PART III.

LECT. IV.

SECT. II.

DANIEL, xii. 2.

Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall "awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and "everlasting contempt."

THE

passages we have hitherto adduced, from the history recorded by the Jewish Lawgiver, and which shew that he himself believ ed a future state of retribution, and contain such proofs of it as would naturally impress that belief on every pious and reflecting mind; have been chiefly taken from the Book of Genesis. In the In the remaining part of the Pentateuch we are not to wonder, that the rewards and punishments of a future life are not expressly introduced. It has been shewn that God exercised over the Jews an extraordinary providence, rewarding

warding obedience and punishing transgression, whether national or personal, by immediate and temporal blessings and calamities; and that this system was rendered necessary by the intellectual character and peculiar situation of the Jewish people, as the only mode of counteracting their carnal dispositions and idolatrous propensities; the only mode adapted to their short-sighted views, their inadequate ideas of the divine perfections, and their unsteady faith in the divine promises.

pro

This system was pursued, first during that most evident display of divine and miraculous power, at the promulgation of the Law, and the settlement of the chosen people in the mised land; and afterwards under their judges, when for above four hundred years the Jewish nation continued, if I may so express it, under the immediate tutelage and direct controul of Jehovah. During this rude and yet unsettled period, the nation seems (naturally speaking,) unfit to receive or improve any further religious instructions. Hence, during this period, we find no inspired teacher, whose admonitions or prophecies have been

handed

handed down as a part of the sacred volume, except some prophecies briefly and incidentally mentioned in the history of the Judges and the book of Samuel, relating merely to immediate and temporal occurrences. No addition was now made to the instructions delivered by Moses, no further developement of the divine plans vouchsafed. But after a sufficiently long trial of the im-' mediate power of God to guide and protect the chosen people, they were permitted to establish a regal government, and rise into notice among the surrounding nations: their foes were subdued by Saul and David; a magnificent temple was erected by Solomon, where the public worship prescribed by the Mosaic ritual, was conducted with the strictest regularity, and accompanied with all the attractions of pomp, and harmony and splendor, which could rouse the attention and command the reverence, not only of the Jews themselves, but of the surrounding nations. A lucrative trade was opened with the East, * which continued in a great measure to be conducted by the Jews, from David to Ahaz, above

two

* Compare 1 Kings, ix. 36. with 2 Kings, xvi. 6.; and Vide Prideaux's Connections, Book I. from p. 7 to 17.

two hundred and fifty years. A great part of this time the Jews were powerful and wealthy; their minds were gradually enlightened by commerce and softened by peace, and the conviction of Jehovah's over-ruling providence gradually established by a still increasing length of experience; and thus a foundation laid for a more firm reliance on the divine promises respecting a future life.

And while the temporal discipline and fortune of the Jews thus prepared the way for the reception of religious instructions; we observe that Samuel founded the schools of the Prophets, where numbers of the Levites, and probably other pious Jews, were trained from their youth to study and expound the word and the will of God, to warn the people against idolatry impiety and vice, and become instruments of extend- · ing the knowledge of the Jewish religion, and the worship of the great Jehovah; we now perceive Providence raising up for them instructors, first in the persons of their two most distinguished kings, David and Solomon, the former as a prophet, the latter chiefly as a moral sage: their works, from

the

the dignity of their authors, and from the very form of their compositions must have been extremely popular: the pious hymns of the inspired Psalmist, praising the wonderful works of God for his chosen people, and adorning the sentiments of piety with all the charms of poetry and music, must have been read with avidity and remembered with delight; and the sententious maxims of the royal Preacher, the pride of his nation for wisdom power and majesty, could scarcely fail of exciting attention to religious truth and moral duty.

We after these, behold a series of prophets, delivering their admonitions and predictions, with the most intrepid resolution and the most awful menaces, to the kings and the assembled multitudes of Judah and Israel. We see some of their predictions immediately accomplished in the most important public events, and therefore their remaining prophecies must have excited general attention and anxious expectation. In truth, the schools of the prophets, established first by Samuel, supplied for ages the civil historians as well as the religious

instructors