no Christian will deny that the spirit of the Law, that is, that the will of God is,that we remember the mercies of God, the fulfilment of His promises, and the exhortation to perseverance, and to go on against the spiritual enemies of the soul with strength and courage, putting on the whole armour of God, being assured that the providence and grace of God will neither fail us nor forsake us 2. We apply the same reasoning to the third part of the Section. Moses, being willing and ready to die, prays to the God who had commissioned him to his high office, to appoint a successor. The prayer is answered. Moses is commanded to take Joshua, who had proved his fitness for the office, to lay his hand upon him, to appeal to the congregation, to give him a charge, to obtain the sanction of the high priest, who, according to his office, should pray for the grace of God to direct him in the government of the people. We have no express command that the same ceremonial should be observed at present to uphold the succession of magistrates, priests, or rulers; but we may justly infer from this law of God in the olden time, that it is according to the will of God, when one magistrate, prince, or sovereign, even now succeeds to another, that fitness for the office, the approbation of the people, a public ceremonial, the sanction of the senatorial or sacerdotal advisers, with public prayer for the prosperity of the community, and for the due discharge of his duties by the prince, should be all united in the inauguration of a ruler to his government of a Church or nation; and that there should be a constant succession, for the sake of the general good, of spiritual teachers and political rulers. So far, we may say, there would be little controversy among those who believe that the will of God is to be ascertained from the actions and laws of God. The two next portions of the Section, however, touch more immediately upon the controversies which prevail among us. The fourth portion relates the command and Law of God, that the whole of the Pentateuch, the whole of the revealed and written Law of God, should be read every seventh year before all the people, men, women, children, and strangers; that all individuals, whether high or low, rich or poor, should be made acquainted with the whole Law of God, and fear God, and observe all the precepts, statutes, and ordinances of the revealed will of God, so far as that will was made known. But the God of the Jew is the God of the Christian. The Lord God of Moses is the Christ of the Christian. The same Holy Spirit, which was given by the Lord God of Moses to grant the five books of Moses to the Jewish Church, is given by the Lord Jesus Christ to grant the New Testament to the Christian Church. But the New Testament, being the completion of Revelation, is of equal, or rather of greater, value to the Christian, than the books of Moses were to the Jew. And if it was the will of God that the free, unrestricted, universal use, reading, hearing, and studying of the ancient Law was required of all classes, from the prince to the servant, in the olden time, then we infer that it is the will of God that it be the bounden duty of all classes of Christians, from the prince to the peasant, to possess, to enjoy, and to use the free, unrestricted, universal reading, hearing, and studying of the more modern and completed Scriptures. We infer, therefore, that that Church is right which not only directs and commands its people thus to value and to honour the revealed Scriptures; but that that Church, that priesthood, that priest, that teacher is wrong, who, on any pretence whatever, abridges, restricts, or withholds the unlimited use of the inspired Volume. We infer that the Church of Rome, and all who symbolize with it in this manner, have not rightly learnt the will of God from the actions and law of the Lord God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one Head of the Universal Church in all ages, when they presume to withhold the blessing which has been sent down from heaven for the common use of the souls, as the air and light are granted for the common use of the bodies, of men*. And, as the fourth portion of this Section thus convicts the Church of Rome of the deep sin of misinterpreting the will of God; so does the next portion convict of great and grievous error those opinionists who proceed to the opposite extreme from Rome. Two words have been of late years much used in the controversies which have prevailed among Christians -CHURCH and STATE; and these two terms are spoken of as if they signified two powers, within one territory, antagonistical to each other. Let us learn from the Word of God, and from the actions and Law of God, what is the will of God as to the identity of religion with Government, and of Government with religion, in every nation. The Law of God, then, was not given to the people of Israel as a Church, independent of the State; nor to a State, independent of a Church. All the laws which the Lord God, or which Christ, gave to the people, were spoken to them as to one society. That society was both political and religious. There was no possibility of separating religion from politics, or politics from religion. Their political duties were a portion of their religion. Their religious duties were a part of their politics. Their citizenship was a double relation to God and their nation, founded upon one Law, which bound them in one brotherhood. The terms, the Church, the State, the People, the Nation, Israel, the Twelve Tribes, were merely different designations of the one society with which God had made a covenant that He would be their God, and that they should be His people. If we settled our modern controversies on the principle that the will of God, the will of Christ, is to be inferred from the commands, the actions, and the written Law of God, we should certainly come to the conclusion that this is the will of God,-that, as the nation of Israel was regarded as one political and religious society, so also every nation under the completed Revelation should endeavour and pray to become one united Christian political and religious society, bound together by one Divine Law-the Law of Christ. The command of the Lord God of Moses is the command of Jesus Christ to the Christian. I will learn the will of Christ from the commands of Christ. Guided by the revealed written Word, I learn this to be the will of Jesus Christ,-that He will have all the world to acknowledge and confess Him to be their Guide through the wilderness, and their Leader to heaven. But be the prophecies which declare the universal dominion of the God of Israel fulfilled when they may, the Deut. xxxi. 9-13. 24-27. world will be divided into its separate independent kingdoms: and, as the Law of Moses made the Jewish nation not a mere collection of isolated religious congregations, taught and presided over by their several isolated instructors, with clashing opinions, and various modes of worship, but one united society of brotherly worshippers of the God of their nation; so will it be when the same God of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ, rules over every nation. They will preserve their nationality, independently of each other, while they each severally form one, separate, national, political, religious people. And as the Universal Church of the Jews was governed by the Lord God, so will the future Universal Church be governed by the same Lord God, Jesus Christ. I believe that the will of God, thus collected and inferred from the actions and Law of God, given at sundry times, and in divers manners, is the best guide to all our modern controversialists. The will of God, thus inferred from the law of God, or of Christ, will teach the Christian to worship God, if by any means it be possible, with his own nation and people, as the one society in which God's Providence has placed him. The will of God, as I infer that will from His actions, commandments, and Laws, tells me, at least, not to seek any foreign communion, which abhors the worship of my people and nation; not to seek for a sect, or party, or association of any kind, which is separated from the one religious and political society which constitutes the Christian people, and Christian nation. With us the Christian believer in Jesus Christ may thus rightly and safely worship with his own religious, free, truth-loving, Scriptural Church and nation. I judge not others. I speak only of my own conclusions from the study of the conduct of the God of the revealed Scriptures. I rejoice that I can worship with my own people in its National Church. If I did not worship God there, I must worship God in the wilderness: for neither the foreigner, nor the separatist, seems to me to have understood the will of the Almighty so thoroughly as the Scripture-loving masters of Israel in our own National Church. May our dear land be the Israel of modern days; the spiritual leaven, to leaven the mass of the world! BEFORE CHRIST 1452. Deut. 3. 27. & 32. 49. & 34. 1. NUMBERS XXVII. 12-14. ye CHRIST 1452. 24. & 32. 51. Ps. 106. 32. 12 ¶ And the LORD 14 For c rebelled a- BEFORE said unto Moses, a Get gainst my commandment ch. 33 47. thee up into this mount in the desert of Zin, in e ch. 20. 12, Abarim, and see the land the strife of the congre- Deut. 1. 37. which I have given unto gation, to sanctify me at the children of Israel. the water before their 13 And when thou hast eyes: that is the waseen it, thou also shalt ter of Meribah in KaDeut. 10. 6. be gathered unto thy peo- desh in the wilderness of ple, as Aaron thy brother Zin. b ch. 20. 24, 28. & 31. 2. was gathered. b d d Exod. 17.7. DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 1—6. k BEFORE 1 And Moses went and 4 And the LORD shall CHRIST 1451. Exod. 7.7. ch. 34. 7. Numb. 27. 1 Kings 3. 7. 17. Numb 20. 12. & 27. 13. ch. 3. 27. BEFORE CHRIST 1451. 1 Numb. 21. spake these words unto all do unto them as he did this Jordan. 24.33. day; I can no more 'go 5 And m the LORD shall ch. 7. 2. out and come in: also the give them up before your LORD hath said unto me, face, that ye may do unto • Thou shalt not go over them according unto all the commandments which 3 The LORD thy God, I have commanded you. hhe will go over before 6 "Be strong and of a Josh. 10.25, thee, and he will destroy good courage, fear not, these nations from before nor be afraid of them: for thee, and thou shalt pos- the LORD thy God, Phe it sess them and Joshua, is that doth go with thee; he shall go over before he will not fail thee, nor Numb. 27. thee, as the LORD hath forsake thee. h ch. 9. 3. 21. ch. 3. 28. 1452. ch. 16. 22. Hebr. 12. 9. Deut. 31. 2. 1 Sam 8. 20. & 18. 13. 2 Chron. 1. 10. 15 And Moses spake before all the congrega- 20 And thou shalt put some of thine honour upon 1 sam. 10. 6, him, that all the congre- 2 Kings 2. 15. gation of the children of Israel z be obedient. Josh. 1. 16, 17. may 21 a And he shall stand See Josh 9. a 17 Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them before Eleazar the priest, out, and which may bring who shall ask counsel for 20. 18, 23, 26. them in; that the congre- him after the judgment of gation of the LORD be not Urim before the LORD: 'as sheep which have no at his word shall they Josh. 9. 14. Zech. 10. 2. shepherd. go out, and at his word 18 And the LORD they shall come in, both he, Mark 6. 34. said unto Moses, Take and all the children of Isthee Joshua the son of rael with him, even all the Gen. 41. 38. Nun, a man "in whom is congregation. the spirit, and lay thine 22 And Moses did as the LORD commanded Deut. 31. 9. 19 And set him before him: and he took Joshua, 18. upon Eleazar the priest, and and set him before Eleazar BEFORE CHRIST the priest, and before all him a charge, as the LORD 1452. the congregation: 23 And he laid his Moses. BEFORE CHRIST 1452. & 31.7. d Deut. 3. 28. hands him, upon dand gave DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 9-13. 1451. e ver. 25. ch. 17. 18. f Numb. 4. 15. Personal history of Moses concluded. His death announced. 9 And Moses wrote before all Israel in their 1451. this law, and delivered it hearing. f 1 unto the priests the sons 12 Gather the people ch. 4. 10. of Levi, which bare the together, men, and women, ark of the covenant of the and children, and thy 1 Chron. 15. LORD, and unto all the stranger that is within thy Josh. 3. 3. 12, 15. ch. 15. 1. Lev. 23. 34. i ch. 16. 16. elders of Israel. gates, that they may hear, the g i n may 11 When all Israel is hear, and learn to fear the come to appear before the LORD your God, as long Josh. 8. 34, LORD thy God in the place as ye live in the land 2 Kings 23 2. which he shall choose, whither ye go over Jordan Neh. 8. 1, 2, k thou shalt read this law to possess it. m ch. 11. 2. a Ps. 78. 6, 7. 22. 8. And it came to Moses had the law, P and put it in the P See 2 Kings of writing side of the ark of the covethis law in nant of the LORD your a book, until they were God, that it may be there finished, for a witness against thee. 25 That Moses com- 27 For I know thy manded the Levites, which rebellion, and thy stiff bare the ark of the cove- neck: behold, while I am nant of the LORD, saying, yet alive with you this day, 5 The arrangement of this part of the narrative is very difficult. We read of two charges to Joshua, and two charges to the people. We read likewise of the delivery of a copy of the law to the priests, and of another to the Levites. Whether these charges were given at the same time; or whether two copies of the law were delivered, one to be deposited in the ark, the other to be copied by the people, is uncertain. It is supposed that some few passages at the end of Deuteronomy have been added by a later writer, either Samuel, or Ezra, or one of the Prophets. This would account for the apparent repetition. |