hard speeches they might utter against HIM, it would be established at last, in very faithfulness, as at first He had confirmed it by his oath. Hath He said? hath He sworn? and shall He not do it? Assuredly the promises to the fathers shall be fulfilled, and the everlasting possession of the land by the seed of Abraham, shall be conjoined with the simultaneously promised blessing to all the families of the earth. For then, and not till then, in that glorious consummation alone, shall these words be true, which, swearing by himself, as He could not swear by a greater, the Lord spake at the very time when even Moses feared that his name would be blasphemed, and his power derided, if his people should perish in the wilderness, "AS TRULY AS I LIVE, ALL THE EARTH SHALL BE FILLED WITH THE GLORY OF THE LORD.-To-morrow, turn ye, and get ye into the wilderness." Whatever the nations might say, or whatever the Israelites might do, the Lord himself would see to the execution of his covenant in all its parts; into his own hand He had taken it; and it rested with him and with him alone, that the unbelief of the Jews and the ungodliness of the nations should finally everywhere cease; and that not even one word should fall from the covenant any more than from the law, till all the earth should be filled with his glory, and see and acknowledge that the Holy One of Israel is the Lord, with whom all things are possible. The whole earth itself is the witness to this hour, that the time is not yet: none, but worse than Egyptian blasphemers, can say that it never shall be-for the promise is as true as the Lord liveth.

Another illustration here arises, plain and palpable in the sight of all believers in Moses, and in the history of which he was the sacred penman; a truth which is also confirmed as clearly at every step in all the progress of Israelitish history, as the apostle hath declared it—the

law makes nothing perfect. Luminous as this is in the eye of faith, it is a hard saying to those sinners of the Gentiles, who, like the Jews in many generations bearing everywhere the curses of that covenant, go about to establish a righteousness of their own. The fact stands out most prominently in Jewish history, and forms its commencement. In the very first year after the law was given, the children of Israel, released from bondage and first united as a people, could not, notwithstanding the promise, enter into Canaan. The whole nation had broken it. From the sin of unbelief it could not save them. And the God of their fathers, at the very time his promises would otherwise have been fulfilled, threatened to smite them with pestilence, and to disinherit them; and Moses, by whom the law was given, prayed that the whole nation might not be killed as one man, because of their transgressions and unfaithfulness in the covenant made under the law. They were commanded back from the borders of Canaan to die in the wilderness. But while the law condemned them, the covenant with their fathers stood; and therefore, as in ages after, Israel was not wholly consumed.

Unlike to that unconditional covenant which God made with Abraham, and which He will doubtless fulfil to the praise of the glory of his grace, the covenant which He made, and repeatedly renewed with the Israelites under the law, was coupled with the most express conditions, on the breach of which fearful judgments were denounced. And the blessings and the curses, which pertained to this covenant, according to their obedience or disobedience, were set before them, and read in the hearing of all the people, both before and after they entered the land promised to their fathers.

1 Heb. vii. 19.

"This day," said Moses, "the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments; thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thy heart and all thy soul. Thou hast avouched the Lord to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken to his voice; and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; and to make thee high above all nations which He hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; if that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as He hath spoken.' "Ye stand all of you this day before the Lord your God, your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and with his oath which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day, that He may establish thee to-day for a people unto himself, and that He may be unto thee a God as He hath said unto thee, and as He hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but with him that standeth before the Lord thy God; and also with him that is not here with us this day,-lest there be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, &c. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses that are

1 Deut. xxvii. 16-19.

written in this book of the law; so that the generations to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sickness that the Lord hath laid upon it-wherefore hath the Lord done this unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt-and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book.'

Such is the tenor of the covenant made with the Israelites when they came out of Egypt, and before they entered into Canaan. After their entrance into the promised land, it was renewed by Joshua, and again before his death, and, in his last words, he said unto the people, "Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen the Lord to serve him: and they said we are witnesses-the Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day." These were all but several renewals of the covenant which the Lord made with Israel on the day when He brought them out of Egypt, and when the law was given by Moses.

2

Greatly does this covenant differ, as it is thus manifestly distinct, from that made by the Lord with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob. That covenant was full of promises and blessings alone, the final and full completion of which the Lord took into his own hands, and ratified by his own oath; this had conditions annexed to it, the breach of which, on the part of the children of Israel, would bring on them all the

1 Deut. xxix. 10-25.

2 Joshua xxiv. 22, &c.

curses of the covenant.

The one was made with men of

faith, who were thus accounted righteous before the Lord; the other was made after the tenor of the words of the law, by which no sinful mortal can be justified in his sight. The one gave unreservedly to the seed of Jacob a large and goodly land for an everlasting possession: the other conveyed only a conditional tenure of the land, and pointed, as with the finger of the Lord, to the tribes of Israel rooted out of their inheritance, and scattered among all the nations of the earth, while the curses of a broken covenant also rested on their blasted heritage. The first conferred on the seed of Jacob the blessed privilege of being a blessing to all the families of the earth; the other denounced against transgressors the blotting out of their name from under heaven.

If a distinction be not made between one covenant, resting securely on the faithfulness of God, and another suspended tremblingly on the obedience of man, it is not to be wondered at that doubts should be cast by thousands on the restoration of Israel, and the fulfilment of the promises of God to the fathers. But if things that so essentially differ be distinguished, and the one covenant be not confounded with the other, that concerning which God lifted up his hand to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, will be seen to stand entire as at the beginning in all its indiminishable force, and to shine. forth as a lamp lighted from heaven, in all its bright unalterable truth, even as the other has been confirmed in the desolation of Judea, and the dispersion of the Jews to this day. If the first had been like unto the second, with such conditions and "curses" annexed to it, the signs of its confirmation might have been, not a smoking furnace, but a consuming fire; not a burning lamp, but a flickering gleam.

If the Israelites had been stedfast in the covenant