afterwards given in a different way. This mode of conveying such instruction repeatedly occurs in the Holy Scriptures. The Prophet Jeremiah tells the Jews that God would " make a new covenant with them;" from whence St. Paul infers that the covenant under which they lived, was old, and " ready to vanish away d." The Prophet Haggai speaks of God " shaking once more the heavens and the earth : " and this St. Paul interprets as an utter removal of the Jewish dispensation, that " the things which coidd not be shaken," the Christian dispensation, " might remain e." Now if these apparently incidental words conveyed so much, what must have been intended by that action, an action which, in point of singularity, yields not to any within the whole compass of the sacred records?
But is this view of the subject confirmed by any further evi- dence ? I answer, Yes ; it is agreeable to the whole scope of the inspired volume. Throughout the New Testament we have this truth continually and most forcibly inculcated, that the law, having been once broken, can never justify: that, whilst under it, we are, and ever must be, under a curse : and therefore we must be dead to it, and renounce all hope of acceptance by it. And the breaking of the tables before their eyes was in effect like the driving of our first parents out of Paradise, and the preventing of their return to it by the menaces of a naming sword. The tree of life which was to them in their state of innocence a pledge of eternal life, was no longer such when they had fallen : and therefore God in mercy prohibited their access to it, in order that they might be shut up to that way of recon- ciliation which God had provided for them in the promised seed. And thus did Moses by this significant action cut off from the Jews all hope of return to God by that covenant which they had broken, and shut them up to that other, and better, covenant, which God was about to shadow forth to them.]
But the chief mystery lies in, II. The manner in which they were replaced —
Moses, having by his intercession obtained for- giveness for the people, was ordered to prepare tables of stone similar to those which he had broken, and to carry them up to the mount, that God might write upon them with his own finger a fresh copy of the law. He was ordered also to make an ark, in which to deposit the tables when so inscribed. Now what was the scope and intent of these directions ? Truly
d Jer. xxxi. 31. with Heb. viii. 13. e Hagg. ii. 6. with Heb. xii. 26, 27.