ritual was an indispensable condition of divine acceptance, and their own nation exclusively the chosen people of God, it was indispensably necessary to put an end to their national establishment, and destroy that temple with which the observance of their ritual was essentially connected, in order to maintain the universal sovereignty of the Messiah, in opposition to their rebellion, as well as to prevent all possibility of corrupting Christianity by the adoption of their errors, and of their now burthensome because useless ceremonies. Whoever observes the struggles of the Judaizing Christians thus to encumber the religion of Christ, and the extreme difficulty with which their efforts were resisted, even by direct revelation and Apostolic authority, in the very first and purest era of the church, will easily perceive the necessity of this precaution, to preserve the purity and extend the dominion of the Gospel; and that in this view. "through the fall of the Jews, salvation is come unto the "Gentiles."*

Pomans, xl. 11.

LECTURE VII.

THE PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF THE JEWS EXHIBITS THE

ACCOMPLISHMENT OF PROPHECY.

Evidence from Prophecy applicable to Judaism. Prophecy of Moses-As to the prosperity of the Jews-As to the punishments they were to suffer-Considered in their variety-Their sources-Their duration―The face of their country. These predictions antecedent to the events-Clearly applicable to them-Not such as human wisdom or political sagacity would have dictated-Instanced in the three Jewish Feasts-The Sabbatic Year-The remoteness of their destroyers-The circumstances attending the destruction of Jerusalem-In their subsequent dispersion-In their present state and sufferings.

THE delivery and fulfilment of prophecy is so important an evidence of a divine authority, and so clear in the Mosaic revelation, that it has been justly considered a defect in this work, that, in exhibiting the internal evidence for the divine origin of the Jewish religion, it did not advert, except very briefly and incidentally, to this species of proof. To supply this defect, it is intended in this and the next Lecture to exhibit a summary view of the leading prophecies which predict the fortunes of the chosen people of God; to point out their past accomplishment; consider what expectations, as to the future destiny of this singular people, these prophecies excite; and how far the present circumstances of their situation appear to coincide with these expectations, and to indicate a providential arrangement of human affairs, even now visibly advancing to that great consummation, when, to use the language of the sublime and evangelic Isaiah," it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be estab"lished in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above "the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peo ple shall

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go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the moun

"tain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he "will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: "for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the "Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the na“tions, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat "their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning"hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither "shall they learn war any more."

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*יי

The great prophecy describing most compendiously, but at the same time most clearly, the fortune of the house of Israel, is that pronounced by their inspired Lawgiver on his last address to the assembled tribes, at the close of their forty years journeying in the Wilderness, and before they had entered upon the land of their inheritance. On this solemn occasion, the Legislator assures the assembled nation; "It shall come to pass "if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which "I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set "thee on high above all nations of the earth: and all these "blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou "shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." Lawgiver then enumerates every species of prosperity which could bless a people, in their persons, their goods, the fruit of their cattle, and the fruit of their ground, and in security from all enemies; " and all the people of the earth shall see that "thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be "afraid of thee:" and in security even from the apparently inevitable contingencies of unfavourable seasons, parching heats, or excessive rains, so common in such a climate: "The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure," says the Prophet," the "heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to "bless all the work of thine hand."

The

It is obvious to remark, how entirely unconnected are such blessings as security from warlike enemies, and the enjoyment of rain from heaven, with the observance of a religious code; and how idle and unmeaning such promises would have appeared, to any people not deeply impressed, by immediate and clear experience, with the conviction, that a supernatural power

Isaiah, ii. 2—4.

Deut. xxviii. the entire chapter.

dictated, and would certainly execute, the promises thus held out. The sacred history records the enjoyment of such prosperity as is thus predicted, during that period of the Jewish state when the divine Law was most zealously observed, the latter part of the reign of David, and the entire reign of Solomon. But unhappily, the intervals of pious obedience and its attendant blessings have been far exceeded, as the Prophetic Lawgiver foresaw, by the calamitous periods of disobedience and its attendant punishments. Let us then direct our attention to the nature and extent of these prophetic menaces, and observe their wonderful accomplishment.

The first circumstance which strikes the mind on reviewing these menaces, is their great extent and variety. There is no circumstance of distress, no aggravation of sorrow, applicable to the nation collectively, or to the individuals who compose it, which is not included in the prophetic denunciation. "It shall come to pass," says their Lawgiver to the Jewish nation, "if "thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to "observe and do all his commandments, and his statutes, which "I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee."* He then enumerates a fearful catalogue of evils which should overwhelm them, in the city and in the field; on their persons by disease; in their property, whether the produce of their flocks, or of the earth. "The Lord

(says he) shall send upon thee vexation and rebuke, in all that "thou settest thine hand unto to do it, until thou be destroyed, "and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me."+

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Nor were their calamities to stop here; they were to be inflicted also by the operation of the elements, which, obedient to the will of the Great Jehovah, were to combine in punishing this rebellious race. "The pestilence, and the consumption, the "fever, and blasting, and mildew," were to pursue them until they should perish. "Thy heaven (says the Prophet) that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee "shall be iron; and the Lord shall make the rain of thy land "powder and dust from heaven shall it come down upon thee, "until thou be destroyed." Even this was not yet the worst;

* Deut. xxviii. 15 to the end.

+Ib. xxviii. 20-24.

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*

their punishment was to be completed by the instrumentality of man; their enemies were to be resistless and destructive. "The "Lord (says their legislator) shall cause thee to be smitten "before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, "and flee seven ways before them and shalt be removed into "all the kingdoms of the earth.” These enemies were not to be found only amongst their immediate neighbours, whose hostility might naturally be expected. "The Lord (says the "Prophet) shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the "end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor "show favour. to the young." A description exactly correspondent, first to the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and still more to the legions of Rome. "And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein "thou trustedst, throughout all thy land." The miseries thus to be inflicted, it was foretold, should exceed in severity the ordinary measure of human calamities. Almost unparalleled sufferings from war and famine are predicted with an exactness, which the narrative of history, while it exactly accords with, cannot exceed. "Thou shalt eat (says the Prophet) the fruit of thine "own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which "the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the "straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee." A prediction so dreadfully verified at the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and still more dreadfully at its final destruction by

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the Romans.

Another most signal feature in the prophetic picture, is the universal and protracted dispersion of the nation; the scorn and cruelty they were to experience in the various lands whither they were to go into captivity, and the keenness of their sensations under this maltreatment. "Ye shall be plucked from the "land whither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall "scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth. "even unto the other; and among these nations thou shalt find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the "Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of

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Deut. xxviii. 49 to the end.