destroying the tyranny of evil, in the world of man. Again, in the representation of pious Homer-" the Bible of the Greeks"-divinity is seen working :—say—in the vengeance of Apollo on account of the injury and insult inflicted on his priests. The Achæans are troubled by his pestilential arrows of sunstroke “far-darting," and the Trojans have respite from persecution of the foe. But the supernaturalism, in the intervention of it, comes far short of the prescription even of literary criticism (Prof. Seeley) for an epic poem, that its true hero shall be Providence. The intervention is interference, or even meddling, rather than government. It is partial, arbitrary, intermittent. It is intrusion of an alien force, as if a giant's hand had been thrust in among the delicate machinery and springs of a watch. But in Exodus, the Providence, chasing evil away before it as night flees from the sunrise, and genial as the atmosphere in spring, is allpervasive as the sun fills the world's life through the year.

There thus was begun in Egypt, and for the true life of the world, a deliverance from the dark supernaturalism of Egypt with her dead gods and her atheistic natural magic; which at the same time is deliverance from the deeper darkness of a naturalism that not only is hopeless because godless, but even sunk so low as to be beneath superstition. That supernaturalism, which animates and illuminates the history, "all and in all," has to be recognised in order even that the history may be understood. A man may believe that there is no supernatural. But the question, for one desiring to understand this Book, is, not, what this or that reader may believe, but, what the writer says. And what the writer says is, that God, the supreme supernatural, fills the history with His omnipresence and all-powerful working, as the life of the world is filled with atmosphere and sunshine. If we do not recognise that supernatural, as filling the whole history, we cannot really see any detail of the story in its true life. It is like trying to see without light, or to live without breathing vital air. To study the history without the supernaturalism, is, to handle a body without a soul, that in our handling of it moulders and crumbles into dust. To explain away its miracles of wisdom and power, would be, to explain the history into nothing, but a mere threadless collection of anecdotes, mostly without a meaning or point; with a joint action that is only that of a mechanical automaton, which may interest or amuse by its variety of movement really soulless, and occasion side glances of reflection on the trickeries of the mover. To refuse to see the supernatural in this Book as the one great all-control

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ling sovereign agency in the history, would be, not, to prepare the mind for a real study of Exodus, but, to close the eyes of understanding (Lu. xxiv. 16, 45, cp. Eph. i. 18).

But we now observe, further and especially, that the all-pervasive supernaturalism of Exodus is itself all pervaded by Redemption. This we hear from the Bush in the wilderness. This we see in the work progressively in Egypt, all through the campaign of the prophecies and the miracles. Those have no part of their characteristic meaning except in connection with Redemption, as the one grand purpose of all God's working, both in Egypt and in Sinai. And accordingly, this is what was declared by God Himself (Ex. xii. 25-27) in that institution of the Passover, which was to be His "memorial" for all generations. The declaration was not only made by Him in Egypt: it was by Him prescribed, to be repeated continually, at every Passover season, through all generations of Israel's future history. It was to be set forth in His own words, in the hearing of children at the festival delivered to those children, from that Heavenly Father, by the fathers of their flesh. This address to children (Ex. xii. 27) so delivered, is the only sacramental address on record from the mouth of God. And what does it say?-Redemption.

Supernatural redemption, from a common doom of death on account of sin, by the way of bleeding sacrifice,—that is the meaning of the Passover as declared by God. It is the meaning of the Lord's Supper, as declared by the Son of God. And it is the teaching of the Apostles, declaring to us what they have received from the Lord. Not only the original Apostles (Jn. i. 29–34), having learned from the Baptist that the Son of God is the Lamb of God, saw in the glorified Christ (1 Pe. i. 10-12) that exodus of Redemption which is witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. Paul, to the Gentiles, declared the same thing :—that "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Co. v. 7), that all spiritual blessings for sinful men from the Holy God are in that "Beloved, in whom we have the Redemption (Revised Version rightly has the) in His blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Eph. i. 6, 7). Accordingly in Exodus, we find God, who so spoke in the Passover before Israel had left Egypt, similarly speaking, when He was renewing the law in the repose of Sinai (xxxiv. 6, 7). Redemption is the one word for that glorious declaration of the significance of His great "name," "Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgres

sion and sin," etc. Accordingly, that is what is set forth in the theological exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews (v.-x.). There we see Moses unveiled. The Old Testament finds its own meaning, and all fulness of saving truth, in Christ. And of that grand exposition, of Tabernacle, regarding the one true living way of life in God, the whole sum and substance is that redemption, supernatural redemption, from a common doom of death on account of sin, by the way of bleeding sacrifice. The Passover, held once a year, was like the Nile's annual flood, for a yearly new creation of the land, by Him who made it at the first, and even from the same original source. The Nile's continuous flowing, for the land's life all round the year, corresponds to the Tabernacle service, with its daily sacrifice. And the heart and soul of the teaching of these two ordinances, laid at the foundation of Israel in the wilderness, respectively at the beginning and at the close of the rounded wonder-year of institution, is that redemption through blood (Ps. cxi. 9).

The doctrine, thus made to fill the whole of Israel's true life of faith, was exhibited in the work of God through Moses in Egypt. The great work was redemption. Redemption was the great work, on account of which God went and showed Himself in Egypt; with His finger pointing, His hand outstretched, His arm uplifted. The end of the revelation, and the grand purpose of it, was the redemption. This had been shown to Moses, in that primary revelation of Jehovah "in the Bush" (Ex. iii. 7-10).

There has been much Some are of opinion, "to be;" and that the

NOTE (1).—On the name of "Jehovah" (which is now by scholars pronounced Yahveh). It here claims our special attention in the Book. discussion as to the etymological meaning of the word. that it is derived from an archaic form of the Hebrew for, corresponding meaning of it is, as in I AM THAT I AM of our Version (Ex. iii. 14), personal self-subsistence, of the Living one who has being in Himself. Thus the old French Version has, "The Eternal;" as the great French commentator, Calvin (on Act. xvii. 28), remarks that creatures have their being only in God, and only God has being in Himself (which again would prove that Christ is God, Col. i. 17). Others prefer to derive "Jehovah" from another form of the same old Hebrew word, so as to make it have the meaning of an ever onward movement, of self-manifestation and self-communication, as if, THE Coming One. This would correspond to the description of Christ in the question (Mat. xi. 2, 3) of the Old Testament (ver. 13) to Jesus of Nazareth, "Art Thou He that should come?"-where in the original the "thou" is emphatic, and "he that should come"-ho erchomenos-The coming One.

The circumstance, that learned men have differed about the right pronunciation

of the word, shows us that we must not allow our faith to be rooted in ancient Hebrew. Christ makes "all things new ;" and it is not the dictionary that makes Bible words, but Christian truth makes the Bible dictionary. We may provisionally assume that the Bible meaning of the word "Jehovah" is, I AM. That will probably suffice to account for the Bible uses of that word. Only, we must keep in view the relative Bible doctrine, that the Being, who is thus Eternally I AM (Ps. xc. 1-3—“A prayer of Moses, the man of God"), has always in time appeared as the coming one; as if water from the smitten Rock had been " following men" all the way through time from its beginning. Especially in the old dispensation, as made known to Abraham and his seed, and above all, when He appeared to Moses, as on wings of eagles (Ex. xix. 4) for Israel's redemption, He was then and there revealed as coming, in a way of selfmanifestation and self-communication, of covenant mercy, of eternal free redeeming love appearing now in time. We shall do well, then, to associate with I AM, in the meaning of the word, "Jehovah," that conception of a coming, in selfmanifestation and self-communication. Plainly the conception has a place in the whole course of supernatural revelation of God's being, from the first gospelpreaching (Ge. iii. 15) downward. And Jonathan Edwards (in his most original work, On God's chief end in Creation) might find a place for the coming in the system of nature, without lapsing (like Goodwin, State of the Creatures) from the high supernaturalism of his Calvinistic thought.

The Jews had a superstition which kept them from uttering the sound of Jehovah (reading adonai in the place of it); as if a name (which "maketh known") were intended not to make known (nomen a non noscendo). And it is perhaps a misfortune for English readers of the Bible, that the Authorized Version very often has, instead of "Jehovah," as proper name of Israel's God, the description "the Lord," which is not a proper name, but a theological proposition, or commentary on this part of the word of God. The printers try to mend the matter, by putting LORD, where it stands for "Jehovah" in the Bible, into small capitals; but that does not make known the name, to Pharaoh (Ex. v. 2) nor to any one else. Still, Moses cannot be veiled by authority of mortals. And in the history we can see the significance of the great name, sufficiently for our guidance to comprehension of the Book.

I. I AM. This in Egypt, with its polytheistic idolatry, had the significance of making Jehovah, Israel's God, to be the only God, living and true. To make it clear that He alone is God, the actual ruler (Da. iv. 35) of heaven and earth, in sovereign command of everything in Egypt, was one avowed leading purpose of all His wondrous works there. This meaning was in the formula, so oft recurring, "I am the LORD:" lit.,—" I, Jehovah." It was the signature to His royal proclamations (cp. Victoria R.): as if,—"Jehovah, God omnipotent, reigneth." (See its recurrence in Sinai, Ex. xxix. 46.) Such was the meaning of later prophecy, as in Isaian (ani hu) "I am he." It meant, that Jehovah alone is God: that "the gods" of the heathen, though they should be personal demons, are not really God; that in respect of proper deity, veritable godhead, they are "nothing." This dogma of Sinai, articulated in the Egyptian campaign of liberation, was maintained in Canaan, through a long course of polemical theology against

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heathenism; as when young David accepted the Philistine's wager of battle, and slew the giant untruth in the name of "the living God"-the real God (1 Sa. xvii.). And it is "the living God"-the real God-as contrasted with "vanities of heathenism, that is made known in Christ, both where there is gross polytheism of ""barbarians" (Lystra, Act. xiv.), and (Act. xvii.) where there is intelligently despairing naturalism of Athenians, with the sad inscription on their altar, as if cold ashes on the hearth (here ver. 18, cp. ix. 5), comes in place of that, the Burning Bush. In Egypt the intelligent despairing had begun (cp. Eph. ii. 12). While the common people worshipped many creatures, the philosophers were aware that there can be only one Supreme Being, manifested through creatures (Ro. i. 21). Thus to their apprehension, that being is alike the Ra, whom the people see as a distinct person in the noon-day sun, and that Thom, or Thum, whom they see as another God in the sun when he goes down in the west. But that being was to those philosophers, not a person, the living God; but only, an impersonal substance of the universe. This came to be confessed in the famous inscription, on the veiled statue of Egyptian Isis,-"I am the thing that is, and was, and shall be." Moses, on the other hand, and his Israel said, that their God is the eternal I AM not a mere characterless substance underlying the universe of creatures, but (Col. i. 17) a living person, transcendentally distinct from the universe, while "filling all in all," and "working all in all." That "thing," when the philosophers went on thinking about it, came at last to be regarded by them as a mere characterless being, "equal to nothing." This was the deepest thought in the heart of heathenism, as represented-e.g.-by the Egyptian Philo Judæus, when Christ was proclaimed, not as "the thing," but (Re. i. 8) as the I AM “that is, and was, and cometh (evermore), the Almighty." The doctrine of a living personality in the Supreme Being is thus a specialty of Bible religion.

2. The Coming One. In Ex. vi. 2-6, we find, that the declaration of this name Jehovah, as the proper name of Israel's God, was a new thing. So Pharaoh (Ex. v. 2, cp. ver. 3) may have really not known what it meant, and may have needed the explanation he received," the God of the Hebrews hath met with us." Previously, the name of the Supreme Being among the chosen people was (Ge. xvii. 1) El Shaddai ("God Almighty" in our version)—which He had Himself disclosed to Abraham as His proper name. That does not show that the proper name Jehovah was previously quite unknown, as if it had now been created for its first appearance. It previously existed, for instance, in the composition of the name of Moses' own mother Jochebed,-where the Jo is a contraction of "Jehovah." But from this time onward it was proclaimed, openly and widely, as the appropriate name of the God of Israel, the name which is to have the rank of being distinctively His "memorial" in all generations. Accordingly, though it must have been little heard in the generations before the Exodus, yet in Genesis, which cannot have been written before the Exodus time, the name is freely employed by the historian ;-as "Christ" occurs two or three times as a proper name in the Gospels (Mat. i. 1, 18; Mk. i. 1), though it did not come into ordinary use as a proper name until a generation after the decease" (exodus) which He accomplished at Jerusalem.

We thus are led to look, in the history of the Exodus time, for some specialty,