Dcut. xxvi. 3 — 6. And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the Lord thy God, that I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto your fathers for to give us. And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish ivas my father.
THE ceremonial law is considered in general as a system of burthensome rites, that had in themselves no intrinsic value, and were useful only as prefigur- ing the mysteries of the Gospel. But though this view of it is in a measure just, yet we may disparage
that law too much ; because there was in many of its ordinances a proper tendency to generate divine affections. In the law before us, certain professions were required to be made at the same time that the first-fruits were presented : and the words that were put into the mouths of the offerers, reminded them of the obligations which they owed to God, and, consequently, were suited to excite, as well as to ex- press, their gratitude to God. As far as respected the deliverance of that people from Egypt, there is no further occasion for the law ; and therefore it is superseded with the rest of the Jewish ritual : but as an intimation of the high value which God sets on grate- ful recollections, it is worthy of our highest regard.
We shall take occasion from it,
I. To point out our duty in reference to the mercies we have received —
We surely ought not to receive them like the brute beasts, which have no understanding : it is our duty to act as intelligent creatures ; and to make the mercies of our God an occasion of augmented benefit to our souls. For this purpose we ought,
1. To review them frequently —
[Even national mercies ought not to be overlooked by us. It was to them in a peculiar manner that the ordinance before us had respect. The Jews were required not only to look back to the deliverance of their nation from Egypt, but to trace back their origin to Jacob their father, whose mother was a Syrian, who himself married two Syrian women, and himself lived in Syria for twenty years; whose children also, with the exception of Benjamin, were all born in Syria, and were the heads and progenitors of all the Jewish tribes. He on many occasions was near perishing : when he fled from the face of Esau, when he was followed by Laban his father-in-law, and when he was met again by Esau at the head of four hundred men, he was in dan- ger of being destroyed : in which case his children would either never have existed, or would all have been destroyed with him. But God had preserved him from every danger, and brought his posterity to Canaan agreeably to his promise : and they in grateful remembrance of this were to profess it openly from year to year ; " A Syrian ready to perish was our father." Perhaps it rarely occurs to our minds that we have quite as much reason for gratitude on a national account as even the