THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE WILDERNESS.

"The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, for both in the Old Testament and in the New everlasting life is offered to mankind by CHRIST, who is the only Mediator between GOD and man, being both GOD and Man: wherefore they are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.”—Art. VII.

BEFORE We begin the special subject for the evening, I will ask you to open your Prayer-books and look at what I have but just read-the beginning of the Seventh Article. The remarkable point of this is, that in the Old Testament everlasting life should be offered by CHRIST, and yet, to any one reading the Old Testament, it would appear that the name of CHRIST is never mentioned from one end of it to the other.

Perhaps some of you can tell me how this is.

"From the numerous prophecies about our SAVIOUR,' said A., "which we find through the whole of the Old Testament, all of these we see fulfilled in the New; and, as these began from the very fall-'the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head'-they show the purpose of GOD from the beginning of Revelation. It was dimly hinted at at first, but so plainly announced as time went on, that though the old fathers, as they are called in the Article, could not know all that we know, they must have known quite enough to bear them out in looking for more than transitory promises.""

"Not a bad answer," said the Parson; "but it does not entirely meet the question. The prophecies you speak of were quite sufficient to convince the few, that GoD in

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THE WHOLE JEWISH HISTORY TYPICAL.

tended a deliverance, and had prepared a scheme of redemption, by which eternal life would be offered to fallen man, but I do not see how they could have learned from this that eternal life was offered already to them by a SAVIOUR, centuries before that SAVIOUR appeared on earth. You must go to something beyond the prophecies." "The types?" said A.

"The typical personages," suggested B.

"Yes," said the Parson, "you are much nearer; but you would be nearer still, had you said that the whole scheme of God's government which we read of in the Old Testament, is typical-that there is no character mentioned in the Law and the Prophets who is not a type of some one in the Gospels-that there is no incident in the history of the Old Church which is not descriptive of something in the New-not simply that there are types of CHRIST to be found in the Old Testament, but that the whole is typical. It is like a group of statuary concealed by a veil, and the same group when the veil is removed: you see the same outlines and general appearances; they are not changed, but you see now the details which produced those general appearances-the group is the very same, only now you see it and understand it better. Perhaps the very same thing will happen again at the last day, and another veil will be then removed; we shall then see still farther into the details of God's government, and shall recognise in the Church of the Blessed, then fully revealed, the very same grouping which we saw outlined in the Old Testament and partially disclosed in the New."

I have said this, because I am going to-night to teach. you Christian doctrines by Jewish types. You might say, Why teach by that which is less clear, when you have that which is more clear at your hand?-why teach by the Old Dispensation those who are living under the New?

Because you will understand the one by comparing it with the other, and because you will thus see the unchangeableness of God's purposes and of His government; because the same idea appearing under many different forms, even though those forms be less distinct than the original, will be less likely to be misunderstood. We get our doctrines

THE NARRATIVE OF THE EXODUS.

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from the Gospel, but we see that we have not misunderstood them, by comparing them with the same doctrines under the law.

The subject that I am going to explain to-day is the life of the Christian, shadowed out and typified by the wanderings of God's people in the wilderness.

The literal history you all know from the Bible, but I will draw its chief incidents together. GOD's people, living in a land not their own, are brought under bondage by a hard and cruel taskmaster; they are called by their GOD to return to their own country, but, their taskmaster being too strong for them, they are unable to obey the call. GOD sends a deliverer and leader; a long and difficult contest ensues, marked by miracles, every one of which attests the power of GOD, and deliverance is at last effected, though not without blood. God's chosen people, now obeying the call, set forth on their journey, and are delivered from the pursuit of their oppressor by passing through water.

It is at this period of their journey that a heavenly Guide appears to them, who from that time till their actual arrival and establishment in their own country, is to be the suggestor of every movement, and at the same time the defence against every enemy.

After this deliverance is effected, and not before, a code of laws is given to them, and a particular form of worship. They are then set forward on their journey to their own country, with a heavenly-appointed leader, with a commissioned priesthood, and under the immediate guidance of that mysterious Appearance; and are safe while they submit to be so guided, and only as long as they submit.

The land to which they are travelling is abundant in all manner of food, and, to prove this, they have some specimens of it—some foretaste, as it were, shown to them; but that land through which, for their want of confidence, they are obliged to take their journey by slow and painful stages, affords no food whatever, to sustain them; they would faint and perish, were they not supernaturally sustained by bread from heaven itself. They are tempted in various manners through the whole course of their journey

54

THE KEY TO THE MYSTERY.

-by lust, by self-will, by unfaithfulness, by discontent. Many fall away, many perish: of all those called, very few indeed arrive at the boundary of that pleasant country which has been their aim and object from the beginning; and when they do arrive, they find that boundary to be a deep impassable river; but the moment the feet of the priests, bearing the outward visible signs of God's principal blessings, touch the water, it parts of itself, and the chosen people, sustained by the presence of these outward visible signs of inward spiritual grace, pass through and take possession of the land which GOD from the beginning had prepared for them.

Here is a plain narrative of facts-the mere relation of the things which happened, which every one could see, and which it required no inspiration to record-which, in fact, were recorded just as well and just as accurately by the Jewish historian Josephus, as they were by the inspired writer Moses.

But if we examine this group of facts by the Revelation which we possess, we shall see that this course of events, accurately and in all its details, represents the life of every Christian, from his call out of an unregenerate state of existence, up to his final admission into heaven; and if we show that, we shall show that God's providence then was in no ways different from God's providence now; we shall show not only that the death of CHRIST procured redemption for them as it does for us, but that every detail of the means by which we appropriate and avail ourselves of this redemption was arranged from the beginning of the world, and in its real spiritual meaning never has been changed, and never will be.

The land of Egypt, called so frequently the land of bondage, cannot but suggest to us the bondage of sin-in short, the natural state into which man, as the descendant of Adam, is born; and if this be so, Pharaoh the taskmaster is evidently a type of the devil, whose servants we are while we continue in that state; and Moses, first rejected as a leader and driven into the wilderness, and afterwards received and followed, represents as evidently our Blessed SAVIOUR. Not without a hard struggle,-not

THE RED SEA AND BAPTISM.

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without many miracles,-not without death, and not uncommemorated by a sacrifice, is the deliverance effected. But of this I will not speak now, as it belongs to another set of types. At last God's chosen people are enabled to break from the power of the devil, and to obey the call of their LORD. Their first step-that by which they are saved-that by which they pass from the land of bondage to the state of freedom-is through water, which purifies them by dividing them from the unregenerate land, and by the same act preserves them from the power of their enemy. They are baptized in the Red Sea, and this is the very word the Apostle uses in speaking of it. GOD from the beginning fixed Baptism as the boundary between the unregenerate and the regenerate condition of men. This call may be obeyed or disobeyed, but as long as we are on the Egyptian side of the water, we are still in the power of the enemy, who on his own ground is too strong for us: we are preserved by the act of passing through water.

Thus has

But water is not that which saves us-it is only the means. While the Israelites were in the act of passing through the water, the power of GOD overshadowed them, then it is that we hear of the pillar of the cloud, which was from henceforth to go before them and to show the way; and not only that, but when their enemies pressed upon them, it went behind them-it cast a light upon the path of the chosen ones, but was a trouble and a discomfiture to their pursuers-it stood between the regenerate and their enemies, so that the one came not nigh the other throughout the whole of the night. What Christian can fail to see in this the HOLY GHOST Who first overshadowed us at Baptism, and from that time forward is a guide to our feet and a light to our paths, leading the way unto all truth, and at the same time preserving us from the evil one, who would, if he could, bring us back to slavery, that Guide which, during the night (that is to say, during the helplessness of infancy and childhood) had stood between us and harm.

And now we are coming to that part of the Israelites' 1 οδηγήσει.