19 



and moral purity, came to the front of Sinai, that they might 

 hear the Lord proclaim His law. " And the Lord came down 

 upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount. And Mount 

 Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended 

 upon it in fire : and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke 

 of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." From 

 the fire, and the thick darkness, the Lord spake the Ten 

 Commandments, in the hearing of all the people. 



The whole scene was imposing and awful, so that " the 

 people removed and stood afar off. And they said unto 

 Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but, let not God 

 speak with us lest we die." Thus it is evident that the 

 whole transaction was, to the assembled Israelites, an awful 

 reality. And, when we consider the circumstances, we see 

 that there was no possibility of simulation. None but the 

 Creator and Possessor of all things could have made Sinai 

 to smoke and quake, and from that firy furnace have uttered 

 the Law. The moral impossibilities are equally apparent. 

 How could a gigantic deception have been joined on to the 

 Egyptian plagues, the dividing of the Red Sea, and the 

 descent of the manna ? Could anything but reality be 

 associated with the utterance of that Law, which is the basis 

 of all sound human legislation, and which to this day has 

 full force in all the most civilised and intelligent nations 

 of the earth ? It is impossible also that the morality of a nation 

 could come out of a lie, either spoken or acted, and espe- 

 cially such a full and complete morality as the laws of Israel 

 enjoined. There is also this important collateral evidence 

 of its reality. The descendants of this generation who wit- 

 nessed the giving of the Law, in all their neglect of it, in 

 all their idolatrous apostasy, never once pleaded the want of 

 authority in the Law itself as an excuse for their sin. And 

 their descendants, so wonderfully preserved as a distinct 

 people to this day, acknowledge the Decalogue as the Law 

 of the Lord. All these assurances, however, are no more 

 than might have been looked for in a declaration of the 

 divine will so important and wide-reaching. 



The reality of the scenes of Sinai being assured, let us look 

 at the significance of this revelation. We have here only one 

 view of the Creator, it is that of King. He does not pro- 

 claim anything concerning His own nature, nor satisfy a 

 single human speculation, nor even declare the relations in 

 which- He stands to His creatures as the basis of His law ; 

 but, taking as an unquestionable and fundamental fact the 

 rightful subjection of all men to Himself, He simply declares 

 His will. And, although the law was given to Israel as the 



