selves in their wickedness, are addressed by the prophet as the rulers and the people of the abominable Sodom; and he pronounces that they would have met with the judgment of Sodom, but for the sake of the faithful who were still left amongst them, such as Abraham hoped to find when he interceded for Sodom : except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah *, that is, as like unto them in their punishment as they were in their manners. And now we shall see the reason why the Evangelist in the book of Revelation speaks of a great city, ·which spiritually is called Egypt and Sodom, where our Lord was crucified; for certainly our Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, and Jerulem for its apostacy and the judgment that was to overtake it, is called by these names in the prophets: though the passage as it stands in the Revelation may be extended from the example of Jerusalem to the world at large.

I

pass over the allegorical history of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, the bond-woman and the free, because it hath been so fully commented upon by the apostle as a figure of the Jewish and Christian covenants. I cannot add

* Isaiah i. 9.

to

to his explanation; and as I should be unwilling to contract it, I rather chuse to refer you to the consideration of it, as it stands in the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Galatians; and shall proceed to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, which is one of the most interesting and edifying histories of scripture; as it gives us an example of all the dangers, temptations and deliverances that can happen in the life of man, during his progress and pilgrimage through the wilderness of this present world." For, in the first place, the translation of the church from Egypt to Canaan is applied in all its circumstances as a pattern of the translation of us Christians from the bondage of sin, to the enjoyment of our freedom in the kingdom of Christ. Out of Egypt, saith God by the prophet, have I called my son *: a declaration which is as truly verified in every child of God at this day, as when Israel was delivered from Pharaoh, and when the infant Jesus was brought back in safety from Egypt to his own kingdom and people.

Thus the redemption of the people of God from Egypt as a sign of a greater and more universal redemption, is a doctrine with which few readers of the scripture can be unacquainted.

K 3

• Hosea xi. 1.

quainted. The prophets warned the people not to rest in the redemption that was past, but to look for another, and that so much more excellent in its nature, that the former should in a manner be forgotten in comparison of it: Remember not the former thing, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, saith the Lord, I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert*. He promised also in one of the psalms, that he would bring his own people again from the depths of the sea; which can signify nothing but that universal redemption from sin and death in which all the nations of the world have an equal interest because this Psalm is not addressed to the Jews, but to all the kingdoms of the earth ; and is applied by the apostle to the victory of Jesus Christ over death, and to the miraculous gifts bestowed on the first preachers of the gospelt so there can be no doubt as to the intention of the expression in question; it must have the same signification in figure as is expressed in the letter at v. 20.—to the Lord our God belong the issues from death.

But the figurative application of the history of the Exodus is much plainer in the new tes

Isaiah xlii. 18.

tament.

+ Compare Psalm lxviii. 18. and Ephesians iv. 8.

tament. There we see Zacharias, in his prophetical hymn on occasion of the birth of John Baptist, celebrating the blessings of the Christian redemption in terms borrowed from the past redemption of Israel out of Egypt *. God is said to have visited and redeemed his people by raising up a Saviour in the house of Davidto have performed the mercy promised to the fathers, which in the letter of it related to the deliverance from Egypt-to have saved us out of the hands of our enemies, that we might serve him without fear, as the Hebrews did, when they were no longer under the power of Pharaoh-and finally to guide our feet into the way of peace, as he had before guided his people to a peaceable settlement in the land of Canaan.

If we consider the history of the Exodus more particularly as an example of the circumstances of our redemption by Jesus Christ; the first thing that offers itself is the miserable servitude of the Hebrews under Pharaoh. Such is the natural state of every man who is born a sojourner in the Egypt of this world. As they laboured in clay and mortar, so is every man by nature the slave of vile and earthly affections. As the Hebrews were under Pharaoh, man is under

K 4

*See the hymn called Beneditus

under Satan, the proud enemy of the true God, and the irreconcileable and merciless persecutor of his church. From this miserable state, Christ as the messenger and minister of God is sent from heaven to deliver man, as Moses was raised up for a like purpose, and sent to lead the people out of Egypt; of whose office we shall have a farther prospect when we come to the second sort of historical figures. Look at the order of the redemption from Egypt, and you will find it agree in every particular with the order of the Christian salvation. The people were conducted to the waters of the red sea, where the apostle instructs us they were all baptised unto Moses*: they were all saved by water, as the family of Noah had before, been saved at the flood, and as we are saved now. It doth not appear to us how they could have been saved from Pharaoh, but by the interposition of the waters of the sea. Here their salvation began, and the power of their adversary ended and we know that Satan has not that sovereignty over baptized Christians as he has over men in the state of nature. After baptism a Christian is no longer the subject of that Tyrant, but the child of God, who undertakes thenceforth to conduct him through all the trials