dumb, and was always to be observed, studied, interpreted, and understood; and THEIR CREATOR, who began to teach and meant to teach them, but from whom mankind so early turned, and with such determined and persisting alienation, that from him they would learn nothing. This compelled him to choose his own means and process for their improvement and benefit against their will; and to lead human nature, notwithstanding its aversion to the teacher, to the progressive and ulterior completeness which he meant it to attain. To these means and process let us now direct our thoughts.

LETTER XXXIX.

A Delineation of that Part of the Divine Process which was comprised in the Formation, Establishment, and Instruction of the Jewish Nation.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

The process adopted by the Deity for the benefit of his human race, after their defection and alienation from him, is displayed to us in the Hebrew Scriptures, from the account of his address to Abraham to the last enunciation of his will

and purposes by the prophet Malachi.

The Divine communications to mankind closed with this prophecy in that period of the world, and no further Divine interposition or supernatural agency was perceptibly exerted on our earth until the appointed time of our Saviour's birth approached.

A new series of Divine agency then commenced, which the Christian Scriptures narrate to us. They disclose a new and extended process of the Divine wisdom as then put in action, which has since been in constant intellectual operation, and under whose continued agency we are now living. We see not the directing hand nor the influencing power by our material organs of vision. But the mind that duly studies the effects which arise may trace and discern them, and will find daily delight in contemplating their widely-augmenting efficiency.

The scheme of the process was to select one individual from the revolting world, and to train him and his immediate descendants into a full and intimate knowledge of the Deity as a personal God; interested with his human world, desirous to teach and determined to superintend and govern it; and, by a series of incidents in their own biographies, to make them sensorially acquainted with their Creator, with the principles on which he should govern human life, and with the rules, and ideas, and feelings on which he required them to act towards him and towards each other. From the family thus instructed he planned to raise a nation with whom he should deal, and whom he should continue to teach and guide in the same immediate manner; and, in the various events which would occur in their national and individual conduct, to make such successive manifestations of himself, of his power and agency, of his mind and will, of his plans and purposes, of his counsels and precepts, and of his general and particular government of the world, as would infuse into the human mind, by due degrees, a true knowledge of him, and right ideas and feelings concerning him. By these the moral intellectual formation of human nature would be gradually advanced, at first in Judea, and afterward in the rest of the world, by the consequences that would follow, as these transactions and revelations became known elsewhere, and as further operations of the Divine agency in the world should introduce further knowledge and larger effects. Thus the truths which the rest of mankind were persistingly refusing would be gradually brought to them through this peculiar channel, to be enjoyed by all when they should, in the course of time, become willing and more fit to receive it.

Abraham was the person selected to be the subject of the commencement of this grand process. He was separated from his kinsfolk and fellow-citizens in order to live at a distance from them, and was informed by the Deity that his posterity should be raised into a great nation.* A momentous appendage was annexed, that all mankind would receive a peculiar bles

* The Lord said unto Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." This was the command. The consequence and reward of his obedience to it was then added: "And I will make of thee a great nation: and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing."-Gen. xii., v. 1, 2.

sing from them.* He was made to go into Egypt for his improvement, and for benefit as to property; and to move from place to place that he might not settle, by a fixed residence, into an assimilation with any existing population, and also to divest him of his erroneous ideas, and to wean him from his former pagan and other habits. That his mind might be adequately improved before he became a father of the new race that were to be the peculiar people of the Divine tuition, twenty-five years elapsed before the promised child was given to him. In the mean time he had another, who was designated to be the ancestor of the important Arab nation.‡

To establish in his mind a full idea and lasting impression that the Deity was a personal God, and meant to act as such to the human world, and desired to be so considered, it was necessary that the Divine nature should enter into a certain degree of familiar intercourse with Abraham and his first descendant, because this only would produce the intended effect. There is and always has been among mankind a great indisposition and unwillingness to conceive or believe in the actual personality of the Deity. The general notion, both among men of science and others, is rather that of an abstract power; of some undefinable and vague mightiness reducible to no distinct idea-an omnipotent something existing everywhere, yet in no locality-an incomprehensive agency, without any individuality-a theoretical Deity, but no personal being; nor as having a decided moral and intellectual character, with feeling, thought, reasoning, and will, analogous to what appear of this description in human nature, though infinitely superior in quality and degree. Such notions make him little more than a name, and neither interest the human heart nor lead the human mind to the conception and belief of an intelligible and individual reality. The idea and feeling of a personal God were therefore produced permanently in Abraham and in his grandson Jacob, by those condescending appearances and in

"And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."-Gen. xii., v. 3. This great promise was more fully elucidated by a subsequent declaration to him, that it extended to some descendant of his race. "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," c. xxii., v. 18. In these words it was repeated to his son Isaac, c. xxvi., v. 4.

† He was called from his native country at seventy-five, and Isaac was born when he was a hundred.-Gen. xxi., v. 5.

Gen. xvii., v. 20. See the second vol. of this history, Letter XXVI., p. 391-412,

tercourses which are recorded in the Book of Genesis. These brought the Deity within their sensorial perception, and be gan that difference between the God of the Scriptures and the vague, indefinite, and theoretical Deity of the general world. It is his recorded manifestations and transactions which give the fullest and most impressive ideas of his moral, intellectual acting and governing reality. In these he always appears, speaks, and acts as a personal being, with feelings, thoughts, and faculties of which he has made ours a dim likeness and representation; but with which, though in that inferiority in which all created beings must always be, with regard to what in him is infinite and perfect, ours have a congeniality in nature. Our spirit was breathed into our mortal frame from himself, and therefore, in its essential qualities, must always partake of his Divine nature, and was declared and meant to be a human image of it.*

In three great principles Abraham was educated by God: in faith, in obedience, and in a knowledge of the actual atten→ tion of the Supreme to human conduct, and of his displeasure at the moral vices. Abraham was taught and exercised into a belief of the reality and true nature of God; and of his prov idence and moral government, and of his exerted foresight, and forming plans and purposes for great and distant objects in the human world; and of his veracity and determination to fulfil what he promised and to accomplish what he foretold. The faith of Abraham also extended to an implicit reliance and confiding assurance on the Divine declarations and predic tions, and was always accompanied with willing, ready, submitting, and immediate obedience. In this Abraham differed from Adam, and showed by that difference a great improvement in human nature. Abraham heard the enunciation of

* The beginning of this special intercourse of the Creator with his creature, in which he established himself in the relationship of a personal God to his selected servant and his posterity, is thus described.

"When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said unto him, 'I AM THE ALMIGHTY GOD. Walk before me and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.

"And Abram fell upon his face, and God talked with him, saying, 'As for me, behold my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, TO BE A GOD unto thee and to thy seed after thee.'"-Gen. xvii., v. 1–7.

the Divine commands with a persevering resolution to obey them, and always performed what was enjoined.

tle' says,

Obedience was with him always associated with his belief, and in this his conduct is an example to all. The apos"Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness."* He therefore exhibited both the Divine effect and the true nature of religious faith. The Divine effect, in the Scriptural doctrine, that faith is the justifying principle of man with God; and the true nature of the faith which so, by showing us that it must always be the faith which obeys while it believes.

Abraham's belief was counted to him for righteousness, be cause he always acted upon it, and was most emphatically blessed for doing so in the most severe trial of his obedience to which he could have been subjected.t

The third great principle was inculcated by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, because they were "wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly. It was so important in the Divine plans as to human nature that he should be known to require moral virtue from mankind, and that vice was offensive to him, and would be visited by penal consequences, that the Deity chose to make a personal annunciation to Abraham of the catastrophe he was about to produce, and his reason for inflicting it.§

He made this communication expressly because he knew that Abraham would teach his family the lessons he received.Il That the moral cause might be fully understood, and that its occurrence might create no diminution of the certainty of the

* Romans vi., v. 3.

This was in the probationary command to offer his son as a burntoffering on Mount Moriah. Abraham obeyed with steady resolution and resignation, and, when the Deity intercepted the consummation of the sacrifice, he attached his immediate benediction to the obedience. "BECAUSE THOU HAST DONE this thing and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, I will bless thee, and will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, BECAUSE THOU HAST OBEYED MY VOICE."-Gen. xxii., v. 16-18.

Ib., c. xiii., v. 13.

"And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of he earth shall be blessed in him?"-Ib., c. xviii., V. 17, 18.

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment."-Ib., v. 19.