Hebrew politics in the times of Sargon and Sennacherib: an inquiry into the historical meaning and purpose of the prophecies of Isaiah

Front matter

IN THE TIMES OF

SARGON AND SENNACHERIB:

AN INQUIRY

Preface

men as the mire of the streets, removed the bounds of the nations, found as a nest their riches, and gathered all the earth as one gathers eggs:' — yet we are not the less glad to read the Assyrians' own accounts of the way in which father and son did, year by year, and from country to country, receive tribute from the kings who submitted, and conquer and punish by captivity or death those who resisted ; carrying off their gods, their chief men, their treasures of gold and silver, their horses and cattle, nay, the whole inhabitants, men and women ; and giving up the cities to pillage, and then restoring them under new vassals : so that of each emperor, and of each year of his reign, we may say in Colonel Kawlinson's words, ' his annals contain the usual amount of burning and plundering, sweeping off the old population, and planting fresh colonies in their place.' We knew from Isaiah that all this must have been so ; but the mind is not the less pleased to have independent evidence that it was so : — to find its inferences realised in facts.

The antiquarian is not, however, the chief interest of these times of Sargon and Sennacherib. Our latest historians of Greece and Rome are showing us, as in a mirror, the very lineaments of our own age. They tell us of soldiers who followed their leaders to certain death, in obedience to the orders of those who sent them, expecting every man to do his duty : and of citizens whose political vices and even passions, as well as virtues, and the causes of their national decay, no less than their national growth, are all found within the circle of constitutional government, with its juries and its parliaments, its administrations headed by the highborn, the

PREFACE.

V rich, and the respectable, and its opposition led by speakers who used the most unlicensed violence of words, without a thought of overstepping the forms of the constitution by act, and whom the people half despised as plebeian, while they supported them as the necessary check on the aristocratic men whom they preferred to have in office. Again they show us, how constitutional freedom of thought and action in politics degenerated into individual selfishness or self-will, so that each man held it his right, or, if he was a fanatic, his duty, to enforce his own private view or interest, without regard to the good of the commonwealth : and how, when this vice had become incurable, the most enlightened patriots agreed with the most timid or selfish lovers of order, that nothing was left for the state but simple military despotism ; nothing in religion, but an organised superstition without faith : — which despotism and superstition would do nothing, indeed, towards restoring the life of the nation, but would make its inevitable death more gradual, and less convulsive, than if they continued to try successive forms of anarchy under the pretence of regaining liberty : and they show us how the civil skill of an Augustus built up this necessary system of state-craft, for which the sword of his predecessor had cleared the ground. These things, and much more, they tell us, and we know how to make the application. But when it is made, it announces an inevitable law of national decay and death, which is to take effect upon us too, as well as upon Greece or Rome ; rather than a moral warning, with direction how we may escape our threatened destiny : and it is this latter that we feel we want, and of which we will not abandon the

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PREFACE.

hope that it may be still found. We know that in our personal experience the moral laws of spirit do control and modify the laws of nature, and in the end produce a result which, though apparently in accordance with the latter, is really the complete triumph of the former : — that the body grows old and dies, but that the man himself may all the while have been growing up towards the maturity of an imperishable life. And we apply the analogy to our country. We observe that all nations that have hitherto perished, have perished, partly at least, of disease originating in political vices : and we conclude, that if immortality is no more possible to a nation than to anything else on earth, it must be possible that its decay should be that of simple and healthy old age ; that it should be altogether honourable and honoured, in that old age, by the young nations that spring from it ; and that it should leave to them the inheritance of a wholly noble character and spirit, and not merely that mixture of vices and virtues, of wisdom and error, which has come down to it from its great predecessors.

This, then, is the important matter to us : whether the law of disease, which, as distinguished from that of age, is so plainly at work in England, as well as in every other nation of Europe, can be still arrested ; and in particular, whether there is truth in that half-forgotten faith of our statesmen in former days, that the political history of the Hebrews does contain indications of the remedy, as well as the disease, though the latter only is described in the books of Greece and Rome : whether, for instance, Milton, who was no mean statesman in a day when men had to show what was really in them,

PREFACE. vii

and who had no lack of knowledge as to what the ancients could teach us of politics, was right when he asserted of the Jewish books, that

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so.

To get an answer to this question for myself; to ascertain whether an English squire could find in the Bible any political instruction which might avail him at union boards and county elections, and in his relations with the parson and the magistrate, the farmer and the peasant ; was my purpose when I began the study of the writings of Isaiah many years since : and the hope of serving some one desirous of such information, might have seemed to me excuse enough for thus attempting to show what I had learnt of the internal politics of Judea, and of their relation to those of modern England. But, meanwhile, there are gathering signs, that the times of Isaiah, and the principles which he enunciated, are finding, and may find more and more, their counterpart, and their application, in our foreign relations too. It may not be only Hebrew politics, but Hebrew politics in their connection with Sargon and Sennacherib, that we want to study. We may know already what the prophet meant by his protests against 'the new moons and sabbaths, and the making many prayers ; ' and against the 4 land full of silver and gold, where men join house to house, and field to field, and grind the faces of the poor, and right not the fatherless, and justify the wicked for reward, and are prudent in their own sight, but regard not the work of the Lord, nor the operation of His hands.' We may know, too, or hope to know, something of the contrary state of things,

A 4 viii

PREFACE.

when righteous and just rulers and princes show how 4 a man can be a covert from the tempest ; ' and how he can 4 devise liberal things for the poor and needy, and fill the land with knowledge and understanding, and break every yoke/ But our country has, within the last four years, become almost as isolated, though not as weak, as Judea, in the midst of military despotisms. Our old notions of law and liberty, in religion and in government, are shocked by acts and maxims which remind us of the Assyrian's boast, that 4 By the grace of my god Assarac I have done it,' or, 4 By the strength of my hand, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent.' And while the political moralist now, as in Isaiah's day, recognises a needful discipline for each nation in these things, and asks himself what cause his own country can show why she should wholly escape it, he thinks — we all think at times — of the possibility of a contest in which not our mere lives, or even the life of our nation, but the life ■ — all that deserves the name of life — of the world itself, will be at stake : nor is the faith wanting among us that, in such a contest, God will have work for 4 his Englishmen,' as Milton calls us. Men's various tempers, and the changeable events of the day, may variously incline, or disincline, them to believe that the contest will be one with fleets and armies : but no one doubts that — in the one sense or the other — a war of principles is at hand, or rather begun already. And, if so, it is worth our while to inquire what we may learn of those principles in a book which professes to set them forth in direct form, and with a practical, and for us illustrative, application to the political events of the writer's own time. If the principles of Isaiah

PREFACE.

ix are the true ones, his demonstration of them will not be the less clear and instructive, because his diagram is the simple constitution, and the little state, of Judea, and we are interested in the commonwealth of England, with its complicated organisation and mighty power.

The reader must not, however, suppose that I have employed the writings of Isaiah to set forth and enforce some system of dogmas, political or theological, of my own. I have applied myself to the prophet, simply to learn from him whatever I might find he had to teach an English citizen : I have taken the book as it stands: and, while availing myself of the stores of thought and learning which the commentators of various schools have provided, I have, to the best of my ability, handled the book itself by the method of the Mebuhrs and the Grotes, and treated it as they — with thorough freedom and thorough reverence — treat the classical books. Wherever the method led, I have followed : and I now offer the sketch-map of my route to any one who may intend to take the same road for himself, and be willing to accept such help as it can give. If he finds its use real, he will, I trust, pardon some repetitions of statement which, if not inevitable to my plan, I have not had the skill to avoid.

The special, but important, question, as to the genuineness of parts of the book ; which has been debated on theological and speculative grounds during the last sixty years, but on which each school still refuses to accept the conclusion of the other ; I have ventured to examine by the same — the positive — method. With what result, the reader will judge.

PREFACE.

I have given, in their proper places, the latest readings of the Cuneiform Inscriptions according to Colonel Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks ; and have shown their bearings upon the Jewish accounts, as well as upon the notices in the classical writers, and in Berosus and the other Oriental annalists of whom a few fragments have come down to us : - — so far as relates to the times I have treated of. But I have been careful to distinguish our main standing-ground ; which is independent of the Inscriptions, and will hold firm though the present interpretations of these should hereafter be set aside in part, or altogether. Of this, however, the best authorities have the least expectation ; and, in addition to what others have published on the subject, Mr. Norris, of the Asiatic Society, permits me to give, with the weight of his name, the following note, in which he states the case more lucidly, I think, than has yet been done : —

" I believe the general tenour of the reading of Assyrian monuments is quite correct, about as correct as would be the reading of a Latin historical document by an intelligent Italian, who knew no more of Latin than what he might have learned through a general study of antiquities, and a comparison with the roots and forms of his own tongue : and it must be remembered that the monuments we have from Assyria are couched in the very plainest and simplest language. The reading of foreign names too is, I believe, accurate : of native names we have less certainty, as it appears to have been the practice of the writers rather to indicate a name than to spell it : — -to designate their monarchs rather as the favourites of this or that particular god or goddess, than

PREFACE.

as having vulgar names, to be written with common letters. Hezekiah, Menahem, Jehu, &c. I believe to be quite sure, and there is reason to suppose that other foreign names are equally ascertained : but monograms of gods are much less manageable, though even here we have now and then collateral aids which render probabilities all but certainties."

Such collateral aids are found in the coincidence of the Hebrew, and fragmentary Greek, accounts — confirmed in one case by a local name — with those statements of the Inscriptions which, being written in the ordinary manner, have been deciphered by the ordinary methods. Thus, within the pile of ruins which bore the name of Sarghun as late as the Arab conquest, were found inscriptions which state, among other things, that the builder was king of Assyria and Babylon, and swept away Samaria, and reduced Tyre and Ashdod ; and the annals of his successor relate, that he invaded Judea in order to compel Hezekiah to pay his accustomed tribute, and defeated the kings of Egypt and Meroe, who came to help their Jewish ally :— with various details of names and facts, corresponding with those of the Hebrew history. And, if it be admitted that these names and facts can be so far deciphered, the conclusion is inevitable, that these two Assyrian kings, under whatever monograms their own names are concealed, were the Sargon and Sennacherib of Isaiah.

CHAPTER I. The Greek Orator. — The Hebrew Prophet. — The modern Preacher

— Schools of the Prophets. — The Book of Isaiah — its Arrangement — its Unity. — Hypothetical and positive Criticism. — Niebuhr's Canons - Page 1

Chap. II

The Book of Isaiah — its Title. — Date of Chapter i. — Prophetic Imagination. — Hebrew Oratory rhythmical. — Parallels in other Nations.

— Contents of Chapter i. — Times of Uzziah and Jotham. — Forms and Spirit. — National Brotherhood. — Political Ideals - - 14

Chap. III

Isaiah ii., iii., iv. Hebrew Genius imaginative rather than logical. — Preterite and Future Tenses in Hebrew. — The last Days. — Contrast of the ideal and actual State of the Nation. — Foreign Influences. — Private Idolatry. — Political Materialism. — National Decay. — Laws of God's Government of the World. — Good and evil of Commerce. — Hebrew Matrons. — Female Luxury — its Punishment. — The Branch of the Lord. — The restored though humbled Nation - -32

Chap. IV

Isaiah v. Coming Woes. — Fusing Power of Imagination. — Hebrew Idyll. — Ancient Fertility of Judea — present Barrenness. — The Vineyard of the Lord of hosts. — Selfishness in an Aristocracy. Rights and Duties of Landowners. — Property a Trust — Hebrew and English Laws of Entail. — Word and Work of the Lord. — God a Constitutional Ruler. — Abuse of Words by worldly Men. — Thucydides. — Fulfilment of Isaiah's Threats to his Cotemporaries — and to all Ages since. — Grotius on Prophecy - - 49 xiv

CONTENTS.

Chap. V

Isaiah vi. The Prophet's Commission. — The Temple — its Scenes. — The Vision. — Insight into the Life of Things. — Prophecy rational and intelligible. — God the real and actual King. — Plural of Majesty.

— Holiness of God — His Justice. — Calvinism - - Page 67

Chap. VI

Isaiah vii. The Accession of Ahaz. — Political State of King and People.

— ' The Lord said.' — Topography of Jerusalem. — The Virgin conceiving. — The Incarnation an universal Idea — how realised. — Loss of Hebrew Independence. — Isaiah not a Magician - 84

Chap. VII

Isaiah viii. — ix. 7. The Symbolical Family. — Ancient and modern Habits of Public Men. — Siloah and Euphrates. — The Panic of Judah, and its Remedy. — Galilee of the Gentiles. — The National Gloom. — The Great Light. — The Messiah. — Gradual Development of the Prophet's Anticipations - - - - - - 100

Chap. VIII

Isaiah ix. 8. — xii. Epic Unity. — Obstinate Energy of the Hebrew Race. Lawlessness of the Ten Tribes. — Legalism of Judah. — The King of Assyria. — Gods in the Image of Men. — The Scourge of Nations,, and its Wielder. — Ancient Roads. — The King of the Stock of Jesse. — The Golden Age. — Fusion of Conflicting Elements in a Nation. — Consequences of the Revolt of Ephraim. — Deportation of Jews in Isaiah's Time. — The Universal Church — . its Relation to the World.

— The Water of Salvation - - - - - 1 1 1

Chap. IX

Isaiah xiii., xiv. Genuineness of the Prophecies on Babylon. — Sceptical Criticism — its Origin and Progress — not Positive or Constructive. — Orthodox Criticism. — Results of the Controversy. — Traditional Comments confounded with the Text. — Hebrew Historical Notices of Babylon — Assyrian Notices. — Babylon sacked in Isaiah's Time by Persians, and perhaps by Medes. — Babylon a Diagram or Ideograph. — Arguments from Style. — Suspense better than hasty Decision. — Final Overthrow of the Empire of Force - 1 40

Chap. X

Isaiah xiv. 28. Philistia. — Origin of the Philistines — their Extermination commanded by Moses Law of Conquests and Exterminations.

CONTENTS.

XV

— British Conquest of India. — Evil not Eternal. — Philistia's Relations with Judah — with Assyria. — Sargon and Sennacherib in Philistia - - - - - - Page 163

Chap. XI

Isaiah xv., xvi. Moab — probably reduced by Shalmaneser. — History of Moab — Picture of its Overthrow. — Tribute of Lambs due to Judah.

— Friendship with Judah advised. — Modern Distinction between the animal and spiritual Life. — Corporate Unity of a State - 174

Chap. XII

Isaiah xvii., xviii. Damascus, Ephraim, and Ethiopia. — Probable Date and Unity of this Prophecy. — The Hush of Nations. — The general Panic. — Worldly Alliances. — God's Deliverance. — Notion of this Prophecy being a Myth — not well founded - - 183

Chap. XIII

Isaiah xix. Egyptian Dynasties in the Time of Isaiah — Cotemporary or Successive. — Historical Notices from various Sources. — Anarchy. — Invasion of Sargon. — Sack of Thebes. — Treaty between Egypt and Assyria. — Multitude of Gods and of Castes unfavourable to Political Unity. — Exclusive Wisdom of Priesthood. — The City of Destruction.

— Alexander and Ptolemy. — Temple of Onias. — Septuagint. — Philo. — Church of Alexandria. — Bacon on Prophecy - - 189

Chap. XIV

Isaiah xx, Sargon, Shalmaneser, Tartan. — The Siege of Ashdod. — Shebna's Policy of Alliances. — Isaiah's Symbolical Protest against it — he walks naked and barefoot. — Isaiah's Policy probably more Expedient — certainly more befitting Israel's Place in Universal History

Chap. XV

Isaiah xxi. A Vision in a Dream or Trance. — Bible Meaning of Inspiration. — Divination. — Ancient Oracles. — Special Powers of Nations and Individuals. — One Greece, one Shakspeare. — Discernment of Political Effects in their Causes less possible now than formerly. —

— ' The Desert of the Sea.' — The Prophet a Watchman. — The Tribes of Arabia — subjected by Assyria - 202

Chap. XVI

Isaiah xxii. Political Parties at Jerusalem. — Shebna and the Majority, j — Eliakim and the Minority. — Isaiah's Attack on Shebna. — Preparaxvi

CONTENTS.

tions for the Siege. — Topography of Jerusalem. — Site of Sion. — Spirit of the People and King. — Fall of Shebna. — Sufferings of Modern Nations from Invasion. — Moral and Religious Results. — Prussia. — Switzerland. - Page 211

Chap. XVII

Isaiah xxiii. The Phenicians — Historical Notices — Their Trade —

— Carriers of Philosophy and Politics — Relations with Israel. — The Tyrian Hercules — their Religion Political, not Natural. — Siege of the Island-Tyre by Shalmaneser — by Nebuchadnezzar — by Alexander — present State. — Authorship of the Prophecy. — The Dispenser of Crowns. — The Queen of Cities dishonoured. — Tyre forgotten Seventy Years — shall sing as an Harlot - - 227

Chap. XVIII

Isaiah xxiv. — xxvii. Utter Desolation of Judah — actually caused by the Assyrian Armies. — National Covenant, broken by Ahaz — he shuts the Temple. — God's Counsels of Old. — Moab put for Assyria. — Patience in National Calamities. — The Wife divorced, and taken back. — The Silver Trumpet sounded. — Expansion of Isaiah's Views - 239

Chap. XIX

Isaiah xxviii, — xxxv. The Political, Moral, and Religious State and Prospects of Judah. — Ariel, the Lion of God. — Worldly State-Craft.

— 1'rue Insight. — The Embassy to Egypt. — Persecution of the Prophets. — Dumb Idols and the Unseen Teacher. — The Holy Solemnities.

— Talmudical Account of Festal Processions. — The Stroke of Doom on Sennacherib. — The Real Deliverer. — Social Influence of Women.

— The Siege raised. — Edom put for Assyria. — Return of the ransomed Captives - - - - - - - - 248

Chap. XX

Isaiah xxxvi., xxxvii. Historical Events of Sennacherib's Invasion and Retreat — his Letter — how answered. — Unconscious Genius in the Narrative. — Rab-Shakeh's Theology. — Isaiah's Inspiration. — ' The Incarnate Wrath of God.' — Zion's Defiance. — The 'Sign* of the Spontaneous Crops. — The Destroying Angel. — Sethos delivered by Vulcan. — Value of Sennacherib's Annals, if established — their Altered Tone after this Year. — German War of Freedom. — History teaches a Belief in Providence. — Niebuhr. — Grote - - - 271

Chap. XXI

Isaiah xxxviii. The Sickness of Hezekiah. — Importance of his Life to his Nation. — his Desire of Recovery not purely Selfish. — Fear of

CONTENTS.

xvii

Death in Old Times. — Christ's Resurrection. — The Sign of the Shadow on the Sun-Dial. — Two Accounts — the Cotemporary One not Miraculous. — Bible to be treated like other Books. — Not so treated by Sceptics. — The Hymn of Hezekiah - Page 285

Chap. XXII

Isaiah xxix. : The Embassy from Babylon. — Chronicle of Eusebius. — Berosus. — Sennacherib's Annals. — Books of Kings and Chronicles. — Value of the Latter. — The Sin of Hezekiah. — Trusting God in Politics. — Modern History. — Niebuhr and Naples. — Colletta. — Reverence for Great Men. — Nations and Rulers re-act on each other. — Hezekiah's Reception of the Embassy. — Isaiah's Denunciation. — ' Apres moi le Deluge.' — Prosperity of England. — Religious Temper of our Statesmen. — Mr. Gladstone - 2p5

Chap. XXIII

Isaiah xl — lxvi.: Question of the Genuineness of the last Chapters of Isaiah. — Pseudo-Isaian Hypothesis. — The Name of Cyrus. — Coresh, and the Lord's Servant. — Modern Explanations. — Moller's Interpretation. — Doubts and Certainties. — The Positive Method. — Coherence of earlier and later Prophecies. — The earlier not fulfilled as Isaiah had expected. — Enlargement of his Views. — Finite and Infinite Ideals. — Facts for Induction as to the Nature of Prophecy. — Note on Strauss, and the Application of Positive Criticism to Christianity ------- 3io

Chap. XXIV

The Vision of the Captivity and Deliverance. — The Transitory and the Permanent. — God in Nature, and in Human Society. — The Powerless Gods of the Nations. — The Jewish Institution of the Redeemer. — Its Effect on the more enlightened Jews. — The Deliverer, King, and Teacher. — The Work of Isaiah and Hezekiah. — Its Success and its Failure. — Jewish Idea of the Messiah. — Its Relation to their Political Life. — Atonement a Human Fact. — A rational Idea. — Union of Half-Truths. — The Messiah of the Gospel. — The Prophets and the Apostles. — Isaiah's Science of Politics — His Death — His Triumph - - - - - 332 a

HEBjREW politics,

CHAPTER I.

THE GREEK ORATOR. — THE HEBREW PROPHET. THE MODERN PREACHER.

SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. ITS ARRANGE- MENT — ITS UNITY. HYPOTHETICAL AND POSITIVE CRITICISM. NIE-

BUHR'S CANONS.

The Spartan king told Xerxes that he was no match for the Greeks, e because they, though free, had a master — the law — over them, which they feared more than the Persians did his despotic will.' And the Athenian orator, looking back on the great struggle after a generation or two had passed, gave his countrymen the same explanation of their fathers' success ( against the barbarian myriads of the king of Asia : ' he pointed out how ( they had done such noble and wonderful deeds, because they were already organised into a free commonwealth in which the good were honoured, and the bad restrained, by law; because they knew and held that it should be left to brute beasts to control each other by mutual violence, such as oriental kings and subjects lived by, but that it became men to define rights by law, to persuade to its maintenance or expansion by rational and instructive speech, and in their conduct to follow the guidance of both these, — the law their king, and speech their teacher.'

The orator enunciated an eternal truth. Had it been less than eternal, it could not be still keeping its ground, and still sustaining the life of every nation which holds to it, or

HEBREW POLITICS.

indeed, although we (not to judge of others) hold never so imperfectly to it: for though we are ready enough to thank God that we English are not as other men, we might more reasonably reflect how often we are all on the verge of doing what lies in us to disturb the perfect play of those two forces, of entire obedience to the law and absolute right of discussion, according as either may check some private opinion or class interest ; and how seldom we remember that one step beyond that verge lies the region of mutual violence with the correlates of despotism and insurrection in which its vitality consists. But this truth, this universal law of human society, has not only outlasted the polities of Greece, but was not first discovered there, as the Athenians supposed ; nor was the exercise of this master right and power of words tf so originally and peculiarly the possession of Greeks alone among all living creatures, that' (as their panegyrist goes on to say) 6 if any other people did acquire it from them, this only extended the name of Grecian to distinctions of mind as well as race, so that they were called by it who shared their education rather than those who had their blood.' Another people had been set, many centuries earlier, to work out some of the same, with some very different, problems of human society, and under not wholly dissimilar conditions, internal and external : and while the Hebrew as well as the Greek could have pointed to various other proofs that his was a commonwealth, or constitutionally organised body-politic, as distinguished from the inorganic despotisms of Assyria or Persia, the one fixed on the same marks as the other did, as the characteristic ones: the 'Nomos and Logos ' of the Greek were anticipated by their true counterparts the e Law and the Prophets ' of the Hebrew.

Isaiah, no less than Demosthenes, might have said that it was the. office of the political speaker and adviser, 6 to see events in their beginnings, to discern their purport and tendencies from the first, and to forewarn his countrymen accordingly ; to confine within the narrowest bounds those political vices of habitual procrastination, supineness, ignorance, and love of strife, which are inevitable in all states ; and to dispose men's minds instead to enlightened concord and unanimity, and to the zealous discharge of their social duties : ' and he too might have added,

INSTITUTIONS FOR NATIONAL CULTURE.

e All these things have I done, and no creature can say that I have ever left any of them undone ; I do not shrink from your scrutiny, be it never so strict.' * But there were differences as well as resemblances between the orator and the prophet, and we must look for further illustrations elsewhere.

If we were to describe a nation, in the political constitution of which was found an incorporated and endowed body of men, with the business of caring for all those interests of the nation which did not fall under the heads of trade, agriculture, war, or domestic and feudal (that is, patriarchal) government ; who practised the more difficult branches of medicine, law, and statesmanship ; who bestowed a religious consecration on all states of national, family, and personal life — delivering the crown and sceptre to the sovereign in trust from the King of kings, joining the hands of man and wife in the name of God, and enrolling, as a citizen, the babe who has just before been received into the congregation ; who claimed the right, and acknowledged the duty, of educating every member of the nation to apprehend his privileges and obligations, not only as a citizen, but as a man, and of teaching him that his greatest dignity and happiness, and his truest and deepest communion with his fellow-men and with God, belong to him as a man, and will be his in proportion as this, his proper humanity, is renewed in him ; and who rescued one day in each week from worldly employments, devoting it to public worship and holy rest, and thus providing the opportunity and means for keeping up that consecration of the nation, and for carrying on that education of the people : — if we were to draw such a picture, it would suit equally the old constitutions of England and the other nations of Christendom, and that of the Jewish nation, whence their model was, no doubt, derived. And though decay and growth have conspired to efface many of the original characteristics of the c Church of England,' and to provide other means for the execution of many of its old functions, it is