Charles I, of England, his head, and drove Charles X, of France, from his throne. Ignorance or contempt of it has prostrated monarchs, overthrown governments, and drenched the plains of Europe and America in fraternal blood. Yet how benign it may be made in its operation and effects!—not like those destructive engines, with which the walls of hostile cities are battered down, but like those happier contrivances, by which the waters of rivers are diverted from their channels, and conveyed to the orchards, gardens, and cornfields of the neighboring valleys, which thus become indebted to them for their fertility and their beauty, for the riches, which reward the husbandman's toils, and the bloom and fragrance which regale his senses. Public opinion is "the empire of mind instead of brute force, and will always prevail, when intelligence is generally diffused, and thought is free and untrammelled. Mere statute law is comparatively powerless, if public opinion is against it. Civil liberty, too, even if acquired to-day, may be lost to-morrow, unless there is accompanying it a sound public opinion, growing out of general intelligence, and an elevated tone of moral sentiment among the mass of the people. Hence the great importance of those regulations in a community, which tend to improve the standard of public sentiment."* No legislator ever understood this principle better than Moses, and none ever applied it with a wiser forecast. Undoubtedly the most efficient means employed by him to form a just, pure, wise, and vigorous public opinion, was the system of education, which he established among the people, and which has been already described. But Moses 'introduced into his code many other regulations, which had a strong tendency to that end, even if such was not their primary intention. Let the reader consult Ex. 22: 21-24, Deut. 24: 6, 10, 19-22, Ex. 23: 4, Deut. 22: 6, 24: 14, Levit. 19: 32, and Ex. 23: 1. Dr. Springt takes notice of the precepts

* Mat. Bib. & Civ. Gov. Lect. 4.

Obligations of the World to the Bible, Lect. 3.

here referred to, and denominates them great moral axioms, designed to form the moral sensibilities of the Hebrews by a standard refined and honorable, to guard them against unnatural obduracy, and to be a sort of standing appeal to the tenderness and honor of men in all their mutual intercourse. Dr. Matthews speaks of them as "statutes by which the national mind in the Hebrew commonwealth was trained to a high standard of public sentiment, imparting to all classes a sensibility to the proprieties of life, and a spontaneous regard to its relative duties, which, in some degree, render a people a law unto themselves. To produce and perpetuate such a governing power, the power of opinion, is the very essence of wise legislation; and, in proportion to its strength and prevalence among a people, will the foundations of civil freedom be strong and enduring." This was the steady aim and successful endeavor of the Jewish lawgiver.

Such, then, as I conceive, were the great ideas, the fundamental principles, which lay at the basis of the Hebrew state. The unity of God, the unity of the nation, civil liberty, political equality, an elective magistracy, the sovereignty of the people, the responsibility of public officers to their constituents, a prompt, cheap, and impartial administration of justice, peace and friendship with other nations, agriculture, universal industry, the inviolability of private property, the sacredness of the family relation, the sanctity of human life, universal education, social union, a well adjusted balance of powers, and an enlightened, dignified, venerable public opinion, were the vital elements of the constitution of Moses. What better basis of civil polity, what nobler maxims of political wisdom, does the nineteenth century offer to our contemplation, despite its boast of social progress and reform? The institutions, founded on these maxims, tower up, amid the barbaric darkness and despotisms of antiquity, the great beacon light of the world, diffusing the radiance of a political philosophy,

*Bib. & Civ. Gov. Lect. 2.

full of truth and wisdom, over all the ages, which have succeeded that, in which they were first promulgated to mankind.

CHAPTER II.

The Hebrew Theocracy.

In order to lay down a true plan of the Hebrew government, it will be necessary to inquire whether, besides the common ends of government, the protection of the life, liberty, property, and happiness of the governed, the lawgiver had any special views in its institution. If so, the government would naturally be adjusted to those ends; and it can hardly be understood, without a knowledge of the particular views, which it was intended to answer. Now it is certain, that such special designs entered into the mind of the Jewish lawgiver, and modified his system of government.

By the free choice of the people,* Jehovah was made the civil head of the Hebrew state. Thus the law-making power and the sovereignty of the state were, by the popular suffrage, vested in him. It is on this account, that Josephus,† and others after him, have called the Hebrew government a theocracy. Theocracy signifies a divine government. The term is justly applied to the Mosaic constitution. Yet there is danger of being misled by it, and thence of falling into error respecting the true nature and powers of the Hebrew government. It may be too broadly applied. There was a strong infusion of the theocratic element in the Hebrew constitution. Still it was but an element in the government; and not the whole of the government. In other words, the † Against Apion, 1. 1.

* See the Int. Essay.

Hebrew government was not a pure theocracy. It was a theocracy, but a theocracy in a restricted sense. Every student of the Hebrew history knows, that the Hebrew people, like other nations, had their civil rulers, men who exercised authority over other men, and were acknowledged and obeyed as lawful magistrates.*

What, then, was the true province of the theocracy? What were its leading objects? These objects, as I conceive, without excluding others, were chiefly two. One was to teach mankind the true science of civil government. It corresponds with the goodness of God in other respects, that he should make a special revelation on this subject. I hold it to have been an important part of the legislation of the Most High, as the lawgiver of Israel, to show how civil authority among men should be created, and how it should be administered, so as best to promote the welfare and happiness of a nation; and also how the relations between rulers and ruled should be adjusted and regulated. But another object of the theocratic feature of the Hebrew government, and the leading one undoubtedly, was the overthrow and extirpation of idolatry. The design was, first, to effect a separation between the Israelites and their idolatrous neighbors, and, secondly, to make idolatry a crime against the state, that so it might be punishable by the civil law, without a violation of civil liberty. A fundamental purpose of the Mosaic polity was the abolition of idolatrous worship, and the substitution in its place, and the maintenance, of true religion in the world. The only agency, adequate to the production of this result, as far as human wisdom can see, was this very institution of the Hebrew theocracy.

The design of the present chapter is to examine and unfold the true nature and bearing of this element of the Hebrew constitution.

In Exodus 19: 4-6, we find this remarkable and important.

*Mathews' Bib. and Civ. Gov. Lect. 1.

record. God there addresses the Israelites thus :-"Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now, therefore, if ye will hear my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation."

The nature of this covenant is still more clearly disclosed in a further account of it, in the twenty-ninth chapter of Deuteronomy. "Ye stand this day," says Moses in an address to his countrymen, "your captains of your tribes, your elders and your officers, and all the men of Israel; that ye should enter into covenant with Jehovah thy God, and into his oath that he maketh with thee this day, that he may establish thee this day for a people unto himself; (for ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the nations that ye passed by, and ye have seen their abominations and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them ;) lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away from Jehovah our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations."

Here we have what Lowman,* not inaptly, calls the original contract of the Hebrew government. Two principles constitute the sum of it; viz. 1. the maintenance of the worship of one God, in opposition to the prevailing polytheism of the times; and 2. as conducive to this main end, the separation of the Israelites from other nations, so as to prevent the formation of dangerous and corrupting alliances.

Without stopping to inquire critically into the meaning of the several expressions here employed, the general sense of the transaction is plainly to this effect:-If the Hebrews would voluntarily receive Jehovah for their king, and would honor and worship him as the one true God, in opposition to

*Civ. Gov. of the Heb. C. 1.