government of God, which permitted the gold to go into the furnace, and to come out unexpectedly in the shape of a calf!

Then it is said, "the people were naked; " that does not mean naked in the sense of being destitute of clothing, but it means naked in the inner and moral sense of the word, that they were before righteous, but that they now were sinful.

Then with respect to the command given to the sons of Levi, it was not Moses that ordered the three thousand to be slain; it was God that commanded it. Moses was the judge who pronounced the sentence, the sons of Levi were the executioners that carried the sentence into effect. It was not man's hasty and passionate judgment, but a solemn sentence pronounced by God's bidding and executed by God's command.

But how is it that amid so many that were guilty three thousand only were slain? The answer is, there seems to have been three thousand who still remained outside the camp; for the language of Moses, in the 27th verse, is, "Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man

- it was evidently, the men that still remained outside the camp, and continued in their sin, that were slain; and those who began to see their sin in its true light were permitted to escape, but were plagued or punished with subordinate penalties and other chastisements.

We then read after this that Moses addressed the people, and said, "Ye have sinned a great sin:" that is, those who were still living, which shows that it was only the impenitent that were slain: "and now I will go up unto the Lord'; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin." And then he says, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin". when there is very strong feeling, very often that feeling checks itself before it is uttered, if I may so speak is to say, it is too deep for utterance; and in the 32d verse,

that

we have a proof of it: "Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin-;" and he stops in the middle of the sentence; his emotions were too strong for utterance; it is an unfinished sentence, it occurs in all languages; "and if not," then he adds, “blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Now, I have heard many persons say that Moses asked to be condemned to misery himself if God would only spare his people; but I am quite satisfied that the book that is alluded to here is a book that is elsewhere referred to in Scripture, and denotes simply being numbered with the living that are upon earth, the book of the living; and in several passages we find allusions to it: "Let my name," as if he had said, "be numbered no more with the living upon earth" "Let my lot be no more with the living upon earth." See Psa. Ixix. 29; Philip. iv. 3; Ezek. xiii. 9; Isa. iv. 3, - and all that Moses therefore asked here was, not that God should blot his name out of His own hidden book, which shall be produced at the great white Throne; but that God would, if it pleased him, take away the life of Moses, if he would only spare the people that had been guilty of so great a sin "let me be no more numbered with the living creation if thou wilt only spare these "let my life be taken instead of the lives of the offenders that have been guilty before thee." God said, "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out". - punishment shall be light upon the guilty head; I cannot take thee as a substitute.

"And the Lord plagued the people," that is, made them feel their sin afterwards, whilst he did not destroy

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MOSES' PRAYER. GOD'S GLORY. HEAVEN. THE GROWING REVE

LATION OF IT.

FIED.

GLORY IS GOODNESS. HOW GOD IS GLORI

In the previous chapter, which we read last Lord's day morning, we had that most distressing and humbling account of the apostasy of the children of Israel, even at the foot of the mount that burned with the glory of God, and with the accents of heaven still ringing in their ears. You will recollect, at the close of it, the intercession of Moses, who prayed, not that he might be blotted out of the Book of Life in heaven - which is a very common, but a very mistaken apprehension of the passage — but that his name might cease to be numbered with the living upon earth, if his death could only secure for the people that had so greatly sinned, the favor and the protection of God.

In this chapter we have Moses, the man of God, brought, if possible, still nearer to God; for the Lord spoke to him "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." The chapter opens with the beautiful announcement of God himself, that, notwithstanding all the sins of the past, his promises should not fail; "Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it." How wonderful is this! The sins of a nation do not always repel the protection of God. When man is unfaith

ful to his duty, though he forget God's precepts, yet God remembers his promises of grace, when man has ceased to be worthy of them at all. In other words, often in the experience of nations, as well as in the experience of individuals, "where sin hath abounded, there grace hath much more abounded." But God says to them, "I will send an Angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: unto a land flowing with milk and honey for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people." Now, I think this verse, and also verse 5, where God says, "Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee," are rather threatenings of what Israel deserved, than absolute promises or prophecies that God desired to fulfil. It seems to me as if he were trying them, to see whether they could appreciate his presence, and whether they would feel his absence and removal from them to be a great personal and national calamity; because we find that afterwards he returns to them in loving-kindness and in mercy, and pities them as a father pities his children.

One sometimes wonders that God should so condescend to reason with us. We often think ourselves a very important race, and our world a very magnificent orb; but in truth, if this little orb in which we live were expunged from the orbs of creation, it would make no greater gap, relatively, than a grain of sand taken from the sea-shore would make a gap there. We are much less in any sense than we think ourselves; and if we are great, we are great only in the splendor of that greatness that pities us, and bears with us, and forgives us.

We read that Moses took the tabernacle, and carried and pitched it without the camp; and when he came out into the tabernacle, all the people rose up; and when he talked with the Lord, "all the people rose up and worshipped,

every man in his tent door." It seems from all this, as if the terrible judgment on the three thousand in the previous chapter had been sanctified. Unsanctified judgments are the worst of all judgments; but judgments sanctified lose their character as penal visitations, and become paternal ministries. To the rest of the people, therefore, this judgment seems to have been sanctified; for we find them now exhibiting a devotional spirit, and showing an obedience to God that they did not manifest before.

We have a most interesting and beautiful account of Moses' communion with God- a communion that is here made visible but that still exists between the soul and God as closely, as really, as truly, as it existed between God and Moses at the foot of Mount Horeb. The soul can still communicate with God. In that dispensation every thing was done visibly; it was the infancy of our race, and God was guiding them with leading strings. But now the same closeness and communion is realized spiritually; the inner life being as real as the outer life, though not visible like it.

God then speaks to Moses as knowing him by name; and Moses, encouraged by God's condescending approach to him, begins instantly to pray for more than he had. The more a believer has, the more he asks. It is not the man strange enough—that needs most that prays most; but it is the man that has got most that prays the more, seeks for more; because the more we have, the deeper we feel the wants that still remain to be supplied; the more precious we feel what we have, and live in the enjoyment of blessedness that we felt not before; like Moses, we make one grant the pretext for asking another, and one blessing a reason for seeking more. Therefore Moses says, "I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight,”—not merit, —“if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight,”. not that I