ter, in confequence of which they were able to drink it.

In this place it appears that the people halted, and Mofes took this opportunity of exhorting them, and making a kind of covenant with them in the name of God. Exod. xv. 25. There he made for them a ftatute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and Jaid, If thou wilt diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his fight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his flatutes, I will put none of these diseases (or plagues) upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee.

Notwithstanding this relief from the effects of thirst, the people finding a want of provifions (for what they had made in haste for their journey could not laft long) after fifteen days from their leaving Egypt, they again murmured againft Mofes and Aaron, and repented that they had left Egypt. Exod. xvi. 2. And the whole congregation of the children of Ifrael murmured against

Mofes

Mofes and against Aaron in the wilderness ; and the children of Ifrael faid unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we fat by the flesh-pots, and when we did eat bread to the full. For ye have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole affembly with hunger.

This circumftance clearly fhews, that no human provifion had been made for the march of fuch a number of people. The country they had to march through had not been explored, no ftations had been fixed upon, and their provifion entirely failed in a fortnight. How ill, then, must they have been prepared to march through the whole of that immenfe defart which lay between them and the land of Canaan, of which they were going to take poffeffion. Indeed, every circumftance in this remarkable hiftory evidently fhews, that the plan of this deliverance from Egypt was laid not by man, but by God, who, by his own power, with a high hand, as we read, and an outstretched arm, himself executed it in all its parts. No

thing was due to Mofes, or to any other leader, and therefore he justly replied to the people when they murmured, Exod. xvi. 18. What are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord.

In this diftrefs the people were relieved, Exod. xvi. 13, by the falling of a flight of quails, which covered the whole camp, that very evening; and the next morning they found, for the first time, all the country round them covered with a nourishing fubftance which they called manna, with which they were miraculously supplied ever after till they came to the borders of the land of Canaan. Though this manna could not ufually be kept more than one day, it was remarkable, that when none of it fell on the fabbath day, but a double quantity the day before, it might be kept two days. Alfo a pot filled with it, and depofited in the ark, was kept to future generations. Exod. xvi. 33.

Proceeding farther, to Rephidim, the people murmured again for want of water, Exod. xvii. 3, and there God relieved them by a perpetual ftream, which iffued

from a rock, on Mofes ftriking it, by the command of God, with his rod. These difficulties, in which the people found themselves unexpectedly involved, did not lead them to difbelieve the power of God, but only to fear he had deferted them. This place Mofes denominated Meribah, Exod. xvii. 7, because of the chiding of the children of Ifrael, and because they had tempted the Lord, faying, Is the Lord among

us, or not?

After this we have an account of a battle which the people had with the Amalekites in which Joshua commanded, while Mofes only prayed for his fuccefs. From this it is evident that he was no warrior; and as other circumftances fhew that he was not poffeffed of the wisdom and fagacity which are usually ascribed to him; and as he was of a most unambitious difpofition, he appears to have been by no means naturally qualified to undertake the conducting of his countrymen in the hazardous enterprize of leaving Egypt, then inhabited by a powerful people, and difpoffeffing another warlike nation of a country in which they G

had

had strongly fortified themselves. What he did was not from any impulse of his own mind, but by fupernatural direction and affiftance.

The next tranfaction in the hiftory, on which, for its fingular importance, I fhall dwell fome time, took place in the third month after the Ifraelites had left Egypt (Exod. xiii. 1.) at Mount Sinai, where we find fuch evidences of the prefence and power of God as had never been exhibited before, and which, in point of grandeur and magnificence, have never been equalled fince; and the fcene was fo circumftanced, that there could not poffibly have been any deception, or impofition, in the cafe. Hitherto the power of God had been abundantly difplayed in great events. The fucceffive plagues of Egypt, and the paffage through the red fea, had been evidently effected by divine power; and the result had been fuch a deliverance of a completely-enflaved people, from the power of a wife and warlike nation, as no power or policy of their own could have effected, efpecially in fo fhort a time, and in their circumftances.

But