"The Egyptians made the children of Ifrael ferve with rigour; and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and brick." Mocking and mifinterpreting the very proper defire of the Ifraelites to go and worship their God was another inftance of tyranny. "Who is the Lord?" faid Pharaoh, when Mofes and Aaron asked permiffion for the people to keep a feast to the Lord. "Who is the Lord, that I fhould obey his voice to let Ifrael go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Ifrael go." "Ye are idle, ye are idle," the king replied, when they craved permiffion to go and do facrifice.

But while all this was going on, it was not unnoticed or unheeded by Ifrael's God. They cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distreffes. He regarded their affliction when He heard their cry.

Then, by the power of Jehovah, was the mighty and wondrous deliverance of Ifrael from Egypt accomplished; and may we not, brethren, in contemplating this history, thank God that our lot has not been caft under fo arbitrary a rule, that our hands are not unwillingly forced by the sway of a defpot, or our fhoulders weighed down by the infliction of a haughty God-defying tyrant? Many, however, think, or pretend, that ours is a land of bondage. Let them go into other places, where even to poffefs or read the Bible is a crime worthy of prison, and the impreffion is removed. Liberty we have, but not license. Liberty to do everything, except what is wrong. Falfe ideas of liberty-born abroad and foftered here fometimes-lead bad men to think it confifts in the privilege and power of doing every abomination. Such liberty as that ends in the straitness of fieges, the

government of muskets, or, ftill worse, the lawleffness of fanguinary affaffins, and the galling yoke of ignorant and cruel upstarts.

How is it with us in regard to the wor

ship of the Lord our God? No Pharaoh forbids us go our own vine and fig-treeemblems of peace and quiet-afford us safe protection. We worship God in His holy temples, no man daring to make us afraid; and this liberty which we use ourfelves is allowed to all others. We ferve the Lord in the way many call herefy; we know it to be the old paths of truth and gofpel light. Others feek to ferve God in their way. Happy in a confciousness of our own fafety, we judge not them. We bring no railing accusation against others— would God they did not fo against us; our worst wish to them is, that they belonged to us. We would not by violence extirpate them-would that they abstained from

clamoring about rooting up that reformed branch of the univerfal Church which God's providence has allowed to be established in these realms !

We believe, however, and truft, and hope for the good of our nation, that the wide-fpreading and fruit-bearing tree of England's Church, being purged as we would wish to fee it of all dead boughs, and pruned of wild extravagant shoots, may yet, by the enriching dews of God's bleffing, bring forth ftill more and more fruit to His glory, and, by leading more and more loft finners to the all-fufficient Saviour, gather multitudes for whom Chrift died into the fafe-keeping of the Lord's garner.

Having regarded the paffage before us in its literal application to the Hebrew people, we turn from that, and from the incidental remarks which have arifen as we

proceeded, to confider the spiritual inftruction which the bondage of the Ifraelites is capable of, and is intended to afford us who are, as we trust, children of Abraham by faith.

Let us note the contraft between the benevolent ordinances of our Heavenly Father and God, and the harsh commands of tyrants. Pharaoh makes his ferfs toil without remiffion or reft-they are goaded on-forced to produce their tale of bricks, even though materials are denied. But Almighty God is ever confiderate of the infirmity of His creatures; "He knoweth our frame, and he remembereth that we are but duft," and although He has ordained labour to be the lot of man, in pity to our finking frames He has fet afide one day in feven for ceffation from toil, and for fending the thoughts from this world's doings to heavenly things. He has marked