the....., ..... 1. Things to come: four short and simple Tracts on elementary points relating to the doctrine of the Premillennial Coming of the Saviour. By the Rev. John Cox, and 2. The Believer's position and prospects; or, Thoughts on Union to Christ. By the same. (London: Ward & Co., Paternoster Row; Nisbet & Co., Berners Street.) The first of these pamphlets deals with the following questions :-"Is the Second Coming of Christ before or after the Millennium? What is the scripture principle of prophetic interpretation? What is the design of the Second Advent of the Saviour? Will Israel be restored to the land of their fathers ?" There is little in it, but what there is is plain. The subject of the second-Union to Christ, and the oneness of the Church with Him-is not properly understood by the author, any more than by "the vigorous writers of the nonconformist school," to whom he refers. The reason is clear. The scriptural truth of "the body" cannot be intelligently discerned, where the various operations of the Spirit are confounded, and His peculiar presence since Pentecost is ignored. The Springing Well and the Flowing Brook; or, Choice Sayings and Wallinger, minister of the gospel, Bath. (London: W. H. Collingridge, &c.) Huntingdon, Toplady, Watson, Romaine, &c., are the "masters" in Mr. W.'s eyes. It will be inferred that the statements are always strong, and often true; and that what truth there is, chiefly proves to be a lesson in the school of "experience." The woman quickly left the room...... She very soon returned with a New Testament in her hand, of the same version and size as the one out of which the colporteur had been reading; but, as she had said, the book was not complete, many pages having been torn out of it. The colporteur. opened it, when his eyes fell on the following lines, written in very large letters, Received at despised at first, and badly used, but afterwards read, believed, and made the instrument of my salvation. I. L... fusileer of the 4th company of the regiment of the line.' "At the sight of this inscription the colporteur put his hand to his forehead, like a man who wanted to bring to remembrance some fact which had occurred. Light very soon broke in upon him . . . . . . and brought before his eyes the young mocker, from whom he separated, while telling him of the terrible judgments to which he was exposing himself. The fervent prayer which he had offered up in his behalf, then also came to his recollection.. and he lifted up his heart in praise to God. "The particulars which the mother subsequently gave about her son proved, beyond all manner of doubt, that he had departed in peace..... From the sad condition of the New Testa-Savoury Meat, by Masters in Israel. With a preface by J. A. ment shown to the colporteur, it could be seen that the young soldier had at first made use of the book to light his pipe, as he had openly avowed... ... But this impious work of destruction was at length stopped, and the owner of the book had himself related to his mother that this took place on the evening before a battle in which his regiment was ordered to occupy the perilous post of the advance guard. At this critical moment serious thoughts came into his mind in a very strange manner, and the words of the man whom he had tricked out of the book came to his recollection like a thunder-clap-It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!' 'And if I should to-morrow fall into His hands!' exclaimed he, in an agony of mind. This thought haunted him during the whole of the night, and, ... as soon as ever it became light in the morning, he took from The lectures of this new Museum were opened on the evening his knapsack the book whose terrible voice did not leave him a of January 8th, by the well known Oriental explorer. On the moment's repose. What was his astonishment, when, instead of platform were a model of Nebuchadnezzar's temple, and a slab the threats which he expected to read in the pages which still re-inscribed with cuneiform characters. The subject was--" Recent mained, he read appeals such as the following:-God sent not Oriental discoveries in relation to the Bible." Sir H. Rawlinson his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world began by urging the great value of the visible and tangible through Him might be saved.' (John iii, 17.) . . . . . By grace illustrations of scripture history, which recent researches had are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the brought to light. gift of God' (Eph. ii, 8 :) 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' (Matt. xi, 28.) "This last passage deeply affected him. He turned it over and over in his mind, until at the sounding of the morning drum, he had to. march away to meet the enemy. The struggle did not last long, but it was of the most sanguinary description. At its close, our young soldier was among the number of those who lay scattered over the field of battle. A frightful wound placed him for several weeks on the very borders of the grave; but these were weeks which were blessed for the good of his soul... ..... ..... But while the health of his soul visibly improved, it was otherwise with his bodily health. . . . . . After having been removed from hospital to hospital in a foreign land, there was a respite, in his sufferings, which admitted of his returning to his parental roof. It was there, more especially, during the six weeks which he was still permitted to spend on earth, that he glorified Him who had caused him to pass from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.' His mutilated Testament was ever in his hand, and he sought to persuade his own mother, as well as every one who came near him, that one thing alone was needful, namely, to accept Jesus Christ as a Saviour. As long as his voice could be heard, he exhorted..... and besought all those whom he loved, . not to run the risk of falling in an unconverted state into the hands of the living God; and when his soul was about to quit its earthly tabernacle, it might, from the expression of happiness and delight which was on his countenance, have been said that, like St. Stephen,. . . . . . ' he saw the heavens opened, and the glory of God, and Jesus Christ standing on the right hand of God.' (Acts vii, 55, 56.)—(pp. 240–245.) There are statements to which one might justly take exception, but the interest of the volume is unquestionable. Notes of the Month. THE SCRIPTURAL MUSEUM-INAUGURAL LECTURE BY SIR H. RAWLINSON. For 2,000 years the Bible had rested chiefly on internal evidence, and that evidence was, indeed, sufficient for all earnest and truth-seeking people. But there were others who would not be at the pains to examine internal evidence, and to them these extraneous corroborations of Biblical statements might speak powerfully. The cuneiform inscriptions, the key to deciphering which had only been discovered within the last twenty years, had brought to light a great variety of Assyrian and Babylonian historic records, running contemporaneously with scripture narrative, and affording innumerable points of contact, and wherever such contact occurred, there was always found to be a coincidence between the two, showing incontestably the genuineness and authenticity of scripture. Coming to details, he adduced proofs of correspondence between the statements of the inspired volume and the deductions from monumental inscriptions in several leading particulars, under the heads of ethnology, mythology, geography, and history. The earliest period to which the inscriptions on the cylinders and tablets he had found positively referred, was about 2,000 years before Christ, though there were some indications of the time before the Flood. Thus, Babylonia, to which the early portion of scripture history refers, was called the country of the four rivers, and those rivers he believed to signify the Tigris and the Euphrates, with their two principal branches. The whole country of Assyria had been excavated in the course of his researches, and cylinders, tablets, and prisms had been extracted from the ruins of the ancient temples, filled with inscriptions, which had now been deciphered, and, in many instances, they served not only to verify scripture, but to throw light upon and explain passages which had hitherto been obscure. It appeared from these inscriptions, that, in the earliest time, a colony had been led by Nimrod from Egypt into Mesopotamia. [?] Nimrod was a Cushite, and belonged to the family of Ham. He was afterwards worshipped as a divinity, by the name of Nergal, (2 Kings xvii, 30,) whose attributes were equivalent to those of Mars. The inscriptions enabled Sir H. to explain the meaning of many names of early scripture history, all of which were significant. Thus, Shem, Ham, and Japheth signified the parts of the country they inhabited. The meaning of Ham was the right hand, indicating that he lived in Arabia; Shem signified the left, or Assyria; and Japheth was the intermediate country. The names of Europe and Asia are purely Babylonian, meaning the setting and the rising of the sun, which names were afterwards adopted by the Greeks. The name Shinar was really a Hammite name of the country; and after the people of Nimrod had been driven into the mountains they took the name of Shinar with them. Sir H. said that the descendants of Ham were in the habit of counting by sixties. They divided day and night into sixty hours instead of twenty-four hours.... It is a remarkable fact, he observed, that the Indians also reckoned by sixties, which indicated a connexion between the Chaldees and Indians of which there are no records. The inscriptions throw light on the meaning of the names of the gods of Babylon, and show by the functions assigned to their gods their representatives in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. The names of the gods sometimes signified sentences, of which the first syllable was the name, the second was the verb, and the third the object. The inscriptions, he said, present a complete tableau of ancient Assyria, by which the name and situation of every town of note mentioned in the Bible can be identified. Sir Henry addressed himself specially to the historical coincidences extending over a period of 2,000 years. He had found the record of a king corresponding with the Chedorlaomer of Gen. xiv, 1,900 years. B.C., and who was described by the epithet "the ravager of Syria." For about 1,000 years after this there was no point of contact between profane and sacred history, but this Sir Henry accounted for from the circumstance that, during that period, there was no inducement for intercourse between the Assyrians and the Jews. The circumstances disclosed relating to the mode of government of Northern Arabia verified the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, for it appeared that that country was ruled by queens, and not by kings. One of the most interesting periods in relation to which coincidences had been discovered related to that of Sennacherib and Hezekiah. The explorations had brought to light the annals of Sennacherib, written by himself, or by his direction, occupying 800 lines, and the account they gave of his first campaign, when he was pacified by a tribute, corresponded in the most striking manner with 2 Kings xviii. To illustrate this Sir Henry read passages from the chapter, and then from the annals, showing minute correspondences in the names of places, especially Lachish, the amount of tribute received from the Jewish king, "three hundred talents of silver and thirty pieces of gold" (ver 14,) and so forth. It appeared from this inscription, however, that upwards of 200,000 Jews were taken into captivity by Sennacherib after that first campaign, and Sir Henry Rawlinson expressed the opinion that there were four distinct captivities of the Jews. There occurs in Sennacherib's account of his wars with Hezekiah the remarkable passage, "Then I prayed to God," which is the only instance in the whole of the inscriptions in which the Deity is mentioned without some heathen adjunct. One of the latest excavations brought to light inscriptions referring to the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It was made in the ruins of the Tower of Nimrod, which was supposed by some to be the Tower of Babel. These cylinders, besides other interesting records, threw light on a point regarding Belshazzar which had hitherto appeared obscure, for no such name occurs in any ancient history but that of the Bible. It appeared, however, that Belshazzar was joint king with his father Minus, and that he shut himself in Babylon, whilst the other king, his father, took refuge elsewhere. Profane historians have not mentioned Belshazzar, because he was considered subordinate to his father. Sir Henry having mentioned other numerous facts, concluded by a renewed expression of his sense of the importance of these discoveries, viewed more especially as a practical refutation of the mythical theories of German Neologians. We had by this means evidence at once visible and convincing to verify the statements of holy writ, and it was not the language of pride or boasting to say that he felt great satisfaction in being, with others, an humble instrument under God in strengthening the authority of His word, so far as external evidence could go. At the recent Meeting of the Asiatic Society, Sir H. Rawlinson exhibited twenty-four sheets of cuneiform inscriptions, as part of a great work he was editing for the British Museum. The legend belonged to Tiglath-Pileser, and dated from the twelfth century, (B.C.,) referring to a restored temple in the city, carrying back the Chaldean Chronology to the eighteenth century, (B. C.,) together with an enumeration of the four immediate ancestors of the king, and a record of his conquest of Egypt and of the submission of the Chismonians, who inhabited Phoenicia before the Semitic colonization of the country. The second inscription, it was stated, would contain the annals of the great Sardanapalus, recovered from the temple of Hercules on the great mound of Nimrud, which is now known to represent the Cauch of the Bible. The third inscription exhibited was a copy of the famous cylinder or hexagonal prism of Sennacherib, found at Nineveh, and now deposited in the British Museum. He gave it as his opinion that there was as much accuracy in his system of interpretation as in that by which Latin and Greek texts were read. Fragments Gathered up. As regards acceptance, their is no difference between Paul and us. This would attribute a various value to Christ's blood, would The blood of the Lamb gives to all believers their sole title to be make it uncertain and incomplete in the extent of its efficacy. in the glory, and gives to all an equal and perfect justification from sin. But great difference there is as to reward of service. The Christian may say, I want nothing before God-I have Christ there; and God would repudiate anything else. that God has accepted the person and blood of His Son. rests there, and there I rest, having nothing now to do but to seek to glorify Him by my life here below. I know God "All fulness" is not in Christ, as a stranger at an inn, going out and coming in, but was pleased in Him to dwell. E. J. H.'s Scripture Queries in our next. A Correspondent, W. O., (Kennington,) justly objects to Dr. Prochnow's thought and phrase, which slipped into No. 8, p. 134, arts and sciences. products of Christianity," when, in fact, they are the mere inventions of fallen man, (Gen. iv,) and serve, under Satan, to hide from his eyes the ter rible truth that he is but an outcast from Eden. In answer to several enquiries, the publisher begs to announce that Parts I and II of the BIBLE TREASURY (consisting of Four Nos. each, in a neat wrapper) are now ready, price one shilling each part, which will be sent post free to any address on the receipt of twelve stamps. It is proposed to continue the issue of shiling parts at regular intervals, and to conclude Vol. I at the close of the present year, with the usual title-page, indices, &c. No MSS. are returned unless it be specially requested, and stamps sumelent to cover the expense of postage be sent at the same time. EDITOR OF THE BIBLE TREASURY, care of D. F. Oakey, 10, Paternoster Row to whom all advertisements should be sent. All communications and books for review to be sent addressed to the ERRATA IN No. 8. Page 126, col. 1, for "Ps. cxi, and Ps. xc," read Ps. cx." bis. Page 134, col. 2, for "Tishendorf" read Tischendorf," bis. Reviews. THE TYPES OF SCRIPTURE.* NO. IV. THE HISTORIES OF EXODUS. did not as the king commanded them." The persecution of man not only drew out the favour of God in behalf of those menaced, but in His singular and wise providence, (Ex. ii,) the daughter of the cruel king became the shield of Israel's future deliverer, in the We might have imputed HERE we enter upon the broader field of a people the person of the infant Moses. special object of God's dealings. Individuals there the secreting of the babe to mere amiable or strong are still, of course, prominent instruments for good parental feeling; but Heb. xi, 23 shows that this is to or ill, as God or the enemy governed. But the dis-overlook a deeper thing. "By faith Moses, when he tinctive display is of God's pity and power in behalf was born was hid three months of his parents." of His unworthy Israel, whom He redeems triumph-But, although providence responds to faith, and acts antly in the face of their oppressors. But His peoin order to accomplish God's purposes, and control ple, as proud, alas! as they were poor, abandon the the walk of His children, it is not the guide of faith, two-fold revelation which God had made of Himself, though it is made so sometimes by believers who are whether as the almighty God of their fathers, Abra- wanting in clearness of light. Moses' faith is seen ham, Isaac, and Jacob, or as the one who was now first in his giving up, when grown to age, all the advantages known in peculiar relationship as Jehovah. Yes! of the position in which God had set him by His prounwittingly, but most truly, they look away from the vidence. Providence may, and often does, give that promises, and cease to lean on His outstretched arm which forms, in many respects, the servants of God who had gotten them the victory, and at Sinai this for their work, but could not be their power in the fatal word was passed, "All that the LORD hath spo- work. These two things must not be confounded. ken we will do," and the law came in with its awful It gives that, the giving up of which is a testimony distance, and darkness, and death too, too near. Up of the reality of faith and of the power of God which to this God had acted in pure grace towards Israel. operates in the soul. It is given that it may be given But they appreciated His ways no more than they up: this is part of the preparation. This faith acted judged themselves aright. With the ignorance and through affections which attached him to God, and self-confidence of the flesh, they supposed that, just consequently to the people of God in their distress, as they were, they only needed to know the will of and manifested itself, not in the helps or reliefs which God, in order to render an acceptable obedience: the his position could well have enabled him to give them, rock on which splits every unconverted man who, in but in inducing him to identify himself with that a measure, owns his responsibility to God, but aspeople, because it was God's people. Faith attaches sumes his freedom and his power to serve. But their itself to God, and appreciates, and would have part in, pride had a speedy fall; and the golden calf witnessed the bond that exists between God and His people; and the crash of the tables of stone, followed by a new thus it thinks not of patronizing them from above, as interference of God, who, along with the law, intro- if the world had authority over the people of God, duced the mediatorial principle, and unfolded in the or was able to be a blessing to them. It feels (betabernacle and its vessels, &c., the beautiful shadows cause it is faith) that God loves His people; of the grace and truth which should come by the His people are precious to Him,-His own on the earth; and faith sets itself thus, through very affection, in the position where His people find themselves. Lord Jesus Christ. Such we conceive to be the general outline of this most instructive book. At the details we must now glance, and with scanty help from the "Typology," which even here (vol. ii, pp. 4—6) resumes the assault upon the proper hope of Israel, or, as it is there styled, "the Church." that This is what Christ did. Faith does but follow Him Moses would have been in His career of love, however great the distance at which it walks. How many reasons might have induced Moses to remain in the position where he was! and this even under the pretext of being able to do Exodus i, is the preface or introduction, presenting, more for the people; but this would have been leaning in a few graphic strokes, the children of Egypt in the on the power of Pharaoh, instead of recognizing the iron furnace, when "there arose up a new king which bond between the people and God. It might have knew not Joseph." Their increase and their might but not in a deliverance by God, accomplished in His resulted in a relief which the world would have granted, excite his crooked and malicious policy. In vain! but not in a deliverance by God, accomplished in His "The more they afflicted them, the more they multi-love and in His power. plied and grew." Not content with a rigour which spared, but dishonoured; Pharaoh would have been embittered the captive with hard bondage, the king flattered, and his authority over the people of God redevises a murderous scheme, which, however, depended cognized; and Israel would have remained in captivity, for its success on lowly women, who "feared God, and leaning on Pharaoh instead of recognizing God in the precious and even glorious relationship of His people with Him. God would not have been glorified. Yet all human reasoning, and all reasoning connected with providential ways, would have induced Moses to remain in his position: faith made him give it up." ("Synopsis," pp. 55-57.) The Typology of Scripture: viewed in connexion with the entire scheme of the Divine Dispensations. By Patrick Fairbairn, Professor of Divinity, Free Church College, Aberdeen. Second Edition, much enlarged and improved, vols. i, ii. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1854. 2 The Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, vol i, Genesis to 2 Chronicles. London: T. H. Gregg, 24, Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. No. 10. Vol. I.-March 1, 1857. Nevertheless, like the blessed One whom he fore- Much is said of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. shadowed, his own received him not. He is rejected It is really a simple matter. It has its parallel in the by that Israel whom he loved. "There is a difference ways of God with man on a large scale; as when He (says the author of the "Synopsis," p. 58) between gave up the Gentiles to a reprobate mind, and poured this type and that of Joseph. Joseph takes the posi-judicial blindness on the Jews. So He will yet do tion, as put to death, [in figure] of Jesus raised to with professing Christendom, sending them strong dethe right hand of the supreme throne amongst the lusion, because they received not the love of the truth Gentiles, in the end receiving his brethren from whom that they might be saved. In Pharaoh's case, as in he had been separated. His children are to him a all the others, the will was utterly wrong, and opposed testimony of his blessing at that time. He calls them to God from the first; when this was distinctly proManasseh (because God,' says he, 'has made me for- nounced, God did harden and covered them with darkget all my labours and all the house of my father") ness to their merited destruction. God never made and Ephraim, (because God has made me fruitful in Pharaoh, nor any one else, to be wicked; but they, being the land of my affliction.') Moses presents to us wicked, had adequate and urgent testimonies which, Christ separated from his brethren; and although by God's judgment, served but to blind the king, who Zipporah (as well as Joseph's wife) might be con- from the first scornfully asked, "who is Jehovah that sidered as a type of the Church, as the bride of the I should obey his voice to let Israel ? I know not rejected deliverer, during his separation from Israel; Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.' In p. 40, Dr. F. yet, as to what regards his heart, his feelings, which seems to speak of the miraculous vouchers which Moses are expressed in the names he gives to his children, was instructed to work at the commencement of his are governed by the thought of being separated from operations, as being precisely the field on which Pharaoh the people of Israel: his fraternal affections are there might be tempted to think he could successfully com-his thoughts are there-his rest and his country are pete with Moses. But it was forgotten, perhaps, that there he is a stranger everywhere else. : Moses is though one of them-the change of the rod into a the type of Jesus as the deliverer of Israel. He calls serpent, and vice versa-was repeated before the king his son Gershom, that is to say, a stranger there,' and the magicians, these signs were primarily intended 'for,' says he, 'I have sojourned in a strange land.' for Israel rather than for the Egyptians. (Exodus iv, Jethro presents to us the Gentiles, among whom 1-8, and 29-31.) There is no attempt to explain Christ and His glory were driven when He was re- their significance. The first appears to set forth the jected by the Jews." rod of power, assuming a satanic character, but after"wards restored to its true place; and the second, the deeper ruin of man, as fallen into loathsome uncleanness, cleansed by God's immediate power and goodness. The third, which was more judicial in its nature, does not seem to have been called for by the Israelitish elders, but fell, in a yet more aggravated form, not as a token, but as a plague on the Egyptians-the change of what was originally given for refreshing man and fertilizing the earth, into the bloody image of judgment and death. Dr. Fairbairn's observations on the " bondage call for scarcely any comment, chiefly because there is so little in them. It is a mistake to look for typical instruction here. Thus, in the first of these sections, he draws the lessons: 1st, that the bondage was a punishment from which Israel needed redemption; and 2nd, that it formed an essential part of the preparation requisite for their occupying the inheritance. (Vol. ii, pp. 12-22.) This is followed by another dreary essay on the "deliverer and his commission," (pp. 23-33,) occupied upon some of the more obvious As to the plagues Dr. F.remarks how excellently they facts in the early part of Exodus, the position of were fitted to expose the futility of Egyptian idolatry, Moses, his first haste, his subsequent shyness, the and to show how entirely everything there was at the burning bush, and the name of God,* and closing with disposal of the God of Israel, whether for good or the deductions: 1st, as to the dueness of the time; evil. The first nine gradually ascend from the lower 2nd, as to the deliverer's arising "within the Church to the higher provinces of nature and of nature-woritself;" 3rd, "not altogether independent of the ship, till the tenth sounds the signal of Israel's reworld" and 4th, as to his being "peculiarly of God." demption in the death of Egypt's first-born, anAs little can we say of the long discussion that suc-nounced from the beginning. (Exod. iv, 22, 23.) But ceeds. (§ 3, "The Deliverance," pp. 34-57.) our author fails to discriminate the two parts in the "I AM' is His own essential name, if He reveals Himself; but as regards His government of and relationship with the earth, His name that by which He is to be remembered to all generations-is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. This gave Israel, now visited and taken up of God under this name, a very peculiar place. In Abraham first God had called any out, first to him given any promises. He first had been publicly called apart from the world, so that God called Himself his God. He never calls Himself God of Abel or of Noah, though, in a general sense, He is the God, of course, of every saint. Faith itself is here pointed out as the way of righteousness. In Eden God, in judging the serpent, had announced the final victory of the promised seed. In Abel He had shown what acceptable sacrifice from a sinner was-not the fruits of his labour under judgment, but the blood God's grace had given to him, which answered his need; in Enoch, clear and absolute victory over death and removal from earth, God taking him; in Noah, deliverance through judgment when the world was judged. Then a new world begun, and a ceasing, through the sweet savour of sacrifice, to curse the earth, and a cove nant for its preservation from any future destruction by water. But in Abraham we have one called out from the world, now worshipping other gods, brought into separate and immediate connexion with God, and promises given to him-a person called to be the object and depositary of God's promises. This gave him a very peculiar place. God was his God. He had a separste place from all the world with Him as heir of the promise. He is the stock and root of all heirs of it. Christ Himself comes as seed of Abraham, who is the father also of the faithful as to the earth. Israel is the promised nation under this title. As regards election they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. In this name consequently, as His eternal memorial, God would now deliver them. At the same time God foretells, that Pharaoh will not let the people go, but takes clearly the ground of His authority and of His right over His people, and of authoritative demand upon Pharaoh that he should recognize them. Upon his refusal to do so, he would be judged by the power of God." (Synopsis, pp. 61, 62.) .* deliverance. He notices "the first-born," as repre- Because He did not come in the type, it is inferred, senting all, and the blood of the lamb as the sign of most illogically, that He may not be personally looked mercy rejoicing against judgment, and the "borrowing" for in the anti-typical conflicts of the last days. But (Exod. iii, 22; xii, 35, &c.) as meaning really and if Dr. F. can thus unseasonably foist in his postsimply a demand with which the Egyptians willingly millennial prejudices, be is unable apparently to see complied, if they did not rather invite the Israelites how the entrance of the desert is inaugurated with a to ask. But the precious, spiritual import of the song of triumph, which bespeaks faith's estimate of Passover and Red sea must not be expected. For this their complete deliverance by God's power, the sewe turn to the "Synopsis," p. 65. "What happened curity of His counsels in their behalf, and their conat the Red sea was, it is true, the manifestation of the fidence in His guidance all the way through. illustrious power of God, who destroyed with the Nevertheless, it is into the wilderness, not into breath of His mouth the enemy that stood in rebel- Canaan, that God's deliverance brings His people, and lion against Him :-final and destructive judgment in trials of every sort appear and thicken. For three its character, no doubt, and which effected the deliver- days after the song, they go through the wilderness ance of His people by His power. But the blood sig- and find no water. (Exod. xv, 22.) Nor is this all; nified the moral judgment of God and the full and en- when they find some at Marah, the water is bitter. tire satisfaction of all that was in His being. God, Spite of their murmuring, the Lord hears Moses, and such as He was in His justice, His holiness, and His shows him a tree, which, when cast in, made the truth, could not touch those who were sheltered by waters sweet. "If death has delivered them from the that blood. Was there sin? His love towards His power of the enemy, it must become known in its appeople had found the means of satisfying the require-plication to themselves; bitter to the soul, it is true, ments of His justice, and at the sight of that blood, but, through grace, refreshment of life, for in all these which answered everything that was perfect in His things is the life of the Spirit. It is death and resurbeing, He passed over it consistently with His justice rection in practice after the deliverance. Thereupon and even His truth. Nevertheless God, even in pass- we have the twelve wells and seventy palm trees ;* ing over, is seen as judge. Hence, likewise, so long types, it seems to us, of these living springs and of as the soul is on this ground, its peace is uncertain, that shelter which have been provided through instruits way in Egypt, being all the while truly converted; ments chosen of God for the consolation of His peobecause God has still the character of Judge to it, and ple." (Synopsis, p. 68.) the power of the enemy is still there. At the Red sea God acts in power according to the power of His love; consequently the enemy, who was closely pursuing His people, is destroyed without resource. This is what will happen to the people at the last day, already in reality, to the eye of God, sheltered through the blood. As to the moral type, the Red sea is evidently the death and resurrection of Jesus and of His people in Him; God acting in it, in order to bring them out of death, where He had brought them in Christ, and consequently beyond the possibility of being touched by the enemy. We are made partakers of it already through faith. Sheltered from the judgment of God by the blood, we are delivered, by His power, which acts for us, from the power of Satan, the prince of this world. The blood keeping us from the judgment of God was the beginning. The power which raised us with Christ has made us free from the whole power of Satan, who followed us, and from all his attacks and accusations. The world who will follow that way is swallowed up in it." The fourth section of this chapter introduces us to the march through the wilderness, with the manna, the water, and the pillar of cloud and fire. The opportunity of the song of Moses was too good to lose for a thrust at those who expect by and by "a corporeally present Saviour, inflicting corporeal and overwhelming judgments on adversaries in the flesh." Dr. F. would gladly reduce the grand future dealings of God, to providential actings or victories to be won by spiritual weapons. The Lord coming to judge the quick-the habitable earth-is an unpalatable truth. Exod. xvi shows us Israel murmuring again, but the Lord answers in nothing but grace; though, as Moses and Aaron protested, the murmuring was against Him, and not them. They had murmured at Marah, yet the bitter waters were immediately sweetened. They murmured, now hungry, but the word is, "ye shall see the glory of Jehovah." "I have heard," says He, "the murmurings of the children of Israel." What, then, was Moses to report ? judgment? Wrath did come upon them another day, when, despising the manna, they insisted on meat, and persevered in their lust, when they ought to have been ashamed and sorrowing at their self-will and unbelief, rebuked by the miracle which laid it at their feet. But Taberah beheld the graves of lust. (Numb. xi.) This, however, was after the law came in, and God righteously judged the sinners who presumed to make the blessing depend on their own power of obeying it. But up to Sinai it was not law, but grace. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Accordingly the Lord told Moses to say, "at even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God." Their absolute need was now plain. In the wilderness, who but God could supply bread for such a multitude? But He did supply it bountifully, and at their doors. "He that gathered much had nothing over, he that gathered little had no lack: they gathered every man according to his eating." Notwithstanding it was so given that day by day they must depend on Himself; no store to Israel. The Lord adopted this number in His two closing missions of the disciples |