allels all over the world. I say there
is nothing unlike the rest of mankind in the character or conduct of
the chosen people; the difference solely is in God's dealings with
them. They _act_ as other men; it is their religion which is not as
other men; it is miraculous; and the question is, how it comes to pass,
their religion being different, their conduct is the same? and there
are two ways of answering it; either by saying that they were worse
than other men, and were not influenced by miracles when others would
have been influenced (as many persons are apt to think), or (what I
conceive to be the true reason) that, after all, the difference between
miracle and no miracle is not so great in any case, in the case of any
people, as to secure the success or account for the failure of
religious truth. It was not that the Israelites were much more
hard-hearted than other people, but that a miraculous religion is not
much more influential than other religions.

For I repeat, though it be granted that the Israelites were much worse
than others, still that will not account for the fact that miracles
made no impression whatever upon them. However sensual and obstinate
they may be supposed to have been in natural character, yet if it be
true that a miracle has a necessary effect upon the human mind, it must
be considered to have had some effect on their conduct for good or bad;
if it had not a good effect, at least it must have had a bad; whereas
their miracles left them very much the same in outward appearance as
men are now-a-days, who neglect such warnings as are now sent them,
neither much more lawless and corrupt than they, nor the reverse. The
point is, that while they were so hardened, as it appears to us, in
their conduct towards their Lord and Governor, they were not much worse
than other men in social life and personal behaviour. It is a rule
that if men are extravagantly irreligious, profane, blasphemous,
infidel, they are equally excessive and monstrous in other respects;
whereas the Jews were like the Eastern nations around them, with this
one peculiarity, that they had rejected direct and clear miraculous
evidence, and the others had not. It seems, then, I say, to follow,
that, guilty as were the Jews in disobeying Almighty God, and blind as
they became from shutting their eyes to the light, they were not much
more guilty than others may be in disobeying Him, that it is almost as
great a sin to reject His