and attain to the true law of righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith?

Faith is a principle of the heart. And it was this principle, to which Moses emphatically appealed, when he delivered the second covenant in Moab, at the close of his ministry. "The Lord commanded Moses to make a covenant with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant, which he made with them in Horeb." (Deut. xxix. 1.)

In this second covenant it is declared," Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath ; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God; and also with him, that is not here with us this day."-There appears to have been a hidden meaning, to be revealed in distant times, conveyed in this announcement. "Those things, which are revealed, belong unto us, and to our children for ever." But, "the secret things belong unto the Lord our God." (Deut. xxix. 29.)

We may perhaps, in these days, understand what those events, then kept secret from the Israelites, were intended to be. The true meaning of the following words of Moses, which his people did not fully understand, may be clear and intelligible to us."When thou" (the nation of Israel) "shalt call all these things to mind, among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee; and shalt return unto the Lord thy God; and shalt obey his voice -with all thine heart and with all thy soul then

the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee."

“ If any of thine be driven out unto the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee. And the Lord thy God will bring thee unto the land, which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it: and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers." (Deut. xxx.) So St. Peter (Acts ii. 39.) "The promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." The expression of Moses, "he will multiply thee above thy Fathers,” is similar to the blessing bestowed by Jacob on Joseph the heir of the birth-right, on which we have commented elsewhere. "The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors, unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills." It is the blessing on all the seed of promise, Jew and Gentile. But, in proclaiming this promise to his people at Horeb, did Moses confer it on those, who had the seal of circumcision after the flesh? No-he extends it to that circumcision which is of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." (Rom. ii. 29.) "The Lord thy God," he says, "will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with

all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." (Deut. xxx. 6.) It is the very doctrine of St. Paul; and we have. thus, in this covenant at Moab, an epitome as it were of the fundamental gospel principle.

teousness.

Circumcision is the seal of Abraham's covenant, the covenant of faith, which worketh obedience by love, and to which God will of his grace impute righWe have this great truth announced even by Moses, the mediator of the covenant of works-the covenant of bondage. It is of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; and this great truth we receive on the joint authority of Moses and St. Paul!

May God in his own good time, as he hath "gathered others to him," so also again "gather the outcasts of Israel" to that faith, which was the faith of their "elders," the faith of Abraham, of Moses, of the Judges, of David, of Samuel, and of the prophets-that faith, which Paul revived, and which Luther restored.

can

God has vouchsafed to man one revelation of his will, throughout all generations, by which alone we come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God . . . unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." (Eph. iv. 13.)

SECTION XXXVIII.

Evidence of gospel truth by "subsequent confirmation.” Saul the persecutor.

Let us now pause: and let us contemplate the wondrous scheme, which the sacred records comprise ; and which they have developed, by gradual and progressive revelation, from the beginning of the world, for our instruction, and for the confirmation of our faith. We use the term scheme' in the sense of our standard Lexicographer's definition, namely, as a combination of various things into one view, design, or purpose.' (Dr. Johnson.)

If we reflect upon this scheme :-if we proceed, link by link, through that prophetic chain, which conducts and introduces us to the gospel consummation, leading us from the creation of the world to the first advent of Christ ;-can we fail to perceive ;shall we hesitate to acknowledge its clear, simple, and unquestionable connection? If we carefully unfold that chain, and distribute its several successive

links in their regular order, each in connection with the one before it; or each in connection with that which follows it; will it not lead us, by infallible progression, to the gospel-consummation? If that be not the end—the 'goal'-the point, from which we must start; or at which we must arrive-what is? Without that directing mark, would not this chain be so tangled, involved, and inextricable, as to be utterly incapable of being unravelled? But, when carefully traced to that final point, is it not distinct, regular, and harmonious, throughout the whole extent of its continuity?

But, does this scheme,' which we have been considering, this combination of various things into one view'does it bear the marks of a preconceived design of any one man, or number of men,—or confederate succession of men? Men have recorded its details; men have explained its doctrines; but whose conception is discovered in the expansion and the unity of this marvellous scheme?

The four gospels proclaim historically, that consummation, to which all the previous writings in Holy Scripture are introductory. The gospels are a record. But they do not constitute, by themselves, the sole credentials of those events, which they record.

No single history, perhaps, can claim entire credence, on its own unsupported testimony. But, four cotemporary writers, each concurring in the main and essential facts, to which the others have