which we hear very little) entirely to mould him into the likeness of God's own forbearance with this stiff-necked people.

How solemn is the declaration of Ex. xxiv. 9, 10:

That "then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:

"And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. Also they saw God, and did eat and drink."

Now as our Lord Himself declares that "No man hath seen the Father at any time;" let us remember who was this Jehovah upon Sinai,-the Jehovah of the Jewish Church in the wilderness. The martyr Stephen tells us, just before his death, that the angel which spake to Moses in mount Sinai was none other than the angel of the burning bush— the angel of the Lord, who had said of Himself, "I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," before whom Moses "trembled and durst not behold" (Acts vii. 32); and also none other than the Saviour, the afterwards crucified Redeemer of the world, whose voice (says Paul, Heb. xii. 26) "then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven."

Dear friends, when you have thought of Jesus taking upon Him the form of a servant, have you also thought of that Jesus as one and the same with the awful Jehovah of Sinai ? At both times it is said of Him, "yet He loved the people " (Deut. xxxiii. 3), and "for His great love wherewith He loved us" (Eph. ii. 4).

It is good to go back in thought to Sinai, and to realize with deep reverence that the mighty God has actually spoken with men upon the earth.

When He had thus spoken, in majesty and fire, to the ear and eye of the favoured people, He did not intend the impression of that day to pass away: He had given them a Revelation,-a Law that was to separate them from all other people; and His words to them were to endure for ever.

From the time that they became, through Moses, the keepers of the oracles of God, they were judged by them, and they were expected to live by them; they became THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK.

They had subscribed to the covenant; they had said, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” They were "under the Law"; and whenever they broke their promise, they incurred punishment and suffering, and this they continually did.

They remained before Mount Sinai a few days longer than eleven months. During this time, Jehovah made them fully understand that He was their King, and He established the regular service of His royal court by the priests and Levites. He set apart more than a fiftieth portion of the whole nation to this office. They were to receive His Law from Moses, to copy it, and to read it to the people,-not only the Ten Commandments, as written by the finger of God upon the two tables of stone, but the Book of the Covenant also, which Moses had written (Exod. xxiv. 4), and read in the audience of the people for the first time, “by the altar under the hill."

During these eleven months, their form of government in all things was appointed, their institutions established, and the Tabernacle fashioned and set up "according to the pattern shown to Moses in the mount," for the house or palace of their Divine King, who always visibly dwelt among them in the glory that was between the cherubim.

The same period witnessed their breach of the first Commandment, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me," in the worship of the golden calf, -possibly a remembrance of the Eden Cherubimand its punishment in the death of 3000 among the people.

But we are now passing into the age when the Pentateuch began to be written. Perhaps you will like to think of the material it was written upon, and the character in which Moses wrote it. This is a piece of ancient Hebrew-the language in which the law was written

The Bible was written by degrees, and by different persons: it took 1600 years to write. The first five books, as we have said before, are generally believed to have been written by Moses in the wilderness, as well as the book of Job; viz.:

Genesis,
Exodus,

Leviticus,

Numbers,
Deuteronomy,

The rest of the Old Testament books, thirty-three in number, were written by different inspired leaders, prophets, priests, and kings, of Israel, but all by Israelites-the keepers of His holy oracles: and as they were written, God himself made a law that they should be read, by the Levites, to the people continually.

But at that time there were no books like our books. The time of Moses was 1550 years before Christ our Saviour came into the world. Our mode of printing or of making paper had not then been discovered. The old Egyptians made linen, in which they wrapped their mummies, and so prepared it, that they could trace hieroglyphics upon it. They also wrote upon rolls made of their rushpapyrus, that is, of the coats which surround its

stalk. The largest papyrus roll now known is ten yards long: many of these are found in the tombs of Egypt, though not often of so great a length. A very valuable one has been taken from these tombs to the museum at Turin, containing the names of King Mykerinus, the builder of the third pyramid, and Reksharé, the architect of Thebes; but the Pentateuch of Moses is not supposed to have been written on this rush-paper.

It is thought that he must have used goat-skins, prepared and fastened together: the very oldest manuscripts of his five books known, are written on leather. There is one in the public library, at Cambridge, which was discovered by Dr. Buchanan, in the record-chest of a synagogue of the Black Jews, in Malabar, in 1806: it measures sixteen yards in length; and, though not perfect, consists of thirty-seven skins, dyed

red.

There is another in the library of the British Museum, which we have seen. That is a large double roll of this description. It is written with great care, on forty thick brown skins, in 153 narrow columns: the writing is, of course, in Hebrew. It was, most probably in this form that the

world received the first part of the Word of God, -His written voice from heaven.

We cannot suppose that the very roll that Moses wrote is come down to us-that would be impossible. That very roll is supposed to have perished at the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 586; if So, it was treasured and in existence for

eight centuries and a half-more than 800 years. Moses commanded the Levites to put it in the side of the ark of the covenant, "for a witness against the people."

The final covenant made with Israel in the plains of Moab, with the last lofty song and eloquent prophecy, seems to have been written on a separate skin; and Dr. Adam Clarke thinks there is every reason to believe that this was the portion lost and found in the reign of Josiah, 800 years after it was written. This was called an autograph copy, which means the very one that Moses wrote. It had been lost in the reigns of the wicked kings that went before Josiah, who was a reforming king; and when he set himself to repair the House of the Lord his God, and brought hewn-stone and timber to repair the floors which the kings of Judah had destroyed, Hilkiah, the priest, found a book of the Law of the Lord by the hand of Moses, and gave it to the king (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14). You perceive that the frontispiece of this tract exhibits a very beautiful roll, and that underneath it is inscribed-"The Samaritan Pentateuch."

If you look back to the frontispiece of Tract III. you will find the city of Nablus, the "Schechem of the Bible, where the very few people in the world still called Samaritans (about 150 in number), continue to live. This roll is in the possession of their priests, and is thought to be the oldest written copy of the Pentateuch now in existence.

Our Prince of Wales went to see it in the year 1862, and a fine photograph of it was made for his Royal Highness. By his gracious permission, and the kindness of Mr. Bedford, the photographer, we are permitted to present to our readers a woodcut of it in its silver case, and with its cover of crimson satin embroidered with letters of gold.