AT length Moses and his people stand at the base of Mount Horeb. The fear of Egypt has departed; the perils of the desert are at an end; Amalek has been defeated; and one stage between the Nile and the Jordan has been reached. Now,

then, may the heart be freely yielded to thankfulness and joy. Repose is at hand. With days and months of repose, instruction will come; and the instructor will be even the Creator himself. What a privilege is here! The whole world around is sunk in sense. In that valley almost alone the spirit vindicates its rights; and there the Spirit of the Eternal God is about to hold converse with the spirit of man. Only two or three spots on the earth's surface have been thus signally honoured-Eden, Horeb, Calvary. Thrice holy spots! what venerable associations cluster around each! what celestial light invests each! The light deepens and brightens from Eden to Calvary, for on the last the grace was con summated which began in the first, and was renewed and augmented in the second. Without those three hallowed spots, how different would have been the history of the world; and how lamentable the lot of man, if the revelation made in Eden had not been continued in Horeb and completed on Calvary.

We must abjure the error of restricting Sinai and its scenes to the Hebrew race. Although regarding them pri marily, that legislation was designed and fitted to benefit the whole earth. The Israelites were the channels of the divine light and goodness. They were the electric chain of revela tion. The voice that spake from Sinai addressed the human family at large. If we view the events now about to be summarily set forth in this their true light, we shall see their importance, magnitude, and grandeur. That secluded valley was the birth-place of a new order of civilisation. There law was born, there right was consecrated, there God's will was declared supreme, and there was uttered to man those awful and sublime words—those words which condition man's happiness, and enfold his destiny-"Be ye holy, for I ¦ am holy."* Before events so solemn, before disclosures so momentous, before requirements so lofty, we feel our spirit bowed. To read and to write of these things is a serious engagement: how awful then to have witnessed them! to have heard those thunders! to have seen those lightnings! to have known and felt that God was there-there on that moun tain brow-there in that cleft of the rock-and that there, in his power and glory, he spake with his servant Moses. * Exod. xix. 6; Lev. xix. 2; 1 Pet. ii. 9.

God's disclosures to individuals ever depend on their own spiritual elevation. Revelation and sanctity are reciprocal factors in the spiritual life. As we rise upwards to God, God comes down to us. Moses had to go up into the Mount ere he could commune with God. The spiritual wisdom which he had long possessed, led him to know that, in these rocky and elevated solitudes, the people would be nearer to God than they could be in the sweltering plains of Egypt, or the scorching sands of the desert. Within the lofty seclusions of Sinai the people would be shut out from the distractions of human society; they would stand face to face with infinitude; their thoughts and affections would be concentrated on one spot; till, from the bare loneliness of the desert, the idea of the one only God would rise in their minds with all the vividness of an intuition. For at the bottom of all the truth revealed to Israel at the foot of Horeb, was the grand doctrine of the divine unity—the one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Lord, Governor, and Judge of all men, and specially the Ruler of his people Israel.

These thoughts may wear to some now the appearance of common-places. This is one effect—a very sad effect-of talking about, instead of living in, God. But no commonplace was the one living and true God to those Israelites just redeemed from dangerous contact with a gross idolatry. It was a disclosure very bright, very dazzling, and soon very precious to the non-intelligent. Not that the disclosure sank at once into the deep places of the heart. The carnal mind does not readily appropriate pure spiritual nutriment. Ere the grand idea could take firm root in those spirits, a long moral husbandry was needful. Yet, viewed in its remoter Issues, the idea of the divine unity was full of the richest fruit. That idea was, indeed, the central truth of the Mosaic economy-the very foundation of the Mosaic church.

With the belief in the one God, the ever-living and eternal One, Jehovah, there was connected the recognition of his one Instrument, Moses-the hero and the deliverer of the nation -the divinely appointed and divinely sanctioned medium between the Almighty and the people of Israel. As on the one side Moses represented God, so on the other he represented the Hebrew nation. Strictly speaking, there was but one representative between the two, for the priesthood at first

existed only as a germ. In consequence, no artificial distinc tion separated Israel into castes. All stood on terms of essential equality before the mount of revelation. Thus, as there was one God and one mediator, so was there one people. Accordingly, "the church in the wilderness" was a type of the church spread all over the world. From that unity comes a universal unity. The mediator of one people has given place to the Mediator of all peoples, tribes, and tongues. But the relation between that one people and God their Saviour involved the correlative ideas of dependance and supremacy. At Horeb, God, who before was known as a mighty Deliverer and bountiful Benefactor, appeared as a sovereign Lord-the Giver of a law-the Exactor of obedience; yet not as coercing slaves, but as guiding and governing free intelligences; and so a theocracy was founded and established, in which God the Creator took into his own hands the immediate control of the Hebrews, becoming their earthly King-their sole Guide, Rewarder, and Judge. This, too, was a grand and prolific thought. The theocracy thus set up on earth, made itself felt in all the observances and symbols of the Hebrew religion; and, after undergoing serious damage from human usurpa tions, was nobly vindicated by prophetic inspiration, and at last issued fully perfect in the gospel of Jesus Christ, as which it is still contending for the universal dominion it must gain, against similar usurpations, very diverse in their kinds and very obstinate in their opposition.

The law is thus seen to be in some sort an anticipation of the gospel. Moses was a school-master to bring men to Christ. That "life in the wilderness" was the germ of the life of the world. If the details into which we are about to

enter shall be found to justify these statements and deduc tions, then scepticism has no plea or excuse for objecting against the legislation of Sinai as a piece of narrow exclusiveness, unworthy of the universal Lord. On the contrary, we have here one of those great ordinal movements which go, wave after wave, in ever-widening circles, from one point over the whole surface of human society. There are wo moral generalisations so wide and so comprehensive as those of the Bible. As there is one God, so is there one human family. As there is one God and one human family, so is there one religion. If that religion has two developments, it has only

one spirit and one aim. If in that religion we find a Moses as well as a Jesus, the former does but prepare the way for the latter. And the eras of that religion, from its origin to its completion, are very few, are intimately connected, and arise the one out of the other; for Abraham is united with Christ by means of Moses and Elias.

The legislative revelation, or, in other words, the course of divine instruction, and the series of divine impressions, given at Sinai, was ushered in by a preparatory incident, in which breathes the spirit of gentleness and mercy, fitted, if anything could, to win the heart. No sooner were the tribes and the amilies of Israel encamped before the Mount, than Moses, ascending to its summit, heard there, in that holy solitude, hese words: "Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and ell the children of Israel; Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice ndeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar reasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: nd ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy ation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the hildren of Israel."* Words of wondrous grace, truly! Words which, with the lapse of centuries, have ever disclosed ew and richer truth. Compare those words with the falsities nd the carnalities of that Egypt out of which Moses had ist come, and then say if his religion was not a blessing to srael, and is not so to human kind.

This gentle invitation was borne by Moses unto the people. ut how could it be communicated to those swarming myriads ? ersonal contact with each-with even each male adult-was possible. The herald of the divine goodness, therefore, ofited by an organization which, though not perfect, ran ck to the earliest days of the nation; for calling around m the elders of the people, he recounted the words of Jehovah. ith characteristic brevity the Scripture adds, that “All the ople answered together and said, All that the Lord hath oken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the ople unto the Lord."†

In the revelations at Sinai there are things covered with an penetrable veil of darkness. These we will not attempt to