dacity of his assaults on those venerable systems, which have constituted, and still consti

not any left to breathe; and he burned Hazor with fire. And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword; and he utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded.' This command of Moses may be read in Deuteronomy xx. 16, 17; vii. 16. But if we may be allowed that method of solving difficulties, that arises from seeming contradictions in our author; a method accepted in the case of other writers, as legitimate and unexceptionable; we shall not be authorised, perhaps, to interpret the direction of Moses beyond a total expulsion of the original inhabitants from the stations intended for the occupation of the Israelites; and a destruction as it were, of their residence among their conquerors. In behalf of this latitude of explanation, I observe, that in Numbers xxxiii. 52–56, we find the command of Moses limited to these points only; the driving them from their habitations, and annihilating their temples, groves, and other appendages and implements of idolatrous devotion. The capital object seems to have been a security from social intermixture with the idolatrous inhabitants of Canaan. This point was to be accomplished, it appears, at all events; but, whether the barbarous extermination of men, women, and children, by the sword, be not imputable to the heated fury of the soldiers, and the sanguinary disposition of an uncivilized age, rather than to the spirit of the Jewish system, and the ferocious requisitions of their lawgiver, is a dilemma now submitted to the disinterested decision of the reader."

On a passage in which Mr. Paine exposes the popular opi

tute, the delight, the hope, and the consolation of multitudes much wiser and much better

nion, that the Sun and Moon literally stood still at the command of Joshua, Mr. Wakefield has these observations:

"On the subject of this paragraph, it may recompence the time of the reader to be detained by a few remarks, that the course of my studies have enabled me to lay before him. I believe no more than Thomas Paine believes, that the Sun and Moon, either in the apparent or philosophical acceptation of the phrase, actually stood still on this occasion, at the command of Joshua: and I entertain this belief, not from the greater difficulty attendant on such a miracle, if required by a concurrence of important circumstances, than what accompanies the consideration of the original formation of these glorious luminaries by the eternal architect, or a thousand other perpetual exhibitions of inconceivable omnipotence; but because there seems, to my apprehension at least, no sufficient reason for such supernatural appearance in this instance; and because a rational explication appears practicable without 60 violent an hypothesis. It is an excellent rule of the poet, and well worthy of perpetual regard in all scriptural interpretations, as well as ordinary criticism,

• Nec deus intersît, nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit.'

"Nor let a god appear,

Unless for business worthy of a God.

"But let the passage itself be first displayed for our contemplation, Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day. when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun! stand thou

than himself;" yet we regret that they were resorted to in the present instance. The office

still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon! in the valley of Ajalon.

And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashir? So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel."

"Now this book of Jashir is again mentioned, 2 Samuel i. 18, and may probably have been a collection of poetic songs, in celebration of the extraordináry atchievements of the Israelitish armies. The words before us are of a poetical complexion in the original language, as those acquainted with the Hebrew will immediately acknowledge; and the detached manner, in which this passage is exhibited, neither interfering with the former nor subsequent parts of the surrounding narrative, gives great countenance to the supposition of its insertion in later times from the book of Jashir, to adorn this feat of heroism. On such an acceptation, therefore, this entire passage is nothing more than a sublime exaggeration of an enthusiastic poet indulging those fervors of rapturous invention conceded to his art; and the beauty, propriety, and conformity of the imagery in this view is strikingly apparent, not only from the customary ascription of all events to the immediate operation of the deity, but from a similar effusion of uncommon magnificence in a Roman poet. Claudian, de tert. cons. Honor. verse 93.

Te propter gelidis Aquilo de monte procellis
Obruit adversas acies, revolutaque tela

of "castigation" was unworthy of our friend's talents, and detrimental to his purpose of

Vertit in auctores, et turbine repulit bastas.
O! nimiùm dilecte Deo; cui fundit ab antris,
Eolus armatas hiemes; cui militat æther,
Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti.'

For thee the North from frozen mountains blows
The whelming stores of winter on thy foes;
In mid career the furious lance arrest,
And whirl retorted on it's owner's breast,
O! lov'd by heaven! for thee in icy showers
The lord of winds his wrath tempestuous pours:
Fierce in thy cause, conspiring skies engage,

And wait thy clarion to stream forth their rage.'

"If we suppose now, which is a very venial postulatum, that the time of this battle coincided, or nearly so, with the summer solstice, we shall discover a very probable source of such an hyperbole to the poet's fancy; nay, this circumstance would be adopted with no hesitation, and without much appearance of singularity even to modern readers, by a historian of those countries, as by no means incongruous to the fervid imaginations, and sublimer flights, of oriential genius and phraseology. This supposition is much assisted also by the words, And the sun hasted not to go down about a whole day; which represent that luminary lingering as it were through the longer period of a summer's diurnal revolution, to second the exertions and complete the victory of the pursuing armies of Jehovah. And certainly neither historians nor poets expect such swelling fancies to be cramped down and crippled by the literal restraints of vulgar application. When Homer in his Iliad, to aggrandise the exploits and prowess of his heroes,

persuading others. Such a contemptuous treatment, even of an unfair disputant, was

tells the reader by a particular address in the midst of action,

• Ως οι μεν μάρναντο δέμας πυρος· ουδε κε φαιης
Ούτε ποτ' γελιου στον εμμεναι, ούτε σεληνην:

"They fought like fire conglob'd: nor hadst thou deem'd
The sun exempt from danger, nor the moon:

he did not expect us, we may be sure, to understand this sublime effusion in the rigour of verbal meaning. He was sufficiently aware, that no man in his senses could presume on this assertion on any real hazard to the security of these ethereal luminaries, from the vain turmoils of such reptiles on the earth.

"A fiction of a similar kind to that in Joshua occurs also in the Odyssey of the same poet; which, as it serves to illustrate the passage of scripture, shall gratify the reader in Pope's beautiful translation of it:

The ravished queen with equal rapture glows,
Clasps her loved lord, and to his bosom grows.
Nor had they ended till the morning ray;
But Pallas backward held the rising day,
The wheels of night retarding, to detain

"As to the mention of the moon in the passage of Joshua, that is merely as a suitable appendage, and in a way sufficiently consonant and customary, to complete and dignify the imagery. Finally, if the reader will take the further trouble of consulting the annotations of Masius and Grotius in the