east, which has most largely acted on the human mind, and whose descendants are still surviving in a very remarkable condition; I mean the Arab people.

From his other son, the promised Isaac, another population branched off, who have also been of great importance in ancient history, and probably with more ramifications than we can now ascertain, the Edomites, or Idumeans, the red people of the east. Other stems of oriental population also sprang from his six children by his second wife, who were sent to settle in the countries east of Palestine, and thus to' carry, where they colonized, the moral and intellectual improvements which the mind of Abraham had received from the divine communications and intercourse that he had experienced.

It is important to notice this diffusion of his posterity, because in that we see, that whatever was specially made known to him was not confined to himself, but was conveyed by natural causes and channels to the most important regions and populations then on the globe. He was therefore like a fountain, from which all his improvements streamed exclusively to the world around him.

It was from the grandson of this chosen patriarch that the Jewish nation more immediately sprang, through his twelve sons, who became the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Here also it was the directed course of events that Egypt, as the great civilizer of the human race at that period, should participate in all the benefit of the supernatural communications which this grandson and his family received; for his son Joseph was led from his abode to become gradually the viceroy or grand vizier of Egypt, and under miraculous circumstances; so that the Egyptian mind fully shared in the sacred knowledge which had designedly been given to the Hebrew race. Still more to improve that mind which was to become the instructing mind to Greece, and to all the other regions with which Egypt had dealings, the descendants of Abraham were stationed in this country under the patronage of its favouring king; and here for three centuries remained, till they had enlarged into a multitude, which excited the jealousy and oppression of its later sovereigns.

The attempts to destroy them were frustrated by an extraordinary interposition of the Supreme; and then began a train of events which were equally a revelation of himself to

e Egyptians, and to the subjected nation who were now mancipated and conveyed to the Arabian desert. In this ey remained forty years, receiving momentous instruction m heaven, with which, as they moved from place to place, the neighbouring nations had sufficient opportunities to acquainted.

Their forcible settlement in Palestine, expressly for reans which brought before the human mind in these civilized untries, the great points on which it was debasing itself d offending the only divine power that really existed, placed em at first in collision, and afterward led them into occaonal amity with the various states and kingdoms in this rt of the world, the most civilized and improved next to at on the Nile. To these they were at times under subctions of some duration; and thus the important Phenian nation, the great colonizer of the islands and seacoasts ancient Europe, was brought into full knowledge, and undant opportunities of intercourse with that particular ce, who were made the recipient and the repository of all e divine communications, which in the ancient world were parted to mankind.

By thus mixing them in momentous transactions, from me to time, with the leading nations of the world, and with e main sources of all its civilizations and improvements, e Hebrew people were made the instrument of benefit to hers, while they were made to fulfil the purposes for which ey were specially designated. This plan was continued rough all the rest of their history.

Their most celebrated and active kings were in friendly mmunication with the sovereigns of Tyre, Egypt, Syria, ssyria, and Babylon, until this latter state, raised suddenly predominant power by a native Napoleon of that day, deroyed the Jewish kingdom in its last surviving branch. But re also provision was made for the benefit of the new Babynian empire, by the residence of the chief survivers of the wish nation in or near its capital for seventy years. When e Persian sovereignty was established, its first kings of the nquering race favoured the return of the Jews to their nae land, and one of them had a Jewish queen and prime nister.

The nation became afterward a province of the principa

cian world, that their Scriptures were translated into the Greek language by the desire of an Egyptian king of the Macedonian dynasty. By this version, the whole that was known and there recorded of the Deity and of his transac tions with his selected nation, was laid open to all the intellectual world, as it was thus put into a language which was at that time as universal as civilization and literature. When the Roman empire spread its dominion from Europe into Asia and Africa, and was comprehending the great majority of mankind under its sceptre, Judea became one of its provinces, and soon excited its peculiar notice. Struggles ensued as to the admission of the imperial images into its temple, which brought its religious opinions into discussion with the Roman statesmen; and at last that dreadfur war took place which subverted their magnificent temple and national government for ever, and compelled them to seek for life and safety by dispersing into foreign settlements; from which they have become divided into those innumerable fragments of population of various sizes which are now to be met with in almost all the regions of the globe, and which strikingly fulfil an ancient and very peculiar prophecy of their being in their later period in such a state.

These facts show us, that from the beginning of the Jewish population under Abraham to the present hour, they have been so circumstanced with the chief nations of the earth in all ages, that every inquiring mind in either, had the means of becoming acquainted with the same divine knowledge which was imparted to the Jews, if it had chosen to use its opportunities of acquiring what was thus accessible to all; or if any had been as interested to make such subjects the object of their curiosity, as some were who travelled into Egypt and India to learn, from the priesthoods of each, the science and literature which they were supposed to possess or to be cultivating. The Jewish people were, at various intervals, greatly mixed, to their own prejudice, from their desire of intercommunity, or from the course of affairs in transactions and intercourse with the contiguous states; so that the populace of each had repeated opportunities of knowing all that the Jewish nation had reen taught and venerated. These things exhibit Judea to have been always placed or kept in the situatio of being a local fountain of divine knowledge, from which channels for its diffusion, into

the chief kingdoms of the earth, were in every age successively made, and were for long intervals subsisting.

Such plans, such results, and for such an object, were worthy of the great subject and of its Great Author.

The introduction and establishment of Christianity in the civilized world, and its progress towards obtaining the intellectual sovereignty of the human race, belonging more particularly to a later period in the history of human nature, need not be delineated here: it will come in more fitly at a subsequent opportunity.

Take now a comprehensive view of what has been thus imperfectly sketched, and accustom yourself to contemplate ancient history as a great map of a connected system of things, formed in the divine mind for the course and government of human affairs, and thereby for the formation of human nature to be what it has thus far been, and to be yet, beyond all that has been done, what it is still advancing to be, in that onward progression which is manifestly in very vigorous movement, and which nothing in man or nature can arrest or frustrate,

The mighty process is in full action around us-the stream of that immense river which has been flowing through all past time, gradually widening and branching out, and increasing everywhere its effusions and its masses, is now rolling towards eternity with augmented force and expansion, carrying us all forward while we live, and sure to waft our descendants and successors to new improvements, new dangers, and new destinies. One pilotage will alone give safety to our course, and it will be our own fault if we do not secure to ourselves its enlightening wisdom and preserving guidance,*

† It is refreshing to the mind to read in a heathen philosopher, who wrote after Christianity had begun to spread, and who seems to have been benefited by its expanding rays, such sentiments as these :

"My business is to be always found void of passion, free, and always doing what I should wish to do. So that I may say to God, Did I ever accuse THEE? Have I ever found fault with thy administration and government? I have been sick. It was because it pleased thee that it should be so. Others were sick too. I willingly submitted to it. I was poor. It was because thou didst choose it to be so. But I was still Cheerful. It was not thy will that I should be a ruler, and I never desired empire.

"I give thee all thanks that thou didst count me worthy of such an honour as to perceive thy works, and to understand thine admirable ad<

LETTER VII.

Sketch of the Peculiarities which distinguish Human Nature from every other order of known Beings, and its special composition of a Soul and Body.

THE first part of our historical outline has been considered in the Letters of our former volume. These laid before you a general sketch of the geological structure of the surface rocks of our globe, with its ocean and atmosphere, and of the vegetable and animal classes which were chosen to be its additional accompaniments. A concise notice was taken of the paradise which was formed within it, and in which the first beings of the human figure and qualities were stationed immediately after their creation. It is from this point that we will begin our farther considerations upon them, and of the designs and course of Providence in their history and in that of human nature. There is a connexion between their history and that of their descendants which cannot be obliterated, and deserves our candid and philosophical investigation.

As human nature appears to have been a special invention of the Creator, which does not, as far as we can perceive, extend to any other sphere-unless the constitution of the planets Mars and Venus resembles ours sufficiently to admit of beings like ourselves inhabiting their surfaces-let us first consider, more particularly than we have yet done, what it is that peculiarly makes a human being. With just notions on this point we shall the better understand the ministration. Let it be, while thinking on these things, or writing on them, or reading about them, that death come upon me."-EPICTETUS in Arrian. 1. iii. c. 5.

It is pleasing to read a similarity of feeling from a very different character sixteen hundred years after, a peasant instead of a philosopher; but of a genius which no circumstances could destroy. Burns thus writes: "The grand end of human life is to cultivate an intercourse with that Being, to whom we owe life and all the enjoyments which render life delightful, and to maintain an integrity of conduct towards our fellow-creatures; that so, by forming piety and virtue into habit, we may be fit members for the society of the pious and the good, which reason and revelation teach us to expect beyond the grave."