of concupiscence; law in the members; I will know you no more. I will make with you an eternal divorce, I will, from this moment open my heart to the Eternal Wisdom, who condescends to ask it.

If we are in this happy disposition, if we thus become regenerate, we shall enjoy from this moment, foretastes of the glory, which God has prepared. From this moment, the truths of religion, so far from casting discouragement and terror on the soul, shall heighten its consolation and joy; from this moment, heaven shall open on this audience, paradise shall descend into your heart, and the Holy Spirit shall come and dwell there. He will bring that peace, and those joys which pass all understanding. And, commencing our felicity on earth, he shall give us the earnest of his consummation. God grant us the grace! To him, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and ever. Amen.

26

ON THE COVENANT OF GOD WITH THE
Meliod an ISRAELITES."

turk Hiti ali ova
surd

DEUTERONOMY XXIX, 10,...19.

Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all wit your the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from thy hewer of wood, unto the drawer of thy water: that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day: that he may establish thee to-day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath been unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord your God, and also with him that is not here this day: (for ye know that we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the nations which ye passed by. And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them,) lest there should be among you man or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord your God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood, and it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart.

My brethren, this sabbath is a covenant-day between God and us. This is the design of our sacraments; and the particular design of the holy supper we have celebrated in the morning-service.

So

ON THE COVENANT OF GOD WITH THE ISRAELITES. 211

our catechists teach; so our children understand; and among the less instructed of this assembly there is scarcely one, if we should ask him what is a sacrae ment, but he would answer," it is a symbol of the Covenant between God and christians."

This being understood, we cannot observe without astonishment the slight attention, most men pay to an institution; of which they seem to entertain such exalted notions. The tendency would not be happy in conciliating your attention to this discourse, were I to commence by a humiliating portrait of the manners of the age; in which some of you would have occasion to recognise your own character. But the fact is certain, and I attest it to your consciences. Do we take the same precaution in contracting a covenant with God in the eucharist; which is exercised in a treaty on which the prosperity of the state, or domestic happiness depends? When the latter is in question, we confer with experienced men, we weigh the terms, and investigate with all possible sagacity, what we stipulate, and what is stipulated in return. But when we come to renew the high covenant, in which the immortal God condescends to be our God, and in which we devote ourselves to him, we deem the slightest examination every way sufficient. We frequently even repel with indignation a judicious man, who would venture, by way of caution, to ask, " What are you going to do? What engagements are you going to form? What calamities are you about to bring on yourselves?"

One grand cause of this defect, proceeds, it is presumed, from our having, for the most part, inadequate notions of what is called contracting, or renewing our covenant with God. We commonly confound the terms, by vague or confused notions: hence one of the best remedies we can apply to an evil so general is, to explain their import with precision. Having searched from Genesis to Revelation, for the happiest text affording a system complete and

clear on the subject, I have fixed on the words you have heard. They are part of the discourse Moses addressed to the Israelites, when he arrived on the frontiers of the promised land, and was about to give an account of the most important ministry God had ever entrusted to any mortal.

I enter now upon the subject. And after having again implored the aid of Heaven; after having conjured you, by the compassion of God, who this day pours upon us such an abundance of favours, to give so important a subject the consideration it deserves; I lay down at once a principle generally received among christians. The legal, and the evangelical covenant. The covenant God contracted with the Israelites by the ministry of Moses, and the covenant he has contracted this morning with you, differ only in circumstances, being in substance the same. Properly speaking, God has contracted but one covenant with man since the fall, the covenant of grace upon mount Sinai; whose terrific glory induced the Israelites to say, Let not God speak with us, lest we die, Exod. xx. 19. Amid so much lightnings and thunders, devouring fire, darkness, and tempest; and notwithstanding this prohibition, which apparently precluded all intercourse between God and sinful man, Take beed....go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: there shall not an hand touch it, but it shall surely be stoned, or shot through; upon this mountain, I say, in this barren wilderness, were instituted the tenderest ties God ever formed with his creature: amid the awful punishments which we see so frequently fall upon those rebellious men; amid fiery serpents which exhaled against them a pestilential breath, God shed upon them the same grace he so abundantly pours on our assemblies. The Israelites, to whom Moses addresses the words of my text, had the same sacraments: they were all baptized in the cloud; they did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual rock that follow

ed them, and that rock was Christ, 1 Cor. x. 2, 3. The same appellations; it was said to them as to you, If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine, Exod. xix. 5. The same promises, for they saw the promises afar off, and embraced them, Heb. xi. 13.

On the other hand, amid the consolatory objects which God displays before us at this period, in distinguished lustre; and notwithstanding these gracious words which resound in this church, Grace, grace unto it. Notwithstanding this engaging voice, Come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden; and amid the abundant mercy we have seen displayed this morning at the Lord's table; if we should violate the covenant he has established with us, you have the same cause of fear as the Jews. We have the same Judge, equally awful now, as at that period; for our God is a consuming fire, Heb. xii. 29. We have the same judgments to apprehend. With many of them, God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were for our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters as some of them. Neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed, and fell in one day twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer, 1 Cor. x. 5....10. You know the language of St. Paul.

Further still: whatever superiority our condition may have over the Jews; in whatever more attracting manner he may have now revealed himself to us; whatever more tender bands, and gracious cords of love God may have employed, to use an expression of a prophet, will serve only to augment our misery, if we prove unfaithful. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobe