caped from the wrath of a cruel king: and the child Jesus was carried into Egypt by his pa rents to escape the wrath of Herod. The nativity of Christ was dignified by the appearance of a star, and celebrated by an host of angels; though its earthly appearance was in poverty and obscurity. And some unusual circumstances marked the birth of Moses, though the particulars are not related. He was born of a poor oppressed people, the child of a slave, and doomed to death by the circumstances of his birth. But his parents were aware of some distinction, which shewed that he was raised up for some great purpose. St. Paul says, they saw he was a proper child; St. Stephen, that he was exceeding fair; the original is, fair to God; from all which it is most reasonable to understand, that some marks of divine favour and distinction were visible about him at his birth. His qualifications and endowments come next under consideration. He is said to have been learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians *, and to have been mighty in words and in deeds. This character is given of Christ as a prophet, nearly in the same terms. The two disciples who walked with him to Emmaus described him as a prophet * Compare Luke ii. 52. mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. When Moses was grown up, he went forth to vindicate the rights of his people, and gave them a sign of his power by slaying an Egyptian who did them wrong; casting out one of their strong men, to shew that a stronger than he was come upon him, and that God had visited his people. So did Christ give a sign of his power as a redeemer, by rescuing the souls and bodies of men from the bondage of Satan: casting out devils by the finger of God, to shew that the kingdom of God was come upon them. The Egyptian wisdom, according to the accounts we have of it, delivered all things under signs and figures; speaking to the mind rather by visible objects than by words, and conveying instruction under a hidden form which only the wise could understand. I do not stay to enquire into the reason of this; I only speak of the fact, which is well known to scholars. Moses must therefore have been accustomed early to this mode of delivering science by symbols and hieroglyphics: and we have seen that his whole law is according to the same method, not speaking literally of any spiritual thing, not even of the immortality of the soul (whence some have ignorantly supposed that it was not a doc VOL. IV. a doctrine of his law) but delivering all things under signs, emblems and descriptive ceremonies; which they who do not study, are miserably in the dark as to the wisdom of the Mosaic dispensation. The wisdom of our blessed Saviour was always conveyed under the same form; all his instructions were given in parables, were visible objects signifying intellectual things; and without a parable spake he not unto them; which form of speech, they who do not study and delight in, as the medium of instruction which the wisdom of God hath preferred from the beginning of the world, will never see farther either into the Old or New Testament. The mission of Moses bears witness, in the form of it, to the misson of Jesus Christ; and gives the most worthy idea that can be conceived both of the dignity and design of it. Both these ministers of God were sent upon their commissions by a voice from heaven. God appeared to Moses in a bush that burned with fire, and said, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them; and, now come, I will send thee into Egypt. So when Jesus was appointed to his ministry, there came a voice from the excellent glory, glory, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The redemption of the people under Moses at the Exodus from Egypt, having already been considered as a figure of the world's redemption under Jesus Christ, I need not dwell upon it here. I may however observe, that as the servitude of the Hebrews was extreme, and their oppression intolerable, when Moses was raised to redeem them; so was the power up of Satan at its utmost height, over Jews and Gentiles, at the coming of Christ. He was permitted to bind and to oppress after a strange manner the sons and daughters of Abraham. And if we consider the state of the Heathens at that time all over the world, we find them under the grossest darkness of idolatry, and the most abominable corruption of manners: so that Christ was wanted by the world of Jews and Gentiles as much as Moses by the Hebrews in Egypt. On this occasion, we have before us a remarkable sign attending the mission of Moses; which being insisted upon by St. Stephen must (like all the other ways of God) have its sense and signification. God appeared to Moses in the desert, from a bush which was on fire and yet was not consumed. Which is a sign, first applying 0 2 applying itself as an assurance of deliverance from the affliction of Egypt; and secondly as a pattern of the incarnation, when God should come down from heaven to redeem the whole world. The burning bush was an earnest and a pledge to assure Moses, that the people of God, though then in a low and miserable condition (aptly signified by a thorn growing on a desert) and under a fiery trial in a furnace of affliction, should yet survive it all; as the bush, though in the midst of a flame of fire, was not consumed. According to this model, such should the event be; and such in fact it was, to the Hebrews in Egypt. As God was present in the bush which was not burned, so being present with his people in their fiery trial, and as it were partaking with them in their sufferings, they would certainly be delivered out of them: according to those words of the prophet Isaiah in all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: which passage some of the Jewish commentators themselves have properly applied to this exhibition of the burning bush, as a sign that God was with his people in their afflictions, to defend and preserve them in the fiery trial. And if this wonderful spectacle was a sign that |