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dismayed, O Israel, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of captivity. I am with thee to save thee though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee-all that devour thee shall be devoured, and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil. I will restore health to thee, I will heal thy wounds, because they call thee an outcast, saying, this is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.

The city shall be

the palace shall

builded upon her own heap, and remain after the manner thereof. I will multiply them, and they shall not be few, and their children shall be as aforetime. Their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed out of the midst of them." This quotation is compressed, and a reference to the text is desirable, where it will be seen, that the promise is conveyed most distinctly to Israel, (the ten tribes) and also to Judah with Benjamin, over whom the seed of David reigned. It is to both one, and the other of them. Their seed collectively shall be called Zion, and shall be brought back into the land of their fathers to possess it. The city shall be re-built on its own heap. The Lord will multiply, and will also glorify their congregation :— and at the time when this is done, which, the prophet adds, shall be in the latter days, a whirlwind from the Lord shall go forth with fury, falling upon the head

of the wicked, and it shall not return till it has performed it. The date of this prophecy is after the carrying away of the ten tribes, and a few years before the Babylonish captivity.

Ezekiel xxxvii. prophesies of the same things. The whole house of Israel shall be placed in their own land. The prophet, by the emblem of two sticks united into one in the Lord's hand, is commanded to shew the joining together of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel his companions, with Judah, and the children of Israel his companions, in the latter day. The Lord will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel-" They shall walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes to do them," saith the Lord, "and they shall dwell in the land, which I have given to Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt, they and their children, and their childrens' children for ever. And the heathen shall know that I do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.” This prophecy seems to have been delivered after the Babylonish captivity; but the return of the Jews from that captivity, can never be insisted upon as an accomplishment of the prophecy, for Israel did not then return with Judah, nor were they united into one nation upon the mountains of Israel.

The only additional authority which shall be here adduced at length, is that of the Apostle Paul, in Rom xi.-It should seem, as if the Christian Church in those days, had already begun to doubt the fact of the children of Israel being ordained to be brought back, as a nation into their own land; and they probably then considered, as many now do, that the conversion of the Gentiles, and of the Jews, individually to the faith of Jesus Christ, was all that was to be expected as the fulfilment of that word of prophecy; and that the distinguishing features and polity of the Jews, as a nation, would thus at length gradually wear away, and Jew and Gentile lose all' distinction in the universal spread of the gospel. The apostle reproves the saints in Rome for their blindness upon this matter: he explains to them (see Rom. x.) that although Israel, stumbling at that stumbling-stone, the doctrine of the cross of Christ, had not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, and had thus disobeyed the gospel, yet God had "not cast away his people which he foreknew," for that the election of grace amongst the children of Israel, had obtained the blessing, though the rest were blinded. The words his people, allude to the children of Israel according to the flesh, as the whole context shews, for none others are spoken of: and the apostle says of them, they have stumbled,

not that they should fall, finally, but that through their present fall, or stumbling, salvation might come unto the Gentiles; signifying, that the gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, was come to the Gentiles through the casting off of the Lord's ancient people. The apostle then adds: if the casting away of Israel be the reconciliation of the world, how much more shall the riches of grace abound to the Gentile world, through the in-gathering of Israel: he reminds them, that Israel is the natural branch of the true olive-tree, which has been broken off, and the Gentiles, which are the wild olive-tree, are graffed in contrary to nature; and he assures them in terms the most decisive, that a time certainly shall come, when the children of Israel, as the natural branches, shall be graffed into their own olive-tree. In other words he adds, "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in and so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, there shall come out of Zion The Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins." The apostle moreover exhorts the Church at Rome, to pay due regard to this great mystery, "lest they should be wise in their own conceits."

Many other parts of Scripture will be found in

exact unison with the texts which have been just referred to; and for the further satisfaction of such readers as may desire it, the following are pointed out to their attention:-Psalms xxii. XXV. CXXV. exxviii. cxxx. CXXXV. cxlvii. cxlix.-Isaiah xix. xxvii. xli. xlv. to the end.-Jeremiah xxxiii. and xlix. to the end.-Ezekiel xx. and xxxviii. to the end.-Daniel xii. and all the minor prophets without exception. The passages indeed are so numerous throughout the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, that a selection is unnecessary.

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