whether they will walk according to my law or no." In what way could Jehovah have given a plainer indication of his intentions respecting the food of this, his peculiar People?
The land of Promise was represented to the Israelites as a land flowing with milk and honey—a land of wheat barley, figs, pomegranates, and other rich vegetable productions, without even once mentioning any kind of animal food, or depicting the country as adapted to the purposes of grazing, with the view of fattening cattle. The promises made to them as the blessings of obedience were "the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth;" and it is, my Christian Friends, an important and remarkable fact, though neither generally known nor acknowledged, that whenever Jehovah prescribes or appoints a diet for mankind he never mentions the flesh of animals as constituting any part of that which "is good for food." We would wish you, Christian Friends, to particularly note—we say, prescribes or appoints. We are not here speaking of what he permits a sinful nation to do. He appointeth one thing, and yet, under certain circumstances, he permitteth another that is opposed to his appointment. We will illustrate our meaning:—lie appointed from the beginning "that man should leave his father and his mother, and should cleave unto his wife, so that they twain should become intimately one;" but "because of the hardness of their hearts," a law was given by Moses permitting the Israelites to put away their wives, by giving them a writ of divorcement. He appointed from the beginning that mankind should live on vegetable food alone, but when the people of Israel in their disobedience to God's will, and in the wickedness of their beasts lusted for flesh, and longed to return to the flesh-pots of Egypt, he permitted them to eat flesh, and this permission, the Bible tells us, was extended not merely for one day, nor two days, but
