and humble pedigree (though a promise admirably adapted to Arab prejudices) would affect or interest a modern European, the few circumstances which, in the present chapter, we are told concerning them, are of a nature by no means unworthy of our serious attention, and conduct to consequences not only curious and important in themselves, but such as are peculiarly appropriate to the present times, and to the occasion which has called us together.

It is, in the first place, as I conceive, apparent that, in the promise here made to the Rechabites by God's prophet and in God's name, and under

me standing, dressed, and wild like an Arab, the bridle of his horse holding in his hand: I shewed to him the Bible in Hebrew and Arabic; he read both languages, and was rejoiced to see the Bible. He was not acquainted with the New Testament. After having proclaimed to him the tidings of salvation, and made to him a present of the Hebrew and Arabic Bibles and Testaments, I asked him, Whose descendant are you? Mousa, (this was his name, with a loud voice) come, I show to you, and then he began to read Jeremiah xxxv. from ver. 5 to 11. Wolff. Where do you reside? Mousa, (recurring to Gen. x. 27) at Hadoram, now called Samar by the Arabs, at Usal, now called Sanaa by the Arabs, and (Gen. x. 30) at Mesha, now called Mecca, in the deserts around those places. We drink no wine, and plant no vineyard, and sow no seed, and live in tents, as Jonadab our father commanded us. Hobab was our father too; come to us, you will still find 60,000 in number, and you see thus the prophecy has been fulfilled, Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.' And saying this, Mousa the Rechabite mounted his horse, and fled away, and left behind a host of evidence of sacred writ." Journal, vol. ii. p. 333-5.

His immediate direction, an approbation of their conduct is implied, of which that promise was, in fact, the appropriate reward and sanction, and such a sanction and such a reward as were in the power of God only to bestow, and as He unquestionably would not bestow but on those whom He was, good reasons, disposed to favour.

for

True it is that the common experience of ages, (and what is this experience but the ascertained and usual manner in which the Almighty directs the fortune of His creatures?) the experience of ages teaches us that, where the institutions of any society are not easily changed, that society is most likely to be of permanent use and prosperous continuance. And if the prophet had said no more than that the modesty of the Rechabites and their reverence for their ancient laws would be found their best security for the independence and prosperity of their little republic, he would have said no more than was warranted by the usual maxims of human wisdom; though the assurance might, beyond a doubt, have acquired additional strength and importance as proceeding, in this instance, from an inspired monitor.

But the assurance which Jeremiah gave them was of a nature far more definite than if it had extended only to that general and ordinary protection, which all communities, whose affairs are conducted with wisdom and integrity, have reason to expect from God's providence. It was the promise of a blessing which cannot be ranked among the natu

ral effects of any human institution, however wisely ordained and however pertinaciously observed; a promise of continued fruitfulness to a numerous tribe, of continued endurance to a particular nation, not for a few generations only, but so long as the world itself should exist; " Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever."

And when we consider that this privilege, than which, to Arabian ears, a greater could hardly be given, was conferred as a reward for the faithful and persevering observance of institutions, such as I have described to you, is it possible that we should fail to notice the reverence which this example teaches for the laws of man's appointment, not only for such as are visibly and immediately conducive to God's glory and the happiness of mankind, but for such as, in themselves indifferent, derive their whole sanction and obligation from the authority of the person from whom they are derived, or from the sacredness of ancient and universal custom? The promise, it will be observed, though of the same general character, is in its application widely different from that which, in the fifth commandment, is held out to those who honour the direct and intimate ties of blood, and the injunctions of a living parent. The person from whom the Rechabites derived the institution or revival of their peculiar laws, though, according to the forms of eastern language, he is called their father, was in truth an ancestor, and a remote one, of a small

part only among their number. Upwards of two hundred years had passed away since their chief or patriarch Jonadab had been courted and conciliated by Jehu: and it must have been as sovereign, not as parent, that he could have possessed so extensive an influence over a tribe which, six hundred years before, and in the days of Moses, was already numerous and important. The observances, too, which he had enjoined were, in themselves, of no moral or religious obligation. They had reference to the usual economy and separate polity of his tribe, and possessed no more of positive importance than the fashion in which a man should wear his hair, or the colour and form of his garment. Yet the Rechabites kept them; and, for thus keeping them, they are praised and rewarded; and it follows, therefore, that an obedience to the laws, as laws, and abstracted from any other consideration, is a duty incumbent on men, and a conduct well pleasing to Him from whom all civil government derives its beginning and authority.

A distinction has, indeed, been made, and made by moralists of no common renown, between the obligation to laws, in their own nature useful and necessary, and to those positive institutions which derive their sanction from the will of a human superior only. The first is admitted to rest on the immutable principles of justice and duty, and to bind the subject not only for wrath but for conscience sake; while the second is supposed to imply no more than the necessity of submitting, if detected, peace

ably and without evasion, to whatever penalty the state has thought fit to impose. Thus a perpe→ tration of the graver offences against society is acknowledged, on all hands, to be not only illegal but wicked, is not only to be punished by temporal inflictions, but is liable to the censures of conscience, and the burning wrath of the Most High ; while, to give a familiar example, the old statute of burying in woollen would have been held by these moralists to have been optional to follow or to transgress by any man who chose to run the risk of the penalty.

Between the cases which I have compared, and in all other comparisons of the same kind, there is certainly a great and aweful interval: and I am ready to admit that, wherever a moral law and a positive institution are at variance; wherever the observance of this last is inconsistent with the performance of a higher duty; wherever its transgression is necessary to produce a preponderant good to the community, to our neighbour and, in certain cases, to ourselves; wherever its observance has become obsolete, and its breach connived at and universal; the conscience of the individual is by no means bound to keep the law, and may even, according to the greatness of the exigency, be absolutely bound to violate it. It was thus that the Rechabites themselves appear to have acted, when, as we read in this same chapter, during the time of the Assyrian invasion, they sought the general safety of their community by a temporary aban