ANTICIPATION OF BETTER KINGDOM.

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become deeper from time to time. So that, on the whole, the burthen of Hebrew prophecy is an utterance of profound spiritual truth, a condemnation of the people to whom it is spoken, and a prediction of their being scattered over the face of the earth.

"But this is not all. For, by the side of warnings of evil, we find a clear foresight that the cause of good, which is that of God, must triumph in the end. Though man is perverse, yet his shortsightedness must not defeat an eternal predestination of the good of his race. Although therefore individuals may cut themselves out of the kingdom by unfitness for it, the Divine kingdom of truth and holiness and right must go on fulfilling itself in the earth. Even therefore if the Israelites by blood should fall away, God will work out for himself an Israel* of the mind, in whose heart the old sayings of His righteousness shall find an echo, and bear fruit in their lives. It is true the prophets speak mostly as Hebrews, and they naturally rejoice in hoping the Divine kingdom may come out chiefly in connexion with their own race. Their tone is national as well as religious. But they foresee clearly that no accidents of blood or place will interfere with a perfect fulfilment of the thought which the Divine Governor is bringing to pass in mankind. Thus they foresee that many things will pass away. Their kings then rejoiced in war: but the prophets look forward to a triumph of peace. Their temple was, according to the Scripture, a place of sacrificing beasts; but they foresee a time when the consecration of man's heart (which the other only symbolised) will be held far better. Nay, while they foretell that their own people will be scattered† throughout the nations of the world, yet the nations who afflict Israel will not themselves escape, but in whatever degree they resemble her sin they will partake her punishment, with the aggravation of

*Isaiah xlix. 5, 6: St Luke iii. 8: St John i. 12, 13: Romans iii. 12—18. + Deuteronomy xxviii. 64: 1 Kings viii. 46-49: Jeremiah v. 15-19: Ezekiel xxii. xxiii.

Ezekiel xxv-xxxii.

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THE KING TO COME.

having their haughtiness humbled. For all violence and wrongdoing must make way for a moral kingdom, which through the lapse of generations shall go on perfecting itself. However unlikely it may seem that all these nations of Ammon, Moab, Assyria, Tyre, Elam, should fall, they will all be swept away before a better order of things. However strange might seem a king, without pomp of chariot or sword, there shall arise a King, representing the majesty of God, but reigning in meekness, and swaying men purely by a dominion of holiness and goodness. Strange things seem to be spoken of this King, who appears as a servant of God, and even as a servant of men. He is rejected, smitten, counted a sinner; all men turn their face from Him; yet to Him all nations shall come; He shall mould a new Israel, nay, a new heaven and earth; for so different will be the qualities He will require of His subjects from the warlike pride now held in honour, that the world will renovate itself under His sceptre. The change will be like that of all wild and poisonous things becoming harmless; swords shall be beaten into ploughshares; the dominion owned by men will be not that of Force, but of Thought and Right; old things will pass away alike as regards evil, and the external remedies of law applied to it; the meaning of the law must be apprehended in men's consciences, or written on their hearts; the sensuous visible kingdom and priesthood will give way to that of the unseen King, the spiritual priest, and God will make all things new*.

Such are the sayings of the Hebrew prophets, which are collected in the Book I wish you to study for yourselves. Now their descendants carry with them everywhere the Book, and hold it in honour. They believe for the most part its history, and acknowledge that their fathers sinned, and were cut off from their land. So far there is no room for dispute. For these Hebrew books have now been in the hands not only of the Jews, but of their bitterest enemies, for more than 2000 years,

* Psalms xlv. lxxii. lxxxix: Isaiah liii. xi. xxv. xxxiii.: Jeremiah xxiii. xxxi.

JEWISH NATIONALITY.

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and no one supposes that any part of them was written later than a full century and a half before the Christian era, at latest. The earlier parts can be traced up to a far more remote antiquity. It is also agreed, that the Roman Titus utterly destroyed the great city of the Jews, A.D. 70, and that the emperor Hadrian extirpated them from Palestine in A. D. 135. And as the Jews acknowledge what is written of their past history, even when it tells against themselves, so they generally look forward to a fulfilment of the happier promises in their prophecies. But, in so far as they hold the stricter religious view of their race, they connect this hope of fulfilment with much of that external and formal view which belonged to their ancestors' observance of the law. There may, indeed, be differences among them. But the Jewish view, to describe it generically, seems to be a notion that Israel still means the descendants by blood of Abraham. If then Israel is to enjoy the Divine favour, this means to them a restoration of their race to their own land. If their law is to be observed, this ought in consistency to mean that the temple will be rebuilt, and the fat of rams smoke on its altars. The King, too, ought to be of the race of David, and to have a temporal throne in Jerusalem. Now I dare not set bounds to the counsels of the Almighty, or to the possibility of a national instinct fulfilling itself by His permission. But, you see, all this kind of expectation has a local and national air; it dwells on outward circumstances rather than on such deeper truths as the Father of our spirits and the equal Judge of all may be supposed to embody in his designs; it belongs, in short, to that cast of mind, which valued formal observance of the Mosaic law, rather than penetrated the depth of the human conscience and the truths of sanctity or righteousness which the Eternal by His Holy Spirit writes within it. May I not say, such a hope is of the earth, earthy? it does not pass within the veil of forecasting thought and of sanctifying truth; hence men who so read their ancient scriptures with a dim feeling of the life embodied in them, may be said to have a veil before their minds.

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JEWISH LITERALISM.

At least, for eighteen centuries the Jews have more or less cherished this local and national or sensuous hope, with no apparent sign of its coming to pass. And although God forbid we should speak harshly of men who by suffering and by fidelity to their own principles deserve our respect, while many noble spirits among them have risen above the faults of their race, yet I may fairly argue that they carry in the Bible which they value their own condemnation. For by restricting themselves to the national and the literal, they do violence to the deeper element which it contains. Hence their Rabbins have become proverbial for playing formally with words and texts. Their national exclusiveness also (not to speak here of the wrong persecutions which have deepened it) would somewhat harden them to the broader humanity, which considers all men the children of God. But especially we may argue, if their narrow and exclusive view of their ancient prophecies be right, then their hope has failed. Here, however, is the wonderful spectacle of a people homeless, yet boasting a land as the Divine gift; and carrying with them everywhere a Book, the spirit of which condemns them now, as they acknowledge that its history records their punishment of old. I do not however wish to make you blame the Jews, who have their own Master in Heaven, but to study these ancient writings for which they are witnesses.

"But now notice this. By the side of the Jews has arisen in the world a religion appealing to their books, but giving a new interpretation of them. That ancient law of Moses must be owned to have stood much in outward precept, and by the very minuteness of its ordinances tended to fetter the human conscience, and so to overlay the perception of deeper truths, which requires a certain freedom for its play. There is now a faith

Many a Jew may be a truer follower of Christ than formal and literal Christians; and whenever "the mind of Christ" is realised in them, there St Paul's inversion of the old blessing of Jew and Gentile will apply now to Christian and Jew: see Romans ii. 26-29. A little book called "A few Words to the Jews, by one of themselves" (London, 1855), seems as if its author read the Old Testament by the light of the New.

CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM.

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in the world, which acknowledges a holy meaning in the Mosaic law, but lays its mental grasp upon the very principles of righteousness, reverence, purity, and contrition, which were expressed in that law in a form suited to the infancy of Man, rather than upon the outward adaptation of these things in the letter. It fully acknowledges the religion of the Israelites to have been divine in its inner mind, yet affirms that the Jews are wrong in now clinging to its outward letter. Incidentally, indeed, we Christians who hold this newer faith, affirm the Israelites of old to have fallen often from the mere letter; as for instance, they were guilty in some stages of their history of idolatry, and in others were betrayed into the common sins of men, which were aggravated by express command against them. But more especially, we say the Jews have never risen to a full conception of the ultimate tendency of their system in the Divine design. They think there was some especial favour intended to their race, either for the merit of their ancestor Abraham, or from Divine election. We say they were elected only as instruments in carrying out a great drama for the good of all nations, who are alike dear to the Father of all. This purpose of God, we argue, was veiled from the elder Hebrews in the natural course of things, but it came to light in the fuller unveiling of His own love which the Eternal God has by spiritual development or by fresh communication since given to us. They dwell with natural fondness on visible displays of the Divine power in leading them wonderfully out of bondage, and through enemies, and rivers, and seas, into a promised land. We think that wonderful as may be the Providence of God in outward act, yet it is far more marvellous in things of the mind. The inheritance for which we look to Him is rather the power of coming mentally into His presence, and knowing the grace and truth of things unseen with which He encompasses our spirits. Our greatest enemies are not Ammonites and Moabites, so much as evil passions, and all the forms of sin and of suffering which come together. It is not what happens to the