admonition, " Let us fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into (rod's rest, any of us should seem to come short of ith."
We know indeed that this sentence of exclusion did not ex- tend to the Canaan that is above : and it is probable that many others who died in the wilderness, were therefore " judged and chastened of the Lord, that they might not be condemned with the world1: " nevertheless the record of their failure is " written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are comek:" and as the great body of the nation were " examples unto us, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted," so may the example of Moses in particular teach us, that " if the righteous turn away from his righteous- ness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned; in his trespass that he hath tres- passed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die1." Indeed this is the very lesson which St. Paul himself inculcates from the exclusion of the Israelites at large, and which is doubly forcible when arising from the failure of Moses ; " Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall"1." Were a man as eminent as Paul himself, it would be- hove him to use the same vigilance as he ; " keeping under his body, and bringing it into subjection, lest by any means, after having preached to others, he himself should be a castaway"." Not he that " runneth well for a season," but " he that en- dureth to the end, shall be saved."]
2. An instructive sentence — [Besides the general idea above suggested, there are several very important things prefigured in this dispensation.
First, it intimated the insufficiency of the moral law to justify us. Moses, the meekest of all the human race, had once " spoken unadvisedly with his lips0;" and for that one trespass was excluded from the promised landp. Now, if we consider the typical nature of the whole Mosaic economy, we shall not wonder, that he, whose whole office and ministry were typical, was ordained to instruct us even by his death. In fact, he was himself a comment on his own law : that denounced every one " cursed, who continued not in all things that were written in the book of the law to do them ; " and he, for one offence, was doomed to die among the unbelieving Israelites, and thereby to shew, that "by the deeds of the law should no flesh be justified"1."
Let this be remembered by us : the law condemns us as truly for one offence as for a thousand r : it is of excellent use to lead us through the wilderness ; but it never can bring us into
* Heb. iv. 1. » 1 Cor. xi. 32. k 1 Cor. x. 11.
i Ezek. xviii. 24. m 1 Cor. x. 12. n lCor.ix. 27.
° Ps. cvi. 33. p Deut. xxxii. 48 — 51.
i Rom. hi. 20. Gal. hi. 10, 16. r Jam. ii. 10.