to abstain from agricultural labours, and wait a spontaneous harvest of nature. He assured them that the polity which he was then ordaining, would be sanctioned by the Divine interposition, at regular intervals, in the revolution of time. He not only foretold an event which was yet in the womb of futurity, but an event which was contrary to experience; and which, if it took place, could not be doubtful or uncertain, but would be public and universal, arresting the minds, and subjected to the senses of all Israel. 6 Every sixth year shall bring forth fruit for three years.' And this was to continue as long as the Israelites should obey the statutes of God, and hallow the seventh year, and no longer. And for this miraculous fertility of the earth, the Jewish legislator pledged himself; he pledged the credit of his whole code of laws for ages and generations to come. And had his assertion proved false, a people so prone to rebel as the Israelites, would never have submitted to the loss of a year's produce of the land, by withholding their seed. That they did withhold their seed, and that they did hallow the seventh year, is as certain as that they ever existed in Canaan. The argument then for the Divine Legation of the Lawgiver is conclusive."* Besides the sabbath of the seventh year, there was the year of Jubilee, which returned at the end of forty-nine Sermon on the Mosaic Jubilee, by Dr. Buchanan, p. p. 129, 130.—" Had the prediction of Moses, regarding the increase of the sixth year, proved false, his code of laws would have been regarded with the same contempt by the suc ceeding generations of Israel, with which we regard the impostures of Mohammed; and we should have heard no more of a theocracy continuing after his death, exhibited in a regular chronology of events, which are as well confirmed as those of the early Roman, or English history. Still less should we have heard of a reverence for the name of Moses (the true prophet) by his own nation, throughout every successive age, down to this day."-Do. note, p. 130. years, and was celebrated every fiftieth year. "And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a Jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and every man unto his family. A Jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you; ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed."* The trumpet of the Jubilee announced the restoration to every man of his inheritance, which, had been sold, and the recovery of his personal liberty to every man, who had lost it. How merciful and excellent soever this law of Moses was, it is evident that the observance was likely to combat with many and great obstructions, from the avarice of those who were in possession, either of the property or of the persons of their brethren. And in that decline of religion which brought on the captivity in Babylon, it was altogether disregarded, as well as the sabbath of the seventh year. According to the prediction of Jehovah, they found the certainty of their punishment rapidly to follow their violation of his law. "Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it." As the forty ninth year was the sabbath of the seventh year, Levit. xxv, 8, 9, 10, 11. + Levit. xxvi, 34, 35. and the fiftieth year of the Jubilee, it is evident that during these two years their ground was to rest, and they were even interdicted from eating the spontaneous fruits of the earth. Now, either Moses received his laws from God, with whom all things are not only possible, but equally easy; or he was not only an impostor, but a man destitute of common sense, and utterly unqualified to deceive any person who was not in a state of greater, and more confirmed stupidity than himself. Between the one or the other of these two characters, there can be no intermediate one; if he was not the messenger of God, he was absolutely out of his senses. If he did not certainly know that the Israelites were under a miraculous Providence, he was bringing upon them all the miseries of famine and death. Had Mohammed exposed his pretensions to Divine legislation to such a test, within fifty-two years, his religion had been felo de se, its own destroyer. That cunning impostor had too much sense to commit himself in such a manner. Can we suppose, for a moment, that Moses, to whose wisdom and piety, not only Jesus and his apostles, but even many of the Greeks and Romans, as well as Mohammed, bore testimony, was capable of appointing laws, on pretence of their divine origin, which a few years must have proved to be an abominable imposition, and tending to the destruction of his countrymen? The very existence of the Jews is a sufficient refutation of such a charge. The other miracle accompanied the three annual festivals, in which all the males were required to appear before God. This miracle then was to recur thrice every year. "Thrice in the year shall your men children appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel."* Every person who has even cursorily read the history of the Israelites cannot but know, that the neighbouring nations were extremely hostile to that people. They were almost. perpetually watching for an opportunity of doing them an injury. Three times in the year such an opportunity offered itself. Three times in the year was their property left without a defender, and their wives and children without a protector; and yet, when from their devotions they returned to their families, they always found them in peace and safety. These seasons of devotion and absence were fixed, and the time of them was as well known to their enemies as to themselves. Without a miracle being continually interposed, and the knowledge and belief of the Divine promise that was their security against invasion, the Israelites durst not have left their families and property, in a state totally defenceless. But such powerful restraints did the fear of God, which fell on their enemies, oppose to their fierce and angry passions, that these were never the times which they chose for their attacks. "For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders; neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God, thrice in the year."† A requisition such as this, no merely human legislator would ever have thought of; and this is left on record, to prove by the internal evidence of the law itself, that Moses was only the subordinate, and God, the supreme legislator. The prohibition of multiplying horses, and of making use of cavalry in their wars, was an ordinance of the same • Exod. xxxiv, 23. + Exod. XXXIV, 24. kind, and showed a full conviction in the mind of Moses, that omnipotence was engaged for their protection, so long as they continued obedient to the law of God. Confidence in their own resources, was what their lawgiver carefully repressed. The same spirit of arrogance that renders nations insolent to their neighbours, equally disposes them to spurn the restraints of religion. The neighbouring nations employed cavalry, and by the want of horses, the Israelites were disqualified for engaging with them on equal terms. A wise human legislator would, therefore, have taken care to provide means of resistance, equally powerful as those with which their enemies were accustomed to attack them. But to a Divine legislator, all such precautions were unnecessary. It is true, indeed, that the nature of their country, which was generally hilly, rendered it less fit for the use of such forces, than a level one; but as it had plains of considerable extent, in which they might have been useful, the former appears to have been the reason of the prohibition. Prophecy constitutes the other part of the external evidence of the truth of Revelation. It is true, that till their accomplishment, prophecies cannot be considered as evidence; and, as by much the greater part of the Old Testament prophecies, were to be accomplished in periods of the world, very remote from those in which they were given forth, they were to the men of that age, no evidences at all. To them, therefore, miracles were the great, and almost the only evidence. With respect to us, upon whom the ends of the world are come, how strongly soever the collected force of the miracles recorded in scripture, may operate upon our minds, it must be allowed, that we have not that demonstration of sense for their having been done, which the spectators of them |