Exodus 21:36

REFLECTIONS

WHAT a holy, pure, and undefiled religion is that which carries with it evidences of its divine origin and authority, in attending to the most minute circumstances of what is right and just. And what a gracious, merciful, compassionate, and ever-attentive God to the happiness of his creation, must the Lord our God be, who thus enjoins a system of laws, the very observance of which promotes universal welfare. Oh! my God, dispose my heart by thy grace to works of love and tenderness, both to man and beast. Do thou enable me to put on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering. And may the peace of God so rule in my heart, that I may follow peace with all men.

Reader! let us not close the Chapter, without first asking grace and wisdom to discern the outlines of the Lord Jesus in it, as the voluntary servant of his Father, who, for the love he bore to him, and to us his captive wife and children, cheerfully consented to have his ears opened and would not go out free, until he had accomplished all the work to which he was called, and what he had graciously undertaken. Oh! thou precious God of my salvation, thou who, though rich, yet for my sake didst become poor; and though in the form of God, and with whom it was no robbery to be equal with God, yet didst make thyself of no reputation, arid didst take upon thee the form of a servant; mercifully grant, that the same mind may be in me which was so strikingly displayed by thyself: may it be the language of my soul, 'I love my Lord, I love my Master, I love his service, in it I would dwell: I will not go out free, but I will abide in it forever.'