and looks forward to Canaan with coldness in punishing is correction and amendment, and distrust. The miraculous stream that not ruin; returning mercy therefore meets followed them from the rock is no water at the first symptoms of repentance, and a reall. and ranna, angel's food, is accounted medy is pointed out the moment that misery light bread. We are too little aware of the is felt; which sweetly discloses to us the sinfulness and folly of discontent, and there- meltings of fatherly affection, outrunning and fore indulge in it without fear or reserve. We preventing filial wretchedness. do not reflect that it is to arraign at once the wisdom and goodness of God: to rob him of the right of judgment, and madly to increase the evil which was too heavy before. In general, the righteous Governor of the world permits this evil affection to punish itself; and can there be a greater punishment, than to leave a sullen, dissatisfied wretch to devour his own spleen? But in the instance before us, he was provoked to superadd to this mental plague, a grievous external chastisement. "And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died." These might be the natural production of the wilderness, but providentially armed for the Occasion with a greater malignancy of poison, or produced in greater abundance, or roused to a higher degree of ferocity. For what are the instruments which God employs to avenge himself of his enemies? He needs not to create a new thing in the earth; the simplest creature can do it. Nature, animate and inanimate, is ready to take up his quarrel; the frost or the fire, continued a little longer, or rendered a little more intense, will soon subdue the proudest of his adversaries. It is not the least of the miracles of divine mercy, that Israel had been preserved so long from the fury of those noxious insects with which the desert swarmed, as Moses justly remarks in recapitulating the history of God's goodness to that people during a forty years' pilgrimage. "Lest thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint."* The rage of these dreadful creatures, which had been during so long a period by a supernatural power suppressed, now freed from that curb, becomes a party too strong for a mighty host, flushed with recent victory. While therefore we adore and admire the goodness which multiplies the necessary and useful part of the vegetable and animal tribes with such astonishing liberality, and limits those which are noxious with such consummate wisdom and irresistible power, let us tremble to think how easily he can remove the barrier which restrains the wrath of the creature, and arm a fly with force sufficient for our destruction. But the intention of God Deut. viii. 14, 15. But what strange method of cure have we here? The poison of a serpent counteracted, and its malignity destroyed, not by an external application, not by the virtue of an antidote possessed of certain natural qualities, but by a blessing annexed to the use of an instrument in itself inadequate, and an action of the patient himself, flowing from his own will, and called forth by the appointment and command of God. The author of that excellent book, entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, has a beautiful reference to this story, when he says, "For when the horrible fierceness of wild beasts came upon these, and they perished with the stings of crooked serpents, thy wrath endured not for ever. But they were troubled for a small season, that they might be admonished, having a sign of salvation, to put them in remembrance of the commandment of thy law. For he that turned towards it, was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by thee, that art the Saviour of all. And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who deliverest from all evil.”* But the grand commentary on the history of the fiery serpents is furnished by Christ himself, in his conversation with Nicodemus, the Jewish ruler. "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."t From this it is evident that many particulars in the Jewish history and political economy, had an interest and importance which extended far beyond the present moment, or the sensible and obvious appearance of things. And in this particular instance our blessed Lord has furnished us with an instructive example, which ought to serve as a rule, for the application and use of figurative, allegorical, and typical subjects. Here he enters into no detail; pursues no parallel or contrast through a multiplicity of particulars; furnishes no wings to the imagination; but fixing on one great, general view of the subject, renders it thereby more powerful and impressive. He was conversing with a ruler of the Jews; was explaining to him the nature and end of his own mission; was deducing the nature and tendency of the gospel dispensation from the established rites of the Mosaic, and the received facts of the Jewish history, with which Nicodemus was perfectly well acquainted. In this case he refers to a noted event, and appeals from it to one Wisdom, ch. xvi. ↑ John iii. 14, 15 which was shortly to take place, betwixt which a striking line of resemblance should be apparent-The elevation of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, for the healing of the Israelites who were perishing by the envemoned stings of the fiery serpents and the elevation of the Son of Man upon the cross, the propitiation for the sins of the world; that when this last display of the divine justice and mercy should be exhibited, Nicodemus, and every intelligent and honest disciple of Moses might be satisfied that "God had at sundry times and in divers manners," presented as in a glass to the fathers, the method of redemption by Jesus Christ. All the application, then, which the words of the Saviour himself warrant us to make of this passage to him, is reduced to a few obvious and striking particulars. "Fools," such as the Israelites in the desert, and transgressors of the divine law in general, "because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions."* The root of the evil, the cause of the plague, is to be found in human perversity and disobedience. The faithful and obedient sleep safe and secure in the lion's den; to the proud and rebellicus the innoxious worm is converted into a fiery serpent, full of deadly poison. The remedy for this sore evil is to be traced up to the divine compassion, power, and goodness. The means of cure are not such as human wisdom would have devised, or the reason of man approved; they are the sovereign appointment of Heaven. The effect is preternatural, yet real: and reason rejoices in what it could not have discovered. The sight of a lifeless serpent of metal, working as an antidote to the mortal poison of one alive; incredible, absurd! Such was the doctrine of the cross in the eyes of prejudice, and philosophy," and science, falsely so called." For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe where is the disputer of this world? hath no God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews, a stumbling block; and unto the Greeks, foolPsalm cvii. 17-20. ishness: but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God."* The virtue flowed from the divine appointment, operating together with the believing act of the patient. To the sufferer who averts his face, or wilfully and contemptuously shuts his eyes, that banner is displayed in vain; no virtue issues from it, he perishes in his unbelief. To the despiser, the impenitent, the careless, Christ has died in vain. In the extension of all God's acts of grace to men, to produce the full effect, there must of necessity be an unity of design and exertion between the giver and the receiver, between him who acts and him who is acted upon. Man's body is "dust of the ground," mere matter, separated from the spirit, incapable of motion or direction. Even that active, penetrating organ, the eye, is but a little lump of pellucid clay, till the vital principle, the breath of God, kindle its fires, and direct its rays. It is this vital principle which, proceeding from God, exists in him, and possesses the power of rising and returning to him. The believing Israelite hears, in dying agonies, the proclamation of deliverance, lifts up his drooping head, looks, and is healed; his will meets the will of God, and the cure is already performed. The perishing sinner hears the voice of the Son of God and lives. Lifted up upon the cross he utters his voice, "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." One of his fellow-sufferers hardens his heart and reviles him, turns from the Saviour with disdain, and dies impenitent-the other hears with rapture the joyful sound, clings to the hope of salvation, prays in faith, and passes with him into paradise. But the circumstance on which Christ chiefly rests, is Moses "lifting up the serpent in the wilderness." Moses probably had not a clear apprehension of the extensive meaning and import of the act he was performing, any more than the dying men who were the subjects of the cure. They looked no farther than the present moment, and for relief from a malady which affected the body. But, like the high priest in later times, they were prophesying, without being conscious of it. He was erecting, and the congregation in the wilderness contemplating an anticipated representation of the great medium of salvation, which God had appointed from the foundation of the world; and had, in a variety of other predictions, circumstantially declared and described, at different periods to mankind. These predictions were slumbering, unnoticed, neglected, misunderstood, even by the wise and prudent, in the sacred volume, a dead letter, till Christ, their quickening spirit, gave them life and motion, and a meaning which they had not before. In the scene that passed in the wilderness, only to the hand which employed it. The zeal we behold the shadow of good things to come, of that pious prince, therefore, is worthy of a prefiguration of the death which Christ commendation, who, in reforming the abuses should die. He is here "evidently set forth of religion, which prevailed at the time that crucified before us," according to his own he mounted the throne of Judah, abolished words, descriptive of " the decease which he this among the rest. Regardless of the purshould accomplish at Jerusalem." "And I, pose for which it was at first framed; of the if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all venerable hand which formed and reared it, men unto me."* and of the lapse of so many years which had stamped respect upon it, "he brake in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it, and he called it Nehushtan,"* by way of contempt-a piece of brass. This same idea, we have just observed, had been suggested by the evangelical prophet Isaiah, and a similar expression is put into the Saviour's mouth by that harbinger of the Prince of Peace. "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." And in another place, speaking of gospel times, "At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel."+ Thus was Moses, by what he did, and Isaiah, by what he wrote, pointing out to the world one and the same great object, Christ Jesus, "the end of the law for righteousness;" the substance of the types; the accomplishment of prophecy and promise; the bruiser of the serpent's head; the restorer of defaced, defiled, degraded humanity. And thus we are taught to regard with peculiar respect, an event which Providence has, in so many different ways, rendered illustriously conspicuous; the death of Christ on the accursed tree. We shall have exhibited to you all that Moses and the prophets, all that the historian and the evangelist have suggested, on the subject of the brazen serpent, when we have led your attention to the impious and idolatrous use made of it in after times. That this illustrious instrument of Israel's deliverance in the wilderness, should be carefully preserved, as a monument of the divine power and goodness, and by length of time acquire venerability and respect among the other valuable memorials of antiquity, is not to be wondered at. But every thing may be perverted; and a corrupt disposition has ever manifested itself in man, to exalt into the place of God, something that is not God. Accordingly we find, about eight centuries from its original fabrication, even in the days of Hezekiah, the brazen serpent exalted to divine honours, and a besotted people rendering that homage to the mean, which was due † Isa. xvii. 7. John xii. 32. On this part of the history of Moses, pagan antiquity has founded the fabulous history of Esculapius, the pretended god of medicine, whose symbol was a serpent twisted round a rod. The learned have, through a variety of particulars, traced the derivation of the fable from the fact; but to repeat them, would rather minister to curiosity than to instruction and improvement. We dismiss the subject, then, with this general remark, that in more respects than is commonly apprehended, and than it has had the candour to acknowledge, is pagan literature indebted to the sacred volume; that the wisdom of Egypt, of Babylon, of Greece, and of Rome is traceable up to this source; that Moses is, of course, to be considered as the father of profane, as of sacred learning, from whom all subsequent historians, legislators, orators, and poets have derived the lights which directed them in their several pursuits; that to the pure source of all wisdom, the revelation from heaven, in a word, the world is indebted for the first principles of science, morality, and religion; which appear to the attentive and discerning eye through the mist in which credulous ignorance or bold fiction have involved them. Let us hence be encouraged to revere the scriptures, to search and compare them; to derive our opinions of religious subjects from that sacred source, instead of forcing the truth of God into an awkward supporter of our preconceived opinions. Above all, let it be our concern to regulate our conduct by the laws which scripture has laid down, and to comfort our hearts by the hope it inspires, and the prospects which it has unfolded. Amen. * 2 Kings xviii. 4. HISTORY OF MOSES. LECTURE LXXIV. And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel. And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered. For ye rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify nie at the water before their eyes. That is the water of Meribah in Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin.-NUMBERS XXVII. 12-14. THERE is something peculiarly interesting in hearing a plain, honest, intelligent man, without vanity, or self-sufficiency, or of affected humility, talking of himself; going into the detail of his own history, with the same fidelity and simplicity as if it were the history of a stranger; unfolding his heart without reserve, disclosing his faults and infirmities without palliation, recording his wise and virtuous actions without ostentation; and relating events, with all their little circumstances, according to the feelings which they excited at the moment. It is pleasant to see an old man, with his faculties unimpaired, his spirits cheerful, his temper sweet, his conscience clear, his prospects bright; enjoying life without fearing death; blending the modesty and benevolence of youth with the wisdom and dignity of age. There is a double satisfaction in hearing such a one describe persons whom he knew, scenes in which he acted, expeditions which he conducted, schemes which he planned and executed. at the distance of thirty-eight years, the whole difference is no more than one thousand eight hundred and twenty men: for at the former period, the number of men of a military age was six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty; and at the latter, six hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty. But though the strength of the host was nearly the same, the individuals whereof it was composed were totally changed; two names alone of so many myriads stood upon both lists, Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun, for Moses himself was under sentence of condemnation; he was not to be permitted to pass over Jordan; he is already numbered with the dead. The course of nature, it is true, is continually producing a similar effect on the human race, upon the whole; but there is a degree of exactness in this instance, not to be accounted for on common principles, and which must be resolved into a special interposition of Providence, which had pronounced the And such a one was Moses, who having, doom of death on the whole body of offenders, by divine inspiration made the ages and ge- in the moment of transgression, and at the nerations before the flood to pass in review, same instant, promised the reward of fidelity and unfolded the history of redemption, in its and obedience to those illustrious two: lonconnexion with the system of nature and the gevity, and the possession of Canaan. Vain ways of Providence, during a period of two therefore is the hope of so much as one guilty thousand five hundred years; having admit-person escaping in a crowd, groundless the ted us to his familiarity and friendly instruction during an eventful life of one hundred and twenty years, is now, with the same calmness and ease, admitting us to contemplate his behaviour in the immediate prospect, and up to the very hour of his death. The idolatrous defection of Israel in the plains of Moab, had been visited with a plague which swept away twenty-four thousand of them. Immediately on the staying of that terrible calamity, Moses is commanded, with the assistance of Eleazer the high priest, to take the number of the people, from twenty years old and upwards, and to compare the muster-roll of the day, with that taken in the wilderness of Sinai, thirty-eight years before. This being done with all possible accuracy, two most singular facts turn up, each singular, considered separately and by itself, and both most singular, taken in connexion one with another. In a multitude so great, and fear of singular goodness suffering in the midst of many wicked. It is related of Xerxes, king of Persia, much to the honour of his humanity, that surveying from an eminence the vast army with which he was advancing to the invasion of Greece, he burst into tears to think that in less than one hundred years they should all be cut off from the land of the living. What then, O Moses, were the emotions of thy soul, to see the event which Xerxes but anticipated, realized before thine eyes? To walk through the ranks of Israel without meeting one man who followed thee out of Egypt, with whom thou couldst mingle the tears of sympathy over so many fallen, or remind of the joy and wonder of that great deliverance? Is not that man already dead, who has survived all his contemporaries? A consideration, among many others, powerfully calculated to reconcile the mind to the thoughts of dissolution, and to impress on the soul the sentiment of the wise man concerning the world, "I hate it, I would not live always." God, thou hast begun to show thy servant thy greatness and thy mighty hand; for what god is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy night? I pray thee let me go over and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon.”* At another time, he seems quietly to give up the cause as lost, and patiently prepares to meet his fate, and meekly resigns himself to the will of the Most High, which he was unable to alter. In a word, we see him at once the man and the believer, and a pattern well worthy of imitation in both respects. Long life, however, is not the less to be considered as a blessing. The love of it is a constitutional law of our nature; and the promise of it is annexed to the sanctions of the written law, as a motive to obedience: "Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," and it is here bestowed as a reward on the faithful. Premature death, in like manner, is an object of natural horror, is threatened in anger, and It is impossible to observe the conflict of inflicted as a punishment. "The wicked Moses's soul, when this cup of trembling was shall not live half his days, and his memory put into his hands, without thinking of the shall rot." In general, a wise and merciful bitter agony in the garden, of the travail of God hides from the eyes of men the era of the Redeemer's soul, of that passionate adtheir departure out of the world. The bi dress, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup terness of death consists in the foretaste, pass from me"-of "sweat like great drops and the forerunners of that great enemy. of blood falling down to the ground,"t-of That bitterness, in its full proportion, was the triumph of resignation, "nevertheless, wrung out, and mingled in the cup of Moses. not my will, but thine be done"-of "humiThe death of every Israelite was a death-liation to death, the death of the cross." warning to him. He had lately ascended Thus it "behoved him to fulfil all righteousmount Hor with Aaron his brother, stripped ness." Thus he taught men to obey the law him of his garments, closed his eyes to his of God, to use all lawful endeavours to prelast long sleep, and descended without him; serve life; and thus he inculcated submission and mount Hor is only a few steps distant to that sovereign will which it is unprofitafrom mount Abarim, and his own summons ble and impious to resist. comes at length. He is respited, not pardoned, and a reprieve of forty years is now expired. It is in that awful, trying hour, we are at this time to trace the character and mark the behaviour of the man of God. "Get thee up," said God to Moses, "into this mount Abarim, and see the land which J have given unto the children of Israel;" and this is all that the law can do for the guilty; it conducts to an adjoining eminence, it spreads a distant prospect of Canaan, it can display its beauty and fertility, it can inspire the desire of possession: but it cannot divide Jordan, it cannot lead to victory over the last enemy, it cannot make "the comer thereunto perfect," nor establish the soul in everlasting rest. Neither Moses, the giver of the law, nor Aaron, the high priest, under the law, could "continue by reason of death." But the Apostle and High Priest of our profession is "entered into the holiest of all," has opened a passage through the gates of death, to life and immortality; lifted up, first upon the cross, and then to his throne in the heavens, he is drawing all men unto him. From the moment he fell under the divine displeasure which shortened the date of his life, we observe it lying with an oppressive weight upon his mind. The love of life manifests itself, and we behold, in the prophet, the man of like passions with ourselves. There is no incident of his life on which he dwells so much, and with such earnestness of interest as this. The history of his offence is again and again repeated, not in the view of extenuating the guilt of it, but to vindicate the righteous judgment of God. The excellence of this part of his narrative, is its departing from the direct line of narration. He hastens forward to bring it early into view; he returns again upon his footsteps, and pre-tachment to life, which characterizes the sents it a second time to view. Is he reminding Israel of their rebellion and disobedience? his own transgression, and the punishment of it, arise and stare him in the face. Is he encouraging them in their progress towards the promised land? he sighs to think that he himself shall never enter into it. At one time, he flatters himself with the hope that justice might perhaps relent, and presumes to expostulate and entreat, in terms earnest and pathetic, such as these; "O Lord Exod. xx. 12. 66 Together with the honest, though fond at man, and the pious resignation which marks the child of God, Moses discovers, on this occasion, that excellent spirit which sinks and loses the individual in the public. He cheerfully gives up his personal suit, and the cause of Israel henceforth engrosses him wholly. "And Moses spake unto the Lord, saying, Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and which * Deut. iii. 24, 25. ↑ Luke xxii. 49-44 Lev. xvii. 12, 13 |