the land when first they approached it. When they entered Canaan it soon stayed their progress, and kept many an enemy within their borders, to harass them in every age. With seven-fold severity it inflicted punishment after punishment; and brought, at last, in guardianship of the covenant made under it, as the avenger of its quarrel, the mightiest nation of the earth to root out the last remnant of Israel from the land of their inheritance, with wrath, and anger, and great indignation,' and with all the unequalled miseries of the siege, and sack, and destruction of Jerusalem.

But God did not call Abraham and make Jacob faithful, and then promise by an oath to believing men, that He gave the land of Canaan to be the everlasting inheritance of their seed, in order to keep them for ever under that legal covenant by which they could claim and keep the land, only in virtue of a righteousness of their own. The spirit of the pharisees has not yet altogether departed from Israel. The traditions of men have more weight with many besides them than the testimony of God. But we cannot pander to such a spirit by closing the proof of the restoration of Israel's inheritance, in terms of that covenant which was coeval with the law. Rather, while looking to it, would we say with Joshua

-even when the most faithful generation ever in Israel heard him-"Ye cannot serve the Lord: for He is an holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions and your sins. If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then He will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that He hath done you good." າງ 2

The Mosaic covenant did indeed point to-without providing for the time when its curses would be no more, but all the promises should survive them in blissful completion.

1 Deut. xxix. 28.

2 Joshua xxiv. 19, 20.

SECTION III.

For the full understanding of the promises that guarantee the everlasting possession of their inheritance to the seed of Israel, not only may things that differ be distinguished, and the oath to Abraham be kept clear of the curses of another covenant, which unbelieving men, not the children of faithful Abraham, have brought upon themselves age after age; but the mutual relations of things that assimilate and are destined to co-operate in the one glorious consummation, may be severally marked. The means are here prepared, whereby the crooked may be made straight, and the rough places plain.

Not two merely, but four covenants of the Lord, are mentioned in scripture, which have an important or essential bearing on the completion of the promises to Abraham concerning the land, as well as the promised blessing to all the families of the earth in his seed. Some allusion to them all may be needful here, before adducing the farther testimony of the Spirit, as recorded by David and the succeeding prophets, concerning the perpetuity of the territorial inheritance of the seed of Israel.

These are, 1. The covenant with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob, which is one and the same, repeated and confirmed successively to them. 2. The covenant of the Lord with the Israelites, on the day in which He brought them out of the land of Egypt. To these already noticed, are added; 3. The covenant with David, respecting the establishment of his house and of his throne for ever; and, 4. The new and everlasting covenant which the Lord will make, in the latter days, with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Each word, as well as each covenant of the living,

God is a law; an irresistible power which must fulfil the purpose for which He sent it. Like the laws which He has given to physical nature, and which govern it all, and exist in perfect harmony, as manifested in the movements of the orbs of heaven, which all obey his voice; so these covenants of God with children of men, in their combined efficacy, under the sovereignty of his grace as of his power, have their decreed purpose to fulfil, in finally evolving an analogous harmony in the moral world here below, when Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, and the will of the Lord be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Indiscriminately commingled, these covenants, in the dimness of human apprehension, without regarding the distinctness of the divine testimony, have sometimes been considered rather as conflicting elements that jar against each other when brought into contact, than conspiring causes whose ultimate result is the salvation of Israel and the glory of Israel's God. And when viewed apart, or looked at singly, not only has not due weight been assigned to each word of each covenant, but, as if commentators had been handling the Koran rather than the Bible, the latter has been made to explain or to absorb the former, and the ingenuity of Christians has been exercised in attempting to accomplish what the unbelief of the Jews could not effect, and to make void the promises of God.

The blessed consummation which it is designed to secure, would not indeed be seen, were the covenant of God with Abraham limited to the everlasting possession by any race of mortals of any land on earth. But jointly with the completion of the promise concerning the land to Israel, is that of the extension of blessings in the self-same covenant, to all the families of the earth; and instead of these being repulsive elements, none in nature

can have a closer affinity than those must ultimately be seen to bear to each other, which are thus joined together in the covenant concerning which the God of nature and of nations, of heaven and of earth, has lifted up his hand, and sworn to as everlasting. And in Christian. faith it may be asked, What shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?

The next chapter will form a more appropriate place for showing that the Abrahamic covenant concerning the land has never yet been fully completed, even in regard to the extent of the promised possession. How far it should have been fulfilled, or how long it should have borne even a vestige of actual fulfilment, among the Israelites under the law, depended on the observance or the breach of the special covenant which God had made with them. It had no clause bearing a blessing to all nations; nor was it declared to be everlasting. But, on the contrary, its curses, which assigned to all transgressors their merited doom, were sufficient for the extermination of any race of mortals, or of all nations upon earth. It ever cried for blood, and wrought death and destruction, even as it exacted perfect obedience; and said, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.' "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." And looking only to it, and to its curses resting visibly both on the Jews and on their land, the promise might well seem to be disannulled, (except on conditions sinful mortals could not fulfil,) and the hope of Israel to be cut off for ever.

But, according to the testimony of the Old Testament and the doctrine of the New, which are perfectly accordant in all things, that covenant made with the Iraelites in the day when the Lord brought them out of the land 'Deut. xxvii. 26; Jer. xi. 3.

2 Galat. iii. 10.

of Egypt, was not, with its curses, to stand for ever; but has to be superseded by a new and everlasting covenant made with the same people. The law was not to be destroyed but to be fulfilled, and to be transferred from tables of stone to the fleshy tablets of the heart, and to be written there by the same finger of the Lord.

The Apostle Paul maintains the immutability of the covenant confirmed by an oath to Abraham, centuries before the law was given by Moses, by which therefore it could not be disannulled. He speaks as explicitly, quoting the testimony of the Spirit as recorded by Jeremiah, of the ceasing of the covenant made under the law, as finally superseded by another. "If the first covenant (with the Israelites) had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. But finding fault with them He saith, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After these days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old, now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away."

1 Gal. iii. 17.

2 Heb. viii. 7-13. Jer. xxxi. 31. &c.