LECTURE VIII. THE OPPOSITION OF THE JEWS TO CHRISTIANITY. ROMANS XI. 11. PAGE I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? LECTURE I. THE ELECTION OF THE SEED OF ABRAHAM. ISAI. XLVI. 13. I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory. THE principal subject of the last twenty six chapters of Isaiah is determined by various passages in the New Testament, wherein particular parts are expressly applied to the person and to the kingdom of the Messiah. But had we no such authoritative determination, the language of the prophecies themselves would leave us in no doubt as to their scope and significance. We are precluded from resting satisfied with any interpretation which would confine our views to the fortunes of the Jewish nation, not merely by the exalted imagery employed by the Prophet to portray the glories of the coming Kingdom, not merely by the delineation of features which have no part in the idea of a Jewish Commonwealth, not merely by the introduction of a Personage distinct from and superior to every human agent raised up to C. H. L. B instruct, to advance, or to restore the chosen seed of Abraham-but by a continual recurrence to the eternal purposes of God working out blessing and salvation to all the nations of the earth by means of the Kingdom so gloriously described. "The righteous man" raised up from the East, made to rule over kings', may point to Abraham or to Cyrus, but in either case the person so denominated is the type of the Righteous One, and is introduced as bearing part in the mighty work of righteousness decreed from all eternity by Him, "who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning, Jehovah the first, and with the last2;" who describes Himself indeed as the Holy One of Israel, but also asserts His claim to a more extended dominion as the Creator and Governor of the whole earth, and all that is therein. Eternal and universal as is His dominion, the Dispensation revealed by His prophets is alike universal and eternal. It extends beyond the confines of time to the regions of eternity. It takes up the nations "as a drop of a bucket," and counts them "as the small dust of the balance3." For it embraces the history of the world, not as a mere succession of thrones, potentates and dominations, but as 1 Isai. xli. 2. 2 Isai. xli. 4. 3 Isai. xl. 15. the development of one grand and universal scheme for the renovation and redemption of mankind. “It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the Heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment: and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner; but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished." The history of the Israelites is plainly inadequate to represent this vast and comprehensive scheme. But who can look abroad upon the earth, and mark the growth of Christianity, slowly at times it may be, yet surely striking its deep root into the most ungenial soils, bursting asunder with vital energy the untempered mortar of custom, prejudice and superstition, and building up the living stones disengaged from the mass of idolatry into the well-framed building that "groweth unto an holy Temple in the Lord"," and doubt whether there be a scheme which answers to the glowing language of prophet3 Eph. ii. 21. 1 Isai. xlix. 6. 2 Isai. li. 6. |