miracles, and a disavowal of accomplished predictions, in what manner does our blessed Lord assert the dignity of his character in the face of his enemies? He appeals to their acknowledged leader, and favourite of GOD, in direct evidence against them. Do not think, says he, that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuseth you, even Moses in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me; but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words.

The condemnation of the Jew, like that of the Christian, proceeds upon the same sufficiency of evidence; he was to be judged by the word that was spoken, and he must either reject his Law-giver, or receive a Saviour, of whom Moses was both type and prophet. Thus grounding the necessity of their belief in him on the very records of their faith, and establishing his authority upon that of their own religious credentials, Christ at once confirms the authenticity of the Pentateuch, and incorporates, as it were, every preceding dispensation into one system of redeeming love. What language could have spoken so plainly of Him, (that mis

take was made a crime) but the language of inspiration? How could he have appealed to any anterior testimony, unless that testimony had been known to have been of divine origin? Instructed also in the covenant made with Abraham and his seed, if Moses were ordained to be the instrument of the promised deliverance to his brethren; if, in the progress of his commission, he were allowed to pre-figure, and to predict a more perfect deliverance, through a prophet that was to be raised up like unto him; and if, moreover, almost every act of their legislation and worship be found commemorative of such expectation, and subsidiary to this gracious design, then of what comment will the Mosaic history admit? Descriptive as it is of the works and the ways of Providence, the

truths it reveals, and the events it foretels, could not be discovered by human means: nor can it be supposed, that the Being, who must have dictated the word of prophecy, and whose name was to be honoured and proclaimed in the fulfilment of it, should suffer the operations of his hands to be disfigured or disgraced by fabulous legends or fanciful representations.

The legislative and the prophetic annals of this inspired writer even now specify and distinguish the Jewish people. Without a vestige of civil polity left, and scattered as they are among all nations, they still guard them as memorials of their principal ancestors, as a code of laws to direct their practice, and as containing the promised advent of one who shall redeem Israel. What, then, does the Christian understand, when he reads of the veil being still upon their hearts? Will he urge against them the predictive testimony, and refuse the descriptive evidence of inspiration? Will he allow their scriptures to bear witness of Jesus, and the redemption of mankind through him, and doubt their veracity, when they prove the necessity of this rich display of mercy, by bearing witness also of the fall of man, and the state from which he fell? Man never had but one teacher, though he may have submitted to many masters; from the natural world he was to be led to the spiritual, from visibles to invisibles; and the knowledge of the true GoD is involved in the knowledge of the works of his creation. Without the Mosaic basis, what vi

sionary superstructures have been raised by many who would build up to heaven, but they have been gazed at and admired, and then tumbled into ruin, each in his turn, for want of a foundation. Had we not been accustomed to concede too much to the powers of human reason, we should have learnt, that divine architecture needed the explanation of its divine architect; we should have found the inspired author of the Pentateuch to be the most faithful historian, the wisest of legislators, and the soundest philosopher. Nay, we venture to assert, upon the most satisfactory proofs, that in proportion as discovery has taken place of conjecture, and experiment filled up the void of theory, the grand and awful scene of creation, as exhibited to our view in the first chapter of Genesis, accords with the known principles of material agency, and disposes of the elements in a manner consistent with their visible and immediate properties.

But to quit the subject of Moses, till he appears as the leader and law-giver of Israel, we will now return to the eventful records of the patriarchal dispensation. In the earliest, and

what is called the antediluvian, period of it, they are but few, and these not pursued into any minute particulars; the inspired historian seems hastening to that important era, when the separation from idolatry began in the faithful founder of his nation, and was continued and preserved in his descendants, through a series of miraculous interpositions, till the partition wall was enlarged and secured by the religious observances of a whole people, and the ritual ceremonies of the Jewish church.

But what is wanting in historical detail, is amply supplied by the precision and importance of the events related. We are shewn the world in its glory, as it was formed by the great Creator, and man placed in it, in his primæval beauty of innocence and conscious dependence. The picture soon changes-and seduced from his faith and dependence, we see him driven from the blissful scenes of paradise, delivered over to sin and death, and robbed of immortality.

Without dwelling upon the conditional prohibition, without entering into any examination of the Tree of Life as a sacramental pledge, or of the Cherubim that was appointed to guard