it"-the glory of which the Evangelist speaks (St. John, i. 14):

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth."

And, in contrast to the Law (ver. 17)

"For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

This "glory" was then as yet hidden to Israel. For the covenant of which Moses was the Mediator, stipulating a perfect obedience to the law as its condition which they could not render, was to them "a ministration of death" and "of condemnation," the glory of which was intolerable; so that they could not even behold the reflection of it in the face of Moses when he returned to speak with them after receiving at the hands of God "the Tables of Testimony:" and (as we read, Exod. xxxiv. 29-end) "he put a veil on his face:" thereby signifying, as the Apostle explains this symbolical transaction (2 Cor. ch. iv.), "that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished." They could not look beyond that dispensation to one to follow, when the veil should be done away, and the glory of God revealed so as that it might be contemplated without fear, even "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," as "the Mediator of the New Covenant," of " the ministration of justification" and "life." This we behold. "But WE ALL," continues the Apostle, " with open face [or "in an unveiled face," 'Avaкekаλvμμévų πρо

σwл] beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory:" we behold it, and receive the reflection of it, as did Moses of the glory shown to him. We behold it, but Israel is still blind to it; "for [as he had remarked above of them, ver. 14, and still his words hold good] until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament," or "Covenant." Not now owing to the character of the dispensation, for "the veil is done away in Christ;" but to their unbelief, by which the veil which was on the face of Moses is, as it were, transferred to their heart, as the Apostle explains himself," but even to this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart." It shall not, however, always be so:-"Nevertheless [he adds] when it [the heart of that people] shall turn to the Lord, it [the veil] shall be taken away."

In other words, they too shall be brought under the "New Covenant," according to the original promise of it, which, like the promise of its Mediator in the prophecy before us, is a promise to them, as recorded in Jeremiah, ch. xxxi. 31-34:—

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a NEW COVENANT with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

"Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord.

"But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law

in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.

"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

This covenant is indeed now in force. It dates (as St. Paul shows in his Epistle to the Hebrews) from the offering of that one all-sufficient sacrifice by which the perfect remission of sins, which it promises, has been effected, — the shedding of that blood by which its great Mediator ratified it, in like manner as His type, Moses, had ratified "the first covenant" by the blood of calves and goats (Heb. ix. 18-20). And it is our inestimable privilege to experience the blessed results of this fact in the consciousness of a forgiveness so full and complete that "there is no more offering for sin," and an "assurance of faith" in "drawing near" to God such as was unknown until that Jesus, "the Apostle and High Priest," the Moses and Aaron, "of our profession, had opened the way into the Most Holy Place," where now "He appears in the presence of God for us."

But in the enjoyment of our privileges we overlook the people to whom the promise was made; and more-we are ready to conclude that, because it has not yet been fulfilled to them, it never will: as though the failure of man could make the word of God to fail. Not so says that word itself—“ The gifts and calling of God [saith the Apostle, and in reference to that people-to the blessing of Jacob,

which Esau sought in vain to have revoked, Heb. xii. 17] are without repentance," i. e. "without change of mind," on His part. His purposes may be delayed (as we would say) by the unfaithfulness of man, or the blessing may be forfeited to one or more generations, as in the instance of the generation which came out of Egypt; but no word of God shall fail, or promise of God fall to the ground. It is well said by one before quoted, speaking of the 430 years' delay between the promise of the Land to the family of Abraham and its possession, that "the lapse of time might teach them that none of the Divine promises are lost simply because they are delayed.' And that so it shall prove with this promise of the "New Covenant," notwithstanding the long delay that has occurred and the unfaithfulness of the people to whom it was given, God has vouchsafed the assurance of the most solemn pledges, subjoined in the words that follow it :

"Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the Lord of Hosts is His name:

"If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me for ever.

"Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord."

The threats against their disobedience have come

* Davison, Discourse IV., Sect. v.

literally true, and so shall the promises on their repentance, which is no less the subject of the sure word of prophecy.

And then also shall their "REDEEMER" and "MEDIATOR" be known unto them in

III. The third of the offices prefigured by His Type, namely, as their "LAWGIVER."

In this character, also, Christ is now revealed. He asserted it by His authoritative teaching during His ministry on earth, of which we have an example in His Sermon on the Mount, in which, in various instances, He repeals the commandments enjoined "to them of old time,"* in order to substitute those of the more perfect law of the New Covenant. And it was in this character that, after His Ascension, on the anniversary of the giving of the Law from Sinai, He sent down that Holy Spirit of truth, by whom (in the terms of that covenant just quoted) the law is written, not as before on tables of stonethe emblem of its powerlessness to influence to the righteousness it prescribes-but "on the fleshy tables of the heart;" no longer the ministration of "the letter which killeth," but of " the Spirit which giveth life;" as in the case of all His true disciples, who, though no longer “under the law," serving “in the spirit of bondage and fear," are "under law to Christ" in "the spirit of adoption," which is His

* So we should read instead of "by them of old time," in St. Matt. v. 21, 27, 33.

† Έννομος Χριστῷ, 1 Cor. ix. 21.