HISTORY OF MOSES.

LECTURE XLIV.

And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean you by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.-EXODUS xii. 26, 27.

WITH

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold, and see the reward of the wicked.-PSALM Xci. 5—8.

God, through Christ Jesus the Lord, in reflecting on that grace which has made a difference between them and their sinful neighbours; which has seasonably warned them

All Israel was engaged in the same service at the same instant of time, and for the self-same reason. All had descended from the same common stock, all were included within the bond of the same covenant, all" to flee from the wrath that is to come;" were involved in the same general distress, all were destined of Heaven to a participation in the same salvation. They appear, in the paschal solemnity, a beautiful and an instructive representation of the great, united, harmonious family of God; who are "one body, one spirit, and are called in one hope of their calling:""who have one Lord, one faith, one baptism :-one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all." And they are all coming, "in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of GOD, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."*

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which has "delivered their souls from death, their eyes from tears, their feet from falling." What must be the inexpressible satisfaction of every believer in Christ Jesus, in the con|fidence of being sprinkled with the blood of atonement, of "being at peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ," of being passed from death unto life?" What a happy community is the redeemed of the Lord! Wherever scattered on the face of the whole earth; they are nevertheless gathered together in their glorious Head: separated by oceans and mountains but united in interest and affection: hated, despised, persecuted of the world; yet cherished, esteemed, protected of the Almighty!

As the Church in general had one and the same sacrifice, a lamb of the description which has been mentioned; so every parti- The sacrifices of the Mosaic dispensation cular family or neighbourhood, according to were many because they were imperfect. their number, had their own particular sacri- The sacrifice of the gospel is ONE, because âce, and in that their particular protection once offered, it "for ever perfects them that and repast. The charity which comprehend-are sanctified by it." The ancient institution ed the whole Israel of God, was thus invigor- prescribed a whole lamb for every several ated and enlivened by being collected and family; the gospel exhibits a whole and comconcentred; and the sacred fire of love, plete Saviour for every several elect sinner: which was in danger of being extinguished and that Saviour at once a teacher, an atoneby being dispersed too extensively, being ment, a ruler: "Wisdom, righteousness, thus confined within a narrower circle, light- sanctification, and redemption." ing on fewer and nearer objects, and aided The application of the blood of the destined by reciprocal sympathy and ardour, was victim in this institution is a most remarkblown up into a purer flame. A happy pre-able circumstance. "They shall take of the figuration of the blessed influence of the gospel, and of its sacred institutions, to rectify, to rivet, and to improve the charities of private life: to shed peace and joy upon every condition and relation; gradually to expand the heart, through the progressive, continually enlarging circles of natural affection, friendship, love of country, love of mankind, love to all the creation of God.

What must it have been to an Israelitish parent, standing with his children around him, to eat the Lord's passover, to reflect, that while the arrows of the Almighty were falling thick upon the tents of Ham, his tabernacle was secured from the stroke: that while all the first-born in Egypt were bleeding by the hand of the destroying angel; of him, a holy and righteous God demanded no victim, but one from the flock; spared a darling son, and accepted the blood of a lamb! What must have been the emotions of the Israelitish first-born themselves, at that awful hour, to reflect on the state of their unhappy neighbours, of the same description with themselves, and on their own condition, had justice, untempered with mercy, struck the biow! Such as this, but superior, as the deliverance is greater, must be the joy of a truly Christian family, which has hope in

* Eph. iv. 4, 5, 6. 13.

blood, and strike it on the two side-posts, and on the upper door-post of the houses wherein they shall eat it." It must not be spilt upon the ground as a worthless thing, nor sprinkled in the entering in of the door, to be trampled upon as an unholy thing; but above and on either side; to be a covering to the head and a bulwark around. "When I see the blood I will pass over you." Could the all-discerning eye of God stand in need of such a token, in order to judge between an Israelite and an Egyptian? No. But the distinctions of God's love avail not them who wilfully and wickedly neglect the distinctions of faith and obedience. The blood in the basin is the same with the blood on the door-post, but it is no protection till it be believingly applied. The virtue is dormant till sprinkling call it forth. Surely, this part of the ceremony speaks to the Christian world for itself. Why is mention still made of blood, blood? "the shedding of blood," "the sprinkling of blood," "redemption through blood," and the like? It denotes the life, which consists in the blood of the animal; and it instructs us in this momentous doctrine, that life being forfeited by sin, the blood must be shed, that is, the life must be yielded up, before atonement to justice can be made that the substitution and accept

ance of one life in the room of another, must | relating to this ordinance, has a specific depend upon the will and appointment of the meaning and design. But I frankly acknowoffended lawgiver: that the blood of slain ledge I cannot discern that design in every beasts, having no value nor virtue of its own particular; and am far from being satisfied to take away sin, must derive all its efficacy with the fanciful and unsupported illustrafrom the appointment of Heaven, and from tions of some commentators upon the passage. its relation to a victim of a higher order: and, Should I myself seem to any to have given that the blood of life of this ONE victim, too much into imagination and conjecture in yielded up to divine justice, is, through its my ideas of it, or in what is farther to be ofintrinsic worth and the decree of God, offered; the nature of the subject, the silence virtue sufficient to take away the sins of the whole world.

of scripture, the consciousness of honestly aiming at your rational entertainment and religious instruction, and the humble hope that these conjectures are and shall be conformed to the analogy of faith, and if erroneous, innocently so; these will, I am persuaded, secure me a patient hearing, and a candid interpretation.

But, as in the original institution, the blood of the lamb slain was no protection to the house, till it was sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop on the parts of the building, and in the manner directed, so the sovereign balm appointed of the Most High for the cure of the deadly plague of sin, the price of pardon The time of the feast was the night season; to the guilty, the life of the dead, becomes the very juncture when the awful scene was effectual to the relief of the guilty, perishing acting, which marred the glory and blasted sinner, by a particular application of it to his the strength of Egypt. Inconsiderate man "wounds, bruises, putrefying sores." must have his attention roused and fixed by Faith, eyeing the commandment, the power strong and striking circumstances. The moof God, and the grace of Christ, is like the ment of execution, the hour of battle, and the bunch of hyssop in the hand of the paschal like, are awfully interesting to a serious, huworshipper, sprinkling the blood of atone-mane, and public spirited person. Every ment upon "the upper door-post, and the two side-posts," the understanding, the heart, the life, the ruling and the governing powers of our nature, that the whole may be accepted through the Beloved.

own

I conclude this part of my subject with quoting a passage from the Targum of Jonathan, respecting the sprinkling of the blood of the paschal lamb, as it was performed by the children of Israel in Egypt, which has struck myself as uncommonly beautiful and sublime.

son of Israel knew, that at the very moment he was eating his unleavened cake with gladness, and the flesh of lambs with a merry heart, "Thousands were falling at his side, and ten thousand at his right hand." What an alarming demonstration of divine justice! What an encouraging display of goodness and mercy! Were the eye opened to see God as he is, were the powers of an invisible world habitually felt, every creature, every season, every event, would possess a quickening, an active, a constraining influence "When the glory of the Lord was reveal-over us. But blind, stupid, sluggish as we ed in Egypt in the night of the passover, and are, the midnight bell must toll to rouse us when he slew all the first-born of the Egyp-to reflection; death must assume the comtians, He rode upon lightning. He surveyed plexion of sable night, and add artificial to the inmost recesses of our habitations; He natural horror, in order to force a way into stopped behind the walls of our houses: His our stony hearts. And God, who knows what eyes observed the posts of our doors: they is in man, vouchsafes to instruct his thoughtpierced through the casements. He per-lessness and folly, by acting through the meceived the blood of circumcision, and the blood of the paschal lamb, sprinkled upon us. He viewed his people from the heights of heaven, and saw them eating the passover roasted with fire: He saw, and had compassion upon us; He spared, and suffered not the destroying angel to hurt us.”

The inferior circumstances respecting the sacrifice are these. The flesh of the victim was to be eaten in the night season, not in a crude state, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire; no bone of it was to be broken; no remnant of it left until the morning; or else the remains were to be consumed by fire. I am unwilling entirely to pass over these circumstances as if they were of no especial meaning or importance; for I am thoroughly convinced every iota and tittle

dium of powerful and awakening circumstances upon our imagination and senses. Hence possibly the injunction to eat the passover by night.

It was to be" roasted with fire," not eaten raw, nor sodden with water. To eat flesh in a crude state is unnatural and unwholesome. And we never find the religious institutions of the living and true God, doing violence to innocent natural propensities and aversions, or encroaching on the health and life of his worshippers: for he saith," I will have mercy and not sacrifice." one method of preparing it was commanded of God in preference to the other, we pretend not satisfyingly to account for. Was it to secure an uniformity of practice in the minutest circumstances relating to his worship?

Why the

Was it to form his church and people to im- the next morning. And is it not extremely plicit obedience to his will, in points which probable that God might intend, by certain they comprehend not, as in those which they arbitrary tokens, to describe the Messiah ; well understand; in all cases whatever, whe- and that the prohibition to break the bones ther he be pleased to render or to with- of the paschal lamb was designed to be a type hold a reason? Was it intended as a sym- of a remarkable circumstance attending the bolical representation of their late condition; crucifixion of our Saviour which Providence tried, and prepared, and refined in the fire watched over with special attention, and of Egyptian oppression; purged, but not con- brought about by a miracle! "But when the sumed by it? Was it a figurative view of soldiers came to Jesus, and saw that he was the judgment of GOD then executing: Egypt dead already, they brake not his legs."* And scorched with the flame; Israel enlightened, it is clear from what follows, that the evanseasoned, purified by it? Did it look forward gelist considered the precept of the law as a unto, and signify some particular circum-prophesy of Christ; "For these things were stance in the person, the doctrine, or suffer- done," says he, "that the scripture should be ings of the great evangelical sacrifice? O fulfilled. A bone of him shall not be broLord, thou knowest. "Secret things belong ken." In many cases it happens, that the to thee, but things which are revealed be- prediction was either not attended to, or had long unto us, and to our children." We thank not been understood, till the event has exthee for what thou hast condescended to re-plained it. veal to us, and would not presume to "be wise above what is written."

Nothing of it was to be "left until the morning." This circumstance was not peculiar to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, but common to almost every other kind of oblation. This will appear if we consult the general laws respecting sacrifice. Thus the prescription runs: "And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall not leave any of it until the "When a bullock,

"Not a bone" of the paschal lamb was to "be broken." This, as well as some of the foregoing circumstances, is by sundry commentators supposed to be intended as a contradiction to various Pagan superstitions and particularly to the frantic behaviour of the votaries of Bacchus; who, in the fumes of intoxication or of religious frenzy, committed a thousand abominations and extrava-morning." And again, gancies; they fell into violent agitations, the or a sheep, or a goat is brought forth, then it pretended inspiration of their GOD; they de- shall be seven days under the dam, and from voured the yet palpitating flesh of the vic- the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be tims which they had just killed, and broke all accepted for an offering made by fire unto their bones to pieces. But, the idolatrous the LORD. And whether it be cow or ewe, rites of the heathen nations were so various ye shall kill it and her young both in one day. and so contradictory one to another, that we And when ye will offer a sacrifice of thankscan hardly imagine the great JEHOVAH Would giving unto the LORD, offer it at your own condescend to express any concern, whether will. On the same day it shall be eaten up; the rites of his worship were, in every in- ye shall leave none of it until the morrow: stance, either conformed or opposed to the I am the LORD." The solemn affix, "I am usages of idolatry. A very famous critic* the LORD," seems to insinuate, that the reaassigns a very silly reason for this branch of son of the commandment was to be sought the commandment. He alleges it was ano- in the majesty and authority of the lawgiver. ther indication of the extreme haste with-And, independent of authority, decency which the passover was to be eaten. "Men in a hurry," says he, "do not stand to pick bones; much less do they take leisure to break them, for the sake of the juice or marrow." As if it required more time to sever the joints, and break the bones by violence, than to dissect and disunite the parts without a fracture. The simple meaning of the precept seems to be, that what was once of fered to God should not be unnecessarily disfigured and mangled. The blood must be shed, for that was the seal of God's covenant; We must notice the remaining particulars the flesh might be eaten, for it was given of this service in the manner in which it was for the sustenance of man's life; but the originally performed; "in haste," "standbones, forming no part either of food or sacri-ing," "with loins girded," "with staff in fice, were to be left in the state in which they were found, till consumed by fire with the remainder of the flesh, if any remained, *Bochart, Hieroz par. i. lib. ii. cap. 1. fol. 609.

seems to require, that what has once been devoted to a hallowed use should never afterwards appear in a mangled, impure, or putrid state. Perhaps superstition was, by this precept, obliquely or intentionally reproved and repressed; superstition, which loves to feed upon scraps, and to hoard up relics, as if they were sacred things; superstition, which gives to the fragments of the sacrifice the veneration due only to the sacrifice itself, and to the great Author of it.

hand," ready to depart. The lamb was to be eaten with "bitter herbs." A representation,

John xix. 33.
Lev. vii. 15.

† Verse 36,
Lev. xxii. 27-30.

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perhaps, of the mixed nature of every sublu- | second death," a living death of everlasting nary enjoyment; and of the wholesome uses banishment "from the presence of the Lord, of unpalatable adversity. The standing and from the glory of his power." From posture, and the implements of travelling, that last plague there is no security but one; speak a plain and distinct language. "Arise that security, of which the "blood of sprinkye, and depart, for this is not your rest." ling" under the law was but a type. "Run "Here we have no abiding city, but look for to your strong hold, ye prisoners of hope." one to come." "Now we desire a better "Flee, flee for refuge; lay hold of the hope country, that is, an heavenly." Arise, let that is set before you." Behold, now is us go hence." A provision was graciously the accepted time; behold, now is the day of made for such as might be ceremonially un- salvation." "If God be for us, who can be clean at the future seasons of celebration, against us?" "He that spared not his own and the door of mercy and communion was Son, but delivered him up for us all, how opened to strangers. Blessed prefiguration shall he not with him also freely give us all of the remedy provided for the chief of sin- things? Who shall lay any thing to the ners of the refuge opened for the reception charge of God's elect? It is God that justiof" aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;" fieth: Who is he that condemneth? It is of the liberal, condescending, comprehensive Christ that died, yea rather that is risen spirit of the gospel! Christians, ye "are no again, who is even at the right hand of God, more strangers and foreigners, but fellow ci- who also maketh intercession for us."* tizens with the saints, and of the household of God." "Those who were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ.'

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Men and brethren, the time is at hand, when a more fearful midnight cry shall be heard than even that which smitten, groaning Egypt raised in the hour of vengeance. The day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night." "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." Behold, a careless, slumbering world, a world lying in wickedness, is threatened with a death infinitely more dreadful than that which destroyed the first-born; with "the

How many things in the scriptures; in Moses, in the prophets, in the law, in the gospel, are dark and hard to be understood? But the hour cometh when the veil shall be removed from our eyes; when the truth as it is in Jesus shall stand confessed without a mystery; and shall be seen and read of all men. "What" he doth, "ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter." "We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."«Fornow we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known." † 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

*Rom. viii. 32-34.

HISTORY OF MOSES.

LECTURE XLV.

And it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you. And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them, by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillat of fire by night, from before the people.-Exodus xiii. 17–22.

ALL that weak, ignorant, erring man can know, is a few of the smaller objects which are immediately around him; and of these but a few of the more obvious qualities which they possess, and the relations in which they stand to one another. Remove them but a little as to space or time, and they gradually disappear, till they are at length involved in total darkness. The distance of a few leagues

terminates our vision; the lapse of a few years erases all traces from our memory. The cloud of night conceals or changes the appearance of things the nearest to us, and the most perfectly known. Here, we are dazzled and confounded by an excess of light; there, we are checked and repulsed by dimness and obscurity. The sun forbids us to behold his face by reason of his splendour;