CHAPTER I. Page. The Promised Land 179 CHAPTER II. The Pilgrimage 197 CHAPTER III. The Day of Preparation for the Passover 226 CHAPTER IV. The Paschal Lamb 259 CHAPTER V. The Day after the Passover 275 CHAPTER VI. The Remaining Days of Unleavened Bread 290 CHAPTER VII. Close of the Feast of the Passover 313 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The present work contains a picture of the Jewish people, in which their ecclesiastical and civil constitution, their social and domestic life are represented, as they existed at the time when the advent of the Messiah was at hand. From his boyhood the author had been inspired, by the perusal of similar works on Pagan antiquities, with the wish to exhibit such a picture of the Jewish nation; and, encouraged by men whose opinion he valued, he had at an early period of life formed the resolution to undertake it, had sketched the general outline of his work, and even executed particular parts of it. Just at this time, however, it pleased the Disposer of events to call him from the situation of leisure in which he had hitherto been placed, to the execution of an office, whose multiplied duties left him little time for any other occupations; and he was compelled to abandon the design which he had so long cherished. It was not without pain that he resolved to make this sacrifice of an object which had long directed and animated his studies. The images which it had left in his mind recurred from time to time, and revived his former wishes. In particular, whenever he had occasion, in the discharge of his pastoral duty, to narrate the histories of the Bible, the question arose in his mind, whether it might not be possible to delineate the peculiar system of life in which these writings originated, according to the picture which they had left in his own mind, without descending to all the minutiæ of antiquarian detail? In pursuance of this thought, he has devoted his few and interrupted hours of leisure, to the work which he now offers to the indulgence of the reader, for which he hopes with the more confidence, having had such large experience of it on a former occasion.