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al guilt, and procure everlasting happiness. But by limiting the effect of merely ritual obedience or transgression to temporal or political good and evil, the divine Lawgiver instructed them to expect final pardon and blessedness, as the result, not of ceremonial observances, but of inward and moral obedience. Thus the great distinction between outward rites and true saving religion was forçibly impressed. The former at best could insure only worldly prosperity; while the latter was connected with eternal life.

5. As the peculiarities of the ceremonial law were chiefly intended as a barrier against idolatry, so temporal sanctions were best adapted to this end; as they assured the obedient Israelites of all those blessings from the true God, which their heathen neighbours expected from their imaginary deities; and as they threatened and inflicted on those, who deserted or corrupted the worship of Jehovah, the same calamities, which idolaters apprehended from, or ascribed to the displeasure of their gods. These sanctions, faithfully executed, had the strongest tendency to crush idolatry, and to bind the Hebrews to the true religion, by giving them an experimental conviction of the power and disposition of their God to reward or punish them in the most speedy and sensible manner. If the

Hebrew Lawgiver had opposed a future or distant retribution only to that idolatry, which was supported by the expectation and fancied experience of present good and evil; he would have erected a very unsuitable and feeble barrier against paganism, and in favor of the true religion. This leads us to add

6. That a great writer, the late bishop Warburton, in a very learned work, called the Divine Legation of Mo ses, has undertaken to demonstrate the profound wisdom

and divine origin of the Hebrew constitution from the total omission of future rewards and punishments in that system. He builds his conclusion on the following premises; viz. that the doctrine of a future retribution is necessary to the support and well being both of civil and religious society; that the wisest lawgivers and nations of antiquity introduced this doctrine, as the grand basis and enforcement, both of their religion and laws; that they universally and justly believed that no religion and no community could subsist without it, unless protected by an extraordinary providence; and yet that Moses, the wise lawgiver of the Jews, established a civil and a religious polity, which flourished for ages without the sanction of a future state; from all which he infers that Moşes must have been conscious of a divine mission, when he framed and published such a constitution, and that this system must have been supported by a peculiar providence. How far this demonstration is wellfounded and decisive will richly deserve our future inquiry. In the mean time we can demonstrate the divine legation of Moses by a process far more simple and sure than that of this author. For example, would this wise lawgiver have promised the Israelites a treple harvest from their lands on every year preceding the seventh or sabbatical year? Would he have obliged all the males to leave their families and country undefended thrice every year? Would he have suspended his whole system on the contingence of the family of Aaron never wanting an adult male heir, free from every disqualifying blemish, to inherit and support the priesthood? Would he have pronounced so many specific temporal blessings and curses, as the certain consequence of obedience or disobedience to his laws? Would he have ventured on these unexampled measures,

if he had not been sure of an extraordinary providence to carry them into effect? If such a providence had not seconded his institutions, would they not have sunk into disgrace, or have involved the nation in ruin? We cannot therefore account either for the origin or success of this singular constitution without the special interposition of Deity. Sound philosophy, as well as authentic history, compels us to admit that the Hebrews were really governed by a peculiar Providence, which protected, rewarded or punished them in a sensible and extraordinary

manner.

LECTURE XXVII.

The numerous rites and ceremonies of the Hebrew ritual pointing out, and gradually unfolding, the more perfect dispensation of the gospel.

BEFORE

EFORE we dismiss the Jewish ritual, it will be proper to consider it more distinctly as a preparatory and typical system, which prefigured and gradually introduced the more perfect dispensation of the gospel. We have formerly shown that the Old Testament contained a prophetic revelation of the Messiah, or a series of predictions intended to keep alive, and to shed increasing light on the great promise, made to our first parents and to Abraham, of the future seed of the woman, who was to bruise the head of the serpent, and in whom all nations should be blessed. As the Hebrew economy thus verbally foretold the Savior of mankind, and hereby prepared the world for his appearance; we have reason to believe that it likewise symbolically pointed to, and terminated in him; in other words, that the Jewish ceremonies were a temporary, intermediate, and emblematical scheme, adapted to the same general use with the prophecies. Many reasons concur to establish this opinion. It is confirmed by the general manner of divine proceeding, which is to instruct mankind by slow degrees, suited to their gradual advance from infancy to manhood. As the doctrine of the Messiah not only dawned on the early ages, but shone with far greater lustre on the latter periods of the Jewish church; as it unfolded itself with still greater clearness in the discourses of Christ, and with perfect fulness in the subsequent ministry of his apostles; so we argue from analogy that the legal rites of the Jews

obscurely hinted the same truths, which the evangelical economy has fully revealed. This renders the plan of divine conduct harmonious and comprehensive. This mode of procedure was also wisely suited to the Hebrew nation; for while it gratified the taste and exercised the devotion of the vulgar with striking external ceremonies, it engaged the respectful and studious attention of strong and contemplative minds to the secret and high import of these ordinances. It also laid a foundation for that admirable correspondence between the law and the gos pel, and that transcendent superiority of the latter, on which the proof and excellence of christianity so greatly depend. We have formerly seen that the Hebrew rites were sensible images or emblems of historic facts, moral duties, and celestial things; that their solemn festivals visibly represented great national events; their washings internal purity; their Most Holy place with the cloud of glory residing in it, the presence and splendor of Jehovah in heaven. It is therefore congruous to believe that many of their symbols had likewise a prophetic allusion to the coming, office, and sufferings of Christ. For as bishop Sherlock justly argues, "Since Abraham and his posterity were chosen not merely for their own sakes, but to be instruments of the promised universal blessing to mankind; since the temporal covenant with that family was subservient to the spiritual and everlasting covenant, which respected the Messiah, and the whole race of man; it is highly probable that the laws of the Jewish dispensation were intentionally fitted to this great design, were figures of good things to come." Agreeably they have been thus understood both by learned Jews and Christians. Thus Philo, an eminent Hebrew writer, says that the Jewish high priest was an image of the

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