THE DESIGN AND NECESSITY OF THE BONDAGE IN EGYPT.
There are certain bonds of union, and sources of sympathy, by which
the minds of a whole people may be united into one common mind: so
much so, that all hearts in the nation will be affected by the same
subjects, and all minds moved by the same motives. Any cause which
creates a common interest and a common feeling, common biases and
common hopes, in the individual minds which compose a nation, has a
tendency to unite them in this manner.
Some of the causes which have more power than any others to bind men,
as it were, into a common being, are the following:--The natural tie
of consanguinity, or a common parentage, is a strong bond of
affiliation among men. And there are others, which, in some cases,
seem to be even stronger than this; among these may be named a common
interest; a common religion; and a common fellowship in suffering and
deliverance. Any circumstance which educes the susceptibilities of the
mind and twines them together, or around a common object--any event in
which the interest, the feelings, the safety, or the reputation of any
people is involved, causes them to be more closely allied to each
other in social and civil compact.
The more firmly a people are bound together by these ties of union,
the more strength they will possess to resist opposing interests and
opinions from without; while, at the same time, everything national,
or peculiar to them as a people, will be cherished with warmer and
more tenacious attachment.
From the operation of this principle originates the maxim 'Union is
strength;' and whether the conflict be mental or physical, the people
who are united together by the most numerous and powerful sympathies
will oppose the strongest and the longest resistance to the
innovations of external forces. On the contrary, if the bonds of moral
union are few, and easily sundered, the strength of the nation is soon
broken, and the fragments easily repelled from each other.
According to this principle, in all cases in which a whole nation is
to be instructed, or prepared for offence and defence, or in any wise
fitted to be acted upon, or to act as a nation, it would be necessary
that the bonds of national union should be numerous and strong; and
that, as far as possible, a perfect oneness of interest and feeling
should pervade the nation.
So long as the human mind and human circumstances continue what they
are, no power in heaven or on earth could unite a people together,
except by the same or similar means as have been stated. If,
therefore, God designed to form a nation, either to be acted upon or
to act as a nation, he would put in operation those agencies which
would bind them firmly and permanently into one mass.
Now, mark the application of these deductions to the case of the
Israelites. About the period when the corruptions of idolatry were
becoming generally prevalent, Abraham, the Bible record states, was
extricated by Divine interposition. He was assured that his
descendants should suffer a long bondage, and afterwards become a
numerous nation. Abraham was their common ancestor, one whom they
remembered with reverence and pride; and each individual felt himself
honoured by the fact that the blood of the "father of the faithful"
circled in his veins. The tie of consanguinity in their case was bound
in the strongest manner, and encircled the whole nation. In Egypt
their circumstances and employments were the same; and, in the
endurance of a protracted and most galling bondage, they had a common
lot. Their liberation was likewise a national deliverance, which
affected alike the whole people, the anniversary of which was
celebrated by distant posterity with strong and peculiar national
enthusiasm.
Now, it has been said that the events of our colonial servitude, and
the achievement of American independence, are points in our history
which will ever operate upon our national character, impressing clear
views of the great principles of republicanism, and uniting all hearts
in support of those principles: how much more affecting and indelible,
then, was the impress made upon the national heart of the Israelites
by their bondage and deliverance! They were bound by blood, by
interest, feeling, hopes, fears, by bondage, and by faith.
And how firmly did these providences weave into one web the sympathies
and views of the Jewish people! It is a fact which is the miracle of
history, and the wonder of the world, that the ties which unite this
people seem to be indissoluble. While other nations have risen and
reigned and fallen; while the ties which united them have been
sundered, and their fragments lost amid earth's teeming population,
the stock of Abraham endures, like an incorruptible monument of gold,
undestroyed by the attrition of the waves of time, which have dashed
in pieces and washed away other nations, whose origin was but
yesterday, compared with this ancient and wonderful people.
In this manner was this nation prepared for peculiar duties, and to
discharge those duties under peculiar circumstances. Many of the
nations by which they were surrounded were more powerful than
themselves; all were warlike, and each had its peculiar system of
idolatry, which corrupted all hearts that came within its influence.
Hence the necessity that this people should be so united as to resist
the power and contagious example of surrounding nations, while they
were fitted to receive and preserve a peculiar national character,
civil polity, and religious doctrines; of all which they were to be
the conservators, amid surrounding and opposing heathenism, for many
ages.
Other facts might be added to the induction, which would make the
design, if possible, more apparent. If the Jews were to be the
recipients of new instruction--to obey new laws, and to sustain new
institutions, it would be desirable that their minds, so far as
possible, should be in the condition of new material, occupied by
little previous knowledge, and by no national prejudices against or in
favour of governmental forms and systems. Now, in the case of the
Jews, the habit of obedience had been acquired. They had no national
predilections or prejudices arising from past experience. In relation
to knowledge of any kind, their mind was almost a _tabula rasa_. They
were as new material prepared to receive the moulding of a master
hand, and the impress of a governing mind.
Now, as this discipline of the descendants of Abraham was the result
of a long concatenation of events, and could not have been designed by
themselves to accomplish the necessary end; and as the whole chain of
events was connected together and perfectly adapted, in accordance
with the nature of things, to produce the specific purpose which was
accomplished by them, it follows, as the only rational conclusion,
first that the overruling intelligence of God was employed in thus
preparing material for a purer religious worship than the world then
enjoyed; and, second, that a nation could have been so prepared by no
other agent, and in no other way.