which all preceding times, like so many tributary streams, meet and unite.

I. Commencing, then, with the greater promise of the Covenant,-" In thee," or (as in the repetition of it, ch. xviii. 18, and elsewhere), "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,"—that,

1. In the first place, the "Seed" intended was the Saviour Christ, Abraham himself would, it were to be inferred, apprehend, even though we had not been expressly told that he did so. For he would see that this promise to him was only the determination to one of his race of the original promise given to man in Eden. There, the Redeemer was foretold as "the seed of the woman:" here it is said "in thy seed." There, as "the Son of Man :" here as "the son of Abraham." And so accordingly our Lord saith, speaking to the Jews, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad.” In the power of that faith which is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," he anticipated the fulfilment of the promise: and more, he received an earnest of it in the birth of Isaac, in reference to which event the Apostle says that, "after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise." (Heb. vi. 15.)

2. Again, in the light of that same prophecy, he could not fail also to interpret rightly in its main provisions the "blessing" to be vouchsafed through this same seed." For he would regard it as iden

tical with the bruising of the Serpent's head there foretold, and the consequent removal of the curse entailed by the Fall. "This [rightly here observes the same author last quoted], it was too plain in the time of Abraham, had not been done. There were no signs in the Flood, nor in anything before or after it, that the worst evil of the Fall had been done away. The moral interdict, the primeval sentence, therefore, remained; and when a general blessing, to extend to all the nations of the earth, was revealed, it could not be understood otherwise than as applying to the redemption of man from the state of condemnation into which he had passed. The Evil and the Blessing would explain each other."

3. But when it is asserted that now is the accomplishment, as of that first promise, so of this; the fact is disproved, in the one instance as in the other, by the words of the prophecy taken in their strict acceptation; confirmed, not only by those Scriptures (already referred to in the first of these Lectures) which reveal the issue of this dispensation, but by all those which speak of its distinctive character and object.

True, as "the Seed of the woman" who should be man's deliverer from his spiritual enemy, so "the Seed of Abraham," in whom all nations should be blessed, has appeared in the words of one of the heralds of the Saviour's birth-" To give knowledge of salvation to His people [Israel] by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God: whereby the

day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (St. Luke, i. 77-79). And in another and most important sense this great promise of the Abrahamic covenant is now being realized in that Gentiles (among whom are we ourselves) are favoured with that light and admitted to a participation of the blessing formerly limited to one chosen people. As St. Paul says, exposing the fallacy of the Jews' exclusive pretension to it, Gal. iii. 8, 9, "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen [the nations or Gentiles] through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." And again, arguing against their fatal error, that the Law gives the title to it, which, on the contrary, is "the ministration of condemnation" as the witness to man's unrighteousness -ver. 13, 14, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."

But that this blessing of the Gentiles is only the earnest, not the fulfilment, of that here predicted; the "first fruits," not the "harvest;" is evident from this-that, whereas the promise is of national and universal blessing, the present is a dispensation of election, differing only from the preceding in the fact that then the election was of one nation, now it is out of all the nations: the calling of a Church out of

G

the world (which word "Church,"* it should be observed, is synonymous with the word "election"): the "taking of a people out of the Gentiles for the name of God," not the general conversion of the Gentiles; to quote the words of an Apostle on the report to the Church at Jerusalem of the progress of that work which began with the mission of Peter to Cornelius,-" Simon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name" (Acts, xv. 14). With which agrees the whole tenor of the New Testament Scriptures-Epistles addressed as they are for the most part to the Churches, i. e. to the people so taken out in various localities; and uniformly proceeding on the supposition that the purpose in the Church's calling, to the end of this dispensation, is the same as that of the election from the first at the call of Abraham-to maintain the truth in the earth in arrest of "the course of this world," which is now, as then, the course of apostacy, though under different forms: then of idolatry, now of Antichristianity; then of "lawlessness" (ávoμía) against God, now of lawlessness against Christ.†

It is indeed written in our Lord's last prophecy, recorded in St. Matt. xxiv., that "the Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world.... and

* 'Ekkλŋoiu, a calling out from the mass of mankind.

† See 2 Thess. ch. ii., which is a complete historical prophecy of this dispensation: beginning with the working of “the mystery of iniquity" (avouías), and ending with its "revelation" and judgment at the Lord's coming.

then shall the end come" (ver. 14),-"the end of this age, "* of which the disciples had inquired in connexion with "the sign of His coming," ver. 3. But it is added, "for a witness unto all nations:" and with a result how far different from their conversioneven the precipitating to its decision the controversy long pending respecting the sovereignty of Christ, to which the Church all along has borne testimony in opposition to the world-the same prophecy tells us, as well as the subsequent prophecies of that same period, which (we have seen) represent it to be the antetype of " the days of Noah," and the nations to be then associated in that confederacy of "the ungodly" upon which Enoch has foretold that "the Lord cometh to execute judgment." Which done-when, as the first step towards the asserting of His power against these opposers of His kingdom, "He shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel," -then-the hindrance to national conversion being removed, and the divine purpose in the election answeredshall the blessing of Abraham come upon the Gentiles in its fulness; then, according to "the decree of Jehovah," long since gone forth but still in suspense, to Christ, set as King upon His holy hill of Zion, "He shall give the heathen [the nations] for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession."—(Ps. ii.)

But this, the time and manner of the fulfilment

*

Tậs ounterclas toi cavos. Comp. ch. xiii. 39, 40: Gr.