numerous, so warlike, nor so well instructed in the arts of civilized life
as many others in the same quarter of the globe, gradually increased into
a powerful community, became distinguished by a system of doctrines and
usages different from those of all the surrounding tribes; retaining it,
too, amid the numerous changes of fortune to which they were subjected,
and finally impressing its leading principles upon the most enlightened
nations of Asia and of Europe. At a remote era Abraham crosses the
Euphrates, a solitary traveller, not knowing whither he went, but obeying
a divine voice, which called him from among idolaters to become the father
of a new people and of a purer faith, at a distance from his native
country. His grandson Jacob, a "Syrian ready to perish," goes down into
Egypt with a few individuals, where his descendants, although evil
entreated and afflicted, became a "nation, great, mighty, and populous,"
and whence they were delivered by the special interposition of Heaven. In
prosperity and adversity they are still the objects of the same vigilant
Providence which reserved them for a great purpose to be accomplished in
the latter days; while the Israelites themselves, as if conscious that
their election was to be crowned with momentous results, still kept their
thoughts fixed on Palestine, as the theatre of their glory, not less than
as the possession of their tribes.

We accordingly see them at one period in bondage, the victims of a
relentless tyranny, and menaced with complete extirpation; but the hope
of enjoying the land promised to their fathers never ceased to animate
their hearts, for they trusted that God would surely visit them in the
house of their affliction, and, in his appointed time, carry them into
the inheritance of peace and rest. At a later epoch we behold them swept
away as captives by the hands of idolaters, who used all the motives which
spring from fear and from interest to secure their compliance with a
foreign worship; but rejecting all such inducements, they still continued