with them, every look shows to us its range so extensive, its duties so imperative, and at the same time our exertions so unequal, that we become rather desirous of the contraction, than ambitious of the enlargement, of our sphere. A man who thus acts and thinks, is so full of the sense of the exigency of his own duties, so full of humiliation at their imperfect fulfilment, that he regards with an eye not only of charity, but of reverence, those whom he sees discharging their duties in a superior station. Are they not, indeed, his superiors, he will say, who discharge, as well as himself does his, the duties of a wider range ? Has not God manifestly ratified their title to their post by according to them the means of fulfilling its callings? And if they behave unworthily, will he be profuse of censure who has a continual and severe censor upon himself in his own well probed heart? Certainly not. Calumny never comes but from an unexplored, and therefore ungodly, heart. Uncharitableness to others is the result of indulgence to ourselves: the ready imputation of offences argues a heart insensible to their heinousness, and familiar with their practice; and the usurpation of the rights of others shows that we know not the real value of our own.

In such a spirit Korah fanned the fire of discontent through the camp. The time was favourable to his purpose, but yet was such as to convict him of a heart hardened both against truth and gratitude. It was not now the beginning of the career of Moses, when his divine appointment rested but upon a few and less distinct miraculous attestations; but the Red Sea had been passed through with dry feet, and

two years, replete with similar divine interposition, had elapsed. To deny his authority, therefore, was openly to deny God's superintendence; and, consequently, to endeavour to set aside Aaron's ordination, was a rejection of God as the God of Israel. Neither was it now a time of trying distress. Were they now smarting under the stripes of their Egyptian task-masters? Were they now fleeing with Pharaoh's host in their weary rear? Were they now fainting with hunger or parched with thirst? These hardships lived but in memory; and memory should have retained their glorious sequel. The waves had closed over Pharaoh and his host; manna had dropped from heaven to feed them, and water had gushed from the dry rock to give them drink. With the reminding them of such mercies should this minister of God have allayed the discontent of the people, whom it was his express duty to instruct; yet, on the contrary, he exhorted them not to acknowledge the disobedience for which God had now turned their steps back into the wilderness, and ascribed base motives to Moses for such a direction. He called the series of their deliverances a series of calamities, and the land of the task-master a pleasant land. With his shoulder impressed with the fresh dent of the staves of the ark of the Lord's presence, he waved his arm to the seditious throng, and rejected the Lord's anointed.

This blind leader of the blind gained over associates, who, if they followed out the arguments by which he seduced them, would prove his most dangerous enemies. These were Dathan and Abiram, princes in the tribe of Reuben. Reuben had been

Jacob's eldest son, but had forfeited his birthright. Korah might readily persuade them that the forfeiture was unjust, that at all events his children were not to be punished by it, that their tribe therefore ought to give the ruler over Israel. But by the same argument this tribe may also claim the sacred dignity possessed by that of Levi, and the shaft which he had directed through Moses, against Aaron, might recoil against himself. But to this he was blind. His cause now prospered. Two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown, joined it. Formidable indeed was such a conspiracy between the civil and ecclesiastical chiefs against Moses and Aaron. They boldly disputed their divine mission, and accused them of usurpation: they charged Moses with leading them forth on false pretences, while his real design was to establish himself as a despot over them. Moses met them with his usual meekness. He proposed to Korah that he and his associates should, on the morrow, assume the coveted office of priests, by appearing before the Lord, and offering incense in a censer; that thus they should await the Lord's disposal, and that the man whom God should then choose, should be consecrated in the place of Aaron.

"Ye take too much upon yourselves, ye sons of Levi," were the ominous words with which Moses concluded his address, echoing back upon themselves their own seditious expression. Had Korah retained his right senses, these words would have rung a dismal knell into his ear. Coming from the meek and cautious Moses, who never uttered a word in

vain, they might have awakened him to the horror of his situation. Perhaps some misgivings did arise. By appointing the morrow for the trial, God had given him time for reflection and repentance; and when the night came on, and the countenance of his abettors was removed, and he was left to the communings of his own heart, his spirit may have encountered with awful reluctances. Most men are visited with solemn thoughts on the brink of an important enterprise, and are wont to weigh well what is to their advantage and what is not. And still more solemn is their meditation, when they are about to undertake the high and solemn office of ministering before God. However clear and legitimate their call may be, they cannot but feel almost overwhelmed with the sense of its responsibility. Korah was going to take upon him the sacred office of priest, and to perform the most sacred part of that function for such was the offering of incense, which went up, amid the solemn prayer of all the people, and was the covenanted vehicle of prayer up to the throne of mercy and grace. But he was violently thrusting himself into this charge: he had received no call except from his factious fellow-conspirators, and he was going to displace one whose divine call had not been disputed until now. Was he not breaking that very covenant upon which the efficacy of incense and sacrifice entirely depended? If Moses had God's commission for the ordination of Aaron, then in no other hands but Aaron's could those rites obtain the benefit of God's covenanted grace. Thence, perhaps, his mind went on to weigh the legitimacy of the commission of Moses, and the various

signs and wonders by which it had been sealed, rose up in his memory. Some one of these possibly startled him with thoughts which he had never entertained before, and conviction for a moment flashed upon his mind. But men, so deeply engaged as Korah was, very seldom retract. Enterprises so unprincipled begin with a wilful casting of God out of mind, and the few moments allowed, if any be allowed, to after-thought, come not before the awful approach of the crisis has compelled reflection. But then the feebly and hastily recalled principles of godly wisdom are few and weak before the violent throng of worldly affections. What can then counterbalance the sense of honour, the sense of shame, by which a leader is driven on against his judgment and his conscience? How shall the eye of God be more dreaded than the eye of men by him who has given up God for man? Still the conflict of conscience, such as it is, coming thus too late for the victory of good, is no inadequate foretaste of the dreadful pangs of remorse which must ever follow ungodly undertakings.

In such a disturbed state of mind, perhaps, rose Korah on the fatal morning. But the sight of his two hundred and fifty associates reassured him, and, with his wonted factious audacity, he called the congregation around him at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and harangued them against Moses and Aaron. He and his deluded associates were at this moment holding in their hands their censers supplied with unlawful fire, and exhibiting these usurped symbols of the acceptance of humble, penitent, and thankful prayer, were stirring up the