PROVIDENCE AS MANIFESTED THROUGH ISRAEL. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring; JOHN x. 16. ISSUED BY THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION; AND ADDRESSED TO THE JEWS. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 3, WALBROOK BUILDINGS, WALBROOK : SOLD ALSO BY ROWLAND HUNTER, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 1833. PROVIDENCE AS MANIFESTED THROUGH ISRAEL. AN ADDRESS TO THE DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM. SECTION I.-Spirit of Judaism. THE peculiarity by which your nation has ever been honourably distinguished from all others is an aversion to form systems of religion. While, among heathen nations, princes and priests formed laws and created mythologies which the ignorant multitude adopted as soon as offered, your lawgivers dispensed only what they had received from above, and your fathers required evidence that the dispensation was from above, before they would adopt it. While the mysteries of paganism were concealed in the recesses of Egyptian temples, your fathers were assembled at the foot of Sinai, listening to the thunders and watching for the disclosures of the cloud in which the glory of God was shrouded. Your prophets and priests bowed themselves before God as children who would know the will of their father; while the wisest of less favoured nations withdrew into grottoes and groves, or approached oracles of their own institution, pretending to commune with nymphs or demigods, but in reality seeking to invest the imaginations of their own hearts with the sanctity of a supposed revelation from on high. The issues were evident to the whole world; the state of the Hebrew nation as to reli B |