Entroduction.

TO PARENTS.

RELIGIOUS SCENES are the birthright of the children of Christian families. They are interesting and instructive to all, but are peculiarly fitted to the tender and ignorant minds of the young; they form a grand part of those divine arrangements, by which God has designed to transmit the knowledge of his truth, through successive ages by which one generation is enabled, and almost compelled to praise God's works to another, and to declare his mighty acts.

How strikingly does all this appear, in that history which the divine wisdom has recorded "for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come !" In blessing and instructing the parents, God was mindful of their children, and VOL. III.

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looking downward through hundreds and thousands of years, he thought of every future generation; and provided that religious scenes should meet them in their earliest childhood. For their sakes "he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded the fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children. That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments."*

This design is distinctly stated in the appointment of the passover. "And ye shall observe this thing, for an ordinance to thee and TO THY SONS FOR EVER, and it shall come to pass, when YOUR CHILDREN shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, and delivered our houses."+

To the command to keep the days of unleavened bread, a similar direction is added: “And

thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto

me, when I came forth out of Egypt."

And to

that which required that the firstborn should be set apart for the Lord; "And it shall be, when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him. By strength of hand, the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage."

Indeed there is abundant evidence that all the sacrifices, offerings, and festivals, were designed as scenes to excite the inquiries, and impress the minds, of children of every successive generation; as memorials of the past, and as types and shadows of good to come. In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, it is said in general; "And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine 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 lyest down, and when thou risest up. And when thy son

asketh thee, in time to come, saying, What mea the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judge.

* Ex. xiii. 4.

ments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as it is this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.'

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What blessed lessons were thus held age to age, before the Jewish children; the divine command, RELIGIOUS SCENES met their tender and ignorant childhood; that in them they might see God's goodness for the past, his promises for the future, and their full obligations to love and serve him. In all those scenes, the Lord Jehovah appeared as the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and they were his memorial to all generations. Every Jewish child saw the scenes of ancient mercy reacted before his eyes, and seemed as if living amidst the blessings of his fathers. Backward he looked upon Egypt, the wilderness, and Canaan; and forward, through the long vista of hun