Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel !" Nor the camp of John on the breast of the great Friend of sinners. Of these encampments sings the 149th Psalm, 5th verse, "Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds." What camp the Apostle means is plainly to be seen. He speaks allegorically, and points to the camp of the host of Israel in the desert. When there, says he, a sin-offering is slaughtered, the blood of the beast is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest; but the body is sent out beyond the camp and burnt, after the priest has put upon it the sins of the people, for which the beast was slaughtered, in an emblematical manner. "Wherefore, Jesus also," continues the Apostle, " that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate," namely, before the gate of Jerusalem, which subsequently represented the spot of the wandering camp in the wilderWith this previous observation is now connected the summons, "Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp!" But go forth from where? From the city of Jerusalem? O! you will observe that the Apostle speaks figuratively. "Go forth," he means to say, "from the former dispensation; go forth from Judiasm, which is grounded only on works; go forth from the yoke of Moses and the Levitical law; go forth from the musty, death-like atmosphere of the synagogue, where they fancy they must weave the garment of sanctity out of self-appropriated wool. Salvation blooms without, without!" Behold, this is the Apostle's meaning.

ness.

Let us, however, embrace the opportunity of enlarging yet more widely upon the idea suggested by the camp.

1 Num. xxiv. 5.

The camp is also the world,-it lies in wickedness, and the great mass is spiritually dead, unenlightened, unconverted: all are alike, the high and the low, distinguished and humble, the educated and the rude. Assuredly this mass forms a camp; but how may he congratulate himself who has happily escaped from the power which governs him! An uncomfortable bivouac is that in the night! No sun, no moon above it, but only clouds of thunder and brooding storms of destruction. There they may work perhaps, but each on his own scaffold. There they eat and drink, but they swallow destruction, and drink in the waters of deceit. There they are cheerful, but cheerful as Haman at his banquet, whilst behind him his gallows was being erected. They sleep there too; but the thoughts with which they sleep are like thin-woven coverlids over deep, shuddering abysses of death. And all around are enemies, traitors, murderers. Ye believe it not, un

happy ones! but that is your greatest misfortune that ye believe it not. You are blinded, made drunk, enchanted by hell.

What do you think of the sins of your life? Do you imagine they have passed away with the years you have devoted to them? I say to you, they remain fixed around you in dreadful heaps, and cry out to Heaven for vengeance upon you. What do you

believe of the Prince of Darkness and his power? Do you believe also, that the torch of enlightenment has banished him from this world? Alas! in your heart he is at work; and his chains, although unseen, encircle your limbs. How do you regard the threats of the Almighty in his holy Word? Perhaps merely as scarecrows and empty noise! But be assured that they are war machines cast and charged. At present, they may

be dumb and withholding their thunder; but the match already burns behind the clouds, and their charge is named curse and eternal damnation. How do you regard death? "What about death!" you may think. Behold already we see that awful vulture with black wings arching round your heads, and to those whom he finds, he comes not as a messenger of peace, but as the executioner in the service of justice, whose chair is enveloped in flames of fire. Thus are you surrounded from without. And from within, say, have you peace? Does the Sabbath-bell chime in your soul, or does not rather something often strike and thrill your bosom, as if it were the eagle, exclaiming, "Alas! alas!" Do you not from time to time feel overcome by a suffocation as if you were not in a comfortable position? Do you not often feel a secret gnawing in the depth of your being, and do you not at times feel such a leaden weight, such a shuddering at futurity, as if you were going to meet some overwhelming misfortune, and yet you know not what? O! be assured this choking sensation, which so often suddenly embitters the cup of all earthly enjoyments, is the foreboding of the dreadful retribution and reward of your life, as also of the dangers which are brooding over you of the murderers who are in wait for you. Thus you, in fact, are in a camp, from without and within blockaded, attacking and attacked; you against the anointed of the Lord, against the people of the Most High, and against the heavenly daughter of truth; and against you God, against you your transgressions, against you right and law; nay, every thing sworn to your destruction: heaven and hell, angels, death and devils.

Such is your situation, poor, blind worldling! Bear

crown and sceptre; we envy you not. Repose upon mountains of gold and silver; we pity you as unhappy. Regard your life, adorned with a thousand variegated ribbons of earthly honour or desire; your position is a lost one. I would not, for all the glory of the world, wish to be in your place! Therefore, " Go forth out of this camp!" bursts from the trumpet of the guard. forth, whoever may yet lie hidden in those heaps; there is no tarrying here. Go forth before the tempest clouds, which are gathering above, discharge themselves, and the fire from the clouds darts down, which is to consume the adversaries!

Go

But what is meant by "Go forth?" Just to look out? No, that won't do. To wish oneself out? No, nothing is done either by that. To reach out? No, we cannot remain in the camp, and yet pluck the fruit from the tree of life. A forthgoing must take place; a stepping out, a bursting forth. And not alone come forth from the outward form of life belonging to that blind mass, neither merely from the chambers of their vain lust, or from their range of ideas, their mists of error, and their system of lying. No,-forth from their feelings, from their manner, from their life! Go forth from the camp, not merely with the feet, but with the whole heart, and with the whole strength of the inward man! And, God be praised! we can come forth. A gate is opened, through which we can escape from the thousand-fold dangers of that camp. The herald himself, who calls out to you that "Go forth!" is witness thereof. How deeply was he himself seated there in that mass! but he broke forth. Now he says, "Follow The way is prepared!"

me, follow me, ye sinners! But his cry into the camp, what does it effect? The

people are intoxicated with a dreadful wine. They hear the trumpet blast of the sentinel, but what do they answer? Some: "Let us sleep on, herald!" Others: "Peace! peace! There is no danger!" Others: "Paul, thou ravest!" and others: "Another time we will listen to you!" Many wake up, and will follow; but when they perceive upon the herald his dusty garments, and on his body the sign of the Lord, and behold his feet torn with blood by the thorns, they begin to shudder at the thought of such a road, and their heart says, "Go thy way, thou gloomy messenger! We prefer to repose in the arms of our idols." Yes, where is the voice which effectually and really savingly sounds forth that "Go forth!" in the camp of the dead world? It dwells not in mortal bosom. Your sweet allurements of wellmeaning love, your startling threats of holy seriousness, tears of expiring pious mothers, tender prayers and representations of departing fathers, admonishing reproaches of enlightened teachers, cordial urgings of friends; and then, tribulation, necessity, shattering blows of affliction: combine altogether, ye otherwise so mighty powers, be blended into one trumpet-blast, and cry out, "Son, daughter, friend, beloved, go forth, go forth from the camp of the circumcised, the spiritually dead!" Alas! what will it avail? By human power nothing can be effected. All our warning and awakening to natural men is only as the shaking of a corpse, by which the dead so little awakes back to life, that rather decomposition and corruption are thereby increased, and we stir up the odour of death only the more powerfully. The only trumpet which sounds forth with success that " 'go forth!" into the camp of the world, is beyond the clouds. One little word stands in