partly what is referred to in the Psalm, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go up into the house of the Lord." "Our feet shall stand within the gates of Jerusalem." There is also in one of the Psalms a panegyric of Jerusalem, in which one of the features of excellence extolled is that "thither the tribes of the Lord go up to keep holy day." And then it was not a coming together to hold a meeting in the formal sense of modern notions, but a coming together to enjoy a good time. "Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are among you, in the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place His name there (Deut. xvi. 11). "Thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God from year to year in the place which the Lord shall choose, thou and thy household."

The picture presented to the mind by such directions is that of a whole nation breaking up at a given date, and leaving the homesteads of common life, and swarming joyously together at a common place of assembly to spend a fortnight's thorough enjoyment together. It would be a different form and class of enjoyment from what we are acquainted with in Gentile holidays. There would not be the rude and objectless hilarity of inebriated crowds jostling together in mere friskiness without any central idea or purpose. Israel came together not only to rejoice but to worship God and to hear the law expounded. There was also provision that if the things were too heavy to carry, they could turn them into money, and spend the money at the place when they got there. This is what we read: "Thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose to place His name there, the tithe of thy corn, and of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of the herd and of the flocks, that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always. And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou be not able to carry it, or if the place be too far from thee which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place His name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, that thou shalt turn them into money, and bind the money in thine hand and go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt bestow thy money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth, and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thine household " (Deut. xiv. 23-26).

"When all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read the law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, women, and

children, and the stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn and fear the Lord your God, and may observe to do all the words of this law, and that their children which have not known anything, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God" (Deut. xxxi. 11).

This formal reading of the whole law was only to be once in seven years, "In the solemnity of the year of release," but in some form or other, every feast of the year brought God before the nation. Take the feast of the Passover. This was in express commemoration of their deliverance from Egypt. Each family, or cluster of families, was to roast a lamb taken from the sheep or from the goats, they were to eat it in the evening with unleavened bread. No leaven was to be found in their houses from the first day of the feast till its close. In the first day there was to be a solemn assembly and cessation from work and also the seventh day. This was to be observed the first month of every year, and was in fact to be a beginning of the year to them because of the importance of the event it signalised. "For in this self same day have I brought your armies out of Egypt, therefore shall ye observe it in your generations for an ordinance for ever. And it shall come to pass when your children shall say to you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, and smote the Egyptians, and delivered our armies." Thus the deliverance of Israel from Egypt was kept perpetually before the mind of the nation, and indeed it is so to this day. The Jews keep the feast of the Passover, although it has shrunken as much from its significance in their eyes as the lamb which is reduced to a bare bone on the plates.

We reserve for another occasion, if God permit, the spiritual significance of the Passover. We are considering at present the character of all these institutions as modes of national life, when they were in force in the land, and the effect of their contemplation is to generate those rapturous sentiments of admiration with which the Psalms of David abound. What a joyous, subdued, ennobling occasion it would be for all Israel to come together, released from their daily toils for a season, and in full enjoyment of each other's society, opening their minds in gratitude in the historic contemplations involved in the feast. We must also remember that all these public occasions would be tinctured with the spirit of those private commandments which enjoined kindness to the unfortunate and justice to all. A feast sweetened with mercy and truth, and enjoyed with the opulent plenty of every barn-floor and vineyard, and adorned with all the picturesque

accessories of a beautiful land and a beautiful situation, intermingled with song and feasting and prayer, exhibits even at this distant date a definite idea of what human life ought to be, and cheers the heart with some prospect of a day to come when that idea will be realised over the wide world, when the kingdom is restored to Israel and all nations made subject to the sway of their king. Oh, happy day, when many people shall go and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, for He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths." The second feast was only seven weeks after the beginning of harvest, which was early in the Holy Land. They were to begin to count seven weeks from the time the first sickle was put to the corn, and they were then to come together and hold a feast. The connection of the feast was not so distinctly historical as the Passover; it was as truly national, but had more to do with the manifested goodness of God in the abundant supplies of the pastures and the cornfields. It was called the "feast of weeks," and was characterised by a tribute of a free will offering at the hand of every family brought to God according to the measure with which they had been blessed in the harvest. It was distinctly spiritual in its object and character. The Israelite presenting his offering was to say to the priest, "I profess this day unto the Lord thy God that I am come into the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers to give us. A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation great and mighty and populous. And the Egyptians evil entreated us and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage, and when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labour and our oppression, and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt by a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness and signs and wonders, and he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. And now behold I have brought the first fruits of the land which thou, O Lord, hast given me " (Deut. xxvi. 3).

This presentation of the first fruits through the priests was not like the presentations that take place in Roman Catholic countries where the priests take and use the good things offered; the offerer making these acknowledgments was himself with his family to use the things brought to the feast, as it is immediately added: "Thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord hath given unto thee and unto thine house; thou and the Levite and the stranger that is among you." The offerer was to close the presentation by saying, "I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that Thou

hast commanded me. Look down from Thine holy habitation from heaven, and bless Thy people Israel and the land which Thou hast given us, as Thou swearest unto our fathers, a land that floweth with milk and honey."

The third feast, called the feast of tabernacles or booths, because of the peculiar feature that the Israelities were to live in booths during its progress, would be two or three months after the feast of weeks. It was fixed by the completion of the harvest, namely, "After that Thou hast gathered in Thy corn and Thy wine." It was to commence on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when they had gathered in the fruit of the land (Lev. xxiii. 39). This would be six months after the Passover. All the feasts were joyous occasions, but it would seem as if the feast of tabernacles would exceed the others in some respects. It was a direction to every family that on the first day of the feast they were to take "the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook," and construct temporary dwellings for their habitations during the feast. We all know the delightful aroma of fresh-plucked branches of resinous trees: we can therefore imagine the charming stimulus that this odour would impart to the whole performance, and how delightful to the children to get into a light, new, airy house of that sort. It would not be cold, because it would be at the top of the summer season, when it would be a luxury to camp out in the open air. And then the well-filled hampers of all sorts to be stored in the sweet-smelling booths would give a zest of peculiar delightsomeness to the most joyous of all the feasts. They were to dwell in these booths seven days.

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There was an historic meaning connected with this. are Israelites born shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt " (Lev. xxiii. 42). They were to "keep a solemn feast to the Lord, because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands." They were also enjoined to appear full-handed, that is, with plenty of provisions. "Thou shalt not appear before the Lord empty: every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee" (Deut. xvi. 16).

It is not possible to over-estimate the beneficence of these institutions. It was not only that the whole nation was thus kept in continual sympathy with divine views of their existence as a nation, but these feasts provided these occasions of purposeful and enlightened activity that were calculated to redeem life from the stagnation and monotony of a life unregulated by law. Consider also the recuperation

with which it would bless the whole community; they would all go back from these feasts refreshed and renewed in health, and ready to address themselves with renewed pleasure to the daily avocations of their farm lives. The feasts were sufficiently frequent to prevent the intervals having that depressing and vulgarising effect which comes from long continuance in one rut of labour. Such variety of activity as the law provided kept every human exercise efficient; even the hearing of the law at the feasts would be attended with a delight that is unknown to the jaded faculties of poor modern times, when every man is a mere unit, and has to shift for himself in the diversification of his private life as best he may.

The whole tendency of the Mosaic institution is well expressed in the 144th Psalm, "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, that our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace. That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store. That our sheep may bring forth thousands and tens of thousands in our streets; that our oxen may be strong to labour, that there may be no breaking in nor going out; and that there complaining in our streets." 'He showeth His word unto Jacob, His statutes and His judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation. Happy is that people that is in such a case, yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”

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