us that covenant from Sinai was nothing but bondage. Further, if the children of Israel who came out of Egypt had but walked “in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised” (Rom. 4:12), the law would never have been spoken from Sinai; “for the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13). Faith justifies, makes righteous; if the people had had Abraham’s faith, they would have had the righteousness that he had; and then there would have been no occasion for the entering of the law, which was “spoken because of transgression.” The law would have been in their hearts, and they would not have needed to be awakened by its thunders to a sense of their condition. God never expected, and does not now expect, that any person can get righteousness by the law proclaimed from Sinai; and everything connected with Sinai shows it. Yet the law is truth, and must be kept. God delivered the people from Egypt, “that they might observe His statutes, and keep His laws.” Ps. 105:45. We do not get life by keeping the commandments, but God gives us life in order that we may keep them. [Sidenote: The Two Covenants Parallel.] Note the statement which the apostle makes when speaking of the two women, Hagar and Sarah: “These are the two covenants.” So then the two covenants existed in every essential particular in the days of Abraham. Even so they do to-day; for the Scripture says now as well as then, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.” We see then that the two covenants are not matters of time, but of condition. Let no one flatter himself that he can not be under the old covenant, because the time for that is passed. The time for that is passed only in the sense that “the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries.” 1 Peter 4:3. [Sidenote: Difference Between the Two.] The difference is just the difference between a freewoman and a slave. Hagar’s children, no matter how many she might have had, would have been slaves, while those of Sarah would necessarily be free. So the covenant from Sinai holds all who adhere to it in bondage “under the law;” while the covenant from above gives freedom, not freedom from obedience to the law, but freedom from disobedience to it. The freedom is not found away from the law, But in the law. Christ redeems from the curse, which is the transgression of the law. He redeems us from the curse, that the blessing may come on us; and the blessing is obedience to the law. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” Ps. 119:1. This blessedness is freedom. “I will walk at liberty; for I seek Thy precepts.” Ps. 119:45.