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.

It is called the Feast of Tabernacles because during the days of this feast they were to live in tents or tabernacles, it being a memorial of God's preserving of them in the wilderness where was no house for them in which to rest. This was a most holy feast to remember them when they had no dwellings, and therefore Moses doth so largely dwell upon the solemnities of it ; then they were especially enjoined to read the Law at this feast, when all Israel was to appear before the Lord (Deuteronomy 31:10; 2 Chronicles 8:13; Ezra 3:4; Nehemiah 8:14, 15; John 7:2). This feast is now abrogated, and belonged not to the Gentiles that were converted to the faith, after the passion and ascension of Christ (Colossians 2:17; Acts 15:10; Hebrews 10:1). Notwithstanding we must consider the inward signification of this ceremony, and see what uses remain thereof to ourselves. And therefore the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 14:16), describing the calling of the Gentiles to the true God, and their gathering into the true Church, setteth it forth according to the manner of God's service used in the law, that they should go up from year to year to worship the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles: alluding to the ceremony of the law, as our Saviour doth (Matthew 5:23, 24), meaning that they should worship God according to His commandments, and not after their own fancies.

1. First, we learn hereby that it is a duty belonging to all to remember the days of their troubles and afflictions, from which God in great mercy hath delivered us. We ought also to consider what we have been in regard of temporal deliverances, and in regard of spiritual deliverances from the bondage of sin (Ephesians 2:1-4, 11-13), for their deliverance from the slavery of Egypt did figure out our deliverance by Christ from the bondage of sin, Satan, and hell itself.

2. Secondly, observe from this feast that God evermore preserveth His Church, even when it is oppressed with greatest dangers and troubles, nay, then His power and mercy is made most manifest; His power shineth brightest in our weakness, and His mercy appeareth most of all in our misery.

3. Thirdly, though the Feast of Tabernacles be not any longer in use, that we should be bound to the keeping of it, yet the doctrine arising from it concerneth us as much as ever it did the Jews. Our keeping of this feast must not be for a week or twain, but all our life, so long as we live upon the earth. We must acknowledge that we are pilgrims in this world (Hebrews 11:16), and if we be not strangers in this present world we have no part in the kingdom of heaven. If, then, we will have God to accept us for His children, we must assure ourselves that this life is nothing to us but a way, or rather, indeed, a race, toward our heavenly country. It is not enough for us to go fair and softly, but we must always run apace, pressing forward with all our strength and force, holding on our way, and straining ourselves to attain to the end of our course.

4. Lastly, we are hereby put in mind of the shortness of this life; we are here for a season, and by and by gone. And albeit we make our houses never so strong, and build them up with brick and stone to continue, yet our bodies are all as tabernacles, always decaying. Let us therefore learn the doctrine of the apostle (2 Corinthians 5:1), If our outward man decay we have a building prepared for us in heaven. And we must say with Peter, "I must shortly put off this my tabernacle, as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me" (2 Peter 1:14). When this lodging of ours shall decay we shall dwell in an house incorruptible. Our bodies are but as arbours made of green leaves, which are of no continuance, one blast of wind is strong enough to blow them away (Isaiah 40:6). Every man hath some disease or other about him that will not suffer him to endure long. And if he had no disease or distemper, yet wait but a while, and age itself will be a disease, and as the messenger of death unto him, that even without sickness he slideth away, as the fruit of a tree, when it is ripe, falleth down of itself, though there be no hand to pluck it, or wind to shake it, or thief to steal it, or tempest to drive it. When we diligently consider this, then we have indeed learned to keep this Feast of the Tabernacles spiritually. To conclude, therefore, let every man beware that he seek not his own ease over much. This is one rule, that we do not pamper our own flesh in the lusts thereof (Romans 13:14). Secondly, such as are planted commodiously in this world must beware that they do not forget the world to come; and they that enjoy the earth at will must remember the kingdom of heaven, wherein they must only place the top of their happiness. If we seek heaven upon earth we shall never find it in the next life. Thirdly, let us use this world as though we used it not; rejoice as though we rejoice not, and weep as though we weep not, considering that the fashion of this world vanisheth away (1 Corinthians 7:30, 31).

(W. Attersoll.).