and ingratitude. Painful it must have been hast said." Lord, now lettest thou thy setto think, that he had survived a whole people, vant depart in peace, according to thy word, endeared to him by every strong, by every for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. I tender tie: that he had been gradually dying have fought a good fight, I have finished my for forty years together, in a condemned, course, I have kept the faith. My master is devoted race, which melted away before his dismissing me from painful service; I shall eyes in the wilderness: that with his own rest from my labours; I shall receive the hand he had stripped Aaron, his brother, of crown. I am passing from the imperfect, his pontifical garments, and closed his eyes. interrupted communion of an earthly sancPainful to reflect on his own errors and im- tuary, to the pure, exalted, uninterrupted, perfections his criminal neglect of God's everlasting communications of the heavenly covenant, which had nearly cost him his life: state. I shall see God as he is. I shall be his sinful delay and reluctance to accept the changed into the same image. I shall be divine commission appointing him the deli- ever with the Lord. I shall shine in his likeverer of Israel; the hastiness of his spirit in ness. I shall be added, united to the assemdefacing the work of God, by dashing the bly of the faithful; to the venerable men of tables of the law to the ground, and breaking whom I wrote, to Abel the first martyr to them in pieces; the impatience of his temper, the truth, to Enoch, who walked with God, the unadvisedness of his lips, the unguarded- to Noah, the preacher of righteousness, to ness of his conduct, at the waters of strife, Abraham, who believed, and was called the which drew down displeasure on his head, friend of God, to Joseph, whose bones are and irreversibly doomed it to death. This now at length to rest in the land of promise, uneasy retrospect would naturally lead to to Aaron, my brother, by nature, by affection, prospects as uneasy and distressing-The in offence, in hope. With the natural eye I time of his departure is at hand; the body behold the fertile plains of an earthly Canaan: must speedily be dissolved and the dust re- but by the eye of faith I descry another counturn to the earth as it was. Against his try, that is an heavenly; watered with the admission Canaan is fenced as with a wall of pure river of the water of life, where grow fire, and a distant glimpse must supply the the trees of life, whose leaves are for the room of possession, and another must finish healing of the nations: where there is no his work. Besides the natural horror of death, more death. My brethren, I die, but God there was mingled in that bitter cup a par will surely visit you. There shall come a ticular sense of personal offence and fatherly Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise displeasure as inflicting it. Israel too, he out of Israel, and unto him shall the gatherforesaw, would after his decease revolt more ing of the people be. The LORD thy God and more, and call down the judgments of will raise up unto thee a Prophet, from the Heaven, and forfeit the promised inherit- midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; ance and this was to him the bitterness of unto him shall ye hearken. In the LORD death. shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory. In Abraham's seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Mortality is swallowed up of life; "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory." But by what brighter prospects was this gloom relieved, and the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death illuminated! He saw the promise of God hastening to its accomplishment. The land flowing with milk and honey" was fully in view. The time, the set time was now come; and what powers of nature could prevent the purpose of Heaven from taking effect? "O Lord, thou art faithful and true; Do now as thou "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace." HISTORY OF MOSES. LECTURE LXXVIII. And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel. And he said unto them. I am an hundred and twenty years old this day: I can no more go out and come in: also the Lord hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan. The Lord thy God, he will go over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them: and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the Lord hath said.-DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 1-3. LECT. LXXVIII.] HISTORY OF MOSES. THE last words and the last actions of eminent men are remembered, repeated, recorded with a mournful pleasure. We listen with peculiar attention to those lips, which are to speak to us no more: and the man, and the words, which we neglected, while there was a prospect of their continuing longer with us, we prize, we cleave to, and wish to retain, when they are about to Indeed we discover be taken away from us. the value of nothing, till we are threatened with, or feel the want of it; and we awake to a sense of the happiness which we have possessed, by the bitter reflection that it is gone from us for ever. Farewell addresses serve to rouse both the speaker and the hearers. He is led to weigh well those words which he is to have no future opportunity of altering or amending. His eyes, his voice, his turn of thought, his expression, all will be influenced, by the solemnity of his situation; and what he feels, he will certainly communicate to others. Wherefore is not every address considered in this light; as a last, farewell, dying speech? It may be so in truth; and if it were known to be so, would our attention be so distracted, our spirit so careless; would our language be thus cold, our zeal thus languid? Attend, my dear friends, and fellow mortals. This is beyond all controversy, to some of us the last opportunity of the kind. The sound of this voice shall never again meet all those ears in one place. It may be for ever silenced; each of them may be for ever closed; and the ordinary tide of human affairs must certainly scatter, this night, persons who are never more to re-assemble, till that day when the whole human race shall be gathered together in one great multitude. We are come hither to ponder thy dying words, O Moses, and to gird up our loins, and follow thee. This whole book may be considered as a series of powerful, pathetic, and tender addresses, delivered at different times within the compass of the last month of his life, by Moses to Israel, in the near and certain prospect of dissolution. Art has attempted to divide it into so many several distinct heads or branches, forming together a complete body of instruction, wonderfully adapted to the occasion, and powerfully enforced upon the minds of the hearers by the death of their teacher, which immediately followed. culated to excite emotions suitable to their They saw in this at once the mercy and We see in this the reason why so great a proportion of the sacred oracles are delivered in the form of history. A fact makes its way directly to the heart, is easily remembered, and readily applied. It requires depth of understanding and closeness of attention to comprehend a doctrine, and to draw the proper inferences from it: but "the wayfaring man, though a fool," can discern the meaning, and feels the force of a plain tale of truth, and the recollection of yesterday becomes a lesson of conduct for to-day. 2dly. This valedictory address of Moses consists of a recapitulation of the laws, moral, ceremonial, political, and military, which he had already delivered to them in the name of God. On this account, the division of the Pentateuch under consideration, has obtained the name of Mischna Thora, translated by the Seventy; Deuteronomy, that is, the semen were dead who heard the voice of God cond law, or a repetition of the law. The speaking these tremendous words from Sinai. The men of the present generation were unborn, or but emerging from childhood, when The first great branch is a succinct and that fiery dispensation was given: but its animated historical detail of the conduct of obligation was eternal and unchangeable. the Divine Providence towards them and Providence therefore directed it to be retheir fathers, during the last forty years, hearsed aloud in the ears of the generation commencing with their departure out of following, by the voice of a dying man, and Horeb, and containing an account of their to be by him left recorded in lasting characsuccessive movements and encampings. A ters, for the instruction of every future age. recapitulation of the recent events of their What was local and temporary of this disown lives, and of what had befallen their pensation has passed away: what was imimmediate predecessors, was obviously cal-mutable and universal, remains in all its 30 *יי and inquired diligently, and behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: then shalt thou bring forth that man, or that woman, (which have committed that wicked thing) unto thy gates, even that man, or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death, be put to death; but at the mouth of one wit ness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people: so thou shalt put the evil away from among you."t force and importance; and shall continue, and shall do no more any such wickedness though heaven and earth were dissolved. as this is, among you.' And again, "If There is one law which Moses, in the there be found among you, within any of thy prospect of death, presses with peculiar gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, earnestness, as he knew it to be of special man or woman that hath wrought wickedimportance, and was but too well acquainted ness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in with the violent, the almost irresistible pro- transgressing his covenant, and hath gone pensity of his auditory to infringe it-the and served other gods, and worshipped them, law which prohibited and proscribed idolatry, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host that crime of complex enormity, against of heaven, which I have not commanded; which the voice of the Eternal had uttered and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, so many thunders, and which had brought on Israel so many grievous plagues. Nothing can be more energetical than the expressions he employs to expose the guilt and danger of this offence against God; nothing more dreadful than the judgments which he denounces against those who should contract it themselves, or presume to decoy others into that odious practice. He leaves them destitute of every thing like a pretext for following the nations in this impiety and absurdity, by calling to the recollection of those who were witnesses of the awful scene, and urging upon the consciences of those who were since born," that there was no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire;*** that therefore to pretend to imitate what never was seen, what cannot be seen, was at once ridiculous folly, and daring, impious presumption. He solemnly enjoins, that the tenderest and most respectable ties of nature be disregarded in the case of those who should dare to set the example of violating the divine will in this respect; that the most intimate friends and nearest relations should become strange and hateful, if they presumed, by precept or by practice, to countenance this transgression. His own emphatic language will best express his meaning, and show with what oppressive weight the subject lay upon his heart. "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, (which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth,) thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him. But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he has sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, *Deut. xiv. 15. Did we not know, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:" did we not know, by fatal experi ence, that there is no absurdity too gross for men to adopt, no impiety too daring for them to commit, we should be astonished to think that the enactment of such laws should ever have been necessary; that having been enacted, there should be occasion to explain and enforce them by so many awful sanctions, and that notwithstanding, in defiance of sanctions so formidable, any should have been found bold enough to transgress. 3dly. Moses labours in this, his last dis course, to establish the importance and ecessity of knowing the divine law, and for that end, of making it the subject of conti nual study and meditation. Every son of Israel must daily employ himself in the reading of it. The young must not plead exemption on account of his youth, nor the old plead the privilege of age. No closeness of applica tion to secular, business, no eagerness to prosecute a journey, no eminence of rank and station, no, not the state and necessary duties of royalty itself, must pretend to claim a dispensation from the superior obligations of the law of the Most High. "These words," says he, "which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." * Deut. xiii. 6-11. ↑ Deut. xvii. 2-7. Deut. vi.6-9. "And it shall be," speaking of the duty and for? And what nation is there so great, that office of the king who might hereafter be hath statutes and judgments so righteous, as chosen to reign over God's people of Israel, all this law which I set before you this day!"* "when he sitteth upon the throne of his Thirdly-The laws prescribed were imkingdom, that he shall write him a copy of posed on them by a Being who had lavished this law in a book, out of that which is be- miracles of mercy and goodness upon them fore the priests the Levites. And it shall be and their fathers, and stood engaged to be a with him, and he shall read therein all the covenant God to their posterity, to the latest days of his life; that he may learn to fear the generations. "For ask now of the days that Lord his God, to keep all the words of this are past, which were before thee, since the law, and these statutes, to do them: that his day that God created man upon the earth, heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and and ask from the one side of heaven unto the that he turn not aside from the command- other, whether there hath been any such ment, to the right hand or to the left: to the thing as this great thing is, or hath been end that he may prolong his days in his king-heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice dom; he, and his children in the midst of Israel."* Some of the Rabbins accordingly pretend, that Moses, with his own hand, transcribed thirteen copies of the Deuteronomy, one for each of the twelve tribes, and one to be laid up till the time of electing a king should arrive, to be given him to transcribe for his private and particular use. 4thly. Moses displays, with singular skill and address, the motives suggested from their peculiar circumstances, to make the law of God the object of their veneration, and the rule of their conduct; such as, first-These laws all issue from the love of God as their source, and converge towards it as their centre. Their great aim and end is to engage us to love, with supreme affection, a God who is supremely amiable and excellent. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day."+ of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else besides him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he showed thee his great fire, and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire."t In a word, the laws of God are in themselves just and reasonable, plain and intelligible; accommodated to the nature and faculties of man, and carry their own wisdom and utility engraven on their forehead. For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring fit unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Moses, while he thus forcibly inculcates A second motive to obedience is, that the the motives of obedience, motives inspired observance of the laws has a native tendency and pressed by every tender, by every awful to procure and to preserve both public and consideration, finds himself under the unprivate felicity; to make them respectable pleasant necessity of venting his heart in the in the eyes of the nations, and thereby to keenest reproaches of that highly-favoured ensure their tranquillity. "Behold I have but rebellious nation, for their perverseness taught you," says he, "statutes and judg- and ingratitude; he deplores in the bitterness ments, even as the Lord my God commanded of his soul, the instability and transitoriness me, that ye should do so, in the land whither of their good motions and purposes, their faye go to possess it. Keep therefore, and do tal proneness to revolt, the inconceivable rathem, for this is your wisdom and your un-pidity of their vibrations from virtue to vice. derstanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him That exquisitely beautiful and pathetic song with which he closes his tender expostulation, and which contains a striking abridg ment of this whole address, consists in a great measure of just and severe, yet affectionate upbraidings and remonstrances upon their *Deut. iv. 5-8. Deut. iv. 32-36. Deut. xxx. 11-14. past conduct. "They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children; they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy Father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee!"* their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink-offerings? Let them rise up, and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I ever. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain, and of the captives from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy."* But the time to favour revolted, returning Israel shall come at length; and together with them the time to irradiate and deliver "the nations which were sitting in darkness, and in the region and shadow of death;" and the prophetic soul of Moses hastens forward to conclude the sacred song, with a grand chorus of harmonious voices, the voices of the ransomed of the Lord from every nation, every kindred and tribe, rejoicing together in one common salvation: "Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, to his people."+ Finally, this long, this instructive, this powerful farewell sermon of the man of God, contains predictions clear, pointed, and strong, of the fearful judgments which should over-lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for take that sinful people, and involve them and their posterity in utter destruction. Many learned men, and not without the greatest appearance of reason, have supposed that the spirit of prophecy by the mouth of Moses has foretold the final dissolution of the Jewish government, and their dispersed, reproachful, despised state to this day, until the time of their restoration to the divine favour, and their re-establishment under the bond of the new and everlasting covenant, "a covenant established on better promises, ordered in all things and sure." This idea seems justified by the following and the similar prophetic denunciations. "Of the rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have How powerfully must all this have been provoked me to anger with their vanities: impressed on the hearts of his audience. by and I will move them to jealousy with those the sight of their venerable instructer, bendwhich are not a people; I will provoke them ing under the weight of an hundred and to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is twenty years:" exhausted by labours performkindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the ed in the public service, no longer capable. lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with of "going out and coming in;" excluded by her increase, and set on fire the foundations the inflexible decree of Heaven from any of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs up- part or lot in the land of promise; lying under on them, I will spend mine arrows upon the bitter sentence of impending death; his them. They shall be burned with hunger, power and glory departing, and passing be and devoured with burning heat, and with fore his eyes to the hand of another! Why bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth are not impressions of this sort more lasting, of beasts upon them, with the poison of ser- and more efficient! Shall "the righteous pents of the dust. The sword without, and perish, and no man lay it to heart?" Is "the terror within shall destroy both the young merciful man taken away, and will none conman and the virgin, the suckling also, with sider?" "The righteous is taken away from the man of gray hairs. I said I would scat- the evil to come." By his departure the ter them into corners, I would make the re-earth is impoverished, but heaven is emembrance of them to cease from among riched. Remove the veil, and behold him men."t "Is not this laid up in store with me "entering into peace:" " they shall rest and sealed up among my treasures? To me in their beds, each one walking in his upbelongeth vengeance, and recompence; their rightness." I hear a voice from heaven, foot shall slide in due time for the day of saying, "Write, Blessed are the dead their calamity is at hand, and the things that which die in the Lord, from henceforth: yea, shall come upon them make haste. For the saith the Spirit, that they may rest from Lord shall judge his people and repent him- their labours; and their works do follow self for his servants; when he seeth that them."‡ * Deut. xxxii. 5, 6. Deut. xxxii. 18-26. * Deut. xxxii. 34-42. † Deut. xxxii. 43. Rev. xiv. 13. |