and bond of social love was established among the twelve petty states which constituted the Jewish people. Religion, commerce, and amusement, were thus combined in these great annual conventions, which so far resembled in their first elements the Olympic Games of the Greeks, and may be equally classed as national sports, although they were immeasurably more august and rational, both as respects their divine origin, and the mode of their celebration.

Exclusively of the minor festivals, which were all observed with a similar hilarity, civil feasts and entertainments were commonly kept at the weaning of children, at the making of covenants, at marriages, at the shearing of sheep, and on other amicable occasions. At these merry meetings they seem to have appointed a Symposiarch, whose duty it was to promote the general hilarity." If thou be made the master of the feast," says the author of Ecclesiasticus, take diligent care for them--and when thou hast done all thy office, take thy place that thou mayst be merry with them, and receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast.-Pour not out words where there is a musician; and show not forth wisdom out of time. A concert of music in a banquet of wine is as a signet of carbuncle set in gold. As a signet of an emerald set in a work of gold, so is the melody of music with pleasant wine. There, take thy pastime and do what thou wilt, but sin not by proud speech." The Hebrews, in fact, so far from being an austere or unjoyous people, seem to have eagerly seized every opportunity that afforded them a reasonable excuse for festive hospitality. That this natural cheerfulness sometimes pushed them to excess, even in their religious festivals, is sufficiently attested by the mode in which they celebrated the feast of

* xxxii. 1, 2, 5, 6, 12.

Purim, which it must, however, be recollected was not of Mosaic institution. After several strange and not very decorous indignities heaped upon the effigy of Haman, they were accustomed to spend the rest of the day in feasting, sports, and dissolute mirth, each sex dressing themselves in the clothes of the other, and practising a variety of mad frolics, while the Rabbins, pretending that Esther obtained the deliverance of her countrymen by intoxicating Ahasuerus, allowed the people to stupify themselves with drink. Excesses such as these, especially in connexion with religious observances, it is not intended to vindicate; they are merely adduced as tending to exculpate the Jews from the charge of ascetical severity to which they have been sometimes subjected.

Such importance seems to have been attached by Moses to the universal unrestricted enjoyment of these festivals, and of the periodical respite from labour prescribed by the Sabbath, that he has carefully extended his benevolent regulations in this respect to the lowest classes of human beings, and even to the labouring animals and beasts of burthen. Scripture expressly tells us that one design of the Sabbath was to give a day of rest to slaves;-and the Israelites, in order to make them the more compassionate in this respect, are reminded of their own servitude in Egypt, when they longed in vain for days of repose. At all the high festivals and great entertainments they were ordered not to eat the tithes, firstlings, or offerings within their gates, but to make them a public banquet, to which the male and female slaves should be invited, as well as the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.+ Such occasions were, therefore, a sort of Saturnalia for the lower orders; "and we cannot but extol the clemency and humanity of that law which procured them, twice ⚫or

* Deut. v. 14, 15.

+ Deut. xii. 17, 18, and xvi. 11.

thrice a year, a few days enjoyment of those luxuries which they would doubtless relish the more, the poorer their ordinary food might be."*

It has been thought by some that the statute which prohibits muzzling the ox while threshing the corn, was meant to be extended to servants, who were not to be tantalized with the preparation of food which they were not allowed to taste.

When Job wishes to describe the avarice and hardheartedness of the wicked, he says, " They take away the sheaf from the hungry, which make oil within their walls, and tread their wine-presses and suffer thirst :"+ and in proof that this construction of the Mosaic ordinance is supported by the practices of the ancient Jews, Michaelis (art. 130) quotes the following Rabbinical doctrine:-"The workman may lawfully eat of what he works among; in the vintage he may eat of grapes; when gathering figs he may partake of them; and in harvest he may eat of the ears of corn. Of gourds and dates he may eat the value of a denarius." Moses has not even forgotten the poor wanderers who were exposed to casual hunger, in which case he seems to have imagined that the natural right of food superseded all laws of property, and has allowed the eating of fruits and grapes in other peoples' gardens and vineyards without restraint.

Not content with these ordinances, so obviously meant to secure to all animated beings stated periods of rest, and an equal enjoyment of the produce of the earth and the blessings of existence, Moses extended his benevolent regulations even to inanimate nature, by ordering that in every seventh year the land itself should remain untilled, that it might enjoy the Sabbath of the Lord. During this fallow year the corn-fields were neither sown nor reaped; the vines were unpruned, and there were no grapes gathered: + Job xxiv. 10, 11.

*Michaelis, art. 128.

the whole of Palestine continued a perfect common, and everything reverted, as it were, to a state of nature. This repose of the soil was to be consecrated to God, who declared that all his creatures, both of the human and inferior species, might then assert an equal right to the spontaneous produce of the earth. Whatever grew, instead of being the property of any individual, belonged alike to all, to the poor, the bondman, the day-labourer, the stranger, the cattle that ranged the fields, and the very game, which no man durst then scare from his grounds. During this continued festival debts were forborne or forgiven, and bondservants, who had served a certain number of years, might demand their manumission. It has been conjectured that the chief object of this singular law was not only to teach the Hebrews that their land was the Lord's property, but to promote the accumulation of corn in stores, and thus guard against a famine, the importance of which precaution Moses must have known from the history of Joseph, and the practice of Egypt. The liberated bond-servants, whose masters were bound by the benevolent injunctions of Moses, to present them, among other things, with one or two sheep, were enabled also, during this year of release, not only to procure a maintenance for themselves, but to find pasturage for their cattle, and to lay the foundation of a little flock. How a nation of husbandmen could find occupation without tillage, or avoid the pernicious effects of a whole year's idleness, we have no means of judging. Their games and amusements, whatever was their nature, must have been called into active exercise.

But the greatest, most general, and most glorious festival ever recorded in history, or practised by any people, was the demi-centennial jubilee, at the commencement of which the glad sound of trumpets and of rams' horns proclaimed liberty throughout the whole land; whatever debt the Hebrews owed to one another

was to be wholly remitted; hired as well as bondservants were set free; and the inheritances that had been alienated reverted to their original proprietors. During this whole period, as in the sabbatical year, no servile work was to be performed, the land was to remain untilled, and its spontaneous produce belonged to the poor and needy.

By this law Moses probably intended to bring back the nation to its original state, to preserve equality among the people, and to prevent that tendency to accumulation which rapidly divides a community into a few rich and a numerous body of poor. But it soon fell into desuetude, and indeed it is not easy to conceive how it could long remain in operation; for as the men of property would naturally become the most influential in legislative enactments, they were pretty sure to abrogate a law which would confiscate their newly acquired estates every fifty years. This institution, therefore, as well as that of the sabbatical year, if not formally rescinded, appears to have been very soon neglected. Both are important, not from their earlier or later discontinuance, but as showing the intentions of Moses, than whom a more benevolent legislator never existed, so far as the comforts of his own people were concerned; though in the intensity of his national selfishness, he had no toleration whatever towards the Canaanites, and not much for the other Gentiles. It is worthy of remark that the government he established, the only one immediately claiming a divine author, was founded on the most democratical and even levelling principles. It was a theocratical commonwealth, having the Deity himself for its king. Agriculture was the basis of the Mosaic polity; all the husbandmen were on a footing of perfect equality; riches conferred no permanent pre-eminence; there were neither peasantry nor nobility, unless the Levites might be considered a sort of priestly aristocracy, for they were entitled by their birth to certain privileges.