to depart and to be with him. Indeed, its home-sick desire is sometimes very strong and painful, so fain would it be at its Father's house in a better world.

"It is great delusion to reckon to our own desert the gifts which God has vouchsafed us, and then to dream of a title to more. Our having been thus favoured, ought the rather to humble us, considering that all is a trust, and that much more has been committed to us already, than we could have had any right to expect.

"It may well be thought no light matter that most of us have never done any thing like the amount of good we ought to have done; but that the main business for which Providence has fitted and appointed us, has been regarded rather as a by-work, while things of far less moment have been preferred before it. How important is it, to beware. of attending too much to one thing, and too little to another!

"Besides using constant prayer for general purposes, we should be ready, upon every emergency, to commit ourselves entirely into God's hands; otherwise we shall insensibly follow the bias of our own inclinations.

"I cannot say I like to hear any conductor of social prayer say, 'Let us sigh' (to God.) Devotional, like natural sighing, is something too spontaneous to be thought of beforehand.

"To pray, is to be engaged in a kind of audience, as well as converse, with God, 1 John v. 15. It is more than an utterance of our requests; it includes a waiting for his answers. Let us be inwardly retired, self-observant, and waiting upon him; and, though we hear no voice, we shall experience a plain, certain, and consoling reply. God makes this reply, not vocally, but by those acts of his providence and influences of his grace, whereby he relieves our necessities. When we listen to the petitions of the needy, we do it, not for the sake of hearing them talk, but for the sake of rendering them some help.

"It cannot be proved that the Lord's-day comes so exactly in the place of the Jewish sabbath, that it must be in all respects observed according to the Old Testament ritual. Neither is it quite certain that the primitive Christians kept the Jewish sabbath as well as the Lord's-day. But the obligation of sanctifying one day in seven, has never ceased in the church.

"The military profession is one of difficulty to a converted man, and one which he will not be forward to prefer. But

сс

whoever is thrown into it against his will, may consider,—1. That John the Baptist did not direct the soldiers to quit it. 2. That there are instances of pious soldiers recorded in the Scriptures. 3. That the commandment, thou shalt not kill,' is not so absolute as to forbid the powers that be' to 'bear the sword,' (Rom. xiii. 4;) also, that God himself directed the Israelites to go to war, and concerning the wars they were to conduct. 4. That it cannot rest with private persons to determine whether a war be just or unjust, especially as the guilt is generally equal on both sides; whereas, the soldier acts merely in obedience to superior authorities, and upon their responsibility. If he can quiet his conscience on such grounds, he may; but if he cannot, let him refer the matter to God, and quit the profession, as soon as a lawful opportunity occurs.

"The married state is generally that in which we can best surmount hardships, and attain the happy end of life with many refreshments by the way. He, therefore, who has no particular calling or occasion forbidding his entrance into this condition, ought to marry. God often teaches us more by our domestic experiences, family illnesses, deaths of children, and the like, than we can learn by any independent speculations, however spiritual these may seem. It is in the married state that I have had my most serious afflictions, but with them my strongest consolations. Therefore I consider it as more than a mere permission, that a pastor should be the husband of one wife;' to me it seems all but a matter of necessity. A pious family, comprising and combining the sweets and benefits of every human condition, created and ordained of God, may be compared to a cheerful hive of bees; but a monastery or nunnery full of unmarried persons, is more apt to remind one of a gloomy nest of wasps. And yet so serious a concern is marriage, that if we consider all its bearings upon time and eternity, we cannot wonder that some anxious persons are never able to resolve upon it; or that, having a special delight in spiritual things, they should be the more disinclined to become instruments of perpetuating our sinful race; nevertheless, marriage is an ordinance of the good and benevolent Creator. The relation between Christ and his church in eternity itself is prefigured by that of marriage, which would hardly be appropriate, had this estate' been other than most holy. Indeed, could it be anywise unholy, how could it ever become honourable among' the children of God, and be attested as such in holy writ? The pure Nazarites themselves, under

6

the Old Testament, were not to be unmarried. Thus, I think, that arbitrarily to reject this ordinance of God, unless one's unmarried condition can, through constant prayer, be made really subservient to advancement in holiness, is a thing for which it will be found difficult to answer.

66

Many precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are expressed in general terms, and require time, place, and circumstances, to show their proper application. And this, whatever it be, can never vary from any special instructions delivered in other parts of Scripture.

"As every propensity to love and serve the creature more than the Creator is a kind of idolatry, why does the Scripture especially give covetousness that name? 1. Worship, properly so called, consists more in affiance than affection. It is affiance in uncertain riches, rather than in the living God, that characterizes the lover of money. 2. He who commits other sins, commits them chiefly in single acts, from time to time; but covetousness preoccupies and engages the whole man; it dictates his every communication.

66

Friendship is not one of the special topics of practical divinity, but brotherly love is; which both includes friendship, and gives it additional charms."

CHAPTER XIV.

EXEGETICAL REMARKS ON PASSAGES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

As his inquiry into sacred chronology demanded his particular examination of the whole Scriptures, we find him setting down in the course of that inquiry, some interesting and often edifying remarks, upon passages in the Old Testament. The following are among the number.

"The notion that chaos originally comprised the heavens as well as the earth, was borrowed from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and in process of time found its way into systems of theology. Ovid appears to have learnt it from some obscure tradition. But Scripture does not blend the heavens with chaos; we read only, that the earth was without form and void,' (Gen. i. 2.)

66

Scripture places the origin of evil just where our own sad experience finds it; namely, in the appetency to 'know good and evil;' to know what pleasure is to be found by one thing and another, and how it relishes. The secret of our monstrous lust of knowledge is unbelief, or distrust of God; as if he had omitted to give us every good, because he grudged us something; as if he had some design to withhold or forbid what might yield us further enjoyment.

"I do not think that the coats which the Lord God made for Adam and Eve, were skins of sacrificial victims; they were merely garments to cover the body.*

"It makes indirectly for the truth of scripture narrative, that traces of sacred history which occur in pagan writers relating to the deluge, to Joshua, and to other persons or incidents, are

*ining "vestis cutis," (sc. Adami and Hevæ) Chald. "Vestes honoris,” i. e. "nuditatis." But this interpretation appears untenable, on the ground that there is convincing reason to believe that sacrifice was originally ordained of God, and that the clothing here alluded to, was that of the skins of the victims offered, and was typical of the hiding of human shame, and the comforting of human helplessness by the benefit of the sacrifice of Christ. (See professor Nicoll's discourse on Gen. iv. 7, where it is satisfactorily evinced from the words themselves, one that sacrifice was originally of divine institution.) Moreover, the conversive of the future, with which Gen. iii. 21. commences, expresses, by its nature, a consequent upon what had been (as there

far less pure than the accounts of the inspired historians. Otherwise it might have been suggested that these pagan writers borrowed from Scripture; whereas, now, the case speaks for itself; namely, that the facts reached them by independent and very ancient traditions, which in process of time had become more and more corrupt and fabulous.

"It is nothing absurd to suppose, that antediluvian records might have been preserved by a variety of means till long after the deluge; as in excavations of rocks, &c.

"Abraham is commended in Rom. xiv. for his stedfastness of belief in the Divine promises. It may be asked, how this accords with the wish he recoils into, concerning Ishmael, in Gen. xvii. 18. This, however, did not proceed from any doubt entertained by Abraham, relative to God's promises concerning Ishmael, (Gen. xvi. 10,) but simply from a tender paternal solicitude to see Ishmael, like himself, honoured personally with some signal token of the Divine favour. This is clear from God's answer to him, (Gen. xvii. 20.)

“We find certain remarkable events in the sacred writings, as the call of Abraham, the deliverance from Egypt, &c., often repeated and referred to; apparently because, while all things are alike present to God, (in all ages,) we are too slow of heart to notice from what very small beginnings he has wrought and accomplished his noblest works.

"It was a very consistent piece of sacred dignity in Jacob, that, when presented before Pharaoh, he gave him his patriarchal blessing. In like manner, as it would have been unbecoming in Moses to have thanked the cunning workmen' in the name of God; therefore he blesses them.

6

"To be gathered to one's people,' is a sweet expression, especially as we may find it used when the custom of depositing the dead in the sepulchres of neighbours or ancestors is not at all referred to.-(See Gen. xlix. 33.)

66

Joseph is one of the most beautiful examples in Scripture. In most other saints of sacred history, we meet with manifest faults; but in Joseph we see nothing but what is pure and blameless. Samuel is a similar example. The bad conduct of

is every reason to believe) implied in the preceding sentence, which was, that Eve, as the mother of all living, would be the mother of Him who should bruise the Serpent's head, yea, of Him who should be the restorer of spiritual life. So that ver. 21. may be translated, "Therefore to Adam and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." Comp. Witsius's Economy of the Covenants, Book IV. ch. i. sect. 31.-T.