If the laws of Moses interposed, as they certainly did, many obstacles to the intercourse of the Israelites with other nations, the design was not to encourage in them a spirit of national pride and contempt of other nations, but to preserve them from the contagious influence of the heathen practices by which they were surrounded.  On this ground the Mosaic laws everywhere rest the restrictions which they impose upon the Israelites:  “Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take to thy son.  For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods.”  Deut. 7:3, 4.  How necessary were these restrictions was made manifest by the whole subsequent history of the people.  So far was the Mosaic law from countenancing hatred towards the persons of foreigners, that it expressly enjoined kindness:  “If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.  But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself:  for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Lev. 19:34.

5.  Another ground of objection to the Mosaic law has been the number and minuteness of its ordinances.  That this feature of the theocracy was, absolutely considered, an imperfection, is boldly asserted in the New Testament.  The apostle Peter calls it “a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.”  Acts 15:10.  Nevertheless the wisdom of God judged it necessary in the infancy of the nation, that it might thus be trained, and through it the world, for the future inheritance of the gospel.  It is in this very aspect that the apostle Paul says:  “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”  Gal. 3:24, 25.  The divine plan was to prescribe minutely all the institutions of the Mosaic economy, leaving nothing to human discretion, apparently to prevent the intermixture with them of heathenish rites and usages; perhaps also that in this body of outward forms the faith of the Israelites might have a needful resting-place, until the way should be prepared for the introduction of a simpler and more spiritual system.

We must be careful, however, that we do not fall into the error of supposing that the Mosaic law prescribed a religion of mere outward forms.  On the contrary, it was pervaded throughout by an evangelical principle.  It knew nothing of heartless forms in which the religion of the heart is wanting.  The observance of all its numerous ordinances it enjoined on the spiritual ground of love, gratitude, and humility.  If any one would understand in what a variety of forms these inward graces of the soul, which constitute the essence of religion, are inculcated in the Pentateuch, he has but to read the book of Deuteronomy; there he will see how the law of Moses aimed to make men religious not in the letter, but in the spirit; how, in a word,