But the Jews have adopted the errors and crimes of their forefathers, and, in so doing, have incurred all the penal consequences. They have mistaken the nature of Messiah's kingdom, and anticipated earthly triumphs, instead of a spiritual reign of universal peace and holiness. They have confounded a suffering with a triumphant Saviour; and yet can have no share in the latter, without going through the humbling process of first recognizing the former. It was for the rejection of a suffering Messiah, that your city and temple were overthrown; that your country was left unto you desolate, your nation "scattered among the four winds of heaven ;" and that you continue, unto this day, "wanderers among the nations," without a home, without an altar, and without a sacrifice. O! may He who can alone remove the veil from the heart, give you the grace to see the truth, and the fervent desire to embrace it; for never, until you acknowledge this fundamental principle of faith, that Christ Jesus is the true Messiah, will you be reinstated in your national privileges, and the days of your mourning be ended.

In the midst of all these terrible judgments, Jehovah still remembers the covenant that he made with their fathers, and confirmed unto David. "If his children forsake my law, and

walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving kindness will I not utterly take from them, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail."

This promise still stands unrepealed; and the extraordinary signs of the times indicate its approaching fulfilment. The Jews are broken off indeed from the true olive tree, but it is with the purpose of being grafted in again. They are cast down, but not destroyed;" having nothing, and yet still the heirs of an imperishable inheritance. 66 They are peeled, scattered, persecuted; an astonishment, a proverb, and a bye-word among all nations; and yet still preserved, because designed to be "a crown of glory, and a royal diadem in the hand of the Lord." (Isaiah lxii. 3.) Their bond of union is the sense of their own misery, and the consciousness of God's future purposes of grace and mercy. They are the living monuments of his avenging justice in their dispersion, as they are reserved to be the memorials of his faithfulness and truth in their restoration and conversion. No provocation, however great, has ever been able to invalidate their claim, and to efface them from the book of God's remembrance. The title deeds are still

preserved in the records of heaven, and the name of Jacob is inscribed upon them by an Almighty hand. "Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever." (Jer. xxxi. 35, 36.) The Jews resemble a mighty ruin, on which the storm has often spent its strength, and time levelled its destroying hand. The battlements are fallen, and the foundations impaired; yet the edifice still bears the traces of its original grandeur, majestic in its desolation. But there is a promise which survives the wreck of time and the lapse of ages; written in imperishable characters, and conveyed in accents of paternal tenderness and love. "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not

comforted, behold,

I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stone. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children." (Isa. liv." 11-13.)

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LECTURE VII.

PART II.

INTRODUCTION OF "THE TIMES OF THE

GENTILES."

LUKE xxi. 24.

"Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

THE entire overthrow of the Jewish nation by Titus, and their subsequent dispersion, formed a most remarkable era, not only in the history of nations, but in the purposes of God, and in the general administration of His church. Hitherto that people had been the exclusive depositories of His will, and the only medium of communicating it to mankind. They were the " peculiar people," "the chosen seed," "the royal priesthood ". "You only have I known of all the families of the earth."* "Ye are my witnesses."+ "To them pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the ser

vice of God and the promises."* But Judah now had ceased to be a people; their beautiful temple was razed to its foundation; Zion was ploughed like a field," and they were "wanderers among the nations." How then was this

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former instrumentality to be replaced, and by what intervention was the Lord henceforth to be made known? Where was to be the church, where its ministrations, and where was the fire that was to burn upon its altars?

By one of those beautiful figures so frequent in the Bible, the Lord Christ is introduced as thus lamenting the result of his labours, and the failure of his mission to the Jews: "Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God."+ The Holy One of Israel then comforts him by the announcement of the forthcoming Gentile dispensation. "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes of

* Romans ix. 4.

+ Isaiah xlix. 4.