There is, in truth, a third theory, which has every appearance of probability according to Bibli cal data, and which is superseding its more partial predecessors in the acceptance of the learned. God, who sees the end from the beginning, from the very first consistently arranged his dispensa tions, and gave them development ; until, in the fulness of time, the Christian dispensation, which was the model as well as the end of those which preceded it, explained their characteristic features uo less than their typical functions. The light of Christianity, reflected upon the scattered notices of patriarchal rites in the earlier Scriptures, enables us to perceive the close relation between the Mosaic and the pre-Mosaic ordinances of divine worship, and also their typical connection with the gospel. In the Mosaic institutions we find in fact a repub lication, in probably a fuller and certainly a more explicit form, of the primitive ceremonial which God had given to the patriarchs. Now, we saw at the beginning of this article, where we re ferred to Mr. Gladstone's work on Homer, that in process of time the patriarchal worship was disin tegrated and corrupted. Out of this disintegration arose the primeval forms of the heathen callus, which in every country retained a certain likeness to its divine and uncorrupted original. This like ness, it may be, presumed, would be kept up only in normal and prominent rites, while diversity would operate mainly in less important points—a presumption which is sufficient to account for all the phenomena contended for in the theories both of Spencer and his opponents. It was not the purpose of the author of the Pentateuch to narrate particulars of God's first gift of religious rites to man. He rather intimates by scattered hints the existence of a sacrificial system with its priesthood (see instances mentioned early in this article), and that by no means confined to Shem's posterity from whom sprang Abraham. A remarkable pas sage in Ezek. xxviii. x1-19 undoubtedly refers to the 7:yrian nation as having at first possessed a holy worship— sanctuaries,' afterwards 'defiled' (ver. 18), and as having been perfect in their ways,' until iniquity corrupted them (ver. 15). In this period of their primeval purity, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty' (ver. 12), resembling the ex cellence of Eden, the garden of the Lord' (ver. 13), they seem to have had a sacred ritual, which, in grandeur and apparatus, reminds us of the beauty of some of the Mosaic details. They had a minstrelsy of tabrets and pipes,' and ornaments of precious stones, singularly like those of the breastplate of Aaron, which might possibly have adorned a primitive hierarchy (ver. 13 ; comp. Exod. xxxix. 9, x3). Moreover, with imagery which brings back to our memory the solemnities of Sinai, they are described as having been set by God' upon his holy mountain,' and, wonderful to add, they had their anointed cherub,"which covered' perhaps another mercy-seat, and sym bolised the divine presence (ver. 14). We must refer the reader for further information on this in teresting allusion to a pre-Mosaic callus, to an article in The journal of Sacred Literature of April x86o (on Sinai, Kadesh, and Mount Hoc '), and another in The Christian Remembrancer of October in the same year (on the theory of the Mosaic system '). We will only here add that the Tyrians in the days of their purity, previous to their settlement in Phcenicia, probably dwelt south of Palestine, and possibly were the first to whom the Almighty vouchsafed his glorious presence upon the holy mountain of God,' or Horeb, that moun tain which was again consecrated by the divine appearance to Moses and Israel, and yet again to Elijah ; nor, indeed, would it be far-fetched to conjecture that the earliest of these revelations was not unaccompanied by some such solemnity as we have above seen inaugurating the Mosaic legislation in after times. What else is the mean ing of Ezekiel's statement : Thou didst walk up and down in the midst of the stones [rocks] of fire?' as if Horeb and its companions had blazed before the fires of Sinai were kindled. Calling, then, to mind the near relationship of the Tyrians and Egyptians, the former from Cush and the latter from Mizraim, both sons of Ham (Gen. x. 6), we have, in this Scriptural record of a primitive Hamite worship of God, not only a strong confir mation of the general view we have advanced above—that the patriarchal system was substan tially the same as the Mosaic—but a highly credible solution of the difficulty over which Spencer and his opponents so earnestly contended. We can see at once how the Egyptians became possessed of such cherubic forms, ages and ages (as the monuments testify) before the Mosaic times. .. . Egypt had not invented the cherubic idea or shape. Moses was not indebted to a debasing idolatry for the form in which, under divine guidance, he cast the symbols of the divine presence. God's gracious
gift of cherubic presence and forms had been per verted. It was only set in its ancient place again, when it appeared in the Mosaic system. The same may be said of the Urim and Thummim. . . . Here, too, Egypt had no doubt derived the entire idea from the ancient and pure system under which she had grown up [in company with her Tyrian kinsmen]. Moses was only instructed to reinstate the mystic jewels. . .. And this is the key to many other coincidences which have been pointed out between the Mosaic and the Egyptian religious institutions' (Christ. Remembr., as above, p. 443). We are now in a position to sum up our evidence, and conclude our article.
Conclusion.—As we began, so we end with the assertion of God's uniformity of plan and aim in the development of his dispensations. All the earlier stages of his divine work on earth led on ward to the perfection of the gospel, of which the Mosaic ritual (Heb. viii. 5) and temple-services (i Chron. xxviii. 12, 19) were no less than di vinely-inspired sketches and patterns (comp. the criact [or etching] in the law, and the EiKthp [or full picture] in the gospel of God's heavenly truth ; Heb. x. I, with the ancient dictum—' Umbra in lege ; Imago in Evangelio ; Veritas in ccelo'). This view gives order and simplicity to the revelations of the O. T. and N. T., and establishes their harmony and coherence against the semi-Manichicanism of the Spencerian doctrine. (For a refutation of Spencer's gloss on the important passage, Ezek. xx. 25, re ferred to above, it is worth while consulting Dey ling's Dissertation, De statutis non bonir, in his Obs. Sacr. ii. 304-32 I. Moreover, while this view raises the Hebrew Scriptures to a level with the Christian, it gives us confidence in applying the details of the Mosaic system to explain the great subject of all the inspired record, the sacrificial work of Christ our Saviour. We do not say that the New Testament is defective or incomplete on this subject of paramount interest, but with St. Paul's writings before us, we cannot err in the conviction that the greatness of Christ's work cannot be adequately understood, unless we bring to its elucidation that divinely-provided commen tary of the great Mosaic code, which is everywhere presupposed by our blessed Lord and his apostles, as the basis of their own instruction and doctrine. Appendix.—Much has been written on the prin.
ciple of classification which should be observed in arranging a digest of the Mosaic statutes. The ordinary one, which divides them into the three heads of moral, ceremonial, and political laws, has been objected to, as being unsuited to the charac ter of the Mosaic institutions, which are said to obliterate any such supposed separation of laws, and refer all to first principles, depending on the will of God and the nature of man (Smith's Diet. of the Bible, ii. 69). It is quite true, as the thought ful writer of that portion of the dictionary observes, that ' any single ordinance might have at once a moral, a ceremonial, and a political bearing,' and we would endorse his caution here. But we fear that the logical difficulty underlies every arrange ment more or less. In his own able analysis into civil, criminal, judicial, and ecclesiastical laws, we encounter at starting an instance which repeats itself at the head both of the civil and the criminal categories. Besides this objection, with which, as being inevitable, we find no fault, there is another, which renders his division, in our opinion, less suitable to the Mosaic code than the older one, which it professedly supersedes. The 'ten com mandments are the basis and substance of all the enactments, whether of the Book of the Covenant, the legislation of Sinai, and the laws of Kadesh, or of the Deuteronomic edition of the code. Our structural analysis above has proved this to be the case. No digest is, to say the least, characteristic, which does not put the great Decalogue at its head. Philo long ago did this (De Decalogo [Works, by Turnebus and Hoeschel], p. 746), when he distinguished THE TEN spoken by God himself from those which were promulgated by the agency of his prophet, 'and which are all referred to those others —rots Se Sul Tor, rpoOlrou irdvras hatvous dva0eperr5-aL. After a discussion, there fore, of the general character of the Decalogue, Philo proceeds to consider in consecutive treatises the other particular laws, as deductions from the ten successively. The threefold division which Moses himself makes of his laws on several promi nent occasions (as at the end of the Sinaitic section, Lev. xxvi. 46, and in the recapitulation of Deute ronomy, vi. 1 ; vii. s), has been sometimes sup posed to justify the usual triple category ; as i'