manner as the authority of a Parent and of his com mand is complete, whether the extent of his favour, or of his displeasure, be laid open or not, with the demand of obedience. In every original right of moral authority, the case must be the same. That is to say, the essence of the obligation, and the virtue of compliance with it, are independent of the kind, or the degree, of the retribution annexed.

Perhaps therefore we shall form more correct notions of the ancient law of God, and of the dignity of the obedience exacted to it, if we regard it less in its particular sanctions, and more in its proper holiness and sanctity, as being the clear revelation of the divine will, coming from God, and directing men to him; and on that account a holy rule of obedience. That it offered a less excellent, a less animating motive, to obedience, than God was afterwards pleased to reveal, can be no imputation upon it, or upon Him; unless it becomes us to say on what terms we, or any others, should serve him, or that He shall always add to his laws one and the same degree of explicit stipulation.

But though the precise sanction of the Law go no further than to this scene of a present temporal retribution, this is not the whole of the case. There are, as I have said, general promises and threatnings interspersed through the volume of it. Whatever enlargement of men's hopes and fears could be suggested by these indefinite discoveries of favour

or punishment; whatever further ideas could be suggested by the strong hopes and cries of nature, or the feebler voice of reason, concerning a future state; whatever intimations of it might be conveyed by particular prophecies, or the example and faith of saints:-all these would remain collateral motives, not abrogated, nor invalidated, by the Mosaic Law, but invested with whatever evidence, or power of influence, they might possess, on their own footing, apart from the institution of that law. For the Law in its sanction is only positive that God will do so much, not exclusive, that he will do nothing more.

In the end, I submit it to the Christian religionist, whether he can take just offence at the omission of the doctrine of an eternal reward in the Mosaic Code, when he adverts to the important principle of his own faith, that such a reward is not attainable by that Law. Neither by obedience to that Law, nor by any obedience, independent of the Christian Atonement, do we expect the gift of eternal life. It is among the first doctrines of Christianity that the Law in itself could not justify to immortality; far otherwise. The suppression, therefore, of the promise of eternal life coincides entirely with the declared inability of the law to confer it. Upon this ground, I put it to the judgment of the sober inquirer, whether the silence of the Law upon this article, an article far too momentous to have

been excluded, except for a great reason, be not a clear and obvious intimation of its own insufficiency, and a mark, a designed evidence, for an evidence certainly it is, to instruct him, that for the life immortal he must look to the Gospel, whether for the doctrine, or for the gift; where he meets it both in the clear revelation, and in the reason of it also. But since the reason of it was wanting in the Law, the non-revelation of it there is abundantly consistent. In his own time, when God, by the work of Redemption, restored man to the confessed capacity of eternal life; when, by a plenary act of mercy, he reinstated him in the title of his original inheritance; then it was his gracious purposes were fully disclosed; and Christianity may, without the smallest derogation from the honour of the elder covenant, be admitted to contain the evidence, as it is con

fessed to convey the grant, of that mercy.

As to the labours of Philosophic inquiry, and the creeds of false Religion, they will confirm and complete this prerogative of the Gospel. For with respect to the first, the labours of Philosophic inquiry.

1. The patient investigators of truth, who in ancient times turned their researches, in the spirit of the best philosophy, to the question of a future immortal state, often to be honoured for their sincerity, and admired for their genius, have yet failed, we know how much, in making any clear discovery of the object of their inquiry. But their failure has

proved, not so much their want of skill in the research, as the infelicity of their condition. For the immortal life which they sought was a forfeited inheritance. The right and title to it were gone. It it is not surprising, therefore, that they failed in adjusting the evidence of it.

2. As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden and difficulty, inasmuch as they could never defend it. They could neither justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce their warrant and authority to teach it. In such precarious and unauthenticated principles, it may pass for a conjecture, a pious fraud, or a splendid phantom : it cannot wear the dignity of Truth.

The result should seem to be, that the Mosaic Religion yields to the Gospel, and to the Gospel alone, the glory of teaching the doctrine of "life and immortality." When this doctrine was brought to light, then the sublime prediction of later prophecy had its completion: "The Lord will destroy in this Moun"tain the face of the covering cast over all people, " and the Vail that is spread over all Nations. He will "swallow up Death in Victory, and the Lord God "will wipe away tears from off all faces*." These were tears of Nature and her children, weeping in

*Isaiah xxv. S.

her ruins. But under that Vail the first Covenant by God's decree lay, except as Prophecy, and new discoveries of Revelation, turned partially aside some of its folds, and began to open a prospect of the approaching change, which in time rent the Vail asunder in the demonstrations of Christianity.

V. I return to the subject people placed under this Law, whose nature and sanctions we have so far considered.

Brought in safety and triumph through so many wonderful scenes, and wrapped from head to foot in their new Institutions, they were ultimately settled in the Land of Promise, and gifted with its abundance. There was no prophecy in being which pointed to any other territorial inheritance, or possession, still in reserve for them. With respect to any earthly donation, the promise had its completion in Canaan. The thing foretold had been, that "they should possess that land," and they possessed it; that "they should be made a great nation*;" and they were established in the force, and regulated order, of a powerful people. What is more, their law had regard in some parts of its service to the same exclusive limits, being restricted in its capacity of a local observance, as in its One place of Sacrifice, and its frequent festival Assemblies embodying the whole nation. The temporal promise, therefore, was exhausted in Canaan; and the Law * Genesis xii. 2.