loose into an uninhabited land, the priests and people were accepted. In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is thus explain-* ed: "Into the second (tabernacle) went the high priest alone every year. The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing, which was a figure for the time then present.-But Christ, being come an High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands-neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, entered in once into the holy place, into heaven itself, having obtained eternal redemption for us." With such views as these of the manifold wisdom and goodness of God, it is perfectly natural that the apostle should administer consolation and encouragement to all such as believe in him; and so he adds, "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the vail, his flesh, and having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith;" the kingdom of Heaven being opened to all that obey his voice, and accept of his mercy. Thus, blessed Jesus, we have in thee an altar of which none have a right to eat who reject thy grace; thou art our great Sacrifice, having for our sanctification suffered without the gate; and thou art our compassionate, sinless High Priest, the perfume of whose merits, and the virtue of whose blood, cover the mercy-seat, and seal the covenant of eternal peace between thy Father and our ransomed souls! O may we be as willing to share thy reproach as we are to partake of thy glory! To thee be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The passover is another type of Christ. When the Lord was about to fulfil the promises he had made to Abraham in the redemption of his oppressed and persecuted posterity, and to inflict just judgments on their proud and cruel oppressors, he commanded his own people, by his servant Moses, to form a new era, and in future to begin their year

up a

from the time of their deliverance, which answers to our March; on the tenth of this month, one or more families, according to their numbers, were commanded to take lamb without blemish, a male of the first year, and to keep it up till the fourteenth; on the evening of that day every lamb of the whole congregation was to be killed; having received its blood into a basin, with a bunch of hyssop dipped in the blood, they were to strike and sprinkle it upon the two side posts, and on the upper door post, and then to abide in the house, that they might escape the vengeance coming on their idolatrous oppressors. This lamb was

to be roasted, but not a bone of it broken, and the flesh of it was to be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and whatever remained of it till the morning burnt with fire; and they were to eat it in haste, in a standing posture, as persons about to journey immediately. Can it be supposed for a moment, that all these ceremonies, described with such minuteness, had no reference to more important events? It would be a most extraordinary circumstance if they had not but it is evident they had. Our Lord is called "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," to express the innocence, holiness, and gentleness of his character, and the tender compassion he has manifested in laying down his life for our redemption, and shedding his precious blood for the purifying of our souls, to deliver us from the wrath to come. It was to be a lamb without blemish, of the first year. Our Jesus was without blemish and without spot, forcordained, and kept up in the counsels of eternity four thousand years before the shedding of his precious blood, and four days after the infamous priesthood had covenanted with the traitor to deliver him up to them, and four days after his public entry into Jerusalem, that murderous city. All the congregation were to kill the lamb, because all were interested in the sprinkling of the blood, and because every family was to be preserved from the plague of death by its application to their dwelling. In like manner, the Lord laid our sins on Christ,

H

the true victim, and he bore them away. Thus we may all be considered as his betrayers and murderers; and, to escape the wrath of God, we must have our hearts sprinkled by that blood, from an evil conscience, that we may serve him acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, without which the sin-avenging hand of inexorable justice will shew us no favour: and, having run for shelter to the blood of his cross, we must abide there continually; in other words, by faith, as with the bunch of hyssop, our souls must obediently trust in his meritorious sufferings, and expect the present and future acceptance of all that is said or done by us for God through Jesus alone. It is in his blood that the saints wash their robes, and make, and preserve them white. This lamb was to be roasted, to shew that, after the nature of fire, the true victim would be, as it were, scorched and burnt up by his fiery sufferings, when pursued by fiends and men, and especially when bruised and put to grief by his Almighty Father for our sins, and which constrained him to say, "I thirst." But not a bone of him was to be broken. No, his sufferings terminated before the moment arrived when his executioners came to expedite the death of the sufferers; so that, though they broke the legs of those who were crucified with him, they were not permitted to treat him so: yet, one of them thrust his spear into his side, and from the wound issued a mingled stream of water and blood; by which it fully appears that he really and truly died. The flesh of it must be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Leaven, by the apostle, is considered as implying sin, and therefore, he commands that it be purged out from among us; and by the same mode of reasoning, the bitter herbs may mean the unfeigned sorrow which true penitents feel when they are brought to scriptural views of themselves and of him whom they have pierced by their sins. "Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us; therefore, let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." All which should be done-immediately done; for we know

not the moment when we may be called from time to eternity. Christ should now be received, and an entire dependance placed upon him, without which we cannot be united to or saved by him. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you."

66

Let us next consider the brazen serpent.-When, as a punishment for sin, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the Israelites in the wilderness, on their repentance he commanded Moses to make a serpent of brass, and lift it up on a pole, promising that every one bitten by a serpent, on looking at the serpent of brass, should live; which came to pass accordingly. Our Lord, in conversing with Nicodemus, informed him, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Our souls have been stung and poisoned by sin, and our spiritual maladies are incurable by human means. No contrivance, power, or skill of our own, can reach our desperate case. Yet we are not left in despair : Jesus, the Son of God and Son of man, has undertaken our cause he has submitted to death for our sakes, even the ignominious death of the cross: he has been lifted up a spectacle to heaven, earth, and hell: we are commanded in our trouble and distress to look to him; and, by virtue of his sacrifice, sin, the envenomed sting of death, is drawn, the soul healed, the powers of hell discomfited, Heaven smiles, and the blooming hopes of immortality fill the believer with joy and gladness.

"Stung by the scorpion sin,
My poor expiring soul,
The balmy sound drinks in,

And is at once made whole :

See there my Lord upon the tree!

I hear, I feel he died for me!"

How divine, how easy the remedy! Despair withers in the shade of the cross. Oh, may I ever look by faith at this

extraordinary instance of incarnate love! Oh let me bring here every accusation brought against my sinful soul! And justice itself will assist me to nail it beneath the feet pierced for me, and smile while the purple current blots out the charge, and changes my dread of condemnation into smiles and holy confidence in God. Saviour, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I would love thee! Or why these tears, these sighs, these desires after thee, this gratitude? Saviour, love me still, and strengthen me to love thee for ever!

The sustenance miraculously afforded the Israelites in the wilderness typified the provision made for our souls in Christ. When they stood in need of water Moses, was ordered to strike a rock, which immediately poured forth a stream of water sufficient for that great multitude, and at which stream they long drank freely and quenched their thirst. The apostle tells us "that rock was Christ:" smitten by the hand of his heavenly Father, he has never ceased from pouring forth the streams of salvation to the sons of men, and whoever has thirsted for it has been invited to drink freely of this refreshing, salutary water of life and happiness.

When they hungered, he rained upon them bread from above-bread that was sweet to every one's taste, which was suited to every one's age and constitution, and which proved nutritious to them all, at all times, places, and seasons. In allusion to this, our Lord said to the Jews, "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven; for the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world. If any man eat this bread, he shall live for ever." How wretched and miserable is that soul that knows not the Lord Jesus, and that is not nourished by him! If none have life, but such as feed by faith on him, how much spiritual death is there in our sinful and unbelieving world! Yet it is evident that as Christ lived by the Father, so we must live by him, or we can have no life in us. Of whom then could it be said, that he came down from heaven, but of