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In the feast of unleavened bread,
And in the feast of weeks,
And in the feast of tabernacles;
And they shall not appear before the Lord
empty: every man shall give as he is
able, according to the blessing of the
Lord thy God, which He hath given
thee."

See, also, Exodus, xxiii. 14—17;— xxxiv. 18—26; and Lev. xxiii.

The Anglo-Saxons had also three great festivals before their conversion to Christianity; the first of which, (Easter) exactly corresponds to the Passover, the first of the feasts appointed Israel; and, even after their conversion, the heathen name of the festival was retained; so that we still call it Easter, the name of the festival, which, at the same time of the year, they had previously observed; and which they had evidently brought with them from the east. The second feast wss Whitsuntide, correspondent to the Hebrew Pentecost, or feast of weeks; when, upon the fiftieth day after the Passover, the first fruits were offered with rejoicing; and hence it was called White-Sunday, because of their then appearing in garments that indicated rejoicing. The third great feast among the Hebrews, was the feast of Tabernacles. It is particularly noted, that the Anglo-Saxons were in the habit of congregating to their great assembly, the Witena Gemot, thrice in the year. And the two first of these times exactly correspond to the two first great feasts of ancient Israel. At this great assembly all the males were supposed to be present, if not in person, at least by their representatives; which was probably also the case in ancient Israel. Nor did they appear empty; their principal object being to arrange with regard to the offerings to be presented to the king, as previously they had, at such times, paid their tribute to their God,—who was king in Israel, previous to the time of Saul.

The priesthood, as in Israel, was confined to certain families, and descended from father to son. In ancient Israel the priesthood had their possessions in land, and they had much to do in the declaring of the law; and

[LEC. XII.

so, contrary to what existed in the primitive Christian Church, the Saxons plentifully bestowed lands upon the clergy. And their courts were given a degree of authority which they did not before possess, and which they very speedily abused. Then, also, tithes appear to have been established in these countries, after the Israelitish pattern. These offerings, we have every reason to believe, had been previously made to the priesthood belonging to that corrupted form of Hebrew worship, which the Saxons brought with them into Britain. Upon their embrace of the Christian faith, the revenues of the former worship were appropriated to the use of the Christian priesthood: just as, afterwards we find them taken from the church, as in connection with Rome, and given to the support of the Protestant worship. They did not belong to the Church of Rome, but to the Church of the Anglo-Saxons. Popery purloined them for a time, but they have been, so far, recovered. When Gregory sent his missionaries to the English, to procure their adhesion to the see of Rome, they were instructed not to destroy the heathen temples but only to remove the images of their gods,—to wash the walls with holy water, to erect altars, and deposit relics in them,—and so convert them into Christian churches; not only to save the expense of building new ones, but that the people might be the more easily prevailed upon to frequent these places of worship, they having been previously accustomed to assemble there. He directs them further, to accommodate the ceremonies of the Christian worship as much as possible to those of the Heathen, that the people might not be much startled by the change: and, in particular, he advises them to allow the Christian converts, at certain festivals, to kill and eat a great number of oxen, to the glory of God, —as they previously had done, to what he is pleased to call, the honour of the devil. These sacrifices, at such festivals, and the very possibility of mak

LEC. XII.]

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ing the new worship look anything like the old, argues such a similarity of the one to the other, as we could not expect to exist between the Christian worship, and any other save that of the Hebrews. Indeed, considering the changes which must have occurred during their sojourn in the northern wilderness, it is wonderful that the Christian worship could have been so far made like it, as that the change in religion should not be much observed. Thus may we account for our retaining the heathen names for the days of the week, and certain great festivals; and thus, also, may we see how the Church of England was so early and so well provided for. And hence followed that peculiar conformity to the Israelitish worship, which, in so many things, it possesses. And well may her children, as being the children of God's ancient people, now acknowledge,—

"О God, we have heard with our ears; Our fathers have declared unto us

The noble works which thou didst in their days;

And in the old time before them."

—Yea, well may the house of Israel

now say,

"О give thanks unto the Lord,
For He is good;

For His mercy endureth for ever."

Their ancient views of the Supreme Being, their reception of the pretended Odin, (correspondent to Israel's expectation of Messiah, as God incarnate); their places of worship, (generally in groves, or else in some one grand national temple)—their order of priesthood; and, in these grand temples, the number twelve, being like every thing else, remarkable ;—their division of time into portions of seven days, measured from evening to evening, their three grand convocations in the year, (correspondent to what was appointed in Israel);—the likeness of their former worship to that of the new religion, so as that the latter could be introduced in place of the former without being much observed: —Surely, by all this view of the religious condition of this people, (equally

I

with that of their personal character, social condition, and political state, as formerly sketched,) we must have the conviction forced upon our minds, that these people were descended from those among whom had been established the religion of Moses.—They were indeed a portion of those that were to come of Jacob.

Their change to nominal Christianity, and the admission among them of the New Testament Scriptures, as well as their recovery of their own Old Testament writings, at the time of Gregory, was a partial restoration to the light and favour of God. This seems to have happened about the year of Christ five hundred and ninety-two; before which, partial conversions may have taken place in different portions of the Anglo-Saxon population, through the influence of the British and Scottish Christians; so that their conversion may be said to have taken place about the middle of the space of time which has elapsed since the captivity of Israel; and their sojourn in the northern wilderness may be reckoned about one thousand two hundred and

threescore years Since that, they have, with all their backslidings, been, upon the whole, making progress. After two days (a thousand years being for a day) the Lord revived them by the Reformation; the dawn of which, in Europe, had among them been given, when Wickliff appeared, -immediately after the two thousand years from the time of their captivity. At the Reformation, there was another recovery of the Scriptures, and release from the service of idols; and there was a clearer exhibition of the one great truth of the Gospel, than had ever been before enjoyed. This, however, they received with too great indifference. It required to be beaten and burned into them by the bloody persecutions under Mary:—when they were taught the value of the doctrine of justification through faith alone, in the crucified Redeemer, by its power in sustaining through suffering and death, in zealous devotedness to the service of God.

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But when the sceptre and the sword were again wielded by the hands of protestant piety, there was a danger of the people's leaving their religion too -entirely in the hands of government; and accordingly their protestant government is allowed sufficiently to evince their fallibility,—by their separating from the church many of the most zealous and conscientious of the clergy; who were left to propagate the truth apart from the state, and to provide more largely and earnestly for the religious instruction of the people, than could have been done by the state alone. But, in time, this nonconformist body undermined the established church; and, despising many of the wise institutions of their fathers, were not merely content to do good in their own way, but they would have their own way to be every thing, both in church and state. And they were allowed to experiment on both, and manifest their folly, by the creation of a military despotism, under Oliver Cromwell. And then a revulsion took place, at the restoration of the ancient mixed constitution, after the death of Cromwell. Then there was a danger of the nation running into the opposite extreme; but, again, the most valuable portion of the clergy were disbanded by the state; to mix more familiarly among the people,—to be pressed home upon their bosoms, and to be supported by their voluntary contributions. By these changes, also, were they forced to spread abroad and plant their colonies; as, for example, in the New England States, in North America, where they continue to spread, and to prosper, as they had been accustomed to do from the beginning,— and even more abundantly. church recovered herself, at the Revolution, from the downward tendency which had been given her since the Restoration. But she was sinking into a lethargic formality,—when, on the one hand, by the violent shakings and bitter sneers of infidelity, she was

The

[LEC. XII.

quickened into a deeper search for the intellectual foundations of her faith; and on the other hand, by the loud voice and busy stirrings of Methodism, she was aroused into a more confiding faith in the One Foundation, Christ Jesus. By this awakening, have both the church established, and the dissenting churches, been animated into a more earnest searching after the truth for themselves, and for the defending then- cause against infidelity. They have also been aroused into more earnest endeavours to spread the truth abroad to others. And, ever and anon, are bands of men raised up to give a prominency to particular portions of the truth; so that what we might forget on the one hand, we are reminded of on the other. And latterly, from many quarters, has our attention been specially called to Christ, as our Hope, as the Chief Corner-stone, as coming for the completion of that building, of which He is also the Foundation. All this is in the kind providence of God. And our business is, neither to overvalue nor undervalue either our own position or that of others; but to maintain that spirit of improvement which is the true characteristic of Israel, and by which we may ever receive gain from all the Lord is saying to us, and doing with us; so as that we may indeed be as the shining light, "that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." May no one section of the Church Universal, magnify itself, or despise the others, but may all glory in the Lord, and strive to serve each other as brethren in Christ;—as fellow-heirs of the promises made unto their fathers. The truths of God, like the tribes of Israel, have been widely scattered abroad. May our God hasten the time when they shall all be gathered into one: when our Redeemer shall clothe himself with his people, as with a seamless robe of glory, woven from the top throughout; when the promise shall be fulfilled,

Deut. xxxii. 43.

Long before the Assyrian captivity of Israel, we find Joel (iii. 4—8) prophesying respecting some portion of Judah, which had been taken into slavery, westward. In this, Tyre and Sidon appear to have been chiefly instrumental. These had sold the children of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, to the Grecians, that they might be removed far from their border. The Lord promises to raise up these Jews, who had been thus enslaved, and to bring them against Tyre; and he threatens to give the Tyrians into their hands. Has this prophecy been fulfilled? It has not, perhaps, been generally observed, that, both by Josephus, and in the 1st book of Maccabees (ch. xii.) it is said that the Lacedemonians, in the time of Onias, the high-priest, sent a letter to the Jews, stating that they had found, in writing, that they and the Jews were brethren, and equally the children of Abraham,--and claiming, in consequence, an interchange of friend

ship. And the Jews acknowledged the claim; and, long after, wished still to continue the brotherly intercourse: so that when they sent ambassadors to Rome, they were directed to make also a friendly call upon their brethren at Sparta. The Lacedemonians were remarkable for the wisdom of their political arrangements. They had much the same mixed form of government as the English. They were also uncommonly brave in war. When Alexander resolved upon his Persian expedition, they were the only people of Greece who refused to be led by him against the east. After his return from his successful expedition to the Danube, and his cruel destruction of the Thebans, refusal seems to have been out of the question: and thus were the Lacedemonians, the brethren of the Jews, the Jews, as we suppose, who had been sold into slavery by the Tyrians, raised up, and that, contrary to their own wish, to be led against Tyre, to execute upon it the

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judgment written. For, the Tyrians refusing to admit Alexander as a master, he wholly demolished old Tyre, on the continent, to make a causeway, whereby to reach New Tyre, which was previously an island; and, having effected his purpose, he burnt it down to the ground, and destroyed. or enslaved all the inhabitants. Eight thousand he slew, in sacking the town; two thousand were crucified; and thirty thousand were sold as slaves. It is no extravagant idea to suppose that the Lacedemonians had been slaves, who had, by some means, obtained their freedom. The two thousand Tyrians who were crucified, had this sentence executed upon them, under the pretext that they were descended of slaves, who had conspired against their masters, and murdered them all in one night; and marrying their mistresses, had continued in possession of the town, in the room of their former lords.

Now, if the Jews, who were farther removed from the Mediterranean sea, and who have not, in Scripture, so much said about their multiplicity,if they thus early were sending in this way their branches into the west,much more may we expect to find the extension of the other house of Israel in this direction: their increase, and their scattering in the isles, being so much the subject of prophecy; and the far greater part, about two-thirds, of their tribeships, reaching down to the coast of the Great Sea, thus affording them every facility for their conveyance in this direction.

By mention being made in Isaiah, chap, x., verse 20, of "the escaped of the house of Jacob," as well as of "the remnant of Israel," which had been taken captive by the Assyrians; it seems to be intimated, that a considerable number had fled from the land, rather than remain to be led away at the will of the enemy. This was the more likely, as those dwelling along the coast of the Great Sea, had, nineteen years before the great captivity, warning given them by the forcible removal of those that lived east

[LEC. XIII.

ward of the Jordan. In the space of these nineteen years, between the two captivities, many, doubtless, escaped; and it may partly have been to prevent the greater withdrawal of Israel from under their yoke, that the Assyrians came up, and swept away the remnant so entirely. The way of escape was westward, down the Mediterranean sea, or into Egypt. Every other door of hope seemed to be closed against them. With regard to Egypt, it had been said by the prophet Hosea (ix. 3.), Ephraim shall return to Egypt:" and again (verse 6), "Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them." Memphis, it may be remarked, is that city of Egypt, in the neighbourhood of which are the Pyramids and other remarkable burying places. It would appear by the language of this prophecy, that the dispersed of Israel would be prized in Egypt; and that they would there be honoured in their burial. And it is, perhaps, worthy of notice, that shortly after the Assyrian captivity, the influence of Israel does seem to have been felt in Egypt, as, then, a singular revolution took place, approximating their government to that of the twelve tribes. Upon the death of the king, who reigned over Egypt, in the time of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, the Egyptians, says Herodotus, (Euterpe, cxlvii.), recovered their freedom; and chose twelve kings, among whom they divided the different districts of Egypt. Thus, immediately after the Assyrian captivity, an elective government was established in Egypt, and that consisting of twelve communes; and this, during the very life-time of the refugees belonging to the twelves tribes of Israel. Egypt, however, does not seem to have been the soil in which the seed of liberty could then firmly take root, however rapidly it might spring up. These twelve kings were they who built the celebrated labyrinth, near the lake Mœris, and to which, Herodotus says, even the pyramids were inferior. It was composed of twelve covered courts, six towards the north, and six to the south; and three