institutions, nor (which would be the most necessary step to take) become better informed or more moral. One after the other the fine qualities of the nation are dying out. Where is the generosity, the loyalty, the charm of our esprit, and our former elevation of soul? If this goes on, the time will come when this noble race of France will be known only by its faults. And France has no idea that, while she is sinking, more earnest nations are stealing a march upon her, are distancing her on the road to progress, and are preparing for her a secondary position in the world.' And the writer of this most able state-paper concluded by saying, 'There is no denying that the moral ties binding society together are getting more and more loosened in France, and that the torpor in which the people are enveloped, and their blind conceit, prevent their realizing the disorder eating up the social organism.'

Much has been written and preached about the condition of the civilized world of antiquity and of its capital, Rome, at the time when the light of the Gospel broke upon its darkness, as revealed in the pages of Roman and Greek writers of the period. But can it possibly have been worse than that of the intellectual capital of Christendom,-the residence of the Eldest Son of the Church, the successor and rival of the Cæsars,- —as thus faithfully depicted by a confidential adviser of that now fallen potentate? After what has since occurred, it reads like a minatory prediction of one of the Israelitish prophets. And subsequent events have hardly been such as to warrant the hope that it may hereafter be said, as it was said of the people of Nineveh after the preaching of Jonah, And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not'*.

The formidable lesson just given to the French nation seems to have taught them little or nothing. Very few among them appear to measure the depth of the evil and detect its causes : all act and seem to think as if nothing had happened since July 1870. But this, instead of being the result of that perennial

*Jonah iii. 10.

youth and excessive vitality of which France so insanely boasts, is only evidence of the moral and intellectual decrepitude resulting from hypercivilization. Never was there a more striking exemplification of the trite saying, 'Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.' Should they continue madly rushing on as they are doing, their national career must soon come to an end, and the name of France will unhappily be added to the list of nations whose only sad boast now is- Fuimus.'

Ought not this lesson to teach the necessity for a belief in the rule of a God who watches over the actions of His sinful creatures, individually and collectively, and to whom they are all accountable? Metaphysicians, after having sought in vain to reason out the idea of their Creator, will find themselves compelled to follow the example of the 'philosophers' of the first French Revolution. These proclaimed that there was no God; they declared that it was against reason and common sense to believe in such antiquated rubbish. For the future, Reason was to be man's sole guide and ruler. And in order to testify their belief in this dogma of the newly established National Church, they solemnly enthroned on the high altar in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, in the place of the Mother of God,' an opera-dancer, whom they designated the Goddess of Reason, thus unconsciously showing how the one spiritual daughter and successor of the other. lution itself originated in great measure out of the corrupt state of the French clergy, so the reaction against the gross superstitions of the ignorant masses led to infidelity.

Goddess' is the For, as the Revo

But the reign of the new deity was not of long duration. The worship of the Goddess of Reason was done away with within seven months of its inauguration; and the National Convention, with Robespierre at their head, whilst admitting the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul, whereby they allowed that their fellow-creatures were amenable to the judgment of some tribunal other than their own bloodthirsty one, legislatively decreed the existence of a Supreme Being; and in so doing they unwittingly bore testimony to the truths of Revelation! For

L'Être Suprême' is almost a literal translation into French of the name and title by which during countless ages the Almighty has been known to His chosen people-JEHOVAH ELOHIM.

CHAPTER II.

THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS.

THE Jews are the only people in the world who possess a connected national history commencing with and extending from the creation of mankind. In whatever sense the events recorded in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis are to be construed, whether as legendary, allegorical, figurative, or mythical, they give, viewed as a whole, a connected and not unintelligible nor unreasonable account, such as is possessed by no other people, of Man's origin and relation to his Maker, and of the several stages of the history of the human race generally, as a prelude to the special history of the Hebrew nation, and to that of the advent of the Messiah as recorded in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

It is not necessary to enter here upon any minute consideration of that early history. God created man in His own image,' that is to say perfect, as far as humanity can be perfect, inwardly richly endowed, but totally ignorant as regards the outward world. But man's natural corruption, joined to his eagerness to acquire knowledge, led to inordinate curiosity and to his disobedience of his Maker's commands, and he fell. It may be that the narrative of the Fall of Man is not to be accepted in a purely literal sense, that it does not bear the signs of being intended as a literal history; still it serves to point out the declension, and evidently the rapid declension, of Man from the state of purity and perfection in which he had been created, and to record the fact, that long before the Flood 'the wicked

ness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually.'

When the flood came for the punishment of men's sins, Noah, a just man and perfect in his generations, was, with his family, alone saved to replenish the earth. It is not intended to follow closely the historical events of which the Scripture itself gives only a general outline. It is sufficient to point out that the descendants of Noah, in the pride of intellect, combined to build the city and tower of Babel; and in this instance likewise they incurred the Divine displeasure.

The next great event recorded is the removal of Terah and his family from the country of their birth; and with this commences the particular history of the Hebrew nation. The immediate cause of this removal is not specified. But, arguing from analogy, it may be supposed to have been similar to that of the call of Noah, the intention of the Almighty being to save the fugitives from the destruction impending over their countrymen, who by their excessive wickedness had rendered themselves amenable to the wrath of God, and also to make their descendents in their turn instruments for the destruction of the sinful people whose countries they were made to occupy. At all events, it was so signal an act of obedience to the Divine will, of duty and abnegation, especially on the part of the Patriarch Abraham, who was subsequently called to remove further into the land of Canaan, that it elicited the peculiar and special recompense awarded in the promise made to him.

After the striking manifestation of the Patriarch's implicit faith in the Almighty by his readiness to offer up his only son Isaac, the child of promise, at Jehovah-jireh, on Mount Moriah, the blessing and promise which had been previously given to him were extended and specifically attached to the descendants of the Patriarch, it being said, 'In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice'*. And this specific promise made to Abraham was renewed at Bethel to his grandson Jacob, afterwards called Israel†.

It is beyond the scope of the present work to give the history of God's chosen people, the Children of Israel, through all their defections, their continual forgetfulness of the God of their forefathers, and their desertion of His worship for that of the deities of the heathen nations that surrounded them. But the truth cannot be too strongly borne in mind, that the whole history and fate of the Israelites were influenced and determined by their guilt in forsaking, more and more, the pure faith of their great progenitor in the One and only true God, and by not listening to His revealed commands.

The countries in which the Patriarch Abraham and his family were directed to settle do certainly not appear to have been those in which they met with the pure worship of the Almighty. But this may have been the means of causing them and their descendants to maintain their own faith, if not in absolute purity, at all events comparatively so. With a view, however, to hinder them from mixing with those people, the ceremonial law under Moses was given to them as a hedge. Still this did not prevent their constant backsliding. Dissatisfied with their theocratic government, they desired human sovereigns like other nations. Instead of the simple tabernacle in which their forefathers had worshipped, a sumptuous temple was erected for the worship of the Eternal.

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But the builder of that temple, the intellectually endowed son of David, Solomon, whose wisdom' is proverbial throughout every portion of the habitable world to which his name has reached, became an immoral, irreligious man. He loved many strange women of the nations concerning which the Eternal had said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods'*. And he thus afforded a signal instance of the insufficiency of mere human intelligence and knowledge to check moral and religious declension,—a proof, indeed, that this latter is, alas! but too often a concomitant of the former.

* 1 Kings xi. 2.