In asserting the importance of the Decalogue, the reader will observe that we do not particularly insist upon the manner and circumstances of its promulgation. We dwell not upon the fact of its having been written with God's own finger upon stone, while Mosaic institutions were engrossed by Moses himself upon parchment. We dwell not upon the thunderings, lightnings, thick clouds, the loud blast of the trumpet, and the voice of Jehovah from the midst of the fire; all which conspire to throw around the ten commandments a glory not belonging to the ceremonial precepts. These things we pass, aware that men will evade the argument from them, by the supposition that they prove nothing more than that kind of superiority which the constitution of a state has over statute law. We can hardly refrain, however, from observing, as we pass, that as the ark was the throne of God, Exod. xxv. 22, Num. vii. 89, xvii. 4, Ps. xcix. 1--it is difficult to conceive how righteousness and judgment were the habitation of his throne, Ps xcvii. 2, if the "ten words" which were there deposited were not designed to be an expression of His perfections, and the eternal rule of right to His creatures. But we think we have placed the morality of the Decalogue upon grounds that cannot be successfully disputed. Having thus secured it, we advert to the foregoing circumstances, not as direct proof of the truth of our argument, but as so much collateral evidence. There is one circumstance, however, which ought not to be passed over lightly. The tables of stone were deposited in the ark, and covered over by the mercy seat. On the great day of atonement, when the High Priest entered into the Most Holy, he sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice upon this mercy seat, and upon the floor before it, thus making an atonement for the sins of the people. But did this blood in reality atone for the sins of the people against that law which was concealed under the mercy seat? No. Not only was it no atonement for moral offences, Heb. x. 4, but it was not even an atonement for their political violation of this code. For such violation, in regard to most of its precepts, was a capital crime, and could not be expiated under that covenant. The whole process, therefore, was typical or prefigurative of the grand atonement made for the sins of the world by Jesus Christ, the High-Priest of our profession. Heb. iii. 1. The argument derived from it in favor of the Decalogue is, that what the law by its offerings could not do, God, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. Rom. viii. 3. For Christ enters into the Most Holy, even unto Heaven itself, with his own blood, and makes a real atonement for sins. In other words, the legal sacrifices could not reach to sins against the Decalogue, but Christ's sacrifice did, and therefore the superiority of the gospel over the law is fully established. But the whole