a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice......but afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days" (Hos. iii. 5).

After the casting out of the Ten Tribes, the house of Judah still continued for a time to be the people of God (Hos. i. 7). First, To keep up the line of David, that the Messiah, the seed of David, the Immanuel promised to Ahaz, might be offered to them next that through them, and ultimately in their place, another people might be brought in, instead of outcast Israelthe children of Abraham by faith; the true Israel; the church of Christ, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles (Rom. ix. 24). Salvation was offered to the Jews; which being by them rejected, the kingdom of God was taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. xxi. 43), and to this newly chosen people are now transferred all the prerogatives of the people of God: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy" (1 Pet. ii. 9, 10).

The Lord had said, "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious; and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded." This stone the Jewish builders disallowed; and he became to them a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; and through their fall salvation is come to the Gentiles. All the ancient people of God are now cast off for a time, excepting that small "remnant according to the election of grace," who, gathered into the church of Christ during the present dispensation, become the true Israel of God; and thus evince, that, even in the outcast condition of the Jews, there is to be found among them an election, beloved for the fathers' sakes; and keeping alive the expectation of that time when God, having brought in the fulness of the Gentiles, shall again return with favour to his ancient people; when "there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn ungodliness from Jacob:"" and so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. xi. 11, 28).

During the present dispensation the church is the people of God, but in a state typified by and corresponding with that of the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. We, like them, wait for our inheritance; we, like them, are strangers and pilgrims; we, like them, must die in the wilderness: but such as are born to God in this wilderness shall, as children of the resurrection, inherit the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God; shall become heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ.

The Christian dispensation is so sparingly mentioned in the Prophets, that many have considered it as a kind of parenthesis

in their discourse, or at least as an interval of Jewish suffering too painful to be dwelt upon by a Jew, and therefore that he willingly over-leaped it, and passed at once from the former to the latter glory of his people: but the fact is, that it was unnecessary to enlarge upon it; for all the minutiae of the Christian dispensation had been already acted out in the Jewish; and if we would study the typical import of the Jewish laws and rites and times, we should need no other record of the church. These are now nearly fulfilled; we are entered upon the last of the series, soon to be wound up by the Feast of Tabernacles, the closing solemnity of the year (Zech. xiv. 16; Rev. vii. 9, xix. 5; Psal. cxxxv.), the conclusion of the Songs of Degrees.

Instead of entering on this extensive subject, we turn our attention to a question here arising, and of great practical importance at the present time, when the Jews are once more rising into notice, and attracting in an especial manner the attention of Christians; this question is, What are the claims of the Mosaic law at present? and, further, Shall the Mosaic law be again restored?

These questions have been unnecessarily involved in difficuties of three kinds: first, from not distinguishing accurately between the Patriarchal and Mosaic ordinances; secondly, from making a difference between Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ; thirdly, from not perceiving that the ordinances in Ezekiel's last chapters are under a new dispensation, and not in any respect a revival of the Mosaic. The purely Mosaic ordinances, apart from these extraneous difficulties, were all tied to the land, the temple, and the priesthood; and so inseparably tied, that out of the land, without a temple and without a priesthood, not one of them can be observed. No purification could take place among the people of Israel, no acceptable service be offered to God, but by the intervention of the priest and the appointed sacrifice; and no sacrifice could be offered except in that place which the Lord God had chosen to put his name there. These purifications, these sacrifices, this priesthood, all denoted something in the person or work of Christ, which he, having accomplished, rendered obsolete, vain, and nugatory, (the real and efficient atonement being made which these things only prefigured, as the Apostle argues at large in the Hebrews); and, having caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease by offering his one sacrifice for sins for ever, rent the vail of the temple, and proclaimed, It is finished. But though the chief import of the Mosaic ritual passed away when it was fulfilled in Christ, a secondary end was answered by it for a time, in bringing men to the Gospel. Of it the Apostles largely availed themselves, as long as the temple stood: they gave the law all reverence, as coming from God; they taught continually that the law was holy, and just, and good; they were willing, to the Jews to be

come as a Jew, that they might gain the Jew; while they also taught that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. x. 4).

6

The destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the expatriation of the people totally changed the relations of both Christians and Jews to the law: in the former, any adherence to the law of Moses became sinful; in the latter, impracticable, and even unlawful degeneracy. Barnabas and Ignatius, in their Epistles, forbid very strongly any return to the law." Bring no more vain oblations:' these things therefore hath God abolished." (Wake, p. 302). "Be not deceived with old fables, which are unprofitable; for if we still continue to live after the Jewish law, we do confess ourselves not to have received grace." (Wake, p. 233). And Tertullian, Athanasius, Jerome, and nearly all the fathers, are equally strong against Judaizing. Three of the Apostolic Canons * forbid theJewish observances, on pain of deposition to the clergy, of excommunication to the laity. Many Councils condemned Judaizing: as that of Laodicea, A. D. 320; the second general Council held at Constantinople, A. D. 383; the third general Council, at Ephesus, A. D. 431; and other later Councils: so that a Christian may not on any account Judaize. But is a Jew converted to Christianity as strongly forbidden as a Gentile? Certainly to recognise any difference between them would make schism in the body of Christ; and the attempt is vain, no one proper Mosaic rite can be observed out of the land of Canaan; and the pretence is but a mockery, in the substitution of some Rabbinical practice, and calling it the Law of Moses. For forty years after the crucifixion of Christ, the Lord bore with the provocations of the Jews, as he did with their fathers in the wilderness: he then destroyed their temple, and swept them off from the land, that they might feel the miserable bondage of being under a law which it was now impossible to keep, and be driven by very despair to embrace the Gospel. As Chrysostom beautifully observes, "Through the necessity of a local worship, God covertly withdrew the Jews from the rage of ritual observances. For as a physician, by breaking the cup, prevents his patient from indulging his appetite in a hurtful draught; so God withheld the Jews from their sacrifices, by destroying the city itself, and making the place inaccessible to all of them "(Hom. vi. adv. Jud.) This impossibility of keeping the law the Jews themselves acknowledged; and it is exemplified in a remarkable conference between the Emperor Julian and the principal men among the Jews, which is related by Sozomen (v. 22), and mentioned by Chrysostom, and by Gregory Nazianzen. After his

* Can. lxiii. Ixix. lxx. Of the last two Beveridge, examining them all in order, says "Duobus autem proximis sive lxix. lxx, ut in Apostolicam et ætatem et doctrinam convenientibus, prætermissis.

apostasy, Julian, in his enmity to Christianity, rebuilt many heathen temples, and restored their idolatrous rites; and the same enmity induced him to send for the Jews, and command them to return to the law of Moses. They unanimously replied, that, the temple of Jerusalem being destroyed, it were not a lawful thing, nor according to the customs of the fathers, to become degenerators from their own metropolis, by keeping the law in a foreign land. This gave occasion for Julian's attempt to rebuild the temple, which was so miraculously frustrated. But the impossibility of sacrifices during the dispersion carries consequences most extensive in its train; for every purification needed a priest, and most of them sacrifices. Now the Jews have neither the means nor the turn for manufactures; and almost all the articles of dress and furniture and utensils are the manufacture of Gentiles, and as such by the law unclean. The distinction, again, between clean and unclean food cannot now be observed; for if the firstlings of the flock were not offered to the Lord, the whole flock was reckoned unclean; and so of the first fruits of the field and of the tree;-but the Jews, possessing neither lands nor flocks, have no firstlings to offer; and if they had, have neither temple nor priest to receive them. And every thing they wear, every thing they use, every thing they eat, is alike unclean, incurably unclean, by the Mosaic law. Nay, even circumcision, on which they most pride themselves, cannot now be practised Mosaically; for there is no priest to perform the rite, or to offer the sacrifice which the law required: such circumcision as can now be practised is only like that of the Turks, or Arabs, or Egyptians*.

The Feast of Tabernacles, with its eighth day, typified a time yet future, when the Jews shall be restored, and all nations of the earth go up to worship at Jerusalem (Zech. xiv. 16). But in that restored state they shall not return to the Law of Moses, but receive a new dispensation, with a temple and priesthood and services suited to that new dispensation, which will combine the literal and the spiritual; every ordinance then becoming, not a type, but a sacrament; the sign, not of a future, but of a present grace; the "outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace, verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful" in the ordinance. This new dispensation is promised to be given when the whole house of Israel is re-assembled in the land from all the countries into which they have been scattered; the time is just before the destruction of Gog and Magog, but after the building of the temple, and after the destruction of the assembled hosts of Armageddon. The prophecies relating to this time make mention of three parties, who are severally but simultaneously visited, and by these divers visitations brought

* The question of the Sabbath will be discussed in our next.

all together under the bond of the new covenant, to constitute the future people of God. First, we have the inhabitants of Jerusalem, consisting of Jews, or the two tribes only, who, gathered in an inquiring and expectant, but not in a converted state, will have built the temple on Mount Zion, with a desire to worship after the manner of their fathers, and with an expectation of the speedy coming of Messiah. Secondly, we have the tents of Judah put in contradistinction to the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Zech. xii. 7, 8); who will probably consist of nearly all the Jews now scattered throughout the kingdoms of the West, and will then be gathered in the plains of Sharon (Isai. lxv. 10), arriving by the way of Joppa and the other ports of the Western Sea. Thirdly, we have the tribes of Israel coming from the East, assembled in the valley of Achor, near Jericho; mentioned together with Sharon in Isaiah lxv., and fixed to Israel, or the Ten Tribes alone, by Hosea, ii. 15. We must briefly lead up these three parties to their several stations, to which the Lord allures them, that he may speak comfortably to them, and bring them into the bond of the covenant. For the gathering of the first band to Jerusalem, the way is already prepared, and it may now begin at any time, for the great river Euphrates is dried up (Rev. xvi. 12; Jer. 1.38; li., 36; Isai. xi. 15; Zech. x. 10). Another hindrance is also now removed, by the withdrawal of that mighty power which sluiced off the waters of the Euphrates, and by the sudden erection of an unexpected barrier, like an insuperable rampart of steel, hedging in the princes of the north-Ros, Mesech, Tubal, and all their bands-that they may not throw any impediment in the way of the returning captives of Judah, whose chains are now dropping off, and whom Babylon, decrepit with age and struggling in her death-throes, has no longer strength or the purpose to detain. This first gathering of the Jews is not by a manifestation of Christ in person, and not a consequence of conversion, but by an agency similar to that which gathers the nations to the war of Armageddon, and spoken of in the same terms. For when, in the day that the Root of Jesse stands for an ensign to the people of Judah, and is sought to by the Gentiles, or Christian church (Isai. xi. 10), an ensign is lifted to the nations for battle (Isai. v. 26, xi. 12); and the trumpet of the land of Assyria (Isai. xxvii. 13, xviii. 3), the seventh trumpet of the Apocalypse (xi. 15), shall be at the same time blown, and the children of Israel shall be gathered one by one, to worship the Lord in the holy mount of Jerusalem (Isai. xxvii. 13). This is the gathering at the end of harvest often alluded to as the lion going up from the swelling of Jordan, and causing a trembling from the West, the seat of Rome, the antitype of Babylon-see at full Hosea xi. 10; Zech. viii. 7, 8; Isai. xxi. 8, 9, 10; Jer. xlix. 19,