belief and rebellion, in the face of all His multiplied and gracious admonitions and acts and gifts of kindness. The Gentiles were admitted to the enjoyment of His special goodness; but if they did not "continue in his goodness" they too might look for the same righteous severity, to cut them off in their turn.*

3. Gratitude. This will ever be proportioned to humility, -to a due sense of unworthiness. There can be no true gratitude where there is fancied merit. Just in as far as we feel the "goodness of God" to be undeserved, will we be thankful for it. How great has been His goodness to us Gentiles! Surely our hearts may well glow with deep and fervent gratitude in the view of "the riches of his grace" towards us! Let us manifest the sincerity and fervour of that gratitude by songs of praise, and by the more substantial evidence of practical godliness in all our walk and conversation, and by active zeal to advance the knowledge of God, and subjection to the sceptre of His grace, amongst Jews and Gentiles-looking in faith for the restoration of the one, and the fulness of the other.

Finally, let all who are living in the enjoyment of abundant and precious privilege, lay their responsibility to heart. O think of the just "severity" with which you must in the end be dealt with. The thread of life is slender and brittle-yet you are trifling with your eternal interests,—trifling with a kind and gracious God, and with the concerns of your souls, while by this slender and brittle thread the sword of divine justice hangs trembling over your heads. Avail yourselves of God's present goodness, that you be not made to feel His future severity. Resist no longer the voice of an inviting and beseeching God. to you, even to you. It is the voice of love. to life and to happiness.

His voice is

It calls you

But O sit not down in the listless

* It is remarkable how similar is the spirit of the admonitions addressed by God to Israel of old, and those addressed still to his professing people. Comp. Deut. viii. 11-20; x. 12-17; xxx. 15-20; with Heb. xii. 28, 29; Heb. iii. 19 with iv. 1; John xv. 2, 9, 10; Heb. x. 38; Rev. ii. 6, 10, 16, 26; iii. 3, 11, 15, 16, &c.

expectation that there will never be a change-that the goodness will last always, and be the same hereafter that it is now. He now smiles and invites you to Himself:-but be assured, if you will not comply with His invitation, there is a time coming-a time at hand, when He will frown you away from His presence. Flatter not yourselves with the weak and wicked sentimentalism that there can never be severity with God. Is not the very use you are making of this sentiment fearfully criminal-flattering yourselves in sin because you know that He is good! It will be the severity of just retribution that shall say to you-"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh."

LECTURE L.

ROMANS XI. 7-32.

(SECOND DISCOURSE.)

But

THE present state of the Jewish people is without a parallel in the history of the world. Many kingdoms and empires, some of them of vast extent, and of high renown, have been invaded and subdued by others, and have either been entirely annihilated, or have been incorporated with their conquerors, and have lost their name and their separate existence. here was a comparatively small people; assailed by the victorious arms of imperial Rome;-the miserable victims of unheard of massacre and destruction; of tribulation, "such as had not been from the beginning of the world till that time, nor has been since, nor shall be hereafter;" driven from the land of their fathers, and dispersed through "every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." Wherever they have come, they have been an abject, despised, proscribed, and outcast race; a proverb, and a by-word, and a hissing among all nations:" and amidst universal degradation, on the one hand, and some solitary but unsuccessful attempts to naturalize them, on the other, they have, to this day, scattered as they are, remained a distinct people, objects of marked separation, and, as far as their situation in different countries has admitted, with their own customs, their own synagogues, and the wretched remnants, the corrupted and pitiful mockery, of their own ancient worship. In this unprecedented and anomalous condition, have they continued, for the long period

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of more than seventeen successive centuries.-The facts of their history, compared with the predictions of Moses and the prophets in the Old, and of Christ himself in the New Testament, are most eminently fitted to establish our faith. The remote date of the former class of predictions is ascertained by the clearest and most unexceptionable evidence. The predictions themselves are the more remarkable, from the singularity and unlikelihood of the case: and, in despite of the vain attempts of deistical and political speculators to account for it on ordinary principles, the condition of this singular people has presented a kind of permanent miracle in attestation of the truth of God.

It is in a religious point of view, that their situation is especially interesting to the Christian mind.

The context represents them, as in a state of spiritual infatuation, or judicial blindness. For the "blindness which has happened to Israel," is a fulfilment of the prophetic imprecation, "Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see:"—and never indeed to any people could the expression with greater truth be applied, that "God had sent them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie."-When Jesus was on earth, he thus warned them: "Yet a little while is the light with you: walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you; for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light:" and, condemning their obstinate incredulity as to His claims, and anticipating their credulous admission of the claims of others, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive:"+-a declaration which was soon after affectingly verified, in the eagerness with which they listened to the pretensions, and embraced the offers, and followed the delusive counsels, of every miserable impostor, who, amidst their threatened and accumulated distresses, gave himself out as the deliverer and restorer of their nation,-the promised

Messiah. And, oh! how thick the veil of prejudice and enmity which " even unto this day remains upon their minds!" How clear, how minute, how full, is the accomplishment of the predictions relative to the Messiah, in Jesus of Nazareth! They themselves are perplexed and confounded,-reduced to the most wretched shifts, or put entirely to a stand, in their attempts to explain them otherwise. Yet with the most infatuated pertinacity, they persist in rejecting His claims: and, with the exception of such as have fallen into total infidelity (of whom the number, it is to be feared, is not small,) both those amongst them who think, and those who do not think, are vainly looking for another.

When we contemplate this people in their present state, we feel it difficult to persuade ourselves, that they are the same nation, whose wonderful history forms so large a portion of the records of inspiration. We behold them "scattered and peeled;"-outcasts of earth and heaven; treated as the "filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things." And is this the people who, in far remote times, were redeemed from Egyptian bondage, by the signs and wonders of Omnipotence?—before whom "the waters of the great deep were dried up, and the depths of the sea made a way for the ransomed of the Lord to pass over?"-who received their laws by the voice of the living God from the fires of Sinai?—who were conducted through the wilderness by the symbol of the Divine presence?-whose wants heaven and earth combined to supply?—" five of whom chased a hundred, and a hundred put ten thousand to flight?"-to whom the God of the whole earth, having driven out their enemies before them, assigned their promised inheritance; separating them from the nations, and choosing them as a special people to himself; dwelling amongst them as their Judge, their Lawgiver, their King, and their God; and maintaining the honour of His name amongst them by a continued course of inspiration, and prophecy, and miracle?-Are these the descendants of those venerable patriarchs, on whom God has conferred the highest honour ever bestowed on mortal manthe honour of having their names associated with His own, in