HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR 1831. 
 
 VERACITY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT, 
 
 FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE PENTATEUCH, TO THE 
 OPENING OF THE PROPHETS, 
 
 ARGUED FROM TUB 
 
 UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES 
 
 TO BE FOUND IN THEM, WHEN COMPARED IN THEIR SEVERAL PARTS, 
 
 BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE ARGUMENT 
 FUR THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES. 
 
 BY THE REV. J. J. BLUNT, 
 
 FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXH. 
 

 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by William Clowes 
 
 Stamford Street. 
 
PBIEk 
 HBOLOC 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Perhaps the title-page might suffice to explain to 
 my readers, so far as they may concern themselves 
 about it, my motive for choosing, as the subject of 
 these Lectures, that portion of Scripture which is 
 here brought under their notice, and only that 
 portion — if not, one word more will be enough. — 
 Having already, on another occasion, delivered 
 before the University a similar course of Sermons 
 upon i the Evidence for the Mosaic Writings ;' on 
 being appointed to the Hulsean Lectureship, I 
 thought the argument fell precisely within the con- 
 ditions of Mr. Hulse's will, and I therefore de- 
 termined, in the discharge of that office, to carry 
 on the like investigation through some of the suc- 
 ceeding Books of Scripture, with the like object. — 
 Thus, the volume becomes (what I could have 
 wished otherwise) a continuation of a former work, 
 rather than a whole in itself. The same explanation 
 must serve for the form in which it is printed, and 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 which differs from that of previous volumes of Hul- 
 sean Lectures ; though indeed the reduction in 
 the number of Sermons, from twenty to eight, 
 would have otherwise rendered some such change 
 necessary. 
 
 For the nomination to the Lectureship, unso- 
 licited, my acknowledgments are due to Dr. Wood, 
 the Master of St. John's College; as well as to the 
 two other Trustees, for their approval of that nomi- 
 nation : Dr. Thackeray, Provost of King's, the 
 Vice -Chancellor ; and Dr. Wordsworth, the Master 
 of Trinity College. I shall be happy if they think 
 that I have not disgraced their choice ; that I may 
 have been the means of exciting a still greater curi- 
 osity to search the Scriptures^ amongst the students 
 of the LTniversity ; with a view to whose instruction 
 these Sermons were written and preached, and to 
 whose further consideration (may it be to their 
 profit!) they are now committed. 
 
SUBSTANCE OF CERTAIN CLAUSES IN THE WILL 
 OF THE REV. I. HULSE, M.A. 
 
 [Dated July 21, 1777.] 
 
 He founds a Lectureship in the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 The Lecturer to be a * Clergyman in the University 
 of Cambridge, of the degree of Master of Arts, and 
 under the age of forty years.' He is to be elected 
 annually ' on Christmas-day, or within seven days 
 after, by the Vice-Chancellor for the time being, and 
 by the Master of Trinity College, and the Master of 
 St. John's College, or any two of them/ In case the 
 Master of Trinity, or the Master of St. John's, be the 
 Vice-Chancellor, the Greek Professor is to be the third 
 Trustee. 
 
 The Duty of the said Lecturer is, by the Will, ' to 
 preach twenty Sermons in the whole year/ at * Saint 
 Mary's Great Church in Cambridge ;' but the number 
 having been found inconvenient, application was made 
 to the Court of Chancery for leave to reduce it, and 
 eight Sermons only are now required. These are to 
 be printed at the Preacher's expense, within twelve 
 months after the delivery of the last Sermon ; and the 
 present volume is the first that has appeared under 
 the new regulations. 
 
 The subject of the Lectures is to be ' the Evidence 
 
VI CERTAIN CLAUSES. 
 
 for Revealed Religion ; the Truth and Excellence of 
 Christianity; Prophecies and Miracles; direct or col- 
 lateral Proofs of the Christian Religion, especially the 
 collateral arguments ; the more difficult texts, or ob- 
 scure parts of the Holy Scriptures;' or any one, or 
 more of these topics, at the discretion of the Preacher. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Lecture I. — 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. In the mouth of 
 
 two or three witnesses shall every word be established 1 
 
 Lecture II 33 
 
 Lecture III. 69 
 
 Lecture IV. ....... 105 
 
 Lecture V HI 
 
 Lecture VI 175 
 
 Lecture VII 200 
 
 Lecture VIII 224 
 
iN 
 
 HULSEAN LECTURES. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 
 established. 
 
 When I last addressed you from this place, 
 I endeavoured to prove the veracity of the 
 Mosaic writings by the instances they con- 
 tain of coincidence without design in their 
 several parts ; and I hope and believe that 
 I succeeded in pointing out such coinci- 
 dences as might come of truth, and could 
 come of nothing but truth. These presented 
 themselves in the history of the Patriarchs, 
 even from Abraham to Joseph ; and in the 
 history of the chosen race in general, even 
 from their departure out of Egypt to the 
 
 B 
 
2 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 day when their great Lawgiver expired on 
 the borders of that land of Promise into 
 which Joshua was now to lead them — a 
 long and eventful history. It is my inten- 
 tion at present to resume the subject; to 
 pursue the adventures of this extraordinary 
 people, as they are unfolded in some of the 
 subsequent books of holy writ; and, still 
 using the same test as before, to ascertain 
 whether these portions of Scripture do not 
 appear to be equally trust-worthy, and 
 whilst, like the former, they assert, often 
 without any recourse to the intervention of 
 second causes, miracles many and mighty, 
 they do not challenge confidence in those 
 miracles by marks of reality, consistency, 
 and accuracy, which the ordinary matters of 
 fact combined with them constantly exhibit. 
 ' For this credibility of the common scrip- 
 ture history,' says Bishop Butler, ' gives 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 3 
 
 some credibility to its miraculous history; 
 especially as this is interwoven with the 
 common, so as that they imply each other, 
 and both together make up one revelation*.' 
 And surely a very striking circumstance it 
 is, and what could scarcely happen in any 
 continuous fable, however cunningly devised, 
 that annals written by so many hands, em- 
 bracing so many generations of men, re- 
 lating to so many different states of society, 
 abounding in supernatural incidents through- 
 out, when brought to this same touchstone 
 of truth, iindesignedness, should not flinch 
 from it ; and surely the character of a his- 
 tory, like the character of an individual, 
 when attested by vouchers not of one fa- 
 mily, or of one place, or of one date only, 
 but by such as speak to it under various 
 relations, in different situations, and at 
 
 • Analogy, p. 389. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 divers periods of time, can scarcely deceive 
 us. 
 
 Perhaps too the turn which biblical criti 
 cism has of late taken may give to the 
 peculiar argument here employed the merit 
 of being the word in season ; and whilst 
 the articulation of scripture (so to speak), 
 occupied with its component parts, may 
 possibly occasion it to be less regarded than 
 it should be in the mass, or as a whole, the 
 effect of this argument is to establish the 
 general truth of scripture, and with that to 
 content itself; its general truth, I mean, 
 considered with a reference to all practical 
 purposes, which is our chief concern ; and 
 thus to pluck the sting out of those critical 
 difficulties, however numerous and however 
 minute, which in themselves have a ten- 
 dency to excite our suspicion, and trouble 
 our peace. Its effect, I say, is to establish 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 5 
 
 the general truth of scripture, because by 
 this investigation I find occasional tokens of 
 veracity, such as cannot, I think, mislead 
 us, breaking out as the volume is unrolled, 
 unconnected, unconcerted, unlooked for : 
 tokens, which I hail as guarantees for more 
 facts than they actually cover ; as spots 
 which truth has singled out whereon to set 
 her seal, in testimony that the whole docu- 
 ment, of which they are a part, is her own 
 act and deed ; as pass-words, with which 
 the providence of God has taken care to 
 furnish his ambassadors, which, though often 
 trifling in themselves, and having no pro- 
 portion (it may be) to the length or import- 
 ance of the tidings they accompany, are still 
 enough to prove the bearers to be in the con- 
 fidence of their Almighty Sovereign, and to 
 be qualified to execute the general commis- 
 sion with which they are charged, under his 
 authority. Here I rest. 
 
6 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 I. Moses then being dead, Joshua takes 
 the command of the armies of Israel, and 
 marches them over Jordan to the possession 
 of the land of Canaan. It was a day and 
 a deed much to be remembered. ( It came 
 to pass, when the people removed from their 
 tents to pass over Jordan, and the priests 
 bearing the ark of the covenant before the 
 people ; and as they that bare the Ark were 
 come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests 
 that bare the Ark were dipped in the brim of 
 the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his 
 banks in the time of harvest,) that the waters 
 which came down from above stood and rose 
 up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, 
 that is beside Zaretan : and those that came 
 down toward the sea of the plain, even the 
 salt sea, failed and were cut off: and the 
 people passed over right against Jericho. 
 And the priests that bare the Ark of the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 7 
 
 Covenant of the Lord stood firm on the dry 
 ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the 
 Israelites passed over on dry ground, until 
 all the people were passed clean over 
 Jordan *.' 
 
 Such is the language of the Book of 
 Joshua. Now in the midst of this mira- 
 culous narrative, an incident is mentioned, 
 though very casually, which dates the 
 season of the year when this passage of the 
 Jordan was effected. The feet of the 
 priests, it seems, were dipped in the brim 
 of the water ; and this is explained by the 
 season being that of the periodical inunda- 
 tion of Jordan, that river overflowing his 
 banks all the time of harvest. The hurley* 
 harvest is here meant, or the former harvest, 
 as it is elsewhere called, in contradistinction 
 to the wheat, or latter harvest ; for in the 
 * Joshua iii. 14—17. 
 
8 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 fourth chapter (v. 19) we read, 'the people 
 came up out of Jordan on the tenth day 
 of the first month,' that is, four days before 
 the Passover, which fell in with the barley- 
 harvest, the wheat-harvest not being fully 
 completed till Pentecost, or fifty days later 
 in the year, when the wave-loaves of the 
 first-fruits of the wheat were offered up *. 
 The Israelites passed the Jordan then, it 
 appears, at the time of Zwr/ey-harvest. But 
 we are told in Exodus, that at the Plague of 
 Hail, which was but a day or two before the 
 Passover, ' the fax and the barley were 
 smitten, for the barley was in the ear and 
 the flax was boiled, but the wheat and the 
 rye were not smitten, for they were not 
 grown up f.' It should seem, therefore, 
 
 * Perhaps I may be permitted to refer to ■ The Veracity 
 of the Five Books of Moses,' p. 136, where this question 
 of the harvests is examined in greater detail. 
 
 t Exod. ix. 31. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 
 
 that the flax and the barley were crops 
 which ripened about the same time in 
 Egypt; and as the climate of Canaan did 
 not differ materially from that of Egypt, this, 
 no doubt, was the case in Canaan too; 
 there also these two crops would come in 
 at the same time. The Israelites, therefore, 
 who crossed the Jordan, as we have seen in 
 one passage, at the harvest, and that harvest, 
 as we have seen in another passage, the 
 for/ey-harvest, must, if so, have crossed it 
 at the ykr-harvest. 
 
 Now, in a former chapter, we are in- 
 formed, that three days before Joshua ven- 
 tured upon the invasion, he sent two men, 
 spies, to view the land, even Jericho *. It 
 was a service of peril : they were received 
 by Rahab, a woman of that city, and lodged 
 in her house : but the entrance of these 
 
 * Ch. i. 2; ii. 1, 22; iii. 2. 
 
10 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 strangers at night-fall was observed : it was 
 a moment, no doubt, of great suspicion and 
 alarm : an enemy's army encamped on the 
 borders. The thing was reported to the 
 King of Jericho, and search was made for 
 the men. Rahab, however, fearing God — 
 for by faith she felt that the miracles 
 wrought by him in favour of Israel, were 
 proofs that for Israel he fought, — by faith, 
 which, living as she did in the midst of 
 idolaters, might well be counted to her for 
 righteousness, and the like to which, in a 
 somewhat similar case, was declared by our 
 Lord, enough to lead those who professed it 
 into the kingdom of God, even before the 
 Chief-Priests and Elders themselves* — she, 
 I say, having this faith in God, and true to 
 those laws of hospitality which are the glory 
 of the eastern nations, and more especially 
 
 * Hebr. xi. 31. Matth. xxi. 3 1 . 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 11 
 
 of the females of the East, even to this clay, 
 at much present risk protected her guests 
 from their pursuers. But how ? ' She 
 brought them up to the roof of her house 
 and hid them with the stalks of fax *' — the 
 stalks of flax, no doubt just cut down, which 
 she had spread upon the roof of her house 
 to steep and to season. 
 
 Here I see truth. Yet how very minute 
 is this incident! how very casually does it 
 present itself to our notice ! how very un- 
 important a matter it seems in the first in- 
 stance, under what the spies were hidden ! 
 enough that, whatever it was, it answered 
 the purpose, and saved their lives. Could 
 the historian have contemplated for one 
 moment the effect which a trifle about a flax- 
 stalk might have in corroboration of his 
 account of the passage of the Jordan? Is 
 * Ch. ii. 6. 
 
12 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 it possible for the most jealous examiner of 
 human testimony to imagine, that these flax- 
 stalks were fixed upon above all things in 
 the world for the covering of the spies, 
 because they were known to be ripe with 
 the barley, and the barley was known to be 
 ripe at the Passover, and the Passover was 
 known to be the season when the Israelites 
 set foot in Canaan? Or rather, would he 
 not fairly and candidly confess, that in one 
 particular, at least, of this adventure, (the 
 only one which we have an opportunity of 
 checking,) a religious attention to truth is 
 manifested ; and that when it is said, the 
 feet of the Priests were dipped in the brim 
 of the water, and when a reason is assigned 
 for this gradual approach to the bed of a 
 river, of which the banks were in general 
 steep and precipitous, we are put in pos- 
 session of one unquestionable fact at least, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 13 
 
 one particular upon which we may safely 
 repose, whatever may be said of the re- 
 mainder of the narrative, and that assuredly 
 truth leads us by the hand to the very edge 
 of the miracle, if not through the miracle 
 itself? 
 
 II. The Israelites, having made this suc- 
 cessful inroad into the land of Canaan, 
 divided it amongst the Tribes. But the Ca- 
 naanites, though panic-struck at their first 
 approach, soon began to take heart, and the 
 covetous policy of Israel (a policy which 
 dictated attention to present pecuniary 
 profits, no matter at what eventual cost to 
 the great moral interests of the Common- 
 wealth) had satisfied itself with making 
 them tributaries, contrary to the command 
 of God, that they should be driven out*; 
 and, accordingly, they were suffered, as it 
 
 * Exod. xxiii. 31. 
 
14 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 was promised, to become thorns in Israel's 
 side, always vexing, often resisting, and 
 sometimes oppressing them for many years 
 together. Meanwhile the Tribe of Dan had 
 its lot cast near the Amorites. It struggled 
 to work out for itself a settlement ; but its 
 fierce and warlike neighbours drove in its 
 outposts, and succeeded in confining it to 
 the mountains # . The children of Dan be- 
 came straitened in their borders, and, unable 
 to extend them at home, ' they sent of their 
 family five men from their coasts, men of 
 valour, to spy out the land and to search it.' 
 So these five men departed, and directing 
 their steps northwards, to the nearest parts 
 of the country which held out any prospect 
 to settlers, ' they came,' we are told, ' to 
 Laish, and saw the people that were therein, 
 how they dwelt careless after the manner of 
 
 * Judges i. 34. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 15 
 
 the Zidonians, quiet and secure, and there 
 was no magistrate in the land that might put 
 them to shame in anything, and they were 
 far from the Zidoniam, and had no business 
 with any man*.' Thus the circumstances 
 of the place and the people were tempting 
 to the views of the strangers. They return 
 to their brethren, and advise an attempt upon 
 the town. Accordingly they march against 
 it, take it, and rebuilding the city, which 
 was destroyed in the assault, change its 
 name from Laish to Dan, and colonise it. 
 From this it should appear that Laish, 
 though far from Sidon, was in early times a 
 town belonging to Sidon, and probably in- 
 habited by Sidonians, for it was after their 
 manner that the people lived. 
 
 Such is the information furnished us in the 
 eighteenth chapter of the Book of Judges. 
 * Judges xviii. 7. 
 
16 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 I now turn to the third chapter of the Book 
 of Deuteronomy, and I there find the follow- 
 ing passage. ' We took at that time/ says 
 Moses, l out of the hand of the two kings of 
 the Amorites, the land that was on this 
 side Jordan, from the river of Arnon unto 
 Mount Hermon — which Hermon the Sido- 
 ?iia?is call Sirion, and the Amorites call it 
 Shenir*.' But why this mention of the Si- 
 donian name of this famous mountain? It 
 was not near to Sidon — it does not appear to 
 have belonged to Sidon ; but to the king of 
 Bashanf . The reason, though not obvious, 
 is nevertheless discoverable, and a very 
 curious geographical coincidence it affords 
 between the former passage in Judges and 
 this in Deuteronomy. 
 
 For Hermon, we know from St. Jerom, and 
 from others, was just above Paneas, the seat 
 
 * Deut. iii. 9. f Joshua xii. 4, 5. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 17 
 
 of Jordan's flood*. And Paneas, we are 
 told by the same authority, was another and 
 more modern name (as Csesarea Philippi was 
 the most modern of all) for this very Dan or 
 Laish. Now Laish, we have seen, was pro- 
 bably at first a settlement of the Sidonians, 
 after whose manner the people of Laish lived. 
 ^Accordingly it appears — but how distant and 
 unconnected are the passages from which 
 such a conclusion is drawn ! — that although 
 this Hermon was far from Siclon itself, still 
 at its foot there was dwelling a Sidonian 
 colony, a race speaking the Sidonian lan- 
 guage ; and, therefore, nothing could be more 
 natural than that the mountain which 
 
 * ' Dan oppidum, quod nunc Paneas dicitur. Dan 
 autem unuse fontibus Jordanis." — Hieronym. in Quaestioni- 
 bus in Genesin. It was also Caesarea Philippi. — Euseb. 
 Eccl. Hist., vii. c. xvii. 
 
 4 The HierusalemTargum, Numb. xxxv. writes thus, " the 
 mountain of snow at Caesarea (Philippi) — this was Hermpn," ' 
 — Lightfoot, vol. ii. p. G2, fol. 
 
18 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 overhung the town should have a Sidonian 
 name, by which it was commonly known 
 in those parts, and that this should suggest 
 itself, as well as its Hebrew name, to 
 Moses. 
 
 III. Connected with the circumstances of 
 this same colony of Laish is another coinci- 
 dence which I have to offer, and I introduce 
 it in this place, because it is so connected, 
 for otherwise it anticipates a point of Jewish 
 history, which, in the order of the books of 
 Scripture, lies a long way before me. The 
 construction of Solomon's Temple, at Jeru- 
 salem, is the event at which it dates. 
 
 In the seventh chapter of the First Book 
 of Kings, I read, ( and king Solomon sent 
 and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a 
 widow's son of the Tribe of Naphtali, and his 
 father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass ; 
 and he was filled with wisdom and under- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 19 
 
 standing, and cunning to work all works in 
 brass. And lie came to king Solomon, and 
 wrought all his work.' (v. 13.) But in the 
 parallel passage in the second chapter of the 
 Second Book of Chronicles (v. 13.), where we 
 have the answer which king Hiram returned 
 to Solomon, when the latter desired him to 
 ' send him a man, cunning to work in gold, 
 and in silver, and in brass ;' I find it running 
 thus : — ' Now I have sent a cunning man, 
 endued with understanding, of Huram my 
 father's, (or perhaps Huram- Abi by name,) 
 the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, 
 and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful to 
 work in gold.' It is evident, that the same 
 individual is meant in both passages ; yet 
 there is an apparent discrepancy between 
 them : the one in Kings asserting his mother 
 to be a woman of the Tribe of Naphtali ; 
 the other, in Chronicles, asserting her to be 
 
 c 2 
 
 . 
 
20 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 a woman of the daughters of Dan. The 
 difficulty has driven the critics to some in- 
 tricate expedients, in order to resolve it. 
 1 She herself was of the Tribe of Dan/ says 
 Dr. Patrick ; * but her first husband was of 
 the Tribe of Naphtali, by whom she had 
 this son. When she was a widow, she 
 married a man of Tyre, who is called Hi- 
 ram's father, because he bred him up, and 
 was the husband of his mother.' All this 
 is gratuitous. The explanation only serves 
 to show, that the interpreter was aware of 
 the knot, but not of the solution. This 
 difficulty, however, like many others in 
 Scripture, when once explained, helps to 
 confirm its truth. We have seen in the last 
 paragraph, that six hundred Danites emi- 
 grated from their own Tribe, and seized 
 upon Laish, a city of the Sidonians. Now 
 the Sidonians were subjects of the king of 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 21 
 
 Tyre, and were the self-same people as the 
 Tyrians ; for in the fifth chapter of the 
 First Book of Kings, where Solomon is re- 
 ported as sending to the king of Tyre for 
 workmen, he is said to assign as a reason 
 for the application, ' Thou knowest that 
 there is not among us any that can skill to 
 hew timber like unto the Sidonians. 9 (v. 6.) 
 The Tyrians, therefore, and the Sidonians 
 were the same nation. But Laish or Dan, 
 we found, was near the springs of Jordan ; 
 and therefore, since the ( outgoings ' of the 
 territory of Naphtali are expressly said to 
 have been at Jordan, there is good reason 
 to believe that Laish or Dan stood in the 
 Tribe of Naphtali. But if so, then is the 
 difficulty solved ; for the woman was, by 
 abode, of Naphtali ; Laish, where she dwelt, 
 being situated in that Tribe; and by birth, 
 she was of Dan, being come of that little 
 
22 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 colony of Danites, which the parent stock 
 had sent forth in early times to settle at 
 a distance. Meanwhile the very circum- 
 stance which interposes to reconcile the ap- 
 parent disagreement, accounts no less na- 
 turally for the fact, that she had a Tyrian 
 for her husband. 
 
 Now upon what a very trifle does this 
 mark of truth turn ! Who can suspect any 
 thing insidious here ? any trap for the un- 
 wary inquisitor after internal evidence in 
 the domestic circumstances of a master- 
 smith, employed by Solomon to build his 
 temple ? 
 
 I am glad to have it in my power to pro- 
 duce this geographical coincidence, because 
 it is rare in its kind — the geography of 
 Canaan, owing to its extreme perplexity, 
 scarcely furnishing its due contingent to the 
 argument I am handling. However, that 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 23 
 
 very intricacy may in itself be thought to 
 say something to our present purpose ; 
 arising, as it in a great degree does, out of 
 the manifold instances in which different 
 places are called by the same name in the 
 Holy Land. Now whilst this accident 
 creates a confusion, very unfavourable to 
 determining their respective sites, and con- 
 sequently stands in the way of such un- 
 designed tokens of truth, as might spring 
 out of a more accurate knowledge of such 
 particulars; still it accords very singularly 
 with the circumstances under which Scrip- 
 ture reports the land of Canaan to have been 
 occupied: — I mean, that it was divided 
 amongst Twelve Tribes of one and the same 
 nation ; each, therefore, left to regulate the 
 names within its own borders after its own 
 pleasure ; and all having many associations 
 in common, which would often over-rule 
 
24 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 them, no doubt, however unintentionally, to 
 fix upon the same. We have only to look 
 to our own colonies, in whatever latitude 
 dispersed, to see the like workings of the 
 same natural feeling familiarly exemplified 
 in the identity of local names, which they 
 severally present. And it may be added, 
 that such a geographical nomenclature was 
 the more likely to establish itself in the 
 new settlements of the Israelites, amongst 
 whom, names of places, from the earliest 
 times downwards, seem to have been sel- 
 dom, if ever, arbitrary, but still to have 
 carried with them some meaning, which was, 
 or which was thought to be, significant. 
 
 IV. I have said that the Canaanites, who 
 were spared by the Israelites after the first 
 encounter with them, partly that they might 
 derive from the conquered race a tribute, 
 and partly that they might employ them in 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 25 
 
 the servile offices of hewing wood and 
 drawing- water, by degrees recovered their 
 spirit, urged war successfully against their 
 invaders, and for many years mightily op- 
 pressed Israel. The Philistines, the most 
 formidable of the Canaanitish nations, and 
 that under which the Israelites suffered the 
 most severely, added policy to power. For 
 at their bidding it came to pass, ( and pro- 
 bably the precaution was adopted by others 
 besides the Philistines,) that ' there was no 
 smith found throughout all the land of 
 Israel, for the Philistines said, lest the 
 Hebrews make themselves swords and 
 spears. But all the Israelites went down to 
 the Philistines, to sharpen every man his 
 share, and his coulter, and his axe, and 
 his mattock*.' Such is said to have been 
 the rigorous law of the conquerors. The 
 
 * 1 Sam. xiii. 19. 
 
26 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 workers in iron were everywhere put clown, 
 lest, under pretence of making implements 
 for the husbandman, they should forge arms 
 for the rebel. Now that some such law 
 was actually in force, (I am not aware that 
 direct mention is made of it except in this 
 one passage,) is a fact confirmed by a great 
 many incidents, some of them very trifling 
 and inconsiderable, none of them related or 
 connected, but all of them turned by this 
 one key. 
 
 Thus, when Ehud prepared to dispatch 
 Eglon the king of Moab, to whom the 
 Israelites were then subject, ' he made him ' 
 (we are told) c a dagger, which had two 
 edges, of a cubit length, and he did gird it 
 under his raiment upon his right thigh*;' he 
 made it, it seems, himself, expressly for the 
 occasion, and he bound it upon his right 
 
 * Judges iii. 16. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 27 
 
 thigh, instead of his left, which was the 
 sword-side, to baffle suspicion; whilst, being 
 left-handed, he could wield it nevertheless. 
 Moreover it may be observed in passing, 
 that Ehud was a Benjamite*; and that of 
 the Benjamites, when their fighting men 
 turned out against Israel in the affair of 
 Gibeah, there were seven hundred choice 
 slingers left-handed f ; and that of this dis- 
 comfited army, six hundred persons escaped 
 to the rock Rimmon, none so likely as the 
 light-armed ; and that this escape is dated 
 by one of our most careful investigators of 
 Scripture, Dr. Lightfoot, at thirteen years 
 before Ehud's accession J. What then is more 
 probable, — yet I need not say how inciden- 
 tal is this touch of truth, — than that this 
 left-handed Ehud, a Benjamite, was one who 
 
 * Judges iii. 16. t Ibid. xx. 16. 
 
 % Lightfoot's Works, i. 44—47. 
 
28 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 survived of those seven hundred left-handed 
 slingers, who were Benjamites? 
 
 Thus again, Shamgar slays six hundred 
 of the Philistines with an ox-goad * ; doubt- 
 less having recourse to an implement so 
 inconvenient, because it was not permitted 
 to carry arms or to have them in posses- 
 sion. 
 
 Thus Sampson, when he went down to 
 Timnath, with no very friendly feeling to- 
 wards the Philistines, however he might 
 feign it, nor at a moment of great political 
 tranquillity, was still unarmed ; so that 
 when c the young lion roared against him, 
 he refit him, as he would have rent a kid, 
 and he had nothing in his hand.' f And 
 when the same champion slew a thousand 
 of the Philistines, it was with a jaw-bone, 
 for he had no other choice. ' Was there a 
 * Lightfoot's Works, iii. 31. t Judges xiv. 5, <3. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 29 
 
 Spear or shield found in forty thousand of 
 Israel * ?' 
 
 All these are indications, yet very oblique 
 ones, that no smith or armourer wrought 
 throughout all the land of Israel ; for it 
 will be perceived on examination, that every 
 one of these incidents occurred at times 
 when the Israelites were servants of Canaan. 
 
 Moreover, it was probably in consequence 
 of this same restrictive law, that the sling 
 became so popular a weapon amongst the 
 Israelites. It does not appear that it was 
 known, or at least used, under Moses. 
 Whilst Israel was triumphant, it was not 
 needed : in those happier days, her fighting- 
 men were men that ' drew the sword.' In 
 the days of her oppression, they were driven 
 to the use of more ignoble arms. The 
 sling was readily constructed, and readily 
 
 * Judges v. 18/ 
 
30 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 concealed. Whilst a staff or hempen-stalk 
 grew in her fields, and a smooth stone lay 
 in her brooks, this artillery at least was 
 ever forthcoming. It was not a very fatal 
 weapon, unless wielded with consummate 
 skill. The Philistines despised it : Goliath, 
 we may remember, scorns it as a weapon 
 against a dog : but by continual application 
 to the exercise of it, (for it was now their 
 only hope,) the Israelites converted a rude 
 and rustic plaything into a formidable en- 
 gine of war. That troop of Benjamites, of 
 whom I have already spoken, had taken 
 pains to make themselves equally expert 
 with either hand — (every one could sling- 
 stones at an hair-breadth, and not miss) — 
 and the precision with which David di- 
 rected it, would not perhaps be thought 
 extraordinary amongst the active and prac- 
 tised youths of his day. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 31 
 
 These particulars, it will be perceived, 
 are many and divers ; and though they 
 might not of themselves have enabled us to 
 draw them into an induction that the Ca- 
 naanites withheld from Israel the use of 
 arms ; yet, when we are put in possession of 
 the single fact, that no smith was allowed 
 throughout all Israel, we are at once sup- 
 plied with the centre, towards which they 
 are one and all perceived to converge. 
 
 I know not how incidents of the kind here 
 produced, (many more of which I hope to 
 offer on future occasions,) can be accounted 
 for, except by the supposition that they are 
 portions of a true and actual history; and 
 they who may feel that there is in them 
 some force, but who may at the same time 
 feel that fuller evidence is wanted to com- 
 p el their assent to a Scripture wich 
 makes upon them demands so large ; who 
 
32 THE VERACITY OF TIl£ 
 
 secretly whisper to themselves, in the temper 
 of the incredulous Jew of old, ' we would a 
 sign;' or of him who mocked, saying, ' Let 
 Him now come down from the cross and we 
 will believe ' — let such calmly and dispas- 
 sionately consider, that there could be no 
 room for faith, if there were no room for 
 doubt ; that the scheme of our probation 
 requires, perhaps as a matter of necessity, 
 that faith should be in it a very chief in- 
 gredient ; that the exercise of faith, (as we 
 may partly perceive,) both the spirit which 
 must foster it, and the spirit which must 
 issue from it, is precisely what seems fit for 
 moulding us into vessels for future honour ; 
 that natural religion lifts up its voice to 
 tell us, that in this world we are undoubt- 
 edly living under the dispensation of a God, 
 who has given us probability, and not de- 
 monstration, for the principle of our or- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 33 
 
 dinary guidance ; and that he may be there- 
 fore well disposed to proceed under a si- 
 milar dispensation, with regard to the next 
 world, trying thereby who is the ' wise 
 servant' — who is reasonable in his demands 
 for evidence, for such he rejects not; and 
 who is presumptuous, for such he still 
 further hardens, — saying to the one with 
 complacency and satisfaction, ' because I 
 said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, 
 believest thou? Thou shalt see greater 
 things than these *.' And to the other, in 
 sorrow and rebuke, * because thou hast seen 
 me, thou hast believed; blessed are they 
 that have not seen, and yet have believed f .' 
 
 * John i. 50. t Ibid. xx. 29. 
 
34 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 
 established. 
 
 It is most satisfactory to find, as the history 
 of the Israelites unfolds itself, the same 
 indications of truth and accuracy still con- 
 tinuing to present themselves — the same 
 signatures (as it were) of a ^subscribing 
 witness of credit, impressed on every sheet 
 as we turn it over in its order. The glory 
 of Israel is now brought before us : David 
 comes upon the scene, destined to fill the 
 most conspicuous place in the annals of his 
 country, and furnishing, in the details of his 
 long and eventful life, a series of arguments 
 such as we are in search of, decisive, I 
 think, of the reality of his story, and of the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 35 
 
 fidelity with which it is told. With these 
 I shall be now for some time engaged. 
 
 I. The circumstances under which he 
 first appears before us, are such as give 
 token at once of his intrepid character and 
 trust in God. 'And there went out a 
 champion/ (so we read in the seventeenth 
 chapter of the First Book of Samuel,) ' out 
 of the camp of the Philistines, Goliath of 
 Gath, whose height was six cubits and a 
 span.' The point upon which the argu- 
 ment for the veracity of the history which 
 ensues will turn, is the incidental mention 
 here made of Gath, as the city of Goliath, a 
 patronymic which might have been thought 
 of very little importance, either in its inser- 
 tion or omission ; here, however, it stands. 
 Goliath of Gath was David's gigantic anta- 
 gonist. Now let us mark the value of this 
 casual designation of the formidable Philis- 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 tine. The report of the spies whom Moses 
 sent into Canaan, as given in the thirteenth 
 chapter of the Book of Numbers, was as 
 follows : — ' The land through which we 
 have gone to search it, is a land that eateth 
 up the inhabitants thereof; and all the 
 people that we saw in it, were men of a 
 great stature. And there we saw the giants, 
 the sons of Anak, which came of the giants. 
 And we were, in our own sight, as grass- 
 hoppers, and so we were in their sight*. 
 Moses is here a testimony unto us, that 
 these Anakims were a race of extraordinary 
 stature. This fact let us bear in mind, and 
 now turn to the Book of Joshua. There it 
 is recorded amongst the feats of arms of 
 that valiant leader of Israel, whereby he 
 achieved the conquest of Canaan, that ' He 
 cut oti the Anakims from the mountains, 
 
 * Numb. xiii. 32, 3. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 37 
 
 from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and 
 from the mountains of Judali, and from all 
 the mountains of Israel : Joshua destroyed 
 them utterly, with their cities. There was 
 none of the Anakims left in the land of the 
 children of Israel, only ' (observe the ex- 
 ception) ' in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, 
 there remained *.' Here, in his turn, comes 
 in Joshua as a witness, that when he put 
 the Anakims to the sword, he left some re- 
 maining in three cities, and in no others ; 
 and one of these three cities was Gath. 
 Accordingly, when in the Book of Samuel 
 we find Gath most incidentally named as 
 the country of Goliath, the fact squares 
 very singularly with those two other inde- 
 pendent facts, brought together from two in- 
 dependent authorities — the Books of Moses 
 and Joshua — the one, that the Anakims 
 
 * Josh. xi. 21, 22. 
 
38 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 were persons of gigantic size ; the other, 
 that some of this nearly exterminated race, 
 who survived the sword of Joshua, did ac- 
 tually continue to dwell at Gath. Thus 
 in the mouth of three witnesses — Moses, 
 Joshua, and Samuel, is the word esta- 
 blished : concurring as they do, in a man- 
 ner the most artless and satisfactory, to 
 confirm one particular at least in this sin- 
 gular exploit of David. One particular, 
 and that a hinge upon which the whole 
 moves, is discovered to be matter of fact 
 beyond all question ; and therefore, in the 
 absence of all evidence whatever to the 
 contrary, I am disposed to believe the other 
 particulars of the same history to be matter 
 of fact too. Yet are there many, I will not 
 say miraculous, but certainly most provi- 
 dential circumstances involved it it ; cir- 
 cumstances arguing, and meant to argue, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 39 
 
 the invisible hand by which David fought, 
 and Goliath fell. The stripling from the 
 sheepfold withstanding the man of war 
 from his youth— the ruddy boy, his car- 
 riage, and his cheeses left for the moment, 
 hearing and rejoicing both to hear and 
 accept the challenge, which struck terror 
 into the veterans of Israel — the shepherd's 
 bag, with five smooth stones, and no more, 
 (such assurance did he feel of speedy suc- 
 cess,) opposed to the helmet of brass, and 
 the coat of brazen mail, and the greaves of 
 brass, and the gorget of brass, and the 
 shield borne before him, and the spear with 
 the staff like a weaver's beam — the first 
 sling of a pebble, the signal of panic and 
 overthrow to the whole host of the Philis- 
 tines — all this claims the character of 
 more than an ordinary event, and asserts, 
 (as David declared it to do,) that The 
 
40 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Lord saveth not with sword and spear, but 
 that the battle is the Lord's, and that he 
 gave it into Israel's hands*.' 
 
 II. I proceed with the exploits of David : 
 for though the coincidences themselves are 
 distinct, they make up a story which is 
 almost continuous. David, we are told, 
 had now won the hearts of all Israel. The 
 daughters of the land sung his praises in 
 the dance, and their words awoke the 
 jealousy of Saul. ' Saul had slain his 
 thousands — David his ten thousands.' Ac- 
 cordingly the king, forgetful of his obliga- 
 tions to the gallant deliverer of his country 
 from the yoke of the Philistines, and regard- 
 less of the claims of the husband of his 
 daughter, sought his life. Twice he at- 
 tacked him with a javelin as he played 
 before him in his chamber ■ he laid an 
 * 1 Sam. xvii. 47. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 41 
 
 ambuscade about his house : he pursued 
 him with bands of armed men as he fled for 
 his life amongst the mountains. David, 
 however, had less fear for himself than for 
 his kindred, — for himself he could provide — 
 his conscience was clear, his courage good, 
 the hearts of his countrymen were with 
 him, and God was on his side. But his 
 name might bring evil on his house, and 
 the safety of his parents was his first care. 
 How then did he secure it? ' And David,' 
 we read, ' went thence to Mizpeh of Moab, 
 and he said unto the king of Moab, let my 
 father and my mother, I pray thee, come 
 forth, and be with you till I know what 
 God will do for me. And he brought them 
 before the king of Moab; and they dwelt 
 with him all the time that David continued 
 in the hold*.' 
 
 * 1 Sam. xxii. 3, 4. 
 
42 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Now why should David be disposed to 
 trust his father and mother to the protection 
 of the Moabites above all others ? Saul, it 
 is true, had been at war with them*, what- 
 ever he might then be,— but so had he been 
 with every people round about; with the 
 Ammonites, with the Edomites, with the 
 kings of Zobah. Neither did it follow, that 
 the enemies of Saul, as a matter of course, 
 would be the friends of David. On the 
 contrary, he was only regarded by the an- 
 cient inhabitants of the land, to whichever 
 of the seven nations they belonged, as the 
 champion of Israel ; and with such suspi- 
 cion was he received amongst them, not- 
 withstanding Saul's known enmity towards 
 him, that before Achish king of Gath, he 
 was constrained to feign himself mad, and 
 so effect his escape. And though he after- 
 * 1 Sam. xiy, 47. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 43 
 
 wards succeeded in removing the scruples 
 of that prince, and obtained his confidence, 
 and dwelt in his land, yet the princes of 
 the Philistines, in general, continued to put 
 no trust in him; and when it was proposed 
 by Achish, that he, with his men, should go 
 up with the armies of the Philistines against 
 Israel, — and when he had actually joined, — 
 1 the princes of the Philistines said unto 
 him, Make this fellow return, that he may 
 go to the place which thou hast appointed 
 him; and let him not go down with us to 
 battle, lest in the battle he be an adversary 
 to us : for wherewith should he reconcile 
 himself unto his master — should it not be 
 with the heads of these men*?' 
 
 Whether, indeed, the Moabites proved 
 themselves to be less suspicious of David 
 than these, his other idolatrous neighbours, 
 * 1 Sam. xxix. 4. 
 
44 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 does not appear ; nor whether their subse- 
 quent conduct warranted the trust which 
 he was now compelled to repose in them. 
 Tradition says, that they betrayed it, and 
 slew his parents ; and certain it is, that 
 David, some twenty years afterwards, pro- 
 ceeded against them with signal severity ; 
 for ' he smote Moab, and measured them 
 with a line, casting them down to the 
 ground ; even with two lines measured he 
 to put to death, and with one full line 
 to keep alive *'. Something, therefore, had 
 occurred in the interval to excite his heavy 
 displeasure against them : and if the pu- 
 nishment seems to have tarried too long to 
 be consistent with so remote a cause of 
 offence, it must be remembered that, for 
 fourteen of those years, the throne of 
 David was not established amongst the Ten 
 
 * 2 Sam. viii. 2. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 45 
 
 Tribes; and that, amidst the domestic dis- 
 orders of a new reign, leisure and oppor- 
 tunity for taking earlier vengeance upon 
 this neighbouring kingdom might well be 
 wanting. But however this might be, in 
 Moab David sought sanctuary for his father 
 and mother ; perilous this decision might 
 be, — probably it turned out so in fact, — but 
 he was in a great strait, and thought that, 
 in a choice of evils, this was the least. 
 
 Now what principle of preference may 
 be imagined to have governed David when 
 he committed his family to the dangerous 
 keeping of the Moabites? Was it a mere 
 matter of chance? It might seem so, as 
 far as appears to the contrary in David's 
 history, given in the Books of Samuel ; and 
 if the Book of Ruth had never come down 
 to us, to accident it probably would have 
 been ascribed. But this short and beautiful 
 
46 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 historical document shows us a propriety 
 in the selection of Moab above any other, for 
 a place of refuge to the father and mother 
 of David ; since it is there seen, that the 
 grandmother of Jesse, David's father, was 
 actually a Moabitess ; Ruth being the mother 
 of Obed, and Obed the father of Jesse*. 
 And, moreover, that Orpah, the other 
 Moabitess, who married Mahlon at the 
 time when Ruth married Chilion his bro- 
 ther, remained behind in Moab after the 
 departure of Naomi and Ruth, and remained 
 behind with a strong feeling of affection, 
 nevertheless, for the family and kindred of 
 her deceased husband, taking leave of them 
 with tears \, She herself then, or, at 
 all events, her descendants and friends, 
 might still be alive. Some regard for the 
 posterity of Ruth, David would persuade 
 
 ♦Ruth iv. 17. tlbid. i. 14. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRTPTURES. 47 
 
 himself, might still survive amongst them. 
 An interval of fifty years, for it probably 
 was not more, was not likely, he might 
 think, to have worn out the memory and 
 the feelings of relationship, in a country and 
 at a period, which acknowledged the ties of 
 family to be long and strong, and the blood 
 to be the life thereof. 
 
 Thus do we detect, not without some 
 pains, a certain fitness in the conduct of 
 David in this transaction, which marks it to 
 be a real one. The forger of a story could 
 not have fallen upon the happy device of 
 sheltering Jesse in Moab, simply on the 
 recollection of his Moabitish extraction two 
 generations earlier ; or, having fallen upon 
 it, it is probable he would have taken care 
 to draw the attention of his readers towards 
 his device by some means or other, lest the 
 evidence it was intended to afford of the 
 
48 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 truth of the history might be thrown away 
 upon him. As it is, the circumstance itself 
 is asserted without the smallest attempt to 
 explain or account for it. Nay, recourse 
 must be had to another book of Scripture, 
 in order that the coincidence may be seen. 
 
 III. Events roll on, and another incident 
 in the life of David now offers itself, which 
 also argues the truth of what we read 
 concerning him. ' And Michal, Saul's 
 daughter, loved David,' we are told # . On 
 becoming his wife, she gave further proof of 
 her affection for him, by risking the ven- 
 geance of Saul her father, when she let 
 David through the window that he might 
 escape, and made an image and put it in 
 the bed, to deceive Saul's messengers f . 
 After this, untoward circumstances pro- 
 duced a temporary separation of David and 
 * 1 Sam. xviii. 20. t Ibid. xix. 12. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 49 
 
 Michal. She remains in her father's cus- 
 tody, — and Saul, who was the tyrant of his 
 family, as well as of his people, gives her 
 6 unto Phaltiel, the son of Laish,' to wife. 
 Meanwhile David, in his turn, takes Abigail 
 the widow of Nabal, and Ahinoam of Jez- 
 reel, to be his wives; and continues the 
 fugitive life he had been so long constrained 
 to adopt for his safety. Years pass away, 
 and with them a multitude of transactions 
 foreign to the subject I have now before me. 
 Saul however is slain ; but a formidable fac- 
 tion of his friends, and the friends of his 
 house, still survives. Abner, the late mo- 
 narch's captain, and Ish-bosheth*, his son 
 
 * There is something remarkable, and to our present 
 purpose, perhaps, in Abner choosing Ish-bosheth for the 
 champion of Saul's party, and passing over Meph-ibosheth, 
 the son of Jonathan, who was the natural head of the house 
 of Saul. It might be, indeed, because the latter was a 
 child, (2 Sam. iv. 4.) though his name might have served 
 the puipose of Abner as well as that of Ish-bosheth, who 
 
50 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 and successor in the kingdom of Israel, put 
 themselves at its head. But David waxing 
 stronger every day, and a feud having sprung 
 up between the prince and this his officer, 
 overtures of submission are made and ac- 
 cepted, of which the following is the sub- 
 appears to have had no peculiar fitness for the part he had 
 to play. But may not the true cause of the preference be 
 this— that Jonathan was born before Saul was king, 
 (1 Sam. xiii. 21,) but Ish-bosheth after? For Saul, we 
 read, reigned forty years, (Acts xiii. 21,) and Ish-bosheth, 
 we read again, but in a passage far indeed removed from 
 the other, was forty years old at Saul's death, (2 Sam. ii. 10,) 
 and therefore must have been born in the first year of his 
 father' reign ; being thus at his birth a king's son— one of 
 the vrog<pupoyivv»)Tcu f as they were called in the Greek empire — 
 a class to whom, in several eastern kingdoms, precedence 
 was given over the mere eldest born; the legal title" to the 
 throne of Solomon himself was, apparently, no other than 
 this. Yet the coincidence between the accidental advan- 
 tage of Ish-bosheth's birth over that of Meph-ibosheth, and 
 Abner's preference of him as a rival to set up against 
 David, is as far from obvious, as anything that can be 
 imagined. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect 
 it, were it not for an incidental passage in a speech of St. 
 Paul, given in the Acts of the Apostles.— See Dr. Town- 
 son's Works, i. p. 58. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 51 
 
 stance : — * And Abner sent messengers to 
 David on his behalf, saying, whose is the 
 land ? Saying, also, make thy league with 
 me, and behold my hand shall be with thee 
 to bring about all Israel unto thee. And he 
 said, well, I will make a league with thee ; 
 but one thing I require of thee — that is, 
 thou shalt not see my face., except thou first 
 bring Michal, Saul's daughter, when thou 
 comest to see my face. And David sent 
 messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, say- 
 ing, deliver me my wife Michal, whom I 
 espoused to me. And Ish-bosheth sent and 
 took her from her husband, even from Phal- 
 tiel the son of Laish. And her husband 
 went with her along, weeping behind her, to 
 Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, go, 
 return; and he returned *.' It is probable, 
 therefore, that Michal and Phaltiel parted 
 
 * 2 Sam. iii. 12. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 very reluctantly. She bad evidently gained 
 his affections ; he, most likely, had won 
 her's : and in the mean time, she had been 
 supplanted, (so at least she might think,) in 
 David's house and heart, by Abigail and 
 Ahinoam. These were not propitious cir- 
 cumstances, under which to return to the 
 husband of her youth. The effect, indeed, 
 they were likely to have upon her conduct, 
 is not even hinted at in the remotest degree 
 in the narrative ; but they supply us, how- 
 ever, incidentally with the link that couples 
 Michal in her first character, with Michal 
 in her second and later character ; for the 
 difference between them is marked, though 
 it might escape us on a superficial glance ; 
 and if our attention did not happen to be 
 arrested by the events of the interval, it 
 would almost infallibly escape us. The 
 last act then, in which we left Michal en- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 53 
 
 gaged, was one of loyal attachment to 
 David— saving his life, probably at great 
 risk of her own ; for Saul had actually 
 attempted to put Jonathan his son to death 
 for David's sake, and why should he spare 
 Michal his daughter?* Her subsequent 
 marriage with Phaltiel was Saul's business ; 
 it might, or might not, be with her consent : 
 an act of conjugal devotion to David was 
 the last scene in which she was, to our 
 knowledge, a voluntary actor. Now let us 
 mark the next, — not the next event recorded 
 in order, for we lose sight of Michal for a 
 season, — but the next in which she is a party 
 concerned ; at the same time remembering 
 that the Books of Samuel do not offer the 
 slightest explanation of the contrast which 
 her former and latter self present, or the 
 least allusion to the change, David brings 
 fl i Sam. xx ? 3fc 
 
54 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 the Ark from Kirjath-jearim, where it had 
 been abiding since it was recovered from 
 the Philistines, to his own city. He dances 
 before it, girded with the priestly or pro- 
 phetical vest, the linen ephod, and probably 
 chanting his own noble hymn, ' Lift up 
 your heads, O ye gates ! and be ye lift up 
 ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory 
 shall come in*!' Michal, in that hour, no 
 doubt felt and reflected the joy of her hus- 
 band ! She had shared with him the day 
 of adversity — she was now called to be 
 partaker of his triumph ! How read we ? 
 The reverse of all this. ' Then did Michal, 
 Saul's daughter, look through a window, 
 and saw king David leaping and dancing 
 before the Lord, and she despised him in her 
 heart f.' Nor did she confine herself to 
 contemptuous silence : for when he had now 
 
 * Psalm xxiv. 7. f 2 Sara. vi. 16. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRirTURES. 55 
 
 set up the Ark in the midst of the taber- 
 nacle, and had blessed the people, he came 
 unto his own household prepared, in the joy 
 and devotion of the moment, to bless that 
 also. How then is he received by the wife 
 whom he had twice won at the hazard of 
 his own life, and who had in return shown 
 herself heretofore ready to sacrifice her own 
 safety for his preservation? Thus it was. 
 ' Michal came out to meet him, and said, 
 how glorious is the king of Israel to day in 
 the eyes of the handmaids of his servants! — 
 as one of the vain fellows shamelessly un- 
 co vereth himself.' Here was a burst of ill 
 temper, which rather made an occasion for 
 
 showing itself, than sought one. Accord- 
 ed ' o 
 
 ingly, David replies with spirit, and with 
 a righteous zeal for the honour of God, — 
 not without an allusion (as I think) to 
 the secret, but true cause of this sple- 
 
56 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 netic attack, — c It was before the Lord, 
 which chose me before thy father, and 
 before all his house, to appoint me ruler 
 over the people of the Lord, over Israel : 
 therefore will I play before the Lord. And 
 I will yet be more vile than this, and will 
 be base in mine own sight; and of the 
 maid- servants which thou hast spoken of, of 
 them shall I be held in honour*.' In these 
 handmaids or maid-servants, which are so 
 prominently set forth, I recognise, if I mis- 
 take not, Abigail and Ahinoam, the rivals 
 of Michal ; and the very pointed rebuke 
 which the insinuation provokes from David, 
 appears to me to indicate, that (whatever 
 she might affect) he felt that the gravamen 
 of her pretended concern for his debase- 
 ment did, in truth, rest here. And may 
 I not add, that the winding up of this 
 
 *2 Sam. vi, 21,22, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 57 
 
 singular incident, ' therefore Michal, the 
 daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day 
 of her death,' well accords with my suspi- 
 cions ; and that whether it be hereby meant 
 that God judged her, or that David di- 
 vorced her, there is still something in the 
 nature of her punishment appropriate to the 
 nature of her transgression ? 
 
 On the whole, Michal is now no longer 
 what Michal was — but she is precisely what, 
 from the new position in which she stands, 
 we might expect her to be. Yet it is by 
 the merest glimpses of the history of David 
 and her own, that we are enabled to ac- 
 count for the change. The fact is not for- 
 mally explained ; it is not even formally 
 asserted. All that appears, is a marked in- 
 consistency in the conduct of Michal, at two 
 different points of time ; and when we look 
 about for an explanation, we perceive in the 
 
58 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 corresponding fortunes of David, as compared 
 with her own during the interval, a very 
 natural, though after all only a conjectural, 
 explanation. 
 
 Herein, I again repeat, are the charac- 
 ters of truth, — incidents dropping into their 
 places without care or contrivance, — the 
 fragments of an imperfect figure recovered 
 out of a mass of material, and found to be 
 still its component parts, however they 
 might not seem such when individually ex- 
 amined. 
 
 And here let me remark, (for I have been 
 unwilling to interrupt my argument for the 
 purpose of collateral explanation, and yet 
 without it I may be thought to have pur- 
 chased the evidence at some expense of the 
 moral,) that the practice of polygamy, which 
 was not from the beginning, but which 
 Lamech first adopted, probably in the hope 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 59 
 
 of multiplying- his issue, and so possessing 
 himself of that ' seed/ which was now the 
 ' desire of the nations # ' — a desire which 
 serves as a key (the only satisfactory one, I 
 think) to much of the conduct of the Pa- 
 triarchs, — the practice of polygamy, I say, 
 thus introduced, continued, in David's time, 
 not positively condemned ; Moses having 
 been only commissioned to regulate some 
 of the abuses to which it led ; and though 
 his writing of divorcement must be consi- 
 dered as making allowance for the hardness 
 of heart of those for whom he was leois- 
 lating, (our Lord himself so considers it,) — 
 a hardness of heart confirmed by a long and 
 slavish residence in a most polluted land; 
 still that writing, lax as it might be, was, 
 no doubt, in itself a restrictive law, as 
 matters then stood. The provisions of the 
 
 * Matt. xix. 8. 
 
60 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Levitical code in general, and the extremely 
 gross state of society they argue, prove that 
 it must have been a restrictive law, an 
 improvement upon past practices at least. 
 And when the times of the Gospel ap- 
 proached, and a better dispensation began 
 to dawn, the Almighty prepared the world, 
 by the mouth of a Prophet, to expect those 
 restrictions to be drawn closer, — Malachi 
 being commanded to proclaim, what had not 
 been proclaimed before, that God e hated 
 putting away *.' And when at length man- 
 kind were ripe for a more wholesome de- 
 cree, Christ himself pronounced it, and 
 thenceforward, c A man was to cleave unto 
 his wife,' and 'they twain were to be one 
 flesh,' and by none were they ' to be put 
 asunder, God having joined them toge- 
 ther f.' A progressive scheme this— agree* 
 * Malachi ii. 16, t Mark x. 7. 2 Cor. xi. 2, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 6l 
 
 able to that general plan by which the 
 Almighty seems to be almost always guided 
 in his government — the development of that 
 same principle by which the law against 
 murder was passed for an age that was full 
 of violence ; and was afterwards sublimed 
 into a law against malice : by which the law 
 against adultery was provided for a carnal 
 and grovelling generation ; and was after- 
 wards refined into a law against concu- 
 piscence : by which the law of strict reta- 
 liation, and no more, eye for eye, and tooth 
 for tooth — a law, low and ungenerous as it 
 may now be thought, nevertheless in ad- 
 vance of the people for whom it was 
 enacted, and better than the law of the 
 strongest — afterwards gave place to that 
 other and nobler law, ' resist not evil.' 
 And it may be observed, that the very case 
 of divorce, (and polygamy is closely con- 
 
62 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 nected with it) is actually in the contem- 
 plation of our Lord, when he is thus ex- 
 hibiting to the Jews the more elevated 
 standard of Christian morals, and is ever 
 contrasting, as he proceeds, — ' It was said 
 by them of old time/ with his own more 
 excellent way, ' but I say unto you ;' as if 
 in times past, according to the words of the 
 Apostle, ' God suffered nations to walk 
 in their own ways *' for some wise pur- 
 pose, and for awhile ' winked at that igno- 
 arnce |.' 
 
 IV. But there is another circumstance 
 connected with this removal of the Ark of 
 God to Jerusalem, which bespeaks, like the 
 last, the fidelity with which the tale is 
 told. It was the intention of David to have 
 conveyed this emblem of God's presence 
 with his people from Kirjath-jearim (from 
 
 * Acts xiv. 16. t Ibid. xvii. 30. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 63 
 
 Ephratah, where they found it in the wood*) 
 at once to his own city. An incident, how- 
 ever, of which I shall presently speak, 
 occurred to shake his purpose and change 
 his plan. ' So David,' we read upon this, 
 ' would not remove the Ark of the Lord 
 unto him into the city of David ; but David 
 carried it aside into the house of Obed- 
 Edom, the Giliite'\' Now what regulated 
 David in choosing the house of Obed-Edom 
 as a resting-place for the Ark? Was it an 
 affair of mere chance ? It might be so ; no 
 motive whatever, for the selection of his 
 house above that of another man, is as- 
 signed — but this we are taught, that ' when 
 the cart which bare the Ark came to Na- 
 chor's threshing-floor, Uzzah put forth his 
 hand and took hold of it, for the oxen shook 
 it — and the anger of the Lord was kindled 
 * Ps. cxxxii, 6. t 2 Sara. vi. 10. 
 
64 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 against Uzzah, and God smote him there 
 for his error, and he died by the Ark of 
 God # .' It had been commanded, as we 
 find in the seventh chapter of the Book of 
 Numbers (v. 9), that the Ark should be 
 borne on the shoulders of the Levites — 
 David, however, had placed it in a cart after 
 the fashion of the Philistines' idols, and had 
 neglected the Levitical precept. The sud- 
 den death of Uzzah, and the nature of his 
 offence alarms him, sets him to think, re- 
 minds him of his neglect, and he turns to 
 the house of Obed-Edom, the Gittitc. The 
 epithet here so incidentally annexed to the 
 name of Obed-Edom, enables us to answer 
 the question, wherefore David chose the 
 house of this man, with some probability of 
 being right in our conjecture. For we learn 
 from the Book of Joshua, that Gath (dis- 
 * 2 Sara.vi. G. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 65 
 
 tinguishecl from other towns of . the same 
 name, by the addition of Rimmon*) was one 
 of the cities of the Levites ; nor of the Levites 
 only, but of the Kohathites (v. 20), the very 
 family specially set apart from the Levites, 
 that ' they should bear the Ark upon their 
 shoulders f .' If, therefore, Obed-Edom was 
 called the Gittite, from this Gath, as he 
 doubtless was so called from some Gath or 
 other, then must he have been a Levite ; and 
 more than this, actually a Kohathite ; so that 
 he would be strictly in his office when keep- 
 ing the Ark ; and because he was so, he was 
 selected ; David causing the Ark to be 
 * carried aside,' or out of the direct road (for 
 that is the force of the expression J), pre- 
 cisely for the purpose of depositing it with 
 
 * Joshua xxi. 24. f Numb. vii. 9. 
 
 I See Numb. xx. 1 7. where the same Hebrew word is 
 used, and xxii. 23. 
 
66 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 a man of an order, and of a peculiar division 
 of that order, which God had chosen for his 
 Ark-bearers. Accordingly, we read in the 
 fifteenth chapter of the first book of Chro- 
 nicles (v. 38), where a fuller account, in some 
 particulars, is given, than in the parallel 
 passage of Samuel, of the final removal of 
 the Ark, from under the roof of Obed-Edom 
 to Jerusalem, that Obed-Edom was actually 
 on this occasion one of the ' Porters ;' for 
 the profane cart was no longer employed, 
 but the more reverential mode of conveyance, 
 and that which the law enjoined, was now 
 strictly adopted in its stead. 
 
 This I look upon as a coincidence of some 
 value — (supposing it, of course, to be fairly 
 made out) — of some value, I mean, even 
 independently of its general bearing upon 
 the credibility of Scripture ; for it is a touch 
 of truth in the circumstantial details of an 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 67 
 
 event which is in its nature miraculous 
 This it establishes as a fact, that, for some 
 reason or other, David went out of his way 
 to deposit the Ark with an individual of a 
 family whose particular province it was to 
 serve and bear the Ark. This, I say, is 
 established by the coincidence as a fact — 
 and here, 'taking my stand with substantial 
 ground under my feet, I can with safety, 
 and without violence, gradually feel my way 
 along through the inconvenience which 
 prompted this deviation from the direct 
 path ; this change in the mode of convey- 
 ance ; this sudden reverence for the laws of 
 the Ark; even up to the disaster which befel 
 the rash and unconsecrated Uzzah, and the 
 caution and alarm it inspired, as being a 
 manifest interposition of God for the vindi- 
 cation of his honour ; and when I find the 
 apparently trivial appellation of the Giltitc, 
 
 F ^ 
 
G8 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 thus pleading for the reality of a marvellous 
 act of the Almighty, I am reminded how 
 carefully we should gather up every word 
 of Scripture that nothing be lost ; and I am 
 led to contemplate the precautions, the 
 superstitious precautions of the Rabbins, if 
 you will, that one jot, or one tittle may not 
 be suffered to pass from the text of the law, 
 not without respect, as if its every letter 
 might contain some hidden treasure^, some 
 unsuspected fount, from which virtue might 
 haply go out for evidence, for doctrine, or 
 for duty. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES GO 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word 
 be established. 
 
 We are now arrived at another incident in 
 the history of David — for I must still call 
 your attention to the memoirs of that ex- 
 traordinary person, as exhibiting marks of 
 truth and reality, numerous perhaps beyond 
 those which any other character of the same 
 antiquity presents — an incident which has 
 been accounted, and most justly accounted, 
 the reproach of his life. The province which 
 I have marked out for myself in these 
 sermons, is the evidence for the veracity of 
 the sacred historians, and not the interpre- 
 tation of the moral difficulties which the 
 history itself may sometimes involve : those 
 difficulties I should be in general more dis- 
 
70 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 posed to neutralise, than to deny or to ex- 
 plain ; and by appealing to the argument of 
 natural religion, where the case admits of it 
 (which it most commonly does), repose upon 
 this conclusion, that if they be thought 
 enough to make us infidels, they ouo-ht also 
 to be thought enough, upon every principle 
 of sound reasoning, to make us atheists too. 
 In the present instance, however, the very 
 coincidence which establishes the trust- 
 worthiness of the history, may serve also to 
 remove some stumbling-blocks out of the 
 sceptic's path, and vindicate the ways of 
 God to man. 
 
 I. That the man after God's own heart 
 should have so fallen from his high estate, 
 as to become the adulterer and the assassin, 
 has been ever urged with great effect by 
 unbelievers; and this very consequence of 
 David's sin was foreseen and foretold by 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 71 
 
 Nathan the prophet, when he approached 
 the kino- bearing with him the rebuke of 
 God on his tongue, and saying*, l by this deed 
 thou hast given great occasion to the enemies 
 of God to blaspheme.' Such has indeed 
 been its effect from the day when it was first 
 done, even unto this day. and such probably 
 will its effect continue to be unto the end 
 of time. David's transgression, committed 
 almost three thousand years ago, sheds, in 
 some sort, an evil influence on the cause of 
 David's God even now. So wide-wasting 
 is the mischief which flows from the lapse of 
 a righteous man ; so great the darkness be- 
 comes, when the light that is amongst us is 
 darkness. But was David the man after 
 God's own heart here? It were blasphemy to 
 suppose it. That the sin of David was ful- 
 fillino- some righteous judgment of God 
 against Uriah and his house, I doubt not — 
 
72 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 for God often makes his enemies his instru- 
 ments, and without sanctifying the means* 
 strikes out of them good. Still a sin it was, 
 great and grievous, offensive to that God to 
 whom the blood of Uriah cried from the 
 ground. And this the Almighty proclaimed 
 even more loudly perhaps by suffering David 
 to live, than if, in the sudden burst of his 
 instant displeasure, he had slain him. For, 
 at the period when the King of Israel fell 
 under this sad temptation, he was at the 
 very height of his glory and his strength. 
 The kingdom of Israel had never so flourished 
 before ; it was the first of the nations. He 
 had thoroughly subdued the Philistines, that 
 mighty people, who in his youth had com- 
 pelled all the Israelites to come down to 
 their quarters, even to sharpen their mat- 
 tocks, so rigid was the exercise of their 
 rule. He had smitten the Moabites, on the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 73 
 
 other side Jordan, once themselves the 
 oppressors of Israel, making them tribu- 
 taries. He had subdued the Edomites, a 
 race that delighted in war, and had stationed 
 his troops throughout all their territories. 
 He had possessed himself of the indepen- 
 dent kingdom of the Syrians, and garrisoned 
 Damascus, their capital. He had extended 
 his frontier eastward to the Euphrates *, 
 though never perhaps beyond it, and he was 
 on the point of reducing the Ammonites, 
 whose city, Rabbah, his generals were be- 
 sieging ; and thus, the whole of the promised 
 land, with the exception of the small state 
 of Tyre, which the Israelites never appear to 
 have conquered, was now his own. Pros- 
 perity, perhaps, had blinded his eyes, and 
 hardened his heart. The treasures which 
 he had amassed, and the ease which he had 
 * 2 Sam. viii, 
 
74 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 fought for and won, had made him luxurious ; 
 for now it was, that the once innocent son of 
 Jesse the Bethlehemite, — he who had been 
 taken from the sheep-folds because an ex- 
 cellent spirit was in him, and who had 
 hitherto prospered in all that he had set his 
 hand unto, — it was now that this man was 
 tempted and fell. And now mark the re- 
 mainder of his days — God eventually for- 
 gave him, for he repented him (as his peni- 
 tential psalms still most affectingly attest), 
 in the bitterness and anguish of his soul ; 
 but God dried up all the sources of his 
 earthly blessings thenceforwards for ever. 
 With this sin the sorrow of his life began, 
 and the curse which the prophet denounced 
 against him, sat heavy on his spirit to the 
 last ; a curse, and I beg attention to this, 
 which has a peculiar reference to the nature 
 of his crime; as though upon this offence 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 75 
 
 all his future miseries and misfortunes were 
 to turn ; as though he was only spared from 
 the avenger's violent hand to be made a 
 spectacle of righteous suffering to the world. 
 He had committed murder by the edo-e of 
 the sword, and therefore the sword was 
 never to depart from his house. He had 
 despised the commandment of the Lord (so 
 Nathan expressly says), and taken the wife 
 of another to be his wife ; therefore were his 
 own wives to be taken from him and given 
 to his neighbour in turn. The complexion, 
 therefore, of his remaining years, was set 
 by this one fatal deed of darkness, (let none 
 think or say that it was lightly regarded by 
 the Almighty,) and having become the man 
 of blood, of blood he was to drink deep, and 
 having become the man of lust, by that same 
 baneful passion in others, was he himself to 
 be scourged for ever. Now the manner in 
 
76 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 which these tremendous threats are fulfilled 
 is very remarkable ; for it is done by way of 
 natural consequence of the sin itself ; a dis- 
 pensation which I have not seen developed 
 as it deserves to be, though the facts of the 
 history furnish very striking materials for 
 the purpose. And herein lies the coinci- 
 dence, to which the remarks I have hitherto 
 been making are a needful prologue. 
 
 By the rebellion of Absalom it was that 
 these menaces of the Almighty Judge of all 
 the earth were accomplished with a fearful 
 fidelity. 
 
 Absalom was able to draw after him the 
 hearts of all the people as one man. And 
 what was it that armed him with this moral 
 strength ? What was it that gave him the 
 means of unseating his father in the affec- 
 tions of a loyal people ? — The king whom 
 they had so greatly loved — who had raised 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 77 
 
 the name of Israel to a pitch of glory never 
 attained unto before — whose praises had 
 been sung by the mothers and maidens of 
 Israel, as the champion to whom none other 
 was like? How could he steal away the 
 hearts of the people from such a man, with 
 so little effort, and apparently with so little 
 reason? I believe that this very sin of 
 David was made the engine by which his 
 throne was shaken ; for I observe that the 
 chief instrument in the conspiracy was Ahi- 
 thophel. No sooner has Absalom determined 
 upon his daring deed, than he looks to 
 Ahithophel for help. He appears, for some 
 reason or other not mentioned, to have quite 
 reckoned upon him as well-affected to his 
 cause, as ready to join him in it heart and 
 hand ; and he did not find himself mistaken. 
 < Absalom,' I read *, ' sent for Ahithophel 
 * 2 Sam. xv. 12. 
 
78 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 the Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his 
 city, even from Giloh, while he offered 
 sacrifices — and the conspiracy,' (it is forth- 
 with added, as though Ahithophel was a host 
 in himself) ' was strong ; for the people in- 
 creased continually with Absalom.' David, 
 upon this, takes alarm, and makes it the sub- 
 ject of his earnest prayer to God, that ( he 
 would turn the counsel of Ahithophel into 
 foolishness.' Nor is this to be wondered at, 
 when we are told in another place that f the 
 counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in 
 those days, was as if a man had inquired at 
 the oracle of God : so was all the counsel of 
 Ahithophel, both with David and with Ab- 
 salom '|.' He therefore was the sinews of 
 Absalom's cause. Of his character, and the 
 influence which he possessed over the 
 people, Absalom availed himself, both to 
 
 * 2 Sam. xvi. 23. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 70 
 
 sink the spirits of David's party, and to in- 
 spire his own with confidence, for all men 
 counted Ahithophel to be as a prophet. But 
 independently of the weight of his public 
 reputation, it is probable that certain private 
 wrongs of his own, (of which I have now to 
 speak,) at once prepared him for accepting 
 Absalom's rebellious overtures with alacrity, 
 and caused him to find still greater favour 
 in the eyes of the people, as being an 
 injured man, whom it was fit that they 
 should avenge of his adversary. For in the 
 twenty- third chapter of the second Book of 
 Samuel, I find in the catalogue of David's 
 guardsmen, thirty-seven in number, the 
 name of ' Eliam, the son of Ahithophel the 
 GiloniteJ (v. 34). The epithet of Gilonite 
 sufficiently identifies this Ahithophel with 
 the conspirator of the same name. One, 
 therefore, of the thirty-seven officers about 
 
80 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 David's person, was a son of the future con- 
 spirator against his throne. But, in this 
 same catalogue, I also meet with the name 
 of Uriah the Hittite (v. 39). Eliam, there- 
 fore, and Uriah must have been thrown 
 much together, being both of the same rank, 
 and being each one of the thirty-seven offi- 
 cers of the king's guard. Now, from the 
 eleventh chapter of the second Book of 
 Samuel, I learn that Uriah the Hittite had 
 for his wife Bath-sheba, the daughter of one 
 Eliam (v. 3). I look upon it, therefore, to 
 be so probable, as almost to amount to cer- 
 tainty, that this was the same Eliam as 
 before, and that Uriah (as was very natural, 
 considering the necessary intercourse of the 
 parties) had married the daughter of his 
 brother officer, and accordingly, the grand- 
 daughter of Ahithophel. I feel that I now 
 have the Lev to the conduct of this leading 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 81 
 
 conspirator ; the sage and prudent friend of 
 David converted, by some means or other, 
 into his deadly foe — for I now perceive, that 
 when David murdered Uriah, he murdered 
 Ahithophel's grvndson by marriage, and when 
 he corrupted Bath-sheba, he corrupted his 
 grand-daughter by blood. Well then, after 
 this disaster and dishonour of his house, 
 might revenge rankle in the heart of Ahi- 
 thophel ! Well might Absalom know that 
 nothing but a fit opportunity was wanted by 
 him, that he might give it vent, and spend 
 his treasured wrath upon the head of David 
 his wrong-doer ! Well might he approach 
 him with confidence, and impart to him his 
 treason, as a man who would welcome the 
 news, and be his present and powerful fel- 
 low-worker ! Well might the people, who, 
 upon an appeal like this, seldom fail to fol- 
 low the dictates of their better feelings, and 
 
 a 
 
82 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 to stand manfully by the injured, find their 
 allegiance to a throne defiled with adultery 
 and blood, relaxed, and their loyalty trans- 
 ferred to the rebel's side ! And the terms in 
 which Shimei reproaches the king, when he 
 follows after him to Bahurim, casting stones 
 at him, not improbably as expressive of the 
 legal punishment of the adulterer, f Come 
 out, come out, thou bloody man, thou man of 
 Belial * ; and the meekness moreover with 
 which David bows to the reproach, accept- 
 ing it as a merited chastisement from 
 God, ' So let him curse, because the Lord 
 hath said unto him, curse David' (v. 20) ; 
 are minute incidents which testify to the 
 same fact — to the popular voice now lifted 
 up against David, and to the merited cause 
 thereof. Well might he find his heart sink 
 within him, when he heard that his ancient 
 * 2 Sam. xvi. 7. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 83 
 
 counsellor had joined the ranks of his 
 enemies, and when he knew but too well 
 what reason he had given him for turning 
 his arms against himself in that unmitigated 
 and inextinguishable thirst for vengeance 
 which is sweet, however utterly unjustifiable, 
 to all men so deeply injured, and sweetest 
 of all to the children of the East ! And in 
 the very first word of exhortation which 
 Ahithophel suggests to Absalom, I detect, or 
 think I detect, the wounded spirit of the man 
 seizing the earliest moment for inflicting a 
 punishment upon his enemy, of a kind that 
 should not only be bitter, but appropriate, 
 the eye for the eye ; and when Absalom said, 
 ' Give counsel among you what we shall do/ 
 and Ahithophel answered, ' Go in unto thy 
 father's concubines which he hath left to 
 keep the house*,' he was not only moved 
 
 • 2 Sam. xvi. 21. 
 
 G2 
 
84 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 by the desire that the rebellious son should 
 stand fairly committed to his rebellion by 
 an unpardonable outrage against the ma- 
 jesty of an eastern monarch, but by the de- 
 sire also to make David taste the bitterness 
 of that cup which he had caused others to 
 drink, and to receive the very measure which 
 he had himself meted withal. And so it 
 came to pass, that Absalom followed his 
 counsel, and they spread for him the in- 
 cestuous tent, we read, on the top of the 
 house, in the sight of all Israel*, on that 
 very roof, it should seem, on which David 
 at even-tide had walked, when he conceived 
 this his great sin, upon which his life was 
 to turn as upon a hinge f ; and so again it 
 came to pass, and under circumstances of 
 local identity and exposure which wear the 
 aspect of strictly judicial reprisals, that that 
 * 2 Sam. xvi. 22. t 2 Sam. xi. 2. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 85 
 
 which he had done secretly (his abduction 
 of another man's wife) God did for him, and 
 more also, as he said he would, before all 
 Israel, and before the sun*. 
 
 Thus, having once discovered by the 
 apposition of many passages, that a relation 
 subsisted between Ahithophel and Uriah, a 
 fact which the sacred historian is so far from 
 dwelling upon, that he barely supplies us with 
 the means to establish it at all, we see in the 
 circumstances of the conspiracy, the natural 
 recoil of David's sin ; and in his punishment, 
 retributive as it is, so strictly retributive, 
 that it must have stricken his conscience as 
 a judgment, even had there been no warning 
 voice concerning it, the accomplishment by- 
 means the most easy and unconstrained, of 
 all that Nathan had uttered, to the syllable. 
 
 II. There is another incident connected 
 * 2 Sara. xii. 12, 
 
86 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 with this part of the history of David, which 
 I have pondered, alternately accepting* and 
 rejecting it, as still further corroborating the 
 opinion I have expressed, that the fortunes 
 of David turned upon this one sin — that 
 having mounted to their high-mark, they 
 henceforward began, and continued to ebb 
 away — this one sin which, according to 
 Scripture, itself eclipsed every other. For 
 though it would not be difficult to name 
 sundry instances of ignorance, of negligence, 
 of inconsideration, of infirmity in the life of 
 David besides this, it is nevertheless said, 
 that ' he did that which was right in the 
 eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside in 
 anything that he commanded him all the 
 days of his life, save only in the matter of 
 Uriah the Hittite*.' I propose, however, 
 this coincidence for the reason I have said, 
 * 1 Kings xv. 5. See Sanderson, Serm. iv. ad Aulara, p. 79, fol. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 87 
 
 not without some hesitation ; though at the 
 same time, quite without concern for the 
 safety of my cause, it being a very valuable 
 property of the argument by which I am 
 endeavouring to establish the credibility of 
 Scripture, that any member of it, if unsound 
 or unsatisfactory, may be detached without 
 further injury to the whole, than the mere 
 loss of that member entails. 
 
 This, therefore, I perceive, or think I per- 
 ceive, that David became thoroughly encum- 
 bered by his connexion with Joab, the captain 
 of his armies ; that he was too suspicious to 
 trust him, and too weak to dismiss him ; 
 that this officer, by some chance or other, 
 had established a despotic control over the 
 king; and that it is not unreasonable to 
 believe (and here lies the coincidence) 
 that when David made him the partner and 
 secret agent of his guilty purpose touching 
 
88 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Uriah, he sold himself into his hands ; that in 
 that fatal letter he sealed away his liberty, 
 and surrendered it up to this his unscru- 
 pulous accomplice. Certain it is, that 
 during all the latter years of his reign, 
 David was little more than a nominal king. 
 
 Joab, no doubt, was by nature a man that 
 
 could do and dare — a bold captain in bad 
 
 times. The faction of Saul was so strong, 
 
 that David could at first scarcely call the 
 
 throne his own, or choose his servants 
 
 according to his pleasure; and Joab, an 
 
 able warrior, though sometimes avenging 
 
 his own private quarrels at the expense of 
 
 his sovereign's honour, and thereby vexing 
 
 him at the heart, was not to be displaced ; 
 
 he was then too hard for David, as the king 
 
 himself complains*. But as yet, David 
 
 was not tongue-tied at least. He openly, 
 
 * 2 Sam. iii. 39 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 89 
 
 and without reserve, reprobated the con- 
 duct of Joab in slaying Abner, though he 
 had the excuse, such as it was, of taking 
 away the life of the man by whose hand his 
 brother Asahel had fallen. Moreover, he 
 so far asserted his own authority, as to make 
 him rend his clothes, and gird him with 
 sack-cloth, and mourn before this very Ab- 
 ner, whom he had thus vindictively laid 
 low ; doubtless a bitter and mortifying 
 penance to a man of the stout heart of Joab, 
 and such as argued David, who insisted 
 upon it, to be as yet in his own dominions 
 supreme. Circumstances might constrain 
 him still to employ this famous captain, but 
 he had not at least (young as his authority 
 then was) yielded himself up to his impe- 
 rious subject. On the contrary, waxing 
 stronger, as he did, every day, and the rem- 
 nant of Saul's party dispersed, he became 
 
90 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 the king of Israel in fact, as well as in name, 
 his throne established not only upon law, but 
 upon public opinion too, so that ' whatever 
 the king did,' we are told, < pleased all the 
 people*'.' He was now in a condition to 
 rule for himself, and for himself he did rule 
 (whatever had become of Joab in the mean 
 season) ; for we presently find him appoint- 
 ing that officer to the command of his army 
 by his own act and deed, simply because he 
 happened to be the man to win that rank 
 when it was proposed by David as the prize 
 of battle to any individual of his whole host, 
 who should first get up the gutter and smite 
 the Jebusites at the storming of Zionf. 
 And whoever will peruse the eighth and 
 tenth chapters of the second Book of 
 Samuel, in which are recorded the noble 
 achievements of David at this bright period 
 * 2 Sam. iii. 36. f 2 Sam. v. 8. 1. Chron. xi. 6. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 91 
 
 of his life, his power abroad and his policy 
 at home, the energy which he threw into 
 the national character, and the respect which 
 he commanded for it throughout all the 
 East, will perceive that he reigned without 
 a restraint and without a rival. Now comes 
 the guilty act; the fatal stumbling-block 
 against which he dashed his foot, and fell 
 so pernicious a height. And henceforwards 
 I see, or imagine I see, Joab usurping by 
 degrees an authority which he had not be- 
 fore ; taking upon himself too much ; exe- 
 cuting or disregarding David's orders, as it 
 suited his own convenience ; and finally con- 
 spiring against his throne and the rightful 
 succession of his line. Again ; I perceive, 
 if I mistake not, the hands of David tied ; 
 his efforts to disembarrass himself of his 
 oppressor feeble and ineffectual : his resent- 
 ment set at nought; his punishments, though 
 
92 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 just, resisted by his own subject, and suc- 
 cessfully resisted. For I find him suggest- 
 ing to David the recall of Absalom after his 
 banishment, through the widow of Tekoah, 
 in a manner to excite the suspicion of 
 the kino-*. ' Is not the hand of Joab with 
 thee in all this?' were words in which pro- 
 bably more was meant than met the ear. 
 It is not unlikely (though the passage is 
 altogether mysterious and obscure) that 
 there was then some secret understanding 
 between the soldier and the future rebel, 
 which was only interrupted by the impetu- 
 osity of Absalom, who resented JoaVs delay, 
 and set fire to his barley f ; an injury which 
 he must have had some reason to feel Joab 
 durst not resent, and which, in fact, even in 
 spite of the fury of his natural character, he 
 did not resent. Howbeit, he remembered it 
 * 2 Sam. xiv. 19. t 2 Sam. xiv. 30. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 93 
 
 in the rebellion which now broke out, and 
 took his personal revenge whilst he was 
 professedly fighting the battle of David, to 
 whom his interest or his passion decided 
 him for this time to be true. ' Deal gently 
 for my sake with the young man, even with 
 Absalom,' was the parting charge which the 
 king gave to this dangerous champion as he 
 went forth with the host ; in the hearing of 
 all the people he gave it, and to all the 
 captains who were with him. It was the 
 thing nearest his heart. For here it may be 
 observed, that David's strong 'parental feel- 
 ings, of which we have many occasional 
 glimpses, give an identity to his character, 
 which, in itself, marks it to be a real one. 
 The fear of the servants to tell him that his 
 infant was dead*; the advice of Jonadab, 
 ' a subtle man,' who had read David's dis- 
 * 2 Sam. xii. 18. 
 
94 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 position right, to Amnon, to feign himself 
 sick, that ' when his father came to see him,' 
 he might prefer to him his request*; his 
 f weeping so sore' for the death of this son, 
 and then again, his anguish subsided, ' his 
 soul longing to go forth' to the other son 
 who had slain himf ; the little trait which 
 escapes in the history of Adonijah's rebel- 
 lion, another of his children, that ' his father 
 had not displeased him at any time, in say- 
 ing, why hast thou done so J?' are all evi- 
 dently features of one and the same indi- 
 vidual. So these last instructions to his 
 officers touching the safety of Absalom, even 
 when he was in arms against him, are still 
 uttered in the same spirit ; a spirit which 
 seems, even at this moment, far more en- 
 grossed with the care of his child, than with 
 the event of his battle. ' Deal gently for my 
 
 * 2 Sam. xiii. 5. t 2 Sam. xiii. 36. t 1 Kings, i. 6. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 95 
 
 sake with Absalom.' Joab heard, indeed, 
 but heeded not ; he had lost all reverence 
 for the king's commands ; nothing could be 
 more deliberate than his infraction of this 
 one, probably the most imperative which 
 had ever been laid upon him : it was not in 
 the fury of the fight that he forgot the com- 
 mission of mercy, and cut down the young 
 man with whom he was importuned to deal 
 tenderly, but as he was hanging in a tree, 
 helpless and hopeless ; himself directed to 
 the spot by the steps of another ; in cold 
 blood ; but remembering perhaps his barley, 
 and more of which we know not, and caring 
 nothing for a king whose guilty secret he had 
 shared, he thrust him through the heart with 
 his three darts, and then made his way, with 
 countenance unabashed, into the chamber of 
 his royal master, where he was weeping and 
 mourning for Absalom. The bitterness of 
 
96 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 death must have been nothing to David, 
 compared with the feelings of that hour 
 when his conscience smote him (as it doubt- 
 less did) with the complicated trouble and 
 humiliation into which his deed of lust and 
 blood had thus sunk him down. The rebellion 
 itself, the fruit of it (as I hold) ; the auda- 
 cious disobedience of Joab to the moving 
 intreaties of the parent, that his favourite 
 son's life might be spared, rebel as he was, 
 felt to be the fruit of that sin too ; for by 
 that sin it was that he had delivered him- 
 self and his character bound hand and foot, 
 to the tender mercies of Joab, who had no 
 touch of pity in him. The sequel is of a 
 piece with the opening ; Joab imperious, 
 and David, the once high-minded David, 
 abject in spirit and tame to the lash. ' Thou 
 hast shamed this day the face of all thy 
 servants. Arise, go forth, and speak com 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 97 
 
 fortably to thy servants; for, I swear by 
 the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will 
 not tarry one with thee this night, and that 
 will be worse unto thee than all the evil that 
 befel thee from thy youth up until now*.' 
 The passive king' yields to the menace, for 
 what can he do ? and with a cheerful coun- 
 tenance and a broken heart, obeys the com- 
 mands of his subject, and sits in the gate. 
 But this is not all. David now sends a 
 message to Amasa, a kinsman whom Ab- 
 salom had set over his rebel army ; it is a 
 proposal, perhaps a secret proposal, to make 
 him captain over his host in the room of 
 Joab . The measure might be dictated at 
 once by policy, Amasa being now the 
 leader of a powerful party whom David had 
 to win, and by disgust at the recent perfidy 
 of Joab, and a determination to break away 
 * 2 Sam, xix 7. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 from him at whatever cost. Amasa accepts 
 the offer; but in the very first military 
 enterprise on which he is despatched, Joab 
 accosts him with the friendly salutation of 
 the East, and taking advantage of the un- 
 guarded moment, draws a sword from under 
 his garment, smites him under the fifth rib, 
 and leaves him a bloody corpse in the high- 
 way. Then does he calmly take upon him- 
 self to execute the commission with which 
 Amasa had been charged, and this done, 
 ' he returns to Jerusalem,' we read, f unto the 
 king,' and once more he is ' over all the 
 host of Israel.' 
 
 It is needless to point out how extreme a 
 helplessness on the part of David this whole 
 transaction indicates. Here is the general 
 of his own choice assassinated in an act of 
 duty by his own subject, his commission 
 usurped by the murderer, and David, once 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 99 
 
 the most popular and powerful of sovereigns, 
 saying not a word. The dishonour, indeed, 
 he felt keenly ; felt it to his dying day, and 
 in his very latest breath gave utterance to 
 it # ; but Joab has him in the toils, and ex- 
 tricate himself he cannot. The want of 
 cordiality between them was now manifest 
 enough, however the original cause might 
 be conjectured, rather than known, and when 
 Adonijah prepares his revolt, — for another 
 enemy now sprang up in David's own house, 
 — to Joab he makes his overtures f, having 
 observed him, no doubt, to be a thorn in the 
 king's side ; nor are the overtures rejected ; 
 and amongst other facts developed in this 
 second conspiracy, it incidentally appears, 
 that the ordinary dwelling-place of Joab 
 was e in the wilderness J f as if suspicious 
 and suspected, a house within the walls of 
 
 * 1 Kings ii. 5. f 1 Kings i. 7. i 1 Kings ii. 34. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Jerusalem was not the one in which he 
 would venture to lay his head. It is remark- 
 able that this formidable traitor, from whose 
 thraldom David in the flower of his age, and 
 the splendour of his military renown, could 
 never, we have seen, disengage himself, 
 fell at once, and whilst whatever popularity 
 he might have with the army must have been 
 fresh as ever, before the arm of Solomon, a 
 stripling, if not a beardless boy ; who, taking- 
 advantage of a fresh instance of treachery in 
 this hardened adventurer, fearlessly gave 
 command to ' fall upon him and bury him, 
 that he might thus take away,' as he said, 
 f the innocent blood which Joab shed, from 
 him, and from the house of his father; 
 when he fell upon two men more righteous 
 and better than himself, and slew them with 
 the sword, his father David not knowing 
 thereof; to wit, Abner, the son of Ner, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 101 
 
 captain of the host of Israel, and Amasa,the 
 son of Jether, captain of the host of Judah*. 
 But Solomon had as yet a clear conscience, 
 which David had forfeited with respect to 
 Joab ; this it was that armed the youth with 
 a moral courage which his father had once 
 known what it was to have, when he went 
 forth as a shepherd-boy against Goliah, and 
 which he afterwards knew what it was to 
 want, when he crouched before Joab, as a 
 king. So true it is, that the ' wicked flee 
 when no man pursueth, but the righteous 
 is bold as a lion.' 
 
 And now can any say that God winked at 
 this wickedness of his servant? That the 
 man after his own heart, for such in the 
 main he was, frail as he proved himself, 
 sinned grievously, and sinned with impu- 
 nity ? On the contrary, this deed was the 
 * 1 Kings ii, 32, 
 
102 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 pivot upon which David's fortunes turned ; 
 that done, and he was undone ; then did 
 God raise up enemies against him for it, out 
 of his own house, for ' the thing,' as we 
 are expressly told, l displeased the Lord * ;' 
 thenceforward the days of his years became 
 full of evil, and if he lived, (for the Lord 
 caused death to pass from himself to the 
 child, by a vicarious dispensation f,) it was 
 to be a king, with more than kingly sorrows, 
 but with little of kingly power ; to be 
 banished by his son; bearded by his ser- 
 vant ; betrayed by his friends ; deserted by 
 his people; bereaved of his children; and 
 to feel all, all these bitter griefs, bound, as 
 it were, by a chain of complicated cause and 
 effect, to this one great, original transgres- 
 sion ; — this was surely no escape from the 
 penalty of his crime, though it was still 
 * 2 Sam. ii. 27. xii. 11. f 2 Sam. xii. 13. ram. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 103 
 
 granted him to live and breathe — God would 
 not slay even Cain, nor suffer others to slay 
 him, whose punishment, nevertheless, was 
 greater than he could bear — but rather it 
 was a lesson to him and to us, how dreadful 
 a thing it is to tempt the Almighty to let 
 loose his plagues upon us, and how true is 
 he to his word, ' Vengeance is mine, I will 
 repay,' saith the Lord. 
 
 Meanwhile, by means of the fall of David, 
 however it may have caused some to blas- 
 pheme, God may have also provided in his 
 mercy, that many since David should stand 
 upright ; the frailty of one may have pre- 
 vented the miscarriage of thousands ; saints, 
 with his example before their eyes, may 
 have learned to walk humbly, and so to 
 walk surely, when they might otherwise 
 have presumed and perished; and sinners, 
 even the men of the darkest and most deadly 
 
104 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 sins, may have been saved from utter despe- 
 ration and self-abandonment, by remembering 
 David and all his trouble ; and that, deep as 
 he was in guilt, he was not so deep but that 
 his bitter cries for mercy, under the remorse 
 and anguish of his spirit, could even yet 
 pierce the ear of an offended God, and move 
 him to put away his sin. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 105 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word he 
 established. 
 
 The subject of my last sermon compelled 
 me to anticipate some of the events of 
 David's history according to the order of 
 time. I must now, therefore, revert to cer- 
 tain incidents in it, which it would then 
 have interrupted my argument to notice, but 
 which are too important as evidences of its 
 credibility, to be altogether overlooked. 
 
 I. The conspiracy of Absalom being now 
 organised, it only remained to try the issue 
 by force of arms ; and here another coinci- 
 dence presents itself, 
 
 In the seventeenth chapter of the second 
 Book of Samuel, we read that ( David arose^ 
 
106 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 and all the people that were with him, and 
 they passed over Jordan' (v. 22) ; and in 
 the same chapter, that ' Absalom passed 
 over Jordan, he and all the men of Israel 
 with him' (v. 24); and that ' they pitched 
 in the land of Gilead' (26). Now in the 
 next chapter, where an account is given of 
 a review of David's troops, and of their 
 going forth to the fight, it is said, ■ so the 
 people went out into the field against Israel, 
 and the battle was in the wood of Ephraim*.' 
 But is not the sacred historian, in this in- 
 stance, off his guard, and having already 
 placed his combatants on one side the river, 
 does he not now place his combat on the 
 other ? Is he not mistaken in his geography, 
 and does he not hereby betray himself and 
 the credit of his narrative? Certain it is, 
 that Absalom had passed over Jordan east- 
 
 * 2 Sam. xviii. 6. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 107 
 
 ward, and so had David, with their respec- 
 tive followers, pitching in Gilead ; and no less 
 certain it is, that the tribe of Ephraim lay- 
 altogether west of Jordan, and had not a 
 foot of ground beyond it : how then was the 
 battle in the wood of Ephraim? By any 
 fabulous writer this seeming difficulty would 
 have been avoided, or care would have been 
 taken that, at least, it should be explained. 
 But the Book of Samuel, written by one 
 familiar with the events he describes, and 
 with the scenes in which they occurred ; 
 written, moreover, in the simplicity of his 
 heart, probably without any notion that his 
 veracity could be called in question, or that 
 he should ever be the subject of suspicious 
 scrutiny, contents itself with stating the 
 naked facts, and then leaves it to the critics 
 to reconcile them as they can. Turn we 
 then to the twelfth chapter of the Book of 
 
108 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 J udges. There we are told of an attack made 
 by the Ephraimites upon Jephthah, in the 
 land of Gilead, on pretence of a wrong done 
 them when they were not invited by the 
 latter to take part in his successful invasion 
 of Amnion. It was a memorable struggle. 
 Jephthah, indeed, endeavoured to soothe the 
 angry assailants by words of peace, but 
 when he spake of peace, they only made 
 themselves ready for battle. Accordingly, 
 ' he gathered together all the men of Gilead, 
 and fought with Ephraim.' Ephraim was 
 discomfited with signal slaughter; those 
 who fell in the action, and those who were 
 afterwards put to death upon the test of the 
 word Shibboleth, amounting to forty-two 
 thousand men ; almost an extinction of all 
 the fighting men of Ephraim. Now an 
 event so singular, and so sanguinary, was 
 not likely to pass away without a memorial; 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 109 
 
 and what memorial so natural for the grave 
 of a tribe, as its own name for ever assigned 
 to the spot where it fell, the Aceldama of 
 their race? 
 
 Thus, then, may we account most naturally 
 for a ' wood of Ephraim' in the land of 
 Gilead ; a point which would have per- 
 plexed us not a little, had the Book of 
 Judges never come down to us, or, coming 
 down to us, had no mention been made in it 
 of Jephthah's victory ; and though we cer- 
 tainly cannot prove that the battle of David 
 and Absalom was fought on precisely the 
 same field as this of Jephthah and the 
 Ephraimites some hundred and twenty years 
 before, yet it is highly probable that this 
 was the case, for both the battles were 
 assuredly in Gilead, and both apparently in 
 that part of Gilead which bordered upon 
 one of the fords of Jordan. 
 
110 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Thus does a seeming error turn out, on 
 examination, to be an actual pledge of the 
 good faith of the historian ; and the uncon- 
 cern with which he tells his own tale, in his 
 own way, never pausing to correct, to 
 balance, or adjust, to supply a defect, or 
 to meet an objection, is the conduct of a 
 witness to whom it never occurred that he 
 had anything to conceal, or anything to fear ; 
 or, if it did occur, to whom it was well 
 known that truth is mighty, and will 
 prevail. 
 
 II. David having won the battle, and 
 recovered his throne, prepares to repass the 
 Jordan, and return once more to his capital. 
 His friends again congregate around him, 
 for the prosperous have many friends. 
 Amongst them, however, were some who 
 had been true to him in the day of his ad- 
 versity, and the aged Barzillai, a Gileadite, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. Ill 
 
 who had provided the king with sus- 
 tenance whilst he lay at Mahanaim, and 
 when his affairs were critical, presents him- 
 self before him. He had won David's heart. 
 The king now entreats him to accompany 
 him to his court, ' Come thou even with 
 me, and I will feed thee with me in Jeru- 
 salem.' But the unambitious Barzillai 
 pleads four score years as a bar against 
 beginning the life of a courtier, and chooses 
 rather to die in his own city, and be buried 
 by the grave of his father and of his mother. 
 His son, however, had life before him : < Be- 
 hold thy servant Chimham, let him go over 
 with my lord the king : and do to him what 
 shall seem good unto thee. And the king 
 answered, Chimham shall go over with me, 
 and I will do to him that which shall seem 
 good unto thee*.' So he went with the 
 * 2 Sam. xix. 37. 
 
112 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 king. Thus begins, and thus ends, the his- 
 tory of Chimham ; he passes away from the 
 scene, and what David did for him, or 
 whether he did anything for him, beyond 
 providing him a place at his table, and re- 
 commending him in common with many 
 others to Solomon before he died, does not 
 appear. Singular, however, it is, and if 
 ever there was a coincidence which carried 
 with it the stamp of truth, it is this, that in 
 the forty-first chapter of Jeremiah, an his- 
 torical chapter, in which an account is given 
 of the murder of Gedaliah, the officer whom 
 Nebuchadnezzar had left in charge of Juclea, 
 as its governor, when he carried away the 
 more wealthy of its inhabitants captive to 
 Babylon, we read that the Jews, fearing for 
 the consequences of this bloody act, and 
 apprehending the vengeance of the Chal- 
 deans, prepared for a flight into Egypt, so 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 113 
 
 1 they departed,' the narrative continues, 
 f and dwelt in the habitation of Chimham, 
 which is by Bethlehem, to go to enter into 
 Egypt' (v. 17). It is impossible to imagine 
 anything more incidental than the mention 
 of this estate near Bethlehem, which was the 
 habitation of Chimham — yet how well does 
 it tally with the spirit of David's speech to 
 Barzillai, some four hundred years before! 
 for what can be more probable, than that 
 David, whose birth-place was this very 
 Bethlehem, and whose patrimony in conse- 
 quence lay there, having undertaken to pro- 
 vide for Chimham, should have bestowed 
 it in whole, or in part, as the most flattering 
 reward he could confer, a personal, as well 
 as a royal, mark of favour, on the son of the 
 man who had saved his life, and the lives of 
 his followers in the hour of their distress ; 
 and that, to that very day, when Jeremiah 
 
 i 
 
114 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 wrote, it should have remained in the pos-^ 
 session of the family of Chimham, and have 
 been a land called after his own name ? 
 
 III. I proceed with the history of David, 
 in which we can scarcely advance a step 
 without having our attention drawn to some 
 new, though perhaps subtle, incident, which 
 marks at once the reality of the facts, and 
 the fidelity of the record. No doubt the 
 surface of the narrative is perfectly satis- 
 factory ; but beneath the surface, there is a 
 certain substratum now appearing, and 
 presently losing itself again, which is the 
 proper field of my inquiry. Here I find the 
 true material of which I am in search ; coin- 
 cidences shy and unobstrusive, not courting 
 notice, as far from it as possible, but having 
 chanced to attract it, sustaining not only 
 notice, but scrutiny ; such matters as might 
 be overlooked on a cursory perusal of the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 115 
 
 text a hundred times, and which indeed 
 would stand very little chance of any other 
 fate than neglect, unless the mind of the 
 reader had been previously put upon chal- 
 lenging them as they pass. Therefore it is, 
 that I feel often incapable of doing justice 
 to my subject before any congregation, how- 
 ever familiar with holy writ. The full force 
 of the argument can only be felt by him who 
 pursues it for himself, when he is in his 
 chamber and is still; his assent taken cap- 
 tive before he is aware of it ; his doubts, if 
 any he had, melting away under the con- 
 fined dropping of minute particles of evi- 
 dence upon his mind, as it proceeds in its 
 investigation. It is difficult, it is scarcely 
 possible to impart this sympathy to the 
 hearer. And even when I can grasp an in- 
 cident sufficiently substantial to detach and 
 present to your consideration, I still am con- 
 
 I 2 
 
1 1 G THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 scious that it is not launched to advantage ; 
 that a thousand little preparations are lack- 
 ing in order that it may leave the slips (if 
 I may venture upon the expression) with a 
 motion that shall make it win its way ; that 
 the plunge with which I am compelled to 
 let it fall, provokes a resistance to which it 
 does not deserve to be exposed. I proceed, 
 however, with the history of David, and to a 
 passage in it which has partly suggested 
 these remarks. When Saul in his fury had 
 slain, by the hand of Doeg, Ahimelech the 
 high-priest, and all the priests of the Lord, 
 ' one of the sons of Ahimelech,' we read, 
 c named Abiathar, escaped and fled after Da- 
 vid V David received him kindly, saying unto 
 him, ' abide thou with me, fear not ; for he 
 that seeketh my life, seeketh thy life ; but 
 with me thou shalt be in safeguard.' Abiathar 
 * 1 Sam. xxii. 20. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 117 
 
 had brought with him the ephod, the high- 
 priest's mysterious scarf; and his father being 
 dead, he appears to have been made high- 
 priest in his stead, so far as David had it 
 then in his power to give him that office, 
 and to have attended upon him and his fol- 
 lowers*. These particulars we gather from 
 several passages of the first Book of Samuel. 
 We hear now nothing more of Abiathar 
 (except that he was confirmed in his office^ 
 together with a colleague, when David was 
 established in his kingdom) for nearly thirty 
 years. Then he re-appears, having to play 
 not an inconspicuous part in David's coun- 
 cils, on occasion of the rebellion of Absalom. 
 Now here we find, that though he is still in 
 his office of priest, Zadok (the colleague to 
 whom I alluded) appears to have obtained the 
 first place in the confidence and considera- 
 * 1 Sam. xxx. 7. 
 
118 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 tion of David. When David sends the Ark 
 back, which he probably thought it irreve- 
 rent to make the partner of his flight, and 
 delivers his commands to this effect, it may- 
 be remarked that he does not address him- 
 self to Abiathar, though Abiathar was there, 
 but to Zadok. Zadok takes the lead in 
 everything. The king says to Zadok, 
 1 Carry back the Ark of God into the 
 city*:' — and again, ' the king said unto 
 Zadok the priest, Art not thou a seer? re- 
 turn into the city in peace ;' and when Za- 
 dok and Abiathar are mentioned together at 
 this period, Zadok is placed foremost. No 
 doubt Abiathar was honoured by David; 
 there is evidence enough of this (v. 35) ; 
 but many trifles lead us to conclude, that 
 herein he attained not unto his companion. 
 Now, unquestionably, it cannot be as- 
 
 * 2 Sam. xv. 25. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 110 
 
 serted with confidence, where there is no 
 positive document to substantiate the as- 
 „ sertion, that Abiathar felt his associate in 
 the priesthood to be his rival in the state, 
 his more than successful rival ; yet that 
 such a feeling should find a place in the 
 breast of Abiathar seems most natural, 
 seems almost inevitable, when we take into 
 account that these two priests were the 
 representatives of two rival houses, over one 
 of which, a prophecy affecting its honour, 
 and well nigh its existence, was hanging 
 unfulfilled. For Zadok, be it observed, was 
 descended from Eleazar, the eldest of the 
 sons of Aaron, Abiathar from Ithamar, the 
 youngest* ; and so from the family of Eli, 
 a family of which it had been foretold some 
 hundred and fifty years before, that the 
 priesthood should pass from it. Could 
 * 1 Chron. xx'iy. 3. 
 
120 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Abiathar read the signs of his time without 
 alarm ? or fail to suspect (what did prove 
 the fact) that the curse which had tarried so 
 long, was now again in motion, and that the 
 ancient office of his fathers was in jeopardy ; 
 a curse, too, comprising circumstances of 
 signal humiliation, calculated beyond mea- 
 sure to exasperate the sufferer; even that 
 the house of Eli, which God had once said 
 should walk before him for ever, should be 
 far from him ; even that he would raise up 
 (that is from another house) a faithful priest 
 that should do according to that which was 
 in his heart and his mind ; and that the 
 house of that man should be sure built; and 
 that they of the house of Eli which were 
 left, should come and crouch to him for a 
 piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and 
 say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the 
 priest's offices, that I may eat a piece of 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 121 
 
 bread*? Abiathar must have bad a tamer 
 spirit than he gave subsequent proof of, if 
 he could have witnessed the elevation of 
 one in whom this bitter threat seemed ad- 
 vancing to its accomplishment, and in whom 
 it was in fact accomplished, with com- 
 placency ; if he could see him seated by his 
 side in the dignity of the high-priesthood, 
 and favoured at his expense by the more 
 frequent smiles of his sovereign, without a 
 wounded spirit. 
 
 Now having possessed ourselves of this 
 secret key, namely, jealousy of his rival, a 
 key not delivered into our hands directly by 
 the historian, but accidentally found by our- 
 selves (and here is its value), let us apply 
 it to the incidents of Abiathar 's subsequent 
 conduct, and observe whether they will not 
 answer to it. We have seen Abiathar flying 
 
 * 1 Sam. ii. 30. 
 
122 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 from the vengeance of Saul to David ; pro- 
 tected by David in the wilderness; made by 
 David his priest, virtually before Saul's 
 death*, and formally when he succeeded 
 to Saul's throne f. We have seen, too, 
 Zadok united with him in his office, and 
 David giving signs of preferring Zadok be- 
 fore him; a preference the more marked, 
 and the more galling, because Abiathar was 
 undoubtedly the high-priest (as the sequel 
 will prove) and Zadok his vicar only, or 
 saganj. 
 
 This being the state of things, let us now 
 observe the issue. When David was forced 
 to withdraw for a season from Jerusalem, 
 by the conspiracy of Absalom, Zadok and 
 Abiathar were left behind in the capital, 
 charged with the office of forwarding to the 
 
 '* 1 Sam. xxiii. 2—6. t 2 Sam. viii. 17. 
 
 % See Lightfoot'8 Works, vol. i. 911, 912, fol. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 123 
 
 king any intelligence which his friends 
 within the walls might communicate to 
 them, that it was for his advantage to know. 
 Ahimaz, the son of Zadok, and Jonathan, 
 the son of Abiathar, (the sons are named 
 after the same order as their fathers,) are the 
 secret messengers by whom it is to be con- 
 veyed ; and on one occasion, the only one in 
 which their services are recorded, we find 
 them acting together*. But I observe that 
 after the battle in which Absalom was slain, 
 a battle which seems to have served as a 
 test of the real loyalty of many of David's 
 nominal friends, Ahimaz, the son of Zadok, 
 and not Jonathan, the son of Abiathar, is at 
 hand to carry the tidings of the victory to 
 David, who had tarried behind at Maha- 
 naim ; and this office he solicits from Joab, 
 who had intended it for another, with the 
 * 2 Sam. xviii. 21. 
 
124 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 utmost importunity, and the most lively zeal 
 for the king's cause*. This, it will be said, 
 proves but little ; more especially as there 
 is reason to believe that David was, at least, 
 upon terms with Abiathar at a later period 
 than this|. Still there may be thought 
 something suspicious in the absence of the 
 one messenger, at a moment so critical, as 
 compared with the alacrity of the other; 
 their office having been hitherto a joint one ; 
 it is not enough to prove that the loyalty of 
 Abiathar and his house was waxing cool, 
 though it accords with such a supposition. 
 Let us, however, proceed. Within a few 
 years of this time, probably about eight, 
 another rebellion against David is set on 
 foot by another of his sons. Adonijah is 
 now the offender. He, too, prepares him 
 chariots and horsemen, after the example of 
 * 2 Sam. xviii. 19—22. t 2 Sam. xix. 11. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 125 
 
 his brother. Moreover, he feels his way 
 before he openly appears in arms. And to 
 whom does he make his first overtures * 
 i He confers,' we read, ' with Abiathar the 
 priest*/ having good reason, no doubt, 
 for knowing that such an application might 
 be made in that quarter with safety, if not 
 with success. The event proved that he 
 had not mistaken his man. ' Abiathar,' we 
 learn, c following Ado?iijah, helped him :' not 
 so Zadok ; he, we are told, ' tods not with 
 Adonijah ;' on the contrary, he was one of the 
 first persons for whom David sent, that he 
 might communicate with him in this emer- 
 gency ; his staunch and steadfast friend ; and 
 him he commissioned, together with Nathan 
 the prophet, to set the crown upon the head 
 of Solomon, and thereby to confound the 
 councils of the rebels (v. 32, 34). Nor 
 
 * 1 Kings i. 7. 
 
126 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 should we leave unnoticed, for they are facts 
 which coincide with the view I have taken 
 of Abiathar's disloyalty, and the cause of it, 
 that one of the first acts of Solomon's reign 
 was to banish the traitor f to his own fields,' 
 and to thrust him out of the priesthood, 
 ( that he might fulfil' (so it is expressly 
 said in the twenty-seventh verse of the 
 second chapter of the first Book of Kings) 
 \ the word of the Lord, which he spake con- 
 cerning the house of Eli in Shiloh,' — fulfil 
 it, not by that act only, but by the other also, 
 which followed and crowned the prophecy; 
 for ( Zadok the priest,' it is added, ( did 
 Solomon put in the room of Abiathar ;' (v. 35) 
 or, as the Septuagint translates it still more 
 to our purpose, Zadok the priest did the 
 king make first priest (slg U$iu ct^cotov) in 
 the room of Abiathar ; so that Abiathar, as 
 I said, had been hitherto Zadok's superior ; 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 12? 
 
 his superior in office, and his inferior in 
 honour ; a position of all others calculated 
 to excite in him the heart-burnings we have 
 discovered, long smothered, but at last burst- 
 ing forth, beginning in lukewarmness, and 
 ending in rebellion. 
 
 This is all extremely natural ; nothing can 
 drop into its place better than the several 
 parts of this history ; not at all a prominent 
 history, but rather a subordinate one; yet 
 manifest as the relation which they bear to 
 one another is, when they are once brought 
 together, they are themselves dispersed 
 through the Books of Samuel, of Kings, and 
 of Chronicles, without the smallest arrange- 
 ment or reference one to another ; their suc- 
 cession not continuous ; suspended by many 
 and long intervals ; intervals, occupied by 
 matters altogether foreign from this subject ; 
 and after all, the integral portions of the 
 
128 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 narrative, themselves defective; there are 
 gaps even here, which I think, indeed, may 
 be filled up, as I have shown, with very- 
 little chance of error ; but still, that there 
 should be any necessity even for this, argues 
 the absence of all design, collusion, and con- 
 trivance in the historians. 
 
 IV. We have now followed David through 
 the events of his chequered life ; it remains 
 to contemplate him yet once more upon his 
 death-bed, giving in charge the execution 
 of his last wishes to Solomon his son. Pro- 
 bably in consideration of his youth, his in- 
 experience, and the difficulties of his posi- 
 tion, David thought it well to put him m 
 possession of the characters of some of those 
 with whom he would have to deal ; of those 
 whom he had found faithful or faithless to 
 himself; that, on the one hand, his own pro- 
 mises of favour might not be forfeited, nor, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 129 
 
 on the other, the confidence of the young 
 monarch be misplaced. Now it is remark- 
 able, that in this review of his friends and 
 foes, David altogether overlooks Mephibo- 
 sheth, the son of Jonathan. Joab he re- 
 members, and all that he had done; Shi- 
 mei he speaks of at some length, and puts 
 Solomon upon his guard against him. Bar- 
 zillai and his sons, and the service they had 
 rendered him in the day of his adversity, 
 are all recommended to his friendly con- 
 sideration ; but of Mephibosheth, who had 
 played a part, such as it was, in the scenes 
 of those eventful times, which had called 
 forth, for good or evil, a Chimham, a Bar- 
 zillai, a Shimei, and a Joab, he does not say 
 a syllable. Yet he was under peculiar obli- 
 gations to him. He had loved his father 
 Jonathan. He had promised to show kind- 
 ness to his house for ever. He had con- 
 ic 
 
130 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 firmed his promise by an oath. That oath 
 he had repeated*. On his accession to the 
 throne, he had evinced no disposition to 
 shrink from it; on the contrary, he had 
 studiously inquired after the family of Jona- 
 than, and having found Mephibosheth, he 
 gave him a place at his own table con- 
 tinually, for his father's sake, and secured to 
 him all the lands of Saul f . 
 
 Let us, however, carefully examine the 
 details of the history, and I think we shall 
 be able to account satisfactorily enough for 
 David's apparent neglect of the son of his 
 friend ; for I think we shall find violent 
 cause to suspect that Mephibosheth had 
 forfeited all claims to his kindness. 
 
 When David was driven from Jerusalem 
 by the rebellion of Absalom, no Mephibo- 
 sheth appeared to share with him his mis- 
 *1 Sam. xx. 17. 1 2 Sam, x. 6,7, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 131 
 
 fortunes, or to support him by his name, a 
 name at that moment of peculiar value to 
 David, for Mephibosheth was the repre- 
 sentative of the house of Saul. David 
 naturally intimates some surprise at his ab- 
 sence ; and when his servant Ziba appears, 
 bringing with him a small present of bread 
 and fruits, (the line of the king's flight hav- 
 ing apparently carried him near the lands of 
 Mephibosheth,) a present, however, offered 
 on his own part, and not on the part of his 
 master, David puts to him several questions, 
 expressive of his suspicions of Mephibo- 
 sheth's loyalty: ' What meanest thou by 
 these? Where is thy master's son*?' Ziba 
 replies in substance, that he had tarried at 
 Jerusalem, waiting the event of the rebellion, 
 and hoping that it might lead to the re- 
 establishment of Saul's family on the throne. 
 ' * 2 Sam. xvi.2, 3. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 This might be true, or it might be false. 
 The commentators appear to take for granted 
 that it was a mere slander of Ziba, invented 
 for the purpose of supplanting Mephibo- 
 sheth in his possessions. I do not think 
 this so certain. Ziba, I suspect, had some 
 reason in what he said, though probably the 
 colouring of the picture was his own. Cer- 
 tain it is, or all but certain, that the tribe of 
 Benjamin, which was the tribe of Mephibo- 
 sheth, did, in general, take part with the 
 rebels. When David returned victorious, 
 and Shimei hastened to make his peace with 
 him, a thousand men of Benjamin accom- 
 panied him ; and it was his boast that he 
 came the first of ' all the house of Joseph,' 
 to meet the king*, as though others of his 
 tribe (for they of Benjamin were reckoned of 
 the house of Joseph, the same mother having 
 
 * 2 Sara. xix. 17—20. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 133 
 
 given birth to both) were yet behind. Went 
 not then the heart of Mephibosheth in the 
 day of battle with his brethren, rather than 
 with his benefactor? David himself evi- 
 dently believed the report of Ziba, and forth- 
 with gave him his master's inheritance*. 
 The battle is now fought, on which the fate 
 of the throne hung in suspense, and David 
 is the conqueror. And now, many who had 
 forsaken, or insulted him in his distress, 
 hasten to congratulate him on his triumph, 
 and to profess their joy at his return ; Me- 
 phibosheth amongst the rest. There is some- 
 thing touching in David's first greeting of 
 him ; * Wherefore wentest thou not with 
 me, Mephibosheth V A question not of 
 curiosity, but of reproach. His ass was 
 saddled, forsooth, that he might go, but 
 Ziba, it seems, had taken it for himself, and 
 * 2 Sam. xvi. 4. 
 
134 THE VERACITY" OF THE 
 
 gone unto the king, and slandered him unto 
 the king ; and meanwhile, ' thy servant was 
 lame.' The tale appears to be as lame as 
 the tale-bearer. I think it clear, that Me- 
 phibosheth did not succeed in removing the 
 suspicion of his disloyalty from Davids 
 mind, notwithstanding the ostentatious dis- 
 play of his clothes unwashed, and beard un- 
 trimmed ; weeds which the loss of his estate 
 might very well have taught him to put on : 
 for otherwise, would not David, in common 
 justice both to Mephibosheth, and to Ziba, 
 have punished the treachery of the latter, 
 the lie by which he had imposed upon the 
 king to his own profit, and to his master's 
 infinite dishonour and damage, by revoking 
 altogether the grant of the lands which he 
 had made him, under an impression which 
 proved to be a mistake, and restoring them 
 to their rightful owner, who had been in- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 135 
 
 juriously supposed to have forfeited them by- 
 treason to the crown? He does, however, 
 no such thing. To Mephibosheth, indeed, 
 he gives back half, but that is all ; and he 
 leaves the other half still in the possession of 
 Ziba ; doing even thus much, in all proba- 
 bility, not as an act of justice, but out of 
 tenderness to a son, even an unworthy son 
 of Jonathan, whom he had loved as his own 
 soul. And then, as if impatient of the 
 wearisome exculpations of an ungrateful 
 man, whose excuses were his accusations, 
 he abruptly puts an end to the parley, (the 
 conversation having been apparently much 
 longer than is recorded,) with a ' Why speak- 
 est thou any more of thy matters? I have 
 said, thou and Ziba divide the land*.' 
 
 Henceforward, whatever act of grace he 
 received at David's hands, was purely gra- 
 * 2 Sam. xix. 29. 
 
136 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 tuitous. His unfaithfulness had released 
 the king from his bond ; and that he lived, 
 was perhaps rather of sufferance, than of 
 right; a consideration which serves to ex- 
 plain David's conduct towards him, as it is 
 reported on an occasion subsequent to the 
 rebellion. For when propitiation was to be 
 made by seven of Saul's sons, for the sin of 
 Saul in the slaughter of the Gibeonites, 
 • the king,' we read, ' spared Mephibosheth, 
 the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, be- 
 cause of the Lord's oath that was between 
 them, between David, and Jonathan the son 
 of Saul* ;' as though he owed it to the oath 
 only, and to the memory of his father's vir- 
 tues, that he was not selected by David as 
 one of the victims of that bloody sacrifice. 
 
 Now, under these circumstances, is it a 
 subject for surprise ; is it not rather a most 
 * 2 Sam. xxi. 7. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 137 
 
 natural and veracious coincidence, that 
 David, in commending on his death-bed 
 some of his staunch and trust-worthy 
 friends to Solomon, his son, should have 
 omitted all mention of Mephibosheth, dis- 
 satisfied as he was, and ever had been, with 
 his explanations of very suspicious conduct, 
 at a very critical hour? Considering him, 
 with every appearance of reason, a waiter 
 upon Providence, as such persons have been 
 since called ; a prudent man, who would 
 see which way the battle went, before he 
 made up his mind to which side he be- 
 longed ? This coincidence is important, not 
 merely as carrying with it evidence of a true 
 story in all its details, which is my business 
 with it ; but also as disembarrassing the 
 incident itself of several serious difficulties 
 which present themselves, on the ordinary 
 supposition of Ziba's treachery, and Mephi- 
 
138 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 bosheth's truth j difficulties which I cannot 
 better explain, than by referring my hearers 
 to the beautiful c Contemplations' of Bishop 
 Hall, whose view of these two characters 
 is the common one, and who consequently 
 finds himself, in this instance, (it will be 
 perceived,) encumbered with his subject, and 
 driven to the necessity of impugning the 
 justice of David. It is further valuable, as 
 exonerating the king of two other charges 
 which have been brought against him, yet 
 more serious than the last, even of indiffer- 
 ence to the memory of his dearest friend, 
 and disregard to the obligations of his solemn 
 oath. But these are not the only instances 
 in which the character of David, and indeed 
 of the history itself, which treats of him, has 
 suffered, from a neglect to make allowance 
 for omissions in a very brief and desultory 
 memoir, or from a want of more exact at- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 139 
 
 tention to the under-current of the narrative, 
 which would, in itself, very often supply 
 those omissions. 
 
 These simple facts I leave to make their 
 own impression. I will not weaken their 
 effect by dwelling upon them longer, but 
 commit them confidently to the consideration 
 of every ingenuous hearer, be his spirit what 
 it may, as testimonies to the general truth 
 of Scripture not to be despised. At the 
 same time, I may be permitted to confess 
 for myself, that, during the course of the in- 
 vestigation of Holy Writ, which I have thus 
 been put upon ; into which I have gone by 
 no means delicately; with a desire to follow 
 after truth, lead me where it might ; with no 
 heated mind, (if I know myself,) and not with- 
 out a full sense of the difficulties that occa- 
 sionally cross the path ; that during this 
 investigation, the thought has forced itself 
 
140 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 upon me very often and very powerfully, how 
 extraordinary an act of presumption, to say 
 the least of it, it is in any man to sport with 
 documents so attested, upon the strength of 
 a cursory, or perhaps of no examination of 
 their contents whatever ; and how immense 
 a hazard he is running, who determines to 
 set them aside, live as he lists, and abide 
 the issue. I judge him not ; but let not my 
 soul be with his, lest I should find after all, 
 that in that hour, when heaven and earth 
 shall pass away, this word shall not pass 
 away, and I remain ' to be confuted by the 
 flames.' 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 141 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 
 established. 
 
 In my last sermon, the history of the people 
 of God was brought down to the reign of 
 Solomon, and its general truth and accuracy 
 (I think I may say) established by the appli- 
 cation of a test which could scarcely fail us. 
 The great schism of the tribes is now about 
 to divide our attention between the kingdoms 
 of Israel and Judah; but before I proceed 
 to submit to you some observations upon the 
 effects of it, both religious and political, on 
 either kingdom, observations which will 
 involve many more of those undesigned coin- 
 cidences which are the burden of these 
 Lectures, I must say a word upon the progress 
 
142 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 of events towards the schism itself; for 
 herein I discover combinations, of a kind 
 which no ingenuity could possibly counter- 
 feit, and to an extent which verifies a large 
 portion of the Jewish annals. ' By faith, 
 Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed his 
 children.' On that occasion, Judah and 
 Ephraim were made to stand conspicuous 
 amongst the future founders of the Israel- 
 itish nation. c Judah,' says the prophetic 
 old man, * thou art he whom thy brethren 
 shall praise : thy hand shall be on the neck 
 of thine enemies : thy father's children shall 
 bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's 
 whelp : from the prey, my son, thou art gone 
 up. He stooped down, he crouched as a 
 lion, and as an old lion : who shall rouse him 
 up? The sceptre shall not depart from 
 Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
 till Shiloh come ; and unto him shall the 
 
HISTORICAL SCR1£TUR1C§. 143 
 
 gathering of the people be*.' All this, and 
 more, did Jacob foretel of this mighty tribe. 
 Again, crossing his hands, and studiously 
 laying the right upon the head of Ephraim, 
 the younger of Joseph's children, ■ Manasseh 
 also shall be a people,' he exclaimed, ' and 
 he also shall be great; but truly his younger 
 brother shall be greater than he, and his seed 
 shall become a multitude of nations. And 
 so he blessed them that day, saying, in thee 
 shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as 
 Ephraim and Manasseh f.' Thus did these 
 two tribes, Judah and Ephraim, enter the 
 land of promise some two hundred and 
 forty years afterwards, with the Patriarch's 
 blessing on their heads, God having con- 
 veyed it to them by his mouth, and being 1 
 now about to work it out by the quiet 
 operations of his own hands. As yet, neither 
 * Gen. xlix. 8, f Gen. xlix. 20, 
 
144 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 of tliem was much more powerful than his 
 brethren, the latter less so ; Judah not ex- 
 ceeding one other of the tribes, at least, by 
 more than twelve thousand men, and Ephraim 
 actually the smallest of them all, with the 
 single exception of Simeon*. The lot of 
 Ephraim, however, fell upon a fair ground, 
 and upon this lot, the disposing of which 
 was of the Lord, turned very materially the 
 fortunes of Ephraim ; it fell nearly in the 
 midst of the tribes; and accordingly, the 
 invasion and occupation of Canaan being 
 effected, at Skiloh in Ephraim, the Tabernacle 
 was set up, there to abide three hundred 
 years and upwards, during all the time of the 
 Judges^. Hither, we read, Elkanah repaired 
 year by year for worship and sacrifice ; here 
 the lamp of God was never suffered to go 
 out c in the Temple of the Lord,' (the expres- 
 
 * Numb. xxvi. t Judges xxi. 1 9. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 145 
 
 sion is remarkable,) ' where the Ark of God 
 was*;' here Samuel ministered as a child, 
 all Israel, from Dan even to Beer-Sheba, 
 speedily perceiving that he was established 
 to be a prophet, because all Israel was 
 accustomed to resort annually to Shiloh, at 
 the feasts f. Shiloh, therefore, in Ephraim, 
 was the great religious capital, as it were, 
 from the time of Joshua to Saul, the spot 
 more especially consecrated to the honour 
 of God, the resting-place of his tabernacle, 
 of his prophets, and of his priests J; whilst 
 at no great distance from it, appears to have 
 stood Shechem^, once the political capital of 
 Ephraim, till civil war left it for a season in 
 ruins, but which, even then, continued to be 
 the gathering point of the tribes || ; Shechem, 
 
 * 1 Sam. iii. 3. f 1 Sam. iii. 20, 21. 
 
 J Ps. cxxxii. 6. ; lxxviii. 67. 1 Sam. ii. 14. 
 
 § Judges xxi. 19. Josh. xxiv. 25, 26. 
 
 II Josh. xxiv. 1. Judges ix. 2. 1 Kings xii. 1. 
 
140 THE VERACITY OF THB 
 
 -where was Jacob's well*, and where, accord- 
 ingly, both literally and figuratively, was 
 the prophecy of that patriarch fulfilled, 
 ' Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful 
 bough by a well, whose branches run over 
 the wallf .' 
 
 Thus was this district in Ephraim, com- 
 prising Shiloh and Shechem, probably the 
 most populous, certainly the most im- 
 portant, of any in all the Holy Land 
 during the government of the Judges ; and, 
 constantly recruited by the confluence of 
 strangers, Ephraim seems to have become 
 (as Jerusalem became afterwards) what 
 Jacob again foretold, ' a multitude of 
 nations.' 
 
 There are other and more minute inci- 
 dents left upon record, all tending to esta- 
 blish the fame fact. For I observe, that 
 * John iv. G. •(• See Lighlfoot, v. i. 49 fol. 
 
Historical scriptures. 147 
 
 amongst the Judges, many, whether them- 
 selves of Ephraim or not, do appear to have 
 repaired thither as to the proper seat of 
 government. I find that Deborah ' dwelt 
 under the palm-tree, between Ramah and 
 Bethel, in Mount Ephraim^ and that there 
 the children of Israel went up to her for 
 judgment*. I find that Gideon, who was of 
 Ophrah in Manasseh, where he appears in 
 general to have lived, and where he was at 
 last buried, had, nevertheless, a family at 
 Shechem, it being incidentally said, that the 
 mother of his son Abimelech resided there, 
 and that there Abimelech himself was 
 born I : a trifle in itself, yet enough, I think, 
 to suggest, that at Shechem in Ephraim, 
 Gideon did occasionally dwell, the discharge 
 of his judicial functions, like those of Pilate 
 at Jerusalem, probably constraining him to 
 * Judges iv. 5. t Judges viii. 27—32 j ix. 1. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 TPIE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 a residence which he mio-ht not otherwise 
 have chosen. I find this same Shechem the 
 head- quarters of this same Abimelech, and 
 the support of his cause when he usurped 
 the government of Israel # . And I subse- 
 quently find Tola, though a man of Issachar, 
 dwelling in Shamir, in Mount Ephraim, 
 (Shechem having been recently laid waste,) 
 and judging Israel twenty and three years ]\ 
 Nor is this all. The comparative import- 
 ance of Ephraim amongst the tribes during 
 the time of the judges, is further de- 
 tected in the tone of authority, not to say 
 menace, which it occasionally assumes to- 
 wards its weaker brethren. Gideon leads 
 several of the tribes against the Midianites, 
 but Ephraim had not been consulted. ' Why 
 hast thou served us thus,' is the angry re- 
 monstrance of the Ephraimites, ' that thou 
 * Judges ix. 22. t Judges x. I. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 149 
 
 calledst us not when thou wentest to fight with 
 the Midianites ? And they did chide with him 
 harshly V Gideon stoops before the storm; 
 he disputes not the vast superiority of Eph- 
 raim, his gleaning being more than another's 
 grapes. Jephthah, in later times, ventures 
 upon a similar invasion of the children of Am- 
 nion, and discomfits them with a great slaugh- 
 ter, but he, too, without Ephraim's help or 
 cognizance : again the pride of this powerful 
 tribe is wounded, and ' they gather them- 
 selves together, and go northward, and say 
 unto Jephthah, Wherefore passedst thou 
 over to fight against the children of Ammon, 
 and didst not call us to go with thee ? we will 
 burn thine house upon thee with firef.' — 
 All this, the unreasonable conduct of a party 
 conscious that it has the law of the strongest 
 on its side, and, by virtue of that law, claim- 
 * Judges viii. 1. f Judges xii. I. 
 
150 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 ino- to itself the office of dictator amongst 
 the neighbouring tribes. Well then might 
 David express himself with regard to the 
 support he expected from this tribe, in terms 
 of more than common emphasis, when at 
 last seated on the throne, his title acknow- 
 ledged throughout Israel, he reviews the 
 resources of his consolidated empire, and 
 exclaims, ' Ephraim is the strength of my 
 head*? Accordingly, all the ten tribes are 
 sometimes expressed under the comprehen- 
 sive name of Ephraim f — and the gate of 
 Jerusalem which looked towards Israel ap- 
 pears to have been called, emphatically, the 
 gate of Ephraim \ — and Ephraim and 
 Judali together represent the whole of the 
 people of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba§. 
 In tracing the seeds of the future disso- 
 
 * Psalm Ix. 7. f 2 Ghron. xxv. 6 and 7. 
 
 % 2 Kings xiv. 13. $ Isaiah vii. 9—1 7, et alibi. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRirTURES. 151 
 
 lution of the ten from the two tribes, I fur- 
 ther remark, that whilst Samuel himself re- 
 mains at Ramah, a border town of Benja- 
 min and Ephraim, (for Shiloh and Shechem 
 were probably now in possession of the 
 Philistines,) there to sit in judgment on 
 such causes as Ephraim and the northern 
 states should bring before him, he sends his 
 sons to be judges in Beer-sheba* a southern 
 town belonging to Judah f , as though there 
 was already some reluctance between these 
 rival tribes to resort to the same tribunal : 
 and the fierce words that passed between 
 the men of Israel and the men of Judah, on 
 the subject of the restoration of David to 
 the throne, the former claiming ten parts in 
 him, the latter nearness of kin J, still indi- 
 cate that the breach was gradually widening, 
 and that however sudden was the final dis- 
 * 1 Sam. viii. 2. > Josh. xv. 28.~ % 2 Sam. xix. 43. 
 
152 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 ruption of the bond of union, events had 
 weakened it long before. Indeed, humanly 
 speaking, nothing could in all probability 
 have preserved it, but a continuance of the 
 government by judges, under God ; who, 
 taken from various tribes, and according to 
 no established order, might have secured 
 the commonwealth from that jealousy which 
 an hereditary possession of power by any 
 one tribe was sure to create, and did 
 create ; and which burst out in that bitter 
 cry of Israel, at the critical moment of the 
 separation, ' What portion have we in David? 
 neither have we inheritance in the son of 
 Jesse — to your tents, O Israel : now see to 
 thine own house, David*.' And so, by the 
 natural motions of the human heart, did God 
 take vengeance of the people whom he had 
 chosen, for rejecting him for their sovereign, 
 * 1 Kings xii. 16. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 153 
 
 and a king, indeed, he gave them, as they 
 desired, but he gave him in his wrath. 
 
 Thus have we detected, by the apposition 
 of many distinct particulars, a gradual ten- 
 dency of the Ten Tribes to become confederate 
 under Epkraim ; an event, to which the 
 local position, numerical superiority, and 
 the seat of national worship, long fixed 
 within the borders of Ephraim, together 
 conspired. 
 
 . But meanwhile, it may be discovered in 
 like manner, that Judah and Benjamin were 
 also, on their part, knitting themselves in 
 close alliance ; a union promoted by con- 
 tiguity ; by the sympathy of being the only 
 two royal tribes; by the connexion of the 
 house of David with the house of Saul, (the 
 political importance of which, David appears 
 to have considered, when he made it a pre- 
 liminary of his league with Abner, that 
 
154 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Miclial should be restored, whose heart he 
 had nevertheless lost*;) and finally, and 
 perhaps above all, by the peculiar posi- 
 tion selected by the Almighty f, for the 
 great national temple which was soon to 
 rob Ephraim of his ancient honours J; for it 
 was not to be planted in Judah only, or in 
 Benjamin only, but on the confines of both ; 
 so that whilst the altars, and the holy place, 
 were to stand within the borders of the one 
 tribe, the courts of the temple were to ex- 
 tend into the borders of the other tribe §, 
 and thus, the two were to be riveted to- 
 gether, as it were, by a cramp, bound by a 
 sacred and everlasting bond, being in a con- 
 dition to exclaim, in a sense peculiarly their 
 own, ' the Temple of the Lord, the Temple 
 of the Lord are we.' 
 
 * 2 Sam. iii. 13. 1 1 Chron. xxviii. 11. % Ps. lxxviii. 67. 
 § Comp. Josh. xv. 63, and xyiii. 28 ; and see Light- 
 foot, v. i. p. 1050 fol. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 155 
 
 We have thus traced, by means of the 
 hints with which Scripture supplies us, (for 
 little more than hints have we had,) the 
 two great confederacies into which the tribes 
 were gradually, perhaps unwittingly, sub- 
 siding ; as well as some of the circumstances 
 by which either confederacy was cemented. 
 Let us pursue the subject, but still by means 
 of the under-current of the history only, 
 towards the schism. 
 
 And now Ephraim was called upon to 
 witness preparations for the transfer of the 
 seat of national worship from himself to his 
 great rival, with something, we may believe, 
 of the anguish of Phinehas' wife, when she 
 heard that the Ark of God was taken, and 
 Shiloh to be no longer its resting-place ; 
 and Ich-abod might be the name for the 
 mothers of Ephraim at that hour to give to 
 their offspring, seeing that the glory was 
 
156 THE VERACIT1 OF THE 
 
 departing from among them*. For what 
 desolation and disgrace were felt to accom- 
 pany this loss, may be gathered from more 
 passages than one in Jeremiah, where he 
 threatens Jerusalem with a like visitation, 
 ' I will do unto this house,' (saith the Lord, 
 by the mouth of the prophet,) ' which is 
 called by my name, wherein ye trust, and 
 unto the place which I gave to you, and to 
 your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. And 
 I will cast you out of my sight, as I have 
 cast out all your brethren, even the whole 
 seed of Epkraim.' And again — { I will 
 make this house like Shiloh, and will make 
 this city a curse to all the nations of the 
 earth f.' With a heavy heart, then, must 
 this high-spirited and ambitious tribe have 
 found that ' the place w r hich God had 
 chosen to set his name there/ (so often 
 * 1 Sam. iv. 21. t Jeremiah vii. 14, 15 ; xxvi. 6, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 157 
 
 spoken of by Moses, and the choice sus- 
 pended so long,) was at length determined, 
 and determined against him; that his ex- 
 pectation (for such would probably be in- 
 dulged) that God would finally fix his seat 
 where he had so long fixed his Tabernacle, 
 was overthrown ; that the Messiah, whom 
 some sanguine interpreters of the prophets 
 amongst his sons had declared should come 
 from between his feet, was not to be of him* ; 
 but that e refusing the tabernacle of Joseph, 
 and not choosing any longer the tribe of 
 Ephraim, (mark the patriotic exultation with 
 which the Psalmist proclaims this,) God 
 chose the tribe of Judah and Mount Zion, 
 which he loved f, s 
 
 Such was the posture of the nation of 
 
 * See on this subject, Allix, Reflections upon the Four 
 last Books of Moses, p. ISO. 
 f Ps. lxxviii. 67. 
 
158 THE VERACITY OF THE - 
 
 Israel, such the temper of the times, * a 
 breach,' as it were, ' ready to fall, swelling 
 out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh 
 suddenly at an instant,' when Solomon 
 began to collect workmen, and to levy taxes 
 throughout all Israel, for those vast and 
 costly structures which he reared, even c the 
 house of the Lord and his own house, and 
 Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem*,' besides 
 many more ; in some of them, indeed, show- 
 ing himself the pious founder, or the patriot 
 prince ; but in some, the luxurious sensualist ; 
 and in some again, the dissolute patron of 
 idolatry f. On, however, he went; and 
 as if in small things as well as great, this 
 growing division amongst the tribes (fatal 
 as it was in many respects to prove) was 
 ever to be fostered ; as if the coming event 
 was on every occasion to be casting its 
 * 1 Kings ix. 15. 1 1 Kings xi. 7, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. H$fl 
 
 shadow before, a separate ruler, we read, 
 c was placed over all the charge of the house 
 of Joseph* / that is, one individual was 
 made overseer over the work, or the tribute, 
 or both, of the ten tribes ; for so I understand 
 the phrase, agreeably to its meaning in other 
 passages of Scripture f. And who was he? 
 — a young man, an industrious man, a mighty 
 
 * 1 Kings xi. 28. 
 
 t See 2 Sam. xix. 20, and Pole in loc. ^('on^s <vavro; 'lo-guvX 
 za\ ilixou 'iuan$. Sept. See 1 Chron. v. 2. The rights of 
 primogeniture, which Reuben had forfeited, appear to have 
 been divided between Judah and Joseph: to Judah, the 
 headship ; to Joseph the double portion of the eldest son. 
 Thus, the people, of Israel became biceps, and were com- 
 prised under the names of the two heads. See also Ps. 
 lxxvii. 16, and Judges x. 9, where the house of Ephraim 
 is synonymous with the house of Joseph. 
 
 Lightfoot considers Joseph to have been the principal 
 family while the Ark was at Shiloh, and all Israel to have 
 been named after it, as in Ps. lxxx. 1, but that when God 
 refused Joseph, and chose Judah for the chief, Ps. lxxviii. 
 68, 69, then there began, and continued, a difference and 
 distinction betwixt Israel and Judah, Joseph and Judah, 
 Ephraim and Judah, the rest of the tribes being called by 
 all these names, in opposition to Judah.— Lightfoot, i. 66 fol, 
 
160 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 man of valour, (for these qualities Solomon 
 made choice of him,) and above all, a man 
 of Ephraim* ; Jeroboam it was. 
 
 It is impossible to imagine events work- 
 ing more steadily towards a given point, 
 than here. The knot had already shown 
 itself far from indissoluble, and now, time, 
 opportunity, and a skilful hand, combine to 
 loose it. Here we have a great body of 
 artificers, almost an army of themselves, 
 kept together some twenty years — Ephraim- 
 ites and their colleagues engaged in works 
 consecrated to the glory and aggrandize- 
 ment of Judah and Benjamin, rather than to 
 their own — Ephraimites contributing to the 
 removal of the seat of government from 
 Ephraim to Judah — Ephraimites paying 
 taxes great and grievous, not merely to the 
 erection of a national place of worship, (for 
 
 * 1 Kings xi. 26. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 1G1 
 
 to tliis they might have given consent, the 
 command being of God,) but to the con- 
 struction of palaces for princes, never again 
 to be of their own line ; and temples for the 
 idols of those princes, living and dead, 
 which were expressly contrary to the com- 
 mand of God — And lastly, we have an 
 Ephraimite, even Jeroboam, with every 
 talent for mischief, endowed with every 
 opportunity for exercising it ; put into an 
 office which at once invested him with 
 authority, and secured him from suspicion, 
 so that his future crown was but the con- 
 summation of his present intrigues ; the 
 issue of his own subtlety, and the people's 
 discontent. Nor is this matter of conjecture. 
 Is it not written in the Book of Kings, (most 
 casually, however,) that the people of Israel, 
 I speak of Israel as distinguished from 
 Judah and Benjamin, in the first moment of 
 
 M 
 
162 THE VERACITY OF THE" 
 
 madness, on the accession of Rehoboam, 
 wreaked their vengeance — upon whom, of all 
 men ? — upon Adoniram, the very man whom 
 Solomon, his father, had appointed to levy 
 men and means throughout Israel, the tax- 
 gatherer for the erection of these stupendous 
 works ! and him, the victim of popular in- 
 dignation, did all Israel stone with stones 
 till he died*. The wisdom and policy of 
 Solomon, indeed, in spite of his faults and 
 follies, upheld his empire to the last, and 
 saved it from falling in pieces before the 
 time ; but how completely the fulness of 
 that time was come, is clear, when no sooner 
 was he dead, than his son, and rightful suc- 
 cessor, found it expedient to hasten to She- 
 chcm, there to meet all Israel, conscious as 
 he was, that however his title was admitted 
 by Judah, it was quite another thing, 
 * 1 Kings v. 14; xii. 18. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 1G3 
 
 whether Ephraim would give in his allegiance 
 too, and, as the event proved, his apprehen- 
 sions were not without a cause*. 
 
 And now Jeroboam, a man to seize upon 
 any seeming advantages which his situation 
 afforded him, at once enlisted the ancient 
 sympathies of the people, by forthwith re- 
 building Shechem, which had been burned 
 by Abimelech \, and making it his residence, 
 though he had all the northern tribes 
 among whom to choose ; and with similar 
 policy, he proceeded to provide for them a 
 worship of their own, nor would allow that 
 1 in Jerusalem alone was the place where 
 men ought to worship' — a worship, rather, 
 I think, a gross corruption, than an utter 
 abandonment of the true, the idolatry of the 
 second, more than of the first commandment, 
 though the two offences are very closely 
 * 1 Kings xii. 1. y I Kings xii. 25, 
 
 M a 
 
1G4 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 connected, and almost of necessity run into 
 one another. For I observe, throughout the 
 ■whole history of the kings of Israel, a dis- 
 tinction made between the sin of Jeroboam 
 and the worship of Baal, somewhat in 
 favour of the former ; and that offensive as 
 they both were to the one Eternal, and In- 
 visible God, Baal-worship was the greater 
 abomination. Perhaps, too, it may be added, 
 that this distinction is recognised by the 
 apostle, whose words are, that ' the glory of 
 the incorruptible God was' — not altogether 
 abjured — but * changed into an image, made 
 like unto four-footed beasts*.' But, however 
 this may be, a worship of their own, indepen- 
 dent of the temple, and of the regular priest- 
 hood, Jeroboam established, still building 
 upon the religious rites of old time, and ac- 
 commodating the calendar of his feasts in some 
 
 * Rom. i. 23. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 165 
 
 measure to that which had existed before* ; 
 and whatever might be his reason for select- 
 ing Bethel for one of his calves, whether 
 the holy character of the place itself, or its 
 vicinity to the still holier Shilohf, whither 
 the people had habitually resorted, I dis- 
 cover a very sufficient reason for his choice 
 of Dan for the other, exclusive of all con- 
 sideration of local convenience, the curious 
 circumstance, that in this town, there had 
 already prevailed for ages, a form of wor- 
 ship, or of idolatry (I should rather say), 
 very closely resembling that which he now 
 proposed to set up throughout Israel, and 
 furnishing him, if not with a strict precedent, 
 at least with a most suitable foundation on 
 which to work. For in this town stood the 
 teraphim, or images of Micah, whatever 
 might be their shape, which the original 
 * 1 Kings xii. 32. t Judges xxi. 19. 
 
1G(3 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 founders of Dan had taken with them, and 
 planted there ; and a priesthood there was 
 to minister to these images, precisely like 
 that of Jeroboam, not of the sacerdotal order, 
 for they were sons of Manasseh ; and thus 
 was there an organised system of dissent 
 from the national church, existing in the 
 town of Dan, c all the time that the House 
 of God was in Shiloh*;' and thus was 
 accomplished, I suspect, that mysterious 
 prediction of Jacob, l Dan shall be a serpent 
 by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth 
 the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall 
 backward f.' 
 
 On the present occasion, those undesigned 
 coincidences, which are the staple of my 
 argument throughout these sermons, have 
 not been presented to you in so perspicuous 
 a manner as they may have been sometimes ; 
 * Judges xviii. 31. f Gen. xlix. 17. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 167 
 
 for the attention of my hearers has, in this 
 instance, been directed not to one point, 
 singled out of several, but to the details of 
 a continuous history. This I could not avoid. 
 At the same time, these details, on a review 
 of them, will be found to involve many 
 minute coincidences, and those just such as 
 constitute the difference between the best- 
 imagined story in the world, and a narrative 
 of actual facts. For let this be borne in 
 mind, that the sketch which I have offered 
 of the gradual development of the schism 
 between Israel and Judah, is by no means 
 an abridgment of the obvious scripture 
 account of it — very far from it. — Looking to 
 that part of scripture which directly relates 
 to this schism, and confining ourselves to 
 that, we rnio-ht be led to think the rent of 
 the kingdom as sudden and unshaped an 
 event, as the rending of the prophet's mantle, 
 
1G8 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 which was its type : for here,, as elsewhere, 
 the history is rapid and abrupt. What I 
 have offered is, strictly speaking, a theory ; 
 a theory by which a great many loose and 
 scattered data, such as scripture affords to 
 a diligent inquirer, and to no other, are, with 
 much seeming consistency, combined into 
 a whole ; it is the pattern which gradually 
 comes out, when the many-coloured threads, 
 gleaned up as we have gone along, are 
 worked into a web. 
 
 I. For instance — I can conceive it very 
 possible, without claiming to myself any 
 peculiar sagacity, for a man to read, and 
 not inattentively either, the sacred books 
 from Joshua to Chronicles, and yet never 
 happen to be struck with the fact that 
 Ephraim was a leading tribe; that it was 
 the head, allowed or understood, of an 
 easy confederacy ; the thing is scarcely to 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 169 
 
 be discovered but by the apposition of many 
 passages, dispersed through these books, 
 bearing, perhaps, little or no relation to one 
 another, except that of having a common 
 bias towards this one point. The same may 
 be said of the main cause of this comparative 
 superiority of Ephraim, the accidental, as 
 some would call it, — as we will call it, the 
 providential establishment of the Tabernacle 
 within its borders. The circumstance of 
 Shiloh being the place whither all Israel 
 went up to worship for three centuries and 
 more, all important as it was to the tribe 
 whom it concerned, is not put forward either 
 as accounting for the prosperity of Ephraim 
 above its fellows, whilst in Ephraim the 
 Ark stood ; or for the jealousy which it dis- 
 covered towards Juclah, when to Judah the 
 Ark had been transferred ; nor yet as being 
 the natural means by which the remarkable 
 
170 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 words of Jacob (surely the prophet, and not 
 the poet in that hour) were brought to pass, 
 touching the future pre-eminence of Ephraim 
 and Judah, howbeit, as tribes, they were then 
 but in the loins of their fathers. So far 
 from this, when in the Book of Joshua we 
 are told that the Tabernacle was set up in 
 Shiloh, not a syllable is added by which we 
 can guess where Shiloh was, whether in 
 Ephraim or elsewhere* ; and it is only after 
 some investigation, and by inference at last, 
 that in Ephraim we can fix it. 
 
 II. The same is true of the league between 
 Benjamin and Judah. What were the sym- 
 pathies beyond mere proximity, which 
 cemented them so firmly, is altogether a 
 matter for ourselves to unravel, if unravel it 
 we can. We see them, indeed, acting in 
 concert, as we also see the other tribes 
 
 * Josh, xviii. 1. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 171 
 
 acting, but the books of scripture enter into 
 no explanations in either case. Neverthe- 
 less, I find in one place, that Saul, the first 
 king, was of Benjamin, and in another, that 
 David, the second king, was of Judah, with 
 a prospect of a continuance of the succession 
 in that line ; and here I perceive a mutual 
 sympathy likely to spring out of the ex- 
 clusive honours of the two royal tribes. 
 Elsewhere, I find that the two royal houses 
 of Saul and David were united by marriage, 
 and here I detect a further approximation. 
 I look again, and learn that a temple was 
 built for national worship in a city, which 
 one text places in Judah, and a parallel text 
 places in Benjamin, leaving me to infer (as 
 was the fact) that the city was on the con- 
 fines of both, and that upon the confines of 
 both (as was also the fact) the foundations 
 of the temple were laid. In these, and 
 
172 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 perhaps in other similar matters, which 
 might be enumerated, I certainly do dis- 
 cover elements of union, however the writers, 
 who record them, may never speak of them 
 as such. 
 
 III. Again; the motives which operated 
 with Jeroboam in the selection of Shechem 
 for his residence, or of Dan for his idolatry, 
 are not even glanced at, though, in either 
 instance, reasons there were, we have seen, 
 to make the choice judicious. And whilst 
 we are told that he fled from Solomon, when 
 the conspirator was detected in him, or 
 when Ah ij ah's prophecy awakened the 
 monarch's fears, and went into Egypt, and 
 that from Egypt, at the death of Solomon, 
 he hasted back to take his part in those 
 stirring times, no hint, the most remote, is 
 thrown out, that his sojourn in that idola- 
 trous land, and the peculiar nature of its 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 173 
 
 idolatry, influenced him in the choice of a 
 calf for the representative of his own God, 
 though the one fact does very curiously 
 corroborate the other, and still adds credi- 
 bility to the whole history. 
 
 In all this, I discover much of coincidence, 
 nothing of design. I see an extraordinary 
 revolution asserted, and then my eyes being 
 opened, I perceive that the seeds of it, not 
 however described as such, and often so 
 small as to be easily overlooked, had been 
 cast upon the waters generations before. 
 I see coalitions and convulsions in the body 
 politic of Israel, and I find, not without some 
 pains-taking, and after all but in part, 
 attractive or repulsive principles at work in 
 that body, which, without being named as 
 causes, do account for such effects. I see 
 both in persons and places, so soon as I be- 
 come intimately acquainted with their several 
 
174 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 bearings, something appropriate to the 
 events with which they are connected, 
 though I see nothing of the kind at first, 
 because no such propriety appears upon the 
 surface. These I hold to be the characters 
 of truth, and the history upon which they 
 are stamped, I accordingly receive, nothing 
 doubting — meanwhile, not failing to remark, 
 and to admire, the silent transition of events 
 into those very channels which Jacob in 
 spirit had declared ages before ; and to 
 acknowledge, without attempting fully to 
 understand, the mysterious workings of that 
 Controlling Power, which can make men its 
 instruments without making them its tools ; 
 at once compelling them to do His will, and 
 permitting them to do their own ; proving 
 himself faithful, and leaving them free. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 175 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 established. 
 
 It is my intention, in this sermon, to offer to 
 your notice some observations on the con- 
 dition of the two kingdoms of Israel and 
 Judah, whether political or religions, as it 
 was affected by their separation. I shall 
 confine myself, however, to such as bear 
 upon the question of evidence to the truth of 
 the history. 
 
 I. ' And Baasha, King of Israel,' we read, 
 i went up against Judah, and built Ramah, 
 that he might not suffer any to go out or 
 come in to Asa Kino* of Judah*.' 
 
 Ramah seems to have been a border town, 
 
 * 1 Kings xv. 17. 
 
17G THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 
 and to have stood in such a position, as to 
 be the key to either. The King- of Israel, 
 however, was the party anxious to fortify it, 
 not the King of Judah ; indeed, the latter, 
 as we learn from the Chronicles*, did his 
 best to frustrate the efforts of Baasha, and 
 succeeded, apparently not desirous of having 
 Ramah converted into a place of strength, 
 though it should be in his own keeping ; for 
 Asa having contrived to draw Baasha away 
 from this work, does not seize upon it and 
 complete it for himself, but contents himself 
 with carrying off the stones and the timber, 
 and using them elsewhere. It is evident, 
 therefore, that it was an object with the 
 kings of Israel, that this strong frontier post 
 should be established, — with the kino-s of 
 Judah that it should be removed. Now 
 
 * 2 Chron. xvi. G. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 177 
 
 this is singular, when we remember, that 
 after the schism, the numerical strength lay- 
 vastly on the side of Israel, one hundred and 
 eighty thousand men being all that Judah 
 could then count in his ranks*, whereas 
 eight hundred thousand were actually pro- 
 duced a few years afterwards by Jeroboam, 
 and even then, he was not what he had 
 beenf. It was to be expected, therefore, 
 that the fear of invasion would have been 
 upon Judah alone, the weaker state, and 
 that, accordingly, Judah would have gladly 
 taken, and kept possession of a fortress which 
 was the bridle of the kingdom on that side, 
 and have made it strong for himself. Yet, 
 as we have seen, the fact was quite the 
 other way. How is this to be explained ? 
 By a single circumstance, which accounts 
 for a great deal besides this; though the 
 * 1 Kings xii. 21. t 2 Chron. xiii. 3. 
 
 N 
 
1/8 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 explanation presents itself in the most inci- 
 dental manner imaginable, and without the 
 smallest reference to the particular case of 
 Ramah. 
 
 In the twelfth chapter of the first Book of 
 Kings, I read (v. 20), that ' Jeroboam said 
 in his heart, now shall the kingdom return 
 to the house of David, if this people go 
 up to sacrifice in the house of the Lord 
 at Jerusalem;' and that accordingly he 
 set up a worship of his own in Bethel and 
 Dan. 
 
 In the eleventh chapter of the second 
 Book of Chronicles, I read (v. 14) that ' he 
 cast off the Levites' (as indeed it was most 
 natural that he should) ( from executing the 
 priest's office,' and ordained him priests after 
 his own pleasure. I read further, that in 
 consequence of this subversion of the Church 
 of God, ' the priests and the Levites that 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 179 
 
 were in all Israel, resorted unto Judah, out 
 of all their coasts;' nor they only, the 
 ministers of God, who might well migrate, 
 but that ' after them out of all the tribes of 
 Israel, such as set their hearts to seek 
 the Lord God of their fathers ; so they 
 strengthened' (it is added) ' the kingdom of 
 Judah, and made Rehoboam, the son of 
 Solomon, strong' (v. 16, 17). The son of 
 Nebat was a great politician in his own way, 
 but he had yet to learn, that by righteousness 
 is a nation really exalted, and that its right- 
 eous citizens are those by whom the throne 
 is in truth upheld. These he was condemned 
 to lose; these he and his ungodly succes- 
 sors were to see gradually waste away be- 
 fore their eyes ; depart from a kingdom 
 founded in iniquity ; and transfer their 
 allegiance to another and a better soil. 
 Hence the natural solicitude of Israel to put 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 a stop to the alarming- drainage of all that 
 was virtuous out of their borders, and the 
 clumsy contrivance of a fortification at 
 Ramah for the purpose ; as though a spirit 
 of uncompromising devotion to God, happily, 
 the most unconquerable of things, was to be 
 coerced by a barrier of bricks. Hence, too, 
 the no less natural solicitude of Judah to 
 remove this fortification, Judah being de- 
 sirous that no obstacle, however small, should 
 be opposed to the influx of those virtuous 
 Israelites, who would be the strength of any 
 nation wherein they settled. Here I find a 
 coincidence of the most satisfactory kind, 
 between the building of Ramah by Israel, the 
 overthrow of it by Judah, and the tide of 
 emigration which was setting in from Israel 
 towards Judah, by reason of Jeroboam's 
 idolatry. Yet the relation of these events to 
 one another, is not expressed in the history, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 181 
 
 nor are the events named under the same 
 head, or in the same chapter. 
 
 II. Nor is this all. Still keeping in mind 
 this single consideration, that the more 
 godly of the people of the ten tribes were 
 disgusted at the calves, and retired, we may 
 at once account for the progressive augmen- 
 tation of the armies of Judah, and the corre- 
 sponding decrease of the armies of Israel, 
 which the subsequent history of the two 
 kingdoms casually, and at intervals, displays. 
 
 Immediately after the separation, Reho- 
 boam assembled the forces of his two tribes, 
 and found them, as I have said, one hundred 
 and eighty thousand men. Some eighteen 
 years afterwards, Ahijah, his son, was able 
 to raise against Jeroboam (who still, how- 
 ever, was vastly stronger) four hundred thou- 
 sand*. This is a considerable step. Some 
 * 2 Chron. xiii. 3, 
 
182 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 six or seven years later, Asa, the son of 
 Ahijah, is invaded by a countless host of 
 ^Ethiopians. On this occasion, notwith- 
 standing the numbers which must have 
 fallen already in the battle with Jeroboam, 
 he brings into the field five hundred and 
 eighty thousand : so rapidly were the re- 
 sources of Judah on the advance. About 
 two and thirty years later still, the army of 
 Jehoshaphat, the son of Asa, consists of one 
 million, one hundred and sixty thousand 
 men*; a prodigious increase in the popula- 
 tion of the kingdom of Judah. 
 
 On the other hand, we may trace (the 
 act, it must be observed, is altogether our 
 own, no such comparison being instituted in 
 the history) the gradual decay and depopu- 
 lation of the kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam 
 himself, we have found, was eight hundred 
 * 2 Chron. xvii. H— 18, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 183 
 
 thousand strong. The continual diminution 
 of this national army, we cannot, in the 
 present instance, always trace from actual 
 numbers, as we did in the former ; but from 
 circumstances which transpire in the history, 
 we can trace it by inference. Thus, Ahab, 
 one of the successors of Jeroboam, and con- 
 temporary with Jehoshaphat, whose immense 
 armaments we have seen, is threatened by 
 Benhadad and the Syrians. Benhadad will 
 send men to take out of his house, and out 
 of the houses of his servants, whatever is 
 pleasant in their eyes*. It is the insolent 
 message of one who felt Israel to be weak, 
 and being weak, to invite aggression. 
 Favoured by a panic, Ahab triumphs for the 
 once ; but at the return of the year, returns 
 Benhadad. Ahab is warned of this long 
 before. ' Go strengthen thyself,' is the 
 
 * J Kin<rs xx, G. 
 
184 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 friendly exhortation of the prophet (v. 22); — 
 no doubt he did so, to the best of his means, 
 but after all, f when the children of Israel 
 were numbered, and were all present, and 
 went against them, the children of Israel 
 pitched before the Syrians like two little 
 flocks of kids, but the Syrians filled the 
 country' (v. 27). And in Joram's days, the 
 son and successor of Ahab, such was the 
 boldness of Syria, and the weakness of 
 Israel, that the former was constantly send- 
 ing marauding parties, ' companies/ as they 
 are called, or ' bands*,' into Israel's quarters, 
 sometimes taking the inhabitants captive, 
 and sometimes even laying siege to con- 
 siderable towns |. And in the reign of Jehu, 
 the next king, Syria, with Hazael at its head, 
 crippled Israel still more terribly, actually 
 seizing upon all the land of Jordan east- 
 
 * 2 Kings v. 2 j vi. 2, 3 ; xiii. 21. t Kings vi. 14,23. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 185 
 
 ward, Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites, 
 and the Manassites, from Aroar to Bashan*. 
 And to complete the picture, the whole army 
 of Jehoahaz, the next in the royal succession 
 of Israel, consisted of fifty horsemen, ten 
 chariots, and ten thousand foot, Syria having 
 exterminated the restf ; so gradually was 
 Israel upon the decline. 
 
 Now it must be remembered, in order that 
 the force of the argument may be felt, that 
 no parallel of the kind we have been draw- 
 ing is found in the history itself; no invi- 
 tation to others to draw one ; the materials 
 for doing so it does indeed furnish, dis- 
 persed, however, over a wide field, and less 
 definite than might be wished, were our 
 object to ascertain the relative strength of 
 the two kingdoms with exactness ; that how- 
 ever it is not ; and the very circumstance, 
 * 2 Kings x. 33. f 2 Kings xiii. 7. 
 
186 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 that the gradual growth of Judah, and de- 
 clension of Israel, are sometimes to be 
 gathered from other facts than positive 
 numerical evidence, is enough in itself to 
 show that the historian could have no design 
 studiously to point out the coincidence of 
 facts with his casual assertion, that the 
 Levites had been supplanted by the priests 
 of the calves, and that multitudes had 
 quitted the country with them, in just in- 
 dignation. 
 
 III. There is still another coincidence 
 which falls under the same head. 
 
 In the fifteenth chapter of the first Book 
 of Kings, (v. 28) I read that ' Baasha the 
 son of Ah ij ah, of the house of Issachar, con- 
 spired against him (i. e. Nadab the son of 
 Jeroboam) at Gibbet/ton, which belonged to 
 the Philistines, for Nadab and all Israel laid 
 siege to Gibbethon.' 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 187 
 
 It appears then that Gibbethon, situated in 
 the tribe of Dan, had by some means or other 
 fallen into the hands of the Philistines, and 
 that the forces of Israel were now engaged 
 in recovering possession of it. It may seem 
 a very hopeless undertaking, at this time of 
 day, to ascertain the circumstances of which 
 an enemy availed himself, in order to gain 
 possession of a particular town in Canaan, 
 near three thousand years ago. Yet, perhaps, 
 the investigation, distant as it is, is not des- 
 perate — for in the twenty-first chapter of 
 Joshua, (v. 23) I find Gibbethon and her 
 suburbs mentioned as a city of the Levites. 
 Now Jeroboam, we have heard, drove all the 
 Levites out of Israel : what then can be 
 more probable, than that Gibbethon, being 
 thus suddenly evacuated, the Philistines, 
 a remnant of the old enemy, still lurking in 
 the country, and ever ready to rush in where" 
 
188 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 ever there was a breach, should have spied 
 an opportunity in the defenceless state of 
 Gibbethon, and claimed it as their own* ? It 
 is indeed far from improbable, that this 
 story of Gibbethon is that of many other 
 Levitical cities throughout Israel ; that this 
 is but a glimpse of much similar confusion, 
 misery, and intestine tumult, by which that 
 kingdom was now convulsed ; and though 
 
 * That the Philistines were thus dispersed over the land 
 may be gathered from many hints in Scripture ; even in the 
 kingdom of Judah they were to be found, much more in 
 Israel. ' Some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat 
 presents and tribute silver,' 2 Chron. xvii. 11. Probably 
 the miscreants mentioned 1 Kings xv. 12, whom Asa ex- 
 pelled, and those mentioned xxii. 46, whom Jehoshaphat his 
 son drove out, and those again mentioned 2 Kings xxiii. 7 
 who were established even at Jerusalem, whom Josiah cast 
 out, were all of this nation. And there still were Hitlites 
 somewhere at hand, who had even kings of their own, 
 1 Kings x. 29, 2 Kings vii. 6 : and we read of a land of 
 the Philistines, where the Shunamitess sojourned during the 
 famine, 2 Kings viii. 2 — all evident tokens, that a consider- 
 able body of the primitive inhabitants of Palestine still dwelt 
 in it. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 189 
 
 a solitary fact in itself, a type of many more * 
 — and thus, in another way, did the pro- 
 fane act of Jeroboam operate to the down- 
 fall of his kingdom, and fatally eat into its 
 strength. 
 
 Whether I am right in this conjecture, it 
 is impossible to tell ; the case does not 
 admit of positive decision either way ; but, 
 certainly, the grounds upon which it rests 
 are, to say the least, very specious ; and if 
 they are sound, as I think they are, I cannot 
 imagine a point of harmony more complete, 
 or more undesigned, than that which we have 
 found between these half dozen words touch- 
 ing Gibbethon, a Levitical city, lapsing into 
 the hands of the Philistines, and the expul- 
 sion of the Levites out of Israel by the sin 
 of Jeroboam. 
 
 IV. Nor is this all. There is another and 
 a still more valuable coincidence yet, con- 
 
190 THE VERAC1TV OF THE 
 
 nectcd with this part of my subject; more 
 valuable, because involving in itself a greater 
 number of particulars, and, therefore, more 
 liable to a flaw, if the combination was arti- 
 ficial. When Elijah has worked his great 
 miracle on the top of Carmel, and kindled 
 the sacrifice by fire from heaven, he has to 
 fly from Jezebel for his life, who swears that, 
 by the morrow, she will deal with him, as he 
 had dealt with the Prophets of Baal, her 
 god, and slay him *. Now when it was so 
 common a practice, as we have seen, for the 
 godly amongst the people of Israel to betake 
 themselves to Judah in their distress, there 
 to worship the God of their Fathers without 
 scandal and without persecution, it seems 
 obvious that this was the place for Elijah to 
 repair unto ; — the most appropriate, for it 
 was because he had been very jealous for the 
 
 * 1 Kinsrs xviii. 40 : xix. 2. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. l9l 
 
 Lord that he was banished — the most con- 
 venient, for no other was so near ; he had 
 but to cross the borders, one would think, 
 and he was safe. Yet neither on this occa- 
 sion, nor yet during the three preceding 
 years of drought, when Ahab sought to lay 
 hands upon him, did Elijah seek sanctuary 
 in Judah. First he hides himself by the 
 brook Cherith, which is before Jordan # ; 
 then at ' Zarephat, which belongs to Zidon ;' 
 and though he does at last, when his case 
 seems desperate, and his hours are num- 
 bered by Jezebel's sentence, ' come in haste 
 to Beer-sheba, which belongeth to Judah], 
 still it is after a manner which bespeaks his 
 reluctance to set foot within that territory, 
 
 * It is true that there is great difference of opinion as to 
 the situation of this brook Cherith ; but from the direction 
 given to Elijah, being to turn Eastward, when he was to go 
 there, he being at the time in Samaria, it is clear that it 
 could not be in Judah. —Consult Lightfoot, v. ii. 318, fol, 
 
 1 1 Kings, xix. 3. 
 
192 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 even more, than if lie had evaded it 
 altogether. Tarry he will not ; he separates 
 from his servant, probably for the greater 
 security of both ; goes a day's journey into 
 the wilderness, and forlorn, and spirit- 
 broken and alone, begs that he may die ; 
 then he wanders away, being so taught of 
 God, forty days and forty nights, till he 
 comes to Horeb, the Mount of God, and 
 there conceals himself in a cave. Now all 
 this is at first sight very strange and unac- 
 countable ; strange and unaccountable, that 
 the Prophet of God should so studiously 
 avoid Judah, the people of God, governed, 
 as it then was, by Jehoshaphat, a prince who 
 walked with God *, — Judah being of all 
 others a shelter the nearest and most con- 
 venient. How is it to be explained? 
 
 I doubt not by this fact ; that Jehosha- 
 
 * 2 Kins:s xxii. 43. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 193 
 
 phat king- of Judah had already married, or 
 ^vas then upon the point of marrying, his 
 son Jehoram to Athaliah, the daughter of 
 this very Ahab, and this very Jezebel, who 
 were seeking Elijah's life*; his, therefore, 
 was not now the kingdom in which Elijah 
 could feel that a residence was safe ; for by 
 this ill-omened match (such it proved) the 
 houses of Jehoshaphat and Ahab were so 
 strictly identified, that we find the former, 
 when solicited by Ahab to join him in an 
 expedition against Ramoth Gilead, express- 
 ing himself in such terms as these: * I am 
 as thou art, my people as thy people, my 
 horses as thy horses f ;' and in allusion, as it 
 should seem, to this fraternity of the two 
 kings, Jehoshaphat is in one place actually 
 called ' King of Israel $.' 
 
 * 2 Kings viii. 18. 2 Chrpn. xviii. 1. 
 t 1 Kings xxii. 4. X 2 Chion. xxi. 2. 
 
194 THE VERACITY Of THE 
 
 It may be demonstrated that this fatal 
 marriage (for such it was in its conse- 
 quences) was, at any rate, contracted not 
 later than the tenth or eleventh of Ahab's 
 reign, and it might have been much earlier ; 
 whilst these scenes in the life of Elijah 
 could not have occurred within the first few 
 years of that reign, seeing that Ahab had 
 to fill up the measure of his wickedness after 
 he came to the throne, before the Prophet 
 was commissioned to take up his parable 
 against him. I mention these two facts, as 
 tending to prove that the exile of Elijah 
 could not have fallen out long, if at all, 
 before the marriage ; and therefore that the 
 latter event, whether past or in prospect, 
 might well bear upon it. I say that it may 
 be proved that this marriage was not later 
 than the tenth or eleventh of Ahab — for 
 
 1, Ahaziah, the fruit of the marriage, the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 195 
 
 son of Jehoram and Athaliah, began to reign 
 in the twelfth year of Joram, son of Ahab, 
 king of Israel *. 
 
 2. But Joram began to reign in the eigh- 
 teenth year of Jehoshaphat *king of Judah f 
 
 3. Therefore, the twelfth of Joram would 
 answer to the thirtieth of Jehoshaphat, (had 
 the latter reigned so long ; it did, in fact, 
 answer to the seventh of Jehoram, the son of 
 Jehoshaphat J ; but, there is no need to per- 
 plex the computation by any reference to 
 this reign ;) and accordingly Ahaziah must 
 have begun his reign in what would cor- 
 respond to the thirtieth of Jehoshaphat. 
 
 4. But he was twenty-two when he 
 began it. Therefore he must have been 
 born about the eighth year of Jehoshaphat; 
 and consequently the marriage of Jehoram 
 
 * 2 Kings xxv. 25, 20. I 2 Kingsiii. 1. 
 
 % Comp. 2 Kings iii. 1 ; viii. IS. 1 Kings xxii. 42, 
 
 o 2 
 
JOG THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 and Athaliah, which gave birth to him, 
 must have been contracted at least as early 
 as the sixth or seventh of Jehoshaphat. 
 
 5. Now Jehoshaphat began to reign in 
 the fourth of Ahab, king of Israel ; there- 
 fore the marriage must have been solem- 
 nized as early as the tenth or eleventh of 
 Ahab — how much earlier it was solemnized 
 in fact, we cannot tell ; but the result is 
 extremely curious ; and without the most 
 remote allusion to it on the part of the 
 sacred Historian, as being an incident in 
 any way governing the movements of 
 Elijah, it does furnish, when we are once 
 in possession of it, a most satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the shyness of Elijah to look 
 for a refuge in a country where, almost 
 under any other circumstances, it was the 
 most natural he should have sought one ; 
 and, where, at any other time, since the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 197 
 
 division of the kingdoms, he certainly would 
 have found not only a refuge, but a welcome. 
 Surely if truth is not here, all belief in 
 the worth of circumstantial evidence must 
 be renounced. But I am persuaded that 
 here truth is, and that this history of Elijah, 
 strange and striking as much of it is, is no 
 cunningly-devised fable, for no fable, how- 
 ever cunningly devised, could sustain a 
 scrutiny such as this to which we are sub- 
 mitting it ; but that it is a veritable history 
 of a real character ; and if so, a history in 
 itself sufficient to prove that the Lord was 
 at that time, at least, abroad amongst his 
 chosen people ; showing amongst them 
 tokens by the hands of his prophets, that 
 verily there was a God in Israel ; and that, 
 in preserving the records of that people, he 
 is still holding up to us, on whom the ends 
 of the world are come, a memorial of this 
 
198 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 manifestation of his power upon earth in the 
 old times before us ; such as must convince 
 us, that however, in this our day, he may 
 think fit to shroud those more outward and 
 visible signs of his presence amongst us, 
 he is-still not far from any of us — he is still 
 very nigh us all — he is still ready, in his own 
 appointed way, (that way not the less his, 
 because it may be less extraordinary than 
 heretofore,) to protect us from harm, and 
 deliver us from evil, as he protected and de- 
 livered this his prophet, if, like this his pro- 
 phet, we acknowledge him, and no other, for 
 our God ; he is still ready to feed us with 
 food convenient for us, to whatever strait 
 we may be reduced, as he fed him in that 
 great dearth, if we trust in Him ; he is still 
 ready to translate us, as he translated him 
 to his kingdom above, if we walk with Him 
 in his kingdom here below; not indeed in 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 199 
 
 tlie chariot of fire, but by some ministering 
 angel, perhaps, that now beholds the face 
 of our Father, and will wait unseen at our 
 couch of death, to convey our souls, if 
 righteous they be, ' that day unto Paradise' — 
 and finally, he is ready to bring us in spirit, 
 as he brought him, the Elias, in spirit, to 
 hold a more intimate communion than we 
 can do in the flesh, with our transfigured 
 Lord, and to dwell with Jesus for ever in 
 the Tabernacle on the mount, which He 
 hath made for us. 
 
200 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word 
 be established. 
 
 In my last sermon, I laid before you some 
 arguments for the truth of that remarkable 
 portion of scripture which tells the history 
 of the great prophet Elijah, and I showed, 
 that, on comparing some of the reputed events 
 of his life with the political and domestic 
 state of his country at the time, the reality 
 of those events was established beyond all 
 reasonable doubt. But I have not yet done 
 with this part of my subject, and I press on 
 your notice once again, as I have repeatedly 
 pressed it before, the consideration that 
 these casual indications of truth, found in 
 the very midst of miracles the most striking, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 201 
 
 do give great support to the credibility of 
 those miracles ; that the portions of the his- 
 tory on which these seals of truth are set, do 
 combine with the other, and more extraor- 
 dinary portions so intimately, that if the 
 former are to be received, the latter cannot 
 be rejected without extreme violence and 
 laceration of the whole ; that standing or 
 falling, they must stand or fall together. 
 
 I. I spoke before of the flight of Elijah, 
 and gave my reasons for believing it. I 
 speak now of a trifling incident in that mag- 
 nificent scene, which is said to have been 
 the prologue to his flight. This it is. 
 Twelve barrels of water, at the command of 
 the prophet, are poured upon the sacrifice, 
 and fill the trench. But is it not a strange 
 thing, that at a moment of drought so in- 
 tense, when the king himself, and the gover- 
 nor of his house, trusting the business to no 
 
202 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 inferior agent, actually undertook to examine 
 with their own eyes the watering-places 
 throughout all the land, dividing it between 
 them, to see if they could save the remainder 
 of the cattle alive*; when the prophet had 
 been long before compelled to leave Cherith, 
 because the brook was dried up, and for no 
 reason else, and to crave at the hands of the 
 widow-woman of Zarephath, whither he had 
 removed, though a land of danger to him, a 
 little water in a vessel that he might drink ; 
 is it not, I say, a gross oversight in the 
 sacred writer, to make Elijah, at such a time, 
 give order for this wanton waste of water 
 above all things, whereof scarcely a drop 
 was to be found to cool the tongue ; and not 
 only so, but to describe it as forthcoming at 
 once, apparently without any search made, 
 an ample and abundant reservoir ? How can 
 * 1 Kin^s xviii. 5. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 203 
 
 these things be ? Let us but remember the 
 local position of Carmel,that it stood upon the 
 coast, as an incidental remark in the course 
 of the narrative testifies (v. 43), that the 
 water was therefore probably sea-water, and 
 all the difficulty disappears. But the his- 
 torian does not trouble himself to satisfy our 
 surprise, being altogether unconscious that 
 he has given any cause for it ; he, honest 
 man as he was, tells his tale, a faithful one 
 as he feels, and the objection which we have 
 alleged, and which a single word would have 
 extinguished, he leaves to shock us as it 
 may, nothing heeding. But would not au 
 impostor have preserved the keeping of his 
 picture better, and been careful not to vio- 
 late seeming probabilities by this prodigal 
 profusion of water, whilst his action was 
 laid in a miraculous drought, for the re- 
 moval of which, indeed, this very sacrifice 
 
204 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 was offered — or, if of these twelve barrels 
 he must needs speak, by way of silencing 
 all insinuation, that the whole was a scene 
 got up, and that fire was secreted, would he 
 not have studiously told us, at least, that the 
 water was from the sea which lay at the 
 foot of Carmel, and thus have guarded him- 
 self against sceptical remark? Now when 
 I see this momentous period of Elijah's 
 ministry compassed in on every side with 
 tokens of truth so satisfactory ; when I see 
 so much in his history established as matter 
 of fact, am I to consider all that is not so 
 established, merely because materials are 
 wanting for the purpose, as matters of fiction 
 only ? Or, taking my stand upon the good 
 faith with which his flight, at least, is re- 
 corded, an incident which, in itself, I look 
 upon as proved beyond all reasonable doubt 
 in my last sermon ; or upon the good faith 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 205 
 
 with which his challenge at Carmcl is re- 
 corded, an incident not unsatisfactorily con- 
 firmed in this sermon ; or rather upon the 
 veracity of both facts, shall I not feel my 
 way along from the prophet's recoil on set- 
 ting foot in Judah, to the anger of Jezebel, 
 with whom Judah was then in close alliance; 
 from this anger of hers, to the cause 
 assigned for it in the slaughter of her priests ; 
 from the slaughter of her priests, to the 
 authority by which he did the deed, himself 
 a defenceless individual, in a country full of 
 the inveterate worshippers of the God of 
 those priests ; and thus, finally, shall I not 
 ascend to the mighty miracle by which that 
 authority was conveyed to him, God, in 
 pledge thereof, touching the mountain, that 
 it smoked ? 
 
 II. A word upon the marriage of which 
 I spoke. Evil was the day for Judah, when 
 
20G THE VERACITT OF THE 
 
 the son of Jehoshaphat took for a wife the 
 daughter of Ahab, and of Jezebel, ten times 
 the daughter. Singular, indeed, is the hide- 
 ous resemblance of Athaliah to her mother, 
 though our attention is not at all directed 
 to the likeness ; and were the fidelity of the 
 history staked upon the few incidents in it, 
 which relate to this female-fiend, it would 
 be safe — so characteristic are they of the 
 child of Jezebel — the same thirst for blood; 
 the same lust of dominion, whether in the 
 state, or the household; the same unfemi- 
 nine influence over the kings their hus- 
 bands ; Jezebel, the setter up of Baal in 
 Israel ; Athaliah in Judah ; those bitter 
 fountains, from which disasters innumerable 
 flowed to either kingdom, preparing the one 
 for a Shalmanezer, the other for a Nebu- 
 chadnezzar. But this by the way. What- 
 ever might be the motive which induced so 
 
historical scriptures. 207 
 
 good a prince as Jehoshapliat to sanction 
 this alliance ; whether, indeed, it was of 
 choice, and in the hope of re-uniting the 
 two kingdoms, which is probable; or whe- 
 ther it was of compulsion, the act of an 
 impetuous son, and not his own, for he was 
 evidently embarrassed by his children, and, 
 there is reason to suspect, was by this even- 
 tually supplanted in his throne *, certain 
 it is, that it proved a sad epoch in the fate 
 and fortunes of Judah ; a calamity almost as 
 withering in its effects upon that kingdom, 
 as the sin of Jeroboam had been upon his 
 own. Up to the time of Jehoshapliat, 
 Judah had prospered exceedingly ; hence- 
 forward, there is a taint of Baal introduced 
 into the blood royal, and a curse for a long 
 time, though not without intermissions, 
 seems to rest upon the land. The even 
 * 2 Chron, xxiii. 3, 4. 
 
208 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 march with which the two kingdoms now 
 advance hand in hand is early seen ; they 
 were now bent upon grinding' at the same 
 mill, and a remarkable instance of coinci- 
 dence without design here presents itself, 
 which, the general observations I have been 
 making may serve to introduce. 
 
 !. Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, I read *, began 
 to reign over Israel in Samaria, in the seven- 
 teenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah. 
 
 2. But Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began to 
 reign over Israel in Samaria, in the eigh- 
 teenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, 
 his brother Ahaziah being dead f . 
 
 3. Elsewhere, however, it is said that this 
 Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began to reign in 
 the second year of Jehoram son of Jeho- 
 shaphat king of Judah £. 
 
 4. Therefore, the second year of Jehoram 
 * 1 Kings xxii. 51. f 2 Kings iii. 1. ;i; 2 Kings i. 17. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 209 
 
 son of Jehosliaphat, must have corresponded 
 with the eighteenth of Jehosliaphat ; or, in 
 other words, Jehoram must have begun to 
 reign in the seventeenth of Jehoshaphat. 
 
 I fear there may be some difficulty in 
 following these details, when thus orally 
 expressed ; but I have run rapidly through 
 them, because I am unwilling to forego the 
 advantage which my argument derives from 
 the intricate nature of its details. It is 
 obvious that the maze of dates and names 
 thus brought together from various places 
 in Scripture, through which that argument 
 is to be pursued, renders all contrivance, col- 
 lusion, or packing of facts, for the purpose of 
 supporting a conclusion, utterly impossible. 
 Now the result of the whole is this, that 
 Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, 
 and Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king 
 of Judah, both began to reign in the same 
 
 v 
 
210 Tilt VEtlACITY Of THE 
 
 year, in the respective kingdoms of their 
 fathers, their fathers being nevertheless them- 
 selves alive, and active Sovereigns at the time* 
 Is there anything by which this simulta- 
 neous adoption of these young men, to be 
 their father's colleagues, can be accounted 
 for? An identity, so remarkable in the 
 proceedings of the confederate kingdoms, 
 can scarcely be accidental. Let us then 
 endeavour to ascertain, what event was in 
 progress in the seventeenth year of Jeho- 
 shaphat, the year in which the two appoint- 
 ments were made. 
 
 Now Jehoshaphat began to reign in the 
 fourth of Ahab*. But Ahab died in the 
 great battle against Ramoth-Gilead, having 
 reigned twenty-two years f; he died there- 
 fore in the eighteenth of Jehoshaphat. 
 
 Accordingly, in the seventeenth of that 
 
 * 1 Kings xxii. 41. t 1 Kings x\i. 29. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 211 
 
 monarch, the year in which we are con- 
 cerned, the two kings were preparing to go 
 up against Ramoth, — a measure, upon which 
 they did not venture without long and grave 
 deliberation, concentration of forces, appli- 
 cation to Prophets touching their prospects 
 of success * 
 
 But when they approached this hazard- 
 ous enterprise in a spirit so cautious, can 
 anything be more probable, than that each 
 monarch should then have made his son a 
 partner of his throne, in order, that during 
 his own absence with the army, there might 
 be one left behind to rule at home, and in 
 case of the father's death in battle, (Ahab 
 did actually fall,) to reign in his stead? 
 There can be little or no doubt that this is 
 the true solution of the case, though the text 
 
 * 1 Kings xxii. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 itself of the narrative does not contain the 
 slightest intimation that it is so. 
 
 III. Such arrangements, indeed, were not 
 unusual in those days and in those countries. 
 Here is a further proof of it, and at the same 
 time a coincidence which is a companion to 
 the last, — for I have no other difficulty in 
 the prosecution of my argument, than that 
 which arises out of a glut of materials, and 
 the fear of oppressing the patience of my 
 hearers, — who will consider however, I trust, 
 the vast importance of the general question, 
 the numbers of the weaker brethren, though 
 they themselves may be strong, and bear 
 with me. For though I could doubtless 
 have chosen for my address to you on this 
 occasion, matter which should have been at 
 once more attractive perhaps to you, and 
 have certainly cost me much less pains to 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 213 
 
 prepare, than this which I am producing ; 
 yet, the intrinsic worth of the argument, 
 I feel, for my own part, to be so great, that I 
 look to leave an impression on the under- 
 standing, which may be lasting, and, by 
 God's grace, fruitful, long after the time 
 when any appeal which I could have made 
 to the feelings, however popular and per- 
 suasive at the moment, would have lost its 
 force. Therefore I pursue my way, little as 
 may be the opportunity I find of strewing it 
 with flowers. 
 
 1 . \ In the thirty-seventh year of Joash, 
 king of Judah, began Jehoash, the son of 
 Jehoahaz, to reign over Israel in Samaria.' 
 So we are told in one passage * But, in 
 another 'f, that, ' in the second year of Joash, 
 the son of Jehoahaz, king of Israel, reigned 
 Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah.' 
 
 * 2 Kinsrs xiii. 10. 
 
214 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 2. Therefore, Amaziah, king' of Judah, 
 reigned in the thirty-ninth of Joash, king of 
 Judah. 
 
 3. Now we learn from a passage in the 
 second Book of Chronicles *, that * Joash 
 reigned forty years in Jerusalem.' 
 
 4. Therefore Amaziah must have begun to 
 reign one year at least, before the death of 
 his father Joash. 
 
 Can we discover any reason for this ? 
 The clue will be found in a parenthesis of 
 half a line, which the following paragraph 
 in the Chronicles presents. i And it came 
 to pass at the end of the year, that the host 
 of Syria came up against him (Joash), and 
 they came to Jerusalem, and destroyed all 
 the princes of the people. And when they 
 were departed from him {for they left him 
 in great diseases,) his own servants conspired 
 
 * 2 Chron. xxiv. 1. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 215 
 
 against him, for the blood of the sons of 
 Jehoiadah the priest, and slew him on his 
 bed, and he died *.' 
 
 The great diseases therefore under which, 
 it seems, Joash was labouring at the moment 
 of the Syrian invasion, presents itself as the 
 probable cause why Amaziah his sou, then 
 in the flower of his age, was admitted to a 
 share in the government a little before his 
 time. Yet how circuitously do we arrive 
 at this conclusion ! The Book of Kings 
 alone would not establish it ; the Book of 
 Chronicles alone would not establish it. 
 From the former, we might learn when 
 Amaziah began to reign ; from the latter, 
 when Joash, the father of Amaziah died; 
 and accordingly, a comparison of the two 
 dates would enable us to determine that the 
 reign of Amaziah began before that of 
 
 * 2 Chron. xxiv. 23, 24. 
 
216 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Joasli ended ; but neither document asserts 
 the fact that the son did reign conjointly 
 with the father. We infer it, that is all. 
 Neither does the Book of Kings make the 
 least allusion to any accident whatever 
 which rendered this co-partnership neces- 
 sary ; nor yet the Book of Chronicles 
 directly, only an incidental parenthesis, 
 a word or two in length, intimates that at 
 the time of the Syrian invasion Joash was 
 sick. 
 
 I have adduced this coincidence, strong 
 in itself, chiefly in illustration and confirma- 
 tion of the principles upon which the last 
 proceeded ; the simultaneous and premature 
 assumption of the sceptre, by the sons of 
 Jehoshaphat and Ahab, as compared with 
 the date of the combined expedition of those 
 two kings against Ramoth-Gilead. But I 
 must not dismiss the subject altogether 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 217 
 
 without calling your attention to the unde- 
 signedness manifested in either case. No- 
 thing can be more latent than the congruity, 
 such as it is, which is here found : either 
 history might be read a thousand times 
 without a suspicion that any such congruity 
 was there ; investigation is absolutely neces- 
 sary for the discovery of it ; patient disem- 
 broilment of a labyrinth of names, many 
 being identical, where the parties are not 
 the same; scrutiny and confusion of dates, 
 seldom so given as to expedite the labours 
 of the inquirer. All this must be done, 
 or these singular tokens of truth escape us, 
 and many, I doubt not, do escape us, after 
 all. What imposture can be here? What 
 contrivers could be prepared for such a sift- 
 ing of their plausible disclosures? What 
 pretenders could be provided with such 
 vouchers ; or having provided them, would 
 
218 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 bury them so deep as that they should run 
 the risk of never being brought to light at 
 all, and thus frustrate their own end in the 
 fabrication? 
 
 Once more I commit to you facts which 
 speak, I think, to the truth of Scripture, as 
 things having authority ; facts, which afford 
 proof infallible that there is a mine of evi- 
 dence, ' deep things of God,' in this sense, in 
 the sacred writings, which they who look 
 upon them with a hasty and impatient glance 
 — and such very generally is the manner 
 of sceptics, and almost always the manner 
 of youthful sceptics, — leave under their 
 feet unworked ; a treasure hid in a field 
 which they only, who will be at the pains 
 to dig for it, will find ; facts, which give 
 a most comfortable assurance in times like 
 our own, that so long as the gravest question 
 which can enter into the head or heart of 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 210 
 
 man to examine, even the stability of those 
 documents, which are the foundation of all 
 our immortal hopes, is to be settled by 
 the calm and dispassionate use of reason, 
 neither pleasantry, nor sarcasm, nor sneers, 
 solemn or flippant, nor any other spirit of 
 which the name is Legion, issuing from the 
 gate of Hell, can long or lastingly prevail 
 against it. 
 
 But if an investigation, such as this that we 
 are conducting, leads to such a conclusion— 
 to a conclusion, I mean, that there is a sub- 
 stratum of truth running through the Bible, 
 which none can discover but he who will 
 patiently and perseveringly sink the well, at 
 the bottom of which it lies — and such is the 
 conclusion at which we must arrive, I 
 challenge any man who has listened to the 
 proofs which I have advanced, to deny it — 
 is it not a lamentable thing to hear, as we 
 
220 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 are sometimes condemned to hear it, the 
 superficial objection, or supercilious scoff, 
 proceeding from the mouth of one, whose 
 very speech bewrays that he has walked 
 over the surface of his subject merely, if 
 even that, and who nevertheless pretends 
 and proclaims that truth he finds not? — 
 How should he find it ? — He will only look 
 above ground for that which lies fathoms 
 below. Should it be the ill fortune of any 
 of you — to my younger hearers I venture to 
 offer the warning — to encounter a spirit like 
 this — I am almost ashamed of starting the 
 suspicion of his possible existence in this 
 place, but amongst the ardent aspirants after 
 distinction, here gathered together, there 
 may be three or two, who, in the presump- 
 tion of their years, or their genius, would 
 lift themselves even to a bad eminence, so 
 that an eminence it be, and hope that scepti- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 221 
 
 cism may be mistaken for philosophy — if 
 such a man you encounter, let him not rob 
 you, be his wit what it may, of the simpli- 
 city of your faith, such as you received it 
 from your fathers, at whose feet you have 
 sat, or your mothers, at whose knees you 
 have kneeled ; a faith, in which that scoffer 
 will probably himself (when you have lost 
 sight of him) one day take refuge, when 
 youthful hardihood shall have given place 
 to mature inquiry, and when the sorrows of 
 life shall have made him afraid. — Let him 
 not rob you of your faith. — Let your instinct 
 protect you, till you have given your reason 
 time and opportunity to protect you better ; 
 and if thoughts do arise in your hearts, first 
 put away the evil lusts, and the evil preju- 
 dices which would blind your eyes against 
 the truth, and having done this, in God's 
 name, fall to upon the Scriptures, and judge 
 
222 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 of them for yourselves. Do they beg of you 
 to spare them? — they dare you to a scrutiny, 
 be your sagacity what it may. Do they 
 flinch from your touch? Nay, they pro- 
 voke it. — They care not how roughly they 
 be handled, so that it be but honestly ; — they 
 implore you to search them — to sift them 
 as wheat — to compare — to explore — to ques- 
 tion — to cross-examine — to submit them to 
 whatever fair test you will, and in as many 
 ways as you will ; — but they do forbid you, 
 in the name of common sense, and common 
 modesty, and common regard for your own 
 souls, and common reverence for a message, 
 which, at any rate, may be from God unto 
 you, to sit in the seat of the scorner instead 
 of the judge, or lightly to regard, or not 
 to regard at all, a question which is not 
 curious, but awful, — not one of time, but of 
 eternity. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 223 
 
 And so may that blessed Lord, who, as 
 we believe, hath caused these Scriptures to 
 be written for our learning, grant that we 
 may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and 
 inwardly digest them, that by patience and 
 comfort of his holy word, we may ever hold 
 fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, 
 which he has given us in our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
224 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 2 Corinthians xiii. 1. 
 
 In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be 
 established. 
 
 I. In considering the political and reli- 
 gious condition of the two kingdoms after 
 the division, I have looked at the establish- 
 ment of the calves at Bethel and Dan, by- 
 Jeroboam, as a great national epoch ; as a 
 measure pregnant with consequences far 
 more numerous and more important, fetching 
 a much larger compass, and affecting many 
 more interests than its author probably con- 
 templated. I have now to fix upon another 
 event, the wide-wasting effects of which I 
 have already hinted as another national 
 crisis, one which, in the end, most materially 
 influenced the fortunes both of Israel and 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 225 
 
 Judali ; the thing* in itself apparently a 
 trifle, but God, says Bishop Hall, ' lays 
 small accidents as foundations for greater 
 designs;' I speak of the marriage between 
 Ahab and Jezebel. — It is thus announced — 
 ' and it came to pass, as if it had been a 
 light thins: for him to walk in the sins of 
 Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to 
 wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-Baal, King 
 of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, 
 and worshipped him. And he reared up an 
 altar for Baal, in the house of Baal, which 
 he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made 
 a grove — and Ahab did more to provoke the 
 Lord God of Israel to anger than all the 
 kings of Israel that were before him*.' Here 
 we have the beginning: of a new and more 
 pestilent idolatry in Israel. This Zidonian 
 queen corrupts the country to which she is un- 
 * 1 Kings xvi. 31. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 happily translated, with her own rooted hea- 
 thenish abominations, and priests of Baal, and 
 prophets of Baal, being under her own special 
 protection and encouragement, multiply 
 exceedingly ; and so seductive did the volup- 
 tuous worship prove, that, with the excep- 
 tion of seven thousand persons, all Israel had, 
 more or less, partaken in her sin. Jero- 
 boam's calf had been a base and sordid 
 representative of God, but a representative 
 still; Jezebel's Baal w T as an audacious rival. 
 Nevertheless, Israel could not find in their 
 hearts to put away the God of their fathers 
 altogether ; and accordingly, we hear Elijah 
 exclaim, ■ How long halt ye between two 
 opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him, 
 and if Baal, then follow him*.' I do not 
 think sufficient notice has been taken of the 
 curious manner in which this sudden ejacu- 
 
 * ] Kings xviii. 21 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 227 
 
 lation of the prophet corresponds with a 
 number of unconnected incidents, character- 
 istic of the times, which lie scattered over 
 the Books of Kings and Chronicles. I 
 shall collect a few of them, that it may be 
 seen how well their confronted testimony 
 agreeth together, and how strictly, but un- 
 designedly, they all coincide with that state 
 of public opinion upon religious matters, 
 which the words of Elijah express, a halting 
 opinion. 
 
 Thus, in this very scene on Mount Car- 
 mel, we find, that after the priests of Baal 
 had in vain besought their god to give proof 
 of himself, and it now became Elijah's turn 
 to act, ' he repaired the altar of the Lord 
 that was broken down*,' as though here, on 
 the top of Carmel, were the remains of an 
 altar to the true God, (one of those high- 
 * 1 Kings xviii. 30. 
 
 Q 2 
 
223 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 places tolerated, however questionably, by 
 some even of the most religious kings,) which 
 had been superseded by an altar to Baal 
 since Allah's reign had begun ; the prophet 
 not having to build, it seems, but only to 
 renew. And agreeably to this, we have 
 Obadiah, the governor of AhaVs own house, 
 represented as a man ' who feared the Lord 
 greatly, and saved the prophets of the Lord ;' 
 he, therefore, no apostate, but Ahab, in 
 consideration of his fidelity, winking at his 
 faith ; perhaps, indeed, himself not so much 
 sold to Baal- worship, as sold into the hands 
 of an imperious woman, who would hear of 
 no other. And so ' Ahab served Baal a lUtlc,' 
 said Jehu, his successor*, another of the 
 equivocal tokens of the times ; whilst the 
 command of this same Jehu, that the temple 
 of Baal should be searched, before the 
 * 2 Kings x. 18. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 229 
 
 slaughter of the idolaters began, lest there 
 should be there any of the worshippers of 
 the Lord, instead of the worshippers of Baal 
 only, still argues the prevalence of the same 
 half measure of faith. Moreover, the cha- 
 racter of the four hundred prophets of Ahab, 
 which, by its contradictions, has so much 
 perplexed the commentators ; their number 
 corresponding with that of those who ate at 
 Jezebel's table ; their parable, nevertheless, 
 taken up in the Lords name ; still their vera- 
 city suspected by Jehoshaphat, who asks if 
 ' there be no prophet of the Lord besides ;' 
 and the mutual ill-will which manifests itself 
 between them and Michaiah ; are all \ery 
 expressive features of the same doubtful 
 mind *. Then the pretence by which Abab, 
 through Jezebel, takes away the life of 
 Naboth, is ' blasphemy against God and the 
 * livings xviii. 10; xxii. 6—24. 2 Chron. xviii, 10—23. 
 
230 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 king,' against the true God, no doubt, the 
 tyrant availing herself of a clause in the 
 Levitical law*; a law which was still, there- 
 fore, as it should seem, the law of the land, 
 even in the kingdom of Israel, howbeit 
 standing in the anomalous position of de- 
 riving its authority from an acknowledg- 
 ment of Jehovah alone, and yet left to 
 struggle against the established worship of 
 Baal, too; enough in itself to confound the 
 people, to compromise all religious dis- 
 tinctions, and to ensure a halting: creed in 
 whatever nation it obtained. Thus, whilst 
 I see the prophets of the Lord cut off under 
 the warrant of Jezebel, and the government 
 of the Lord virtually renounced ; at another 
 time I see, as I have said, a man condemned 
 to death for blasphemy against the Lord, 
 under the warrant of Leviticus ; and the 
 * Levit. xxiv. 16. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 231 
 
 two sons of an Israelitisli woman sold to her 
 creditor for bondsmen, under the same law*; 
 and the lepers shut out at the gate of 
 Samaria, still under the samef, and con- 
 trary, as it should appear, to the Syrian 
 practice, for Naaman, though a leper, does 
 not seem to have been an outcast, but to 
 have had servants about him, and to have 
 executed the king's commands, and even to 
 have expected Elisha to come out to him, 
 and put his hand upon the place. What 
 can argue the embarrassment under which 
 Israel was labouring; in its religious rela- 
 tions more clearly than all this? — the law 
 of Moses acknowledged to be valid, and its 
 provisions enforced, though its claim to the 
 obedience of the people only rested upon 
 having God for its author ; that God whom 
 
 * 2 Kings iv. 1. Levit. xxv. 39. 
 f 2 Kings vii. 3. Levit. xiii. 46 ; xiv. 3. Numb. v. 23. 
 
232 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Baal was supplanting". Here, I think, is 
 truth : it would have been little to the pur- 
 pose to produce flagrant proofs that the 
 worship of God and the worship of Baal 
 prevailed together in Israel ; those might 
 have been the result of contrivance ; but it 
 is coincidence, and undesigned coincidence, 
 to find a prophet exclaiming, in a moment of 
 zeal, ' How long halt ye,' and then to find 
 indications, some of them grounded upon the 
 merest trifles of domestic life, that the people 
 did halt. 
 
 II. But this marriage of Ahab and Jezebel, 
 so ruinous to Israel, was scarcely less so to 
 Judah ; for in Judah, the same miserable 
 alliance was to be acted over again in the 
 next generation, and with the very same 
 consequences. 
 
 Ahab,, king of Israel, had taken to himself 
 Jezebel, a heathen, for his wife, and Israel, 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 233 
 
 through her, became a half-heathen nation. 
 Jeroboam, king of Judah, had taken to him- 
 self Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, 
 worthy, in all respects, of the mother who 
 bore her, to be his wife ; and now Judah, in 
 like manner, and for the like cause, fell away. 
 Of Ahab, it is said, < but there was none like 
 unto Ahab, who did sell himself to work 
 wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom 
 Jezebel his wife stirred up*.' Such were 
 the bitter fruits of his marriage. Of Jeho- 
 ram, it is said, c and he walked in the ways 
 of the kings of Israel, as did the house of 
 Ahab, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, 
 and he did evil in the sight of the Lordf.' 
 Such in turn was this ill-omened union to 
 him and his — Either of these women, there- 
 fore, was the curse of the kingdom over 
 which her husband ruled; and as we have 
 * 1 Kings xxi. 25. t 2 Kings viii. 18. 
 
234 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 already seen some of the mischief brought 
 into Israel (faulty enough before) by Jezebel, 
 so shall we now see still more brought into 
 Judah (hitherto a righteous and prosperous 
 people) by Athaliah, the daughter of Jeze- 
 bel. I, however, shall not enter into the 
 subject further than to draw from it what I 
 can of evidence. 
 
 And here, before I proceed further, let 
 me notice a circumstance trivial in itself, 
 which tends, however, to establish this re- 
 puted alliance of the houses of Jehoshaphat 
 and Ahab, as a matter of fact. There is no 
 more cause indeed for calling this in ques- 
 tion, than any other historical incident of an 
 indifferent nature ; but still, I am unwilling 
 to let any opportunity pass, of drawing out 
 these tokens of truth, whether significant or 
 not; be the gifts great or small, which are 
 cast into the treasury of evidence, they con- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 235 
 
 tribute to swell the amount; they con- 
 tribute to justify the general conclusion^ that 
 truth is still the pervading principle of the 
 sacred writings, in minute as well as in 
 momentous matters, in things which are,, 
 or which are not, of a kind to provoke in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 I am told then, that a son of the King of 
 Judah marries a daughter of the Kino- of 
 Israel. — Now agreeably to this, for some 
 time afterwards, I discover a marked identity 
 of names in the two families^ so much so, as 
 to render, whilst it lasts, the contemporary 
 history of the two kingdoms extremely com- 
 plicated and embarrassing. Thus, Ahab is 
 succeeded by a son Ahaziah*, on the throne 
 of Israel ; and Jehoram is also succeeded by 
 a son Ahaziah, (the nephew of the other,) on 
 the throne of Judah f. — Again, Ahaziah, 
 * 1 Kings xxii. 49. t 2 Chron. xxii. 1. 
 
236 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 King of Israel, dies, and he is succeeded by 
 a Jehoram* ; but a Jehoram, the brother-in- 
 law of the former, is at the same moment on 
 the throne of Judah, as his father's col- 
 league f. How much longer this mutual 
 interchange of family names might have 
 continued, it is impossible to tell, for Ahab's 
 house was cut off in the next generation by 
 Jehu, and a new dynasty was set up; but the 
 thing itself is curious, and however our 
 patience may be put to the proof, in dis- 
 eneraffins: the thread of Israel and Judah at 
 this point of their annals, we have the satis- 
 faction of feeling that the intricacy of the 
 history at such a moment is a very strong 
 argument of the truth of the history. For, 
 although no remark is made upon this iden- 
 tity of names, nor the least hint given as to 
 the cause of it, we at once perceive that it 
 
 * 2 Kings i. 17 ; iii. 1. + 2 Kings i. 17. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 237 
 
 may very naturally be referred to the union 
 which is said to have taken place between 
 the houses, and which many circumstances 
 tend to show, however extraordinary it may 
 seem, was a cordial union. 
 
 III. I now proceed to consider some of 
 the public consequences of this marriage 
 to Judah. 
 
 In the eighteenth verse of the eighth 
 chapter, of the second Book of Kings, we 
 are informed of Jehoram's wickedness, and 
 at whose instigation it was wrought. — 
 In the twenty-second verse, we find it said, 
 (after some account of a rebellion of the 
 Edomites) ' then JLibnah revolted at the same 
 time.' — No cause is assigned for this revolt 
 of Libnah; the few words quoted, are inci- 
 dentally introduced, and the subject is dis- 
 missed. But in the Chronicles*, a cause is 
 
 * 2 Chron. xxi. 10. 
 
238 THE VERACI1T OF THE 
 
 assigned, though still in a manner very brief 
 and inexplicit ; ' the same time, also,' (so 
 the narrative runs,) ' did Libnah revolt from 
 under his hand ; because he had forsaken the 
 Lord God of his fathers / that is, because, at 
 the persuasion of Athaliah, for she, we have 
 found*, was his state-adviser, Jehoram did 
 what Ahab, his father-in-law, had done at 
 the persuasion of the mother of Athaliah, set 
 up a strange god in his kingdom, even Baal. 
 Thus, this supplementary clause, short as it 
 is, may serve, I think, as a clue to explain 
 the revolt of Libnah. For Libnah, it appears 
 from a passage in Joshua, was one of the 
 cities of Judah, given to the priests, the sons 
 of Aaron f; no wonder, therefore, that the 
 citizens of such a city should be the first to 
 reject with indignation the authority of a 
 monarch, who was even then setting at 
 
 * 2 Kings viii. 18. f Josh, xv, 42 ; xxi. 13. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 239 
 
 nought the God whose servants they espe- 
 cially were, and who was substituting for 
 him, the abomination of the Zidonians. 
 This is the explanation of the revolt of 
 Libnah. Yet, satisfactory as it is, when we 
 are once fairly in possession of it, the expla- 
 nation is anything but obvious. Libnah, it 
 is said, revolts, but that revolt is not ex- 
 pressly coupled with the introduction of 
 Baal into the country as a god ; nor is that 
 pernicious novelty coupled with the marriage 
 of Athaliah ; nor is any reason alleged, why 
 Libnah should feel peculiarly alive to the 
 ignominy and shame of such an act; for 
 where Libnah was, or what it was, or whereof 
 its inhabitants consisted, are things unknown 
 to the readers of Kings and Chronicles, and 
 would continue unknown, were they not to 
 take advantage of a hint or two in the Book 
 of Joshua. 
 
240 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 IV. I am confirmed in the supposition 
 that the revolt of Libnah is correctly ascribed 
 to the indignation of the Priests at the 
 worship of Baal, by other circumstances 
 in the history of those times : for many 
 things conspire to show, on the one side, 
 the reckless idolatry of the royal house of 
 Judah, (so true to their God till the blood 
 of the house of Ahab began to run in their 
 veins,) and, on the other side, the general 
 disaffection of the ministers of God, and the 
 desperate condition to which they were 
 reduced. For when the Temple of Jeru- 
 salem was to be repaired, which was done 
 by Joash, the grandson of Athaliah *, the 
 effects of her wicked misrule incidentally 
 come out. Not only had the utensils of the 
 Temple been removed to the house of Baal, 
 but its very walls had in many places been 
 * 2 Chron. xxiv. 4. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 241 
 
 broken up, the ample funds put into the 
 hands of the young king being principally- 
 devoted, not to decorations, but to the pur- 
 chase of substantial materials, timber and 
 stones ; and from a casual expression touch- 
 ing the rites of the Temple, that ( there 
 were offered burnt-offerings in the House of 
 the Lord continually all the days of Jehoiada *', 
 it is pretty evident that, whilst Athaliah 
 was in power, even these had been discon- 
 tinued ; that even Judah, the tribe of God's 
 own choice, even Zion, the hill which he 
 loved, paid him no longer any public tes- 
 timony of allegiance, the faithful city herself 
 become an harlot. So wanton was the defi- 
 ance of the most High God, during the 
 reigns of Jehoram, Ahaziah, and the sub- 
 sequent usurpation of Athaliah, when these 
 her husband and her son were dead. 
 
 * 2 Chron. xxiv. 14. 
 
 R 
 
242 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 On the other hand, Joash, the rightful 
 possessor of the throne of Judah, an infant 
 plucked from among his slaughtered kindred 
 by an aunt, and saved from the murderous 
 hands of a grandmother, grew up un- 
 observed — where, of all places? — in the 
 Lord's House, contiguous as it was to the 
 palace of Athaliah, who little dreamed that 
 she had such an enemy in such a quarter ; 
 the High Priest his protector; the Priests 
 and Levites his future partizans ; so that 
 when events were ripe for the overthrow of 
 Athaliah, the child was set up as the cham- 
 pion of the Church of God, so long prostrate 
 before Baal, but still not spirit-broken, cast 
 down, but not destroyed ; and by that 
 Church, and no party else, was he esta- 
 blished ; and the unnatural usurper was 
 hurled from her polluted throne, with the 
 shriek of treason upon her lips ; and having 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 243 
 
 lived like lier mother, like lier mother she 
 died, killed under her own walls, and among 
 the hoofs of the horses *. This, I say, is a 
 very consistent consummation of a resist- 
 ance, of which the revolt of Libnah, some 
 fourteen years before, was the earnest : in 
 the revolt of Libnah, a city of the Priests, 
 the disaffection of the Priests prematurely 
 breaks out ; in the dethronement of Atha- 
 liah, achieved by the Priests, that same 
 disaffection finds its final issue ; the interval 
 between the two events having sufficed to 
 fill up the iniquity of Baal's worshippers, 
 and to organize a revolt upon a greater 
 scale than that of Libnah, which restored its 
 dues to the Church, and to God his servants, 
 his offerings, and his house. 
 
 But will any man say that the sacred 
 historian so ordered his materials, that such 
 
 * 2 Kings xi. 1G. 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 incidents as these which I have named, 
 should successively turn up — that he guided 
 his hands in all this wittingly — that he let 
 fall, with consummate artifice, first a brief 
 and incidental notice (a mere parenthesis) 
 of the revolt of a single town, suppressing 
 meanwhile all mention of it's peculiar con- 
 stitution and character, though such as pre- 
 pared it above others for revolt — that then, 
 after abandoning not only Libnah, but the 
 subject of Judah in general, and applying 
 himself to the affairs of Israel in their turn, 
 he should finally revert to his former topic, 
 or rather to a kindred one, and lav before us 
 the history of a general revolt, organized by 
 the Priests ; and all, in the forlorn hope that 
 the uniform working of the same principle 
 of disaffection in the same party, and for 
 the same cause, in two detached instances, 
 would not pass unobserved ; but that such 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 245 
 
 consistency would be detected, and put down 
 to the credit of the narrative at large ? This 
 surely is a degree of refinement much beyond 
 belief. 
 
 Thus having traced this singular people 
 through a long and most diversified history, 
 we are come to see planted in both king- 
 doms of Israel and Judah, the idolatrous 
 principle which was shortly to be the down- 
 fall of both. God usually works out his own 
 ends in the way of natural consequence, 
 even his judgments being in general the 
 ordinary fruits of the offences which called 
 for them ; and in this instance the calves of 
 Jeroboam and the groves of Baal were the 
 sin, and from the sin were made to flow, as 
 a matter of course, the disgust of all virtu- 
 ous Israelites, and the intestine divisions 
 resulting from it ; the interruption or suspen- 
 sion of all public worship ; the mischiefs of a 
 
246 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 perpetual conflict between a national code 
 of laws still in force, and national idolatry, 
 no less actually established than the laws ; 
 the depravity of morals which that idolatry 
 encouraged, and which served to sap the 
 people's strength ; all, elements of ruin 
 which only wanted to be developed in order 
 to be fatal, and which in a very few gene- 
 rations did their work. 
 
 It is curious to observe how the origin, 
 the progress, and the consummation of the 
 devastating principle, correspond in the two 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Israel is the first to offend, both by the 
 sin of Jeroboam and the sin of Ahab ; and 
 Israel is the first to have illustrious Prophets 
 sent to him to counteract the evil, if it were 
 possible, — whom, however, he persecutes or 
 slays ; and Israel is the first to be carried 
 into captivity. 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 247 
 
 Judah, after some years, follows the ex- 
 ample of his rival. Idolatry, even the worst, 
 that of the same Baal, is brought into 
 Judah. Prophets, many and great, are now 
 in turn sent to warn him of the evil to come; 
 but now he too has declared for the groves; 
 and those Prophets he stones, in one instance 
 even between the porch and the altar ; and, 
 accordingly, by nearly the same interval as 
 Judah followed Israel in his idolatries, did 
 he follow him in his fate, and went after 
 him to sit down and weep by the waters 
 of Babylon. There is something very co- 
 incident in this relative scale of sin and 
 suffering. 
 
 It was the office of those prophets, of 
 whom I spoke, not only to foretell things to 
 come, but also to denounce the sins of the 
 times in which they lived ; they were cen- 
 sors, as well as seers. — Of the earlier race, 
 
248 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 Elijah, Elisha, Ahijah, and others, we have 
 no writings at all, otherwise they would 
 have doubtless offered, in their character as 
 moralists, a mirror of their own age, in their 
 own nation of Israel. Of the latter race, 
 Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and more, 
 we possess the records, — and a very awful 
 picture they one or other present, of the 
 condition of either kingdom, of Judah more 
 especially. Here, therefore, a new scene 
 opens before us ; a new, and perhaps nobler 
 field of argument, such as I have been ex- 
 ploring, displays itself. But to trace such 
 allusions to contemporary transactions, as 
 are blended with the Prophecies — to exa- 
 mine how they tally with facts, as we find 
 them set forth in the latter chapters of the 
 books of Kings and Chronicles — to com- 
 pare the heavy denunciations of those earnest 
 and holy men, and the woes which seem to 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 249 
 
 encompass them as they write, with the 
 corresponding ruinous disorder into which 
 Israel and Judah (as we gather from the 
 history) had already sunk, or were then 
 sinking — to identify the age of the prophet, 
 by means of some undesigned and oblique 
 coincidence in his parable, with an age, cer- 
 tainly long before that of the events which 
 he is made to predict, and thus to possess 
 ourselves of a more sure word of prophecy, 
 by satisfying ourselves that it was actually 
 what it professed to be, foreknowledge in the 
 party who uttered it; — all this is a fruitful 
 province for investigation, which I must now 
 notice and abandon, — the present not being 
 the time for breaking fresh ground, and that 
 of such a nature as the confirmation of the 
 pretensions of the Prophets ; more espe- 
 cially, as the argument which I am handling, 
 if found to be available here too, could only 
 
250 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 be so by means of a comparison more than 
 usually close, between the prophetical por- 
 tions of Scripture, and those historical por- 
 tions which treat of the times in which the 
 Prophets lived. I say more than usually 
 close, since the figurative language of the 
 prophets, and the general terms in which 
 they are apt to express themselves, might 
 otherwise occasion any casual reference to 
 the incident of the day, such as, if detected, 
 would be a date, to be very easily overlooked. 
 Suffice it to have said thus much ; and 
 having now touched the borders of the ao;e 
 of written prophecy, I will here rest, feeling 
 that hitherto my foot has been treading on 
 firm ground, and confident, that were we at 
 leisure to proceed farther, it still need not 
 be drawn back. 
 
 But now, after all, there may be those 
 who say within themselves, wherefore this 
 
HISTORICAL SCRTPTURES. 251 
 
 waste of evidence ? Why this perpetual 
 laying of foundations, instead of going' on 
 unto perfection? To such I make answer, 
 that, independently of the object to which 
 the lecture which I have undertaken is more 
 especially directed, there is nothing in the 
 character of the times in which our lot is 
 cast, which should lead us to suppose that 
 a word upon the evidences, particularly if 
 possessing any degree of novelty, is a word 
 out of season. And though it may be said, 
 and said with truth, that a spirit of unbelief 
 will, of itself, come to an end, and may be 
 safely left to prove its own vanity, by work- 
 ing out its own dissolution ; still, it would 
 be through much suffering that the con- 
 summation must be reached, through much 
 bitter and dear-bought experience ; and if 
 this alternative can be escaped, it will be 
 well, and if we can learn to be wise in time, 
 
252 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 escaped it may be. That soon or late, a 
 spirit of unbelief, however prevalent for the 
 moment, will wither away, I doubt not ; be- 
 cause it contains within it the elements of 
 its own extinction; and because it is opposed 
 to those great moral influences which govern 
 us from without. It is self-destroying, from 
 its very discomfort. There we have the 
 strife between open bravery and secret mis- 
 giving ; the weariness of life for lack of the 
 object which satisfies; the wild excess of 
 passions, to which prudential considerations 
 only are but a feeble check ; the imperfect 
 interest which can be taken in the welfare 
 of others, where the sympathy is wanting 
 which binds all together as fellow-members 
 of Christ's Church, fellow-partakers of the 
 benefits of his Cross and Passion, fellow- 
 heirs of his Everlasting Kingdom. This is 
 the internal desolation of heart which un- 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 253 
 
 belief inflicts ; these, some of the inbred 
 enemies which insure its eventual over- 
 throw ; and so the infidel parent will risk 
 the imputation of insincerity in his unbe- 
 lief, rather than expose his child to the con- 
 tagion of principles which, however he may- 
 profess them, he feels to have been his own 
 curse. It is opposed from without ; for if 
 the fool says in his heart, there is no God, 
 he is speedily compelled to acknowledge 
 that the world around him, nay, the temple 
 of his own body, is too fearfully, and wonder- 
 fully made, to have been made by chance, 
 and he stands perplexed : if he glories in 
 his health and strength, and seeks no higher 
 pleasures than those of his animal nature, 
 a sickness overtakes him after a while, and 
 his laughter is turned into mourning, and 
 his mirth into heaviness ; and, whatever may 
 have been his prejudices before, he now 
 longs to believe in an incorruptible body; 
 
254 THE VERACITY OF THE 
 
 if earthly distinction is his idol, it comes 
 perhaps, but not till it is valueless, when 
 he is old, and cannot enjoy it, when he is 
 solitary, and cannot impart it, and it finds 
 him but too willing to compromise for an 
 humble name, be it but written in heaven : 
 if he has friends and kindred, in whom his 
 soul is bound up, and he desires no better 
 heaven than continued communion with 
 them, death crosses him unawares, and 
 shivers these, his household gods, in pieces, 
 and his heart within him is desolate, and 
 he is driven, in spite of himself, to seek for 
 some more permanent thing on which to 
 spend his affections, than any form in the 
 flesh, however fond, however faithful, and 
 however fair. 
 
 Thus are the events of the s} 7 stem, in 
 which we live, perpetually driving us back, 
 as sentinels commissioned so to do, and 
 stationed for the very purpose along the 
 
HISTORICAL SCRIPTURES. 255 
 
 path of life, whenever we are disposed to 
 start aside from the track which Revelation 
 prescribes, (what stronger argument can 
 there be, that the author of that system, and 
 the author of that Revelation are the same !) 
 and happy, therefore, are they, who by a 
 proper application of their understandings 
 to the evidences, and a teachable spirit, 
 have the conviction worked in them, in their 
 early years, that Scripture is indeed God's 
 Word, and their only guide, — that it is the 
 thing wherewithal a young man may cleanse 
 his way, — and who thus are spared some of 
 those gnawings from within, and those 
 bufferings from without, which must be 
 otherwise their schoolmasters, to lead them, 
 if possible, even through suffering unto 
 Christ. Therefore, let such as are them- 
 selves converted, give God thanks, and 
 grudge not the task of strengthening their 
 brethren. Therefore, let them bear with 
 
256 THE VERACITY, ETC. 
 
 others who attempt it, and second them by 
 their prayers to Almighty God, that his 
 Spirit, which is wanted to make all preaching 
 fruitful, may go forth with such words as 
 may be soundly spoken, however elementary 
 they may seem, — that it may go forth even 
 with this my argument, which I have now 
 brought to a close — that so, the attention of 
 the thoughtless hearer may be challenged 
 by a weight of evidence for which he was 
 not prepared, his understanding be opened 
 to understand the Scriptures, his meditations 
 be drawn to continue in them, his profiting 
 appear unto all men, till, at length, his 
 inward man by degrees become, as it were, 
 transfigured, and death be to him only a 
 translation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London: Printed by W. CLOWES, Stamford Street. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 01147 0236