At that particular juncture, then, in the history of that part of the world to which our attention has just been recalled, Moses had to deal with the material we are examining. Still limiting our inquiry to historical objects, historically investigated, what he had to do at that time was to make these mixed and unpromising materials into a people—a work that was from first to last entirely a moral one: as hard a task as was ever undertaken, the very idea of which has no place in the minds of us moderns. He was thoroughly aware of the difficulty of his task. Had it ever been heard before, and, after some thousands of years, we may add, has it ever been heard since, of a nation taken out of another nation, and, according even to the Hebrew accounts, the object of which is not historical, taken chiefly from the servile class of another nation, and yet welded into a true people, with the strongest, the most enduring, and the most distinctive characteristics? What material was ever more unlikely? And yet was ever success more complete? A scion, not a vigorous and healthy offset, but a bruised sprout, was so planted, and surrounded with such influences, as that it took good root, grew vigorously, sent forth strong and spreading branches, and bore, and even still bears, its own peculiar fruit. Nowhere in Europe in these days, except it may be to some extent in northern Germany, is any attempt made to fashion in this way the mind, and sentiments, and instincts of a people, which, and not the amount of population, or of wealth, is what truly constitutes a people. Why, then, did Moses, in this great attempt, omit entirely the one thought we consider the most potent of all? His object was to make a people. It was not primarily to reveal a religion. We come to this conclusion from an observation of the facts, from an analysis of the Dispensation, and from taking into account the principle, that religion is for man, and not man for religion. But a nation, especially such a nation as he contemplated, is made only by moral and intellectual means. The revelation, therefore, of a religion was not at all an accident, or in any sense something which might be, according to circumstances, included in, or excluded from, his plan. It was a necessity—a necessary part of the one means for the one object. These materials could not have been made into a people without a code, nor could there have then been a code without a religion. The question, then, before him was not simply—as is generally supposed—to promulgate a religion, but to make the mass of living integers before him into a nation by a code, sanctioned by a religion. The religious part of the question, therefore, was limited to the consideration of what form of religion would best effect this?