was too conspicuous to admit of doubt or controversy.

Could they who had thus experienced the immutable veracity of the Divine Instructor, imagine that though he fulfilled his promises with regard to what was near, he would not fulfil them with regard to what was far off? No. They could not thus think! And is the nature of the Eternal changed? If the promises and threatenings given through Moses and the prophets were fully and completely accomplished, can we believe that those given by a greater than Moses shall fail? The nature of the dispensation is, indeed, in some respects changed, but he who gave it can never change!

The punishments and rewards declared by Moses, were national and temporal. The punishments and rewards declared by Jesus are individual and eternal. And as surely as the chil

dren

dren of Israel obtained possession of the land promised to their fathers, so surely shall we obtain possession of that inheritance promised by God through Jesus Christ, if we, on our parts, perform the conditions of the engagement. As surely as the children of Judah were led into captivity by the King of Babylon, according to all that had been foretold them by the prophet, so surely shall you and I be condemned at the day of judgment, if we, like them, refuse to listen to the prophet's voice.

In the words of the prophet to whom I have so lately alluded, I may now make an appropriate conclusion of this letter. "Have ye

"not known?" says Isaiah the son of Amos, "Have ye not known? "Have ye not heard? Hath it not "been told you from the beginning? "Have ye not understood from the "founda

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foundations of the earth? It is He "that sitteth upon the circle of the "earth, and the inhabitants thereof "are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth "out the heavens as a curtain, and

spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell "in that bringeth the princes to no"thing he maketh the judges of the "earth as vanity. He shall blow upon "them and they shall wither, and the "whirlwind shall take them away as "stubble. The grass withereth, the "flower fadeth, because the spirit of "the Lord bloweth upon it; surely "the people is as grass. The grass "withereth; the flower fadeth.

Bur

66 THE WORD OF OUR GOD SHALL 66 STAND FOR EVER!"

LETTER VI.

IN ushering in the law of ordinances, it pleased the Almighty Giver of the law to afford such testimonies of its Divine origin as were evident to the senses; but in ushering in the law of grace, the appeal was no longer to be made to the senses, but to the understanding and the heart. Every circumstance was declarative of the dif ference of the dispensation. The glories of this world, which had by Moses and the prophets been held forth as the reward of obedience, were cast into shade by "the glory which "excell

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"excelleth," the glory of immortality! Hope was no longer to cling to earthly things; the desires of the heart were to be purified and exalted; and all temporal objects to give place to those which are eternal.

The circumstances of our Saviour's birth gave a mortal blow to worldly pride. When we contrast them with the scene of grandeur and magnificence exhibited at the giving of the law, we cannot wonder that the Jews should doubt and be astonished. They who were filled with high expectations of seeing the reign of the Messiah commence by an external display of might and power, could not by less than miracle be brought to acknowledge, as their promised Saviour, one like him, born and nurtured in poverty and obscurity.

For this they might indeed have been prepared by the prophets, as by

some