at he will
perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long
as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make anything else necessary
to his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to
ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke which neither our fathers
nor we were able to bear; but, by the very act of laying this
unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us the easy yoke and light burden
of Christ himself, our Lord and our life.

LECTURE XXI.

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ADVENT SUNDAY.

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HEBREWS in. 16.

_For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came
out of Egypt by Moses_.

I take this verse as my text, rather than those which immediately go
before or follow it, because it affords one of the most serious
instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in the whole New
Testament. For the true translation of the words is this: "For who were
they who, when they had heard, did provoke? nay, were they not all who
came out of Egypt through Moses?" And then it goes on--"And with whom
was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose
carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should
not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?" I call this a
serious mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer's
comparison. So far from meaning to say that "some, but not all did
provoke," he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was not
only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with only the
two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the rest who were
grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God; and the carcases
of that whole generation, fell in the wilderness.

Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the service of
this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For this day is the
New-year's day of the Christian year; and it is probably for this reason
that the service of the first day of the common year is confined
entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's circumcision, and takes no
notice of the beginning of a new year. It is manifest that it could not
do so without confusion: for the first of January is not the beginning
of the Christian year, but Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the
Christian year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we
reckoned by the common divi