Designed self-education

aided by

direct re. velation.

capital of dominion, and the centre of civilisation, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates.

In the first century in which Christians were to be the propagators of revealed truth, this geographical provision for the education of the world to faith is a phase of the world's arrangement perhaps more remarkable than any period of history presents. Under the perfected condition of the Roman system of government, the wide region comprehending all that had been governed by all the earlier great monarchies, except the countries east of the Euphrates, was as united for all purposes of communication as a small modern kingdom is now. Over Europe, as far north as the Rhine, large cities were more frequent than has ever since been the case. So far as can be ascertained, the population was as dense as it is at present. Through the whole empire, lines of the famous Roman roads, well kept and protected, opened every region to every other. Greek philosophy, the concentration of all human thought and culture, had been disseminated among the wealthy Roman citizens to every corner of the vast dominion. Jewish populations, with their sacred books, were everywhere already resident and known, a foundation ready provided for the superstructure of Christian teaching. The result of such geographical facilities was the spread of Christian truth, and its acceptance in various degrees, so extensively, that, before all who had seen the apostles were dead, the Christians were almost dominant in influence. They outnumbered the whole legions of the empire, and were so numerous in every social rank, that one of their apologists said they had possession of every place in the community except the temples, and these were deserted.

3. This systematic choice of positions of widest influence for the home or the sojourn of the "keepers of the testimony," during the periods of the ancient universal monarchies, is a part of God's providence so peculiar as to oblige inquiry as to its purpose. When we have to add that the remarkable contact was no mere juxtaposition, but one producing excitement, generally opposition, and often persecution of the holders of the truth, must we not regard the result of the so-marked

arrangement as having been also the design of it-viz., to draw into self-education in the knowledge of the true God the families and nations who, by this sustained means, were invited or compelled to compare revealed religion with their own impure superstitions? This inference is strengthened much, or rather established, by another fact of Old Testament historythat God, with a frequency which we might also call systematic, all along interposed at times with direct revelation of Himself, to help the great heathen powers in this self-education.

line of re

exclusive.

4. Indeed we cannot regard the strongly-marked historical Selected lines of revelation, wider and wider though they become during velation the Jewish times, as exclusive boundaries. God, who made never Enoch and Noah preachers, and who universally in His laws given to Moses put under the responsible care of Israel the religious instruction of "the stranger within their gates," and "the nations that dwelt on their borders," was for ever Himself doing as He commanded, and giving gracious helps to those whom He directed His chosen servants to help. We may regard as an instance of this before the Deluge the protective mark set upon Cain, making those beholding the fugitive firstborn of mankind think of God's mercy, while the sight of the fugitive's wandering life was continually an epistle seen and read of all men, making known His justice and His judgment against sin. Enoch walking with God set the life of faith before men's eyes, and his preaching proclaimed the retribution sin cannot escape from the holy God. But God Himself, at the same time, revealed to them the opposite blessedness awaiting every faithful one, when He translated Enoch; and men knew that the prophet was not because God had taken him. 5. Among the second race of nations, the recorded instances Contacts of patriarchal were sufficiently numerous to be generalised by us into method of God's dealing with the world. Passing over the historical lesson of faith bequeathed by Noah's family to all mankind, and found in the traditions of most nations, of the Almighty's taking vengeance on the sins of the world by a destroying flood; passing by, also, the lesson common to all races of the providential interference which originated the difference of languages upon the earth, and so defined the

separated families of men, the histories of the first Hebrew patriarchs give us instances of neighbouring kingdoms, visited by them during providential straits, being led through entanglements with the affairs of the patriarchs to most distinct practical recognition of the true God; and of those peoples being helped thereto by visions from Him of an educating kind. Chedorlaomer and his Mesopotamian allies may, more likely than may not, have known of Abraham's singular exodus from their already stirring country. It took place with deliberation. If Rawlinson's conjecture be correct that Ur was Mogheir, Abram's caravan, a large one, traversed the whole length of the region. It halted for some time at Haran, on the highway to Palestine. At any rate, Chedorlaomer's army could not ever forget the great Canaanite shepherd's pursuit of them, and the slaughter of all the four kings at his hands near Damascus, in the very enjoyment of their victory, when they were returning from reducing to subjection all their revolted tributaries along the Jordan (Gen. xiv.) The kings of the vale of Sodom did not profit by the neighbouring light of Abraham's faith, nor by his opportune testimony to Jehovah (ver. 22), but the testimony was given in their hearing. The irreclaimable pollution of life there was already ripe for the destruction which six hundred years later overtook the Canaanite peoples. It is in the story of that expedition that we meet with the most remarkable evidence that the patriarchal or any period affords of divine light extraneous to Hebrew limits-Melchizedec, king of Salem, "priest of the most high God," who blessed Abram, and received of him tithes of all his spoil taken from the four kings (ver. 18-20). That, however, was not a light derived from Abram, but a well enough understood divine agency, which will fall to be noticed later in this chapter. Of the self-education of contemporary persons, by observation of the patriarch's fortunes and divine revelation given in aid thereof, Pharaoh (Gen. xii. 17) is an example, and Abimelech of Gerar afterwards (xx. 6), both of whom received divine instruction, one in an understood affliction, the other in an articulately-speaking dream. Isaac afterwards received a direct acknowledgement of Jehovah from

another king of Gerar, because of his observation of the Hebrew's fortunes (xxvi. 28). Abraham's and Isaac's eldest sons both pass from sight out into the wilderness. Want of history of them for long afterwards does not, however, infer the improbable supposition that they left the light of their fathers' instructions in the truth wholly behind them, and gave none of it to their children. Jacob in Padan-aram, in Canaan, and in Egypt was a light, the value of whose illumination we know not, but of the shining of which we read distinctly (Gen. xxix.-xxxi.), and of divine communication aiding it (xxxi. 24). Egypt had, before Jacob's descent into it, profited in temporal things by the wisdom of his son; and that wisdom was declared by Joseph and acknowledged by Pharaoh with sufficient publicity to be the gift of the true God (Gen. xli. 25, 28, 32, 38, and 39). .If a Pharaoh arose four hundred years after who "knew not Joseph," the recording of his blindness indicates that Egypt had long had impressive remembrance of its great Hebrew saviour; and the last remarkable fact of his history-" the commandment concerning his bones,” preserved religiously in the traditional faith of the Hebrewswas one peculiarly impressive to Egyptian habits of thought. When the time came for that commandment to be executed, its fulfilment was an incident in the most notable example history contains of that self-education of nations by Hebrew light which was thenceforth to be the most remarkable element of human history for a number of centuries. It seems to be ascertained that the oppressor of Israel in Egypt, whose obstinate resistance of the demands of Moses concentrated the attention of Egypt upon the prophet and his miracles and the words of God accompanying them, was the greatest of Egypt's Pharaohs, Rameses or Sesostris; whose stupendous power in the world of nations during his long reign fills so much of ancient history, and whose gigantic statues, of the same proportions as those of the gods, ten times the size of ordinary men, still identify the ruins of his capital-monuments for four-and-thirty centuries of the awful greatness of that king's power, and his still more magnificent self-esteem. His contest with Moses; his grandly proud resistance of the Word of

Jehovah as an unwarrantable interference with his authority (Exod. v. 2); his mightiest arrogance, taking to himself the prerogative of God, swearing by himself, "I am Pharaoh ;" his impatience under the prophet's miracles; his repeatedly broken-down courage and fresh scorn of defeat; his final submission, and then mad pursuit of the people, and the awful end of him and his daring warriors plunging into the miraculous opening of the sea; these made the terrible Rameses himself the central figure in the great lesson which that mighty people had to learn under the compulsion of the ten successive plagues. That lesson was the omnipotence of Him alone whom their slaves had worshipped; and it was a strong and surely deeply-engraved instruction which was brought to fruit when the proud nobility of Egypt, soldiers, priests, and husbandmen, besought their so long humbled slaves to go from them, and loaded them with their own treasures, and thrust them out in the middle of the night. The same assisted selfeducation in the true faith, the things mankind should think respecting God, is exemplified in the history of the forty years of the wilderness. We see people after people comparing in their councils of war or of government the might of the Hebrews' Jehovah with all the might of other nations and their gods; and we see their reasonings assisted also by occasional miraculous manifestations to them of those attributes of the true God which they were thinking out for themselves. Balak's overruled counselling with the unfaithful prophet of Beor makes an eminent instance of both the selfteaching and the divine help interposed. Balaam himself, a resident in Mesopotamia, is an example of an outlying light of truth far away from the chosen people. At that crisis of Israel's need and the heathen's opportunity of learning the truth of God's government the prophet Micah shows Balaam uttering revelations, the spirit of which was in advance of what we know of contemporaneous Hebrew sight: "Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousand of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?