committee for the sanctification of the Sabbath (how strange !) appointed by the Presbytery of Glasgow, ventured to go the length, the daring length, of proposing to solicit the Tramway Company to run cars upon the Lord's day under the 'flimsy ostensible project of carrying people to and from church, which they know or ought to know will be the least end for which these cars are used. This also they have done in direct opposition to the divine commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.' Professors of religion are also corrupters in many ways. Many of them set a most inconsistent example in respect of their walk and conversation, they do not keep the Sabbath and reverence the sanctuary as they ought, by conscientiously and regularly attending the house of God, but absent themselves whole days or half days for the most trivial reasons, and so corrupt others by their example. Many frequent the ball-room and threatre, and engage in card-playing and other games of chance, and so corrupt others as to any sound belief and realisation of the immediate direction and providence of God. And many parents allow their children to grow up without giving them any religious instruction, and, especially in the country, without almost ever bringing them to the house of God. Thus we are children that are corrupters.

In our sin in all these things we resemble the Jews, for like them

WE HAVE FORSAKEN THE LORD.

He is greatly forsaken in our national councils. In them His name, His word, His authority, and His providence are very little regarded, and His honour and glory are not sought; and how can it be otherwise when those who are the electors do not account it a matter of any importance to obtain representatives who are fearers of the Lord, but think it sufficient to choose those who have the wisdom of this world, though they may be even the enemies of God?

He is greatly forsaken in His house, for multitudes, as we had occasion already to observe, never go to a place of worship, but spend the day in idleness, amusement, and dissipation. He is forsaken by many professors individually, who never pray to God in secret, and relatively and socially in respect of not worshipping Him in their families, nor attending to the religious instruction of their children. And the indifference, formality and nominal religion of vast multi

tudes testifies that the generality of all ranks and classes have forsaken him in heart. The world, in its riches, honours, and pleasures, is the idol which is generally set up in the room of the living and true God and which is almost everywhere worshipped. And even among those who are the people of God there is great spiritual deadness and restraint of prayer.

LIKE ISRAEL WE HAVE ALSO PROVOKED THE LORD TO ANGER.

Some of our sins, as we have shown, are very heinous in their own nature, such as our unbelief, rejection of Christ, misimprovement of His word, and undervaluing of the gospel; all our sins are peculiarly aggravated, for to what nation or people has the Lord shown such favour, and what nation has so solemnly lifted up its hand to the Lord and said, "I will not transgress : the number involved in trespassing against the Lord is very great, and involves all ranks and classes in the land. As our sins are in their own nature heaven-daring and presumptuous, God is justly provoked to anger against us, and He has been and is presently testifying His displeasure against us. His Spirit is greatly restrained and withdrawn from His house and from the hearts of His people. Satan has been permitted to enter the Church, and having rent it in pieces by error and strife, he is now farther employed in perverting the truth and taking away and corrupting the ordinances of divine institution, so that they are in many instances no longer observed generally as God has appointed in His Word. He has shaken His hand against us in judgment from time to time, in threatenings of famine, war, and pestilence; and at this present time he has dried up the sources of our wealth, causing such a stagnation of trade and commerce as has never been known in the land. The number of the unemployed, for whom provision must be made that they perish not of starvation, is actually appalling. The past year is one which will be ever memorable on account of the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, and the fraud and misery which it revealed and produced. But we cannot but remark that the year in which this great commercial disaster took place, which will be remembered while the nation has a history-the year in which so many families were utterly ruined, and in which thousands of the labouring classes cried for bread-was the dark and ominously foreboding year, that will yet be found to be the womb of further evils, in which the Romish Hierarchy was restored in Scotland, and declared to be re-established in opposition to existing national laws and all our engagements to the Most High God.

Thus, like Israel, we have forsaken the Lord, we have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, and are gone away backward. Our

departures from the Lord are not newly begun, but have been long continued in, and we are now very far removed from Him in a course of apostasy. If ever any nation had a mission and a special work to accomplish, surely we had, who were like Israel placed on high amongst the nations of the world, and bound by the most solemn covenant engagements to testify against infidelity, and above all, against the idolatry of Rome. But in that great mission we have failed as a nation, and have been unthankful to God, ungrateful for our privileges, and sadly careless of the interests of the generations to come. And hence we have just reason to fear, that as we bear such a general resemblance to Israel in their character, and in their sins, that so also we shall be made to resemble them in punishment, if we do not take warning by their example and repent. The Lord has cause to say respecting us, as He said of them, "Shall I not visit for these things, shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? A wonderful and a horrible thing is committed in the land. The. prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so, and what will ye do in the end thereof."

If we closely resemble Israel in their privileges, and also in their sins, may we not expect that the Lord will say of us, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, and therefore will I punish you for your iniquities." The event showed, in their case, that He was true to His word, "for under the whole heaven hath not been done as was in Judah and Jerusalem." The Lord is sovereign in the time, manner, nature, and degree of punishment, and how He will proceed no one has a right to attempt to indicate. Were the resemblance in character and sin, absolutely exact, the procedure might, and might not, be the same, but when we have reason to judge that our trespass is even greater than that of Israel in the prophet's day, how can we expect an immunity which they did not obtain? Have we not reason to fear that as they were made to know that it is an evil thing to depart from the living God, so also shall we. There is an enemy to the Lord amongst us, and with which we are associated, and whom we have taken by the hand, contrary to vows and solemn covenants, as directly as ever Israel were chargeable with, but which was not known to them; an enemy which God has devoted to utter destruction, and which, He has said, He will "destroy with the breath of His mouth and with the brightness of His coming;" and an enemy whose destruction is at hand. This enemy is the Church of Rome, and we have, contrary to all knowledge, experience, and warnings, become partakers of her sins which have reached up to heaven, and may we not therefore expect also to receive of her plagues, which

shall come in one day? We do not know any greater cause of alarm, and of apprehension than our alliance with the Man of Sin, but this added to all our other sin, vastly increases our national guilt and danger.

Nothing, we believe, but a general repentance, reformation, and returning to the Lord and to our covenant allegiance, will prevent the infliction of His threatened judgments. And so far as we can see, in the present frame and disposition of our minds, such a return to the Lord is far from us. And what, then, have we to expect, and to look for, but that His judgments will fall upon us suddenly, that they will come upon us from various quarters, and that they will be dreadful in their character and unspeakably great? Still, those who search and try their own hearts and ways, who turn to the Lord from their iniquities, and walk closely with Him, who mourn over the sins of the Church and of the land, and who plead for the revival of per- . sonal, family, and national religion, shall preserve their own souls, and shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger; for before Jerusalem was smitten, the Lord provided for the safety of those who mourned for the sins of the Church and of the land, saying to His angel, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst of the land."

DEUTERONOMY-ITS AUTHORSHIP.

II. .

In our attempt to establish the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy we have considered the principal objections connected with the book. itself, and found them insufficient to warrant a departure from the opinion which has ever prevailed both among Jewish and Christian Biblical scholars. As far as the testimony of the book itself goes, and a comparison of it with the earlier books of the Pentateuch leads us, the Mosaic authorship is, to say the least, a more assured and stable position than any into which the critics have placed themselves. We might also add that various things about the book tend greatly to strengthen this position, such as, "the freshness and richness of the Egyptian reminiscences, the freedom with which the speaker reproduces historical incidents, laws, and above all the decalogue-a freedom which is scarcely conceivable except on the supposition that the speaker was the lawgiver himself.”*

We now come to view the book in the light of the history of the

* Franz Delitzsch, D.D.

Israelites subsequent to the age of Moses, and to inquire what traces, if any, of its existence and influence can be found. It may conduce to clearness of argument, to deal first with some points connected with this history advanced by the critics to prove its post-Mosaic authorship, and then to look at the history and literature of the Israelites for direct proof of the position we defend. The subject is a very wide and difficult though an interesting one, and our treatment of it within the limits of the present papers must be superficial.

That we may present a full view of those points urged by the critics against the Mosaic authorship of the entire Pentateuch, it may be necessary to advert to their theory of the literary origin and composition of its various parts. It is stated, with much ability and clearness, by Professor Smith in his "Additional Answer to the Libel." He views the Pentateuch, in the form in which it is now found in the Bible, as the work of some writer who lived in or after the period of the exile in Babylon. He sees in it various original documents which differ in their style, contents, and dates, and which have been very skilfully placed in a fictitious historical framework. To this great work the name of Moses was purposely yet innocently attached, because it represented the progress and completion of the legislation which he had begun. Critical skill has detected in it three distinct documents of this kind. 1. There is the portion embracing Exodus xx.-xxii., which contains the laws God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai when He entered into covenant with the nation. This is accounted the most ancient. It was written and read to the people ere the covenant was entered into, and so it is granted that Moses was its author. It is the only portion of the whole four books, however, of which this is affirmed. 2. There is another document, to which belong those portions of Genesis, in which in the Hebrew God is designated Elohim and not Jehovah, and "a large part of the legislation in the middle books of the Pentateuch, particularly laws about the tabernacle and its service, the priesthood and the Levites." Some who hold this documentary theory of the origin of the Pentateuch, think that the materials of this document were prepared by Moses and written by some one, such as Eleazar, immediately after his death; but Professor Smith, along with the scholars on whose opinion he lays so much weight, believes it to be of a much later date. It is supposed to be the latest of all the original documents. 3. It was preceded by that one which contains the substance of Deuteronomy and embodies all its legislation. Each one of these documents marked a new development of the law given by Moses, to which they were designed to impart the divine sanction. Such is the startling theory advanced by this new school,