Our attention was directed, in our last, to the distinctions which exist between the two departments of divine revelation. We found them to be, in some respects, wider and more important than would be gathered from Mr. W.'s opening lecture; besides differing in character from those on which he there so much insists, and, indeed, from any recognized by him in any part of his volume. We must not suppose however, that the change from the old order of things to the new, was immediate; or, that as soon as we open the New Testament, Christianity, in its distinctive and full-grown character, will burst upon our attention. Some of its grand elements are there from the very beginning; but they present themselves along with much that pertains to the former economy; much that has since passed away. The fact is, that the four gospels (and, in a certain modified sense, even the Acts of the Apostles) describe a transitional state of things, as distinct in some of its features from the Christianity which it introduced, as, in others, from the Judaism which it succeeded and gradually set aside. While, therefore, we doubt not for a moment, that it is in the New Testament God's present testimony is found—that by which he immediately addresses our souls, whether as sinners or as saints; and while it is therefore most important that the Old Testament should be read in the light cast back upon it by the New; it is equally indisputable, that many things in the New Testament can only be understood through previous acquaintance with the Old. To know ourselves as ruined and undone, and to know Christ crucified and risen as our only Savior, is to have everlasting life: and this knowledge God can, by his Spirit, communicate by means of any portion either of the Old Testament or the New. But if, knowing that the great question of eternity has been settled for us, by the sovereign grace which has blotted out our sins, and accepted us in the Beloved, we are desirous of full acquaintance with our Father's mind and will, as revealed in his word, we may not neglect either the Old Testament or the New. They are mutually illustrative of each other's contents, and neither can be neglected without serious loss. God may now usually begin his work in individual souls by means of truth revealed in the New Testament; but it is with Genesis that he begins the book of inspiration; and if we are, through his aid and teaching, to understand it as a whole, it is there our researches must commence. Should we reverse this order, and begin with the New Testament, we should continually meet with words, statements, and allusions which the Old Testament alone could explain. Let it be supposed that some one to whom both volumes are unknown, should open the New Testament and begin to read, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” “Who was David?” and “who was Abraham?” are questions which must instantly arise. Where could the answer be found, except in the Old Testament? Nor is there a verse down to the seventeenth, by which similar inquiries would not be aroused-inquiries which must receive their answer, if answered at all, from the same source. Passing over some verses, on which nevertheless, we might make similar remarks, what could be known of the import of verse 21, had the Old Testament no existence? “He shall save his people from their sins.” What people? And, why “his” people? What is the nature of the relations subsisting between him and them? What has been their conduct in these relations? Whence their need of being saved? And what are we to understand by the salvation he is to bestow? These are all questions naturally suggested by the words; and if some of them must find their answer in the continued perusal of the book itself, how many of them can only be solved by reference to more ancient records of equally divine authority? A direct quotation from these records is what immediately follows: Isaiah's prediction of Emmanuel, the Virgin's son, was to find its accomplishment in the birth of Jesus. But, enough. We might take any other chapter of Matthew's narrative, and almost any chapter of the narratives by the other three evangelists, and we should find ourselves as continually thrown back upon the law, the prophets, and the psalms, for the import of quotations or allusions which would meet us at every step.
We have referred to the transition from Judaism to Christianity, as having gradually taken place. Of this fact, the New Testament itself affords abundant evidence. Were this evidence to be carefully examined, other facts would be educed—facts overlooked by Mr. W. and by those generally with whom he symbolizes, but which have a most direct and important bearing on the questions at issue. In the introduction to his Epistle to the Romans, Paul speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ under two distinct aspects: as “made of the seed of David according to the flesh,” and “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” (Rom. 1:3, 43Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; 4And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: (Romans 1:3‑4).) As “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” he had special links of connection with Israel. Where the apostle is enumerating Israel's distinctive privileges, such as the adoption, the glory, &c., that by which he crowns the catalog is, “and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” (Rom. 9:55Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:5).) It is from the same apostle's pen that we have the words, “Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers.” (Rom. 15:88Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: (Romans 15:8).) “Made of a woman, made under the law.” (Gal. 4:44But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, (Galatians 4:4).) Let anyone read the gospels in the light of these apostolic statements, and how evident it must be to him, that innumerable links with Israel and Judaism, having no place in Christianity as existing in Paul's day, were maintained by our blessed Lord during his sojourn on earth. Circumcised the eighth day, and duly presented by his mother according to the law, he afterward accompanied her and Joseph to the annual feasts in the city of solemnities. It was in the synagogue that he commenced his ministry at Nazareth, and often is it noticed afterward that he taught in their synagogues. How frequently were those whom he healed or cleansed directed by him to go and show themselves to the priests; and how did he charge the twelve not to go into the way of the Gentiles, or enter any city of the Samaritans, but to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. “The Scribes and the Pharisees,” said be, “sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” (Matt. 23:2, 32Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. (Matthew 23:2‑3).) It was on the night of the passover, and after he had faithfully observed it with his disciples, that he was betrayed into the hands of men.
How different is all this from the Christianity of the epistles, and, in many respects, from what we find in the Acts of the Apostles. No doubt there were other elements, new, heavenly, and divine, from the very beginning of the gospels. Christ was there, the Son of the Father, the image of the invisible God; and wherever this full divine glory of his person peculiarly stands forth, the limits of Judaism and of his dispensational links with Israel were not sufficient to restrain the outflow to sinners, whether Gentile or Samaritan, of that grace, to introduce and exercise which “God was manifest in the flesh.” Most true is this, and most blessed. But it nullifies in no degree the fact, of which we have seen such ample proof, that, throughout his continuance on earth, the Savior deigned to maintain many a link with the nation of the Jews, and with the economy under which they had been placed.
Why were these national and dispensational links maintained by our blessed Lord? A profoundly interesting question, to which, happily, his own words afford an explicit reply. They place it beyond doubt, that as one part of an extensive tract of land might be selected and enclosed, as a specimen of the whole, for the purpose of testing its fruitfulness by actual experiment, so the nation of Israel was chosen of God for the purpose of testing whether man, favored with every advantage of even divine care and culture, would bring forth fruit towards God. Isaiah had long before sung of Jehovah's vineyard in a very fruitful hill, fenced, and planted with the choicest vine; the stones gathered out, a tower built in its midst, and a wine press made therein. Touching this vineyard, (which the prophet declared to be the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant), it had been asked, “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes!” (Isa. 5:44What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? (Isaiah 5:4).) Because of such strange results of so much diligent, unwearied culture, judgment had been pronounced in Isaiah's day, and the execution of it had been long impending, when the Lord Jesus Christ appeared. The trial was not complete till then. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.” (John 15:2222If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. (John 15:22).) A vineyard let out to husbandmen is the figure employed by our Lord, to set forth their privileges and responsibilities, and to describe their guilt. (Matt. 21:33,33Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: (Matthew 21:33) &c.) It is not, as in Isa. 5, the fertility of the vineyard that is in question, but the honesty of the husbandmen, and the consequent productiveness to their Lord, and of the grounds entrusted to their care. “When the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits.” Thus had the prophets been sent to Israel. With what result? “The husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.” Thus had Israel dealt with the prophets who had been sent to them. But great is the divine longsuffering. The owner of the vineyard had patience with the husbandmen, and “sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.” Was there no hope remaining? Could no further means be tried? Yes: “last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.” Such, therefore, is one aspect in which the mission of Jesus is to be viewed. No doubt he came to reveal the Father, and to accomplish redemption by the sacrifice of himself; but he also came seeking fruit on God's behalf from those who were responsible for rendering it. Before he became the sacrifice for human guilt upon the cross, he was presented as the final test of man's condition before God. Israel was the theater in which the experiment was made: but it was human nature itself-man, as such-that was put to the test. With God in the distance, or behind the veil, man had, with every lesser advantage of laws, messengers, prophecies, warnings, promises, made no return to God for the pains bestowed: would he, now that God was revealed in the person of his Son, be more submissive or obedient? Alas! “when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” The last astounding proof of God's forbearing love, of patience which nothing yet had sufficed to exhaust, drew forth from man—from Israel—the expression of intense and complete hatred. They cast him out of the vineyard and slew him!
The application of this parable was left by the Savior to the Jews themselves. He asks them what might be expected to be done by the lord of the vineyard to those husbandmen, and they are obliged to reply, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto others.” He then reminds them of the Stone rejected by the builders, and of its high destiny to be the Head of the corner, and adds, “Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”
But it was not only as the representative of God's claims—as seeking fruit—that the Jews rejected their Messiah: it was also as the revealer and expression of God's perfect grace. A certain king makes a marriage for his son, and sends his servants to call the invited guests—such as were bidden: “but they would not come” (Matt. 22:1-141And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, 2The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, 3And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. 4Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. 5But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: 6And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. 7But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 8Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. 9Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. 10So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. 11And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: 12And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. 13Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22:1‑14)). Nothing is claimed of the guests at a marriage feast; everything is provided; and the guests partake freely of the bounty of their host. But the grace which this provides all for man, and makes him welcome to the whole, is as unwelcome to his heart as those righteous claims of God's holy law, with which he refuses to comply. “They would not come.” But what cannot grace do? The death of Christ is itself made the ground of new invitations! “Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are now ready: come unto the marriage.” What can be represented here, but the ministry of the apostles to Israel after the death and resurrection of their Lord? Alas! it was with the same result; save where sovereign grace imparted a new life, and thus subdued the opposition of man's will, these further invitations met with no better reception than the former. “They made light of it.... and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully and slew them.” It was for this rejection of the gospel of an ascended Christ, proclaimed by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, that judgment was executed on Jerusalem and the Jews. “But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” Nor was it till they had thus rejected mercy, offered to them in every form, and pressed on their acceptance in every way, that the proclamation of heavenly mercy went forth universally: all being now indiscriminately bidden to the feast. “Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.”
If we turn now to the early chapters of the Acts, from which Mr. W. extracts the passage on which his opening discourse is founded, we shall find that what they present is this lingering of divine mercy over Israel, before the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. They had indeed committed an unparalleled crime in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, and in a certain sense filled up the measure of their iniquity. But the vinedresser had interceded for the barren fig-tree (Luke 13:88And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: (Luke 13:8)). Jesus, on the cross, had cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do:” this, their ignorance, thus pleaded by the Redeemer on the cross, is precisely what the Holy Ghost admits by Peter ensued was arranged of God accordingly. But if Jesus himself, looking down upon Jerusalem, and weeping over it, could say, “If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” we need not, in the unchangeableness of God's purposes, find any difficulty as to vast and wondrous results depending on Israel's repentance, as taught in Acts 3, even though it was surely foreknown of God that they would persist in their sin, and that wrath would come upon them to the uttermost. We may well understand, that what was long afterward said by Paul to the Jews of a certain locality was true of the whole nation: “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” (Acts 13:4646Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. (Acts 13:46)). The martyrdom of Stephen terminated for the present all hopes of Jerusalem's repentance, or of Israel's in Acts 3:1717And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. (Acts 3:17); “And now, brethren, I wot that reception of the Lord whom they had crucified; and through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.” So far were they, in answer to the intercession of Jesus, conditionally forgiven, that instead of judgment being instantly executed, full, free, absolute forgiveness was proclaimed to them on condition of their repentance. Observe too, that it is national forgiveness of which the apostle treats, and the restoration of their forfeited national blessings, even including the return of Jesus himself. “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that (see the Greek) the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord: and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God path spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” Forgiveness of sins, and the times of refreshing, or restitution, of which all the prophets had witnessed, as well as the return of the Lord they had rejected, are here proposed to the Jews on condition of their repentance. This was the only condition on which Old Testament prophecy had suspended the arrival of these bright and happy days for Israel; and on this condition they are still held out by the apostle. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” He well knew that they who had rejected and crucified a humbled Messiah on earth, would still reject the Holy Ghost's testimony to an ascended and returning Christ; and everything which seeing that every Old Testament prediction of the kingdom (or the millennium) treated of its establishment as dependent on Israel's conversion, that also was indefinitely postponed. And thus was the way prepared for the revelation of the mystery, till then necessarily concealed, that the period of Christ's rejection by Israel and the earth should be occupied in the calling and formation by the Holy Ghost of “the Church” —the elect body or bride of Christ—to be the vessel of his sympathies and sharer of his rejection while he sits on the Father's throne on high; and also to be the sharer of his glory when he shall “take to him his great power, and reign” upon the earth.
But is Israel cast off hopelessly and forever? Is there to be no fulfillment of those bright visions of rest, and blessedness, and supremacy on earth, under Messiah's sway and Jehovah's smile, with which the Old Testament abounds? Is it anywhere declared by our Lord himself, or by his apostles after him, that these predictions are never, in their plain and obvious sense, to be fulfilled? that they are to receive no accomplishment but that which is alleged to consist in the amalgamation of any converted Israelites with the church of the present dispensation Such is the doctrine of the Bampton Lecturer: and such, with more or less of consistency, is the doctrine of the reviewers, Mr. Lyon, and all the modern rejecters of millenarianism. They all deny that Israel is to have any national distinction or pre-eminent place in days to came. Some admit that the Jews may be restored to their own land; others deny this, as savoring of the worst features of millenarian literality; while some, of whom Mr. Waldegrave is one, treat it as a doubtful, uncertain matter: but all agree in denouncing the expectation of any real fulfillment of those national hopes for Israel, of which Old Testament language, if at all literally understood, constitutes so plain a warrant. “Christ,” say they, “discountenances such hopes, and the apostles forbid them.” But is this the case? Does the New Testament bear out these bold, confident, and oft-repeated assertions? We believe not. We believe that the New Testament needs only to be candidly, prayerfully, and diligently studied, in its evident and inseparable connection with the Old, to satisfy any Christian inquirer, that these assertions are not only baseless, but contrary to what the New Testament distinctly declares.
First, be it remembered, that the Old Testament itself predicts, in several passages, that for a long season Israel would remain in unbelief; while judicial blindness, rejection by Jehovah, scattering among the nations, and abject misery under the Gentile yoke, should be the result of their sins, and of their having rejected their Messiah. See, among other passages, Isa. 6:9-12; 1:1, 2,; 53:1-3; 63:17; 64:79And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. 11Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 12And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 6:9‑12)
1The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 2Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. (Isaiah 1:1‑2)
1Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? 2For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:1‑3)
17O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. (Isaiah 63:17)
7And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. (Isaiah 64:7); Hos. 1:6-9; 3:4; 5:14, 156And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away. 7But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. 8Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. 9Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. (Hosea 1:6‑9)
4For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: (Hosea 3:4)
14For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him. 15I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early. (Hosea 5:14‑15); Mic. 3:9-12; 5:19Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. 10They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. 11The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. 12Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. (Micah 3:9‑12)
1Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. (Micah 5:1). But, secondly, all these prophecies and numbers more show decisively that Israel's rejection and unbelief are but for a time, however prolonged; and that this dreary period is to be succeeded by the days of promised blessedness and rest. Thirdly, our Lord and his apostles distinctly recognize both these truths. Without doubt they declare, and that most unequivocally, that the Israel of that day were sealing on themselves the calamities by which they had been already overtaken, and bringing upon themselves and their children still heavier judgments than any which had yet been inflicted. Nor do they fail to portray the blessings to the Gentiles which result from the way in which divine mercy has overruled the sin of the Jews and their consequent rejection for a time. But do they anywhere intimate that this rejection is final and irreversible? Do they anywhere teach that the present Gentile dispensation has permanently and unchangeably replaced God's natural relations with the earthly people of his choice? Far from it—as far as possible. In Matt. 23—the sequel, in fact, to the series of parables which have been already considered, and in which our Lord had told the Jews that the kingdom of God was taken from them and given to others—after pronouncing upon them the dire and oft-repeated woe which their evil and hypocrisy drew forth from those blessed lips; after declaring that on them should come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, lamenting over them in such pathetic language, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together, and ye would not!” after declaring, as he crossed the temple's threshold, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate” does he not add, as though he would not leave them utterly hopeless, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, TILL YE SHALL SAY, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord"? Can we suppose the Savior to have used these as his parting words, if he knew that they would never nationally welcome him, and never see him again, till, as individuals, in common with the whole human race, they behold him on the great white throne? Could words more clearly intimate, that however they might be in the act of rejecting him, the days would come when they would welcome him with all their hearts? that however certain—sadly, sorrowfully certain—that till then they should not behold him, yet that then, made “willing in the day of his power,” they should see him again, and see him to their joy? “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” were words well known to Jewish ears. They form a part of that magnificent Psalm (118) which was well understood to be an inspired, prophetic utterance, prepared beforehand as Messiah's welcome to the throne. These very words had been but a short time before uttered by the disciples and the multitudes on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Had they been sincerely used—used, moreover, not only by those who did chant them forth, but by the heads of the nation, and by the nation itself as a whole—then, what might not have occurred? In that case they would have known the day of their visitation, and everything must have been changed. Alas! they know it not. The fervor of the multitudes was rebuked by the Pharisees; and on the part of the nation as a whole, the cry was ready to be uttered, “Away with him! Crucify him!” It behooved Christ to suffer, “and enter into his glory.” “The stone” was to be first “rejected of the builders;” but where was the prediction of this fact recorded? In the very psalm quoted by our Lord when he said, “Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Thus does he at once interpret and endorse Old Testament prophecy, linking together in his farewell words to Israel their future national reception of him as their Messiah, his return to them at that time from heaven (where, as the rejected Stone, he is at present exalted), and their own celebration, in that day, of his triumphs and their deliverance in language prepared for them by the sweet singer of Israel. Read Psa. 118 in the light thus shed upon it by our Lord's words; read it, as the joyful, adoring utterance of the penitent, pardoned, delivered Israel of the latter day, when they see their long-rejected, but now welcome Messiah, and say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; read it thus, we say, and every line, every word is pregnant with meaning, and redolent with joy. Set aside Israel's hopes, and the attestation of them by our Lord in the moment of Israel's deepest guilt and degradation, and how unmeaning the Psalm becomes!
If we turn, moreover, to the testimony of the apostles, we shall find it confirmatory, not condemnatory, of Israel's hopes. Take, for instance, Rom. 11. The chapter opens with the inquiry, “Hath God cast away his people?” to which the emphatic and almost indignant reply is at once subjoined, “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.” “Ah,” says our author, and many others of his school, “it is the elect—the Israel of God—of whom the apostle speaks.” This is Mr. W.'s grand solution of almost every difficulty which arises to his theory of interpretation. But what question was there among those to whom the apostle wrote, as to whether God had cast off the souls of his elect? Had God utterly and forever cast off his people Israel—the literal, natural Israel? was a question naturally arising out of all that the apostle had been teaching; and it was one of deepest interest to his brethren according to the flesh. No doubt he mentions an election from among them— “a remnant according to the election of grace.” But this remnant is not his subject in the chapter before us; he only refers to its existence as one argument among many, by which he proves that Israel—the nation Israel—is not utterly and forever rejected of God. It is thus that he distributes his theme. Not utterly, seeing (1) that he himself is an Israelite; (2) that in the worst days of the nation's previous history, such as those of Elias, God had a remnant; and (3) that “even so at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” He thus proves the first part of his proposition, that it is only to part of Israel that blindness hath happened, not to the whole. But is the blindness to be permanent, even to the extent in which it does exist? No. “Blindness in part is happened to Israel,” not forever, but “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved.” Mr. W. has the boldness to suggest whether the word “Israel” in one part of this quotation may not be understood literally, and in the other figuratively! whether “all Israel” and “the fullness of the Gentiles” be not one and the same body of men! Could temerity itself go farther than this in dislocating and confounding the statements of God's holy Word? What must be the system of interpretation which requires of its exponents to go to such lengths as these?
But it is not at once that the apostle states the conclusion, that “All Israel shall be saved.” He reaches it by successive and ascending steps. He argues (1) that through the fall of Israel salvation has come to the Gentiles, “to provoke them (Israel) to jealousy.” Can they be forever cast off, if even God's present mercy to the Gentiles be designed to provoke Israel to jealousy, and so beget in them gracious and holy desires after him under whose chastisements they at present remain? (2) If the Gentiles have reaped such profit from Israel's fall, what shall the receiving of Israel be “but life from the dead?” Here is anything but an obscure intimation, that Israel is yet to be received; and not only so, but that the reception of that people is to inaugurate a period of blessedness for the world—the Gentiles—with which the present is not worthy to be compared. (3) The reception of Israel having been thus referred to, the apostle reasons from the very graffing in of the wild Gentile olive to the good olive tree from which the natural Jewish branches have been broken off, that it is possible for these latter to be gaffed in again. (4) He advances another step, and proves it to be not merely possible, but probable: “how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?” Then (5) finally, he declares the certainty of their conversion and salvation, quoting in proof of it a passage from Isa. 59:20,20And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 59:20) which inseparably associates it both with the coming of the Lord, and the introduction of millennial blessedness on earth. No doubt there has been, is, and shall yet be, an election from among Israel; but Israel itself, as a nation, is elected of God, and it is with reference to this election that the apostle says, “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Of what other election than that of the nation itself can the apostle say, “as concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes?” Our brethren sometimes indulge themselves in speaking of a certain passage as “a millstone round the neck of pre-millennialism;” but certainly the eleventh of Romans may not inappropriately be regarded as a like fatal encumbrance to those “high-minded” prophetic theories, which deny the validity of Israel's national hopes, and seek to resolve all its bright prophetic future into the present heritage of “Gentile branches,” even now through unheedfulness to this warning grown “wise in their own conceits,” and ready alas! to be cut off!”
One remark we must by no means omit—that it was not by Israel alone that Christ was rejected when he came before. He was presented to the Gentiles, in the person of Pontius Pilate, the representative of Gentile power; and his rejection is treated by himself and by the Holy Ghost as his rejection by the world. It was, as we have seen, in Israel that the test was applied; but the question to be decided was, whether Christ would be received in his own world. It was decided in the negative. In John's gospel, where Christ is presented in the full divine glory of his person, as the Son of the Father, rather titan in his dispensational characters and relations, as in the other gospels, this fact is largely and solemnly insisted on. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:1010He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. (John 1:10)). “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men [not Jews merely] loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (ch. 3:19). “Now is the judgment of this world” (ch. 12:31). “The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him” (ch, 14:17). “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more: but ye see me” (verse.19). “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (ch. 15:18). “And when he (the Holy Ghost) is come, he will reprove the world of sin.... because they believe not on me” (ch. 16:8, 9). “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee” (ch. 17:25). Who can read these passages and entertain a doubt, that the Christ of the Acts and of the Epistles is a world-rejected Christ? This is another great truth which our brethren who reject pre-millennialism overlook, or, at least, by their system, set aside. This really constitutes the most essential, fundamental difference between their theories and the Christianity of the New Testament, which consists in knowing, confessing, and serving Christ, and in waiting for him, as the rejected One of this world. “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men” (1 Peter 2:44To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, (1 Peter 2:4)). By and by he will arise from off the Father's throne, and receive to himself the co-heirs who are now being called; the power of the throne will then be exercised in vindication of his long despised and rejected Name; and when all things are prepared for the solemn event, he and his saints will return, and this earth shall be subdued to his sway. Of these things the prophecies of the New Testament bear witness; the more they are studied, and the better they are understood, the more evident will it be, that no contrariety exists between the Old Testament and the New. The prophecies of the Old Testament leave room for the revelations and mysteries of the New; the latter fill up, but do not contradict, the former. They both exhibit the purposes and ways of God for the glorifying of himself in Christ, as one vast harmonious whole; and in their combined light, grace and righteousness, mercy and truth, Jew and Gentile, heaven and earth, are all seen to be to the praise of the glory of him, of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things: to whom, indeed, be glory forever. Amen.