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conscience, its openly proposed sanctions were those which alone are suitable to a temporal polity, and which alone could have made an impression on such a people as the Israelites then were, or indeed on any people as such;-present retribution, supported by sensible interpositions and manifestations of the Divine power.

And here we must, for the present, pause. We have considered the Theocracy only in its negative aspect, as conservative of important truths, and repulsive of adverse influences; more interesting, to the Christian at least, are its positive uses, as a school of discipline for the ancient believer, and an earthly, and typical, representation of the spiritual relations which, under the Gospel, subsist between God and His people. These I propose to make the subject of the following discourse. Meanwhile, I trust it has been shewn, that in its structure, as a form of national polity, and even in those peculiarities which, at first sight, might seem difficult of explanation, it bears traces of that Divine wisdom, which is most conspicuously seen in the perfect adaptation of the means used to the ends proposed.

LECTURE II.

GALATIANS iii. 24.

The Law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ.

THAT the Jewish Theocracy was fitted, in its structure, to ensure the preservation and integrity of the sacred oracles, and to maintain the worship of the one true God amidst the universal tendency to idolatry; that, so far from being justly chargeable with imperfections inconsistent with its alleged divine origin, it exhibits, in its fusion of civil and religious government and in its subordinate peculiarities, the only means by which, without violating the rights of conscience, these ends could be secured; I endeavoured, in the preceding Lecture, to establish. But we should form a very inadequate notion of the Mosaic dispensation, did we confine our view to this its negative operation, its restraining and repellent quality merely. We can in no wise admit the view of those, of whom a distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses may be taken as the representative, by whom the idea of this

dispensation is reduced to the lowest possible; and the Theocracy is regarded as a purely civil institution, enjoining, and satisfied with, an outward allegiance to Jehovah as the tutelary God of the nation. Thus, arguing against Warburton's proof of the divine mission of Moses from the absence of any save temporal sanctions in the Law, as being in his opinion useless, the writer alluded to makes the observation, "How ridiculous would an Act of Parliament appear, which should denounce the pains of hell as the punishment of a crimea!" He finds "in the Mosaic system nothing that could have been designed to maintain, in its purity, the doctrine of a Messiah, or even preserve it at all. Moses framed no symbolic books for the people to subscribe, nor did he publish any doctrine, the belief of which was enjoined under pain of punishment. For instance, though he describes God as all-wise, almighty, good, and the like, yet if any man doubted of this, or of the coming of a Messiah, he did not thereby become liable to any punishment by the Law. The worship of one only God, in so far as it stands opposed to idolatry, was the sole point which Moses made it the grand object of his policy to establish and maintain to the latest period." Such, in his own words, is the theory of the learned German. It excludes, as will be per

a Michaelis, Comment. b. i. art. 14.

b Ibid. b. ii. c. 4. art. 32.

ceived, from our conception of the Mosaic Law, all prospective references, all ulterior aims, every thing of a disciplinary and typical character, and by presenting only half the truth, leads to positive

error.

We have but to open the volume of Scripture, to perceive how defective such a view of the scope of the ancient dispensation is. Contrast with it such passages as the following, which meet us continually in the books of Moses; "I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people. And ye shall be holy unto Me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine." "Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and to hearken to His voice; and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, that thou shouldest keep all His commandments; that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God." Or let us listen to St. Paul, and he will tell us that the Law presented" a shadow of things to come";" that "the Law was a schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ';" that "as the heir, so long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and

c Levit. xx. 24-26.

e Col. ii. 17.

d Deut. xxvi. 17-19.

f Gal. iii. 24.

governors, until the time appointed of the father;" so the ancient believers "were in bondage under the elements of the world"," a system of rudimentary ordinances, imposed for a special and temporary purpose. It is impossible not to perceive that the Law is here described, not merely as a fence against the corruptions of heathenism, but, in the first place, as a school of discipline and education, of a strictly ethical, and not a cosmical, character; intended, that is, to operate upon the will and the conscience by means of law, emanating from a holy God, and issuing in the holiness of the creature; and, in the second place, as a typical adumbration, under earthly figures, of the future economy, of which Christ is the Mediator and the Head. These are the points to which I would now invite your attention; requesting that it be borne in mind, that by the term Law is meant the whole system of Moses, as a polity, and not any particular appointments, typical or otherwise, belonging to it: we are still considering the structure of the Theocracy in general, only, as in the former Lecture more under its political, so as in this more under its religious, aspect.

I. The Law, then, was "a schoolmaster," a system of educational discipline, to bring men to Christ. On the lessons which it inculcated, the subject-matter of its teaching, whether by type or by prophecy, I make no remark at present, further

8 Gal. iv. 1-3.