supernatural manifestations the general aspect was essentially typical
of the future redemption of the lost race by a Saviour. That promise
of deliverance from the consequences of sin, which Almighty God had
vouchsafed to the first sinners, was repeated in a vast variety of
miraculous interventions. Though there may have been many exceptions to
the ordinary character of the Patriarchal miracles, still, on the whole,
they wear a typical aspect of the most striking prominence.

The first miracle recorded after the fall is the token granted to Abel
that his _sacrifice_ was accepted. A deluge destroys all but one family,
who are saved in an ark, the type of the Church of God, and a rainbow is
set in the sky as a type of the covenant between God and man. A child is
miraculously born to Abraham in his old age, who is afterwards offered
to God as a type of the Redeemer, and saved from death by a fresh
supernatural manifestation of the Divine will. The chosen race become
captive in Egypt, as a figure of man's bondage to sin; a series of awful
miracles, wrought by the instrumentality of Moses himself, a type of
Jesus Christ, delivers them from their slavery, terminating with the
institution of the Passover, when the paschal lamb is eaten, and they
are saved by its blood, as mankind is saved by the blood of the Lamb
of God. The ransomed people miraculously pass through the Red Sea,
foreshadowing the Christian's regeneration by baptism; as they wander
afterwards in the desert, manna descends from heaven to feed them, and
water gushes from the rock to quench their thirst, and to prefigure that
sacred food and those streams of grace which are to be the salvation of
all men. Almost every interruption of the laws of nature bespeaks the
advent of the Redeemer, and does homage to Him as the Lord of earth and
heaven.

At length a code of laws is given to the chosen race, to separate them