When Jehovah, the Lord God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who appeared to Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of the bush, who had displayed his power in controlling the agents in nature, making them evidences of his eternal power and godhead, when he wrought his wonders in the land of Ham, who brought out Israel from among them, and most divinely appeared at their head, going before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in fire by night; when by his presence in the cloudy pillar he had conducted them to Sinai, he then descended on that mount, in the same cloud, to deliver the law, at which time he bowed the heavens, shook the earth, and caused Sinai to shake and quake from its foundations. The day for his majestic appearance and delivery of the law, being come, he was revealed in flaming fire. All the terrors of fire and smoke, lightnings, thunders, and an earthquake, assembled together, composed a scene, to which nothing upon earth can be compared, but the terrors of a volcano, as they have been described to us in the writings of those who have been eye witnesses of them. Divines have considered the tremendous exhibition on mount Sinai, as an argument and earnest of the future destruction of the world by fire: we may suppose it is with a view to this moral use of the terrible scene, which attended the delivery of the law that the prophet reminds us of Horeb,

when he foretels the conflagration of the world, Mal. iv. 1.

This day was ushered in with thunders, lightnings, and a thick cloud on the top of the mount, with this the sound of a trumpet exceeding loud and sonorous was heard. Nature felt the effects of it; all the visible elements were disordered; fire, the most terrible of all created elements, displayed its fury, burning and consuming all before it, scorching the ground, and causing the mountain to smoke. Under this appearance, Jehovah Jesus descended on the top of Sinai. The thick and dark cloud composed an awful and gloomy tabernacle for his residence; the lightnings, thunders, and tempests, were suited to strike terrors into the minds of the people, who were eye and ear witnesses of this tremendous display of majesty and omnipotence. Thus God descended on Sinai, with fire, cloud, and glory, and with ten thousands of his saints; the mountain burned unto the midst of heaven; the top of it was covered with blackness and darkness; the tempests, thunderings, and lightnings, were exceeding terrible; the sound of the trumpet was still more awful. With all the regalia, Jehovah displayed his near approach to the people of Israel on the mount.

I will endeavor next to point out what these things were expressive of: the dark cloud in which the Lord dwelt, was expressive of his

invisibility: it was also expressive of the majesty of God, of whom the psalmist saith, "Clouds and darkness are round about him." It was also expressive of his glorious presence, and of his judgments against the transgressors of his holy law. The mountain burning with fire, was expressive of God's majesty on it, and also of his wrath against all the transgressors of his law, who should live and die under its awful curse: it is doubtless from this tremendous blaze of fire, which broke forth from between the thick dark

ness, that it is said, "Our God is a consuming fire," Heb. xii. 29. which is taken from Moses, who says to the Israelites, "The Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God," Deut. iv. 24.

The thunderings and lightnings, with the blackness, darkness, and tempest, might serve to denote the terror of this dispensation, the horrible curses of the law against Christless sinners, and the great confusion and disquietude raised in the mind of a sinner, when truly awakened to feel himself a convict of God's law, and liable to, and deserving of eternal damnation.

The sound of the trumpet, which added greater awe, and created greater terror in the mind, than all the other solemn apparatus, made it like a day of judgment unto them. Thus the glory, majesty, godhead, sovereignty, and holiness of the Lord Jesus, their Savior, who had

'brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," was displayed. I have already said it was the same divine person who appeared unto Moses in the bush, and brought the ten desolating judgments on the land of Egypt, who led his people out of it, and went before them in a pillar of a cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night, who descended in the same symbolical cloud, on the top of mount Sinai, arrayed in all these demonstrative proofs of his eternal power and godhead, and the Holy Ghost says the same.

In the sixty-eighth psalm, the prophet celebrates the majesty and magnificence of Jehovah's appearance in Zion, his holy habitation, as the mighty conqueror of all the enemies of his people, riding upon the cherubim, as in a triumphal chariot, with all the host of heaven, as it were, in his retinue; and this he compares with his descent on Horeb; "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels, (or thousands repeated): the Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place:" or, Sinai is in the sanctuary, so Dr. Horne reads it: then it follows, "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive, thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among you," verses 17, 18. These transactions being figurative ones, the apostle Paul has applied these last words to our

Lord's ascension up into the highest heaven, Eph. iv. 8. The martyr Stephen, in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, says, that the angel spake to Moses, and the fathers of the Israelitish nation on mount Sinai, which is a full proof that it was Christ, the essential Word, who spoke out the ten commandments out of the midst of devouring fire, and who is described in the following grand and august manner, Deut. xxxiii. 2. "The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints; at his right hand went a fiery law for them." And the apostle speaking of this dispensation of the law on mount Sinai, expressly says, that "Christ's voice then shook the earth," Heb. xii. 26. From hence we have undeniable evidence and testimony that it was Christ who gave the law, who was present on the mount, and whose voice in the thunder, trumpet, and in the voice of words, shook the earth.

Having considered and set before you the solemn apparatus with which this display and manifestation of the glory, majesty, sovereignty, and holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the King and Lawgiver of his people was introduced, I proceed on with my subject.

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And will, secondly, consider the case of the people, who, on bearing the awful thunders roar, and beholding the glare of such lightnings,