their minds, giving them fresh impulse to the perform. ance of the duty which they had other and strong reasons for discharging. It was a most natural idea for the minds of parents to entertain, on perceiving that this child possessed such an uncommon degree of beauty as strongly interested their natural affections, and made them the more willing and resolved to run the risk of attempting its preservation. But we are persuaded that there was something else than the appearance of mere natural beauty and fair proportions that attracted so strongly the attention of Amram and Jo chebed, and awakened in their bosoms the common untimely fate of the other Hebrew children. In all the passages of Scripture that bear allusion to the in fancy of Moses, this appearance is particularly noticed, and in the celebrated speech of Stephen, he is describ ed as being exceeding fair, or, as it is in the strong, graphic language of the original, divinely fair, so that they were led, by a something uncommon in his fea. tures, to a more thoughtful consideration of their child, and to a persuasion that there was some important. though, as yet, unknown and latent reason for which heaven had imparted to him such an extraordinary ex pression of countenance. And not only were affec tions thus strongly enlisted in his behalf, which the indication of premature excellence is so apt to do, but even their sober and long suspended judgments were convinced that the child was predestined for some im. portant service, and that it was their duty to resort to every possible means of securing his preservation. first step he took for the accomplishment of that design was to prohibit their continuance of their old pastoral pursuits, which, by scattering them over the country, and leading them to shift from place to place, would have afforded them the greatest facilities of evading his decree, and to collect them all into one district, where they were reduced, by their imperious master, to a state of the most abject and grinding servitude. The method which he at first adopted for the murder of the male children of the Hebrews having completely failed, he committed the execution of that cruel task to all the officers who were appointed over the brickmakers, and who, no doubt, were abundantly zealous and faith-resolution of doing their utmost to save him from the ful to the instructions of their royal master; and so much more effectual were their proceedings, that they threatened, at no distant period, to leave not one remnant to perpetuate the name and memory of the chosen race. But the machinations of wicked men are often thwarted in a manner which lays their wisest counsels in the dust, and the very means, which their wisdom and foresight suggested as the most efficient for their unhallowed purposes, are often rendered, by an overruling Providence, the indirect occasions of promoting his own glory and the interests of his people. It happened that, just about the time when this new edict of Pharaoh was issued, and when, through the vigilance of the mercenary agents of the court, the sword of persecution raged most fiercely, Moses was born, and rescued from the knife of the destroyers, by the timely and prudent precautions of his parents. The credit of that successful stratagem is given by the apostle to both of his parents, although the sacred narrative makes mention only of his mother, and that because the execution, the active superintendence of the counsel devolved upon her; but it is evident that his father was no less engaged in that enterprise than his mother, not only because it was impossible that such a step could have been taken without the head of the family being privy to it, but because, as we shall afterwards find, it was the fruit of their mutual piety. For three months they eluded the strict search of Pharaoh's myrmidons, and managed matters with such dexterity, that on neither was the eye of suspicion ever directed. Their affection grew with the growth of the child; and as, by a kindly law of nature, the heart of a parent is more closely entwined round the life of a child, in proportion to its state of dependence and threatened danger, so we may imagine how strongly the hearts of this affectionate and pious couple must have been bound up in the fate of their little one, when they paid their stolen visits to their infant charge, and brooded over the dire necessity of parting with it, as they looked on the little innocent, serenely reposing, and unconscious of its danger. Every day must have added to their fears of detection, till at length the rumour, probably gaining ground, that there was an infant boy in their house, which would be followed by an immediate and vigilant search, they were compelled to change their measures, and in the hope of preserving him from the tender mercies of his pursuers, to throw him entirely on the care of Providence. There can be little doubt that, during the whole of these anxious three months, the vigilance of this pious pair was accompanied with devout and fervent supplications, and that as the exigency was great, they would be neither negligent nor languid in the exercise of that faith, by which alone they, in common with their chosen race, could expect the accomplishment of the divine profuises. They had been led to adopt measures for the preser-consequence of discovery. But they were not afraid of vation of their boy, "because they saw that he was a proper child." This circumstance is not introduced by the apostle, as if this were the sole reason of the design they had formed, and the expedients they fell upon, but it is mentioned as indicating the strong impression which the appearance of that child made upon There is no evidence, and indeed, from the whole tenor of the narrative, no probability, that they were privileged with any specific declaration of the will and intentions of God regarding him. They had, however, a firm and unwavering faith in the emancipation of the Hebrew people from the yoke of the Egyptians, the foundation of which faith was the divine promise made originally to their ancestors, and recently revived, in a most affecting manner, by the last will of Joseph, whose dying commands to convey his bones, from the scene of all his glory, to another land more glorious in his eyes as the promised inheritance of his family,--and of the certainty of which he gave them a prophetic intimation and a pledge, by making them the intermediate depositaries of his honoured remains were calculated to fan, in the minds of the whole Hebrew race, and of Moses' parents in particular, a hope that made them superior to all "fear of the king's commandment." Had this Ilebrew household been governed by no other than the dictates of reason and experience, and by no other hope than what arose from the wisdom and excellence of their own plans, they would have had much reason "to be afraid of the king's commandment;" for it was not the mandate of an angry and capricious despot, which, having been issued in a moment of thoughtless levity, or a vindictive mood, might be revoked again, when he returned to a better and milder state of mind, but it was the cool, deliberate, calculating enactment of his government, which had become the standing law of the country, and failure in the execution of which would have been punished as a capital crime, while the rigid perfor mance of it was sure to recommend the zealous officer to the favour and patronage of the court. The parents of Moses, therefore, had much cause for well-founded alarm in carrying on their design of concealing their child, not only on his account, but also on their own, as the loss of their lives would have been the certain the king's commandment, for remembering that the deliverance and prosperous establishment of Israel, as a separate and independent nation, were guaranteed by the Word of Him "who could not lie," they were convinced that there was no room for doubt or anxiety as to the issue in the minds of any who had just and believing apprehensions of the divine character. More- | compatible with a diligent use of external means, but over, besides the original promise of God, to which the faith of Amram and Jochebed were directed, there seems to have prevailed a strong and general expectation, among the Jews, that some one would be raised, by Providence, about that time, to achieve the long lost independence of Israel. This notion, whether founded on some unrecorded revelation or not, that the God of their fathers was to commission some eminent and well qualified person of their own race to accomplish their deliverance from Egyptian slavery, had taken such firm hold of the minds of the Hebrews, that as the time for the accomplishment of the promise was almost at hand, the period having been limited to the fourth generation, and as the thoughts of the Hebrew parents were directed as anxiously to that event as the hopes of the pious Jews were, at a later period, to the advent of the promised Messiah, the parents of Moses, who seem to have been persons of eminent piety, and watchful observers of the procedure of Providence, conceived, as well they might, from the extraordinary prognostics of his infant appearance, that God had reserved him for the achievement of that enterprise. Though wanting an express revelation on the subject, they yet read in these signs the premonitions of Providence that that little babe was raised up for some great and important purpose; and even though they might not possess such plain and certain evidence as might convince them that the great and important purpose could be no other than the long promised and long expected deliverance of their people, yet faith has often acted, and, in this instance, did really act, While shadows, clouds, and darkness, sat upon it. It was faith, then, which was the grand principle that led the parents of Moses to conceive it their duty to preserve the life of their child, and which exempted them from all fear of the king's commandment,-faith in the promise of God respecting the increase and deliverance of all the posterity of Israel from the tyranny and the land of the Pharaohs. It was this which prompted them, at first, to hide him for three months in some secluded part of their tent, and which prompted them, when that retreat could no longer afford a safe asylum, to betake themselves to the strange and, apparently, desperate course of trusting him in a fragile bark, amid the impetuous waves and ravenous monsters of the Nile, a change of measures, which, so far from betraying any diminution or failure of their faith, was the strongest proof of the power and increase of it, for when they saw that the first means their invention supplied could not longer be continued, and yet retained their strong persuasion that it was the will of Providence that the child should be preserved, they adopted another stratagem, which promised not only to save the life of their infant, but to put him in the likeliest way of being qualified for the important office to which he was destined, a stratagem that was eminently successful. The anxious mother, who charged herself with the execution of it, hovered on the margin of the stream, till she saw, to her exquisite delight, the attention of the royal party directed to the bark that contained the last hopes of the house of Levi; a moment after found her the nired and privileged nurse of her own son, now the adopted child of Egypt's presumptive heiress, and Jochebed, happier than the rest of her countrywomen, returned to her home with the light heart and elastic step of one who had become, as it were, a second time the mother of her child, while the house of Amram, alone, of all the dwellings of Israel, was gladdened by the playful gambols and prattle of a boy. This very interesting incident may, in the first place, teach us the advantages of cherishing a lively faith in the word and promise of God; and, in the second place, that the most devoted trust in Him is not only perfectly Exodus iv. 13. Acts vii. 24, 25. will stimulate the believer to a more active and strenuous application to every lawful or appointed means. CHRIST THE SOURCE OF THE BELIEVER'S BLESSINGS: A DISCOURSE. BY THE REV. CHARLES GIBBON, "And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God."-EZEK. xxxiv. 29, 30. SINCE man was first placed in this world, receiving his natural gifts and talents from God, a rule of direction as to their use, and a promise of blessings upon their improvement, he has been taught by experience of its needfulness, as well as by divine authority, to look up to heaven, and there to apply for new and continual light and strength, of which the source and distribution ever is with the Father of Spirits. Accordingly, therefore, as men have cultivated the knowledge of their own spiritual nature and necessities, and sought the Author of every good and perfect gift, has their condition been more or less improved in all their relationships, and in the rational and moral use and exercise of this life. The history of man, as it has come down to us, is indeed a history of his sinfulness; but we find the truth of our position proved hereby also, that the very sinfulness of his character, the inherent corruption of his nature, has been acknowledged, combated, and restrained, when the hand of the true God has been seen,-his ordinances, which have been vouchsafed, venerated, and the operations of his providence regarded. I. The heathen, observant only of their own superstitious rites, and grossly ignorant of the truths, as they were careless of the moral obligations and restraints of religion, scoffed at the Israelites, who highly valued, though they acted so often unworthily of, those divine communications by which they were truly distinguished. But to those who are able and willing to institute an inquiry into their history, their divine law, and prophecies, and to compare these with the history and institutions of any or of all the other nations upon earth, it must appear that as, on the one hand, the approach of the Gentiles, as proselytes, to the faith of the heavenly oracles committed to the Israelites, afforded the only probable means of spiritual improvement in those days, so, on the other hand, that any admixture of the favoured people with the heathen in their rites and institutions, or the forming with them any ties by which they might be assimilated, would have been attended with the very worst effects,— debasing the worship of God by such conversion, and, by adulterating any portion of his Word or appointments, thereby defeating their design, and obstructing the course, the preparation and evidence of the work of redemption. And therefore it is, that the Scriptures of the Old Testament so pointedly denounce all such alliances, and are full of threatenings against the profane, ungodly, and indecent habits of the heathen; they warn also the Israelites that the greatest of all temporal calamities that could befall them, was that of being given over to such enemies; and thus we may see the reason why their wars had a religious character, and why they groaned so grievously under heathen captivity, when subjected thereto on account of their national defection from God; why also they still kept aloof and distinct from those who thus enslaved their persons; and lastly, why their national hatred, so begun, was propagated and perpetuated against the Gentiles, whom they were taught to designate a strange people, because worshipping strange gods, and being strangers to God's truth and law, and unbelievers in his promises. To the race of Israel, therefore, from the time of their deliverance from Egypt till the day of the Messiah, one of the greatest of earthly blessings sought from the God of heaven was, "that they might not bear the shame of the heathen." We may next advert to another instance of that divine protection which is set forth in the text as the recompence of a people who seek the Lord in the way which he appoints, viz., "that they shall not be consumed with hunger in the land." This expression is very significant, and very extensive in its signification, being determined, by its connection with the great promise preceding it, and the whole passage, indeed, from the beginning of the chapter which introduces it, to refer to spiritual as well as temporal deliverances and blessings. In the scripturally-familiar and endearing similitude of a flock under the charge of an affectionately careful shepherd, human beings wandering from the way of life, and lost for want of a sufficient leader and head, are represented as taken under the charge of God himself, their all-sufficient Shepherd, powerful and willing to reclaim, restore, supply, and save them. Revelation from the God of nature has clearly disclosed that it was the penalty of disobedience, embodied in the very covenant of life, made from the first with man, that sin should be visited by an agency destroying its works and its workers together; and hence, when death came into the world by sin, the days of man were num.. bered, hence corruption from without was appointed to keep pace, and walk side by side, with the corruption that is within. Hence the law spoke its terrors of temporal punishment,hence the prophets were heralds of calamitous judgments, and hence a freedom from such woes, and a blessing from on high pouring out plenty, and diffusing health, and lengthening out a life of safety and peace, were regarded by God's ancient people as within the boundaries of the land of promise, and within the precincts of God's reign upon earth. But the greatness of the gift of life is little, indeed, to be accounted of, wonderful as it is, as pertaining to the body, when compared to the reasonable spirit which God has created after his own image, immaterial, but giving it a body as it pleases him, inclosing it in a fleshly tabernacle, made of earth, and returning to earth again. It is the soul which giveth to that body a life, and a character of life, in so many and such grand respects totally unlike that of the irrational creature. The soul exerts its capacity to receive of itself, and from other spirits, the knowledge of all the works which God has made visible to, and discoverable by man, a knowledge bounded, indeed, by a finite comprehension, yet still extending to the heights above and the depths beneath, and the length and breadth of this lower creation; a knowledge surveying, in short, the great stores of the earth, the sea, and the firmament, surveying and exchanging the works and inventions of men, yet never satisfied with its attainments, and so varied and ever varying in its use, as to render it impossible almost to rehearse its multiplied and diversified employments. Yet there is not one of its faculties or powers which is not at first imparted, momentarily sustained, and continued in operation, by God. Apart from him, the soul has not, no, not for one moment of time, one exercise of its own sufficiency. And so established is all this in the history of nations and of individuals, that the setting up of pretensions to knowledge or virtue, independently of sought and sustained supplies and help from God, and of his blessing on the means employed, has invariably been the time also of a decline of spiritual-mindedness, and of a corrupting influence over the pure and holy affections of the soul, an absolute deadening and destroying of all elevating and soul-sanctifying hope. Such and so great is the declared needfulness of these spiritual supplies to our souls, from the Word and Spirit of God, that the man who is self-deprived of their quickening, inspiriting, enlightening, and strengthening sustenance and virtue, is said to be sick, to faint, to sink, to be lost, to be sick unto death, to be lost without remedy, to undergo the second death, and to be separate from God. From the first sinning parents, then, even to the last of their sinful posterity, the soul has been directed to look to God for continually needful spiritual supplies, to look for his justifying grace to the Son of God manifest in the flesh, taking man, in his distance from God, under his own guidance back to the Father, doing that for man which no man could do for himself or for others, making discovery of all truth needful for enlightening and directing the mind to God, to his will, and his purpose of grace, through faith leading to repentance and obedience derived from his own perfect obedience; offering up a meritorious and sufficient sacrifice, of which countless thousands of burnt-offerings had blazed out the sign; giving his pure and spotless body, and his guiltless blood, to take away 74 the curse on man's transgression, and establishing | his kingdom in the very hearts of human beings; building his Church on the ruins of the temples of superstition, and the empty space of infidel devastation; calling into life those green and flower-growth, and fruitfulness; but they rejected that ing spots, those trees of blossom in the wilderness of depraved humanity, which the speculative philosophy of the heathen sages, and the trifling, gross, and sickening formalities of heathen worship, scarcely essayed, and were in truth wholly impotent to plant or to cherish. vineyard, was he planted, and to them did he offer himself, the true vine, and invite them to come unto him, to be grafted into him as the stem, through which every branch derives vitality, quickening virtue, that life-preserving influence and nourishment, and were therefore cut off and cast out of the vineyard which God's right hand had planted, broken off from all the blessings to be fulfilled to the accepted children of the promises; made aliens to the ancient commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant made with their fathers. They rejected their Prince and Saviour, and, while they vainly look for another, are It is to this unspeakably best gift of God to man the sinner, that the passage in the prophet before us determinedly directed the eye of hope to look; as the source of all the mercies and bless-rejected for their unbelief. But though the blood ings, which God had in promise bestowed. The plant of renown was the ever-glorious Messiah; and by him it was to be accomplished, that human souls should hunger no more for lack of knowledge, or means of grace and direction, but that heathen darkness, and defilement, and gross superstition, and ungodly habits of soul and life, should have the living light, and living power of the Gospel, to dispel and restrain, and in the fulness of time to remove them. It was this plant of renown, by which the seeds of truth and virtue should be so sown in the heart, and the image of God so restored to the soul, that he should dwell with his servants, and that they should know the Lord their God to be with them. of Him, whom with wicked hands they were suffered to crucify, the Lamb of God, our passover slain for us,-was on that rebellious unbelieving race, he, who was indeed the glory of Israel, was ever foreshown as a light to lighten the Gentiles, having the uttermost parts of the earth given over to him for his possession; and the branches of that tree, of which he is the stem, we behold in their vast and spreading extent. In his universal Church and kingdom, he is now that plant of renown, whose blessed fruit supplies the hungry soul; and he extends that influence and energy into the characters of those that feed on his supplies, which satisfy the longing soul, and fill it with good ness. or sink under the burden of sins which were the shame of the heathen, and a deadly evil to all such as are overcome by them, it now remains for us, that we make application of this great truth of our relationship to the Shepherd of Souls. II. Having brought our discourse to this bearIn the first announcement of the remedy for man fallen by transgression from a holy and happy state, ing, that our spiritual supplies are continually derived from Christ, the plant of renown, feeding the Redeemer was promised as "the seed of the woman." He was prophetically announced growing souls hungering and thirsting after his righteousup as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dryness, so as that they shall not suffer spiritual decay, ground, (Isa. liii. 2 ;) as a branch out of the decayed root and stem of David, (Isa. xi. 1,) which the Lord should make strong for himself, (Psalm lxxx. 15.) "The spirit of the Lord resting upon him, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord. Judging the poor with righteousness, reproving, with equity, the meek ones of the earth; but smiting with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips slaying the wicked.” He is called by Isaiah, (ch. iv. 2,) the Branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious; and the time is foreshown when the people should inherit the Branch of God's planting, the work of his hands, that he might be glorified. "Behold," says Zechariah, (iii. 8, and vi. 12,) "thus speaketh the Lord, Behold the man, whose name is the Branch, and he shall grow up out of his place. Even he shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a Priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both. And they that are afar off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord.” To be the common fountain of spiritual light and life to all that embrace the offered mercy and salvation, did the Redeemer come from the glory which he had with the Father to the abodes of men. Among the Israelites, at first, in the Lord's There are designated, in the subject of the text which we have been illustrating, two sorts of evils, which you must shun as the greatest which can befall you the shame of heathen ungodliness, and vice revived; practical heathenism, on the one hand, and, on the other, a state of spiritual famine, or destitution of Christian faith and graces, from defective application to the means divinely afforded, or want of suitable improvement of them. 1. You cannot be ignorant of the language employed in the Word of God, to express his abhorrence of heathen wickedness, and the strong and forcible scriptural delineation of that wickedness, its causes, extent, and consequences. Not worshipping the living and true God, they had ceased to know him, and lived as without God in the world. They groped in darkness, or satisfied themselves with delusions, or believed a lie, and they held their opinions in practical unrighte Their self-surrender to ousness, and impurity, and cruelties, and evil inventions without end. the flesh and to the world, blinded the eyes of their souls, sealed up or seared their consciences, till they cared not for and ininded not any of those great interests which belong to our salvation. All this character of demoralization, unchecked by any higher principle than the slavish fear of man and his brief authority, was the cause of their being given over to their own reprobate minds. They left void that place in the heart which God requires for himself, and the evil spirit took possession of it. That they denied God, by wicked works, and alienation of mind and of conscience from him, will be their condemnation at the last day; but it will be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment in this respect, that they were without the written testimony of God, and had no heavenly Shepherd revealed to keep them within the pale and territory of a spiritual Church and kingdom, no man of God to speak his word, no Sabbathday of holy exercises, no communion with the Saviour; and let this view of heathenism be fully present to your thoughts, that you may see the dreadful evil of any approach to its polluting character, its withering power over all the fair proportions of human character-fair only when improved by religion in virtue, and fitted by a Saviour for God. judgment. Oh, may God save every one of you from the sin, the danger, and the shame of revived practical heathenism. 2. It is not enough that you are free from the shame of heathenism. So, for the most part, was the race of Israel, the ancient people of God. Nationally, and as a Church, they were kept (not indeed without divine constraint,) from the gross darkness, and the alienation of the heathen from the faith and worship of the true God; yet they often fell into a lifeless, spiritless, and faithless form of religion, and were betrayed, by their own sinful hearts, into similar condemnation. They temporalized almost all the spiritual promises of God; they looked to their law, and their other divine institutions, as bestowing upon them privileges which they laboured not to improve to their great design and end. They did not live by them. They did not give them effect. They talked of them, they were bodily present at their formal observances, they appeared to come unto God, (Ezekial xxxiii.) as his own people come before him, and they sat before him as his people, and heard his words, but they would not do them; Oh, then, my friends, employ yourselves often with their mouth they shewed much love, but their in self-interrogation, whether you have been indeed heart went after its own covetousness." Nothing living in the knowledge, the daily pondered know-wrought on that people in the way of religious imledge, of your dependence upon your God, not pression, for any endurance of time, (so hard of merely for the supplies needful for continuing your heart were they,) but temporal calamities and chasbodily life, but for those which are of infinitely tisement from God's hand; the servile principle more concern, the daily needful supplies of grace of fear almost alone actuated them, or restrained and spiritual influence, restraining your wills and them and forced them back on religious obserdetermining them to deny ungodliness and worldly vances, and regard to their heavenly ruler. "When lusts. Emancipated as you are from the gross he slew them," says the Psalmist, (Ps. lxxviii. 34,) idolatry, the foolish, dark, and base superstitions "then they sought Him; and they returned and of ancient heathenism, by the great change which inquired early after God: and they remembered Christianity has made to pass over the human in- that God was their Rock, and the high God their tellect and the face of society, (much as its spirit- Redeemer. Nevertheless they did flatter him changing force is resisted,) be reminded that you with their mouths, and they lied unto him with have a power ever busy within you, which, if not their tongues. For their heart was not right with dispossessed, will never cease till it bring you him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant." to that revived heathenism which accounts the And Oh! my friends, is it not, alas! but too true, finished work of the Saviour, and the operation of that even in the Church of the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit, as certain strange unacceptable in the kingdom of his grace, there may be, and things, which occasions their being heard with often is, a mere profession of faith without expeaversion, or received with opposition, or stifled and rience of its power, an assumption of the name denuded of all growth and fruitfulness. That and faith of the Christian, without verification of power is sin, and self-sufficiency. Ask, then, your- those substantial realities which must be wrought selves, whether you have the inclination and desire into the soul with labour, and effort, and ardour, to be spiritually minded, or if you have been only and anxiety, equal, at least, to what is bestowed alive to things temporal, and dead to the things on the things which perish. Let it not be your of salvation? Oh, let me warn you, that till you reproach and everlasting ruin that your Christianare roused to a sense of your sinfulness, your many ity should dwindle into mere appearance and outmoral defects and spiritual wants, roused to a sense ward observance, denuded of its vital operation on of the sin and danger of an unregenerate and un- the inner man, so as to renew your souls in truth sanctified soul, that you are still away from God, and holiness after the image of your Redeemer. -that you are beset by the evil spirit of heathen-Oh! let it not be left alone to the season of adism, and have neither light nor life from Christ. Let me warn you that the sentence of heathen condemnation impends over such with the aggravation of denying the Lord that bought them, of despising the riches of his goodness, and after a hardened and impenitent heart of treasuring up wrath against the revelation of God's righteous versity, the day of trouble, or the bed of sickness, to force upon your minds those considerations by which you should be united to Christ, in your day of strength and trial, in all your contest with your spiritual enemies. Let that living principle which brought the Son of God from heaven to seek and to save sinners, |