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and moral purity, came to the front of Sinai, that they might 
hear the Lord proclaim Hislaw. “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 fiery 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 
ofthe earth? Itisimpossiblealso that the morality of a nation 
could come out of a le, either spoken or acted, and espe- 
cially such a full and complete morality as the laws of Israel 
enjomed. 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 
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