whether it be abroad in restoring peace to a distracted world, may the policy and the powers of our country be exerted, as they ever have been, "Not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." "Walk about Zion, and go round about her; tell the walls thereof; mark well her bulwarks, set up her houses that ye may tell them that come after; for this shall be our God, for ever and ever; he shall be our guide even unto death.”

SERMON XXIV.

ROMANS XV. 4.

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the holy Scriptures, might have hope.

IT hath pleased the Almighty, from the time of his first covenant with the children of Israel, never to leave himself without a living witness in the world, by means of his written Word. The history of the first creation of the world, of the fall of man, of the destruction of the whole human race (Noah and his family alone excepted,) by the deluge, is recorded by the hand of Moses. The call of Abraham, the birth of the patriarchs, the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt, their deliverance from captivity, their rebellions and wanderings in the wilderness, are all faithfully related by the same. inspired historian. The Almighty did not permit his chosen people to trust to dark, fabulous, and faint tradition for the knowledge of these important

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events, but it pleased him, by the pen of Moses, to give them an authentic account of the origin, not only of themselves as a favoured nation, but of the world around them. This history has, by the goodness of Providence, been preserved to us, and though it carries us up to a period of the remotest antiquity, far beyond the reach of any other narrative, we know it to be true, because we know that it comes from God. During the long period of the residence of God's chosen people in the Holy Land, from the time of Joshua to the birth of our Saviour, records of all the Jewish history were preserved, the writings of the prophets came down entire, and together with the works of David and Solomon, form that body of history, of prophecy, and of wisdom, contained in the Old Testament. The providence of the Almighty seems to have guarded such a treasure with peculiar care; its very existence is a living miracle. For if we consider the destruction of Jerusalem, the demolition of the temple, the long captivity of the Jews in a foreign country, and all the lengthened confusion which followed their obstinacy and their rebellion, no written history, no law, no prophet, not a remnant could have remained, had not the whole been guarded and preserved by a higher power than that of man. Not only their Author, but their Preserver, was God.

Thus then the Sacred Volume remained unmutilated and entire, in the hands of the Jews, at the coming of our blessed Lord, and it is of this the Apostle declares, that "whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning."

They were written for our learning, not only because they acquaint us with the history of ancient times, and of former years; not only because they instruct us in the mighty works of the Lord in the days of old, and his wonders upon earth; but because we can receive the same information from no other quarter. Did not the Scriptures inform us of the fall of our first parents, we should know no more of their transgressions than the heathens of old. Our experience teaches us that we are fallen creatures, but Scripture only can teach us how and when we fell. But by learning, the Apostle does not mean empty and barren speculation, but learning unto salvation; not merely to render us better scholars, but better men; not only to satisfy us in useless curiosity, but to confirm us in the belief of Christianity.

I shall consider, therefore, the words of the Apostle in the first instance, as they apply to the Old Testament, for at the time in which he wrote the epistle from which my text is taken, the New Testament had not assumed a settled

and certain form; parts only were in existence, the Apostles writing as the Spirit gave them utterance, and the one sacred and majestic whole, had not blessed the Christian world with its great body of heavenly light. Let us therefore reflect, how a serious and attentive study of the books of the Old Testament best answer the great end for which they were written, namely, for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Holy Scriptures might have hope.

Who is there who shall read the history of our fall, of all the corruptions of the human race, of all the dreadful crimes there recorded, without a deep and awful sense of man's native and hereditary pollution; who does not clearly see how "sin entered into the world, and death by sin;" who does not fly to the hopes of a Redeemer to purify us from all our innate corruption, to wash us in his blood, and to reconcile poor fallen man to his offended God? Can any one carefully read the history of the Jewish dispensation in all its various stages, from the call of Abraham to the last of the prophets, without viewing in it a gradual preparation for the appearance of such a Saviour? Let him study the law of Moses, and he will find that all the numerous ceremonies which it imposed on the children of Israel were not useless nor idle commands, but were all typical of that more pure and perfect