124 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



And let it be ever impressed on your minds that 

 these reasons apply to us Christians, no less 

 than they did to the Jews ; for He is the Lord 

 our God by a more excellent covenant than he 

 was theirs. He has relieved us from that 

 slavery, of which the Egyptian bondage was but 

 a type ; and instead of the land of Canaan, he 

 has prepared for us an inheritance in heaven. 



" The first and second commandments, in 

 which we are forbidden, under a dreadful penalty, 

 to swerve from the worship of the one true God, 

 or to kneel to any created being, seem to have 

 been framed in allusion to the gross idolatry of 

 Egypt, where all manner of living creatures were 

 adored; and this allusion must have strongly 

 reminded the Israelites of the w 7 ant of power in 

 those mock deities, who could neither prevent 

 the plagues which they had just witnessed, nor 

 could they enable Pharaoh, though backed by a 

 mighty army, to detain them in that country." 



My uncle then went through all the other 

 commandments, and said a greal deal to us 

 about the divine institution of the Sabbath ; but 

 when he came to the tenth, " This/' said he, 

 " stamps the seal of divinity upon the whole 

 Mosaic code, of which the Decalogue is the 

 summary. No such restrictions are to be found 

 in the laws of the most famous heathen legis- 

 lators ; neither Lycurgus, nor Solon, nor Jus* 



