Q. How did the people relish the heavenly

manna?

A. They became weary of it, and wished to eat flesh again in Egypt.

Q. And how are you under the like temptation ?

A. My heart may be tempted to return from the spiritual life of Christianity, to the carnal life of the world.

Q. Did not the people fear the enemies that were in their way?

A. Yes they were terrified at the sons of Anak, as I am apt to be terrified at the enemies of my salvation.

Q. How are you to be supported?

A. By an assurance that he who assisted them will assist me against every enemy. Q. By what may you be led aside?

A. By the false doctrines and customs of this wicked world.

Q. Who was Balaam ?

A. A mercenary prophet, who suffered himself to be hired to curse the Church of God.

Q. What became of him?

A. He was destroyed in battle, as all the enemies of God's Church shall perish at last,

Q. Who were the mixed multitude?

A. A set

A. A set of carnal strolling people, whose evil example was often followed by the congregation.

Q. Who was Corah?

A. A rebellious Levite, who claimed an authority against Moses and Aaron.

Q. What are you to learn from the impatience of the people, who were wearied by the length of the way?

A. That I am never to be weary of welldoing, nor of following God in the way of his commandments.

Q. On what are you to depend?

A. On the presence of God attending me through this wilderness: for he who was with Moses and Joshua leading his people into Canaan, will also guide my feet into the way of peace,

THE TEXTS.

1 Cor. x. 1, 2. All our fathers were bap tized unto Moses, in the cloud and in the sea. V. 3. They did all eat the same spiritual

meat.

V. 4. And did all drink the same spiritual drink.

V. 5. With many of them God was not well pleased,

V. 6. These things were our examples.

V. 13. There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man.

VIII. THE CHAPTER OF DEATH.

WHAT could our Saviour mean, when he said, let the dead bury their dead? How can one dead man bury another? This can never be, unless the word dead be taken in two different senses: for then, a man who is dead in one sense, may be buried by another, who in a different sense is as dead as he that is, dead in trespasses and sins. To be carnally minded is death, saith the Apostle; and the poor prodigal son in the parable having lived in that state of mind till his conversion, the Father says of him, This thy brother was dead, and is alive again.

Man has a soul and a body, each of which dies in its own way; and so either of them may be alive while the other is dead. This case gives occasion to many strange sayings in the Scripture. There is a sense in which Adam died on the day when

when he sinned; and there is another sense in which Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years. Adam delivered down a natural life to all us that are born of him; but the only inheritance he could leave to our spirits, was that death to which he was fallen. It is this death of the spirit which makes it necessary for every man to be born again. We are baptized, that we may have a new life from the spirit of God; and when it is begun, it must be kept up by the means of grace; as the living seed which is hid under the earth is brought forward by the powers of heaven, which, can reach it there, and act upon it. The means of grace, by which the Christian life is nourished, are--prayer, the word of God, the Lord's Supper, the ordinance of the Church, the company and conversation of godly people, with an awful attention to the providence of God over our lives and actions, for correction and preservation : yea, and even the wicked, who have no grace in themselves, do often increase it in other men by their hatred and persecution. Among the means of grace we are likewise to reckon self-denial and mortification; and also the sickness and pains of

the

the body, which are frequently made such to those who suffer them; according to what the pious king Hezekiah said of his own case -In all these things is the life of my spirit. Isa. xxxviii. 16.

If a Christian lives, he will breathe, like a man alive; he will aspire to God and heaven in his affections, and be fercent in prayer: he will talk like a man alive; and his speech will be edifying, and minister grace to the hearers: he will eat and drink ; and his food will be the food of the mind, the hidden manna, the bread which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world; he will eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood: there will be in him all the signs of spiritual life and growth; and he who thus liveth and believeth shall never die.

On the contrary, there are multitudes of people who seem to live, but are no better than dead; and they might as well be in their graves they are, properly speaking, They have in them nothing of the life of the Gospel, nor any symptoms of it; no sight, no sense of spiritual things, no appetite, no affection. This we shall find, if we make trial of them.

unburied dead.

We

may