody wars have been waged, and countless treasures expended. But all these struggles and expenditures have not yet, in the particulars just indicated, brought modern society to that point, where Moses fixed his people, in an age, when even the Greeks and the Romans were still savages and barbarians. Privileged classes, enjoying the benefit of milder laws and special exemptions, were unknown to the Mosaic constitution. Neither patent of nobility nor benefit of clergy found any place among its provisions. And civil liberty, according to the notion of it presented in the excellent definitions of Blackstone, Paley, and other approved writers on public law, that it is no other than natural liberty, so far restrained by human laws (and no farther), as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the public; that it is the not being restrained by any law, but what conduces in a greater degree to the public welfare; and that it consists in a freedom from all restraints, except such as established law