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But just as Abraham, the father of the faithful, and Job, whose patience has been left on perpetual record, failed in the exercise of those very graces for which they were most conspicuous, so Moses, who was otherwise so remarkable for his meekness, his endurance, and his self-control, was at length provoked to speak unadvisedly with his lips; and on the second occasion of the miraculous supply of water, viz., that at Kadesh, he was not only betrayed, as regards his tongue, into the sins of impatience and of arrogance, but he smote the rock twice, when he had been commanded only to speak to it, and the heavy sentence went forth from the Lord, both against himself and also against Aaron, who seems to have been a partaker of his sin, "Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them" (Num. xx. 12).

This sentence of exclusion from the land of promise, thus denounced against the two leaders of the people, who appear to have been equally implicated in the transgression of the Divine command, was speedily executed. Shortly after the departure from Kadesh, at the expiration of the forty years' wanderings in the desert, the children of Israel came unto Mount Hor. On the top of that mountain Aaron was divested, in obedience to a Divine command, of his sacerdotal robes, with which Eleazar, the eldest of his surviving sons, was invested; and, in the very same chapter which contains the record of the transgression, we read that "Aaron died there in the top of the mount" (Num. xx. 28).

The circumstances attending the last hours of the great captain and lawgiver of the hosts of Israel, are yet more remarkable; and the record of his departure from earth is fraught with many lessons of deepest interest and instruction. In obedience to God's command, Moses ascended the heights of one of that chain of mountains which overhang the eastern bank of the Jordan, on which Balaam, the unrighteous prophet, had recently stood, and from which his unwilling lips had pronounced blessings on the people whom he had been summoned to curse. How earnestly the

ment of the work to which his life had been consecrated, appears from the prayer contained in Deuteronomy iii. 25: I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain (i.e., as it should seem, the mountainous district of Canaan on the western side of the Jordan), and Lebanon." But, as he himself records the answer returned to his petition, "the Lord was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the Lord said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan" (vv. 26—28).

But ere the sentence was executed-a sentence, it should be observed, which the double sin both of their leaders and also of the people had provoked-it remained that Moses should utter in the ears of the Israelites, and leave on perpetual record for those who should come after, the solemn words of warning, of instruction, and of encouragement, which are contained in the Book of Deuteronomy. And, throughout the whole of this eventful history of the great prophet and lawgiver, there is nothing more striking than the evidence which this book furnishes of the single-hearted and unshaken devotion of Moses to the great work confided to him, as to a servant "faithful in all his house"-" for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after."

About forty days seem to have elapsed previously to the death of Moses from the time that the first command was given to him, as recorded in the Book of Numbers (xxvii. 12), and again in the Book of Deuteronomy (iii. 27), to go up to the summit of Mount Abarim, and to behold the land of promise, coupled with the announcement that he should not go over the Jordan, but that having only beheld the land into which he had so ardently desired to lead his people, he should die upon the mountain. Let us endeavour, for a moment, to realise to ourselves the imposing scene, sc briefly but so graphically brought before us in the narrative recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy.

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Although on the day on which the words recorded in Deut. xxxi. were spoken, the aged lawgiver had completed the last of the three great and eventful periods of his life, "his eye," we read, was not dim," neither was his "natural force abated" (Deut. xxxiv. 7). Moreover, as we have already seen, the great work of his life-the one all-absorbing object of his hopes and his aspirations-was not yet accomplished. He had already endured for forty years the repinings and the rebellions of his people. He had suffered with them the toils and privations of the wilderness life, and

with them he had encountered its new and unseen dangers. He was already, as it seemed, on the very eve of the accomplishment of that on which his whole heart was so intently fixed. The prize was already in view. But a few more days of hope and expectation, and the great and terrible wilderness, "wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water," was to be exchanged for the land flowing with milk and honey-a land wherein his people were to eat bread without scarceness-" a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills they were to dig brass." Nor was this the only consideration which might well have made the immediate prospect of death at such a moment an object of dismay and of terror to the great leader of Israel. For, notwithstanding the marvellous communication made to Moses on the mountain of God-wherein, as our Saviour Himself declared, the doctrine of the Resurrection was contained-it is impossible to overlook the fact that the revelation of a future state, made to the most highly favoured of God's servants under the older dispensation, was immeasurably inferior to that which is now made to us, insomuch, indeed, that the general record of their experience is briefly summed up by the Apostle in the very expressive words, "through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

If both of these considerations be permitted to exercise their due influence on our minds, we can scarcely fail to arrive at the conclusion that there are few portions of the inspired volume which are more calculated, not only to excite our astonishment, but also to suggest to our minds matter of deep and profitable meditation, than that which records the manner in which the last forty days of the life of Moses were spent, and which ends with the brief recital of his ascent into the mountain, his death, and his burial.

There are comparatively but few, even under the higher and brighter dispensation of the Gospel, who, if suddenly surprised by the summons to "set their house in order," accompanied by the warning, "Thou shalt die and not live," would not be so absorbed by their own personal hopes and fears that they would have little time or disposition to warn and to admonish others.

Now, it was not thus with the great leader of Israel. Having once received the assurance that the sentence of exclusion from the earthly Canaan was one which was irreversible-like St. Peter in after times, when warned, by the same voice, of his approaching end-he not only meekly bowed beneath the rod, but he addressed himself, with resolute and unabated energy, to the same great work to which he had consecrated so large a portion of his life; and he endeavoured, during the last forty days, as he had done during the last forty years of his life, so to impress the minds of his

hearers with the solemn truths which he was commissioned to announce to them from heaven, that they might be able, "after his decease," to have the same things "always in remembrance." On the day on which Moses had fully set before his people the blessing and the curse, as set forth in that memorable song of mercy and of vengeance which is recorded in the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy, "the self-same day," we read, he received the command, "Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in Mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people" (vv. 49, 50). Having pronounced his final words of blessing on the people who have the eternal God as their refuge and underneath the everlasting arms, his sight appears to have been so supernaturally strengthened that he was enabled to survey the whole extent of the country of Canaan, from Dan in the north even to Zoar in the south (Deut. xxxiv. 1—3).

His appointed work was now done. In mercy, as well as in judgment-for in the case of God's people mercy is ever mingled with judgment—this faithful servant of the Lord was summoned to cease from his labours and to enter into his rest. No human eye seems to have witnessed the final scene. No earthly friend on whom he could lean was present to close the eyes of a prophet like unto whom no other afterwards arose in Israel, until the advent of that Greater Prophet, to whom Moses, by type and by prophecy, had borne such conspicuous witness.

But his death was precious in the eyes of Him whom he had served so faithfully in life; and though no man knew of the place of his sepulchre, never was there beheld upon earth so grand a funeral. 66 And he buried him," we read, valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor ; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."

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Inasmuch as God has Himself, in infinite wisdom, concealed from human eyes the history of Moses from the day of his sepulture in the lonely valley over against Beth-peor until the day on which, together with Elijah, he stood on the Mount of Transfiguration, and there held converse with his Incarnate Lord, it would ill behove the humble student of Scripture to endeavour, with rude hand, to rend the mysterious veil.

But surely, there is a flood of light thrown in upon the condition of the faithful after death, when we read, in the few but expressive words of the inspired Evangelist, "And, behold, there talked with Him (ie., with Christ) two men, which were Moses

and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem" (St. Luke ix. 30, 31). We know not, indeed, what bright anticipations of the new Jerusalem may have been given to Moses, as God Himself disclosed to him the beauties of the earthly Canaan. It may be that in that eventful day on which he stood alone with his Maker on the heights of Pisgah, there was unfolded before his eyes so glorious a view of "the city which has the foundations," that, like Abraham, he was content to relinquish his desire of entering into the land flowing with milk and honey, and to transfer his ardent aspirations to the "rest which remains for the people of God." Be this as it may, when next the leader of Israel is brought before our view, it is no longer as one who was disappointed of his desire, seeing that it was on one of those goodly mountains which he had so earnestly longed to behold before death, that we find him standing and holding converse with the Lord of the whole earth after it.

The earthly Canaan, as we are so frequently reminded in Scripture, was God's own type and representation of the heavenly rest. Into that rest it is not the law, but Christ, not Moses, but Joshua, i.e., Jesus, who alone can bring His people. The law, with its awful doom for impenitent sinners, must still be proclaimed in all its terrors, and we must not shrink from the enunciation of God's wrath, as "revealed from heaven, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." But the blessings promised from Mount Gerizim must ever be mingled with the curses denounced from Mount Ebal. The sinner, whose conscience is awakened to a sense of the sinfulness of sin, must be pointed at once, and without any intercepting medium, to the cross of Christ. No earthly priests or mediators must come between the sinner and the Saviour. As Christ's ambassadors to the souls of those for whom Christ died, it is the privilege of Christ's ministers to declare, even to those whose sins are "red like crimson," "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins;" and again-"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." If we look to the directions given to the Israelites in Deut. xxvii., we shall find that it was on Ebal, not on Gerizim-i.e., on the mount of cursing, not on that of blessing-that an altar was to be erected to God, and that it was there that not only burnt offerings, but also peace - offerings, were to be offered, and that the people were to rejoice (vv. 5, 6, 7). And what other inference can we draw from this remarkable injunction but the one central truth of the gospel of Christ, viz., this that the curse of the law is removed from the

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penitent believer in Jesus? in other words, that Christ hath delivered us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." But the direction for the erection of an altar on Mount Ebal seems to imply even more than this. It teaches that it is only through the curse, if we may so speak, that we can attain the blessing; i.e., that Christ's atonement for sin is the one and only ground of the acceptance of the sinner; and further, that it is not until sinners have been brought to feel in their inmost souls the weight of the curse, that they will be stirred up, as men who are in earnest, to seek and to obtain the blessing.

One more lesson seems to be fairly drawn from the record of the death of Moses. As the outward circumstances of time and of place which distinguish the history of God's true servants during life-whilst varying greatly in each particular instance-are subject to the control of the same guiding and over-ruling Providence, which makes all things to work together for their good, so, and perhaps in a yet more marked manner, are the circumstances—however apparently dark and incomprehensible-which characterise the departure of each out of this world. To the eye of the superficial beholder the good and faithful servant is often summoned to cease from his labours at a time when his work is still incomplete, and when his services seem to be most required. A Tindale devotes the whole energies of his mind and body to the noble end of translating God's Word into his native tongue; and just as his lifelong efforts were about to be crowned with success, a cruel death snatches him away from a yet unfinished work. A Henry Martyn, intent on the accomplishment of a similar task, is permitted to breathe out, in solitude and in suffering, his last earthly aspirations for the dawn of the new heavens and the new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. A Patteson, endowed in a marvellous manner with the highest qualifications for the same work, is severed from it by a violent death, inflicted by the hands of those to the benefit of whose souls and bodies he had so cheerfully and ungrudgingly devoted his life. But in each and in all of these cases, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. It matters little for such whether their death-bed be surrounded by living friends and relatives and their restingplace be the peaceful churchyard of their native parishes, or whether amidst the solitude of the desert they breathe their souls into the hands of their Redeemer, or in the depths of the ocean their bodies await the day when the sea shall give up its dead. Alike, as in the case of Israel's prophet and leader, their souls are secure in the guardianship of their Lord, and their bodies are the objects of solicitude to Him who is the Resurrection and the Life.