Babylonian exile disproves the truth of this prediction" (of Jacob) considered as foretelling" that the tribe of Judah should not cease to exist as a people, with a government of its own, till the Redeemer should appear;" or "the period of unbelief and apostacy, which is now passing away [quære "passing away"?] destroys the truth of the promise which Christ gave to His New Testament Church."

This must be conceded: at the same time it is for the serious consideration of those who adopt his interpretation of the prophecies, that if the promises to Israel and the oath to David be explained away as mere imagery and figures of speech, it would be difficult to specify "a promise to the New Testament Church," or a prophecy of Christ's kingdom, that is of any certain signification.

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The Theocratic definition of " the sceptre," proposed in this Lecture, suggested itself to my mind a long time ago, and, with the substance of the argument here, was the subject of one of a series of articles on these early prophecies, contributed to a theological periodical (now discontinued), in 1838. Since then my attention was drawn to the fact that it had been proposed by Bishop Warburton in his "Divine Legation of Moses," book v., sect. iii., subsect. 3, where—having argued (and in my judgment conclusively) against various explanations of it as the emblem of the civil polity of the Jews, and among them that which represents it to denote a tribal sceptre only, he concludes, “that the true and real meaning of the Sceptre of Judah' is that THEOCRATIC GOVERNMENT which God, by the vicegerency of judges, kings, and rulers, exercised over the Jewish nation;" and which, he shows, continued to the coming of Christ, till which time "there never was any 'Lawgiver' in Judah but God, by the ministry of Moses." But I need not say that an author who regards the whole Mosaic Dispensa

tion as one of merely temporal promise, and the election of Israel as likewise temporary in its purposes, sees no reference of this prophecy beyond the first coming of Christ; when, he asserts, the kingdom in question was "abolished," and the sceptre departed from Judah for ever.

Bishop Horsley also takes the same view in the second of his sermons on the forty-fifth Psalm,-where, speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem, "when their city was laid in ruins, their temple demolished and burnt, and the forms of the Mosaic worship abolished," he adds, "then it was that the sceptre of ecclesiastical sway (for that is the 'sceptre' meant in Jacob's famous prophecy) departed from Judah. The Jews were no longer the depositories of the laws and oracles of God; they were no longer to take the lead in matters of religion and worship." But that he did not believe that this sceptre has for ever departed is plain (as from all his works, so) from this same series of sermons; in the last of which, for example, he thus states the order of the conversion of the world to Christ with reference to St. Paul's prediction, Rom. xi.:-"First, the rejection of the unbelieving Jews; then the first call of the Gentiles;-then the recovery of the Jews, after a long season of obstinacy and blindness, at last provoked to emulation, brought to a right understanding of God's dispensations by that very call (of the Gentiles) which hitherto has been one of their stumblingblocks; and lastly, in consequence of the conversion of the Jews, a prodigious influx from the Gentile nations yet unconverted." And this (he further observes) in connexion with "the cheering hope of the second coming of our Lord, who surely cometh to turn away ungodliness from Jacob,' and set up a standard to the nations which yet sit in darkness and the shadow of death." See also his second Sermon on St. Matt. xxiv. 3, where he speaks of the circumstances attending "the re-establishment of the Jewish kingdom.”

LECTURE VI.

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THE following additional prophecies relating to this second Exodus I have before quoted in full in " Lectures on the Second Advent and connected Events:" Lect. v.; where the whole subject of the Jewish Restoration is considered in its order and results:-Isa. xxvii. 12, 13; xliii. 16-21; li. 9-16; lii. 9-12; lxii. 10-12. Ezek. xx. 33-38. Hosea, ii. 14-20. To which add, Isa. xli. 18-21; lv. 12, 13. Ezek. xxxiv. 11, 12. Zech. x. 6-end. Ps. lxviii. 22, 23.

The divinity student is also referred to the concluding Lecture of Dr. Graves on the Pentateuch, "On the Future Conversion and Restoration of the Jews:" and "Bishop Newton's Dissertations," No. XXVI., sect. IV.

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This typical character of the Mosaic Dispensation, and of the Law under which Canaan was possessed, affords another confutation of the opinion of those who argue from the temporal nature of its blessings and promises that it contained no promise of a better and enduring inheritance, no hope of a future life in a "world to come." Though independent of this, and admitting that the Law were utterly silent as to this hope, it would by no means follow that it was not entertained and cherished by the believers under that dispensation; since, we have seen, it had been revealed —and not indistinctly-in the promises that went before, beginning with the first; in the faith of which we are told that all the patriarchs died: a faith which it cannot be supposed would have been lost to their descendants. For (as well said in a passage which contrasts strikingly with one above quoted from the same author)-"The Law in its sanctions is only positive that God will do so much, not exclu

sive that He will do no more: and more He had before promised that he would do." "The promise of the

universal blessing, with which this people began its existence, still waited its accomplishment. By that promise to Abraham some order of things different from the possession of Canaan which could not be the basis of an universal blessing; some institution different from their law, which did not admit of an universal use, was necessarily implied. To the large scope of this suspended prophecy the capacity neither of their country nor their law corresponded: yet it was a branch of the Covenant made with Abraham; it was confirmed by being often repeated; and God for ever reminded them of this whole Covenant by taking to Himself the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' and making that Name the medium of His federal communication with them. The promise itself was conspicuous in its kind: it had, therefore, wherewith to command their attention in turning their thoughts to some object beyond what they saw."* And it has been shown that it looked far beyond it, much farther than he would say,-beyond even the first advent to the second,-beyond this dispensation to "the dispensation of the fulness of the times."

But it is not true that the Dispensation itself was without its intimations of a future state and of the life to come. For, on the contrary, those its blessings and promises, temporal though they were, carried with them each such intimations. They were typical to correspond with the typical character of the land to which they related and by which they were bounded. It was a type of the renewed world—the "world" (ỏ Kósμos) of which the "inheritance" was promised to Abraham and his seed in Christ-in those very features, among others, which formed the special subject of promise and blessing to its inhabitants: such, for example, as its extra

*Davison, ut supra, Discourse IV., Sect. IV. V.

ordinary fertility; and, in the sabbatical years and years of jubilee, its spontaneous produce, in connexion with the law of universal release and restitution at those periods, and the return of each family to its inheritance; and, in general, the many blessings flowing from the righteous government and constitution under which it was possessed, in proportion as its laws were carried into effect and that obedience to them rendered which was the condition of the blessing. And were it credible that the import of all this could fail to be apprehended, and that the design of God should be misinterpreted to be the concentrating of His people's desires in Canaan alone, and the fixing their hopes on “the things seen and temporal" to the exclusion of " the things not seen and eternal:" could it be supposed that the great verity thus foreshadowed was not apprehended, and that the type would not be read, if not in its own light, in the light of the antecedent promise of which this possession of the land was the earnest and pledge: there was superadded a continuous stream of contemporary prophecy, which in this instance was more than an "insinuation,”—a clear and intelligible promise. For if this (as again truly observes the last quoted author, speaking of the Levitical ordinances) would lead the religious and reflecting mind to look beyond the types of the Ceremonial Law to" some more efficacious mode of atonement" than was provided by "the blood of bulls and of goats," and to aspire "after an inward purity which bodily lustration might represent, but could not supply," by its "speaking more and more to the disparagement of the legal and Levitical worship, at the same time that it pressed the Moral Law and enlarged upon the promises and mercies of the Christian covenant" (e. g. Ps. li. 16, 17, with 2-6, 1. 7-14. Isa. i. 11-17. Micah, vi. 6-8, &c.): so (he might have added), it would also lead such to look beyond the possession of Canaan to another and better inheritance, by the "glorious things" spoken of that land