them entirely unto Him, to fix them entirely upon Him; and to prove that you love Him above all things by loving for His sake 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. age MOSES, having been adopted in his infancy by the daughter of Pharaoh as her son, lived until he was forty years of in the court of the King of Egypt. In the course of this period of his life, but in what precise part of it the Scriptures do not mention, he received a divine intimation that he was ordained to be the person, who should deliver the children of Israel 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. went forth, and looked on their burdens, in expectation that some favourable opportunity would speedily arise of convincing his countrymen that, by his means, they were to be rescued from the oppression under which they He they groaned. Soon did he conclude that the opportunity presented itself. Seeing one of the Israelites suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. Again going forth among them on the following day, he shewed himself unto them as they strove: he interfered between two of them who were engaged in a violent contest each with the other, and would have set them at one again; would have caused them mutually to cease 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 simple and emphatical truth: Sirs, ye are brethren. In what respects were the Jews brethren? In the first place, they were all descended 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 respect they were equally brethren to each other and to all mankind. But, in the next place, the general consanguinity of man with man vanished in comparison with the particular relation between Jew and Jew. The Jews had not to trace back their origin to Adam in order to prove themselves to be kindred. They stopped, short two thousand years from the creation. They rested 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 necessary to continue the search so high as Abraham. All of them were the posterity of his grandson Jacob. Farther; they were accustomed and required to consider themselves as brethren, in consequence of having already been in some measure formed into a separate people, and kept apart by their manners and institutions, both from the Canaanites while their ancestors were in Canaan, and from the Egyptians since they had come down into Egypt. And lastly, though they had not as yet been received as a nation into an open covenant with God, amidst the awful solemnities accompanying the delivery of the law upon Mount Sinai; they were entitled to regard themselves as joint-heirs of the promises made unto Abraham, of the privileges and blessings, present or future, which God had graciously pledged Himself to confer on Abraham's posterity. These, we may presume, or the most impressive pressive of these, were the views which Moses endeavoured to bring before the two contending Israelites, whom he was anxious to restrain from offering injury the one to the other. Let us observe with what justice corresponding views may be presented to the consideration of Christians. Christians are the descendants of Adam and Eve; and, as such, partake of one blood, of one nature. They cannot indeed, like the Jews, trace up their origin to some common ancestor short of Adam: because, 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 should be blessed. Still, however, Christians, no less than the Jews, derive their earthly descent from the same stock. As the Jews were to have no communication with idolaters; so likewise are the servants of Christ 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 ye separate, saith the Lord (a), and touch not the (a) 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18. 1 3 unclean |