scendants of him who was the immediate progenitor of the twelve tribes. Thus a number of ideas are conveyed at the same time that a specific statement is, as it were, given in one emphatic term. It is surprising of how many ideas a single word is made the vehicle, either directly or by inference in the sacred writings, in which there is no waste of language, though the pleonastic form of expression is so often adopted, and although it is commonly in the highest degree tropical.

The parallelism in this place is distinctly gradational, for in the first corresponding term a simple idea only is suggested, in the last a complex. Something more than his people is expressed by it; namely, that they are the descendants of Jacob. It is worthy of remark, that although the two clauses of the couplet express the same thing, the one does so in language perfectly simple, the other in language eminently figurative; the first term of the concluding hemistich being an elegant synecdoche, the second a descriptive metaphor, and the third an expressive image; JACOB signifying his numerous posterity, lot their near and privileged communion with God, and inheritance his hereditary connection, so to speak, with his chosen people. They belong to him by that indefeasible law of right which governs the universe. The divine rights are constantly represented by human symbols, because infinite as well as finite objects can be defined no other way. God is described as having an inheritance in the Hebrews, because they were everlastingly and unalienably his;

that is, so long as he might think fit to retain them in his keeping. They were

The lot of his inheritance,

as he had "divided" or separated them from the gentile nations, and made them his peculiar people. Herder is, I think, much more than usually successful in his rendering of this somewhat perplexed passage. I think he gives it clearness.

When the Almighty gave the nations their lands-
When he separated the children of men,

He limited the bounds of nations

That the numbers of Israel might have room;
For the portion of God is his people,

Jacob, the lot of his inheritance.

There is, it will be perceived, no essential difference betwixt this and the reading of our venerable translators, though it must be confessed that the former is decidedly more distinctly and clearly put.

CHAPTER XIV.

The prophetic ode continued.

THE two couplets which follow are admirably descriptive of God's august dispensations towards the children of Israel. The poet, by way of impressing the more strongly upon the minds of his hearers their uniform ingratitude towards Him, who had so mercifully sustained them through difficulties and trials as numerous as they were severe, refers back to the time when they were exposed to the perils of the desert:

He found him in a desert land,

And in the waste howling wilderness;
He led him about, he instructed him;
He kept him as the apple of his eye.

In these lines, as I have already said, the divine guardianship of the in terms of extreme beauty.

great sublimity.

Israelites is signified
It is a
It is a passage of

He found him in a desert land;

in a region where the difficulty of obtaining the necessary supplies for a long and arduous journey was great, the produce being scanty;

And in the waste howling wilderness,

where there was none; where there were neither cornfields nor pastures, flocks nor herds; where there was nothing to be seen but sterile plains, rugged rocks, and barren hills; where the wells supplied only waters of bitterness, and fiery serpents impeded their march. Here God sustained the Israelites with so careful a regard to their necessities, that "their raiment waxed not old, neither did their feet swell," during forty years. Here he produced water from the rock to assuage their thirst, when they clamourously demanded to be conducted back to the place of their former bondage, and manna to appease their hunger, even when they were ripe for rebellion. He led them about during two generations in that inhospitable region, supplying all their wants with fatherly care, continually working miracles in their behalf, subduing the nations who attempted to impede their progress towards that land of promise whither they were directing their march under his almighty guardianship and direction. Here he gave them those laws both ecclesiastical, moral, and civil, which were to furnish them with a system of legislation, and render them eventually wise unto salvation." In this wilderness was proclaimed amid the thunders of Sinai, that code of wise institutes, the ceremonial part of which was annulled, but the essential or spiritual part of which was ratified and fulfilled by Christ, who showed its efficacy

66

Deut. viii. 4.

by his own example, and thus "justified the ways of God to man."

In order to ascertain the valuable instruction which the Lord Jehovah gave to the Israelites in this waste and howling wilderness, for the benefit of all future generations, we have only to read with due attention the Mosaic history, and we shall at once see that those statutes which he commanded to be observed by the Abrahamic race, were not only the best adapted to their condition, but were so eminently wise, that they have formed the basis of every system of statism adopted by the civilized communities of the earth. They are the root of all law, the mainspring of all government, the source of all good polity The glory of Athens and of Rome was alike founded upon the political wisdom which emanated from them, and the very essence of them was afterwards embraced in the famous code of Justinian. It was in these sagacious prescripts, emanating from the divine mind, that the Lord "instructed" the Israelites with the authority of a legislator and the tenderness of a father,—

He kept them as the apple of his eye.

He preserved them with the greatest care and loving-kindness.

Some idea of the character of that waste and howling wilderness in which God led, instructed, and kept his people, may be formed from Harmer's valuable observations on passages of Scripture. In the fourth volume of that work,*

* Page 125.