Prophets against Israel as a proof of their rebellion against the Gospel of Christ. In the eleventh chapter, He asks, "Will the promises of God fail towards this people?" By no means. "Already," says he, "there is a residue according to the election of grace. 2ndly, God called the Gentiles to provoke the Jews unto a holy jealousy, therefore it was not to reject them. 3rdly, In the latter days they will certainly be brought back to the enjoyment of their privileges according to the promises and the testimony of God. But that God had shut them up in unbelief, as were the Gentiles by nature, in order that it might be pure grace on His part towards all, whether Jew or Gentile."

In the chapters following, the Apostle rests on these principles (mercy in God)-exhortations to a walk that responded to this goodness, and that sought only His perfect will with the intelligence of a renewed mind. He exhorts them to moderation, to meekness, to use their spiritual gifts, whatever they might be, with diligence, confining themselves to what God had communicated to each of them, to the spirit of grace, of kindness towards the saints that were in want-to patience when they suffered wrong (" vengeance belongeth to God")-to submission under the authorities as being ordained of God. In short, to imitate Christ in their walk, and not to seek to satisfy the flesh.

He sums up his doctrine in the fifteen chapter, and confirms it by quotations taken from the Old Testament, and sends affectionate salutations to the Christians whom he personally knew at Rome.

The "ORPHAN" PSALMS (see p.50). In Ps.cxi.and cxii. the first word "Hallelujah" is (I would suggest) clearly a Title; because, though each of these Psalms has but ten verses, they are both of them Acrostic. Two clauses in the first eight verses in each, and three clauses in the last two verses, begin with a letter of the Alphabet as found in the Alphabetical order.

ED.

No. XIX.

THE JEWISH REMNANT IN THE

LATTER DAY.

My desire is to present (according to the measure of the ability which God Himself may be pleased to supply) the instruction afforded in Scripture on the above subject. May He by His Spirit make the truth efficacious to our souls, in engaging and interesting us with those things which He has revealed as objects of interest to His own heart of grace and love; and may we thus be separated more and more from all those lower, grovelling, creaturethoughts which would detain us here.

away

At the close of the seven-fold terrible denunciations of Lev. xxvi., we read (ver. 38, etc.) " And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And they that are left of you shall pine in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me, and that I also have walked contrary to them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies: if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will remember the land." There are two points here. First, there is an unconditional covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which is the basis of all true blessing to Israel. Second, the bringing in of that blessing is to succeed the hearthumbling of those who are left in the enemies' lands, and their accepting the punishment of their iniquity. Then will God remember His covenant, and remember the land. But in this passage it is put conditionally; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled: it is not a positive

prediction that this shall take place. But this we have in Deut. xxx. 1, etc. “And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey His voice.... that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee." The fourth verse and the sixth are both very emphatic; and the latter taken in connexion with the New Covenant in Jer. xxxi. 31-34, shews it to be entirely a work of grace in the hearts of those referred to: the passage in Jer. xxxi. is so quoted in Heb. viii., and is, in a general sense, the covenant under which believers are placed now, as well as that under which repentant Israel will be placed by and bye.

The two passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, I take as the basis of all further instruction in Scripture as to the Remnant; and one thing is obvious from those passages, that it is before their restoration to the land that their hearts begin to break down before God. It is while they are yet in the countries to which they have been driven in their dispersion, that God begins to work this gracious change in their hearts.

From many other passages it is quite clear, however, that this broken-hearted remnant are not the only Israelites who, in the first instance, return to their own land. Many of the Jews return thither unconverted and perish in their sins. "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third part shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: Í will say, It is my people, and they shall say, The Lord is my God" (Zech. xiii. 8, 9). The next chapter describes the deliverance of this third part by the coming of the Lord, with all his saints, at the season of their utmost extremity. Ezekiel ix., while doubtless referring to

the judgment then about to fall on Jerusalem, and the preservation of the remnant of that day, may surely be viewed as a foreshadowing, at least, of the like circumstances in the latter day. How solemn in this view is the description there given of the matured evil which inevitably brings on judgment-"The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness; for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not." And how seasonable at all times the delineation of those who at such a period are marked for preservation from the destroyer. "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." Such, on the one hand, will be the character of the unbelieving mass of the nation; and such on the other hand, the spirit of the chosen remnant in the latter day. The one will be in league with the Gentile adversaries of God, just as Herod and Pontius Pilate and the chief priests joined together to mock and crucify our Lord. Isa. xxviii. 14-22, informs us of their covenant with death and agreement with hell, and of its utter overthrow by the overflowing scourge. But the fullest instruction on the subject is in Isa. lxiii. lxiv. and lxv. In chapter lxiii. 15, the sighing, crying, mourning remnant, identifying themselves before God with the whole nation of that and former generations, confessing the sins of their fathers as well as their own sins, begin their strain of solemn lamentation and confession, which is continued through chapter lxiv. "Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace and afflict us very sore?" Such is their importunate appeal. The answer of God is in chapter lxv. He answers roughly first-as Joseph did his brethren-He takes them at their word, and answers as though they were the nation, and thus vindicates his dealings with the nation. Then he distinguishes

between the remnant and the nation, and opens to the remnant his purpose of grace concerning them. The first sort of answer closes with verse 7. Then we have, in verse 8, and afterwards, "Thus saith the Lord, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it; so will I do for my servants' sakes that I may not destroy them all. And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains; and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there. And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor [where the accursed thing and the hider of it were got rid of in righteous judgment], a place for the herds to lie down in-for my people that have sought me. But ye [the nation] are they that forsake the Lord, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop [of Antichrist, I suppose], and that furnish a drink-offering unto that number. Therefore will I number you [the nation] to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter: because when I called ye did not answer; when I spake ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold my servants shall eat, but ye shall! be hungry; behold my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed; behold my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen; for the Lord God shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name; that he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes."

I have little doubt that the hundred and forty and four thousand sealed ones in Rev. vii., represent this Jewish remnant in the latter day. But their preservation is not, as I judge, from persecution (even to death in many instances), but from the judgments on the wicked which come direct from God's hand, or are inflicted by the executioners of His wrath. The remnant will, I believe,