histories. We have to disentomb the remains of the Thebes and the Ninevehs to get at the history of their ancient monarchs, and to know their dynasties; while, by God's providence, that which gives some historic data to the glories of Mizraim and Ashur, confirms in its detail that of which we have already the minutest particulars in Israel's authentic history. We find, in pictures yet fresh on the lore-covered walls of the country of the Pharaohs, the very kinds of overseers over the Jews making their bricks, of which Moses speaks in the book of Exodus. Modern research alone has given the place and importance to those countries which the Scriptures had already assigned them."

The immediate occasion of the call of Abraham seems to have been the prevalence of idolatry in those early ages of the world. While those survived who had witnessed the deluge or indeed those who had held intercourse with such as had-we may well suppose that the fear of another such interposition of God's power in judgment would have a strong hold on men's minds. Satan, finding probably that it would be vain to attempt to eradicate these fears of supernatural agency, succeeded in turning them to his own account by inducing men to substitute for the true God, whom they traditionally knew, a host of imaginary deities who began to take God's place in their minds, as the objects of their homage and their dread. Satan himself, under this disguise, became the object of worship. These dupes of superstition and idolatry might not be aware of this but scripture tells us, that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God." 1 Cor. x, 20. The history of all this, as to the moral process by which it was brought about, we have in Rom. i, 21-25. When men generally had thus given up God for idols, "God gave them up" to all the well known horrors of paganism. Three times in the passage just referred to, we have this expression. "Wherefore God also gave them up." v. 24. "For this cause God gave them up." v. 26. "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." v. 28. It was from amid this mass of idolaters that Abraham was called. When God gave men up" to the delusions they had chosen, he did not leave himself without witness among men. Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the

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flood (i. e. the river) in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac." Josh. xxiv, 2, 3. Four hundred years and upwards elapsed before Abraham's offspring were manifested as a nation. This was not till their redemption out of Egypt; and with that event and those which immediately succeeded the passage through the wilderness, and their entrance into Canaan-their national history, properly speaking, begins.

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Two things must be obvious to every serious reader of the Old Testament. First, the nation of Israel was designed to be a standing testimony against idolatry—a testimony to the unity of God, and to the fact that Jehovah is the one, true God. Secondly, Israel was designed to be a specimen of the happiness-the prosperity-of a people living under the immediate government of Jehovah. As to the first point, need I quote such scriptures as the following? "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Ex. xx, 2, 3. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." Deut. vi, 4. Therefore, ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God." Isaiah xliii, 12. With regard to the second point, consider such scriptures as these. ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.......For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.' Lev. xxvi, 3-12. All this was conditional indeed on their obedience. So also are the blessings promised them in

Deut. xxviii. But the following passage is prophetic. "There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee: and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop dew. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places." Deut. xxxiii, 26-29. Hear the words of David also, "And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel, whom God went to redeem to be his own people, to make thee a name of greatness and terribleness, by driving out nations from before thy people, whom thou hast redeemed out of Egypt? For thy people Israel didst thou make thine own people for ever; and thou, Lord, becamest their God." 1 Chron. xvii, 20, 21. Not to multiply quotations, I give but one out of many which describe the effect upon the nations, of Israel's future restoration. "And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity, that I procure unto it." Jer. xxxiii, 9.

Such being God's objects in his dealings with the nation of Israel, let us now consider a little the way in which he has acted to bring them to pass. First of all, we find that he made choice of Abraham as the father of this people, and to him he made unconditional promises that his seed should possess the land of Canaan for an inalienable inheritance. These promises he even confirmed to him by an oath. He repeated the promises to Isaac and to Jacob. It is to be observed, moreover, that promises were made to Abraham that all the families of the earth should be blessed in him, Gen. xii, 3,—and in his seed, Gen. xxii, 18. That Christ was descended from Abraham the Holy Ghost has been careful to note at the beginning of the gospel by Matthew. The apostle Paul explicitly applies to Christ the term "Abraham's seed." He saith not, and to seeds as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ." Gal. iii, 16. This may be supposed by

some to nullify any special application of the promises to Abraham's seed according to the flesh-that is, to the nation of Israel. But surely it has no such meaning or intent as this. It simply shews that whether the subject be Israel's special privileges and blessings as promised to Abraham, or the participation of Gentiles in the promise that in him and in his seed should all the families of the earth be blessed, it is in Christ, the true seed of Abraham, that all will be fulfilled. All nations were not blessed in Abraham or his seed while the seed were under the law. The promised seed had first to come. The true Isaac had not only in intention, but in fact to be offered up. He had to be received back not "in a figure" but in reality from the dead, ere this promise could be fulfilled. The extension of the gospel to us sinners of the Gentiles is in part the fulfilment of this promise: it waits its full accomplishment when Christ the true seed shall be known and confessed

by Israel, the natural seed. The proof of this will fall under the second head of our present inquiry. I only notice the principle here. Gal. iii, 16, is supposed by many to set this principle aside; and it would hardly have been fair to quote the passage as above without noticing what some have thus alleged respecting it.

The promises to the fathers were unconditional: so were all the dealings of God with the nation of Israel, in redeeming it out of Egypt, and conducting it in grace as far as to Mount Sinai. There the law was given, the people having consented to receive it, and promised to keep it, as the condition of their continued blessing. With what result I need not inform my readers. Their dancing round the golden calf which Aaron had made for them to worship, was but the beginning of a course of disobedience and rebellion which characterized them throughout. God had long patience with them, and bore with their evil ways, introducing first one and then another principle on which he could graciously exercise his long-suffering towards them. The varied institutions and agencies in which these principles of God's ways were embodied, were all typical of better things to succeed. The tabernacle, with its priesthood, its sacrifices, and its services; the judges and the prophets who were raised up from time to time; as well as the royal dignities and authority of David and his offspring, all sustained this double character. Each for the time being was a link between God and the nation; while all were shadows of good things to come.

Priesthood, royalty, and prophecy were the three great institutions by which God maintained his connection with Israel. The latter indeed could scarcely in strictness be termed an institution, as prophecy was not successional, but dependent on the sovereign actings of God in grace, who raised up prophets, and sent them according to his own will. It is affecting to notice how each institution became in man's hands corrupt, and thus powerless for good, and even sometimes positively active in evil. When the nation had begun to depart from God after the death of Joshua, and God visited them with one chastening after another, judges were raised up by whom God delivered them out of the hands of their enemies, and governed them, generally throughout the life time of the judge. But for the whole of this period, the abiding, visible link between God and the people, was the tabernacle at Shiloh, with the priests who ministered there. In the days of Eli and his two sons, the priesthood itself became totally corrupted, and God not only gave the people into the hands of the Philistines, but put an end to the order of things which he had instituted at Shiloh. The ark was taken; the priests were slain; Eli, their aged father, fell down and brake his neck; and the wife of Phineas expired, naming her son to whom she was giving birth, "Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father-in-law and her husband." 1 Sam. iv. 21. It is of this crisis in Israel's history that the psalmist writes thus. "For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images. When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel: so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy's hand." Ps. lxxviii, 58-61. It was not long indeed before God vindicated his own name, and compelled the Philistines to restore the ark. But the ark and the sanctuary were never re-established at Shiloh; and everything was in an unsettled state till the son of Jesse was raised to the throne. After he had been used of God in subduing Israel's enemies all around, he brought up the ark in triumph to Jerusalem; and there, in the temple reared for it by his son, it found a resting place during the days of the kingdom.

It was in the counsels of God from the beginning, that royalty should be established in Israel, and that he whom