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creature, and which-were he "extreme to mark -no flesh could stand before Him.

We have hardly leisure to analyze minutely all the features of eastern imagery and prophetic sublimity with which the greatness and prosperity of Israel are shadowed forth in these successive predictions. We must hasten to the last, which is often quoted as one of the most magnificent announcements of the future Messiah, inscribed by the finger of God on the prophetic record. How is this most important of all the "visions" of Balaam ushered in?

MARY. "He hath said which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty— I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh."

MAMA. Stop, Mary; what an awful picture does this unconsciously give of the future state of that apostate prophet, who, though the favoured instrument of such communications to others, and "knowing the knowledge of the Most High"-was doomed to expiate the abuse of these vast privileges by eternal distance and separation from the very Saviour whose kingdom and glory he predicted! Under what lofty images does he personify the Redeemer?

MARY. "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall arise out of Israel."

MAMA. Though the minute particulars of the victories ascribed to this illustrious person have caused this prophecy to be primarily applied to David-all expositors agree in referring its ultimate accomplishment to the Messiah; so much so, that an impostor (one of the false Christs foretold by our Lord) took the name of " Son of the Star"-while the announcement of the true Deliverer's birth by a "star in the east" lends a sanction to the received application of these noble images to Him who-beheld like a "star" afar off by those kings and prophets who only "desired to see" those things with which our eyes have been blessed-now shines upon us in the meridian splendour of the "Sun of Righteousness."

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MORNING SIXTEENTH.

LESSON.-Deuteronomy, Chapters i. ii. and iii.

MAMA. The book of Deuteronomy, at which, by the omission, as usual, of the ordinances, genealogies, and local regulations contained in the latter part of that of Numbers, we have arrived, is so called from two words signifying a "repetition of the law;" and is rendered very interesting to us, as well as the Jews, by the touching circumstances under which it was delivered by Moses, just before his decease, to his beloved countrymen, and the affectionate energy with which it recapitulates their many deliverances, and enforces the corresponding duties of gratitude and obedience.

Nor was this summary of God's former precepts and miracles a mere gratuitous effusion of the dying lawgiver's good-will to the nation he had so long led as a shepherd. Most of those who witnessed the departure from Egypt, or

heard the promulgation of the law on Sinai, were dead; and a generation had sprung up, to whom a rehearsal of God's mighty works and perfect commandments must have been anything but superfluous. We all require, my dear Mary, to be reminded of the majesty, the justice, and longsuffering of Jehovah ; and nowhere shall we find them more forcibly displayed, or irresistibly enforced, as motives of human conduct, than in the lawgiver of Israel's parting address to his countrymen.

At what point in their journey Canaanward had the Israelites arrived, when this remarkable exhortation was delivered?

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MARY. It says they were in a plain “ against the Red Sea." Surely they had not gone all that way back again.

MARY. No, Mary; that is a mistake of transcribers. But at God's command, and to punish their disobedience, they did, as we have read, retrace their weary steps as far as Kadesh. How far does the second verse say that place was from Horeb ?

MARY. Only eleven days' journey. What a little way!

MAMA. And yet how long did their wanderings within this limited space judicially continue?

MARY. Forty years, Mama, to teach them to distrust God.

MAMA. Right; let it teach us to avoid their sin of unbelief. What does the 6th verse say relative to their original sojourn in Horeb?

MARY. God said to them, "Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount."

MAMA. Do you know how long that was?
MARY. No.

MAMA. About one year after the promulgation of the law from its lofty pinnacle; during which time they erected their tabernacle, numbered their people, and regulated their order of march, and (had they listened to the gracious encouragement given in the 8th verse of our chapter, "Go ye in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers,") might have been in the space of one short month established residents in the land of promise. But distrust and disobedience frustrated God's gracious designs, and deprived all that generation (Moses not excepted) of their share in the earthly CaThese things were written for our instruction, to whom is held out, by the same God, a "better country, even an heavenly." Did you observe, as you went along, the affecting ejaculation which Moses utters, when alluding to the

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