thought of the Jews, and the great underlying idel\ of the Mosaic revelation. But this verse- gives us most material help by setting out a threefold relation of God to men in the thoocrACy. I. Goo Is THE LAW-MAKER. " The Lord is our Lawgiver." Thie is true in two senses. I. God gave the formal laws from Mount Sinai, which were written down by Moses, and made the basis of the national covenant. Compare and illustrate by the work of Lycnrgus and Ju~tinian. God's laws, as arra11ged for the Hebrews, were only the adapt.ations to their national life of the conditions and 1-ules under which God set humanity from the first. This should be made quite clear, lest a notion should pre- vail that God's Law to the Jew was his first revelation to men. It was tho writing out of essential law for the practic-a.l use of one people. 2. God gives revelations of his will, which are law for all who receive them. There is no finality in the revelation· of God's law, for the very reason that God maintains living relations with us, and those relations involve that the expression of his will is law to us at any given time. Illustrat.e by the prompt and entire obedience of the prophets to God's will, howsoever it may be revealed to them. Such revelations are made to us, and for us God's will is law, . II. Goo rs THE LAW-APPLIER. "The Lord is onr Judge." This is precisely the work of the judge-to show how the principle and the comprehensive terms of the Jaw bear on each particular case. Moses, Joshua, David, Samuel, and Hezekiah, referred each case of difficulty directly to the Divine Judge. But in just this Israel so often failed; and this we still find to he our supreme difficulty. We can accept the fact that law is from God, but we want to preside ourselves over all applications of law. What we need is the confirmed habit ofreferring all things to God our Judge. III. Gon IS THE LAW-EXECUTOR. "The Lord is our King." The proper idea of a king is one entrusted with power to carry out the requirements of the national law. The king is the exe,cutive. God carries out his own laws. Scripture is full of striking instances V<hich are designed to impress the general truth. 'l'ake such cases as Achan, Korab, Uzza, Ananias, and Sapphira. This phase of God's relation is not so difficult to apprehend as the previous one; and yet in these days we are in some danger of losing our sense of the directness of Divine judgments.-R. T. Ver. 24.-No mO'l'e si,clmess. This is clearly a figure, designed to complet.e the picture of relief from the strain and pressure and anxiety of the time of invasion. Sickness is the constant attendant on prolonged siege. The point on which we may dwell is that sickness is the sign of the presence of evil, of sin; and so heaven is represented as the place where there is no more sickness, because there is no more sin. This connection between sickness and sin lies at the basis of some of the most important Mosaio regulations. It explains the importance ceremonially attached to the one disease of leprosy. Trench st&tes this very skilfully: "The same principle which made all that had to do with death, a grave, a corpse, the occasions of a ceremonial uncleanness, inasmuch as all these were signs and consequences of sin, might in like manner, and with a perfect consistency, have made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness, each of these being also death beginning, partial death-echoes in the body of that terrible reality -sin in the soul. But, instead of this, in a gracious sparing of man, and not pushing the principle to the uttermost, God took but one sickness, one of those visible out-eom- iogs of a tainted nature, in which to testify that evil was not from him, could not dwell with him; he took but one, with which to link this teaching. Leprosy, which was indeed the sickness of sicknesses, was sele<?ted of God to the end that, bearing his tes- timony against it, he might bear his testimony against that out of which it and all other i;.-icknesses grew-against sin, as not from him, as grievous in his sight; and against the sickness itself also as grievous, inasmuch as it was a visible manifestation, a direct con• sequence, of the inner disharmony of man's spirit, a commencement of the death, which through disobedience to God's perfect will had found entrance into a nature made by God for immortality.'' I. ALL SICKNESS IS A LITTLE DEA'.l'H. It is a beginning of death, Strangely death lurks in the smallest things-a pin-prick, a slip of the foot, a tiny clot of blood, the bite of a fly, etc. 11. ALL DEATHS ARE THE BlGN OP SIN. " The sting of death is sin." Sickness and death keep ever before men the fact that they are sinners. . n, xxnv, 1-17.) THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 650
III. 8IOKNEBB A.ND DEATH WILL GO .AWAY WHEN' BIN GOES. IV. Ae Goo IB GRACIOUSLY WORKmG FOR THE REMOVAL OJ' SINS, WE KNOW IJE IS WORKING ALBO FOR THE REMOVAL OF BUFFERING. The day cometh when he shall bo able to « wipe all tears from our eyes,"-R. T.
BBOTIOll' XI. THE DIVINE JUDGMEN'T ON' THE WORLD, AND THE GLORY 01' THE CHUROll OON'BEQUENT UPON IT (CH. XXXIV., xxxv.).