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prise. Many nations shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths."

3. Monthly." At the beginnings of your months," there was to be a special service of a gladsome character. "In the day of your gladness and in your solemn days and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings " (Num. x. 10). "Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. For this was a statute for Israel and a law of the God of Jacob" (Psa. lxxxi. 3-4). On that day,

the first day of the month--marked and dated by the advent of the new moon--there was to be a large addition to the daily sacrifice. There were to be seven lambs, two young bullocks, and one ram, besides the daily lamb of the morning and evening; and these additional burnt-offerings were to be accompanied by proportional meatofferings and wine-offerings in the quantities specified-(Num. xxviii. 11-14)-in addition to which, there was to be an offering of one kid of the goats for a sin-offering.

This was a more casual, yet a larger, form of special service than the Sabbath or the daily once in thirty days as compared with once in seven days or twice in one day. Its occasion was the completion of a larger cycle of the divine beneficence to man. It takes the moon about thirty days to perform her circuit round the earth. All the benefits she confers in that circuit, we cannot know. Some of them we know. She prevents stagnation in the waters of the earth by causing their rise and fall and so giving us the tides. She mitigates the darkness of night, and even imparts to it a silvery beauty, which is often more acceptable than the glory of the day. She exercises subtle magnetic influences on the condition of earth's inhabitants which we cannot estimate. She gives us a standard of time measurement which is of greater value than familiarity allows us to appreciate.

That the periodicity of such an ordinance in nature should be chosen as the occasion of a special recognition of man's relation to God, is significant. It shows that God finds pleasure in our appreciation of His works. It shows that he disapproves of the sluggish intellectuality that takes them all as a matter of course. There is a liability in men to do this. Accustomed to the automatic operations of the laws of nature, they are liable to become insensible to the eternal power and wisdom in which they have their root. In a sense, the motions of nature are a matter of course. They are established and cannot be interfered with: yet they are not reasonably regarded if considered without reference to the contriving energy in which they had their

He hath also estab

origin. "He commanded and they were created. lished them for ever and ever. He hath made a decree which shall not pass." To look at them and not admiringly recognise the wisdom that has made them is to be like a cow or any other beast-which dimly looks, sees, feels, but does not understand-well enough in its place, but only as fattening flesh to be eaten. "O Lord, how great are Thy works! Thy thoughts are very deep. A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this " (Psa. xcii. 5). "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein" (Psa. cxi. 2).

What man, who has made some great and clever thing, does not enjoy the appreciations of intelligent visitors--the keener the better? What man gets any satisfaction out of the unintelligent gaze of the uninitiated? If this be so with us, who are in the faint image of the Creator, we may understand why God should delight in the recognition of His works by the intelligent creatures He has made, and why He should have selected the completion of the moon's monthly journey for a special exercise in this direction.

There is an evident counterpart to the Mosaic monthly institution in the blessed age that is coming with the advent of the saints to power. It is "from one new moon to another," as well as from Sabbath to Sabbath, that all flesh appears in the temple courts to worship (Is. lxvi. 23). It is "every month" or once a month, that the Apocalyptic wood of life (the saints) yields its fruit for the healing of the nations (Rev. xxii. 2), and it is "according to his months" that the literal tree on both sides of the temple river yields its fruit "whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed the fruit thereof shall be for meat and the leaf thereof for medicine" (Ezek. xlvii. 12). There will be no monotony in a state of things in which the whole population is roused with the advent of every new moon in the heavens to a special service of worship and praise, and a special distribution of healing and blessing. The prospect of the Kingdom is a prospect of an endless succession of joyful activities.

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But what nation of mankind as he now is would care for the activities of holiness? It is "when Thy judgments are made manifest that “all nations will come and worship before Thee" (Rev. xv. 4; Psa. lxxxvi. 9: xxii. 27-29: cii. 16-22; Isaiah xxvi. 9). Till then, the only kind of activity that appeals to the general taste is the activity of the racecourse or of the circus, or of the theatre, and other polluted forms of public life. There are to be "new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." Among many detailed features of delightfulness will be the monthly recurrence of special feasts of praise, joy, and blessing.

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CHAPTER XXI. -THE ANNUAL SERVICES.

NNUAL.-There were several annual services appointed for observance in the tabernacle, recurrent "three times a year -which might seem a contradiction, How could they be

annual if held three times in a year? The answer is, each of the three was special in itself, and came only once a year: the passover, the reaping of the first fruits, and the ingathering of the harvest, which included the feast of tabernacles. The particulars may be learnt in Num. xxviii. and xxix.: Lev. xxiii.: and Ex. xxiii. 14-16.

The annual is the largest natural cycle recognised in the tabernacle service, Other periods enter into the administration of the law in temporal things, such as the six years of service or debt, ending in liberty or forty-nine years of exile ending in unconditional restitution; but these are not natural periods; that is, they are not measured by the movements of the heavenly bodies, and there was no provision for their recognition in the ritual of the sanctuary. The year is a natural period, and the longest natural period in the life of man. His life is but a repetition of years. The year, therefore, would naturally stand as the symbol of his whole life.

That "once a year" certain things should be done was an intimation that the things signified stood related to his whole life, that is, that the will of God required these things in paramount recognition in the lives of those who would be acceptable to Him.

1. THE PASSOVER.-The passover was for the whole congregation to keep. But there was a special observance in the tabernacle. During the seven days of the feast, while the people were living on unleavened bread ("sincerity and truth"-1 Cor. v. 8) the priests were to offer every day, in addition to the daily morning and evening sacrifice, (( two young bullocks, one ram, and seven lambs of the first year without blemish as a burnt-offering, and "one goat for a sin-offering" (Num. xxviii. 19)-along with their appointed meat-offerings, already considered. If the burnt-offering mean, as we seemed to see a chapter or two back, the absorption of the mortal by the flaming-power of the Spirit, then two bullocks (double strength, or all our strength): one ram (natural fatherhood): seven lambs (the very perfection of child

like innocence, sweetness, and simplicity) would be an intimation that man could only attain the immortal in a complete dedication to God of natural powers and relationships, in a perfect submission to His will as the law of life. Christ in all this conformed to the foreshadowing of the law, and we conform to him when we obey him as called upon to do (Heb. v. 9). "The goat for a sin-offering" shows us the antitypical sacrifice of sin's flesh-a pushful, masterful thing-which was put to death on Calvary, "that the body of sin might be destroyed (Rom. vi. 6-10) though in Christ, its pushful masterful tendencies were all overcome beforehand, as Jesus said, "I have overcome," that the sacrifice (without blemish) might be accepted for us. Thus was blended with the Passover celebration, the typification of a perfect submission to the will of God as a basis of reconciliation.

There is something significant in this association of the highest spiritual attainments with the annual celebration of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, for we must not forget that the primary object of the feast was to keep this event in national memory (Ex. xii. 14-27). The modern attitude is that of unbelief concerning the divine nature of the plagues the death of the first-born; and the opening of the Red Sea for Israel's escape; and lo, here, not only is the historic reality of these things linked with a feast which has been kept by Israel in all their generations ever since to the present day, but involved in their celebration is the shadowing of the highest final achievements of God's purpose in Christ. The world's scepticism in the matter is an insult to reason. Moses and Christ are the two poles of God's great work. The miracles of Moses and the miracles of Christ are the two ends of a great historic fabric: they make one piece. If Moses foreshadows Christ, Christ embodies, authenticates, and proves Moses. They are inseparable. The idea of a man believing in Christ without believing in Moses is the monstrous outcome of ignorance. Christ celebrated the passover with his disciples: in this he held up Moses and the firstborn to our view: for the passover had no meaning apart from the Lord passing over the blood-sprinkled houses of the Israelites in Egypt on the night that he went through the land and destroyed the first-born in every house in Egypt. Christ said the passover would be "fulfilled in the kingdom of God" (Luke xxii. 16) which implies the typical nature of the passover feast, in harmony with Paul's teaching that Christ is our passover, sacrificed for us (1 Cor. v. 7). Thus, Christ in the kingdom and Christ on the cross unite with Moses in Egypt on the night of the exodus-which may enable us to understand why the final song of salvation is "the song of Moses and of the Lamb (Rev. xv. 3).

The sacrificial endorsement of the passover in the permanent annual services of the tabernacle is an intimation that a continual recognition of God's work in Egypt is part of our acceptable qualification before Him. How utterly does this consideration condemn our generation which treats lightly and doubts the works He did in the land of Ham. In what an odious light must our flippant, unbelieving contemporaries appear in the eyes of the Eternal, who has condescended to do and record all these mighty works, only to be laughed at by their conceited mediocrities-under the leadership, too, of their clerical leaders! There is a pungent force little suspected in the question of Christ: "If ye believe not the writings of Moses, how shall ye believe my words?" The tempest of his anger will presently awake them to their senses, when he fulfils his promise: "According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show (again) marvellous things. And the nations shall see and be confounded at all their might, and they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth, and they shall fear."

2. THE FEAST OF FIRST-FRUITS.-This differed from the first anniversary celebration, in being founded upon an institute of nature, and not upon a divine interposition in the nation's affairs. Yet we shall find it no less spiritual in its uses, whether in its proximate and literal bearings; or its typical and remote significances.

As regards the first, it was a recognition of the divine beneficence in providing so bountifully for human need in the products of the soil-which even the Gentiles are reasonably expected to discern as the testimony of nature. As Paul told the inhabitants of Lystra, though God had left all nations to walk in their own ways, God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all things therein, " had left not Himself without witness in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness" (Acts xiv. 15-17). But the "witness" is only faintly discerned and mostly not discerned at all. Men use the divine goodness as the creatures crunch their oats and turnips, with a gastric satisfaction merely, without taking thought of the exquisite wisdom and superb goodness that have contrived and provided such suitable substances for the sustenance of man and beast. Israel were not to be like the nations in this respect. They were to make the harvest an occasion of joyful recognition of the goodness of God. It was to be a longdrawn-out festivity beginning "from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to thy corn (Deut. xvi. 9) and lasting till "thou hast (fully) gathered in thy corn and thy wine "-a festivity tempered with the sobrieties of worship, and therefore lacking the tendency to surfeit