Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

state of things did not justify his conduct, Pharaoh might think it came very near to do it. He still found them increase; and more rapidly than when leading the easy life of shepherds. Under apprehension of the scenes that might follow a great increase of their numbers, soured as they were by his change of policy towards them, he was wrought up to the cruel purpose of destroying their male children.

The thing was cruel; but, while it cannot be too strongly condemned, we ought in all reason to recollect, that the exposing of infants has been done by many nations. The polished Greeks and Romans, until Christianity put a stop to it, often exposed their own children. The same is done now by pagan nations in the East. Pharaoh was a Pagan, and his conduct towards the infants of Israel was not worse than others have observed towards their own. There is a tribe in Hindostan who for ages have destroyed their female children, and, if I am rightly informed, do it now.

Moses did what was right, and acted by Divine direction: this needs not however prevent us from reflecting how Pharaoh, a Pagan, would naturally view his conduct. Moses was saved from death by the daughter of Pharaoh : he was educated at court, and in the very best manner. Soon after he was grown up, he was found interfering with the policy of the government towards the Hebrews. He fled, and remained abroad until the death of the king. But the new king was hardly seated on the throne, before he re-appeared, and, being joined by the leading men among the Hebrews, presented himself at court, and demanded that Israel should be allowed to go three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice. The man, the time, the manner, as well as the demand, were all likely to offend Pharoah. It is not needful to go over what took place at the several interviews.

Pharaoh, pressed by the plagues, tried to compound the matter. At one time he offered to let the men go, detaining the women and chil dren as hostages for their return. He proposed that they should sacrifice and keep the feast in the land. While Moses readily complied with Pharaoh's request to remove the plagues, he abated not one whit of his first demand; but rather rose than fell in it. He declared that they must take their families, their flocks and herds, with them; that they would not leave one hoof behind. It did not admit of a doubt, that they had no intention to return to slavery. They were for being free. Might not Pharaoh have feared, that Moses had in view to keep them for awhile in the wilderness,

provide them with arms,-train them to military service,-and then return to Egypt with his six hundred thousand slaves, transformed into warriors, breathing vengeance for their supposed wrongs? And may not a mistaken notion of his own safety have urged him to resist the demand?

cross the

Or, admitting that Moses intended to lead them to Canaan, might not Pharaoh have really concluded that the scheme was little short of madness? To attempt with a nation of slaves, without arms, without any experience in war, without provisions, to desert and attempt to dispossess the seven nations of Canaan, amounting to perhaps ten times their number; a warlike people, well armed, with a country filled with towers and cities "walled up to heaven!" was there ever such an attempt? A man in Moses' situation, educated in expectation of a throne, might be willing to attempt any thing, ra ther than live in obscurity. Ought Pharaoh to let a people under his authority be led on such an errand? Might he not think it was his duty, in kindness to them, to keep them where they were,--and to give them enough to eat and wear and do? And might he not think that all their

1

talk about being free, and complaining about their work, was produced by the intermeddling of Moses and Aaron? It really appears to me that he might happen to take up notions of that kind; and feel not a little provoked at Moses and Aaron, for spreading discontent among his slaves.

But there were still other diffi. culties. The Hebrews formed the great body of labourers in his kingdom. Moses insisted on taking them all off, on the same day. What a state of things this was calculated to produce in his kingdom! Would it not ruin it? And would it not ruin the Hebrews? They had been raised in slavery been unfit for self-government. He had found it necessary to employ overseers, and even to call in the aid of the scourge to overcome their idle habits. For a people with such habits, to be turned free all at once! might not Pharaoh think it would ruin them?-that they could not govern themselves? -that they would starve? and think that kindness to them would forbid turning them loose, as Moses demanded?

But we have no reason to think that Pharaoh was wholly without regard to the value of property. The Hebrews, as his labourers and artificers, were very valuable property. There were 600,000 labouring men, besides the women and children. From their doubling in less than fifteen years, there must have been a great many children. It will be a moderate calculation, to suppose that the men above the age of twenty, formed one-fourth of the whole. There were then three millions in all. Estimate these at three hundred dollars a piece, it amounts to 720,000,000 dollars : not to mention their cattle, and other property, which were very valuable. Now, is it to be wondered at, that Pharaoh felt reluctant to lose so much property? Nothing was said about buying their freedom. He was required

to give all up,-not to bear a part of the loss, and they the rest-he was to bear the whole! We can easily conceive how Pharaoh might have persuaded himself, that to lose so much property, and be deprived of all his labourers,—and have to set his own people to all the hard work in the city, and in the field, to which they were not accustomed, was really rather too much.

He might very possibly have thought, that if it was wrong at first to enslave the Hebrews, he at least was not to blame for it; that it was done long before he was born; that he found them in slavery, and held them as property; that the whole habits of the Egyptians was such now, that the evil of slavery was a kind of necessary evil; that they could not do without it; and that it was hard to make him pay for the faults of his fore-fathers, and to give up what he had received as property by inheritance.

There is another point deserving notice. Natural and personal rights were not then so well understood as now. Perhaps few, if any, then maintained the doctrines, that personal " liberty is an unalienable right," which no man has a warrant either to take or withhold from us, under the plea of a right of property. Less was given to Pharaoh, as to knowledge, than to us, and less was therefore to be expected.

As to the supposition that the miracles wrought made Pharaoh altogether inexcusable in refusing to comply with the demand, I admit it. But is it not equally true that those plagues, while they prove God's displeasure against Pharaoh and the Egyptians for enslaving Israel, go directly to prove the general truth, that all who enslave others, or hold them forcibly in slavery, do what is offensive to God? Pharaoh may have persuaded himself that Moses wrought his miracles by magic. Pharaoh was an ignorant Paga. We be

lieve that God wrought the miracles; and the general truth is plain, God hates oppression.

To conclude my apology, which is much too long, I repeat that I fully believe that Pharaoh did wrong in enslaving Israel-in persevering in it; and that, however plausible his excuses, they availed nothing. The thing was wrong. He only added sin to sin, and made matters worse by his delay. The event proved that it would have been better for Egypt never to have enslaved Israel. It would have been better to have given up this state at any one time that could be named; for not only did they go out, but they spoiled the Egyptians; and the attempt to force them back, involved the whole army, with Pharaoh at its head, in ruin. All this is admitted. Yet I say, Egyptian slavery was not so hard as some other cases of slavery; and Pharaoh's excuses are, I think, better than what have satisfied, and now satisfy, many.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

fòrgiving." In like manner the verbs, increase and decrease, have the accent on the last syllable; but if we contrast them, we remove the accent to the first syllable. "A man's riches must increase or dècrease."

This is perfectly correct. But some readers of the Liturgy seem to mistake juxta-position for antithesis, and extend the rule beyond its legitimate application. Hence we hear, "Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses"-" That it may please thee to give us true repentance: to forgive us all our sins"—"We bless thee for our creation, prèservation;" in which places the words "forgive," "creation," "preservation," should be read with the natural accent, though a little lingering on the syllables pre, ser, will naturally be made by a reader who has a good ear to prevent a jingle in the sound.

Allied to this misplacing of accent is a very common misapplication of emphasis, which owes its origin to the authority of Dr. Johnson, who observed, that the Commandments, being prohibitions, the emphasis should be laid on the word not The rule is evidently wrong. Had one of these Commandments stood

PERMIT me, through the medium of your paper, to call the attention of the clergy to a method of read-alone, and been a reply to an avowed ing certain portions of our excellent Liturgy, which, though violating just taste, is adopted by many under the idea of superior correctness.

Some writers on grammar and elocution, among them Murray and Walker, have very justly observed, that a transposition of the accent is sometimes required when two words, which have a sameness in part of their formation, are opposed to each other in sense. For example, as single words, we pronounce "in"forgiving," justice," with the accent on the penultima; but if we mean to contrast them with their opposites, we then place the accent on the first syllable. Thus we say, "Neither justice nor injustice has to do with the question." "There is a difference between giving and

[ocr errors]

purpose of doing the thing which it forbids, the emphasis would have been properly placed on the nega

tive. To the man who should say, "I will steal," the answer would rightly have been, Thou shalt not steal, But in the Decalogue we have a series of prohibitions; and therefore the emphasis is not to be laid on the negative, which is common to all, but on the thing specified in each, and by which it is distinguished from the rest. If the word "not" is to be emphatic in the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Commandments, why not the word "nor" in the Tenth; "nor his servant, nòr his maid, nor his ox," &c.; yet I never heard any read so, except ill-taught children saying their catechism, Nor do I ever remember hearing a

[ocr errors]

clergyman read, "Thou shalt do nò murder;" yet the Sixth Commandment also is a prohibition, and, by Dr. Johnson's rule, the emphasis should be upon "no."

amply abundant for the parishioners. Moreover, the commissioners were formed into a body corporate for building new churches in populous towns and districts, destitute of

AN ADMIRER of the liturGY. church room. It should seem there

1

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

IN reference to the recent act for building churches, alluded to in your last Number, an opinion has been taken up by many, and by some in authority, that the clause cited by your correspondent is unlimited in its application, and that any individual, without regard to church accommodation, may in any parish erect a chapel for himself and neighbours, in defiance of the incumbent, provided only the commissioners are satisfied with the endowment. That the legislature should have had such a measure as this in contemplation seems to me incredible. They could not but be aware that an unnecessary division of a parish into sections would be a disruption of that bond of union which ought to subsist between the authorized minister and his people; and though, in cases of absolute necessity, where the want of accommodation in the parish church is notorious, they might deem it a paramount duty to give every facility for opening a way to enable every man to worship God according to the rites of the national church, I cannot hastily believe that they would sanction a measure which might intersect a parish with as many chapels as there were persons in it willing and competent to incur the expense.

I am the more disposed to take this view of the subject from the title of the Act itself; "An Act, &c. in POPULOUS parishes." If the Act be to amend Acts relating to populous parishes, it can have no reference, it should seem, to parishes not populous; that is, I conceive, where the church accommodation is

fore, that to interfere in parishes not populous, and where there is ample church accommodation, would be to enter on a sphere of operation never assigned to them; and as the recent Act repeals none of the former connected with population, &c. I should consider it as involving rather a transfer of right to sanction the building of chapels, and a change of the previous steps necessary for such a measure, than a hasty and unnecessary invasion of the privileges and spiritual duties of the legal incumbent. The opinion of some able civilian on this point might remove much uncertainty of no inconsiderable moment to the peace and harmony of the members of the Established Church.

A CONSTANT READER.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

Ir would be beside the object of your publication, and tedious to your readers, to prolong a discussion relative to the technical method of wording a charitable bequest. The principle which I endeavoured to point out, in my former communication, is fully recognized by your correspondent Omega-namely, that in order to ensure the payment of a charitable legacy, an express direction is requisite on the part of the testator, not only that it shall be paid out of his personal estate, applicable by law to the discharge of such legacies, but that this portion of his property shall be primarily applied to that purpose.

Having called the attention of your readers to the defect of the forms of bequest usually recommended by benevolent institutions in this important respect, it would perhaps only be necessary for me to add,

that recourse may be had either to the form prescribed by Omega, or that by myself, as may be most adapted to suit the general arrangement of the particular testamentary disposition.

For, with great deference to Omega, I still think, the form suggested by me is fully adequate to the end proposed; and that it will probably be more usually convenient than Omega's form, both on account of its brevity and simplicity, and because, as it does not affect the order of the several parts of the will, it may be introduced into any part of it, or may be used as a separate codicil.

The whole of a testator's personal assets immediately upon his death vests by the act of law in the executors, subject to the payment of the debts and legacies; of course, therefore, a bequest to them, of any par

ticular portion of those assets as recommended by Omega, is unnecessary. All that is required is, that the order of the distribution of the effects be expressly pointed out. Now, the direction that such part of the personal estate, as is by law applicable to the payment of charitable legacies, shall, in the first place, and before answering any other purpose whatsoever, be applied in satisfying the bequests of this description, appears to me as definite and clear as can be well imagined.

I have to apologize for intruding again upon the patience of your readers. It is however important that the principle contended for should be fully understood, and that persons should feel confidence in using one or the other of the several forms of bequest which have now been recommended.

I. D. L.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

[blocks in formation]

We left our two worthies at the beginning of the seventeenth century; Hall just entering on the rectory of Halstead, where, under the religious despotism of James I., he remained till 1612; and Arminius in his pastoral charge at Amsterdam, but now become, by reason of his treatment of the Predestinarian question, "a man of strife and contention to the whole earth." Little did the new century, temporally considered, promise of good to either. King James, though holding Hall in honour, and soon about to send him in 1618, to assist the Dort Synodists in Holland to put down the Arminians, yet, in 1603, was giving no proof of his own candour

and impartiality in the HamptonCourt conference, whilst dealing with his Calvinistic subjects, the Puritans. He admitted their doctrines, but persecuted their persons; and by a series of harsh and ill-concerted measures, in conjunction with the Anti-predestinarians, maddened them, till he prepared them, in the reign of his successor, to sweep away kings and bishops together, and our venerable friend Hall amongst the number. From such a fearful national catastrophe, our Dutch neighbours were in part rescued by the poverty of the Arminians in numbers and strength, and their consequent necessary mission to every measure of suppression and expulsion against their leaders.

sub

We pursue our notice, first, of the further progress of Arminius. We left him pastor at Amsterdam. And happy had it been for himself,

« AnteriorContinuar »