Читать книгу Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation: A Book for the Times - James B. Walker - Страница 10

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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.