from which our text is taken was delivered by Moses, and with the following prefatory announcement-" These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb."1 And certain it is, that in this latter covenant there are evangelical privileges held forth, and evangelical promises, which enter not into the description of that righteousness which is of the law, "That the man which doeth these things shall live by them." For we therein read of forgiveness to the penitent, "When thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, he will have compassion upon thee "___ and of regeneration, "The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul"-and not only of forgiveness, but of positive beneficence and favour, "For the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good." These perhaps may identify this latter of the Old Testament covenants with the covenant of peace and mercy under which we now live, and so identify the application of the words both as uttered by the Jewish legislator and by the Christian apostle to one and the same subject, even the gospel of Jesus Christ-leaving the distinction which there is in the righteousness of the law from the righteousness of faith to be exemplified and upholden by the earlier of these Hebrew covenants, 2 Deut. xxx, 2, 3.

1 Deut. xxix, 1.

$ Deut. xxx, 6.

VOL. IV.

even the covenant of Horeb under which we have this promise of hopeless fulfilment, that the man who doeth these things shall live by them; and this denunciation of terror and despair, universal because inclusive of the whole human race"Cursed is every one who continueth not in all the words of the book of this law to do them.'

But we must not spend further time in the settlement of this question. Whether the words of our text were employed both by Moses and Paul to characterise the same or two different economies, there is a common property ascribed by each to that one economy of which he is speaking. The condition upon which its blessings are suspended, and by the fulfilment of which these blessings will be realised, is not a distant and inaccessible secret —either imbedded in the fathomless depths below, or placed far out of sight among the unscaled heights of the firmament above us. "For this commandment," it is said by the founder of the old dispensation, "the commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off." "But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." And, in counterpart to this, it is said by the chief among the apostles of the new dispensation," The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and thy heart: that is, the word of faith which we preach; That if thou believe, thou shalt be saved."

But the great peculiarity in the verses of my

1 Deut. xxx, 11, 14.

text, and to which I would at present direct your more special attention, is the precise and particular object of the ascent and the descent respectively which are there spoken of by the apostle. These objects are different from that which is spoken of in the book of Deuteronomy-where to bring the commandment or the word from afar, is the assigned purpose both of the imagined ascent into heaven, and of the imagined descent into the abyss or bottom of the sea. In the New Testament this is stated differently-the assigned purpose of the ascent being to bring Christ down from above,' and of the descent being to bring up Christ again from the dead.' It is still possible, notwithstanding this difference-that Moses and Paul may after all have been dealing with the same truth, and looking to the same quarter of contemplation-the first, as is customary in the Old Testament, giving utterance to a doctrine, but couched in enigma or shrouded in hazy obscuration; the second, as is customary in the New Testament, giving utterance to the identically same doctrine, but evolved from the dimness in which it lay hidden, and with the light of a clearer and broader manifestation thrown over it. However this may be, let us now hasten to our explanation of the verses here before us; and which we think fitted to throw a new and interesting light, over the gracious economy that has been. instituted for the salvation of our world.

In the parallel verses of Deuteronomy there seems no difficulty. The children of Israel are

there simply told-that, instead of having to seek afar or among remote and impracticable places for the rule of life, this rule brought from heaven to their door, now stood within reach of one and all of them. The same could have been said of a law anterior to that of Moses, even the law of the heartthat voice within the breast, which is heard in the homestead of every human conscience; and gives forth lessons that serve, in part at least, for the guidance of all men. And the law of Moses, though brought from the heights of the upper sanctuary, might be said, as far at least as viewed in the generalities of its ethical system, to have placed itself in the hearts of those who heard it— responded to in all its great unchangeable principles by the light and the law of every man's conscience—thus finding a voucher, as it were, for its own truth and authority in every bosom-and in virtue of this its ready introduction to the innermost recesses of our moral nature, of the prompt and familiar recognition which it meets with there, so establishing and so accrediting itself as the rightful inmate of humanity all the world over, as both to warrant and explain the saying, that this word framed though it was in the highest heavens, and thence brought down to the earth we live in, still And then as to the

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this word is in thy heart. ritual and the positive of this great religious directory, though it could awake no consenting testimony from within, and could therefore meet with no internal evidence to welcome or to own it-yet

enforced as it was by every demonstration of authority from without, by the smoke and the thunder, nay by the voice and all those signals of a present Deity, which convinced and overawed the thousands of Israel-we may well believe that the book written by Moses, and which recorded all the precepts whether ceremonial or judicial or moral, that were delivered to this great prophet in the converse which he held with God, and which also described all the usages and forms of their earthly service, conformably to the pattern showed him in the mount, by which were represented the ministrations of the upper sanctuary, or things of the tabernacle in the heavens-that this book, in all its contents, would be deferred to by the Hebrews of old, as the rightful and authoritative directory both of their solemn worship, and of their every-day conduct: And being read at stated seasons by the priests to the people, as well as read by parents to those children whom they were strictly charged to teach diligently in the statutes of the Lord, it might well be said of this word that it was in their mouth as well as in their heart. They had not to go abroad, as sages of old are said to have done, when they travelled in quest of wisdom. They had neither to search for it as for hid treasure in the depths of the earth, nor to pluck the secret from unseen or mysterious altitudes beyond the sky. It had been brought down from thence to Sinai; and imparted to Moses; and placed by him in a volume of little room within the reach and reading of every man; and so, passing