But we know nothing of futurity. God has reserved to himself the knowledge of that which shall be: and he conceals it from the highest orders of his intelligent ereation.

Chain'd to his throne a volume lies,

With all the fates of men:
With ev'ry angel's form and size
Drawn by th' eternal pen.

His providence unfolds the book,
And makes his counsels shine;
Each opening leaf, and ev'ry stroke,
Fulfils some deep design.

Here he exalts neglected worms
To sceptres and a crown:
Anon the following page he turns,
And treads the monarch down.

Nor Gabriel asks the reason why,
Nor God the reason gives;
Nor dares the favorite angel pry
Between the folded leaves!

We may go back to the creation of the world, but we know not what shall be on the morrow. He alone knoweth the end from the beginning; and we shall have occasion to notice a most decisive evidence of this foreknowledge, in the prediction with which we commenced this Lecture respecting the subject of the present discussion, and which was delivered four hun dred years before the event to which it relates was accomplished.

The book of EXODUS commences with a recital, by name, of the eleven patriarchs, who accompanied their father into EGYPT, God having sent Joseph bcfore them, to provide for them, and to nourish their little ones. With conciseness characteristic of the sacred writings, Moses sums up the number of the family

Dr. Watts' Lyric Poems. b 1. poem

of Jacob, sweeps off that generation, exhibits the increasing population of their descendants, and hastens to

THE SLAVERY AND DELIVERANCE OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT which part of his narration is to occupy your attention at this time. We shall, as usual, simply detail the facts as they are recorded by Moses, and corroborate them by foreign testimonies. Let us

1. DETAIL THE FACTS AS THEY ARE RECORDED BY MOSES.

In discovering the sources of the slavery and sufferings of the Israelites, we are naturally led to contemplate the wonderful changes effected by the lapse of a few years. Nor shall we find it difficult to persuade those, of the truth and fidelity of the sacred historian's representations on this point, who have accustomed themselves to mark the vicisitudes around them, caused by the revolution of a few months, not to say years. What changes are effected in one year! When we separate, who can say whether we shall see each other's faces in the flesh again? We meet at the house of friendship-we behold the father of a family happy and exulting. The bloom of health blushes in the cheek of his children. The partner of his life enjoys unusual vivacity. We return-but grief spreads her shadow over his countenance. In the intermediate space of a few weeks, the spoiler, death, has robbed him of his wife, or of some of his children: or perhaps we find the mother a widow, and the children fatherless. A man who travels along the vale of years, finds himself deserted by his contemporaries, and passes through the most gloomy part of his way, while the evening sun sets upon him, alone. Some have left him from mutability of disposition: some are divided from

him by distance: some have been separated from his interests, by forming new connexions, some have been driven from his embraces by the envenomed tongue of calumny: some have gone before him into the land of spirits. And thus the sons of Jacob sunk one after another into the grave, till Egypt was covered with a new generation, mutually strange to each other.

How much is suspended upon the life of an individual! What an object of weakness, what a broken reed, is that individual sinking into the arms of death! How soon his services are forgotten, and his memory is buried with him in his sepulchre! Connected with life, are all the diversified comforts with which the human mind has formed any acquaintance. The charities of friendship, the blessings of society in all its ramifications, the felicity of domestic enjoyments, the relations of father and child, of husband and wife, of a man and his brother, the reciprocal duties arising out of these, the consolations immutably connected with them-are all suspended in this trembling balance-LIFE-are all obliterated in the instant of its expiration-all vanish, when the spirit quits the clay tabernacle! Yonder fragment of the human form the wreck of man-all that has fallen into the relentless hand of death-once enjoyed the comforts, the magnificence, the pride of powerdiffused the felicity which he participated-acted and moved a prince in the circle of society---and, a star of the first magnitude, irradiated the satellites which revolved around him. To him the young looked up for intelligence: his tongue moved only to utter wisdom, and his words dropped as the latter rain. When he opened his lips every murmur was hushed, and thousands moved not, held, as it were by enchantment, and bound by the magic of his eloquence. Such he was!

but all these honors stood inseparably connected with life, and with its exhausted lamp, the ray of intelligence which illumined the world-expired! Such was Joseph-but when he died, the light of his brethren was quenched, and the staff of his father's house, broken!

"And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." Who is not charmed with this impres sive mode of describing the revolutions of time? Other writers with me, would have dwelt long upon a theme so copious, and would have exhausted all their eloquence upon a subject which furnishes such ample scope for description. But what prolonged narrative could be equally striking with this single verse? Its brevity in a moment sets before you the velocity with which the stream rolls ages and generations along to the illimitable abyss of eternity. There is not a period to the sentence till a whole generation is swept away! One should imagine that Moses bad snatched a feather from the wing of time, to record the swiftness of his flight, and the rapidity of his desolations!

Joseph died but the God of Abraham lived-lived to remember and to accomplish his promise. "And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty: and the land was filled with them." Their preservation in this deserted condition is rendered credible by that which our eyes witness every day, in their present population, the marks which they carry in their countenance decisively characteristic of their nation, and their separation from all the people among whom they dwell, although scattered over the face of the whole earth. This is one of the standing miracles which infidelity can neither gainsay nor resist.

"Now there arose a new king over Egypt who ✔ Knew not Joseph." It is not inprobable that he might be a stranger, or a foreigner, exalted to the throne, for the government of Egypt was elective, and their princes successively took the name of Pharoah, as it was the custom of the Roman emperors long afterwards to bear that of Cæsar. And if this monarch was chosen from among the Egyptians, seven kings had reigned, and sixty years elapsed, between the death of Joseph and his ascension to the throne; a space of time more than sufficient to obliterate the sig nal services of a minister from the bosom of princes. The bodily strength of the Israelites, and their prodigious numbers, alarmed this jealous monarch; and with narrow, barbarous policy, he "set over them taskmasters to afflict them, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage." It was now that the prophecy delivered to Abraham began to be accomplished: for they were "strangers in a land that was not theirs”. and that, in a state of servitude.

The hand of God continued to work in defiance of the weak and cruel king of Egypt, and "the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." The measures of Pharaoh became proportionably severe; and not satisfied with imposing the fetters of slavery, he commanded that everymale child should be cast into the river so soon as it was born. This decree, as unnatural as it was sanguinary, was executed but too severely by those to whom the commission was given! The voice of lamentation was heard throughout the land; "Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be: comforted because they were not." Day after day the sun arose and set in blood. In childbirth the