practical conclusions, and certainly, in another, the condemnation of much that is said and done, by some respectable persons, as detrimental to the cause of truth. For, as Oliver Cromwell sagaciously observed, when the question on the expediency of naturalizing the Jews in England was pending: " Since the Scriptures predict the conversion of the Jews, it is our duty to employ suitable means to bring it about;"--so now it may be supposed, and is by some affirmed,—if their restoration be predicted, it is our duty to employ suitable means to promote it. But if it be not predicted, it may be inferred, then any efforts to such an end will be as fruitless in result as fallacious in principle, and perhaps attended with consequences positively injurious.

If the Jews are to be not only reinstated in the Divine favour, but to experience peculiar manifestations of that favour beyond the lot of other converts; if they are to be recognized, on their conversion, as they were before their "casting away," as the peculiar people of God above all other people, it must be because they

now stand in a relation to God different from that in which other nations stand towards Him, possessing in that different relation a special ground to expect His pre-eminent regard.

Our inquiries, then, must be, in the first place, directed to ascertain, if possible, in what this difference of relation, if there be any such difference, consists. We shall consider the questions separately.

First, Do the Jews now stand in any relation to God different from that in which the rest of the unbelieving world stand towards Him? Secondly, If they do, what are the grounds of this different relation?

It is the Divine testimony that they were, in a peculiar sense, the people of God; and the peculiarities by which they were indicated to be such are evident. To them alone, of all the people in the earth, were committed the oracles of God. To them pertained the adoption by the world's Great Parent, in preference to all the other tribes of men, as His own children; and the glory of the Divine presence and communion, and the covenants, recognizing and

confirming their peculiar relation; and the giving of the law, while all other people were a law unto themselves; and the service of God, while the multitude "sought out many inventions," and "served idols;" and the promises of future blessings to the world through Messiah, while all the human race beside were tossed on the restless ocean of uncertainty, too fathomless to anchor in, too boundless to explore, and too much wrapped in darkness to present a haven to the keenest view. Of the Jews were the Fathers,-the Patriarchs and Prophets,-distinguished as the favourites of Heaven and the depositaries of its will; and, of them, as concerning the flesh, Christ came who is over all, God, blessed for ever. But the very end of Christ's advent being that all might be saved, and salvation consisting in the proper knowledge of Christ, it is obvious that the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was broken down when Christ was set forth to be "a propitiation, through faith in his blood;" and it was declared that as God was the God of the Jews, so He was "of the Gentiles also;" seeing it is one

God which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith.

Had the Jews now happily believed in Him, of whom their fathers wrote, a blessed annihilation of their peculiar distinctions would have succeeded beneath the equal love of the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, in whom "there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, male nor female, bond nor free,” but all are alike, whatever were their former distinctions, children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So that the natural conclusion would be, that the Jews stand now in precisely the same circumstances as the unbelieving world in general, and that the highest glory to which they can attain being one equally attainable by others, that is, "power to become the sons of God," they are not to be regarded as a people at any future period of time to be distinguished above other people, but only destined, in common with others, to participate in the blessedness of the day when "the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth." This, it is said, would be the

natural conclusion; but, as such a conclusion is contested,--"to the word and to the testimony." It is true, they are referred to by the Apostle after their national rejection, as "the natural branches," and, "as touching the election, beloved for the Father's sakes." It is true, also, that the feelings of our nature respond to the principle here developed, and such expressions as these suggest the idea that the Jews, though monuments of the Divine displeasure in all nations, are still regarded with a father's heart by the God of Abraham, and, though rebellious children, are remembered to be children still. But to conclude that because they sustain the relation of rebellious children, they possess a special ground to expect any peculiar manifestation of the Divine regard, upon their conversion, above other nations, also the "children of God by faith in Christ Jesus," would be altogether premature.

The relation, then, in which the Jews stand to the Divine Being, appears to be that of rebellious children in a sense distinct from any in which the designation can be applicable to other people, because