BEFORE 1451. my death BEFORE CHRIST 1451. ch 32.5. Judg. 2. 19. CHRIST ye have been rebellious after 32. 1. 29 For I know that DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 14, 15. 2 [14 And the LORD and presented themselves Numb. 27. said unto Moses, Behold, in the tabernacle of the thy days approach that congregation. 13. ch. 34. 5. a ver. 23. Numb 27. 19. ver. 23. ch. 1. 38. & 3. 28. Josh. 1. 6. thou must die: call Joshua, 15 And the LORD 3 DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 7, 8. 7¶ And Moses called and thou shalt cause them unto Joshua, and said un- to inherit it. C ch. 28. 15. Gen. 49. 1. ch. 4. 30. b Exod. 33. 9. to him in the sight of all 8 And the LORD, dhe Exod. 13. PRAYER. LET US PRAY, that we become daily more and more prepared to die, and that we find comfort and peace in the prospect of death by remembering the promises of the blessings of the Christian immortality. That we persevere in our resistance to all evil, relying on the Providence and grace of God. That the Spirit of God rest upon us. That we rise above the contro versies of the day, and value the revealed will of God above all worldly treasure. That we worship God with our nation and people, in the Catholic Communion of the national Church, and not with the foreigner, the sectarian, or the separatist. O LORD of life and death, who didst command Thy servant Moses, when the days of his appointed labours in Thy service were ended, to go up to the mountain, and survey the Promised Land, and to die upon the mountain, when he had so gazed upon the inheritance of the people of God; grant the same grace, we beseech Thee, to us Thine unworthy servants, who are still wandering in the wilderness of the present world, and expecting the summons of Thy good Providence to the world of spirits. We know, we feel, that we must also die. The warning is within us. The voice of our ever increasing infirmity tells us that the day is approaching when the dust of the body shall return to the dust of the earth, and the soul, which at this moment thinks of the past, the present, and the future, which remembers its sins with repentance and with sorrow, and which now, even now, believes with stedfast faith and lively hope in the Lord and Saviour of the souls of men, shall be separated from the body, and live in its new state with Thee. O prepare us for the hour of that death. Save us from presumption. Save us from despair. Open the eyes of our minds, that we may gaze with delight and peace upon the promises which Thou hast given in Thy Holy Word to all those who know the plague of their own hearts, and humbly pray, that, for the sake of Jesus Christ their Lord, they may be made partakers of the rest which remaineth for the people of God. Hear, O hear, Thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hear the prayer of the intercession which was offered to Thee by the Son of Thy love, when this earth was honoured and blessed by His presence in the flesh: "Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." We desire to depart, and to be present with Christ in heaven; which is far better than all the honours, the riches, and the portion of this present life. Give us the comfort which descends from the Spirit of God alone. Give us that peace within,—that calm, serene, and holy peace with God,-which calls to mind the precious promises that Thou wilt never fail to succour those who in the feebleness of their frame, and in the faintings of death, call upon Thee; and that Thou wilt never forsake the believer who in the valley of the shadow of death leans upon Thy faithfulness for the earnest of heaven, and the strength of his soul. We have no hope, no confidence in life or in death, but in Thy free and undeserved mercy. And because Thy Providence is still prolonging our days upon earth, and because we are still surrounded with the temptations of the world, enable us by Thy aid and strength imparted to persevere against all evil, to be of good courage, and to fear not, nor to be afraid that Thou who hast commanded us to fight the battle against the sins of the soul, and who hast commanded us never to faint, nor to be weary, but to put on the whole armour of God, that we be able to fight the good fight of faith, will still enable us to conquer the enemies of the God of Israel, till the power of Satan is trodden under foot, and we shall be more than conquerors through Him who hath loved us. May the Spirit of the Lord rest upon us! As we know the charge Thou hast given to us, may we observe and do it! And because we are surrounded not only with temptations to break Thy Law, and to wander from the King's high way of holiness and love, but are surrounded also with the variety of controversies, the oppositions of Christian to Christian, and with many contending and discordant divisions, sects, and parties, which disturb our peace, and darken the clearness of the glory of God; so be with us, we pray Thee, that we make Thy Holy Word our guide and our rule, that we learn the will of God from the Scriptures of God. Spirit of the living God, which didst inspire the minds, and direct the hands, of Thy servants the Prophets, the Apostles, and the Evangelists, to write the words of eternal truth, O omnipresent, heart-searching Spirit of God, be with us when we read Thy Word, and guide us into all Truth. Above all worldly treasure may we value that Truth, and rejoice in its guidance, and its comfort. And because we learn Thy will from Thy Law, and because we know and are certain from that Law, that Thou didst command Thy people to honour Thee as one united society, family, and people; so we believe it to be Thy holy will that we, as one people, society, and family, should be united in the love of the worship of God. We praise and bless Thy holy name that we can worship Thee in the Church of the nation to which we belong. We thank Thee for the public law which gives the Scriptures to the people, which honours Christ the Lord, and teaches the whole truth of Thy Revelation to all ranks and classes among us. Preserve us, we pray Thee, from the wandering which desires the communion in which other mediators than the Lord Jesus Christ are honoured. Keep far from us the restlessness which drives us from the communion with our people. May no love of novelty withdraw us from the paths of our duty. May no excitement of mind be mistaken for the discovery of truth. In peace and love, and hope and patience, may we walk in Thy faith and fear through life and death, rejoicing in the worship which is founded on Thy Holy Word. Give our rulers grace to preserve what is worthy, to change what is useless, to uphold what is good, and true, and useful, and well-pleasing in Thy sight, O Lord. So be with us in life and in death. Guide us here with Thy counsel in our public service and worship, and guide us in our private communion with Thee, that the words of our mouth, and the meditations of our heart, be always acceptable in Thy sight; and after this life is ended, receive us to Thy glory to possess Thy best promises for ever. We ask all in the name and for the sake of Him who hath taught us when we pray to say, Our Father, &c. DEUTERONOMY XXXI. 16-21. 23. 22 AND 30. XXXII. 1-14. TITLE. The remedy of moral evil is more plainly revealed than its origin and cause. The existence of evil is the proof of man's immortality, and of his continued progression in that immortality. The future is ever present with God, and the world is governed on one plan. Moses is commanded to write an ode, which should be a history of the past, a warning, a witness, and a prophetic description of the future conduct and condition of the People. The commerce, the influence, the language, and the religion of England, are beginning to leaven the world with the desire and the resolution to obtain better governments, and a purer faith, than they have possessed under their ancient despotisms, absolutisms, and superstitions. INTRODUCTION.—If God could prevent evil, and would not, where is His benevolence? If God wished to prevent evil, and could not, where is His power! are the two questions which have ever been either scornfully asked by the sceptic and the unbeliever, or humbly and reverently asked by the thoughtful and perplexed believer. And these questions never can be, and never have been so answered, as to satisfy the human mind. If, after all the deep and beautiful reasonings and speculations of the various metaphysical and philosophical writers who have endeavoured to solve the difficulties arising from the permission of the wrong choices of happiness, the unavoidable calamities, the profound ignorance, the contending errors, the tendencies to the injurious, and all other sources of sorrow that abound among us, the heart of the reflecting observer still sinks within him at the contemplation of so much that pains him; the unbeliever in Revelation has no power at all to answer such questions. With him the world is one great maze, and all without a plan. The believer in Revelation has many answers which content him, though they do not so remove all his difficulties, as to give him that perfect pleasure which he hopes to enjoy from clearer views, and stronger proofs, in a future state of existence. Because he trusts God's Providence implicitly, where he can only trace it partially, he will answer, that evil is permitted in all its various forms, that greater good may befal mankind, than if that evil had not been permitted; he looks on the present life with the light which beams on him from the invisible world; and so walking by the faith which believes the truth of Revelation rather than by the sight of his own limited experience, he answers, that what he knows not now, he shall know hereafter. He answers that, judging from his own limited experience, he has repeatedly found that his understanding has solved many spiritual and moral difficulties which he once deemed to be inexplicable; and he believes that in the continued progress which the human soul must make under the guidance of that Holy Spirit which will give him as much knowledge as is necessary to his happiness in a future state, as He has given as much knowledge as is necessary for his guidance in the present state, he shall gradually be enabled to comprehend more and more of the wisdom of Providence which first created man, and which still preserves him; and being thus convinced, he never permits the afflictions which seem at first sight to be inconsistent with God's benevolence to make him doubt God's power to remove them; and he never permits the non-exercise of God's power to remove them to make him doubt, or distrust, God's benevolence. He perceives that moral evil does certainly exist within him and around him. He believes that the cause and origin of that evil related in Revelation, is a partial though sufficient account of its beginning among men; and its origin on earth, while the remedy of all the inward and all the outward spiritual and moral calamities which torment and disturb mankind are plainly and fully developed in the Revelation which connects the present life with the life to come. And because he is convinced that evil began among mankind from the connexion between the state which is now invisible to the senses and the present life; and because, also, the remedy of that evil is given also from the same invisible state; therefore he concludes that the very obscurities and difficulties which arise from the seemingly clashing attributes of God's benevolence and God's power, are the proofs at once both of his immortality after death, and of his continual improvement in the knowledge, apprehension, and enjoyment of still greater Revelations from God after the death of the body, as the employment of that immortality. The Section before us confirms the truth of all these most satisfactory anticipations. It contains the discovery of the one plan, which, indeed, has been often mentioned, and which is familiarly known to every believer in Christianity. The only way in which, as we have said, we can now answer the perplexities respecting the benevolence and the power of God is, by believing that more good will result to the human race from the permission than from the non-permission of moral and physical evil. This conclusion, however, involves the conviction that such a result was known from the beginning, and therefore that such a result was the object of the permission of evil; and therefore, also, that the events which with man follow the present, and are called by him the future, were and are known to the Deity, not as the future, but as a part of His ever-present. Hence it is that the prophecies which abound in Revelation are only a communication from the invisible world of a part of that knowledge of God which with Him is the present, though with man it is the future; and, therefore, "no prophecy is of private interpretation';" that is, no prophecy is to be separated from the general mass of that knowledge which communicates to man at sundry times, and in divers manners, the appointed developments of parts of that one great plan by which the God of Creation, Revelation, Grace, and Nature, rules and governs the world. In the Section before us we read that Moses is commanded to bring his divine legation to a close by writing an ode which thus developes the chief portion of the plan on which the world is governed, and which we shall now consider, and which then relates the future condition of the people in the Holy Land, with the promise that the Gentile nations should again, as we now see they do, form a part of the Universal Church, the inheritance of God, as we shall consider in the next Section. It begins with the general prediction that Israel, after the death of Moses, would corrupt themselves, and break the Covenant which God made with them, and be visited with so many and great calamities, that they shall say, as they did in their first captivity, and as they will again say at the end of their present dispersion, "Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?" It then proceeds with the command to Moses to write an Ode or Song, which the people should learn; and this Song was to relate their election and their history, the mercies they should receive, the sins they should commit, the punishments they should incur, and the final reunion of the Gentiles with the Jews as one people, after the wonderful prophecies in this Ode had been all completed. It is a summary of the prophetical history of the world. It explains the whole theory of the government of God. And it ends, as we shall see in the next Section, with declaring the more general happiness of the world, as the result of God's power accomplishing the objects of God's benevolence, and thus overruling evil to the production of the greater good. The Song of Moses, therefore, was to be written, and learnt, and remembered, both by the literal Israel and by us, the spiritual Israel, as the warning that God knows, sees, and punishes, and rewards, and as a witness and proof, not only that He can, but that He ever has seen, and does see, and know, and punish or reward, the actions and the conduct both of indi |