purpose, the peculiar situation and privileges of the tribe of Levi, as regulated by the divine appointment, admirably fitted them. Possessed of no landed property, and supported by the tithes and offerings which they received in kind, they were little occupied with labour or secular care; deriving their maintenance from a source, which would necessarily fail, if the worship and the Laws of God were neglected, they were deeply interested in their support. Their cities being dispersed through all the tribes, and their families permitted to intermarry with all, they were every where at hand to admonish and instruct; exclusively possessed of the highpriesthood, as well as of all other religious offices, and † associated with the high-priest and judge in the supreme court of judicature, and with the elders of every city in the inferior tribunals, and guardians of the cities of refuge, where those who were guilty of homicide fled for an asylum, they must have acquired such influence and reverence amongst the people, as were necessary to secure attention to their instructions: and they were led

* Numbers, xxXV. + Deut. xvii. 9, and xxiv. §.

to

to study the rules of moral conduct, the principles of equity, and, above all, the Mosaic code, with unceasing attention: but they were not laid under any vows of celibacy, or monastic austerity and retirement, and thus abstracted from the intercourse and the feel

ings of social life. Thus circumstanced, they were assuredly well calculated to answer the purpose of their institution, to preserve and consolidate the union of all the other tribes, to instruct and forward the Jews in knowledge, virtue and piety; "To teach "Jacob the judgments, and Israel the Law "of Jehovah;" that they might hear and fear, and learn to obey the will of their "Sovereign and their God."

And, as no

more important object could be aimed at by any Lawgiver, so the almost total neglect of other legislators in this respect, and the caution and wisdom of the Jewish institutions for this purpose, seems to supply one important presumptive argument for the divine. original of the Mosaic code.

Hitherto we have considered the Jewish Law, chiefly as it secured the rights, and promoted the happiness, of the higher and middling

middling classes of society; the nobility and gentry, the Levites, and the great mass of the Jewish yeomanry or freemen. But the Mosaic Law extended its parental care to the very lowest classes, the stranger and the slave, the poor, the fatherless and the widow. These it represents as the peculiar objects of the divine care, and denounces against any injury to them, peculiar indig nation and punishment from God. "If "a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him; but the stranger that dwelleth among you shall "be unto you as one born among you, and "thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye "were strangers in the land of Egypt; I 66 am the Lord thy God." "The tithes "of the third year thou shalt give to the "Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and "the widow, that they may eat within thy gates and be filled."

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That part of the Hebrew constitution which

forbad

* Vide the Jewish Letters, Part III. Letter iv. Universal History, B. I. ch. vii. sect. 4, on the Laws relating to the sabbatic and jubilee years, p. 613 and 617.

+ Lev. xix. 33.

Deut. xxvi. 12.

forbad the acceptance of interest * from a fellow-citizen, and established a septennial abolition of debts, and a periodical restitution of all lands which had been alienated from their original proprietors, though necessary for the general balance and security of the Hebrew government, might yet have operated to increase in some instances the pressure of poverty, by rendering it more difficult to obtain immediate relief. It is therefore important to observe, how anxiously the Legislator guards against any such effect from these regulations. ተ "If there be "among you," says the Law, a poor "man, one of thy brethren, within any of "thy gates, in the land which the Lord

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thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden

"thine heart nor shut thine hand from thy

poor brother; nor let there be a thought in "thy wicked heart, saying, the seventh year, "the year of release is at hand, and thine eye "be evil against thy poor brother, and thou "givest

* Interest from any one not a fellow-citizen, was permitted, but subject to the limitation of using him with the strictest regard to equity and benevolence, which the passages quoted in the last paragraph require.

† Deut. xv. 9.

"givest him nought, and he cry unto the

Lord against thee, and it be sin unto "thee; thou shalt surely give, and thine "heart shall not be grieved when thou giv"est unto him, because that for this thing "the Lord thy God will bless thee in all "that thou puttest thine hand unto, for

the poor shall never cease out of thy land: "therefore I command thee, saying, thou "shalt open thine hand wide to thy bro"ther, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land."

*With equal energy does the Law maintain the cause of the hired labourer: "Thou "shalt not oppress an hired servant that "is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land, within thy gates, At "his day thou shalt give him his hire, "neither shall the sun go down upon it, "for he is poor and setteth his heart upon "it; least he cry unto the Lord, and it "be sin unto thee."

Thus also how are the feelings, as well as the wants of the poor, consulted in that