26. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

27. And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.

28. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

29. See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

30. So the people rested on the seventh day.

31. And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

32. And Moses said, This is the thing which the Lord commanded, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt.

33. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations.

34. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept.

35. And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.

36. Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.

How wonderful was this perpetual miracle!

Day after day, year after year, did this supernatural food continue to fall, until the Israelites 66 came unto the borders of the land of Canaan." But in the verses we have just read, a second miracle is propounded to us. The manna, we are told, could not be kept for a single night, as an article of food, or it lost its savour. Therefore "Moses said, let no man leave of it until the morning. Notwithstanding, they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms and stank." But now observe what happened upon the Sabbath day on the day preceding they gathered twice as much manna as usual, viz., two omers for each man, and this at the express command of God, in the former part of the chapter (verse 5). Had they attempted to do so on any other day, they would have failed, because we are told expressly "that he who gathered much had nothing over," i. e., that he who gathered more than an omer, found himself supernaturally deprived of it, and could take no more than an omer to his tent. The gathering of this quantity, about three quarts, for each member of the family, would probably occupy a considerable portion of the day, especially as it is described in verse 14th : "Upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on

it

the ground." The manna was not, therefore, in heaps, but thinly spread upon the earth, perhaps on purpose to afford occupation to the people in a land where cultivation and tillage must have been unknown; but the gathering this upon the Sabbath would greatly have interfered with its religious services. On the day, therefore, preceding the Sabbath, every man gathered twice as much as usual, and was permitted to carry away. The rulers of the congregation, astonished at this, came and told Moses, who at once unravelled the mystery, by declaring, "To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord; bake that which ye will bake to-day, and seethe that ye will seethe, and that which remaineth over, lay up for you, to be kept until the morning; and they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade, and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to-day, for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord, to-day ye shall not find it in the field."

Here then, is a distinct reference to the existence of the Sabbath, previously to the establishment of the ceremonial law, and at the same time, a weekly miracle wrought to manifest the Almighty's esteem and respect for it. Sufficient evidence that this most blessed and holy institution, appointed even in paradise itself, and

observed, as we have full and sufficient reason for believing, by the patriarchs, although necessarily obscured and clouded during the Egyptian captivity, (since a nation of slaves could not observe their own days for resting,) was never forgotten, and was now again resumed under the peculiar auspices of the great Jehovah.

It is most important to notice, that the institution of the Sabbath was thus wholly irrespective of and antecedent to the giving of the ceremonial law, and thus equally binding after that law's decease, as before its birth. Whenever, therefore, we are told that the ceremonial law is abrogated, we must remember that this affects not the observance of one day in seven as holy unto the Lord. If we are even told that the ten commandments were set aside at the same time, and that the moral law shared the fate of the ceremonial, and gave way, at the coming of Messiah, to the greater light and higher morality of the Gospel, still, this also affects not the observance of one day in seven as holy unto the Lord. God has claimed that at our hands, or rather he has presented it to us as a boon, in the days of man's innocency; and although we contend not that the Christian's Lord's-day should be marked by the rigid observances of the Jewish Sabbath, which we do not believe to be

binding upon us, we do contend for the spiritual observance of the Lord's-day in its fullest extent, and most blessed entireness. We are asked for this day, this one brief portion of our time, to be, as far as our circumstances will admit, wholly devoted to God, to his house, his ordinances, his word, his throne of grace. We are invited, as we love the well-being of our own souls, to be very jealous over our thoughts, our words, our employments, our books, our company on that day. All is not too much for God, and we may be assured that all is not more than we shall wish that we had rendered Him, when we hear for the last time, the Sabbath bells of earth, and are about to enter, through the merits of our Redeemer, upon the eternal Sabbath of our Father's kingdom.

EXPOSITION XL.

EXODUS Xvii. 1–7.

1. And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and