spoke unto him in Mount Sinai.” There is one part of the history of the Jews in the wilderness, which so fully shows that they distinguished this Angel of Jehovah from all created angels, as to deserve particular attention. In Exodus xxiii, 20, God makes this promise to Moses and the Israelites: “Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.” Of this Angel let it be observed, that he is here represented as the guide and protector of the Israelites; to him they were to owe their conquests and their settlement in the promised land, which are in other places often attributed to the _immediate_ agency of God; that they are cautioned to “beware of him,” to reverence and stand in dread of him; that the pardoning of transgressions belongs to him; finally, “that the _name_ of God was in him.” This _name_ must be understood of God’s own peculiar name, JEHOVAH, I AM, which he assumed as his distinctive appellation at his first appearing to Moses; and as the names of God are indicative of his nature, he who had a right to bear the peculiar name of God, must also have his essence. This view is put beyond all doubt by the fact, that Moses and the Jews so understood the matter; for afterward when their sins had provoked God to threaten not to go up with them _himself_, but to commit them to “an angel who should drive out the Canaanite,” &c, the people mourned over this as a great calamity, and Moses betook himself to special intercession, and rested not until he obtained the repeal of the threat, and the renewed promise, “My _presence_ shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” Nothing, therefore, can be more clear than that Moses and the Israelites considered the promise of the Angel, in whom was “the name of God,” as a promise that God _himself_ would go with them. With this uncreated Angel, this _presence_ of the Lord, they were satisfied, but not with “an angel” indefinitely, who was by _nature_ of that order of beings usually so called, and therefore a created being; for at the news of God’s determination not to go up with them, Moses hastens to the tabernacle to make his intercessions, and refuses an inferior conductor:--“If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.”