The Pulpit Commentary — Deuteronomy — Section 482

Vers. 24-30.-The Divine testimony deposited in the ark. Moses, being thus com- missioned of God to utter the inspired warning, loses no time in summoning the congregation. But while doing so, he gives precise directions to the Kohathites, who had charge of the ark, to deposit his manuscripts within it. Is anything to be learned from this consignment of the sacred books? I. THE SACRED BOOKS ARE NOT COMPLWENT41\Y TO HUMAN NATURE. The Pentateueh, in its tremendous charges and indictments aga1nst mankind, is in unison with the rest of the \Vord. It is· a sustained witness against the human race. "Others may perhaps suspect," says Henry Rogers," that Jewish vanity led the writers thus to ignore or treat lightly the affairs of all nations except their own. The answer is concise, but con- clusive. Let Jewish vanity in general be what the reader pleases, these writers would seem to have had none of it. If they have passed by the glorious achieve- ments of secular history, they have recorded all the infamies of their own nation; and, indeed, their principal references to other nations are as 'scourges' of their own-scourges justly sent, they confess and avow, for apostacies which had wearied out the patience of Heaven I" '!'he marvel is that the Jews aod Christi:i.ns should conspire to preserve what is a most humiliating account of the race. II. THE ARK WAS THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF Goo PROTECTED BY HIS PRESE.,_','CE. It was the "safe" of Israel, not, alas! "fire-proof," like Milner's, as the Babylonians demon- st-rated, yet as durable and as sacred as the times allowed. It was fenced around by the holiest sanctions. Nowhere could the manuscripts be so safe. Now, t~e ark is regarded as a type of Jesus; and if so, then the depositing of the Law withio the ark would convey the idea of the Law of God being within the heart of Christ (Ps. xl. 8). In other words, Jesus Christ embodies the Divine Law or will, and is at once its most brilliant exposition and the most tremendous indictment of human nature. The Jews were not so careful of the living Law as their forefathers were of the written Law. They recognized its charge against themselves: the charge had become oral; it walked before them; it was something that they could not shake off except through the desperate alternative of assassination. 'l'hey killed in Christ their living Conscience. III. WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST TO TREASURE UP Goo's LAW WITHIN OUR OWN HEARTS, We cannot have too much of the Bible in our minds and memories. The more we study it, the more like Christ shall we become. He whose "delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in his Law doth he meditate day and night," is blessed, and he shall be like the treo whose roots are in the waters, duly fruitful and ever green (Ps. i. 2, 3). His conscienco shall bP reinforced and become iucreasingly tender • his heart shall be elevated in its affections and longings ; and his mind shall be trai~ed to what is hicrh and holy. Thus is the whole being enriched and the life enlarged. May we depo~it tho Word of God with as much care in our hearts as the Levites did the rolls of Moses in the ark !-R. M. E. 494 THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. [on. XXXI, 1-30.