I. CONSIDER THE INCREASE IN THE OFFERINGS DURING THIS MONTH. There was the customary morning and evening offering for every day; the customary offering at the beginning of the month; and an additional offering, as if to signify that it was the beginning of a more than ordinary month. There would also be the appointed offerings on the sabbaths of the month. The tenth day of the month brought the great day of atonement, when there was to be much affliction of soul because of sin. Then, to crown all, there were the eight days of the feast of tabernacles, when an unusual quantity of offerings were presented. We may therefore consider the seventh month as being, conspicuously, a month devoted in Israel to the service of God.

II. CONSIDER THE LESSONS WE ARE TAUGHT BY THIS MONTH OF SPECIAL SERVICE.

1. Note that it was at the season of the year when the fruits were all gathered in. "The feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field" (Exodus 23:16). There was thus a time of leisure - not the commanded leisure of the sabbath, but the natural leisure of the man who has finished his year's work. There is an interval between gathering the fruits of one year and preparing for the fruits of the next. What is to be done with this time? The answer is, Man's leisure must be used for God. Let there be a month largely occupied with special national approach to God. And, depend upon it, something similar is expected from us. There is nothing in which the lot of men is less equal than in the amount of leisure time which they have at their disposal. One man has to labour long hours and hardly finds a holiday all the year round, while another has abundant leisure. What an awful responsibility for the rich and selfish triflers who lounge away their lives in a world where so much may be done for the miserable and the needy! How he spends his leisure is one of the great tests of a man. Where his heart is, there he will go, when for a few hours he is slipped out of harness. If we are God's at all, all our time is God's. If our hearts are right with him, our greatest joy will be in our religion, and we shall hail, we shall grasp, every opportunity of increasing our knowledge of God, of the Scriptures, and of how to render that service to Christ which is so plainly expected from us. The spirit in which an Israelite entered on this festal month would be a great test of him altogether.

2. If God requires a service out of the common, he will furnish sufficient opportunity for it. God did not institute these services simply to fill up a leisure month. They had to be rendered at some time or other, and he selected a season when all the details of them could be most conveniently carried out. If God requires any service from us, we may be sure that be will make the duty of that service clear to conscience. It is not allowed to any of us to say, "I have no time for this service, no opportunity for it, therefore I cannot do it." The method of God is to put a service clearly before us, and then tell us to trust him for the making of a way. He will not allow us to plead want of time and opportunity, any more than he allowed Moses to plead want of ability (Exodus 4:11, 12). Here is the reason why faithful and obedient spirits have been so successful. God has said "Go," and they have gone, when there seemed no way more than a single step ahead. Wherever God finds a real believer he makes a way for him, like that royal road to which the Baptist referred (Luke 3:4, 5). We see here how the events of the ecclesiastical year are gathered and arranged. When the Israelites first received these commandments to make offerings, receiving them as they did at different times, they may have said to themselves, "How can we possibly get through so much?" But here they are all put in order, and it is seen that there is a time for everything, and that everything can be done in its time. The lesser service prepares for the greater. God does well continually to ask his servants for more, because he is ever making them able to give more.

3. The day of temporal fullness is the day of spiritual danger. It is not only that the time of leisure is the time of temptation; there is a peculiar temptation in the leisure because it follows on worldly success. In such circumstances men are tempted to think of their own industry and skill more than of the needful blessing of God. Not without reason did the great day of atonement stand in this month. Everything is good which will force upon a man, in the midst of his worldly prosperity, a sense of the presence and claims of God. When Israel had a good harvest, the time of leisure that followed would be a time of great anxiety to many as to how they might most profitably dispose of the harvest. It is oftentimes the rich man who is in danger of having the least leisure; when his riches lie in capital, the use of which he must watch continually. - Y.

Some of the Rabbins fantastically suppose that it was instituted in remembrance of the offering up of Isaac, or of deliverance from being offered, which conceit is idle and nothing at all to the purpose. Others imagine that it was appointed upon occasion of the wars that the Israelites had with the Amalekites and other nations under the conduct of God, to put them in remembrance that the whole life of man is nothing else but a continual warfare (Job 7:1; 2 Timothy 2:1). Of this feast we read (Leviticus 23:24). This was accounted as a Sabbath, an holy convocation, wherein they must do no servile work. Therein the trumpets sounded aloud, and the sound thereof was heard far and near.

1. Let us come to the uses hereof in regard of ourselves, which served of purpose to stir up the people to return unto God praise and thanksgiving with joyfulness of heart for all His benefits, according to that in the Psalms (Psalm 81:1, 2, 3). So David, having experience of God's good hand toward him in many preservations, composed Psalm 18, as a testimony of his thankfulness "for his deliverance from the hands of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul." So I should think that the cause of this feast was to be a feast of remembrance for His manifold mercies received in the wilderness, that thereby they might stir up themselves to be united in God. And the cause of the institution of this feast seemeth to be contrary to that which followeth, which is the feast of fasting. For as the Jews had a day to humble themselves by fasting, so they were also to have a day of rejoicing when they heard of those trumpets. And albeit we neither hear nor have these trumpets sounded in our ears to call us to the temple and place of His worship, yet ought we to praise His name cheerfully and readily with spiritual joy and gladness continually (Isaiah 35:2, 3, 10), with singing and thanksgiving (Isaiah 49:20, 21); for it is certain the faithful only have true cause to rejoice (Psalm 32:11; Psalm 33:1); the ungodly have no cause at all (Isaiah 48:20-22); but rather to weep and lament (Luke 6:25).

2. This warneth us of the preaching of the gospel concerning Christ the Saviour of the world, the Conqueror of all our enemies and of them that hate us (Isaiah 57:1; Zechariah 9:1.). For this was a warlike instrument (Numbers 6:31; Joshua 6.). God hath caused the doctrine of salvation to be sounded out into the world so that all have heard the sound of it (Psalm 19:4; Romans 10:18). Such a trumpet was John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, who was sent "to prepare the way of the Lord" (Mark 1:1, 2), and to call upon them to repent because the kingdom of God was at hand. And this commendeth to the ministers in the execution of their office, diligence, carefulness, continuance, cheerfulness, and zeal (1 Corinthians 9:17; 1 Peter 5:2).

3. As the ministers must be the Lord's trumpets, so indeed ought every faithful soul to be a trumpet. For when this feast was yearly observed, such as heard the trumpets were warned by it all the year after to stir up and awaken themselves, remembering that God doth call them as with a loud voice daily, that they should yield up themselves souls and bodies unto Him to worship and serve Him as He requireth. When this feast was celebrated, all the males were not commanded to repair to Jerusalem, as they were at the three more solemn feasts (Exodus 23:17), to wit, if they were free men and in health, able to go to the place of His worship (Deuteronomy 12:6; Deuteronomy 16:2). And hence it is that the Jewish doctors, out of that law of all males appearing before the Lord three times in the year, do exempt eleven sorts; and therefore they say that women and servants are not bound, but all men are bound, except the deaf and the dumb, and the fool, and the little child, and the blind, and the lame, and the uncircumcised, and the old man, and the sick, and the tender or weak which are not able to go and travel upon their feet; nevertheless, though the people were far from Jerusalem when this feast was holden, and that they could not resort thither daily to do sacrifice in the temple, yet they were to consider in their absence that sacrifices were offered there even in their behalf, and God was worshipped there in the behalf and name of all the tribes. True it is this figure is utterly abolished by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, howbeit this remaineth that we ourselves should serve for trumpets. For as the temple being destroyed we must be spiritual temples unto God; so the trumpets being taken away, every one of us must be spiritual trumpets, that is, we should rouse up ourselves, because we are naturally so wedded to the world and unto the vanities here below that it seldom cometh into our minds to think of God, of the gospel, of the kingdom of heaven. Our ears are so possessed with the sound of earthly things, and our eyes so dazzled with the pleasures of the flesh, that we are as deaf and blind men, that can neither hear nor see what God saith unto us. He calleth unto us daily, and maketh the gospel sound aloud in the midst of us that we might have the inward remorse of a good conscience, to repent us of all our evil ways, yet we, notwithstanding this summoning of us, do remain dull and deaf, and dumb and blind. Wherefore we must not look till there be a solemn holy day to call us unto the Church, there to keep a feast of trumpets, but it must serve us all the days of our life as a spur to cause us to return to God.

(W. Attersoll.)