The Abrahamic covenant was also purely spiritual in its character, the condition of its blessings being nothing else than faith.  The apostle Paul urges the fact that this covenant was made with Abraham before his circumcision, lest any should say that it was conditioned wholly or in part upon a carnal ordinance:  “He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised.”  Rom. 4:11.  The seal of circumcision, then, did not make the covenant valid, for the covenant existed many years before the rite of circumcision was instituted.  Faith was the only condition of Abraham’s justification.  “He believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness.”  Gen. 15:6.

And if we look at the promise contained in the Abrahamic covenant, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed,” we find it to be the very substance of the gospel, as the apostle Paul says:  “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.”  Gal. 3:8.  The incarnation and work of Christ are, according to the uniform representation of the New Testament, nothing else but the carrying out of the covenant made with Abraham, for this covenant was made for all mankind, was purely spiritual, being conditioned on faith alone, and its substance is Christ, in whom all nations are blessed.

And while God has thus indissolubly linked to the incarnation of his Son this high transaction with Abraham, we see how he has at the same time connected it with the first promise made in Eden, and thus with the fall of man through the subtilty of Satan.  The promise in Eden is that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.  The promise to Abraham is that in his seed, which is also the seed of the woman, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  Now it is by the bruising of the serpent’s head, or, in New Testament language, by destroying the works of the devil, that Abraham’s seed blesses all the families of the earth.  The two promises, then, are in their inmost nature one and the same, and their fulfilment constitutes the work of Christ.

Thirdly, the end of the Mosaic economy is Christ.  Its general scope is thus briefly summed up by Paul:  “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”  Gal. 3:25.  But not to insist on this, let us contemplate its three great institutions—­the prophetic, the kingly, and the priestly order.

The mode of communication which God employed on Sinai the people could not endure, and they besought him, through Moses, that it might be discontinued:  “Speak them with us,” they said, “and we will hear:  but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”  Ex. 20:19.  Of this request God approved, and promised:  “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren like unto thee.”  Deut. 18:18.  The point of special