Now whatever might be urged in favour of this opinion, supposing our translation to be accurate, must be admitted to lose its force, if the just rendering of the passage be, as I maintain, "the Lord praised," not the unjust Steward, but "the Steward for his iniquitous deed." It appears to me that our Lord. could not be so described, without an impropriety, of which it is impossible to imagine the Evangelist guilty; and therefore the Master, not the Saviour, must be the person from whose lips the commendation proceeds.

The final lesson taught us in this Parable, by our Divine Instructor, is, that the children of this world, people of the godless cast I believe to be portrayed by Master and Steward, are wiser in their generation, i. e., in their way of pursuing the objects they covet, than the children of light in prosecuting the far nobler ends of their high vocation. Jesus Christ does not say that earthly-minded men are altogether and essentially wiser than the spiritually-minded. Vastly different is the sentence He has passed upon them severally in respect of their widely different pursuits. The very name,"children of light," applied to persons whose heart is set upon treasures in heaven, suggests that to prefer earthly riches is to be a child of darknessto be one who totally mistakes good and evil, and is in the highway to perdition. But it is possible for such as aim at the worse, to exert, in that pursuit, more forethought and diligence, than are sometimes found in those who are, nevertheless, wisely aspiring to the better portion. This is a sad reproach to the Christian Church. God grant it may not attach with special force to any of us individually.

The doctrine taught by the final clause of the history is simply this: that as the Steward, when aiming to become the inmate of certain houses, bribed the householders, by a great seeming liberality, to receive him; so are we, by a genuine sacrifice of our worldly pelf for purposes best approved by Him whose is the key of heaven, to promote our reception into that eternal home, and secure a cordial welcome from its blessed inhabitants.

IL.

MOSES AND CHRIST COMPARED, AND CONTRASTED IN RESPECT OF THEIR PROPHETICAL OFFICE.

THE word "Prophet" is commonly applied to one who is able, by Divine inspiration, to foretell future events. In this sense, Christ was a Prophet when He foretold His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. It is in this sense that we use the word when we speak of the long line of Old Testament prophets, whose predictions have been so remarkably fulfilled. But the word has often a much wider signification; and means one who is favoured with a knowledge of the Divine will in regard

to things either past, present, or to come, and who is commissioned to reveal that will to men. For we know that the holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, were not confined, in their Divine communications, merely to disclosing the secrets of futurity: they were empowered also to bring within the circle of human knowledge the long-buried events of the past; and above all, they were appointed to deliver to us, for our instruction and guidance, God's most holy commandments. If we take the case of Moses, we shall find that his knowledge of the Divine will was not confined to the future. He was able to look far back into the depths of antiquity, beyond the origin of our race, even to the very "Genesis" of things, when God's omnipotent word spake the universe into existence.

In this the proper and comprehensive sense of the word, Moses may be called the Prophet of the Old dispensation, as he made known the law to the children of Israel; and Christ may be called the Prophet of the New or Christian dispensation, as through Him the Gospel was revealed. In His character of Priest, Christ died for men; and in His character of Prophet, which is no less distinctly and clearly marked, He proclaimed those tidings, the hope of which gladdened the hearts of the prophets and righteous men of old.

As Prophets, both Moses and Christ were Divinely appointed to their high office. When Moses was an outcast from his native land, keeping the flock of Jethro in the solitary desert, God manifested Himself to him in the burning bush, and sent him to lead Israel from their land of bondage.-In like manner our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ was called, and that from all eternity, to His great work.-In answer to the summons He is heard saying, "Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me: I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart."

As both were Divinely appointed to the prophetical office, so both were Divinely qualified for the due discharge of it. Both were highly favoured of God, and blessed with an intimate knowledge of His will. It is declared of Moses, that there arose no prophet in Israel like unto him to whom the Lord spake face to face. The Lord spake unto Joshua by the captain of his host; to Samuel His word came in the silence of the night; and Elijah, mourning in the desert over the sins of Israel, heard the still small voice of comfort that followed the storm, the earthquake, and the fire; but to Moses He spake as a man speaketh to a man. Nor was there any other Old Testament prophet favoured with such an intimate knowledge of the Divine decrees. Through him was given the law that was to guide God's chosen people till Shiloh should come. To this law, succeeding prophets had no power to add, and to diminish aught from it was beyond their authority. It was their text, which it was their office to expound, and which they expounded with more and more clear

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ness as the rising of the Sun of righteousness drew nearer. was the standard of Jewish faith, the rule of their life; and they looked back to the great prophet through whom it was revealed, as the one of all holy men most highly favoured of Heaven.

As Moses was highly qualified for his office, far more so the Blessed Jesus. He it is whom God hath highly exalted, and given Him a Name that is above every name. And although, when He came to execute His great mission, and to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation, He humbled Himself, appearing in lowly guise, despised and rejected of men; yet was He in reality the eternal Son of God, enjoying with the Father equal dignity before the world was. As His glory was infinite, so was His knowledge of the Divine will unlimited. He knew the counsels of the Almighty from all eternity. Of Himself he says,-"I was with Him when He prepared the heavens; when He set a compass upon the face of the deep; when He gave the sea His decree that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was with Him as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him."

Moses and Christ were thus both divinely called and divinely qualified to fill the prophetic office. In the discharge of this office, it was the duty of both to reveal what had hitherto been hid in darkness and mystery. It was their high privilege to be the means of unfolding the ways of God to the human race; of dispersing the cloud which rested on man's origin, condition, and destiny; of leading him from the land of bondage, and inviting him to behold the living God. They were both commissioned to reveal to man a knowledge to which, by his own unaided faculties, he could never have attained.

It is doubtful if, even among the Hebrews, much knowledge was preserved of the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Groaning under a heavy bondage, made heavier every day, oppressed by misfortunes to which they could see no termination, they may have forgotten, in the agonizing sense of present overwhelming misery, Jehovah's promises of future deliverance. To them it may have seemed that He had forgotten to be gracious; to have withdrawn from them for ever the light of His countenance; and they may have forsaken Him for the gods of their powerful oppressors. And this is the more probable, since we do not hear of His manifesting Himself to them as clearly in their bondage as He did to their fathers the patriarchs. Certainly their subsequent history shews that they had acquired, in the time of their servitude, a strong tendency to idolatry, into which they repeatedly fell, notwithstanding the strong proofs given them so often of God's existence, goodness, and power. It was to re-animate the expiring faith of his countrymen; to enlighten their minds, which were becoming assimilated in spiritual darkness to those of the heathen around them; to fit them to be God's witnesses to a CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 213.

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world lying in wickedness-that formed the object of the mission of Moses. He taught them their high destiny as a peculiar people, and committed to their keeping the law of God. And however imperfect the spiritual knowledge which it contains may seem to us who enjoy a light so much clearer, it was a knowledge which all the wisdom of Egypt and all the science of Chaldea could not have supplied.

And thus, also, to teach them who were perishing for lack of knowledge, and make light arise on those that sat in the darkness and shadow of death, did our Saviour descend from the mansions on high, and veil His glory in a human form. And never in the history of the human race was there a greater need of heavenly light; never did there prevail a moral darkness more deep, or moral ignorance more gross, than that which enveloped the nations at the advent of our Blessed Redeemer. All old forms of faith had by that time become powerless and dead. Whatever traditional truth they had once contained had been completely eliminated from them. The voice of prophecy had ceased in the Jewish Church; and though there were a few pious believers who waited in patience for the hope of Israel, the minds of the people were filled with worldly expectations, and ambitious only of temporal power. In the Gentile world, men fluctuated between a dark idolatry and a withering scepticism. The multitude bowed in abject fear to gods many and lords many, the impersonations of their own unholy passions; while the learned joined in solemn mockery, or looked on with scorn and contempt. It seemed as if mankind had been wholly left to follow the devices of their own evil imaginations; as if God had determined, as of old, that His Spirit should strive with them no more. In this hour of need came that Divine Teacher, that Prophet sent of God, whose great office it was to restore man's lost hopes; to unveil to him a brighter future; to fill his heart with higher joys, and his mind with nobler aims. He came to communicate to man that sacred knowledge, without which the light of learning and science can serve only to reveal to him the extent of his misery, and to render visible the moral darkness into which he has been plunged by sin. That life and immortality which the heathen sage hardly dared to hope for, were by Him clearly brought to light, and that message of salvation delivered which has been the stay and consolation of the faithful in every age.

Such are some of the points of resemblance between Moses and our Saviour in respect of their prophetical office; let us now look at a few of the principal points in which they differ. They do not stand opposed to each other in kind; they differ infinitely in degree. The difference is that which subsists between the type and the thing prefigured, the symbol and the thing symbolised. For Moses was but the type of Him who was to come in the fulness of time, ere the sceptre should have departed from Judah-that Messiah who, when He should come,

was to tell His people of all things-that heavenly Teacher who, when He did come, spake as never man spake before, of themes the noblest that human thought can conceive. And though Moses was faithful in his house, yet was he a servant of the house; whereas Christ, as a Son, is over His house and He is worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. Moses was indeed highly distinguished of God; he received largely of the Divine Spirit, so that a portion only of the Spirit that rested on him was conveyed to his successors: but Christ was very God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. To Moses a knowledge of the Divine will was largely imparted; but Christ from all eternity knew the Divine will in all its fulness. He is in every respect more glorious, more excellent than Moses, for His glory and His excellence are infinite and eternal; and the Revelation which He made to man of the will of God, is more full, more complete, than that of Moses. The Mosaic economy was indeed far more perfect than any scheme which the mere human intellect, in its natural state of ignorance, could have formed; but compared with Christianity, it gives but a feeble light. The Revelation made by Moses is to that made by Christ as the dawn of morning to the brightness of noonday; it was the promise, but only the promise, of a glorious future-the shadow of the good things to come-the schoolmaster to bring the world to Christ-the first great stage in the world's journey back to the Eden that was lost through Adam and regained through Christ. The Law was not, like Christianity, complete and final, something perfect in itself, than which nothing better is to be looked for. Every one of its provisions showed that it was merely preliminary; that it was merely the form of a coming reality.

Thus the Law was valid because Christianity was to follow it. It derived its principle of vitality from the system which it foreshadowed. Except as typical of the Christian dispensation, the whole of its ceremonies were merely forms without a substance. The blood of bulls and of goats was shed in vain, if it pointed not to the one great sacrifice for sin. Hence the law was not antagonistic to Christianity; on the contrary, the two Revelations were in strict harmony with each other. And Christ affirms this when He says— "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I come not to destroy, but to fulfil. Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the Law till all be fulfilled." Christianity was the consummation of the whole Mosaic economy. The Ceremonial Law, which pointed to Christ, naturally ceased when Christ came: it had served the end for which it was instituted, and had no longer a place save among the shadows of the past. The moral obligations laid down in the Law did not pass away; on the contrary, they were strengthened, developed, and made clearer by Christ; and thus the