the worst madness-we affirm of this, that it is a prodigy without equal in all the registered wonders which have been known on our earth: and I want nothing more to assure me that Christ came from God, and that he had a superhuman power of inspecting distant times, than the evidence vouchsafed, when I turn from surveying the once chosen people, and hear the Redeemer declaring in his last discourse in the temple, that their house should be left unto them desolate, and that a moral darkness should long cloud their understanding.

that Messiah had come, or that their expectation was vain, and that no deliverer would appear. There seemed no alternative, if they rejected Jesus of Nazareth, but the rejecting their own Scriptures. So that we can have no hesitation in affirming, that the continued infidelity, like the continued separation, of the Jews is wholly inexplicable, unless referred to the appointment and judgment of God. We can no more account, on any common principles, for their persisting in expecting a Redeemer, when the predictions on which they rest manifestly pertain to a long-departed age, than for their retaining all their national peculiarities, when they have been for centuries "without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice." In both cases they accomplish, and that too most signally, the prophecies of Christ-concluding his public ministrations, and their house being left unto them desolate, and a judicial blindness having settled on their understanding.

And never, therefore, should we meet a Jew, without feeling that we meet the strongest witness for the truth of our religion. I know not how those, who are proof against all other testimony, can withstand that furnished by the condition of the Jews. They may have their doubts as to the performance of the miracles recorded in the writings of evangelists; but here is a miracle, wrought before their eyes, and which ceases not to be miracle because long continued. We call it miracle, because altogether contrary to what we had reason to expect, and not to be explained on mere natural principles. That the Jews have not ceased to be Jews; that, though scattered over the world, domesticated in every land, at one time hunted by persecution and ground down by oppression, at another, allowed every privilege and placed on a footing with the natives of the soil, there has been a proved impossibility of wearing away their distinguishing characteristics, and confounding them with any other tribe-is not this marvellous? That, moreover, throughout their long exile from their own land, they have held fast the Scriptures which prove their hopes vain, and appealed to prophets, who, if any thing better than deceivers, accuse them of the worst crime, and convict them of

But we have now, in the third and last place, to consider what our text affirms of the future conversion of this unbelieving people. We have already insisted on the fact, that, in delivering the words under review, Christ was

that they could not, therefore, have been accomplished in events which occurred whilst he was yet upon earth. Yet they manifestly contain a prediction, that, at some time or another, the Jews would be willing to hail him as Messiah. In saying, "ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," Christ undoubtedly implied that the Jews should again see him, but not till prepared to give him their allegiance. We referred you to the psalm in which this exclamation occurs, that you might be certified as to its amounting to an acknowledgment of the Messiah. So that, on every account, we seem warranted in assuming, that, whilst announcing the misery which the Jews were fast bringing on themselves, and the protracted infidelity to which they would be consigned, Christ also announced that a time would come, when the veil would be taken from their hearts, and they would delightedly receive the very being they were then about to crucify.

Such is the great event for which we yet look, and with which stands associated all that is most glorious in the dominion of christianity. We know not with what eyes those men can read prophecy, who discover not in its announcements the final restoration and conversion of the Jews. It is useless to attempt to resolve into figurative language, or to explain by a purely spiri

tual interpretation, predictions which seem to assert the reinstatement of the exiles in the land of their fathers, and their becoming the chief preachers of the religion which they have so long labored to bring into contempt. These predictions are inseparably bound up with others, which refer to their dispersion and unbelief; so that, if you spiritualize any one, you must spiritualize the whole. And since every word has had a literal accomplishment, so far as the dispersion and unbelief are concerned, how can we doubt that every word will have also a literal accomplishment, so far as the restoration and conversion are concerned? If the event had proved the predicted dispersion to be figurative, the event, in all probability, would prove also the predicted restoration to be figurative. But, so long as we find the two foretold in the same sentence, with no intimation that we are not to apply to both the same rule of interpretation, we seem bound to expect, either in both cases a literal fulfilment, or in both a spiritual; and since in the one instance the fulfilment has been undoubtedly literal, have we not every reason for concluding that it will be literal in the other?

land which God promised to Abraham and his seed. We cannot divine what instrumentality will be brought to bear on mankind, when God shall "say to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." But we are sure, that, whatever the means employed to gather home the wanderers, they shall flow into Judea from every district of the globe; they shall fly as "the doves to their windows ;" and the waste and desolate places become too narrow by reason of the inhabitants."

And when God's hand shall have been lifted up to the Gentiles, compelling them to bring his sons in their arms, and his daughters on their shoulders; when marching thousands shall have crossed the confines of Palestine, and pitched their tents in plains which the Jordan waters; then will there be a manifestation of the Christ, and then a conversion of the unbelieving. We have but few, and those obscure, notices of this august consummation. We may perhaps gather, from the predictions of Ezekiel and Daniel, that, when the Jews shall have resettled themselves in Judea, they will be attacked by an antichristian confederacy; that certain potentates will combine, lead their armies to the holy land, and seek to plunder and exterminate the reinstated people. And the struggle will be vehement; for it is declared in the last chapter of the Prophecies of Zechariah, "I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and half of the city shall go forth into captivity." But at this crisis, when the anti-christian powers seem on the point of triumphing over the Jews, the Lord, we are told, shall visibly interpose, and turn the tide of battle. "And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives." It was from the mount of Olives that Jesus ascended, when he had gloriously completed our redemption. And whilst the apostles" looked steadfastly towards heaven, as he went up," there stood by them two men in white ap

We believe, then, of the nation of Israel, that it has not been cast off for ever, that not for ever shall Jerusalem sit desolate, mourning her banished ones, and trodden down by the Gentiles. We believe, according to the declaration of Isaiah, that there shall come a day when the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem." We believe, according to the magnificent imagery of the same evangelical prophet, that a voice will yet say to the prostrate nation and city, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." "The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee; for in my wrath I smote thee; but in my favor have I had mercy on thee." We know not by what migh-parel, which told them that "this same ty impulse, nor at what mysterious signal, the scattered tribes shall arise from the mountains, and valleys, and islands of the earth, and hasten towards the

Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." There was here a clear prophecy that

Christ should return personally to the earth, and that, too, in like manner as he departed. And it may be one point of similarity between the departure and the return, that, as he went up from the mount of Olives, so, as Zechariah predicts, it shall be on the mount of Olives he descends. Then shall he be seen and known by the Jewish people. Then shall the hearts of this people, which had been previously moved, it may be, to the seeking the God of their fathers, though not to the acknowledging the crucified Messiah, sink within them at the view of the being whom their ancestors pierced, and whom themselves had blasphemed. They shall recognize in him their long-expected Christ, and throwing away every remnant of infidelity, and full of remorse and godly contrition, shall fall down before him, and supplicate forgiveness, and tender their allegiance.

all false doctrine, and all superstition, and all opposition, give way before these mighty missionaries; till, at length, the sun, in his circuit round this globe, shall shine upon no habitations but those of disciples of Christ, and behold no spectacle but that of a rejoicing multitude, walking in the love of the Lord our Redeemer.

Such, we believe, is the prophetic delineation of what shall occur at the second advent of Christ. And if there were great cause why Jesus should weep over Jerusalem, as he thought on the infidelity of her children, and marked the long train of calamities which pressed rapidly onwards, there is abundant reason why we, upon whom are fallen the ends of the world, should look with hope to the hill of Zion, and expect, in gladness of spirit, the speedy dawning of bright days on the deserted and desecrated Judea. If we have at This we believe to be the time re- heart the advance of christianity, we ferred to by Christ in the prophecy of shall be much in prayer for the conour text. Then will the nation be pre- version of the Jews. "Ye that make pared to exclaim, "Blessed is he that mention of the Lord," saith the prophet cometh in the name of the Lord." Isaiah, "keep not silence, and give him Then will the period, which God, in no rest, till he establish, and till he his righteous vengeance, hath appoint- make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." ed for the desolation of their house, be I have more than sympathy with the brought to its close; "the times of the Jews as a people chastened for the sin Gentiles" will be completed, and the of their ancestors: I have an indistinct jubilee year of this creation will com- feeling of reverence and awe, as knowmence. Until the Jews, with one heart ing them reserved for the most gloriand one voice, shall utter the welcome ous allotments. It is not their sordidof our text, we are taught to expect ness, their degradation, nor their impino general diffusion of christianity, no- ety-and much less is it their suffering thing which shall approach to that which can make me forget either complete mantling of the globe with the vast debt we owe them, or the righteousness and peace, which pro- splendid station which they have yet phets have described in their most fer- to assume. That my Redeemer was vid strains. But the uttering this wel- a Jew, that his apostles were Jews, come by the reinstated Israelites, shall that Jews preserved for us the sacred be as the blast of the silver trumpets oracles, that Jews first published the which ushered in the Jubilee of old. tidings of salvation, that the diminThe sound shall be heard on every ishing of the Jews was the riches shore. The east and the west, the of the Gentiles-I were wanting in north and the south, shall echo back common gratitude, if, in spite of all the peal, and all nations, and tribes, this, I were conscious of no yearnings and tongues shall join in proclaiming of heart towards the exiles and wanblessed the King of kings and Lord derers. But, asks St. Paul, "if the of lords." Jerusalem, "her walls sal- casting away of them be the reconcilvation and her gates praise," shall be ing of the world, what shall the receiverected into the metropolis of the re- ing of them be but life from the dead?" generated earth; and she shall send And if indeed the universal reign of forth, in every direction, the preachers Christ cannot be introduced, until the of the "one Mediator between God and Jews are brought, like Paul their great man ;" and rapidly shall all error, and type, to preach the faith which now

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SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE;

February, 1837.

The publication of the following Sermons was strongly requested by many of those who had heard them delivered. The Author was thus placed under the same circumstances as a year ago, when he had discharged the duties of Select Preacher before the University. He felt that it would not become him to act differently on the two occasions; and he can now only express his earnest hope that discourses, which were listened to with singular kindness and attention, may be perused with some measure of advantage.

SERMON I.

THE UNNATURALNESS OF DISOBEDIENCE TO THE GOSPEL.

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth; before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"-Galatians, 3 : 1.