command, and not a delusion, might be made certain to Abraham's mind, by means we do not comprehend, but which we know to be within the power of _him_ who made our souls as well as bodies, and who can control and direct every faculty of the human mind: and we may be assured, that, if he was pleased to reveal himself so miraculously, he would not leave a possibility of doubting whether it was a real or an imaginary revelation: thus the sacrifice of Abraham appears to be clear of all superstition, and remains the noblest instance of religious faith and submission that was ever given by a mere man: we cannot wonder that the blessings bestowed on him for it should have been extended to his posterity. This book proceeds with the history of Isaac, which becomes very interesting to us, from the touching scene I have mentioned; and still more so, if we consider him as the type of our Saviour: it recounts his marriage with Rebecca--the birth and history of his two sons, Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, and Esau, the father of the Edomites or Idumeans--the exquisitely affecting story of Joseph and his brethren--and of his transplanting the Israelites into Egypt, who there multiplied to a great nation. In EXODUS you read of a series of wonders wrought by the Almighty, to rescue the oppressed Israelites from the cruel tyranny of the Egyptians, who, having first received them as guests, by degrees reduced them to a state of slavery. By the most peculiar mercies and exertions in their favour, God prepared his chosen people to receive, with reverent and obedient hearts, the solemn restitution of those primitive laws, which probably he had revealed to Adam and his immediate descendants, or which, at least, he had made known by the dictates of conscience, but which, time, and the degeneracy of mankind, had much obscured. This important revelation was made to them in the wilderness of Sinah: there, assembled before the burning mountain, surrounded "with blackness, and darkness, and tempest," they heard the awful voice of God pronounce the eternal law, impressing it on their hearts with circumstances of terror, but without those encouragements and those excellent promises, which were afterwards offered to mankind by Jesus Christ. Thus were the great laws of morality restored to the Jews, and through them transmitted to other nations; and by that means a great restraint was opposed to the torrent of vice and impiety, which began to prevail over the world. To those moral precepts, which are of perpetual and universal obligation, were superadded, by the ministration of Moses, many peculiar institutions, wisely adapted to different ends--either to fix the memory of those past deliverances, which were figurative of a future and far greater salvation--to place inviolable barriers between the Jews and the idolatrous nations, by whom they were surrounded--or, to be the civil law, by which the community was to be governed.