them entirely unto Him, to fix them entirely upon Him; and to prove that you love Him above all things by loving for His fake your neighbour as yourself, and by living in all things unto the Son of God who died for you. SERMON VII. On BROTHERLY LOVE. ACTs, vii. 26. MOSES, having been adopted in his infancy by the daughter of Pharaoh as her fon, lived until he was forty years of age in the court of the King of Egypt. In the course of this period of his life, buɩ in what precife part of it the Scriptures do not mention, he received a divine intimation that he was ordained to be the perfon, who should deliver the children of Ifrael from that house of bondage. When he was now full forty years old, he appears to have imagined that the time of their deliverance was come. He went forth, and looked on their burdens, in expectation that fome favourable opportunity would fpeedily arise of convincing his countrymen that, by his means, they were to be rescued from the oppreffion under which they they groaned. Soon did he conclude that the opportunity prefented itself. Seeing one of the Ifraelites fuffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. For be fuppofed his brethren would have underflood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. Again going forth among them on the following day, he fhewed himself unto them as they ftrove: he interfered between two of them who were engaged in a violent contest each with the other, and would have fet them at one again; would have caused them mutually to ceafe from offering injury, and would have reconciled them. What was the argument which he employed to lead them to right tempers and right conduct? It was this fimple and emphatical truth: Sirs, ye are brethren. In what refpects were the Jews brethren? In the first place, they were all defcended from Adam and Eve, the common parents of the human race. Thus were they all born of one blood, partakers of one nature. In this refpect they were equally brethren to each other and to all mankind. But, in the next place, the general confanguinity of man with man vanished in comparison with the particular relation between Jew and I 2 and Jew. The Jews had not to trace back their origin to Adam in order to prove themfelves to be kindred. They stopped fhort two thousand years from the creation. They refted when they reached the patriarch Abraham. From him they all derived their birth, the common children of the father of the faithful. Nay it was not neceffary to continue the fearch fo high as Abraham. All of them were the pofterity of his grandfon Jacob. Farther; they were accustomed and required to confider themfelves as brethren, in confequence of having already been in fome measure formed into a feparate people, and kept apart by their manners and inftitutions, both from the Canaanites while their ancestors were in Canaan, and from the Egyptians fince they had come down into Egypt. And laftly, though they had not as yet been received as a nation into an open covenant with God, amidit the aweful folemnities accompanying the delivery of the law upon Mount Sinai; they were entitled to regard themselves as joint-heirs of the promifes made unto Abraham, of the privileges and bleffings, prefent or future, which God had graciously pledged Himfelf to confer on Abraham's pofterity. Thefe, we may prefume, or the most impreffive 3 .. preffive of thefe, were the views which Mofes endeavoured to bring before the two contending Ifraelites, whom he was anxious to restrain from offering injury the one to the other. Let us obferve with what juftice corresponding views may be prefented to the confideration of Chriftians. Chriftians are the defcendents of Adam and Eve; and, as fuch, partake of one blood, of one nature. They cannot indeed, like the Jews, trace up their origin to fome common ancestor fhort of Adam: becaufe, through the unbounded mercy of their Heavenly Father, they are gathered out of many kindreds, and tongues, and peoples, and languages, by Him who was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, by Him in whom all the nations of the earth fhould be bleffed. Still, however, Chriftians, no lefs than the Jews, derive their earthly descent from the fame ftock. As the Jews were to have no communication with idolaters; so likewise are the fervants of Chrift enjoined to keep themselves apart from an unbelieving world, to have no fellowship with the workers of iniquity. They have heard the express command, Come out from among them, and be Separate, faith the Lord (a), and touch not the (a) 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18, I 3 ye unclean |