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the pilgrim tribes of Israel, and His teaching them definite knowledge of the feelings and conduct they ought to have towards Him, and the sins they would be in danger of. He definitely revealed a particular way of obtaining His forgiveness, and prepared and enjoined on them an extensive and minute religious discipline, to train them into a habit of thinking of sin against Him as the great Evil, and of thinking of expiation and purification as absolutely necessary-an expiation by atonement, not without shedding of blood; and a purification by self-government, combined with seeking and trusting in help from Him. Equally near to them in secular and spiritual interests, marking these to be inseparable, He was their King, guiding them by an open oracle, as well as by a minute statute law of His own dictation; and their God dwelling in the midst of them, though declaring that no house that they could build could suffice for His temple, whose throne was the heavens and the whole earth but His footstool. And in the course of the generations during which He trained the nation to be ready to receive the coming Saviour, and understand the need of such an atonement as was to be made, and to be habituated to the thought and belief of God's having so great love for man, He progressively called Himself by names of nearer and nearer human relationships to themnames more and more declaring love, compassion, saving help, self-sacrifice for men's sake.

We may consider separately the names and the actual history by which God revealed His nature and His connection

with man.

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revealing

names.

7. The progress of revealing names given to God in sacred Progress of history is chronologically distinct. The name of majesty'Elohim," Deity-is alone used at first, but is used also of false gods. It expresses no relationship between Him and man but the rudimentary one which seems to be the faith of every human soul able to think-the existence of an invisible Being who is supreme over man. When He first revealed His design of raising up a people for Himself to make Him known among the darkened nations of mankind, He made Himself known to the father of the designed instructor-nation by a

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proper name and certain attributes describing His position towards mankind. Instead of "Elohim"-Deity, He called Himself "El," a name never applied without explanation to false gods, but used as His own proper name, and afterwards shown to import absolute supremacy; being used to that effect in combination with the common term, as El-elohim," God of gods. At the same time He associated certain attributes with the proper name in His servants' thoughts. Melchizedec speaks of Him to Abraham as the Most High El; and Abraham says to the king of Sodom, "I have lifted up mine hand to Jehovah, the Most High El, possessor of heaven and earth" (Gen. xiv.) After the attribute of supremacy, those of might and faithfulness were soon revealed. "When Abraham was ninety years old, the Lord appeared unto Abraham, and said, I am the Almighty God; and I will make my covenant with thee" (Gen. xvii. 1).

The next great unveiling of the nature and will of the Deity, God of gods, Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, the Almighty God, was to Moses in preparation for His great drawing near to mankind in common, and not to individuals only; proximately inviting the faith of the whole race. The revelation consisted of two parts. He first declared His peculiar position as the object of faith to man; the object of contemplation and ever-present thought to the whole universe of intelligent being. He declared Himself the only self-existent Being, the only living and true God; "I AM THAT I AM: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you" (Ex. iii. 14). He next made known the special relationship by which He wished His people Israel to think of Him, which was to be represented by the name "Jehovah." The name itself had been known to Abraham their father, and yet more expressly the father of spiritual Israel-"all them that believe" (Gen. xiv. 22)—but not the riches of "holy and reverent" thought and trust to which the name was to invite the chosen people. They were to think of His selecting love evermore by that name, and rejoice in Him as their own near, holy, unchangeably loving Protector, "Jehovah of Israel," "the Holy One of Israel," "their Almighty King." Thenceforth

they were to look upon Him whom they worshipped not instructed by titles of greatness, power, and supremacy, but by a name promising a near selecting relationship comprehending special trust and special guidance. The revealed relationship began immediately to be acted upon. The moral Decalogue, and the religious, political, and social law, were given them as the will of their Jehovah-His godly, kingly, fatherly discipline. And coincident with that declaration of special temporal relationship assumed towards Israel by God as their Jehovah, it is important to notice a revelation made to Moses of a yet far-distant faith which mankind would have; a revelation of a relationship not to that people and time, but to all peoples and times of that world which the Prophet like unto Moses taught that God so loved. At the second giving of the Ten Commandments on Sinai, when Moses, despairing because of Israel's so speedy fall back into idolatry, and receiving comfort of faith in Jehovah's forbearance, besought Him, saying, "Show me thy glory," the Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed Himself "The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty" (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7). That short bright unveiling of God as the Holy and Loving One was an early example of what Hebrew revelation contained often afterwards testimonies whose full meaning appeared only in the fulness of times. The grace and truth, the meeting of fullest love and holiest justice, here put in words, came only by Jesus Christ, and was understood only when His coming made God the just, yet justifier of sinners, visibly known. The revelation made to Moses was a forelight of Christ, one of many expressions and acts not comprehended at the time they came forth, but which, looked back upon now as they stand one behind another extending to the beginning of God's merciful unveilings of Himself to mankind, form the precious vista of faith's retrospect, through which it beholds the Saviour, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, keeping the same watch in all generations over the race He came in the fulness of times to save.

tive faith

truth.

We cannot trace in the same chronological manner all the affectional titles from time to time assumed by or attributed to Jehovah in the comforted faith of His servants. The needs which called these forth did not come chronologically upon man. Attributed as often as assumed, they have their great value as illustrations of the progress of learning the truth, the acquisition by the instructed people of faith's comforting thoughts. That progress is distinctly seen in Israel's history.

Apprecia- 8. We find the Israelites taking from the first a special localising means of indulging themselves and impressing their descendthoughts of ants with the thought of their Jehovah's nearness and peculiar relationship to them. They marked by the "holy and reverend name" places and events in their history, to be thought of ever after as sacred to His praise. Abraham, their father in faith, had left them a suggestive example of this practice of self-instruction. The place to which he had been called to offer up his son Isaac for a burnt-offering, but where instead of that great affliction he had received an earnest of Jehovah's taking upon Himself the burdens of men, the patriarch had named "Jehovah-Jireh”—Jehovah the Provider; and the phrase had remained proverbial among his descendants, a seed of future thoughts of faith in Jehovah's "providing" which were to rise higher and higher through Israel's generations until the day came that Abraham saw afar off. Their immediate progenitor Jacob had left them another historical name which was a rallying-point to their faith in after times. The place where he met the angels of God on his return home with his children, the fathers of the tribes, he had called Mahanaim-" the hosts"-the Lord's hosts; and it became the religious sanctuary of the trans-Jordanic tribes; and it was David's place of safety in Absalom's rebellion, doubtless not without consolation from its suggestions of faith in Jehovah under his sore affliction, one like Jacob's in character and in its burden of self-reproach. In this habit of thought Moses called the memorial altar which he built on the place of Israel's first victory in the wilderness "Jehovah-Nissi ". Jehovah my Banner (Ex. xvii. 15). Gideon localised another

memory of Jehovah's coming near for their help, giving the title of "Jehovah-Shalom "-Jehovah is Peace-to the altar he built after the divine appearance to him, appointing him the deliverer of Israel from the Midianites (Judg. vi. 24). The places thus named became perpetual instructors, sights, memorials for faith to rest itself upon; and their Provider, their Banner, their Peace-giver, became thus assured attributes of Jehovah in Israel's habitual thoughts. "Perez-Uzzah" and "BaalPerazim” (2 Sam. v. 20, and vi. 8) memorialised graver thoughts of faith. We trace this principle of indulging and helping faith by names historically descriptive made use of in the thoughts of faith revealed to Israel's later periods. The city of the restoration which Ezekiel was commissioned to reveal to the Jews of the captivity, was to be thought of by them by the name, "The Lord is there" (Ezek. xlviii. 35), suggestive of the same comfort of faith as Christians have in the description of the city of their rest, when they think of it by the words, "The Lamb is in the midst thereof." In the Messiah's reign, to which Jeremiah was made to invite their faith, "this is the name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness' (Jer. xxiii. 6), a name now historically, as then, in promise, productive of comforting thoughts of definite saving grace.

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apprecia

9. The progress of new thoughts by this and other means Progress of to become habitual emotional thoughts—the advance of the tive lanlearning as well as of the teaching of faith-is distinctly seen guage. in Israel's history. By the time of Eli, Israel in general must have become accustomed to think of Jehovah by the peculiar tie first revealed to Joshua, "the Lord of the whole earth, the Captain of the hosts of Israel." Samuel's mother in her prayer vowed unto " Jehovah Sabaoth Jehovah of

their Hosts. By David's time the Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Israel's hosts, was under that title thought of as the Lord of the hosts of heaven and earth, "the Lord of hosts, the King of glory" (Ps. xxiv.); the Ruler of the natural and moral world in one (Ps. xix. lxxxiv.), whose service and the purpose of His government is holiness (Ps. xv.), exercising a moral government, a holy providence. Jehovah, a "shield" to Abraham, and his "exceeding great reward'

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