‘And He said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou,    and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders    of Israel; and worship ye afar off. 2. And Moses alone    shall come near the Lord; but they shall not come nigh,    neither shall the people go up with him. 3. And Moses    came and told the people all…

          ‘Though I myself might have confidence even in the          flesh: if any other man thinketh to have          confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised          the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the          tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as          touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal,          persecuting the church; as touching the          righteousness which is in the…

          ‘Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace          always, by all means. The Lord be with you          all.’–2 THESS. iii. 16.We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts of prayer whichcharacterise this letter, and bear witness to the Apostle’s affectionfor his Thessalonian converts. It is the deepening of the ordinaryJewish formula of meeting and…

    ‘And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east    of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the    west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar    unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.’    GENESIS xii. 3.These are the two first acts of Abram in the land of Canaan.1.…

          ‘Have ye suffered so many things in vain?’–GAL.          iii 4.          Preached on the last Sunday of the year.This vehement question is usually taken to be a reminder to the fickleGalatians that their Christian faith had brought upon them muchsuffering from the hands of their unbelieving brethren, and to imply anexhortation to faithfulness to the Gospel lest they…

    ‘And the Lord said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one    plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards    he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he    shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. 2. Speak    now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow    of his neighbour, and every woman of…

          ‘I follow after if that I may apprehend that for          which also I was apprehended of Christ          Jesus.’–PHIL. iii. 12.‘I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.’ That is how Paul thinks of what wecall his conversion. He would never have ‘turned’ unless a hand had beenlaid upon him. A strong loving grasp had gripped him in…

    ‘After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of    his brethren may redeem him.’–LEV. xxv. 48.There are several of the institutions and precepts of the Mosaiclegislation which, though not prophetic, nor typical, have yetremarkable correspondences with lofty Christian truth. They may be usedas symbols, if only we remember that we are diverting them…

    ‘And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a   one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And    Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed    thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou    art: Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy    word shall all…

THE noble words in which Joseph dissipates his brothers’ doubts have,as their first characteristic, the recognition of the God by whom hiscareer had been shaped, and, for their next, the recognition of thepurpose for which it had been. There is a world of tenderness andforgivingness in the addition made to his first words in verse…