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Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest till he establish and till he make Jerusalem a praise on the earth." To the same purpose is Jeremiah iii. 12. Here the ten lost tribes are addressed. They are to be reclaimed as well as their brethren; and what are the means? Surely they must be supernatural indeed! At the present moment, no one can certainly tell where these ten tribes are. Is it only by some stupendous miracle that they are to be found and delivered? No: ministers are commanded to go forth and preach the Gospel to them, and this is to be attended with the most happy results. "Go and proclaim these words towards the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord, and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever. Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: and I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the Lord, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord; neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers."

Take again the xxxi. chapter of the same book of prophecy-what does it testify as to the way in which

the people of Israel are to be converted? Does it speak of miracles? No. "Hear the word of the Lord our Jehovah, oh, ye nations;" the address is to us to the gentiles: and what is the exhortation? "and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock." Thus we are plainly taught that the gentiles are to go to the scattered house of Israel, to the most distant isles, and tell them of the mercy which God has in store-in other words, preach the Gospel to them. It is only through the medium of the Gospel that God has promised to gather his people as a shepherd, or to show them mercy. Nor is preaching the only instrument referred to in this chapter. Prayer also is distinctly recognized: "Thus saith the Lord, Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations, (or gentiles;) publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel, (verse 7.) Here the gentiles are called upon to pray for the salvation of the Jews-the very words of a suitable supplication are put into their mouths, and this prayer is almost immediately followed by the promise, that Jehovah will gather and redeem his people.

If we now turn to the xxxvii. chapter of Ezekiel, containing a celebrated picture and prediction of the conversion of the Jews, we shall find these views amply borne out. By what means are the dry bones of the valley to be made alive, and to rise up a numerous army? Is it by miraculous power? Does God by an act of might transform the dry bones into compact and living bodies? No: the change is wrought gradually, and through the instrumentality of the prophet. He is commanded to prophesy upon the dry bones, and say unto them, "Oh, ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, and behold I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live." It is through the preaching of the prophet-it is in hearing the word of the Lord, that spiritual life is to be communicated to the dead soul. Nor is this the only

instrument which the prophet is to employ. He is to add prayer to preaching; after he had begun to preach, and a partial result appeared, he is commanded to pray. "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the winds. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind,” that is, to the Holy Spirit of God under the emblem of wind, as in the mighty rushing wind of Pentecost, "Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, oh Breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.” And because there was no miracle, was this a fruitless undertaking? So some at the present day might imagine; but far different was the result: "So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them and they lived, and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army." Here we have not only the use of the ordinary means of grace recognized, but we have preaching and prayer distinctly specified and employed, and the most glorious success follows. Nay, more, we find that God wrought nothing till the prophet used the appointed means, and that he wrought effectually as soon as the means were used. The result was in proportion to the means employed. What can better teach us the important truth, that to expect the blessing without using the means, or to despair of success in the use of them, are equally criminal? God has taught us the order in which the conversion of the Jews is to succeed: first preaching, then prayer, then the outpouring of the Spirit.

It is needless to multiply quotations in proof of a point so clear and certain. I may just notice that the New Testament never repeals the doctrine of the Old on this subject; that on the contrary our blessed Lord commanded his apostles to preach the Gospel to every creature, Jew and gentile, beginning at Jerusalem— the seat of his murderers. He does not tell them to use ordinary means with the gentiles, but to wait for miraculous ones for the Jews. No: He commissions them to begin with the Jews, and to begin with the preaching of the Gospel; and is it to be credited that

such an exhortation would have been given if God had reserved the conversion of the Jews specially for himself, if men were to hold no place in the matter?

Thus have we seen, that in contemplating the conversion of Israel, the Christian Church is not to wait for miracles, nor to trust in their power, but to make use of those means which are within the reach of man. We have seen from the word of God, that it is in the use of means the great work is to be carried through, and in a general way we have seen what some of those means are. But here we must be a little more particular. We must spread out what the Scriptures have wrapt up in general terms.

1. Then, it is the duty of the Christian Church to supply the house of Israel with the word of God in their own tongue. Though the Jews, as a whole, are an intellectual and learned people-more generally acquainted with the art of reading than any nation perhaps of the same numbers, and though very many of them make no small sacrifices to acquire knowledge, yet, until lately, they were grossly ignorant of the word of God; and still the ignorance is great. Like Roman Catholics, they prefer the traditions of man to the words of inspiration. Even the Old Testament Scriptures were rare, and high-priced among them, when the Jewish Society began its operations-reaching from twelve to fifteen shillings

* The Talmud, with its voluminous commentaries, is the great record of these traditions. The Church of Rome, with more cunning, has not committed her oral traditions to writing; but the object in both cases is the same. When the depraved mind of man cannot, by avowed infidelity, get rid of the obligation of God's word, the next best thing is to invent traditions congenial to itself, and so to neutralize the hated revelation. The Jewish Talmud is a fair specimen of what the Romish traditions would have been if put down in words, and also what the Scriptures would have been if written by human wisdom. They would have been so voluminous and expensive, as to have been beyond the reach of the poor, (the Babylonian Talmud, extending to twelve or thirteen folio volumes,) and so learned that a lifetime would have been necessary to read, not to speak of understanding and digesting them. It is not difficult to see, however, how well such learned inventions, in which the people must trust to the priest or the rabbi, just serve the purposes of ecclesiastical power and usurpation.

while to the New they were utter strangers, reading in its room the most blasphemous slanders of our blessed Lord-well fitted to steel them and their children against all inquiry into his character and claims. We need not then wonder to be told that the infidelity which appeared among them, and created a schism in the middle of the last century, still extensively prevails-very many reject without even knowing the contents of the Scriptures. What, under the Divine blessing, is one grand remedy for this state of things? Is it not the cheap and wide circulation of both Old and New Testaments in the native language of the people? The Bible contains the best evidence of its own truth. Suppose that we had not had the Scriptures in our hands, that they were difficult of access, or that they were confined to the original languages, who does not see that we must have been miserably ignorant; and if otherwise inquiring, must have been strongly inclined to infidelity?-witness the condition of a large body of the people in popish countries.

Now the Jews have peculiar claims upon us for the gift of the word of God.-Not only was that word, from beginning to end, written by Jews under the inspiration of the Spirit; but the Jewish nation may be said to have been the great librarians of the Christian Church. By their very jealousy and opposition, they have guarded the purity of the Scriptures, and transmitted them safely to our day, while they have furnished us with the principles of their correct interpretation. These are unspeakable obligations, and how can we better repay than by a large and cheap diffusion of their Scriptures and ours; so that every Jewish family may possess a copy of the word of life? There is a stronger reason for this course, that the Jews have been found to be accessible to instruction through the Scriptures, while sealed up against every other channel of influence—that in these latter days, and in distant parts of the world, they have discovered a most remarkable thirst for the Scriptures-cheerfully paying a considerable price for their possession; and some of them even enrolling

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