Mount Sinai, then, was to afford the great sign of the divine mission of Moses; there God would be revealed to him, and show that He was God indeed. Wherefore He came down with all the signs and seals of His presence, with His power, and His wisdom, and His goodness. He came with His power, with blackness and clouds, and thick darkness; with fire, and the sound of a trumpet, and with a mighty voice. Hear, and think upon the solemnity of that day on Mount Sinai, when God gave the signs of his power:"Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice." These were the signs of power; and thus we find Moses appealing to them as such, when he asks the people, "Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?"

But there were also given the signs of God's wisdom and goodness: there was given on that same Mount Sinai, that law of which St. Paul bore true witness, when he described it as holy, just, and good. There were given all those statutes and ordinances which met so many of the worst evils of society, evils which it has been found so hard to

deal with,-statutes which, while they made allowance in some respects for the hardness of the people's hearts, for their imperfect notions of right and wrong, yet had a tendency gradually to raise those notions, and so to prepare them for the yet more perfect law that was to be revealed hereafter. So that Moses could appeal to the signs of God's wisdom and holiness shown on Mount Sinai, no less than to the signs of his power. "What nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?"

By what was to happen on Mount Sinai, a proof was to be given that Moses had been sent by God to deliver Israel. But this proof was not after the same manner to be given again to a future Redeemer. For the people had said, “Let us not hear again the voice of the Lord our God, neither let us see this great fire any more, that we die not. And the Lord said, They have well spoken that which they have spoken." Therefore he said unto Moses, "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." The next redemption given, the next law delivered, were thus not to have exactly the same sign as that which had accompanied the redemption and the law ministered by Moses.

Yet, as God had said to Moses, "This shall be a token unto thee: When thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, thou shalt serve God upon this mountain;" so was the worshipping of God on His holy mountain to be a token, no less, that Jesus Christ, the perfect Redeemer and Lawgiver, had come from God also. And so the Apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, compares Mount Sion with Mount Sinai, even while he is contrasting them. For there too should be seen all the signs of God, His power, and His wisdom, and His love; only His power itself was to show itself in works of love, and not of terror. His power was shown in the great company of the worshippers, that out of every land men were turned unto Him, and His word beginning at Jerusalem, had triumphed even to the ends of the earth. His power was shown in the person of Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant; for He was dead, and is alive for evermore; and having so overcome death, He hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Further, His power was shown also in the gifts of His Holy Spirit ; His signs and wonders, done by the Apostles, and by those on whom the Apostles laid their hands; His better and more enduring signs and wonders, done, not by the Apostles only, and by the men of one generation, but by thousands in a thousand generations; the signs of the renewed heart and

the converted will; the signs of peace, and hope, and joy.

And as there were the signs of God's power on Mount Sion as well as on Mount Sinai, though of a different kind, so also were there the signs of His wisdom and of His goodness, differing from those shown on Mount Sinai, not in kind, but in degree. There were the wisdom and the goodness of Christ's law of liberty, fitted for the highest perfection to which men could possibly ascend, and admitting of nothing wiser or better. These signs we have; these are the signs enjoyed by the Church of God in her worship on God's holy mountain,—a sure token that He, by whom she was redeemed and brought to this holy mountain, was her true prophet, her true deliverer; that her redemption from first to last was the work of God alone.

So, then, we are on God's holy mountain, and He is with us. The first Israel abode for a certain time before Mount Sinai; but then they went on their way through the wilderness. But we are worshipping, if it be not our own fault, on the mountain of God always. The signs of His presence are ever before us, that we may see and believe. But as Israel feared the thunder and the fire, so we despise the milder signs that are offered to us; we see, and do not believe. It is so, and

it is our sin and our shame that it is so. But is not our sin yet greater, if we not only despise the signs of God, but are actually engaged in obscuring or defacing them? if we not only do iniquity ourselves, but offend others; that is, cause others, through our fault, to fall the more readily?

I am not speaking now of what I have so often spoken of, the difficulties which we throw in the way of others,-I do not say deliberately, but at any rate wilfully,-when by laughing, or persuading, or by any other influence, we actually do turn our neighbour away from good to bad. I am not speaking of this, but of a fault common to us all at every age and in all circumstances. We are too apt to lessen, to obscure, to deface for each other the signs of God's presence amongst us; we live with one another nominally in the bonds of God's holy Church, rather to hinder each other in our Christian course than to forward.

For manifestly we do hinder our brethren rather than help them, by every mark of unbelief and of evil that we show in our own hearts and lives; we so far deface the signs of God's presence, we lessen the assurance that we are on His holy mountain. Our faith is weak; who does not know and feel that it is so? God is not visible to us, nor can we see beyond the grave; and therefore there is a weakness of faith in each of us naturally, and