doouments must proceed upon tho validity and power of the preceding, Hence the MosELic LELw could not render the Abrahamic covenant of promise null and void. It must consist with and supplement the preceding. The promise made to the seed of Abraham remained in force, notwithstanding the thunders of Mount Sinai. Nay, tho thunders of Sinai were, as we shall next see, to incline the people to accept the previous promise. There was no antithesis between promise and Law; but Law came to incline the people to embrace the promise. There was something more veneraole and more sacred even than the covenant at Sinai, and this was the promises made to Abraham in Canaan. 'l'heso were the well-head of Jewish privileges. The Jews had not been called to law-keeping and self-righteousness, but to promises exceeding great and precious to be won by,their Messiah. It was to faith, not to ceremony, that their system really summoned them; Ill. THE-PURPOSE OF THE LAW. (Vers.19-22.) Was the Sina.itic covenant, then, e. work of ·supererogation? By no means. It was a grand instrument, when rightly regarded, to drive sinners into a Saviour's arms. What did it require? Perfect obe- ·dience. Did the·people at Mount Sinai fancy they could renderit? Nay; the utterance of the ten commandments in the great and terrible tones convinced them that they could not stand up in their own strength before such a holy God. Hence their flight from the mount (Exod. xx. 18). Hence their cry for the mediation of Moses (ver. 19). In a. word, the effect of the publication of the Law was to overwhelm the people with a sense of their sin. This is the purpose of the Law. It. is not to feed man's hope of claiming life by law-keeping; it is, on the contrary, to kill that hope and send him to God's free grace that be may be saved by faith in the promises. The Law is to secure our despair of self that we may build all our hope on the Saviour. What, then, were the ceremonies of Judaism? They were embodiments of the promises. The Judaizers said," We a.re to be saved by observing these ceremonies;," but the truth was that the ceremonies were enacted to make the promises emphatic and to lead sinners away from self-righteousness to God and his mercy. The ceremouial Law was a pictorial gospel, to keep up the hearts of those whom the moral Law had reduced to <lespair; but the false teachers ma.de the ceremonies saving, and so ignored the gospel they embodied. May we be kept from all analogous mistakes !-R. M. E.
Vera. 23-29.-The Law-school and the hom&-coming. Paul, in the present section, pursues the thought of the purpose of Law. It is the tutor to convey certain lessons to the soul and to secure thereby the soul's return to the Father and the home. Let us look at the interesting line of thought thus given. I. 'l'HE LAW-SCHOOL. (Vers. 23, 24.) The idea was once entertained that the Law, as ,rcz,1icz')'"")'Os, meant the slave who was entrusted with the guidance of the child to the school of Christ. But this notion is now abandoned, and, as the superior slaves were oft-en entrusted with the education of the child to a certain age, the idea which is now accepted from this passage is that the soul goes to the school of the Law, und learns from the Law the lessons which fit it for coming home to Christ. Christ is not the Schoolmaster to whom Law leads the soul, but is the elder Brother of the Divine family to whom the lessons of the schoolmaster, the Law, leads the enlightened soul. The Law- school is an institution of great strictness and severity. Hence we are represented here as "kept in ward under the Law" (Revised Version). Like one of the great barracks which am called euphoniously "public schools," o.nd where, as in public prisons, the youths a.re for some hours daily confined, and out of which they are thankful to escape; so the Mosaic Law is meant to be the severe training-school which will make us relish ever so much the freedom and comfort of home. II. 'l'HE BURDEN OF ITS TEACHING. (Ver. 24.) The lesson of the Law is personal unworthiness, the impossibility of our ever saving ourselves. 'l'he more we study the ten commandments, the more we enter into the spirit and meaning of the moral Law, the deeper must be our conviction that we cannut keep it perfectly, and so must be liable to its penalties. But the Jews, instead of holding hard to the teaching of the moral Law, turned their back upon it and betook themselves to the cll'l'emoniaZ Law as their hope of life. '!'heir notion was that, though they might neglect the weightier mntters of the Law, such o.s judgment, mercy, and faith, they were perfectly Rafe so Ion~ as tllcy tithed the mint, tho anise, and the cuwmin (MMt. xxiii. 23). Instead of learn- IGO THE EPISTLE 'l'O THE GALA.'l'IANS. [CH, III, 1-29,