Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

He believes that all things are working together for their spiritual and final good. He looks to the world to come for the difference to be made between those who serve God, and those who serve him not, between Dives and Lazarus, between the murderer Herod, and the murdered John. He does the will of God, and walks in the way of Christ, and looks for his recompense at the resurrection of the just. Oh! that we may be enabled by the grace of the Holy Ghost to set that eternal world constantly before us, and to live in a continual regard to its blessed and most awful sanctions. Oh! that our faith may be firmly fixed upon Him, who has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, that through him we may finally obtain a portion in that dwelling-place of God, and a part in its glory, honour, and immortality.

SERMON XVI.

THE LAW OF JEALOUSIES.

NUMBERS V. 29.

This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled.

I Now enter on the exposition of another of the books of Moses, the book of Numbers. It bears this name because it gives an account of the numbering of the people. The first four chapters are occupied with this business, and with the disposition of the respective tribes in their encampments round the tabernacle, with the appointment of the tribe of Levi to have the charge of the tabernacle and its furniture, and to be assistants in other matters unto the priests. Omitting all particular notice of these matters, the first subject on which I enter is this of the law of jealousies, as it is called in the text. It follows our last sermon very suitably. For

I then observed to you that the Israelites were placed under a special and extraordinary providence of God, administering present temporal rewards and punishments, as they were obedient or disobedient to his laws. Now this is an instance of such administration in one peculiar case. In this particular sin direction is given that a solemn appeal shall be made to God, who engages to discover the truth, and to pass his judgment on the party, if guilty, by an immediate and extraordinary act of power.

Adultery was a crime expressly forbidden by the seventh commandment, and the punishment assigned by the law to both the adulterer and adulteress, as we saw when we considered the criminal code of the Jews, was death by stoning, when the commission of the crime was discovered. But sometimes the crime might be suspected, and a spirit of jealousy, with or without just cause, might come over the mind of the husband. In such a case express provision was made, by this law, for determining the guilt or innocence of the wife and although God might

have declared her innocence or guilt at once, yet he chose that it should assume the form of a public trial, that the attention of the people might be the more called, both to the crime of adultery, and also to his own presence and administration of their law. This prescribed form of proceeding I will now lay

before you.

The husband who suspected his wife of infidelity was to bring her before the priest, with an offering for her of the tenth part of an ephah of barley-meal, without either oil or frankincense put upon it. This offering was from a commoner and courser grain than the fine flour offered in the meat-offering, and unaccompanied by the other requisites, because it was no grateful offering of thanksgiving, but an expression of the humiliation, grief, and shame, to which the parties were put. No animal of any kind was brought nor blood shed, because this was not a case for an atoning sacrifice; it was "an offering of memorial," as it is said, "bringing iniquity to remembrance" it was a solemn appeal to God, reminding him that he had engaged to

judge, and expecting from him a discovery of her sin, if sin had been committed, or of her justification, if she were innocent. Then the priest was to "bring her near, and set her before the Lord;" that is, he was to place her by the sanctuary, the Lord's dwelling place, that she might consider herself as in his immediate presence, and that she and all the spectators might solemnly await his decision. Then the priest was to take holy water from the laver in an earthen vessel, and put some of the dust of the floor of the tabernacle into it, and uncovering her head, and putting the offering of memorial into her hand, and holding in his own the vessel with the water, he was to adjure her by a solemn oath; he was to declare that she should be free, if she were innocent but he was to lay upon her this heavy curse, that, if she were guilty, the water, which she was about to drink, should cause her body to swell, and her thigh should rot. To this test of her conduct the woman was to give her full assent: solemnly referring her case to God by repeating twice, Amen, Amen.

« AnteriorContinuar »