crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwife? is not he thy Father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?" *

Finally, this long, this instructive, this powerful farewel sermon of the man of God, contains predictions clear, pointed and strong, of the fearful judgments which should overtake that finful people, and involve them and their posterity in utter destruction. Many learned men, and not without the greatest appearance of reason, have fuppofed that the spirit of prophecy by the mouth of Mofes has foretold the final dissolution of the Jewish government, and their dispersed, reproachful, despised state to this day, until the time of their restoration to the divine favour, and their re-establishment under the bond of the new and everlasting covenant, " a covenant established on better promises, ordered in all things and sure." This idea seems justified by the following and fimilar prophetic denunciations. "Of the rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and haft forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his fons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will fee what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall confume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them, I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burned with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beafts

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upon them, with the poison of ferpents of the dust. The fword without, and terror within shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the fuckling al, fo, with the man of grey hairs. I faid I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men."* Is not this laid up in store with me, and fealed up among my treasures? To me belongeth vengeance, and recompenfe; their foot shall flide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his fervants; when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, which did eat the fat of their facrifices, and drank the wine of their drink-offerings? Let them rise up, and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live forever. If I whet my glittering fword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword fhall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the flain, and of the captives from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy."t But the time to favour revolted, returning Ifrael, shall come at length; and together with them the time to irradiate and deliver "the nations which were fitting in darkness, and in the region and shadow of death;" and the prophetic foul of Mofes hastens forward to conclude the facred fong, with a grand chorus of harmonious voices, the voices of the ranfomed of the Lord from every nation, every kindred and tribe, rejoicing together in one common falvation: "Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people

ple: for he will avenge the blood of his fervants, and will render vengeance to his adverfaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people."*

How powerfully must all this have been impressed on the hearts of his audience by the fight of their venerable instructor, bending under the weight of " an hundred and twenty years:" exhausted by labours performed in the public fervice, no longer capable of "going out and coming in;" excluded by the inflexible decree of Heaven from any part or lot in the land of promife; lying under the bitter sentence of impending death; his power and glory departing, and paffing before his eyes to the hand of another! Why are not impreffions of this fort more lasting, and more efficient? Shall "the righteous perish, and no man lay it to heart?" Is "the merciful man taken away, and will none consider?" "The righteous is taken away from the evil to come." By his departure the earth is impoverished, but heaven is enriched. Remove the veil, and behold him " entering into peace:" "they shall reft in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness." I hear a voice from heaven, saying, "Write, Bleffed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth: yea, faith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."†

* Deut. xxxii. 43. † Rev. xiv. 13.

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Hiftory

History of Mofes.

LECTURE

VIII.

DEUTERONOMY xxxi. 7, 8.

And Mofes called unto Joshua, and faid unto him in the fight of all Ifrael, Be strong, and of a good courage : for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath fworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee, he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not, neither be dismayed.

Is it not a presumption and a presentiment of immortality, that men naturally feel, design and act as if they were immortal? In life we are in the midst of death; but it is equally true, that in the very jaws of death, we live; and fondly dream of living longer. Let the fatal moment come when it will, it comes to break into fome scheme we hoped to execute, to interrupt some work we had begun, to disappoint fome purpose we had adopted. The warnings of diffolution which are sent to others, we feem to understand and feel better than those which are addressed to ourselves. One man is under sentence of condemnation, another labours under an incurable disease; one is daily expofing his life to jeopardy in the high places of the field, another putting the knife of intemperance

to

to his throat every hour: this man has completed his seventieth year, and his neighbour has lived to see his children's children of the third and fourth generation.

These are all symptoms equally mortal, but none takes the alarm to himself: every one is concerned for his neighbour's cafe, and flatters himself his own is not quite so desperate. The wretch condemned to death, foothes his foul to rest with the hope of a pardon, and laments the certain doom of his confumptive acquaintance: the declining man, with his foot in the grave, pities and prays for the unhappy creature who must suffer on Wednesday se'nnight. The foldier braves the death that is before his eyes in a thousand dreadful forms, in the prefumption of victory; and the voluptuary thanks his kinder stars that he is likely to sleep in a found skin. The man of feventy reckons upon fourscore; and ten years in profpect are a kind of eternity; and the grandfire amuses himself with the hope of feeing his grandchildren fettled in the world. Thus the pleasing illufion goes on: and men are dead, indeed, before they had any apprehen, fion of dying.

The thoughtless and impious insensibility with which many advance to their latter end, is not more mournful and distressing, than the steadiness and compofure of piety and habitual preparation are pleasing and instructive. Blefsed is the state of that man to whom life is not a burden, nor death a terror, who has " a defire to depart and to be with Christ," but is willing "to continue in the flesh," for the glory of God, and the good of men; who neither quits his station and duty in life in fullen discontent, nor cleaves to the enjoyments of this world, as one who has no hope beyond the grave.

But the cup of death, to the best of men, contains ⚫ many bitter ingredients. Even to Mofes it was far from being unmixed. To the natural horror of dying was fuperadded, the sense of divine difpleafure; a fenfe