able fruit of faith. But it ought to have been more entirely subject to God, and to have its starting-point in Him alone, and in obedience to His expressed will. Thus the Lord acts often. The earnest energy of faithfulness is manifested, but the instrument is put aside for a moment sometimes, in order that the service may depend directly and entirely upon God. There was something analogous even in Jesus, save that there was not in Him either false reckoning, or error, or external providences, in consequence, to deliver Him from them; but the perfection of the energy of life within, acted always in the knowledge of who His Father was, and at the same time submitted to His will in the circumstances in which He had morally placed Him. Moses, fearful even amid faithfulness, and dreading the power which lent him, unconsciously perhaps, a certain habit of energy (for one is afraid of that from which one draws one's strength), and repulsed by the unbelief of those towards whom his love and his faithfulness carried him, for "they understood him not," fled to the desert, a type of the Lord Jesus rejected by the people whom He loved.

There is a difference between this type and that of Joseph. Joseph takes the position (as put to death) of Jesus raised to the right hand of the supreme throne amongst the Gentiles, in the end receiving his brethren, from whom he had been separated. His children are to him a testimony of his blessing at that time. He calls them Manasseh ("because God," says he, "has made me forget all my labours, and all the house of my father "), and Ephraim ("because God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction"). Moses presents to us Christ separated from his brethren; and although Zipporah might be considered as a type of the Church (as well as Joseph's wife), as the bride of the rejected Deliverer, during his separation from Israel, yet, as to what regards his heart, his feelings (which are expressed in the names that he gives to his children), are governed by the thought of being separated from the people of Israel: his fraternal affections are there -his thoughts are there-his rest and his country are there. He is a stranger everywhere else. Moses is the type of Jesus

as the deliverer of Israel. He calls his son Gershom, that is to say, a "stranger there"; "for (says he) I have sojourned in a strange land." Jethro presents to us the Gentiles among whom Christ and His glory were driven when He was rejected by the Jews.

But at last, God looks upon His people; and He will have not only the faith that identifies itself with His people, but the power which delivers them; and that Moses, who was rejected as a prince and a judge, must appear in the midst of Israel and of the world, as a prince and a deliverer.

Stephen made use of these two examples, in order to convict the consciences of the Sanhedrim of their similar and still greater sin in the case of Christ.

God-who to appearance had left Moses in the power of his enemies, without recognising his faith-manifests Himself now to him when alone, in order to send him to deliver Israel and to judge the world.

Considered as a practical history, God shews Himself to us here as destroying the hope of the flesh, and humbling its strength; and He makes a shepherd, under the protection of a stranger, of the adopted son of the house of the king; and this during forty years, in order that the work might be a work of obedience, and that the strength may be that of God.

God manifests Himself under the name of Jehovah. He had put Himself in relation with the Fathers under the name of God Almighty. That was what they wanted, and this was His glory in their pilgrimage. Now He takes a name in relationship with His people, which implies constant relationship with Him; and in which, being established with Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, He accomplishes in faithfulness what He has begun in grace, all the while shewing what He is in patience and in holiness in His government in the midst of His people. For us, He calls Himself Father, and acts towards us according to the power of that blessed name to our souls. But this name of Jehovah is not the first which He gives Himself in His communications with the Compare Matthew v. and John xvii.

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people through the mediation of Moses. He at first presents Himself as one interested in them for their fathers' sakes, whose God He was. He tells them that their cry had come up to Him; that He had seen their affliction, and that He was come down to deliver them. Touching expression of the grace of God! Upon this, He sends Moses to Pharaoh, in order to lead them up out of Egypt.

But, alas! obedience, when there is only that, and when carnal energy does not mix itself with it, is but a poor thing. And Moses raises difficulties. God gives thereupon a sign, in token that He will be with him, but a sign which was to be fulfilled after the obedience of Moses, and was to strengthen him and to rejoice him when he had already obeyed. Moses still makes difficulties, to which God answers until they cease to be weakness, and become rather unbelief. God declares His name "I am." At the same time, while declaring that He is that He is, He takes for ever, as His name upon the earth, the name of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

God foretells that Pharaoh will not let the people go; but takes clearly the ground of His authority and of His right over His people, and of authoritative demand upon Pharaoh that he should recognise them. Upon his refusal to do so, he would be judged by the power of God.

Moses still raises difficulties, and God gives him again signs, remarkable signs. They seem to me, in their character, types of sin and of its healing; of power having become Satanic, and being reclaimed and become the rod of God; and then of the presence of that which refreshes, coming from God, having become judgment and death. Yet Moses refuses still, and the wrath of God is kindled against him, and He joins with him Aaron his brother, whom He had already prepared for that, and who had come out of Egypt to meet him; for the folly of His children, while it is to their shame and to their loss, accomplishes the purposes of God.

Whatever may be the power of Him that delivers, it is necessary that circumcision should be found in him who is interested in, and who is used as an instrument, for the

Saviour God is a God of holiness; it is in holiness, and in judging sin that He delivers; and, acting in holiness, He does not suffer sin in those who are His coworkers, with whom He is in contact; for He comes out of His place in judgment. For us, the question is of being dead to sin, the true circumcision, our Moses is a bloody husband to her who has to do with him. God cannot use the flesh in fighting against Satan. He cannot suffer it Himself, for He is in His place in judgment. Satan also would have power over it, and of right; God therefore puts it to death Himself, and He wills that this should be done on our part also. This is true of the Church; but she can reckon herself dead. It will be true in one way, more evidently, in judgment at the last day, when the Lord pleads with all flesh, and identifies Himself with those who have not taken part, spiritually, in the sufferings of Christ.

At the news of the goodness of God, the people adore Him: but the struggle against the power of evil is another matter. Satan will not let the people go, and God permits this resistance, for the exercise of faith, and for the discipline of His people, and for the brilliant display of His power where Satan had reigned.

Before the deliverance, when the hopes of the people are awakened, the oppression becomes heavier than ever, and the people would have preferred being left quiet in their slavery. But the rights and counsels of God are in question. The people must be thoroughly detached from these Gentiles who are now become their torment. Moses works signs. The magicians imitate them by the power of Satan, in order to harden Pharaoh's heart. But when the question is of creating life, they are forced to recognise the hand of God.

At last, God executes His judgments, taking the firstborn as representatives of all the people. We have thereon two parts in the deliverance of the people; in one, God appears as Judge-in the other, He manifests Himself as Deliverer. Up to this last, the people is still in Egypt. In the first, the expiatory blood of redemption bars the way to Him as Judge, and it does it infallibly, but He does not enter within-that is its value.

The people, their loins girded, having eaten in haste, with the bitter herbs of repentance, begin their journey, but they do so in Egypt; yet now God can be, and He is, with them. Here it is well to distinguish these two judgments-that of the first-born, and that of the Red Sea-as matters of chastisement; the one was the firstfruits of the other, and ought to have deterred Pharaoh from his rash pursuit. But the blood which kept the people from God's judgment, meant something far deeper and far more serious than even the Red Sea. What happened at the Red Sea was, it is true, the manifestation of the illustrious power of God, who destroyed, with the breath of His mouth, the enemy who stood in rebellion against Him-final and destructive judgment in its character, no doubt, and which effected the deliverance of His people by His power. But the blood signified the moral judgment of God, and the full and entire satisfaction of all that was in His Being. God, such as He was, in His justice, His holiness, and His truth, could not touch those who were sheltered by that blood. Was there sin? His love towards His people had found the means of satisfying the requirements of His justice; and at the sight of that blood which answered everything that was perfect in His Being, He passed over it consistently with His justice and even His truth. Nevertheless, God is seen there as Judge; thus likewise so long as the soul is there, its peace is uncertain-its way in Egyptbeing all the while truly converted; for God is still Judge, and the power of the enemy is still there.

At the Red Sea, God acts in power according to the purposes of His love; consequently, the enemy, who was closely pursuing His people, is destroyed without resource. This is what will happen to the people at the last day, already, in reality-to the eye of God-sheltered through the blood. As to the moral type, it is evidently the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of His people in Him; God acting in it, in order to bring them out of death, where He had brought them in Christ, and consequently beyond the possibility of being reached by the enemy. We are made partakers of it already, through