or unprepared, that, as the minister of Christ, I have faithfully uttered them. Would that these truths might awaken you to attend to the things which belong to your everlasting peace before they are "forever hidden from your eyes." They are words of solemn import, and I would leave with you the truth they express in the infinitely more solemn and impressive language of Scripture: "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ?" "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." "I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him." "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."

My brethren, I entreat you to give heed to these solemn words, as to the voice of God Himself. He calls unto you now to turn unto Him and live. Christ pleads with you by His most precious blood. The Holy Spirit would draw you from the path which leadeth unto death, to the way of peace and eternal joy. "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

XXIV.

THE BURNING BUSH.

"The angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." - EXODUS iii. 2.

UNDER this extraordinary appearance, God first communicated to Moses his great commission, as ruler and leader of Israel. We know not that he received any intimation of the exalted destiny which awaited him, until he arrived at fourscore years. But the hand of God, preparing him for the future by the discipline of events, may be traced in the preceding steps of his life. Saved in infancy from a cruel death, he was exalted, by a most wonderful concurrence of events, from the condition of bondage under which he was born, to be the companion of princes. By circumstances not less extraordinary, while he was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt, and surrounded by the influences of Paganism under its most imposing forms, he was also instructed in the knowledge of the true God, and of His covenant with the chosen people. His life divides itself into three periods, each embracing forty years, all distinct, passed under entirely different and peculiar circumstances.

The first, amidst the court of Pharaoh, its splendor, its learning, its luxury, and its sin.

The second, in retirement, amidst the solitudes of Midian, the grandeur of a court exchanged for the lowliness of a shepherd. In the simple pursuits of pastoral life, he undergoes another kind of discipline. These forty years of calm retirement, of meditation, and communion with God, trivial as the daily incidents of life might seem to such a man, were full of preparation for the future.

And now commences a third period, that of intense action, in which, divinely directed, with commanding energy and power, he occupies a sphere of greatness surpassed by none ever filled by man. This period opens with the scene described in the text. While engaged in his usual employment, near Mount Horeb, his attention was suddenly arrested by the extraordinary spectacle of a bush burning with fire and yet not consumed. "And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush." Then he received his commission, to deliver the people from bondage, and to lead them to the promised land.

The burning bush was a striking emblem, by which not only the attention of Moses was arrested, but a great moral truth was also communicated. Under emblematic forms God often conveyed instruction to His ancient people, and the

same mode is not entirely discarded under the new dispensation. Upon the meaning of this emblem of the burning bush I design to fix your attention at the present time.

1. There can be no doubt that it was intended, first, to represent to the leader of Israel the condition of the people, and its design. Four centuries had passed since the promise made to Abraham, that he should inherit the Land of Canaan; and for two centuries the people had been dwelling among strangers, and for several generations under the most galling oppression. They were exposed to the fiercest persecution, the object of which was to diminish their num bers and destroy their spirit. As a nation they had become degraded, under the power of this hard servitude. Over this condition of his brethren Moses had mourned before he fled from Egypt. And perhaps he had yielded to distrust of the promise of deliverance. He may have become hopeless in view of the immense difficulties in the way of their restoration. As in the wilderness he brooded over the calamities of his countrymen, he may have allowed his mind to sink into despair of seeing the day when the arm of the Almighty should be stretched out for their deliverance. The ways of God in regard to them were dark, and when all the greatness of the promise rose before him, and his imagination pictured the glory of that land which the children of Abraham were to cover with a teeming population, the

present reality pressed upon his view, and a dark do d again overshadowed the prospect. A nation of slaves, abject through king and grinding oppression, gave little apparent ground for hope of realizing such a vision. The scene now witnessed by him was designed to remove his fears, and reanimate his hopes.

The bush, burning, but not consumed, was an emblem of the condition of the people and of their history. All the fiery persecution by which they were tried had failed and would fail of its design. The God of their fathers was still with them, checking the fury of the adversary; as with the three children, at a later day in their history, when cast into the fiery furnace, there stood one like unto the Son of God, who quenched the flames around them. So by the secret power of God the nation was preserved amidst the afflictions of Egypt, and he, their future leader, was taught to trust in the promises of God. The day of fulfilment was approaching, and before his own death, in forty years more, the people were to enter the land of promise. "And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows: and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land, and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring