gratify. "Let it suffice thee," and doubtless it did suffice that holy man, that the will of the Lord should be done. Doubtless, as he stood upon the top of Pisgah, the sight of the promised land fully satisfied Moses, that if such were the riches, and fertility, and beauty of the earthly Canaan, that better land to which he was called, and which he should shortly enter, would be infinitely more rich, more lovely, more beautiful, than aught that eye had seen, or imagination pictured. Could we but have heard him speak, one hour after he had entered there, we can believe it would have been to join his praises to those around the throne, that his prayer had not been heard, and that he had not been permitted to linger longer in a world, which, however beautiful, is disfigured by misery and ruined by sin.

Do our prayers, the prayers of faith, ever appear to be left unanswered? "Let it suffice" us; it is because our heavenly Father has some better gift in store, than our blind faith can see, or our stammering tongue can ask for.

EXPOSITION XLVI.

DEUTERONOMY iv. 1-9.

1. Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.

In thus commencing a most earnest appeal to the children of Israel to obey the Lord their God, how appropriately did Moses preface it, by the allusion to his own disobedience, contained in the last portion of Scripture which we read. He had just reminded them, that a single act of isobedience had excluded him, even their leader, from the land of promise; with what peculiar emphasis, then, might he call upon them to hearken and to obey, lest, near as they were to that happy land, similar conduct on their part should receive a like reward, and they also should be for ever shut out from its possession. We may all learn much from the injunctions that follow; for the great and important truths which they contain, the necessity of a careful and enlightened obedience to the commands of God,

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were not more needful at the hour they were delivered, than they are at the present moment, and shall be to the end of time.

2. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you.

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3. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you.

4. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God, are alive every one of you this day.

5. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.

6. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

7. 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 for?

8. And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous, as all this law, which I set before you this day?

9. Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons'

sons.

Well might we as a Christian and highly favoured nation, profit by directions such as these. Surely if Israel had just reason to ask, "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 for," England, thrice blessed, and happy England, may we fully make the same inquiry. What nation upon earth has for so long a series of years enjoyed such prosperity? Where have temporal blessings been so largely and so abundantly set forth? Where have spiritual mercies been so widely and so graciously extended? If there be a nation in which the parental presence of our God has been peculiarly manifested, a land in which the Scriptures of truth and the ordinances of religion, and the blessings of faithful and scriptural ministrations, have been widely, we may almost say universally disseminated, a country in which alone of all the nations of Europe, no enemy has for centuries been permitted to set his foot, that land, by the undeserved mercy of our God, is unquestionably our own. Great, indeed, have been our privileges, and fearful will be our reckoning, if blessings such as these have profited us not. Observe, then, carefully, what Moses says should be the wisdom and understanding of the great nation to which he spake, in the sight of the

people of the earth. Not their victories, upon which they had just so gloriously entered, and of the continuance of which they were assured; not their wealth, which was to pour in upon them in after days from all quarters of the globe, but simply this," to keep and do the commandments of the Lord." They were neither to add to them, in the hope of pleasing God by any inventions of their own, nor to " diminish ought" from them, with the desire of gratifying themselves. What God commanded, that they were strictly and conscientiously to endeavour to perform, and not only to fulfil themselves, but to teach them their sons and their sons' sons.

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Such also will be our wisdom, as it is obviously our duty. Keeping simply to the written word of God, in its purity, that word, of which Luther so wisely and so truly said, “ God does more by the simple power of his word, than you, and I, and the whole world could effect by all our efforts put together! God arrests the heart, and that once taken, all is won!"* Let us, then, suffer no human traditions to interfere with this great instructor, as "a rule of faith," a divine director of conduct, and a converter of the heart; but endeavour, by God's help, to teach it and to hand it down, unweakened and unadulterated * L. op. (L.) xviii. p. 255.