Jude 14, 15.)

Cain despised (1 John iii. 12.)

assist the people of God, while it warned, and left without excuse, the ungodly around. (2 Pet. ii. 5. Abel was a believer, and went to heaven. religion, and belonged to the Wicked One. He was driven out, for his sin, from the presence of the Lord, and became the father of a worldly and unbelieving race. The church was found in the family of Seth, whom God raised up to take Abel's place. Those who belonged to it, were called, it seems, Children of God; while the unbelieving were styled, Children of Men. The number of the ungodly was soon increased greatly; the children of the pious were, many of them, seduced to join them. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." Corruption thus rapidly became stronger and stronger, till it filled the earth, and Noah's family embraced the whole church. The flood came with the wrath of the Almighty, and buried the guilty race in destruction.

This awful event should have been remembered, to keep men from repeating the apostacy which was its occasion. But the posterity of Noah soon began again, with an evil heart of unbelief, to depart from the Lord. Idolatry gradually took the place of true religion. To such extent did it prevail at length, that the very existence of the church in the world, seemed to be brought to a termination. But in its low estate, God interposed to recover it to new dig. nity, and to establish it with better privileges. He selected Abraham, the Chaldean; communicated to him the clear knowledge of religion, with new and more explicit promises of that Great Salvation which was to be made known in the latter days; and set him apart, with his posterity, to preserve the truth amid the corruptions of the world, and to hand it down, without interruption, until the time of Jesus Christ. The line of Abraham's ancestors seems to have been distinguished for piety, from the time of Noah, longer than most other families; but idolatry had at last corrupted it as well as the rest. (Josh. xxiv. 2.) Called by God, however, the patriarch left his country and his friends, and came into Canaan. The Lord promised that he would give that land to his descendants; that they should be his peculiar people-his church; and that in his Seed all the

nations of the earth should be blessed. As a seal of the covenant, into which he and his posterity were thus graciously allowed to enter, he received the sign of circumcision.

Isaac and Jacob were heirs of the same promises, and distinguished with like spiritual blessings. Their religion was committed to their descendants. Among these, its form, and something also of its power, continued to be known in Egypt till the time of Moses. It appears, however, to have fallen, by that time, into very general neglect. Many of the Israelites, there is reason to believe, were carried away with the idolatries of Egypt.

With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, the Lord recovered his people from oppression. He led them, by the hand of Moses, to the foot of Sinai. There he formed a solemn covenant with the whole nation, and gave them a written law. The church was now made to assume a new and more conspicuous form. It was blessed with a fuller knowledge of the divine Will; it was admitted to greater privileges; and much more effectual provision was made for protecting its existence, and guarding its truth, in the midst of an apostate world. The principles of true morality and religion were made clear to all, by particular precepts of duty toward man and toward God. The manner in which God was to be worshipped, was carefully prescribed. A great system of rites and ceremonies was established; which, while it served like a hedge to secure the proper form and the continuance of the church, was, at the same time, so full of important instruction, and so framed to shadow forth spiritual and heavenly truth, that to every true believer it could not fail to be a source of continual improvement in grace, and a most valuable help to devotion.

After a long discipline in the wilderness, the chosen nation was settled in Canaan, with all the advantages which thus, by its new form, the church was appointed to enjoy. That form was intended to be continued until the time of the gospel. Age after age, however, the measure of religious knowledge, with which it was distinguished, received important increase. The bible, whose first five books had been written by the hand of Moses, was gradually en

larged, by the addition of others equally inspired. The light, that was shining in a dark world, grew stronger and clearer. Prophecy multiplied its revelations, and by its sure word pointed with more certainty and emphasis to the glory that was to come.

The Jewish state was very peculiar. As we have seen, when considering its manner of government, its civil and religious institutions were closely blended together, so as to form a single system harmoniously conspiring in all its parts toward the same general point. The whole was designed, in the wise plan of God, to preserve the true religion, and prepare the way for the introduction of the full brightness of the gospel in the fulness of time. The Jewish church was the special object regarded, in the separation of the Israelites from the rest of the world to be the peculiar people of the Most High; and their whole government, accordingly, was constructed with a view to the interests of the church, and in such a manner, as to fall in with and assist the particu lar constitution under which it was placed. Hence, as already remarked, a religious design is to be discovered running, in some measure, through the whole system, and much of the meaning of those laws and institutions which moulded and fixed the shape of the civil government, is to be sought in their relation to religion, rather than in any merely political purpose. Still, it is proper to distinguish the nation as a church, from the nation as a civil community, and to distribute its institutions and laws into two general classes-such as related more directly to religion, and such as had regard to the government of the state as an earthly kingdom.

But the laws which related entirely to religion, were not all of the same nature. As a church, the Jews were placed under a two-fold system of law. They had the Moral law, which rests upon all men, in every age; and they had a Ceremonial law, peculiar to their dispensation, and designed to pass away with it.

In discoursing of divine laws, it has been common_to divide them altogether into two kinds-NATURAL and PoSITIVE. Natural laws, which are the same that are usually called Moral, are such as arise necessarily from the character of God and the nature of his moral creatures, and

which every man's conscience, if it be not completely seared by sin, tells him, as soon as they are known to him from the light of nature or revelation, that he is under solemn obligation to obey. Positive laws are such as have no necessary and unalterable reason in the nature of things, but derive their authority from the particular appointment of God, made known by revelation: having no force, except where they are thus expressly enjoined, and being designed to continue only for a time, determined in the purpose of the Most High; after which, all their obligation is done away. Each of the ten commandments is a natural or moral law: the laws which required the Jews not to eat certain animals, the laws which regulated inheritances among them, and others of a like sort, were positive laws. A positive law, when it is enjoined, is no less binding than a moral one. The obligation to obey rests, in both cases, upon the same reason, namely, the will of God: when that will is made known in any way, whatever it may require, the duty of complying with it is at all times the same, and at all times of the highest force; whether the requirement is perpetual and universal, or whether it is limited to times and individuals, is an inquiry that does not touch at all upon the nature or the extent of its claim to be regarded and obeyed. Positive laws, again, have been divided into POLITICAL and CEREMONIAL. The laws which God gave for the government of the Jewish republic, in its civil character, were of the first class; such were the statutes that were made concerning magistrates, marriages, inheritances, punishments, &c.: many of them, as already noticed, partook at the same time of a religious character. The laws which among the same people prescribed the peculiar rites and forms of religious worship, private or public, were of the latter class-ceremonial: such were those that related to meats and washings, and sacrifices, and all the outward service of the tabernacle or temple.

While, therefore, the Moral law, and that which has been styled the Ceremonial, were alike altogether religious in their character; and so may be with propriety classed together, in distinction from the Political or Civil law; they were distinguished nevertheless from each other by a

wide and clear difference. The one had its origin with the beginning of creation, flowing necessarily out of its divine plan, and being essential to, and inseparable from, its constitution, as long as that constitution shall endure: the other had its commencement only when the sovereign wisdom of God revealed its appointment, and had no necessary existence in the original order of being, but was made to answer some particular end in the general system of God's grace; and having accomplished this design, had no longer any authority whatever. A moral law, accordingly, includes its reason in itself; and finds its end answered directly and immediately in the obedience which it receives; a ceremonial one, on the contrary, had its reason entirely out of itself, and always contemplated some other end than what it directly required to be done, as its original and principal design.

The MORAL LAW, summarily comprehended in the ten commandments uttered from mount Sinai, requires in all its precept a spiritual obedience. It contemplates the heart. It carries its authority into all duties: even such as were ceremonial in their nature were enforced by its power; because when the will of God is understood, whatever it may prescribe, the obligation to regard it flows from the first principle of natural and unchangeable reason; namely that the creature should in every thing render a willing obedience to its infinitely perfect Creator. Thus, for an ancient Jew to cat swine's flesh, while it brought him under the penalty of the Ceremonial law, was an offence, also, if wilfully done, against the Moral law, not less truly than it would have been for him to take his Maker's name in vain, or to steal his neighbour's property. Our Saviour teaches us, that the sum of all the Moral law is expressed in two great precepts; (Matt. xxii. 37-40.) Love to God will secure natural obedience to all his will, and "love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." (John xiv. 23, Rom. xiii. 8-10.) This law is that which Paul speaks of as being written in the hearts of men. (Rom. ii. 15.) Man was originally made so as to have a natural sense of its obligation, and a natural knowledge of its precepts. And although, by the fall, the clearness of this knowledge has