תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

they may call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent."-Zeph. 39. In this, the Jewish nation seems to be particularly in view, as if they were to take the lead in the return to the primitive ground left so early by the Gentile professors. Coming fully upon the true ground of the Church, as marked out in the New Testament, they will awaken the right-hearted ones who are not of that nation, to the true practice. And thus, to use the language of a historian of the Church, (Milner,) "we shall see again primitive apostolic faith and practice visit our earth in all their genuine simplicity and beauty." We are told that the return of the children of Abraham to God, will be as life from the dead to others.-(Rom. 11: 15.)-and how striking would it be so in this event.

CHAPTER XI.

AGENCY OF THE RESTORED JEWS IN EVANGE

LIZING THE WORLD.

Ir is reasonably conceived that one design which infinite wisdom may have in view in the conversion of the Jews, and their restoration to the Holy Land, is the agency they may thereby exert in evangelizing that part of the world which will yet remain to be effected by the Gospel. We are assured that when they cease from their unbelief, and are re-engrafted into their own olive tree, "their riches will be the fullness of the Gentiles." (See Rom. 11: 12, 23.) From what we have already considered, we may conceive how this may be. Not only wid the event of their conversion quicken the feelings of believers of the genuine stamp, who shall witness it or hear of it, but the converted race, having the Gospel in its fullness, both in sentiment and practice, and various circumstances concurring to facilitate their agency, the Gospel may thereby be planted in all the ends of the earth.

The Gentile Church is not in a condition for accomplishing this. For thirty years past, efforts have been made, and that on an extensive scale, for converting what is denominated the unchristianized, or heathen world, to Christianity-but with little success, certainly not with such as will in any wise compare with that of the early prop

agators of our divine religion. And how could it be? How could the Head of the Church convert the world by such agency ? What is the Christianity of the Gentile Church, even the best part of it-the Protestant? Generally, it is a religion that rebukes not war, except in what it would term the abuses of war, and war in some of its grosser forms; whose ministers are chaplains, and its members are officers, soldiers and marines in the armies and navies of what is called Christendom: a religion that is incorporated with human governments, continually having to do with secular politics, so chilling and blighting to Christian character: that conforms to the spirit and usages of the world: whose professors are, many of them, proud, ambitious, lovers of the world, lovers of pleasure, avaricious, full of peculations, fraudulent and unrighteous in their deal. ings, given to oppression, (unconscious that Christianity is benevolent, requiring that we treat our fellow men as we would have them freat us,) using their fellow beings as brutes-yea, some of whose leading professors, in seeking the conversion of pagans to the Christian faith, invite and persuade men to throw into their treasuries the price of oppression and pollution, to aid in that object, having become so darkened in their perceptions of the true spirit and the precepts of Christianity, and to the character of that Savior whose cause they professedly advocate! Is this that lovely religion which came down from heaven, taught by the Redeemer in person and afterwards by his Apostles and Martyrs? If it be not

a corrupt and degenerate Christianity-if it be not, to a great extent, Anti-Christianity, certainly the New Testament affords no criterion by which we may determine what is true and what false. And can such an instrumentality convert the hea then world to Christ? It is painful to be obliged to speak thus. As one among my dying fellow men, passing on to the Judgment, and as being not my own, but his who hath bought us with so great a price, I feel bound to declare it. Ministers and laymen now engaged in missionary operations, will be reluctant to believe that it is the defective character of their own, and the Churches' religion which hinders the success of their efforts; but it is apprehended that they will ultimately find this to be the chief cause. A little while, and "Time will be no longer"-the last great spread of the Gospel is soon to occur and it must be a spread of the genuine Gospel-must be the religion of the Son of God in its purity. He will have a pure Church at last, and if the Gentiles are not qualified for the agency of its construction, he will take the work out of their hands, and commit it to those of the regenerated Jews, that they may glorify him, in being the means for calling the extremes of the earth into his kingdom.

*The following occurs in a letter from a devoted Missionary in the East:-"Formerly I had great hopes from the piety of Missionaries; but of late it has been my prevailing opinion, that God will never permit the present low, worldly standard of piety in the CHURCH to be presented to the nations to be converted." And we may add, not only the "low standard of piety in," but the adulterated religion of the Church, "will never be permitted to be presented to the nations to be converted."

G

It appears their land will be the great central locality, the great Christian Metropolis for the world. "And thou, O Tower of the flock, the strong-hold of the daughter of Zion! the kingdom shall come to the daughters of Jerusalem." Mic. 4: 8. Farther, it is said in the same chapter, (as well as in 2d of Isaiah,) “And many nations shall come, and say come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." A pure Christianity once was sent forth from Jerusalem for all the worldwhy should it not be so again? The way will have become prepared for its becoming the centre of missions, as the Jews will be peculiarly qualified in various respects for going forth to proclaim the Gospel to the surrounding world, and to the people coming up to Jerusalem to inquire for the true Christianity.

So many wonderful things are there in the history of the descendants of Abraham, it would not be more surprising, if there yet should be a literal fulfilment of the prophecy recorded, Ezek. 38th and 39th chapters, Zech. 14th, and elsewhere, of the gathering of the unconverted nations hereafter in Palestine, for the extermination of the Jews; nor if the Redeemer should come personally for the destruction of those enemies at the judgment of the world-yea, to stand on Mount Olivet, whence he ascended, or appear immediately above it, as we read, Zechariah 14: 4, 5.

« הקודםהמשך »