repentance, and the putting away of our sin. Here the Israelites come to Moses, and say, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee." Yes, they had spoken against God and his servants; but "when he slew them, then they sought him;" they confess their sin to Moses, and intreat him to intercede for them. We cannot help thinking here of the prodigal son, who, when he came to himself, returned as a penitent and cried, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants. Here we see how men are compelled by their sufferings to seek the prayers of God's ministers whom they had before neglected and despised, and perhaps reviled and insulted. Misfortunes and sufferings make great changes in men's feelings and conduct, sometimes only for a season, but sometimes with a most happy permanency of effect. Many have fallen again into their old habits and sins, when their afflictions have ceased; but many have begun in their sufferings a regular course of penitence and piety,

from which they have never again departed. And well may such say, "It is good for me that I was afflicted; before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept thy commandments."

Moses was a man of a most patient and forgiving spirit. He at once listened to their cry, forgave them for himself, and prayed to God for them. And God heard his prayer, and appointed a wonderful mode of deliver

ance.

that

III. Let this form the subject of our third head. We read of it thus, "The Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." Here was another miracle. There was nothing in the representation of the creature by which the wound had been inflicted that could possibly tend to effect a cure: but it was God's appointment, in which

he exercised their faith, and tested their obedience, and it proved efficacious to every one who directed his eye to it in faith and hope.

But we know the use which was made of this circumstance by our blessed Lord, and learn the intention with which God adopted this method of cure. It was to shew forth the grace of his gospel, and the mode by which he would save sinners through his Son. Hear what Christ says in the third chapter of John and fourteenth verse," 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 everlasting life."

Now mark how suitably the Old Testament here represents to us the condition of our souls, and the mode of relief which is proposed to us in the gospel. In the earliest part of man's history, Satan is represented to us as the serpent by whom our race was ruined, and who brought us into a state of corruption and sin. Through his conquest in that day, the poison of sin rankles in our

whole constitution; the body and the soul are affected by it; the body is full of disease, and the soul is depraved; the body will die, and the soul will be cast into hell. Not more surely did the bite of the fiery serpents destroy the Israelites, than the old serpent, which is the devil, or Satan, has infected our whole nature with a fatal disease, through which both body and soul will be destroyed in hell, except we apply to that mode of deliverance which God has in mercy proposed to us in the gospel. This is represented to us by the lifting up of the serpent of brass. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so the Son of man was lifted up. Jesus was raised up on high upon the cross, and he is also uplifted on the sound of his gospel, in order that men may look upon him by faith, and be healed of their mortal diseases. From his cross he seems to cry, "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth;" and the explicit declaration of the gospel sets forth, as I have already quoted it, that "whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." This act

of the mind and heart is frequently represented to us by the act of the eye; and in the look of distress, and entreaty, and hope, with which a poor beggar looks to one who he knows can relieve him, we see a picture of that inward emotion of the soul, which the convinced sinner feels when he applies, believing, unto Christ. There can scarcely be a more lively representation, by any outward sign, of that internal application of the soul to Christ, upon which its deliverance from all the sad consequences of the fall depends. And thus we have set before us, by this type of the Old Testament, both the disease and the mode of cure, the evil and its remedy. It presents to us two of the great essential truths of the gospel, the corruption of man's nature through original sin, and his salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In application of this deliverance, let us mark two circumstances connected with it. First we observe that God in his wonderful mercy gave it to them when they had the least reason to expect one. They had just been murmuring against a former mercy, and