The progeny of Ham, the son of Noah, we find, peopled Egypt, Medea, Chaldea, Phœnicia, and several other adjoining countries. It will be remembered that two of the three sons of Noah possessed these countries which the folly of idolatry overflowed; whilst it was in the line of Shem alone, that the true faith was continued. The Mosaiac narrative is chiefly descriptive of events which occurred in the posterity of that patriarch, because from it the righteous line of the faithful in Abraham, David, Solomon, and ultimately Christ, proceeded. Thus more than two-thirds of the inhabitants of the world were gross idolators: we often find the Omniscience of the Highest forewarning the sacred line to avoid its fascinations. Nay, when, upon more occasions than one, the descendants of the faithful forgot themselves, and those admonitions of the Creator were neglected, we find the sacred race flying before the face of puny foes, which defeat was declared to be from their having prostrated themselves before strange gods: they were bowed thus low in battle. Not to mention their disobedience immediately beneath Mount Sinai, which protracted their journey through the wilderness to forty years, which, perhaps, under other circumstances, would not have required as many days. All those troubles, their subsequent captivities, and national afflictions, were the produce of disobedience. This is one of those means which retributive justice resorts to punish wilful sin; so, however, it was with the seed of Abraham. And so it is presumed to be with the present race of men; either immediate or remote punishment vindicates the Omnipotence of Heaven. From the frequent maledictions we discover in the sacred volume against idol worship, we cannot doubt that it was peculiarly offensive to the Deity. that the great majority of the world were addicted to this proscribed practice is equally certain. And as the Spirit of Truth had declared in the decalogue, that “It would not be worshipped under any form in the heavens above, in the earth below, or in the waters under the earth;” so was image-worship, and consequently the construction of such things, forbidden. We discover that as this mania infected all nations, tongues, and people, so did not the Israelites escape it; but immediately after their departure from Egypt we find an exact similitude of the sacred calf of the Egyptians, cast in melted gold, which they constructed below Mount Sinai. In Egypt, metallic statues, as well as those of stone, must have existed anterior to that event, as they actually had done to our own knowledge, and long before idolatry had made its appearance in Egypt, it had existed in Chaldea, as already shown. As that worship had first its being in Chaldea, so had the art of statuary its origin in that country; it was improved, perhaps, in Egypt, and perfected in Greece, from the time of Pericles to that of Alexander, commonly called the Great. DRAWING. THE HUMAN FIGURE.