unmingled severity and hatred, have been so little sought after for good, even by the church of Christ, so cruelly, we may rather say, consigned to the spiritual blindness and deplorable alienation from all blessing, which their rejection of the Messiah has entailed upon them from the hand of God. But while these things have come upon them in righteous judgment for their sin, who will stand up to vindicate the church of Christ for putting forth her hand to inflict it? Nay who can tell how much she has curtailed her own inheritance of blessing-contributed to the weakening of her own arm, and the swelling of that flood of evils, which, for many a long day has been laying waste her condition, by the manner she has carried herself toward those to whom she was at first indebted for salvation, and to whom she must be yet more indebted before she can reach her full inheritance of glory? The day of judgment alone will disclose how much the church, by pursuing such a course, has been forsaking her own mercy and lessening her dowry of divine grace and blessing; but assuredly it now becomes her as a church, and each individual among her members, to look back with shame upon the humiliating history of the past, and be stirred up to redeem the time, by manifesting a more Christianlike and brotherly interest in the spiritual welfare of the seed of Abraham, and to strive so much the more earnestly that so many centuries have already gone of careless and sinful neglect, in seeking, as helpers together with God to gather the dispersed of Judah, and restore again the outcasts of Israel. Remember, O Lord, thy covenant-plead the cause that is thine own.

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LECTURE XII.

IMMEDIATE DUTIES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN RELATION TO ISRAEL.-ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS.

BY THE REV. JOHN G. LORIMER,

MINISTER OF ST. DAVID'S PARISH, GLASGOW.

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.-LUKE xix. 41, 42.

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.-ROMANS X. 1.

THOUGH I have no doubt, that my friends and brethren who have preceded me in this course have, at the close of their respective lectures, pointed out the practical bearings; yet the grand application of the whole has been assigned to me; and at the risk of repeating thoughts, which may have been already more than once suggested, I shall now, in dependence on the Divine Spirit, proceed to consider what are the immediate duties of the Christian Church in regard to Israel, and endeavour to remove any dif ficulties or objections which may stand in the way of the faithful discharge of these duties. Generally interesting, as I know the course has proved, and for this, we desire to be thankful to the God of Abraham and his seed, the grand question is, what have we Christians to do in the matter? The origin and history-the present condition, and the future prospects of the Jews, are not mere themes of historical research, or literary interest, or carious speculation: they point to a great practical application-to present duty. Without this, they would lose much of

their importance, and degenerate into food merely for the men of literature or antiquarianism.

And what then are the duties of Christians in regard to the Jews? Have they any duties? It is generally admitted, that they have duties to render to the gentiles-that they lie under solemn obligations to labour to bring them to the knowledge and reception of the gospel, apart from which there is no salvation. Are the Jews placed beyond the benefit of these Christian obligations? Are Christians to leave them to themselves, to allow six millions of responsible and immortal human beings to live and die, generation after generation, not only strangers, but enemies to the only Saviour of men, and that without the slightest effort to enlighten or reclaim? Has the Christian received no instruction for his conduct toward the Jew, or has he received instruction to abandon him? Is the Jew the only exception to the command—Preach the gospel to every creature? It must be confessed, that the Christian Church has, for eighteen hundred years, acted very much upon the principle, that she has no duties to discharge in behalf of God's ancient people—that their sin in crucifying the Prince of Life is unpardonable. Nay, as if the judgments of God were not sufficiently heavy upon the nation, the Christian Church has often felt and acted, as if it were her duty to add to these judgments. It is an astounding fact, which speaks volumes, that for eight hundred years of the Christian era, the study of the Hebrew language was so generally neglected, that the Christian Church did not produce one Hebrew scholar of note; and yet this is the language which, it may be said, is essential to be known, if we would make any successful efforts among the Jews. Down to the fifteenth century, no attempt was made to translate any part of the New Testament into Hebrew, the native tongue of the Jew-and it is only forty years ago that any serious attempt was made to circulate that New Testament among the Hebrew people. Can any thing better describe the awful neutrality of the Christian Church, to use no stronger

term, in her treatment of Israel? It is true, that efforts were occasionally made by individuals to enlighten the Jew in the knowledge of the gospel. At the beginning of last century, when Protestant missions were first set on foot for the conversion of the heathen, similar indications of interest were manifested on behalf of the Jew, both in England and on the continent. In London, an asylum was opened for converted Jews, and the government of the day appointed a minister, and paid for their instruction. And at Halle, in Germany, about the same time, (1727,) the Callenberg Institution was founded for the propagation of the gospel among Jews and Mahometans: and after rendering important services, particularly through the medium of the press, was broken up at the period of the French revolution. But these efforts were few, and limited, and insulated. They cannot be held as acquitting the Christian Church of the grossest negligence and indifferencenot to refer to days of positive Popish persecution, and Protestant prejudice.

And has the Christian Church then no duties to render to God's ancient people? She has the strongest, the most imperative of all duties. If any party can plead obligations, the Jew can plead them with tenfold force. He has all the usual arguments, and he has many besides, peculiar, tender, and affecting. Nothing can more strikingly prove the amazing blindness and insensibility of the Christian Church, than that she has hitherto been almost dead to the claims of the very persons whose claims are most sacred and impressive. And what then is her first duty? I. It is her duty to be humbled and ashamed and filled with true repentance in the presence of God, for her long neglect of, and opposition to his people. If the Christian Church has reason to be ashamed that, after eighteen hundred years, even the Christian name does not extend over a fifth part of the population of the world, and that it is only but as yesterday she has arisen to her missionary work among the heathen, how much greater reason has she to

mourn that, hitherto she has attempted so little in behalf of the Jewish nation, to whom, in many respects, she is so deeply indebted. The neglect of the souls of our fellow-men is a great sin, and demands a thorough repentance. It is only through this channel that we can return to the Lord with the hope of acceptance; and it is only by beginning in this way, and so glorifying the God of Israel, that we can hope that our efforts for the future will be steady, and welldirected, and successful. If it becomes us to sorrow for personal, and family, and social, and national sin, surely it also becomes us to sorrow for our sins as members of the Christian Church; and is not our insensibility to the wants of the perishing Jew one of these sins, and a crying, and an aggravated one? Paul was in continual heaviness and sorrow of heart, for his brethren according to the flesh. His heart's desire and prayer for Israel was, that they might be saved: and our blessed Lord wept tears of compassion over Jerusalem. Have such been our feelings, or the feelings of the Christian Church? Have we not, to say the least, been indifferent about Israel? and when urged upon the subject, have we not often pleaded various idle excuses, such as, that the time is not yet come-that all Jewish undertakings will issue in failure-that a Jew cannot be truly converted? Had the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit, treated us as we have treated God's ancient people-had the apostles and first teachers of Christianity, who were Jews, treated us as we have treated their brethren, what would have been our present character? what our future prospects? Would they not have been far indeed estranged from the gospel and its hopes? And what then is the line of duty? Is it not to confess the sin of neglecting and abandoning God's ancient people the sin of overlooking the calls of his word, and the admonitions of his providence respecting Israel? Is it not, in sackcloth and in ashes, to pray for forgiveness, and for the future to arise-study the claims of Israel, and intelligently and zealously go forth, according to the word of God, for the conver