summer, and of autumn, they were required to commemorate the mercies which had been vouchsafed to their nation, and with joy and gratitude to acknowledge their obligations to
Jehovah b What a blessed tendency had such seasons
to keep alive in their minds a sense of their high privileges, and to spread a savour of true religion through every family in the land !]
2. What care God took to guard against the objections to which it was liable —
[It would of necessity occur to all, that, by their observance of this ordinance, their land on every side would be exposed to the incursions of their enemies, who would not fail to take advantage of their absence, and to retaliate upon them the injuries they had sustained. In this view it should seem, that they would be highly criminal in leaving the women, the children, the aged, and the sick, in such a defenceless state, and that it would be more advisable to depute some from every quarter to represent the rest. But God would not be served by deputy : he commanded all to keep the feasts at the place prescribed : and, to remove all apprehensions about their pro- perty or their famiUes, he pledged himself to protect their frontier, and so to overrule the minds of their enemies, that they should not even " desire" to invade their land at any of those seasons. They had seen how able he was to turn the minds of their enemies in Egypt, who had just before sent, yea even " thrust" them out of the land, laden with spoil ; and he engaged that, to the remotest period of their existence as a nation, he would interpose for them with equal effect, if only they would trust their concerns to him, and serve him in his appointed way.]
We indeed have nothing to do with the institution before us : nor do we much admire the formal cus- tom (which seems to have arisen from it) of attending at the Lord's supper on the three great festivals of our Church, while we live in the neglect of that ordi- nance all the year besides. Nevertheless the insti- tution is far from being uninteresting to us ; as will be seen, while we, II. Suggest some observations founded upon it —
Much might we speak respecting the providence of God, who so miraculously wrought upon the minds of their enemies, that no infidel could ever adduce
b They were ordered to rejoice before the Lord, and to make free- will offerings to him : " None were to come empty." Mark espe- cially, Deut. xvi. 10, 15, 16.