SERMON XXXVI.

DEUT. v. 28, 29.

"They have well said all that they have spoken. O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!"

THIS, I believe, is the one only place in which

God's people, the children of Israel, on their way from Egypt to Canaan, are related to have received any praise and approbation from Him. Almost all the rest of the way they are reproved for their undutiful, unthankful ways. Ye have been rebellious against the Lord, says Moses, from the day that I knew you. Many a time did they provoke Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert; they turned back and tempted God, and moved the Holy One in Israel. Nay, so regularly disobedient were they, that the Spirit of God has held them up for an example against frowardness and perverseness to all times and to all nations. Forty years was He grieved with this generation, this highly-favoured race, and said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known My ways.

They who were continually bringing so much blame on themselves, it cannot but be well worthy of our regard what the particular point might be, which is so bright an exception to the general course of God's sentence on their behaviour. They whose tongues in

general proved so full of murmuring and blasphemy, of them it is here declared by the Almighty Himself, They have well said all that they have spoken; who would not be curious to observe in what matter particularly they so far surpassed themselves, and obtained such high praise from the judge?

Now the occasion of their being so honoured was this. When God had shewn Himself to them on Mount Sinai, with all those circumstances of terror, the whole mount burning with fire, and quaking greatly; the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; the command given, that not so much as a beast should touch the mountain; and above all, the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, and uttering the awful Ten Commandments; the people were filled with a real and deep fear of God, they removed, and stood afar off; and when the heavenly voice ceased, we read in the First Lesson this afternoon, how they came near to Moses, by the heads of their tribes, and their elders, and said, Behold, the Lord our God hath shewed us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go thou near (so they speak to Moses) and hear all that the Lord our God shall say; and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it. This was their feeling; they were deeply impressed with the sense of God's immediate Presence, made known

to them by such awful tokens; they felt how unworthy they were to come so very near Him; they humbly therefore expressed their wish that He would speak to them as before through Moses His own appointed messenger.

Nor was this a slavish, unworthy fear in them, nor was there in it anything disrespectful to the Almighty, as if they preferred His minister to Himself. On the contrary, God's own voice distinctly assures them that it was well-pleasing in His sight. It was true devotion in them, when they so shrank from God's presence, and sought rather to come to Him through that man whom He had ordained. For Moses goes on and says, The Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee, they have well said all that they have spoken. And then He proceeds to give Moses orders accordingly: Go, say to them, Get you into your tents again; but as for thee, stand thou here by Me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandments and the statutes and the judgments, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess it. Thus we see they had for the moment the entire approbation of the great unerring Judge. If they had but gone on steadily, with the same humility of mind, to do the commandments which they then heard, they should have had peace with God for ever.

We may believe that Almighty God spake out the more expressly in their praise, and that Moses took the greater delight in repeating His words, as knowing what a root of irreverence they had in their hearts, and how much danger there was that they

should behave ill and disrespectfully, even with such fearful tokens of His overpowering majesty on every side of them. This had caused Him to give such earnest warning, and make such manifold preparation as we read of in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus, before He allowed them to hear His voice. He bade them sanctify themselves, and abstain even from innocent pleasures, for three days, that their thoughts might be less likely to wander from Him in those awful moments when He was to be so near. He bade them set bounds about the mountain, whoever touched it was surely to be put to death; whether it were beast or man, it was to be stoned, or thrust through with a dart. Moses alone was to go up, and all they to stand about the mountain; and when he had gone up, the Almighty, as if not yet satisfied with His own precautions, sent him down again, to charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. Moses was also to repeat the warning to the priests, that they, coming so near as they did to the Lord, should sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them. Moses wondered how it should be necessary to repeat this warning, after so much as had been said before; and as at other times he remonstrates, so to speak, with the Lord, The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai ; for Thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it. Moses considered it impossible, after what had been said, and what they saw with their eyes, that they should be guilty of such irreverence; but God, who knows the secret of our hearts, and how deep the root of bitterness there goes,-God saw that it was needful for him to go down, and repeat the warning to them again, before

He began to utter the Ten Commandments, out of the midst of the fire in their hearing. God's merciful purpose was so far accomplished, that the whole congregation was for the time truly and profoundly filled with fear. Those who might otherwise have been presumptuous and profane now dared not so transgress; they were kept in order and taught reverence, partly by the fearful sights and great sounds on every side of them, partly, we may believe, by the substance of the Commandments themselves which they heard. For which of us all could help trembling, should he hear with his own ears the voice of God from heaven, naming by name those very sins which we have on our consciences, forbidding them and threatening them with His wrath and damnation ?

Their hearts then being in this way humbled,-perceiving on the one hand God's glory and greatness, and that if they lose His favour they perish, and onthe other hand being made aware how unworthy they are to come near Him, through their manifold sins, they are led as it were of their own accord to the thought of a Mediator, of one who should be betwixt God and them, and should make them aware of God's Will and Presence in a way less fearful and overpowering. They removed, and stood afar off, and said unto Moses, Speak thou unto us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die. This was the temper which obtained God's praise and approbation, to be thoroughly aware of His majestic presence, and fully set to remember Him and keep His commandments, yet at the same time so fully aware of their own evil deeds and unworthiness, as to tremble at approaching Him directly, and most thankfully to welcome and lay hold of whatsoever means and helps