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 priestcraft. 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

some repetition, to present in this place, a brief specific answer to the allegations above recited. This, therefore, is what I now propose to do. We will consider them in the order in which they are mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

The first objection is based upon the alleged trifling nature of many of the Mosaic laws. Such are the laws against cutting the hair and beard after a particular manner;* against boiling a kid in the dam's milk;t against wearing garments made of linen and woollen mixed together; against the interchange of male and female attire ;§ against cutting the flesh; against receiving the price of a dog and the hire of a prostitute into the public treasury; against the sowing of mixed seeds;** against worshipping in groves and high places; and against the use of certain kinds of animal. food.++

All these laws, with others of an apparently like trivial nature, were aimed against the idolatrous customs, then prevalent in the world. Unless, therefore, idolatry itself, with all its horrid train of crimes and impurities, was a trifle unbecoming the care of God, the agencies adapted to its . extirpation could not but be worthy of his contrivance and institution. Let us glance at a few of the practices, against which the laws in question were directed.

A particular mode of shaving the head and face were regarded by certain sects of idolatrous priests as essential tc the acceptable worship of their gods.§§ By others it was supposed that the pursuits of husbandry would be rendered more successful by sprinkling the fields and gardens with the milk

Herod. L. 3, c. 8; also L. 4. c. 175. Maimon. More Nev. Pt 3. 7.

See also Dr. Clarke's very instructive note on Lev. xix. 27.

of a goat, in which a young kid had been previously boiled.* Maimonides, who, with an untiring industry, searched into every nook and corner of ancient history, for the purpose of bringing to light all the institutions and usages of idolatry, informs us, that the gentile priests used to wear garments made of a mixture of the produce of plants and animals, hoping thereby to have the beneficial influence of some lucky conjunetion of the planets, and to derive thence a blessing upon their sheep and flax. From the same writert we learn that another common custom of idolatry was for men, in the worship of several of their gods, to put on the garments worn by women, and women those used by men. He found an express precept in an old magical book, enjoining that men should stand before the star of Venus in the ornamented garments of women, and women in the armor of men before the star of Mars. The savage rite of cutting the flesh was generally practised by the ancient heathen nations, to pacify the infernal deities, and render them propitious to departed souls.§ Anubis, one of the principal Egyptian divinities, had the head of a dog, and was worshipped under the symbol of that animal. Nothing was more common than to consecrate the wages of prostitution to the gods; and, indeed, this vile commerce was carried on within the very precincts of the temples, and under the sanction of the impure divinities, whose priests fattened on its unholy gains. To worship in groves and

* See Cudw. on the Lord's Sup. and Spencer de Leg. Heb. cited in Dr. Clarke's note on Ex. xxiii. 19.

Pe Idol. Also on Lev. xix. 19.

? See Magee on Aton. and Sac. vol. 1, p. 101.

On Deut. xxii. 5.

|| Anth. Class. Dic. Art. Anubis. This opinion, indeed, has been shaken by Wilkinson, (Anc. Eg. vol. 5, p. 260,) who has rendered it probable, that Anubis had not the head of a dog, but of a jackal. Still it remains certain, that the dog was a sacred animal with the Egyptians, and, as such, received a superstitious veneration. See Smith's Heb. Peop. pp. 39, 40.

¶ See Prof. Bush and Dr. Clarke on Levit. xix. 29; also Augustin de Civit. Dei, L. 18, c. 5.