fifty days after their coming out of Egypt, He called them round the
peak of Sinai to hear His own Voice proclaim the terms of the new
Covenant.

The Covenant with Abraham had circumcision for the token, faith as the
condition, and the blessing to all nations as the promise. This Covenant
remained in full force, but in the course of the last four hundred
years, sin had grown so much that the old standard, handed down from the
patriarchs, had been forgotten, and men would not have known what was
right, nor how far they fell from it, without a written Law. This Law,
in ten rules, all meeting together in teaching Love to God and man,
commanded in fact perfection, without which no man could be fit to stand
in the sight of God. He spoke it with His own Mouth, from amid cloud,
flame, thunder, and sounding trumpets, on Mount Sinai, while the
Israelites watched around in awe and terror, unable to endure the dread
of that Presence. The promise of this Covenant was, that if they would
keep the Law, they should dwell prosperously in the Promised Land, and
be a royal priesthood and peculiar treasure unto God, They answered with
one voice, "All the words the Lord hath said will we do;" and Moses made
a sacrifice, and sprinkled them with the blood, to consecrate them and
confirm their oath. It was the blood of the Old Testament. Then he went
up into the darkness of the cloud on the mountain top, there fasting,
to talk with God, and to receive the two Tables of Stone written by
the Finger of God. This was, as some believe, the first writing in the
letters of the alphabet ever known in the world, and the Books of
Moses were the earliest ever composed, and set down with the pen upon
parchment.

Those Laws were too strict for man in his fallen state. Keep them he
could not; breaking them, he became too much polluted to be fit for