hath statutes and judgments so righteous, as all this law which I set before you this day?"* Thirdly-The laws prescribed were imposed on them by a Being who had lavished miracles of mercy and goodness upon them and their fathers, and stood engaged to be a covenant God to their posterity, to the latest generations. "For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the "And it shall be," speaking of the duty and | for? And what nation is there so great, that office of the king who might hereafter be chosen to reign over God's people of Israel, "when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law, and these statutes, to do them: that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the command-other, whether there hath been any such ment, to the right hand or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom; he, and his children in the midst of Israel."* Some of the Rabbins accordingly pretend, that Moses, with his own hand, transcribed thirteen copies of the Deuteronomy, one for each of the twelve tribes, and one to be laid up till the time of electing a king should arrive, to be given him to transcribe for his private and particular use. 4thly. Moses displays, with singular skill and address, the motives suggested from their peculiar circumstances, to make the law of God the object of their veneration, and the rule of their conduct; such as, first-These laws all issue from the love of God as their source, and converge towards it as their centre. Their great aim and end is to engage us to love, with supreme affection, a God who is supremely amiable and excellent. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day."+ thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else besides him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he showed thee his great fire, and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire."t In a word, the laws of God are in themselves just and reasonable, plain and intelligible; accommodated to the nature and faculties of man, and carry their own wisdom and utility engraven on their forehead. "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it! But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Moses, while he thus forcibly inculcates A second motive to obedience is, that the the motives of obedience, motives inspired observance of the laws has a native tendency and pressed by every tender, by every awful to procure and to preserve both public and consideration, finds himself under the unprivate felicity; to make them respectable pleasant necessity of venting his heart in the in the eyes of the nations, and thereby to keenest reproaches of that highly-favoured ensure their tranquillity. "Behold I have but rebellious nation, for their perverseness taught you," says he, "statutes and judg-and ingratitude; he deplores in the bitterness ments, even as the Lord my God commanded of his soul, the instability and transitoriness me, that ye should do so, in the land whither of their good motions and purposes, their faye go to possess it. Keep therefore, and do tal proneness to revolt, the inconceivable rathem, for this is your wisdom and your un-pidity of their vibrations from virtue to vice. derstanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him Deut. x. 12-15. Deut. xvii. 18-20. That exquisitely beautiful and pathetic song with which he closes his tender expostulation, and which contains a striking abridgment of this whole address, consists in a great measure of just and severe, yet affectionate upbraidings and remonstrances upon their Deut. iv. 5-8. †Deut. iv. 22-36. | Deut. xxx. 11-14 past conduct. "They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children; they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy Father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?"* their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink-offerings? Let them rise up, and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I ever. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain, and of the captives from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy."* But the time to favour revolted, returning Israel shall come at length; and together with them the time to irradiate and deliver "the nations which were sitting in darkness, and in the region and shadow of death;" and the prophetic soul of Moses hastens forward to conclude the sacred song, with a grand chorus of harmonious voices, the voices of the ransomed of the Lord from every nation, every kindred and tribe, rejoicing together in one common salvation: "Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, to his people."+ Finally, this long, this instructive, this powerful farewell sermon of the man of God, contains predictions clear, pointed, and strong, of the fearful judgments which should over-lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for take that sinful people, and involve them and their posterity in utter destruction. Many learned men, and not without the greatest appearance of reason, have supposed that the spirit of prophecy by the mouth of Moses has foretold the final dissolution of the Jewish government, and their dispersed, reproachful, despised state to this day, until the time of their restoration to the divine favour, and their re-establishment under the bond of the new and everlasting covenant, "a covenant established on better promises, ordered in all things and sure." This idea seems justified by the following and the similar prophetic denunciations. "Of the rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have How powerfully must all this have been provoked me to anger with their vanities: impressed on the hearts of his audience by and I will move them to jealousy with those the sight of their venerable instructer, bendwhich are not a people; I will provoke them ing under the weight of "an hundred and to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is twenty years:" exhausted by labours performkindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the ed in the public service, no longer capable lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with of "going out and coming in;" excluded by her increase, and set on fire the foundations the inflexible decree of Heaven from any of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs up- part or lot in the land of promise; lying under on them, I will spend mine arrows upon the bitter sentence of impending death; his them. They shall be burned with hunger, power and glory departing, and passing beand devoured with burning heat, and with fore his eyes to the hand of another! Why bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth are not impressions of this sort more lasting, of beasts upon them, with the poison of ser- and more efficient? Shall "the righteous pents of the dust. The sword without, and perish, and no man lay it to heart?" Is "the terror within shall destroy both the young merciful man taken away, and will none conman and the virgin, the suckling also, with sider?" "The righteous is taken away from the man of gray hairs. I said I would scat- the evil to come." By his departure the ter them into corners, I would make the re-earth is impoverished, but heaven is enmembrance of them to cease from among riched. Remove the veil, and behold him Inen."† "Is not this laid up in store with me "entering into peace:" "they shall rest and sealed up among my treasures? To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge his people and repent himself for his servants; when he seeth that Deut. xxxii. 5, 6. Deut. xxxii. 18-26. in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness." I hear a voice from heaven, saying, "Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." * Deut. xxxii. 34-42. † Deut. xxxii. 43. Rev. xiv. 13. HISTORY OF MOSES. LECTURE LXXIX. And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong, and of a good courage for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee, he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not, neither be dismayed.-DEU TERONOMY Xxxi. 7, 8. Is it not a presumption and a presentiment of immortality, that men naturally feel, design, and act as if they were immortal? In life we are in the midst of death; but it is equally true, that in the very jaws of death, we live; and fondly dream of living longer. Let the fatal moment come when it will, it comes to break into some scheme we hoped to execute, to interrupt some work we had begun, to disappoint some purpose we had adopted. The warnings of dissolution which are sent to others, we seem to understand and feel better than those which are addressed to ourselves. One man is under sentence of condemnation, another labours under an incurable disease; one is daily exposing his life to jeopardy in the high places of the field, another putting the knife of intemperance to his throat every hour: this man has completed his seventieth year, and his neighbour has lived to see his children's children of the third and fourth generation. These are all symptoms equally mortal, but none takes the alarm to himself: every one is concerned for his neighbour's case, and flatters himself his own is not quite so desperate. The wretch condemned to death, soothes his soul to rest with the hope of a pardon, and laments the certain doom of his consumptive acquaintance: the declining man, with his foot in the grave, pities and prays for the unhappy creature who must suffer on Wednesday se'nnight. The soldier braves the death that is before his eyes in a thousand dreadful forms, in the presumption of victory; and the voluptuary thanks his kinder stars that he is likely to sleep in a sound skin. The man of seventy reckons upon fourscore; and ten years in prospect are a kind of eternity; and the grandsire amuses himself with the hope of seeing his grandchildren settled in the world. Thus the pleasing illusion goes on and men are dead, indeed, before they had any apprehension of dying. The thoughtless and impious insensibility with which many advance to their latter end, is not more mournful and distressing, than the steadiness and composure of piety and habitual preparation are pleasing and instructive. Blessed is the state of that man to whom life is not a burden, nor death a terror, who has "a desire to depart and to be with 2 Y Christ," but is willing "to continue in the flesh," for the glory of God, and the good of men; who neither quits his station and duty in life in sullen discontent, nor cleaves to the enjoyments of this world, as one who has no hope beyond the grave. But the cup of death, to the best of men, contains many bitter ingredients. Even to Moses it was far from being unmixed. To the natural horror of dying was superadded the sense of divine displeasure; a sense of death as a particular punishment. It disappointed a hope long and fondly indulged in, the hope of being himself, and of seeing Israel in possession of the promised and expected inheritance. And, what was the bitterness of death to such a spirit as his? Moses died in the persuasion, and a melancholy one it was, that the people on whom he had bestowed so much labour, whom he had cherished with such tender affection, whom he was so unremittingly anxious to conduct to wisdom, to virtue, and to happiness, would, after his death, swerve from the right path, provoke God to become their enemy, and thereby bring down certain destruction upon their own heads. "I know thy rebellion, and thy stiffneck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you: and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands." It is pleasant to a dying father to entertain the sweet hope that the children of his care, of his love, will remember the lessons which he taught them, will follow out his views, will support the credit of his name, will instruct and bless the world by the example of their wisdom, their piety, their virtues, though he is not to be the happy spectator of it: but ah! more cruel than the pangs of dissolving nature, the dreadful conviction of approach ing folly and disorder: the sad prospect of * Deut. xxxi. 27-29. 30* discord among brethren; of profligacy and licentiousness, no longer restrained by parental gravity and authority: a fair inheritance, and an honourable name ready to be dissipated by profusion, to be covered with shame, to be disfigured by vice, to be forfeited by treason. It is sweet to a dying pastor to contemplate the success of his ministry, the extent of his usefulness; to cheer his fainting heart with the thought of having been made the humble instrument of bringing many souls unto God, many sons unto glory and with the well-grounded belief that his doctrine shall survive him: that though dead he shall continue to speak and to instruct. Sweet the prospect of that day when he shall present himself, and the joyful fruit of all his labours, to his Father and God, saying, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me, are for signs, and for wonders in Israel; from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion."* It was this which caused the great "Author and Finisher of our faith" himself to rejoice in spirit, on the very eve of his departure out of the world. "Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled." But ( how depressing to reflect, "I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nought and in vain ;" to look back upon a ministry, not the "savour of life unto life, but of death unto death," and to look forward to the dreadful progress of degeneracy and corruption, from evil to worse, till "sin, being finished, bringeth forth death;" to look forward to the still more dreadful day of doom and to the prospect of appearing as an accuser and a witness against the despisers of that gospel, which would have saved their souls from death. The faithful servants of God are not all equally successful, and even a Moses has the mortification of knowing assuredly that all his pains and anxieties should prove ineffectual. The tide of corruption sometimes rushes down so impetuously, that no force can stern it; and Providence is often pleased to put honour upon the meaner and feebler instrument, that the glory may redound not "to him that willeth, nor to him that runneth, but to God, who showeth mercy." But every faithful minister, like Moses, has at least this consolation: "having kept nothing back, but declared the whole counsel of God, they have delivered their own souls;" they published the truth of God, "whether men would hear or whether they would forbear;" | and if they have not been so happy as to persuade, they have at least put to silence wicked and unreasonable men; if they have not prevailed to render them holy, they have at least rendered them inexcusable; if they have been unable to subdue the pride of the Isa. viii. 18. † John xvii. 12. * Isa. xlix. 4. creature, they have displayed the holiness and justice of the Creator. We find Moses taking refuge in this, when the dearer, sweeter hope was at an end-the hope of being the favoured, ho noured minister of life and salvation. "I an fast approaching to the end of my career; I have already passed the limits which God has prescribed to the life of man. Six score of years are fled away and gone, and these hairs, whitened by time, labour, and affliction, feelingly inform me that my last moment is at hand, that no more time remains but what is barely sufficient to give you a few parting admonitions, to breathe over you the blessing of a dying friend, and to bid you a long farewell. After a laborious, anxious, and painful ministry of more than forty years; after being honoured of God to perform before your eyes, and those of your fathers, a series of miracles, which shall be the astonishment and instruction of the whole world till time expire, I was looking for the compensation of all my troubles, the reward of all my labours, the accomplishment of all my wishes, in your sincere return to God, in your gratitude to your friend and deliverer, in your fidelity and obedience to God, and in the prosperity and happiness which must infallibly have flowed from them. The paternal solicitude I have felt, that ardent love which emboldened me, at the hazard of my own life, to stand in the breach' between you and a holy and jealous God, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy you;' that fervour of zeal which hurried me on to wish myself blotted out of God's book, if the dearer name of Israel might be permitted to continue written in it; all my discourses, all my emotions, all my efforts; my active days, my sleepless nights; these unceasing sighs which I still breathe to Heaven in your behalf, these last tears which a dying old man sheds over a people still and ever dear to him, and from whom to be torn asunder is the death of deaths; these are the faithful and undoubted proofs of my affection for you, of my unabated, inextinguishable zeal for your salvation. But alas, however earnestly I may desire it, I dare not, cannot hope! I foresce your perfidiousness and rebellion; I know your perverseness and ingratitude. While I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death? What then is left me, but the mingled and strongly allayed satisfaction of reflecting that I am innocent of your blood, that your salvation is in your own hands, that if you perish your blood must be upon your own heads." "Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them." "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."* more than human appears. "And the Lord And the Lord appeared in the tabernacle in "Be Having in terms such as these poured out the anguish of an overflowing heart, Moses addresses himself to his last earthly employ-selves in the tabernacle of the congregation. ment. The last exercise of his authority is to lay down all authority. The concluding act of his administration, is to transfer the right of administratio, to another; and the legislator, leader, and commander expires, while the man yet lives. Imagination can hardly paint a more affecting scene. Hear the trumpet sounding the proclamation of a solemn assembly, an holy convocation. Behold the thousands of Israel flocking together to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation; every eye straining to catch a departing glance of him whom they were to behold no more; every ear eagerly attentive to drink in the last accents of that voice which the hand of death was about to silence for ever. Behold the venerable sage, in all the composure of unaffected piety, in all the dignity of wisdom, in all the respectability of age, in all the simplicity of a child, in all the serenity of a celestial spirit, in all the solemnity of death, advancing to his well-known station, presenting to the This secret conference being ended, they people him whom they were henceforward return to the people, and Moses publicly to acknowledge and obey as the ruler ap- delivers to the Levites, which bare the ark pointed over them by Heaven. His eyes of the covenant of the Lord, a copy of the beam complacency, his tongue drops manna, law which he had transcribed with his own as he conveys to his noble successor the hand, to be laid up in the side of the ark, as plenitude of his power, the residue of his a standing witness for God against a sinful honour, a double portion of his spirit. Be- people; and the business of this interesting hold he lifts up his hands and lays them upon and eventful day concludes with a public the head of Joshua, with a thousand tender recital from the lips of Moses of that tender wishes that his burden might sit light upon and pathetic song, which we have in the him, that he might escape the pains he him-thirty-second chapter. This sacred song of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel. And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song until they were ended." self had endured, and attain the felicity which every Israelite was to commit to memory, to was denied to him; with a thousand pater-repeat frequently, and to teach it every man nal exhortations to follow Providence, and to his son. It was composed expressly by fear nothing; to love Israel, to seek their the command of God, and under his immegood always: with a thousand fervent pray-diate inspiration. "Now therefore write ye ers for his prosperity and success. I see this song for you, and teach it the children Joshua with modest reluctance shrinking back from a charge so weighty: desirous of being still a subject and a servant: accepting with regret honours of which Moses must be stripped; ready to cry out, as his master was taken away from him, "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" I see on every countenance And a most wonderful composition it is, a mixture of sorrow and resignation, of hope whether considered as the production of a clouded with remorse and concern; they lively, lofty, correct imagination; abounding could now die for him, whose life they had with the boldest images, and conveying the embittered by unkindness, levity, and ingra-noblest sentiments; adding all the graces of titude; they reproach themselves and one another, as having occasioned the death of the wisest and best of men; they cannot bear to think of surviving him. But a voice more awful than that of man is heard: a glory † 2 Kings ii. 12. * Deut. xxx. 19. poetry to all the force of truth; as conveying the most useful and necessary moral and re|ligious instruction, in a channel the most pleasing and attractive; as the address of a dying man, a dying father, a dying minister, *Deut. xxxi. 14, 15. Deut. xxxi. 19-22-30. |