Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/107

 "And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me; I will bring them forth from the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel." (Ezek. xx. 33-38.) Here then we see, whether we consider the past or the future, that a mere temporal deliverance is not sufficient—that God's greatest temporal blessings, and even his mighty signs and wonders, may lead us in the more dreadful and fatal captivity of sin. Surely if a miraculous deliverance could deliver the soul, those that saw the miracles in Egypt, and experienced the Lord's mercy in their preservation from the destroying angel, and in the passage through the Red Sea, ought to have been perfect in holiness. Yet we find, after all that they saw and heard, that they were a disobedient and faithless generation, and that they perished in the wilderness. The history, then, of this great deliverance reminds us in the most forcible manner of the bondage of sin, and the necessity of a more noble and gracious emancipation. Israel was in bondage in Egypt, and the Lord had compassion and delivered them. All mankind, Jews and Gentiles, are born slaves to sin, and dreadful is the misery which they have suffered, and hopeless the prospect for the future, unless God have provided a way of escape. Now is it likely that that God who had compassion on the Israelites in their temporal affliction, should look, unmoved and unpitying, upon the temporal and spiritual wretchedness of the whole human race? Is it conceivable that those gracious ears, which heard the cries of Israel in Egypt, should be deaf to the groans and lamentations of all the sons of men? Is it consistent with the Bible-character of God to provide a remedy for temporal sorrow, and yet furnish no means of deliverance from everlasting woe? Is it like our Heavenly Father to stretch out his hand to save a few of his children from Egypt, and yet leave the great majority to perish in ignorance and sin? Blessed be God, who, in his great mercy, sent Jews to our forefathers to tell us of the blood of another and greater passover, which can preserve Gentiles as well as Jews from the wrath to come.

"Messiah, our passover, is sacrificed for us; "and therefore we too keep the feast, and join in the hymn of thanksgiving, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed his people." You remember the paschal lamb of Egypt. We can say—

"Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." You remember the sprinkling of blood that delivered your fathers from temporal death. We rejoice because,