know is, that they learned it from their ancestors; it may then pass for truth.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE JEWS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO OUR RELIGION.

I.

THE creation and the deluge having taken place, and God, not purposing again to destroy or to create the world, nor again to give such extraordinary evidences of himself, began to establish a people on the earth, formed expressly to continue till the coming of that people whom the Messiah should form to himself by his Spirit.

II.

God, willing to make it evident that he could form a people possessed of a sanctity invisible to the world, and filled with eternal glory, has exhibited a pattern in temporal things, of what he purposed to do in spiritual blessings, that men might learn from his excellent doings in the things which are seen, his power to do his will in the things which are not seen.

With this view, in the person of Noah, he saved his people from the deluge; he caused them to be born of Abraham; he redeemed them from their enemies, and gave them rest.

The purpose of God was not to save a people from the flood, and to cause them to spring from Abraham, merely that he might introduce them into a fruitful land; but as

nature is symbolical of grace, so these visible wonders indicate the unseen wonders which he purposed to perform.

III.

Another reason for which he formed the Jewish people is, that as he purposed to deprive his own people of carnal and perishable possessions, he wished to show by this series of miracles, that their poverty was not to be imputed to his impotence.

This people had cherished these earthly conceits, that God loved their father Abraham personally, and all who descended from him; that, on this account, he had multiplied their nation and distinguished them from all others, and forbidden their intermingling with them; that he led them out of Egypt with such mighty signs; that he fed them with manna in the wilderness; that he brought them into a happy and fruitful land; that he gave them kings, and a beautiful temple for the sacrifice of victims, and for their purification by the shedding of blood; and that he purposed to send them a Messiah, to make them masters of the whole world.

The Jews, being accustomed to great and splendid miracles, and having considered the great events at the Red Sea, and in the land of Canaan, but as a sample of the great things to be done by their Messiah, expected from him wonders far more brilliant, compared with which, the miracles of Moses should be but a type.

When the Jewish nation had grown old in these sensual views, Jesus Christ came at the time predicted, but not with the state which they had anticipated, and, consequently, they did not think it could be he. After his death, St. Paul came to teach men that all the events of the Jew

ish history were figurative; that the kingdom of God was not carnal, but spiritual; that the enemies of men were not the Babylonians, but their own passions; that God delighted not in temples made with hands, but in a pure and penitent heart; that the circumcision of the body was unavailing, but that he required the circumcision of the heart,

etc.

IV.

God, not willing to discover these things to a people unworthy of them, but willing, nevertheless, to announce them that they might be believed, clearly predicted the time of their fulfilment, and sometimes even clearly expressed the truths themselves; but ordinarily he did so in figures, that those who preferred the things which served for figures might rest in them; whilst those who really loved the things prefigured, might discover them. And hence it followed, that at the coming of the Messiah, the people were divided. The spiritually-minded Jew received him; the carnal Jews rejected him, and have remained to this day, as his witnesses.

V.

The carnal Jews understood neither the dignity nor the degradation of the Messiah, predicted by their prophets. They knew him not in his greatness; as when it is said of him, that the Messiah, the son of David, shall be David's Lord; that he was before Abraham, and had seen Abraham. They did not believe him so great as to have been from everlasting. Neither did they know him in his humiliation and death. "The Messiah," said they, "abideth ever, and this man says that he must die." believe him to be either mortal or eternal. in him nothing beyond a carnal greatness.

They did not

They expected

They so loved the material figure, and so exclusively devoted themselves to it, that they knew not the reality, even when it came at the time and in the manner foretold.

VI.

Skeptical men try to find their excuse in the unbelief of the Jews. If the truth was so clear, it is said, why did they not believe? But their rejection of Christ is one of the foundations of our confidence. We should have been much less inclined to believe, if they had all received him. We should thus have had a much ampler pretext for incredulity and distrust. It is wonderful to see the Jews ardently attached to the things predicted, yet bitterly hostile to their fulfilment; and to see that this very aversion was itself foretold.

VII.

To establish the Messiah's claim to confidence, it required that there should be prophecies going before him, and that they should be in the hands of men unsuspected, and of diligence, fidelity and zeal, extraordinary in their degree, and known to all men.

To attain this object, God chose this sensual nation, to whose care he committed the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a deliverer, and a dispenser of those earthly blessings which this people loved; they felt, therefore, an extraordinary regard for their prophets, and exhibited to the whole world those books in which the Messiah was foretold; assuring all nations that he would come, and that he would come in the mode predicted in those books, which they laid open to the whole world. But being deceived by the mean and ignominious advent of the Messiah, they became his greatest enemies. So that the peo

ple who, of all mankind, would be the least suspected of favoring the Christian scheme, are directly aiding it; and by their zeal for the law and the prophets, preserving with incorruptible scrupulosity, the record of their own condemnation, and the evidences of our religion.

VIII.

Those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, as an offence to them, are they who possess the books that bear witness of him, and that testify that he would be rejected as an offence to them. Thus, by their rejection of him, they marked him as the Messiah; and he has received testimony, both from the righteous Jew who received him, and from the unrighteous who rejected him ;-both these facts being foretold in their Scriptures.

For the same reason, the prophecies have a hidden sense, a spiritual meaning, to which the people were adverse, concealed under the carnal meaning which they loved. Had the spiritual meaning been evident, they had not the capacity to love it; and not approving it, they would have had little zeal for the preservation of their Scriptures and their ceremonies. And if they had loved these spiritual promises, and had preserved them uncorrupted to the days of the Messiah, their witness, as the witness of friends, would have had no force. On this account it seems good that the spiritual sense was concealed. But, on the other hand, if this sense had been so hidden, as not to be seen at all, it could not have served as a testimony to the Messiah. What, then, has God done? In the majority of passages, the spiritual was veiled under the temporal sense, whilst in a few, it was clearly discovered; moreover, the time and the state of the world, were so clearly foretold, that the sun