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and God's covenant with him, to the Exodus from Egypt under Moses and the giving of the Law, occupied according to the received chronology, for which we have the authority of the Apostle Paul, a period of four hundred and thirty years. The greater part of the Book of Genesis, and a considerable portion of the Book of Exodus, are devoted to it; and it is a subject of continual allusion and explanation throughout the Scriptures. The distinct accounts we have of Melchizedeck, who was cotemporary with Abraham, of Jethro, who was cotemporary with the earlier ministry of Moses,3 and of Balaam, who witnessed almost its close ;* give us clear intimations of the existing state of divine knowledge, and of human affairs; and these are confirmed by multitudes of allusions and incidents found in the sacred narrative-and rendered certain by the Book of Job, who was, it is probable, earlier than Moses and later than Abraham. The call of Abraham, was in effect the rejection of the whole race besides; and the tendency of the whole race, as such, has been continual and decisive against God. The sacrament of circumcision given to Abraham, created for the first time a precise, visible separation between those in covenant with God, and all beside; and the sacrament of the passover, whose institution signalized the close of this dispensation, as circumcision did its commencement, made this separation still more complete, by exhibiting still more clearly, the ground, the nature, and the object of it. These sacraments entered in a fundamental manner, into the next succeeding dispensation; and passing under new forms, by the ordination of Christ himself, into the bosom of the Gospel Church, they still survive as signs and seals of the Covenant of Redemption. The covenant which God made with Abraham, to whom he appeared seven or eight times, was manifold in its aspect. It was a covenant personally between God and the patriarch, embracing himself and all his posterity, and stipulating for great blessings temporal and spiritual to him and to them. It was a Covenant between God and Abraham, embracing after a peculiar manner, his descendants through Isaac, which embraced all the Jewish people, and the land of Canaan as their inheritance. It was a covenant between God and Abraham, wherein the patriarch was accepted as the father of all believers, and all of them received. 3 Ex., xviii.

1 Gal., iii. 17.

4 Num., xxii.-xxiv.

VOL. II.

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5 Gen. xii.-xxiii.

Gen., xiv.; Heb., vii.

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unspeakable promises in him. And above all, it was a covenant between God and Abraham wherein the patriarch was accepted. as the representative of humanity itself; and as such received promises for all the kindreds of the earth, and above all promises, that of the Saviour of the world, as his seed.' In all these aspects, this amazing covenant has accomplished its stipulations through all succeeding time. In the promised line of the family of Abraham, the visible church of God became immediately.conspicuous. In the form of a great people it came in contact with all the great world-powers developing themselves in the postdiluvian world, according to the purpose of God revealed to Noah. And their deliverance from Egypt, their abode in the wilderness, and their triumphant settlement in the promised land-all miraculous and all typical of things far greater than themselves; were made the occasion and the means of organizing that theocratic commonwealth of the Jews, which constituted so remarkable an epoch in the Economy of Grace.

7. The institutions of Moses, established about twenty-five centuries after the creation, continued with divine authority for about fifteen centuries. They are capable of being considered in a threefold point of view; once in their purely civil aspect— once as a system of actual religion and positive morality—and once as a typical system involving and exhibiting more or less distinctly, a spiritual system far higher than itself. These three elements are, indeed, combined in the most intimate manner for the system they jointly composed was to be practically administered over the most enlightened nation in the world, as at once their only temporal government, and their only way of eternal salvation. Still, from the point of view we occupy, it is not difficult to separate these elements. We readily understand that as a system of positive religion and morality, these institutions would combine and would exhibit, all that God had made known until then of the way of salvation; and that they would be fitted to receive and to preserve all immediate and all further communications of his grace. Thus we find them grounded upon the Moral Law, which God had written on the heart of man when he created him, and which he now wrote on tables of stone we find the revelation of divine grace, of a Saviour from sin, and of life through him, the burden of the entire system; and we find

1 Rom., iv. passim; Gal., iii. passim; Rom., ix. passim.

the sum of all the past history of Redemption reduced to a written form, and the continuance and perpetuity of that sacred record made one of the chief distinctions of a dispensation, attested by so many and such stupendous miracles, and replenished with such fulness of divine inspiration. Omitting the Book of Job which is probably a monument of the Abrahamic dispensation, the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures belong to this era. In like manner, we easily perceive, that all that was purely typical in the institutions of Moses, was exhausted and cancelled when that became actual which it only signified; and we perceive as well, that institutions replenished with such types of better things to come, bear in their own bosom at once the proof and the cause of their own weakness and decay. Touching the Mosaic institutions considered as a purely civil polity, my impression is that men have never adequately conceived either their nature or their design. Civil institutions higher than the household, had no existence amongst men, and no revealed authority from God, before the flood. The purpose of God to organize society, and to organize his own kingdom in the world, both more completely than before-was first made known to Noah and to Abraham; and both parts of the purpose in its earliest development, were exhibited in this theocratical commonwealth. There are interests of mankind absolutely temporal, and there are evils to which man is unavoidably subject in a state of sin: the former inseparably incident to his mortal existence, the latter to his mortal existence as a sinner. What seems to me to be taught by the civil institutions of the Jewish people, and that upon the authority of God himself-is the great principles and truths which underlie the most successful treatment of all such interests, and all such evils. Human civilization, human progress, human liberty and security; property in its own nature, use, and liability; rights and duties of the citizen, whether public, social, or personal; misdemeanours, crimes, and punishments; the great problems which connect themselves with national independence, and with the public force, and general prosperity; those vast and intricate questions connected with trade, money, pauperism, and servitude. These are the topics to which Moses addressed himself: and while I am obliged to admit that no competent annotator known to me, has expounded his wonderful conceptions; I do not hesitate to assert that what

he has taught, seems to me to be replenished with divine wisdom.

8. This Jewish state preceded the existence of all those universal world-powers which the post-diluvian principle of human society developed. In its career it came in contact with all four of them, and perished finally under the blows of the last and greatest of them all-after Messiah had come, and been crucified. Daniel, its great apocaliptic Prophet, in his captivity at Babylon under the first of them, revealed the career and fate of them all, and especially of the first three and John, the great apocaliptic Prophet of the Christian dispensation, in his captivity at Patmos under the last of them, took up the sublime vision where Daniel left it, and made it complete. Nothing is so astonishing as the catastrophe of the Jewish state, the Jewish institutions, and the Jewish people. The Messiah, in whose name the theocratic commonwealth had been founded and always administered, to whom every thing tended, and of whom every thing was full, came at last, only to be rejected and set at nought. They said, Let his blood be upon us, and upon our children! Fearful words-fearfully accomplished! Their divine commonwealth utterly subverted-their divine institutions supplanted by the still more glorious institutions of the Saviour, whom they caused to be crucified-and themselves, the seed of Abraham, the children of the covenant, and the chosen people of God, wanderers for eighteen centuries, the wonder and the opprobrium of mankind. Solemn and true are those words-The wild dove has her nest, and the fox has his cave; mankind have their country; what has Israel but the grave?

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9. The Word was made flesh, says the Apostle John, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. This is the great parable which, from the beginning of time, has been on the lips of all the redeemed: the Word made flesh-grace and truth-the glory of the only begotten of the Father! This is the significance of the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the ascension, the second coming of the Lord. This is the meaning of that great day of Pentecost-this is the sum of our Christian Revelation-this explains the Gospel Church throughout its whole career-this is the intent of this dispensation of the Holy

1 John, i. 14.

Ghost with power. The glory of the only begotten of the Father-grace and truth-the Word made flesh! This is the cry with which the tribes and kindreds of mankind rise from the dust and look abroad upon the day, and return to the brightness of Zion and the glory of her rising. This is the burden of the hymn of every soldier of the cross, whether it be a hymn of victory, or of martyrdom, on earth-or of hosannah in the highest, in the realms of light. This, therefore, is our posture this day: the Gospel Church-the dispensation of the Holy Ghost-the great parable of the Word made flesh-grace and truth-the glory of the only begotten of the Father!

10. If it can be thought sufficient, after all that has been said, to pass over, with a brief general statement, the glorious epoch of the personal ministry of Christ, and that of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the founding of the Gospel Church, and its progress until now: it could hardly be excused, in this connection, and considering how much it may be needful to say hereafter, to enter particularly upon those great dispensations. which are still future. It is not indeed the particular object of this Treatise, to trace the career of the Church of God; but to exhibit the truth of God, in its simplicity and power, subjectively in its effectual working upon and in the soul of man, and the effects which necessarily result therefrom. To a certain extent, as has been shown, the whole preceding Economy of Redemption is involved in the just appreciation of what is now actual, and of its effects: to a certain extent, all its future Economy is involved in like manner-but is involved more generally, and more distinctly as a consequence than a cause of our union with Christ-as results rather than means of salvation. The future of that great Economy, therefore, except as it helps to determine our actual position, falls more naturally for its precise consideration, towards the close than towards the commencement of an inquiry into the Knowledge of God Subjectively considered. For the present it may be sufficient, in addition to the general statements already made, to say, that what is actual, or what is past, is not more certain nor more distinct in its great outline, than is all the future of this vast Economy. Nor is that which exists connected with what has gone before more strictly, than what is to come is connected with both. Nay, it never can be made as certain, that when we were enemies, we