was to bruise the serpent's head, and all the families of the earth to be blessed.

We now proceed to the history of a people, which, though expressly written (as we are told) for our example, and the only one upon earth in which we are peculiarly interested, is too often set aside for pages, which, however alluring by their strains of poetry or eloquence, substitute only the virtues and policies of nations which knew not God, nor looked for his salvation;-pages, which, for the righteousness of GOD, present us with the splendid vanities of man; for his plain testimony set before us, the philosophy of the disputant, and for his sanc tification, the wisdom of this world; a wisdom, of the melancholy effects of which the present state of Christianity bears witness, and which, in nations who have cultivated that alone, the Almighty hand, bringing to nothing the understanding of the prudent, has rendered foolishness indeed.

In this book of Deuteronomy (so called from being a republication or repetition of the former law) Moses, as a last testimony of affection for those whom he had so long governed and in

structed, recapitulates the marvellous instances of an interfering Providence, and the miraculous train of events which had accompanied their rescue from Egyptian bondage, and supported and directed them for a series of years in a barren and pathless wilderness. He reminds them of their mutinous upbraidings and consequent punishments, of their repentance and forgivenesses. He exhorts them to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments of the Lord their GoD, and to walk in his ways; that He might be unto them a GOD, and keep unto them the covenant and the mercy, which He had sworn unto their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But if they failed in the observance of them, and to fear and worship that great and glorious name the Lord their GOD, that instead of being multiplied and blessed, they should be left few in number, they should be scattered among all people, and should perish from off the good land, which the Lord was to give them for an inheritance.

The Jewish law-giver had now nearly compleated the purport of his office, and the end of his appointed days; he was arrived on the

banks of the river Jordan, which it had been ordained he should not pass; and of those who had departed with him from Egypt, the greatest part had been cut off for their rebellion from the land of promise, and had fallen in the wilderness. To their surviving posterity, therefore, the relation of these events would carry with it all the interest of domestic narrative; and the rising generation, whose instruction he seems to have chiefly in view, from having thus made known to them the origin of their fathers' misfortunes, might be taught to acquaint themselves early with their Creator, to remember that GOD was their rock, and the High GoD their Redeemer. That they might acknowledge the merited chastisement of those who had so signally paid the penalty of disobedience, Moses, in the words before us, carries them back to the promulgation of the law on mount Sinai; to the manifestation of God's will before the whole assembled host of Israel; to the covenant then ratified between them and their Creator; to the proclamation of mercy, which rested upon their covenanted obedience, I will be to them a GOD, and they shall be to me a people.

Nothing can be imagined more impressive than the reference he makes, and in the presence also of many surrounding witnesses, to one of the most awful and tremendous appearances that ever was exhibited to the eyes of men. His circumstantial description, quitting all figurative expression, shews them, arrayed in glorious majesty, the GOD of their fathers, who claimed their obedience their Creator originally, their Governor and Preserver at present, and the Lord GOD Omnipotent for ever.

The time also, the circumstances, and the cause of the heavenly scene were such, that he might well say, Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is GoD There is none else beside him. They had been just delivered from the yoke of a great and powerful nation; they had been advancing for several days in a wide and perilous wilderness, filled with apprehension for their safety, and doubting or mistrusting the hand that had hitherto so signally preserved them. Ready to take every alarm, and encamped at the foot of a horrid and desolate mountain, which served to increase their sense of danger, they receive a message

from their God (the exertions of whose stupendous power they had so lately seen in the field of Zoan, and in the Red Sea) to prepare and sanctify themselves to appear before him on the third day, when He would come down on the mountain, to display before them the majesty of his presence, and to vindicate his slighted authority.

. On the appointed morning, with thunder and lightning for his messengers, and preceded by a noise like the blast of an exceeding great trumpet, the LORD proclaims his approach.Soon He descends, as He had said, upon the mountain, which immediately in a smoak burns and blazes up to the midst of heaven, and trembled to the very foundation at his divine presence. Thus riding in the storm, and situated upon a throne, towards which the terrified Israelites dared not turn their eyes, with a voice that shook the earth, He spake, in the hearing of all the congregation, the Ten Commandments. people, dismayed at this tremendous appearance, and humbled before the voice of GOD speaking to them out of the midst of the fire, now supplicate the interposition of Moses; they earnestly

The