oases in the desert, or planets and suns in illimitable space.

Hence it is that, in primitive times, and in desert lands especially, you see the two primordial elements of society in rudest and most artless forms; the absolute principle only ruling by fitful and occasional acts of violence, and not by steady and well-organised inquisition; and the liberty, ranging wild and irregular, in constant fear of a sudden, unadmonished interruption. Of this latter condition no better type exists on the globe than that of the Arab-the most elementary race of intelligence within the arena of civilisation, and therefore, perhaps, the root, and occupying the source and well-spring of society, the interval between the Eastern and Western civilisations.* There is more of the arenaceous element in the Arab than in the Jew, for in the Jew it is repressed by the preponderating force of its opposite principle; but both extremes are well represented in each, as indeed they must be more or less in all, especially, however, in primitive or elementary nations, who are unproductive in mind, and unprogressive in laws, in manners and customs. The rock and the sand are both represented in Judah, in its firm and stable

* The Eastern and Western hemispheres are parted by the intersection of two broad lines-the Equator of the Rainless Desert, which runs from the West of Africa to Tartary, and the Ecliptic of Civilisation, which runs from Japan to Britain and crosses the other at the Arabian Desert. The East, therefore, has the Desert on the North, and the West has it on the South.

institutions and its amazing dispersion, and Judah itself is a rock in comparison of the scattering of the tribes that are lost amongst the nations. But in all social economies the singular alliance between liberty and despotism in the Levantine East is deserving of serious reflection. There the principles of liberty and equality have only the iron hand of the despot to prevent their establishment; there is no aristocratical medium, as with us-no genealogical pride of birth-no nobility, gentility, freedom or slavery, either to promote or prevent advancement. The blood of the slave is there as good as that of his master and even now, as of old, the porter that sits at the king's gate, or the groom that rubs down and saddles his horse, may be elevated to-morrow to the rank of Grand Vizier, without any disparagement arising from his former condition. This is the most elementary form in which the two principles of absolutism and liberty can exist; and out of this, as out of the desert of rock and sand, civilisation is elaborated, like a texture of cloth by the cross movement of the warp and the woof. But the process of weaving is carried to perfection in less primitive regions.

It is in the principle of liberty that mental activity resides; it is the moving, the progressive element; but without the aluminous cement that comes from the rock of an absolute principle, the liberty only becomes an unproductive, moving chaos. This absolute principle is the beginning of society,

as the rock is the basis of the nutritive earth, and therefore it is rather the rock than the moving sand or productive soil that we must look for in Israel, and only so much of the latter as are indispensable for a political existence. Liberty there is, as we shall see; but law there is more, for it takes the precedence and becomes the foundation, and constitutes the idiocrasy, of Israel's policy; so much so that even the exercise of liberty is the forging of new chains and the increase of bondage. God is compared to the rock, his people to the sand. Divine Law is the rock, human opinion is its pulverisation-eternal correlatives.

All nations, in ancient times, had their sacred mysteries, and all are reported-with what amount of truth we know not-to have come from Egypt. "Zoroaster," says Bishop Warburton, in his "Divine Legation of Moses," "brought them thence into Persia; Cadmus and Inachus, into Greece; Orpheus, into Thrace; Melampus, into Argos; Trophonius, into Boeotia; Minos, into Crete; Cinyras, into Cyprus, and Erectheus, into Athens." And all these taught what many of the ancients represent as analogous to the doctrine of Moses, in their greater mysteries-Divine unity; but the doctrine of the lesser gods and goddesses in their lesser mysteries. Moses alone taught the greater mystery of the Unity to the whole people; and thus the Jews became the only nation in the world who were initiated into a unitary faith. "For those things,"

says Josephus against Apion, "which the Gentiles keep up for a few days only-that is, during those solemnities which they call Mysteries and Initiations-we, with vast delight and a plenitude of knowledge which admits of no error, fully enjoy and perpetually contemplate during the whole course of our lives." In like manner Eusebius teaches that the Hebrews were the only people who were initiated into the Greater Mysteries.* They were taken to the Rock.

The mission of Moses, therefore, appears to have been regarded, even by Josephus and the early Christians, as a providential enlargement of the school of the Greater Mysteries, and taken as the mysteries of other nations from the great fountainhead of all ancient mystery, the land of Egypt and

* We shall not dispute the question of the mysteries, as we can easily dispense with everything that is doubtful; and our argument does not depend on the literal truth of the above quotations; but they serve to illustrate the subject. How much originality there was in the Law of Moses it is now impossible to ascertain. But the sacrifices, the priesthood, the ark, and the general character of the religion were sufficiently akin to the prevailing theologies of the age to be regarded as modifications approving of the principle of paganism without its polytheism. The Divine Unity, as taught in the ancient mysteries, must have been very imperfect. But there must have been some unitary doctrines to account for the testimony of antiquity. Jablonski, the celebrated author of the "Pantheon Egyptiacum," says that those men "who were most distinguished amongst the Egyptians for wisdom, acknowledged God to be a certain unbegotten Eternal Spirit prior to all things that exist; who created, preserves, contains, pervades and vivifies everything; who is the spirit of the universe, but the guardian and protector of men."

D

the house of bondage, but openly and publicly revealed to a separated nation, instead of being secretly and timidly inculcated to a chosen few of the higher orders of men who were considered safe to be entrusted with the secret. Whether this be strictly or only vaguely true, certain it is, that no other nation succeeded in popularising the reputed peculiarity of the Greater Mysteries, and even in Israel, for hundreds of years, it was rejected by the populace as a doctrine incompatible with the spirit of the age, and established at last after severe national affliction and that repentance which grief suggests as the mode of deliverance. The very name of God, most familiar to the nation in early times, was a plural word, Elohim-the Gods-the Heathen name of the Deity, analogous rather to the sand than to the rock, and a new name required to be introduced as the special appellative of the God of Israel-Jehovah the Rock. This required time; and Elohim was evidently misleading, for whenever the Golden Calf or Calves were set up, the popular shout was raised, "These are thy Gods (Elohim), O Israel!"

The unity of God was, perhaps, never at any period of the world without its professors; but the idea was too great for popular acceptance in the infancy of society, and therefore even those who held it with difficulty refrained from idolising and localising the object of their worship. Indeed it is very doubtful whether the Hebrew Patriarchs re