But why was he to live there till the high priest died? There, my young reader, is the grand meaning of this striking law. You have been told that a great deal that happened to the Israelites was to shadow or set forth, as by a picture or resemblance, the future spiritual things in the Gospel of Christ. Now the wrath of God is threatened against all sinners, who are in danger of ruin as the man-slayer, who could only be protected by running into the city of refuge. Christ is appointed for us to flee to him for salvation. To him, then, the trembling sinner must "flee from the wrath to come." The way is free and open, and if we "flee for REFUGE to lay hold on the hope here set before us, we shall never perish, but have everlasting life. This is the meaning of the city of refuge.

Moses goes on to repeat the Ten Commandments, and what happened at Sinai when God gave them. And he tells the people particularly to love and serve God that it may be well with them. And he does not forget the little children, for he says, "These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." (See the sixth chapter.) These scem to us

to be very odd commands, but they were very likely to make the people and their children remember all about what God did for Israel, in saving them from the Egyptians, taking care of them in the wilderness, when they served him, and bringing them to the land of Canaan.

The Jews tied sentences of the law to their wrists, and on their foreheads, and wrote them in different parts about their houses, that they might remember them; and all this was good: but Jesus blamed the Pharisees for doing so, because they cared not about the words they wrote, but thought that when they had done the thing, that was enough; which was a great mistake, for all this should have been done that they might really remember God's word.

All the Scripture given by God, up to that time, was written by scribes, or persons employed to make copies for people, and these laws would have been seen by few amongst so many, but for this way of writing the most striking parts, that all might often read them.

My dear young reader, how good is God to you! He sends you the whole Bible, and plenty of copies are now printed, instead of written, and sold cheap, so that the poorest may have them. It was not so, even in England, in

former days, for when labourers were paid twopence a day, and the price of a sheep was a shilling, a Bible sold for seventeen pounds; that is to say, for the value of three hundred and forty sheep. This was six hundred years ago.

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord; and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them (the Canaanites) out from before thee."

The heathen of Canaan worshipped a fancied god, which they called Moloch, and one part of their worship was to make two large fires, and their priests led little children between them, and so marked them as his servants, as many Christians mark their children as servants of Jesus Christ by baptism, while some leave this to be done by themselves when they grow up to be men and women. On some occasions the poor children were put into the fire and burnt to death to please their false god, as their parents supposed.

Charmers, which they had, were persons who pretended by certain foolish methods to cure diseases and many other evils. The blacks, in Africa, have bits of paper on which the priests write some words, and these the people wear about them, and think they will save them from being drowned or shot, and from other ills. Some, too, pretend to ask the devil about things, which they want to find out. A wizard was a kind of conjuror, and a necromancer one who pretended to talk with the dead.

There is another thing about which I must tell you, and which you will go back and read about in the nineteenth chapter: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it."

See how particular God was that his people should be honest. The landmark was then a great stone, which like our stones now, that mark the separation of counties and parishes, then served the purpose of a hedge, and separated lands from each other. If any one was inclined to be dishonest, he could easily remove the stone, and so by degrees get away a good deal of his neighbour's inheritance. This was breaking the law, which said, "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not covet," and God therefore commanded that it should never be done.

In the twenty-eighth chapter there is a remarkable prophecy about the

Jews, in which Moses foretels what happened to them many hundred years afterwards. If they should disobey God and forsake him, a foreign enemy should enter their land, which the Romans did at last, who were then a very fierce and powerful nation; their country should be laid waste, and all the fruits of it eaten up by the army of foreigners; their cities should be besieged, or surrounded by their foes to take them, and should fall into their hands; and, among other miseries, the tender and delicate woman even should be so driven by hunger that she should eat her own child, which really happened; multitudes should perish, so that they should become few in number, and when the Romans besieged Jerusalem, there were two millions of Jews that perished by the sword, besides those that died from famine and disease; and, lastly, the remnant, or Jews that remained, should be scattered into all nations; and this, too, has come to pass, for now they do not make a nation living by themselves, as the French, the English, the Spanish, and others; but though they are still numerous, they live apart, scattered among all people; and there are some in Turkey, and some in Germany, and some in France, and some in England, and some in many other countries; a wonderful thing, which has not happened to any other nation in the world. See how true God is to his word, and what a dreadful thing it is to continue obstinately to sin against his commands.

All these things, and many others of a like kind, Moses wrote, and he ordered these laws to be read to all the people at one of their solemn feasts, once in every seven years. None were to be without hearing them; for, said he, "Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and the stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law. And that their children which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land, whither you go over Jordan to possess it."

Moses warned of his Death-Moses's Song.

DEUT. XXXI., XXXII.

The Lord now told Moses that he soon must die, and he ordered him to write a song or history in verse, that might remind Israel of all that God had done for them, and warn them against the danger of forsaking him and turning to false gods; and this song would, by being often sung, be fixed in the people's memories, and hand down their wonderful history from father

to son, and from generation to generation. This song is contained in the thirty-second chapter; a few parts you will, perhaps, want to be explained.

Moses begins by saying, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew." What he means by this is, that what he should say, should be designed to do the people as much good as the rain and the dew bring to the barren earth when they descend upon it.

Then he says God is a rock; that is, God is strong as a rock is strong, and he is immoveable as a rock is immoveable; that they are safe, indeed, that put their trust in him.

He says also, that with a tender care, like that of an eagle towards her young ones, God had guarded Israel; he made him ride on high or proud places of the earth, as a conqueror on his charger; "he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock," meaning that in Canaan he had given him to enjoy that abundance of honey which there was there, and which the bees sometimes made in the rocks, in the holes of which they formed their hives; and oil, also, which was got out of trees found among the rocks.

But he also sings, "Jeshurun,"-a name he gives to Israel,-"Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked;" meaning that when Israel had abundance, then the nations grew proud or insolent, like an overfed beast, that would turn and kick the hand that had fed it.

And now God ordered Moses to go up into Mount Abarim, the highest part of which was Mount Nebo, and here he might see the land of Canaan; but because he had trespassed against God at the waters of Meribah, in the wilderness of Zin, he was never to enter into it.

Death of Moses-Joshua becomes Leader of Israel.

DEUT. XXXIII, XXXIV.

Moses, inspired from Heaven, now blesses Israel, and like Jacob foretels the future lot of the twelve tribes. It would keep us too long to explain all that is here said; you will, however, read, that he said of the tribe of Joseph, "His horns are like the horns of unicorns." Horns, in Scripture, when applied to people, mean power; and as the unicorn is a most powerful animal, Joseph's tribe are thus described as being very strong, so that they shall beat their enemies whenever they assail them.

Again, you will read about Zebulun, that "They shall suck of the

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abundance of the seas;" for that tribe were to have part of the sea-coast to live upon, and so to fish, and become merchants, by which they should live, as infants live by drawing milk from their mothers' breasts; and Issachar should get support by treasures hid in the sand, perhaps by pearls and corals, which are found there by the sea-side.

Further, Dan is called "a lion's whelp;" meaning that that tribe should be like a lion, springing suddenly and powerfully upon its enemies. Asher must "dip his foot in oil;" that is, the ground to be given to that tribe should be well planted with trees producing oil, so that it should be so abundant, that they might be said to tread in it; as we say sometimes of a rich man, that he rolls in riches, by which we do not mean that he lies down and turns himself over in his heaps of money, but that he has a very large quantity. Moreover, it is foretold of this trlbe, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass;" not that they should have shoes made of iron and brass, for who could wear them on all occasions ? but that they should tread upon ground, like our Cornwall, where mines of precious metal are in abundance under the feet.

So, further on, you read of God's riding "upon the heaven." This is very grand, and is meant to show us that God manages all the affairs of heaven, and that he directs even the clouds, and the tempests, and the winds, by his providence, with as much ease as a skilful rider manages a noble horse, or a skilful driver his chariot.

You will now, I hope, have a kind of key to unlock the meaning of some expressions of the above kind, which you could not before understand; and when any expression of a similar nature happens to puzzle you, and appear absurd and contradictory, and impossible, only think that it must mean something of what I have just told you, and then the difficulty will be

overcome.

And now we come to the death of Moses, which you shall have in the words in which it is described in the Bible: "So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there, in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

"And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

"And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab, thirty days so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

"And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the