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their mission, and the truth of their doctrine. teacher, who comes destitute of such a sanction, can claim no credit, but will be deemed an impostor.

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Among the numerous miracles Henoch and Elias will perform, here is particular mention of some. If any one offers to hurt them, to injure them, or attempt to seize them in order to put them to death, fire will come out of their mouths, or, they will command fire to come forth and devour those enemies. The same terrible punishment Elias, while on earth, inflicted upon the fifty men, whom king Ochozias sent to apprehend hin. The captain of the fifty men, said to Elias: Man of God, the king has commanded that thou come down. Elias answering, said to the captain of the fifty: If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven and consumed him and the fifty that were with him." 4 Kings i. 9, 10. The second miracle of Henoch and Elias mentioned in our text is, that they will shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy. At their command, no rain will fall during the three years and a half of their preaching: which drought will naturally produce a famine. This calamity they will probably be inspired to call for, in order to make mankind sensible of the wrath of God that is armed against them, to induce them to enter into themselves, and withdraw from their evil ways. Elias had formerly worked the same wonder, as we learn from the third book of Kings, where he is introduced speaking to Achab, king of Israel, in the following manner: Elias the Thesite said to Achab: As the Lord liveth, the God of Israel, in whose sight I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to the words of my mouth” 3 Kings xvii. 1. This drought, announced by Elias, lasted three years and a half, as we learn from St. Luke's Gospel, c. 4. v. 25, and St. James' Epistle, c. 5. v. 17. The third miracle ascribed to the two wonder-workers is the turning waters into blood. This was also performed in Egypt by Moses. In fine, it is said they will have power to strike the earth with all plagues as often as they will. Here is then a general power put into their hands to inflict on mankind whatsoever calamities and disasters they may judge proper, either for their own defence, or to punish the enemies of God, or to bring men back to a sense of religion. Such surprising wonders worked by the hands of Henoch and Elias will undoubtedly make impression upon mankind, and being enforced by a vigorous preaching will bring many to repentance.

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quickly do these things to you: I will quickly visit you with I will set my face against you, and you poverty, &c. shall fall down before your enemies. And I will scatter you among the gentiles." But then the Almighty presently after adds: "And yet for all that, when they were in the land of their enemies, I did not cast them off altogether, neither did I so despise them, that they should be quite consumed, and I should make void my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God." Levit. xxvi. 15, &c.

He spoke again by his prophet Amos: "Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth: but yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord." Amos ix. 8. Unfaithful to their God, they frequently offended, he frequently punished them; and as often as they returned and implored his forgiveness, as often he forgave and again cherished them. When their ingratitude had grown to such a height, as totally to abandon their indulgent Father and their God, and by a base prostitution to transfer to stocks and stones the worship due to him, and even obstinately to persist in their idolatry, notwithstanding the constant proaches he made them: he in his just anger banished them from their native land, and delivered them over to their enemies. The ten tribes, which formed the kingdom of Israel, were carried away slaves into Assyria; whence they afterwards dispersed themselves into other countries.

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The tribes of Juda and Benjamin, of which consisted the kingdom of Juda, were removed to Babylon by Nabuchodonosor, where they were subjected to a severe captivity for seventy years. These bounds of time God set to his justice, and then the affection of the Father returned. They repented of their iniquities; he replaced them in their country, and renewed his blessings to them. Some of the Israelites returned also from Assyria, and uniting themselves to the Jews, formed one body with them.

After a period of years, the term arrived, in which their fidelity was to be put to the strictest test. The principal of all the divine dispensations to man, the redemption of the world, was now to be performed. The great personage, the Son of God, who was to execute the work, had been announced to the Jews by their prophets, and was to be born of their race. A command from heaven had been given them, through the channel of the same prophets, to receive him as their promised Messiah, to acknowedge him for their new Le

gislator, and to accept his doctrine and laws in lieu of those they had hitherto followed; and that they might not mistake his person, their prophets had given them a full description of his character, of the time of his coming, of the tenor of his life, and his extraordinary miraculous works. But when he appeared, his character and garb not answering to the carnal notions they had formed to themselves of his supposed power and grandeur, they refused to receive him. They expected in their Messiah, a mighty conqueror, a potent monarch, who would raise them above all other nations. They would not understand that the blessings designed by the divine wisdom to adorn and signalize the Messiah, were of a far nobler, sublimer, and more lasting nature, than all that worldly pomp and imaginary dominion their hearts were set upon. As therefore these temporal views and expectations they did not find in the humble and low condition in which Christ appeared, they rejected their God and Saviour, they despised his doctrine, they contemned and blasphemed his miracles, they treated his sacred person with the utmost indignity, and even proceeded to such an unparalleled instance of impiety, as to put him to death. This enormous crime, the greatest they had been or could be guilty of, drew the whole torrent of divine wrath upon them. They had said: "His blood be upon us, and upon our children." Matt. xxvii. 25. And effectually their horrible imprecations fell upon their own heads and upon their children also. Within less than the space of forty years after, the Almighty sent upon them his scourge; the Romans, who ravaged their country, destroyed their city and temple; and after that an innumerable multitude of them had perished by famine, plague, and the sword, the remainder were expelled Judea, and scattered over the whole face of the earth, conformably to the prediction of our Saviour: "There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people, (the Jews.) And they shall fall by the edge of the sword; and shall be led away captives into all nations." Luke xxi. 23, 24. In this desolate condition, without any fixed abode or government, the contempt of mankind, they have remained for 1700 years, and thus they still continue a dreadful and lasting monument of the divine indignation.

But it must be observed that, notwithstanding this most terrible, most severe, and most lasting of all the punishments the Almighty has inflicted upon the Jews, nevertheless he has not utterly exterminated them. Their race subsists, and

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is very numerous. The calamities and oppression they have undergone, would probably have extinguished any other people, but they are still preserved by a special protection for a future great purpose. The manifold benefits the Saviour of mankind came to confer on the world, were first offered to the Jews, but being rejected, they were transferred to the Gentiles who took the place of that people in the favour of God. Therefore I say to you, (the Messiah told them,) that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof." Matth. xxi. 43. consequence of this divine determination, the light of faith and the happy tidings of salvation were carried to other nations, that lay buried in gross ignorance, and in the darkness of idolatry; they were taught the true knowledge of God, and of Christ their Saviour, which they embraced, and became the people of God by becoming Christians. But when the merciful dispensations of heaven to the Gentiles shall be completed, that is, when the gospel of Christ shall have been fully preached to mankind, and the number of converts to Christianity, designed by the Almighty, shall be filled up, and the end of the world approaching, then the last posterity of the Jewish people shall experience that bounty, which the Almighty has hitherto suspended for many ages, but in his mercy has kept in reserve for them.

He will then take from them their heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh; he will make them sensible of their past blindness and obstinacy, will open their eyes to acknowledge Christ their Messiah and Saviour, and in fine by making them Christians, will receive them anew into his favour. This doctrine we learn from St. Paul: " hath God cast away his people," (the Jews,) says he; "God forbid.-For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part hath happened in Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles should come in; and so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written there shall come out of Sion, He that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: and this is to them my covenant: when I shall take away their sins." Rom. xi. 25, 26, 27. This passage of St. Paul expresses so fully the future conversion of the Jews to Christianity, that on it, as chief basis, is built the sentiment of the fathers of the Church, who are so unanimous on that head, that it is needless to quote any of them.

The dispersion therefore of the Jews and their long captivi

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ty are to have a period, but a period determined by that event, the vocation of the Gentiles to the faith, which when fulfilled, the Jews are to be re-assembled from all the corners of the earth, will be converted to Christianity, and re-established in that same land they formerly inhabited, and which was given by the Almighty himself to their ancestors. This singular economy of God towards that people is also in part made known to us by our Saviour, in those his words: They (the Jews) shall be led away captives into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, till the times of the nations be fulfilled." Luke xxi. 24. But the whole is beautifully described by many of the ancient prophets. A few of those instances shall here be put down. Thus prophesied Azarias, in the reign of Asa, king of Juda: "Many days shall pass in Israel, without the true God, and without a priest or teacher, and without the law. And when in their distress they shall return to the Lord, the God of Israel, and shall seek him, they shall find him." 2 Paralip. xv. 3, 4. Thus spoke the prophet Osee, about 800 years before Christ: "The children of Israel shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, without altar, and without Ephod, and without theraphim: and after this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and they shall fear the Lord and his goodness, in the last days," c. 3. v. 4, 5. Here the prophet first describes the present forlorn state of the Jews, without either fixed settlement or government, temple or sacrifice then he informs us, that in the last days they will return to God and seek David their king, that is, the true Messiah, Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David and his successor in the kingdom of Juda. And it shall come to pass in that day," says the prophet Isaiah, "that the Lord shall set his hand the second time to possess the remnant of his people, which shall be left from the Assyrians, and from Egypt, and from Phetros, and from Ethiopia, and from Elam, and from Senaar, and from Emath, and from the Islands of the sea; and he shall set up a standard unto the nations, and shall assemble the fugitives of Israel, and shall gather together the dispersed of Juda, from the four quarters of the earth,” xi. 11. The prophet Jeremiah prophesies on the same subject, in the following strain: "Behold the whirlwind of the Lord, his fury going forth a violent storm, it shall rest upon the head of the wicked. The Lord will not turn away the wrath of his indignation, till he have executed and performed the thoughts

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