may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever" (Deut. iv. 39, 40). The rules of conduct were those which, in the judgment of Moses, led to long life and earthly prosperity; their neglect would inevitably bring disaster and woe; there was no other reward, no other dread. And in Psalm xc, described as "a prayer of Moses, the man of God," when he mentions that the days of our years are threescore and ten, or if, perchance, by reason of strength, fourscore, yet "that strength labour and sorrow," so far is he from arriving at Paul's conclusion--"What advantageth it me if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"--that he makes the brevity of man's life the ground of the petition, "So-teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Let us be up and doing, for our own and our brethren's sakes; there is no time to be lost; let us strive and ponder how to pass our brief life on earth wisely and well. The dead, moreover, were buried out of sight, and any bodily disfigurement (Lev. xix. 28; Deut. xiv. 1) or offerings (Deut. xxvi. 14) for them were prohibited. 13. Now, if the Jewish Jehovah thus represented by Moses be one and the same being with "the God of Peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus," whose kingdom was not of this world, whose reward was eternal life, whose followers were of all men the most miserable if in this life only they had hope in Christ, then the Almighty in one dispensation left his chosen people to ignore the possession of an immortal soul and the hope of eternal life--doctrines fully known and recognised by the Egyptians and other nations surrounding them--but in the other revealed, little modified, as his own, these prevailing beliefs of the heathen nations, thus making Christianity practically little else than the Mosaic religion without the sacrifices, joined to the Egyptian belief in the soul's immortality and a state of future rewards and punishments, which Moses rejected; in one dispensation he placed his service in the following of those rules of life which lead to making the best of the good earth on which men live, without any other reward; in the other, "he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal," and those are denounced "who mind earthly things, for our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." A wondrous contradictory Almighty!