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presume to grasp at the forgiveness, and delight ourselves in the pardon, which a merciful Saviour has purchased for us, and which he is equally ready and willing to bestow. Much evil has, we fear, accrued to many minds from these great duties having been kept out of sight; this has led them, if we may so say, in snatching at the pardon, to leap across the difficulties that lay before it. We believe, indeed, the forgiveness, when sought through the blood of Christ, to be free as the air we breathe, and in no respect the purchase of our tears, our penitence, our humiliation; but we also believe that it never is conferred where these are not; and that worse than vain are that man's pretensions to "rejoice in the Lord," who has never deeply bewailed his sins, sorrowed over the very imperfections of his sorrow, and repented of his most earnest, because still most imperfect and inadequate, repentance. The frame of mind of which we speak, can alone be produced by the aid of God's good Spirit; nothing short of his divine and blessed operation, can work this in the human heart, but all aids are needful, and all helps to this great end profitable and important. Our church, therefore, most wisely and scripturally teaches us to pray, "Give us grace to use such abstinence, that our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory." "Such abstinence," as each in his own case finds best or needful for the obtaining of this important end, namely, an entire subjection of the flesh to the spirit. "Such abstinence," not merely from food, although this, when necessary, is most certainly in

cluded, but such abstinence from every thing that can tend to "quench the Spirit," or to prevent us from obeying its "godly motions in righteousness and true holiness," as our cold and frozen hearts may require. Under the blessed liberty of the Gospel, this must be measured by every man's conscience in the sight of God; each ascertaining what in his own case is required, and seeking grace, and wisdom, and strength, to apply it. More than this, we neither ourselves need, under the free and blessed privileges to which we are called, nor have we the right to bind them as a yoke about the necks of our brethren. The full, perfect, and sufficient atonement, blessed be God, is once and for ever made. All that remains for us, is to receive it, and for this, no measure of fasting, of tears, of penitence, of self-denial, has ever been prescribed by divine authority, simply because it must, in every instance, differ; that measure being our measure which will humble us before God, and so penetrate our hearts, as, by his grace, to destroy our love for all things that are offensive in his sight, and induce us to resolve upon forsaking and abhorring them.

*

If God's word be true, therefore, there is not that human being, who thus deeply and earnestly bewails his sins, and is willing to forsake them, and anxious for pardon, only through the blood of Christ, to whom we may not offer it with all the freedom and all the confidence at the present hour, which the apostle exhibited when he said to the Philippian jailer, "Believe

* Rom. v. 11.

on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." And there is not that human being in existence, however widely he may have departed from the vows of his baptismal covenant, or however deeply he may have sunk in sin, who, by God's grace, receives this offer, and obeys the Lord who makes it, who does not stand before God, at that hour, a pardoned sinner, an adopted son, an heir of glory, as certainly and as acceptably, as if he had never been the fallen denizen of a fallen world.

EXPOSITION LXII.

CHAP. xxiii. 38-44.

33. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

34. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord.

35. On the first day shall be a holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work therein.

36. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: on the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.

37. These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice and drink offerings, every thing upon his day:

38. Beside the sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all your free-will offerings, which ye give unto the Lord.

39. Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the

Lord seven days; on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.

40. And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.

41. And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.

42. Ye shall dwell in booths seven days: all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths;

43. That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

44. And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord.

We have here the institution of the feast of tabernacles, the last of the three great feasts of the Lord, upon which, in after days, the Israelites were bound to appear in the temple at Jerusalem. This completes the whole number of the Jewish festivals, of which there were, as we have seen, four in the course of the year; while, singular to record, there was but one appointed fast, the day of atonement. So very much, even in that sterner dispensation, did the days of rejoicing exceed those on which men were called upon to "afflict their souls:" and so desirous is our heavenly Father that his service should always be a happy as well as a holy service.

The feast of tabernacles was appointed, as we learn from the forty-third verse, to commemorate the circumstance of the long abode of the Israelites in tents, after the Almighty had delivered them from their Egyptian bondage. For this purpose, they were always during this festival to dwell in tents or booths

made of the branches of trees, for seven days; forsaking their houses, and remaining in these less.convenient abodes, which were usually erected in after times, either on the flat roofs, or in the court-yards belonging to their ordinary dwellings.

As the feast of Pentecost, celebrated at the same time the giving of the law and the in-coming of the corn harvest, so the feast of tabernacles had also a double object, and while marking the grateful recollection of the Israelites of the tents of the wilderness, testified also their gratitude for the gathering of all "the fruits of the land," and for the close of the vintage, the last harvest of the year. It is therefore referred to by anticipation in the Book of Exodus as the "feast of in-gathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field."* It was naturally the most joyous of all their festivals, and this was quite in accordance with the direction of the Almighty in verse 40, "Ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God;" and according to the Jewish writers, it was accompanied by music, and singing of hymns, and dancing, even the elders of the people taking part in the courts of the sanctuary, in these amusements, thus sanctioned and sanctified by the Almighty.

Many chronologers suppose our Lord Jesus Christ to have been born about the period of this feast. If it were so, it offers a striking example of the manner in which the Saviour was pleased to honour these divine institutions of the elder dispensation, which

*Exod. xxiii. 16.

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