region of the earth. It does not appear, therefore, that any special duty of Christians is involved in this predicted lot of Israel, except so far as governmental action may be requisite in removing the political obstacles that stand in the way of the event. Farther than this we do not perceive that Christian interference is called for. The Jews may be safely left to themselves to carry out, under their own promptings, the accomplishment of their own destiny in this respect. The great work of Christians, in the mean time, is to labor for their conversion. In this they are undoubtedly authorized to look for a considerable measure of success, though it be admitted that the bulk of the nation is not to be converted till after their restoration; for it is only upon the coming together of bone to his bone that the Spirit of life comes into them, and they stand up an exceeding great army.

We are well aware that a multitude of queries may be started relative to the ultimate end to be compassed by the event here announced. The question of the cui bono is a very natural one to be urged in this connexion. To this we may very properly reply, that our inability to discover an adequate end of such a movement of Providence is not sufficient to countervail the evidence of the fact, provided that fact be made out by a logical competency of proof. Our business is with the evidence of the fact, and until the evidence which we have adduced from the present and kindred prophecies be overthrown, we see no grounds to be troubled on the score of the reasons by which the divine counsels are governed. We are at best but poorly qualified to sit in judgment upon the ultimate purposes of the Most High. Their fathomless depths mock the soundings of reason's profoundest plummet. In how many instances, in his past dispensations, has God brought the course of events to issues which would never have entered into the imagination of men or angels? Were the whole hierarchy of heaven to be empannelled in one grand jury of inquest on the final aims of any one of the divine proceedings, how easily might their findings be baffled! We say, then, that arguments drawn from human ignorance are not properly to be arrayed against conclusions to which we are brought by a legitimate train of proof. The true question is, whether God hath said. that he will do it. Our object has been to show that he has; and if we have succeeded in this, our conclusion must stand, whether we can see the reasons of it or not. Every sound principle of hermeneutics reclaims against a construction of the prophet's language which would turn it into some vague and mystical allusion of a purely spiritual import, involving nothing of a literal sense.

!

As we read the lively oracles we gather, indeed, no intimation. that there is to be, properly speaking, any new dispensation to be accorded to man on the earth. But there may doubtless be new

phases or features of the present Christian dispensation in the ages of coming time. The development of the grand destinies of Christianity may very possibly be of an exceedingly strange and astounding character; and if we could fully grasp them from our present position, they would perhaps fill us with an astonishment similar to that which would have struck the mind of an ancient Israelite, could he have looked forward some few centuries, and have seen the entire abolition of Judaism with its gorgeous rites-its smoking altars -its mitred priests--and its varied services. As the sublime counsels of Jehovah go into accomplishment, they often present themselves in new aspects, so that while they actually realize the very letter of prophecy that was before our eyes, we are at the same time filled with overwhelming wonder at the glory of the truth, and at our own obtuseness in not previously perceiving it.

In the present case, however, we can well conceive that one purpose of immense moment may be answered by such an event as the literal return of the Jews to the land of their fathers; and that is the effect it shall have on the conversion of the world. It will not only rend the veil from a thousand prophecies, hitherto wrapped in obscurity, but it will give a new and irresistible impulse to the moral conquest of the nations. The simple contemplation of the fact, that the seed of Jacob, after centuries of dispersion, oppression, and misery, are, in exact accordance with the letter of inspiration, brought again to their own borders, and invested with pre-eminent dignities and favors, will of itself exert a moral influence such as we can now but inadequately conceive. Infidelity will be silenced for ever, and the world struck dumb by the occurrence of a virtual theophany made manifest before their eyes. When the Most High descended in all the pomp of the Godhead upon the flaming summit of Sinai, and there delivered his law and avouched the seed of Jacob as his peculiar people, the transaction occurred in an obscure region of the earth, far removed from the eyes of the rest of the world, who little dreamt of the sublime exhibition that was then making to a comparative handful of the human race. But the event we are now considering will be as conspicuous as the other was latent. It will occur in the full view of the whole civilized world. It will blaze with notoriety. It will flash a splendid demonstration upon all kindreds and tongues of the truth of revelation, which no sophistry can elude, no obduracy resist. "The way," says Mr. Bickersteth," in which the restoration of the Jews will affect all nations is becoming increasingly evident from facts that are arising before our eyes and from the dispersion of the Jews among all nations. Where have they not been scattered, and into what part of the earth have they not been meted out? They are spread over the East. They pervade each kingdom of the Western Roman

empire. Russia, and Poland, and Prussia, have millions of Jews. The last Russian census gives 1,080,224 Jews in Russia, apart from Poland. Africa and America are not without them. How can they be gathered from the Niger to the Volga; from remotest China in the East, to Portugal in the West, and from each accessible country of North and South America, without moving every land, and making known throughout the world the wonderful works of God?" (Restor. of the Jews, p .221.)

But this is not all. A christianized Judaism will not remain an inert element in the system of influences which are destined to transform the moral aspect of mankind. The law is yet appointed to go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The same predictions which secure the return of the Jews to the land of their fathers, and their conversion to the faith of Christ, enwrap also the intimation that they shall spontaneously assume the work of propagating the knowledge of that Messiah whom they have been so tardy in confessing. Provoked to a holy jealousy by the prior labors of the Gentiles in this behalf, and nerved by the zeal of men who have been called into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, they will rush upon the work of the world's evangelization with the glowing ardor of those "living creatures"--those cherubic ministers-who ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning." "And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Put, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren an offering unto the Lord, out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain, Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord."

"

In the accomplishment of any great event of Providence the power of the divine hand is manifest in proportion to the magnitude of the obstacles to be overcome. In the case of the Jews this consideration weighs in its utmost force. It is not a physical but a moral resistance that is to be encountered, and this affords to the reflecting mind a higher idea of the divine omnipotence than any miracle wrought by suspension of the laws which govern the natural world. What is the cleaving of a flood to the conquest of a rebellious spirit? What the bringing forth of water from the smitten rock, to the eliciting of penitential tears from the stubborn heart? The longer the Jews have withstood the evidences of the Gospel, the more confirmed must their prejudices have become; and the stronger their prejudices, the more signally is shown the truth and

reasonableness of that religion which finally subdues them and wins assent. To renounce convictions of long standing and of intense power--to confess that we and our fathers have been in error, and that of the grossest kind--to give up opinions long held in the highest veneration-to forsake the faith in which we have been nurtured from childhood, and embrace that against which we have earnestly contended-implies a triumph of truth which refers itself at once to the most glorious working of the right hand of the Most High. Such, we cannot doubt, will be the moral issue of the restoration of Israel, and in this result alone we find an ample solution of the problem which the prediction in itself may afford. Still we rest not the weight of our argument on the ends to be answered by the event, but upon the scriptural evidence of the fact.

And ye shall know that I am the

בְּפִתְחִי Lord, when I have opened your וִידַעְתֶּם כִּי־אֲנִי יְהוָה בְּפַרְ אֶת־קִבְרוֹתֵיכֶם וּבְהַעֲלוֹתִי אֶתְכֶם graves, O my people, and brought אֶת־קִבְרוֹתֵיכֶם וּבְהַעֲ .you up out of your graves מִקִבְרוֹתֵיכֶם עַמִּי :

: Dani¬apa

And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves. It is not perhaps possible to conceive a more triumphant demonstration that can be made of the divine perfections than that which shall accrue from the event here announced. It is virtually a declaration that Jehovah will make himself known in the glory of his power and the truth of his promises. The force of this convincing display shall fall in the first instance on the Jewish mind, but to them it will not be confined. All nations shall share with them in the effects of this overpowering conviction. Jer. 33. 9. "And it shall be to

me a name of joy, and a praise, and an honor, before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear of 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 shall procure unto it." As it takes place in an age of the world when the human mind has reached a high degree of development and will be fully able to appreciate the weight of this kind of evidence, no deduction of science will carry with it more authority than that which attaches to the proof thus afforded of a stupendous divine interposition. God is known in all those striking occurrences which refer themselves directly to him as their true agent; and from repeated intimations in his word it would appear, that no order of events was ever designed to illustrate more signally the actings of Omnipotence than his dealings in the latter day with his own people. The language of the Psalmist in reference to a former event of the same character will be eminently applicable to this: Ps. 126. 1, 2, “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them." In the following passages the allusion is direct to the effect here. described Ezek. 28. 25, 26, “Thus saith the Lord God; When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell in their land that I have given to my servant Jacob. And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them: and they shall know that I am the Lord their God." Ezek. 34. 28, 30, “And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid. And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God." Ezek. 36. 23, 24, " And I will sanctify my great name which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land." So after the defeated invasion of Gog and Magog, Ezek. 38. 23," Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord."