alone can elevate his being, he is but building up in his heart an altar at which he offers up the brightest and best gifts which God has bestowed upon him, and he receives in return only perishable treasures.

The one means of elevation to his nature, which is offered to his acceptance, is communion with the Father of Light and Truth, in the earnest prayers of a broken and a contrite heartthe one means of restoration to his lost holiness is the effusion of the Holy Spirit in answer to those prayers! The one way of safety is a life spent under the sanctifying influence of prayer, thus offered up through that Redeemer by whose blood alone he feels that the kingdom of Heaven has been opened to all believers!

We bow not the knee to Baal, we make not a graven image. Whatever be the idolatry of which we are guilty, it is not that gross form of it in which the Jewish Church sinned, but we may be guilty of spiritual idolatry; and when ever we take the guide of life from any other source than God's own word, we are! We are guilty, and the jealousy of God will as surely visit our sins as it did those of his chosen people! The provision against our spiritual temptation is as ample as that which God's Law offered against the grosser temptations of the days of old, and we are as strictly bound to use it. The word of

God is destined to preserve his ark, the Church, through all its trials. Whatever wind shall beat against that Church, however wildly the stormy waters may lash its sides whether fanaticism assail us from one quarter, or indifference from another the word of God hath power to calm the first, and to stir up the second. Though for a season they may disturb, they cannot destroythe same protection which for centuries has maintained that Ark entire and unbroken by the waves, will maintain it to the end!

LECTURE V.

1 TIMOTHY I. 8.

But we know that the Law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

ONE of the objects proposed in this series of Lectures was to trace the effects produced by the Law of Moses on the Jewish people. In the last Lecture its efficacy was considered in banishing idolatry from one portion of the globe. It was there shewn that, from the season when the Jews had learned in adversity and under punishment to honour the Law of their forefathers, idolatry no longer could lift up its head among them, or, if it obtained a temporary victory, it lifted it up only to be crushed more effectually. It was shewn that the kingdom of Israel, which was more guilty as touching this matter, was sooner destroyed than that of Judah; and that when once destroyed, it was destroyed for ever. It was there shewn that the knowledge of the one true God was thoroughly understood, and his temple-worship duly established, before the time of the appearance of the Messiah; and that

thus an highway was prepared, by which the nations, in their time, might be brought to the knowledge of the living God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ. It was shewn that their punishments were, for the most part, dependent on their non-observance of the Law, and chiefly in the case of their transgressing it by any admixture of idolatrous rites.

And the triumph which was thus achieved, it must be remembered, was no mean triumph; and to human eyes it was one which was often almost lost sight of, though the Lord remembered his purposes. When, for instance, the one people, in whom his knowledge was to be retained, was carried away captive from its own land, or was crushed and bruised by the hand of foreign oppressors even upon the holy soil— who that looked to human instruments alone would have ventured to predict that this people should remain united, and dwell in the land of their forefathers till the Messiah should come, still unmixed with any other people, and still holding the institutions which they had received upwards of fourteen hundred years before? Had there not been some extraordinary element of consistency in their political constitution, they must have yielded to the pressure of such untoward circumstances, and have been annihilated as an independent people. It will be the object

of the present Lecture, in part, to trace the effect which the existence of their Law had with regard to the leading events of their history, and to shew how far it operated as a means of uniting the people. It will lead us, indeed, to a part of their history not very commonly treated of in this place, because we have only apocryphal authority to found our reasoning upon; but as I am about to address myself to an historical rather than a religious question, the writings which are no authority in matters of faith may be fairly adduced in support of facts. It is chiefly with a view to remark on one or two unfair representations made by the enemies of our faith, that I pursue this enquiry.

It must be obvious to every one here, that one of the most usual modes of attack is to confound in name two things which are different in reality, and that nothing is more liable to this abuse than the phrase the Law,' which so constantly occurs in Holy Writ, because it is used in more senses than one. It was this which enabled one of the sarcastic sceptics of the last age to ridicule the Law of Moses as a collection of trifling ceremonies and idle precepts. The course he took was this. He selected one or two of the ceremonies of the Paschal Supper,

1

1 Voltaire. See Lettres de quelques Juifs, &c. à M. de Voltaire, Vol. 1. p. 239, &c. See Leo, Vorlesungen, p. 81.