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long misunderstood. The different interpretations of this passage have all arisen, as I have in a preceding part of this Discourse explained, from the ambiguity of a single word, which by its natural force may indifferently signify either a multitude assembled, the act of assembling, or the person by whose authority the assembly is convened. If the ambiguous word be taken in the last of these three meanings, the literal rendering of the three passages question will be to this effect: Of the two first, "Thou shalt be," or " I have appointed thee to be for a gatherer of the peoples:" of the third, "A nation and the gatherer of nations shall arise from thee.". I shall not dwell upon the arguments that might be alleged for giving a preference to this interpretation of the passages in question, as the original text stands in our modern copies; but I shall proceed to show, that in older copies, which were likely to be more sincere, this was the most obvious, if not the only sense which the Hebrew words presented.

The copies of the Hebrew text which are now in use, from which the English and most modern translations of the Old Testament have been made, give the text which the Jews have thought proper to consider as authentic, since a revision of the sacred books by certain learned rabbin who lived several centuries after Christ. These critics, by their very imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew language, which in their time had been a dead language among the Jews themselves for many ages, and by their prejudices against our Saviour, were but ill qualified for their arduous undertaking. I would not over confidently charge them with an impiety of which they have been suspected-of wilful corruptions of the prophetic text in prejudice of our Lord's pretensions. To say the truth, I am little inclined to give credit to this heavy accusation: the Jews, to do them justice, with all their prejudices, have ever shown a laudable degree of religious veneration for the sacred text, and have employed the greatest pains, though not always by the most judicious means, to preserve

its integrity. I am therefore unwilling to believe that any Jew would make the least wilful alteration in any expression which he believed to have proceeded from the inspired pen. But, although I am inclined to acquit them of the imputation of wilful corruptions (without any impeachment, however of the candour of those who judge more severely; for they have room enough for their suspicions), it is but reasonable to suppose,-it were unreasonable to suppose the contrary,-that where various readings occurred of any prophetic text, these Jewish critics would give the preference, not in malice, but in the error of a prejudiced mind, they would give the preference to that reading which might seem the least favourable to the scheme of Christianity, and to give the least support to the claims of that Saviour whom their ancestors had crucified and slain; and that this was actually their practice, might be proved by many striking instances. It is therefore become of great importance, to consider how certain texts might stand in more ancient copies of the sacred writings; which is often to be discovered from the translations and paraphrases made before the appearance of our Saviour, and of consequence before any prejudices against him could operate. Among these, the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, for its great antiquity, deserves the highest attention, being about two hundred and sixty years older than the Christian era. And though an extreme caution should be used in admitting any conjectural emendations of the sacred text, lest we should corrupt what we attempt to amend, yet the historical inquiry after the varieties of the ancient copies cannot be prosecuted with too much freedom: for, though it might be dangerous to make any alteration of the modern text, except upon the most certain evidence, yet it can never be dangerous to know of any particular text that it was once read otherwise; and the inquiry might often prove the means of restoring many illustrious prophecies. Nor can I see for what reason we should be scrupulous to adopt readings which give perspi

cuity to particular passages, and heighten the prophetic evidence, when we have the highest reason to believe that those readings were received by the Jews themselves, in their unprejudiced times; and were only called in question afterward, for the positive testimony they seemed to bear to our Saviour's claims, and to the gospel doctrine of a general redemption. The passages which would be most apt to suffer, through the prejudices of the later Jewish critics, would be those in which the call of the Gentiles was most openly predicted, and in which the Messiah was described as a universal teacher.

We have seen that this description of the Messiah is contained in the promises to Jacob, as they stand in the modern Hebrew text. From an attentive consideration of the Greek translation of the Seventy, I cannot but persuade myself that this character of the Messiah was far more explicitly expressed in the copies of the Hebrew from which that version was made, though it was not clearly understood by those translators; and yet the whole difference between their copies of the original, and those of the modern Jews, consists in the omission of a single letter in the later copies. The word "gathering," or "gatherer," on the true sense of which so much depends, is rendered by the Seventy, in every one of the three passages in question, in the plural number,-not "gathering," but "gatherings ;" and yet the original Hebrew word, in the present state of the text, is singular. These translators have in general followed their original with such scrupulous exactness, expressing in their Greek all the grammatical peculiarities of their Hebrew original, often at the expense not only of the purity but of the perspicuity of their style, that no one who has had the opportunity of giving a critical attention to that translation will believe, that the Seventy would in three places, where they found a word in the Hebrew which could not but be singular, choose, without any necessity, to express it by a plural word in Greek: and every one who cannot believe this, will find himself

compelled to conclude that that word, which in our modern copies of the Hebrew text is necessarily singular, in the copies, which the Seventy used was something that might be taken for a plural. The addition of a single letter (and that a letter which transcribers have been very apt to omit) to the word which now occurs in the Hebrew, will give it that plural from which the Seventy have expressed: but, with the addition of this letter, the Hebrew word may be either that plural word which the Seventy understood it to be, or a singular word which literally signifies "the preacher." "The words of the preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher." This, you know, is the title and the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes. The word which here, and in other parts of this same book, is very properly rendered in our English Bibles by "the preacher," differs not in a single letter from that plural word which in the promises to Jacob the Seventy have rendered by "the gatherings." But since this word, by the consent of all interpreters, signifies "the preacher" throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, why should it be otherwise understood in other passages of Scripture, where the same sense may suit the context? In the promises to Jacob, no other sense of the word will equally suit the context, since no other interpretation of the word produces an equal perspicuity of the whole sentence. This, therefore, is the sense in which it is most reasonable to understand it; and the literal translation of these three passages, as the text appears to have stood in the copies which the Greek translators followed, will be thus: Of the two first, "Thou shalt be," or "I have appointed thee to be for a preacher of the peoples:" of the third, " A nation, and the preacher of nations shall come out of thee." It is no great objection to this interpretation, that the Seventy missed it: these translators were Jews, and would be little inclined to admit a sense of any text which should make it a prediction of the Messiah in the express character of a teacher

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of the Gentiles. They took up, therefore, with another meaning, which the word, considered by itself, might equally bear, though it rendered the sentence less perspicuous. The want of perspicuity was a circumstance in which they found a shelter for their prejudices. They perhaps imagined, that "the gatherings of the nations," though by the proper import of the Hebrew words it expressed "a gathering of the nation for the purpose of instruction and salvation," was only an obscure prediction of a universal monarchy of the Jews, to be established by the Messiah, and a gathering of the Gentiles under that monarchy by conquest: and an obscure prediction of this exaltation of their own nation was more to their taste than an explicit prophecy of the Messiah as a general benefactor. The Samaritans, who had no interest in the national prosperity of the Jews, their enemies, were better interpreters.

To sum up the whole of this long but interesting disquisition, it appears that the promises to Jacob, conveyed first in his father Isaac's parting blessing-repeated in the patriarch's dream at Luz, and, for the last time, when God appeared at Peniel-in any sense in which they can be taken, contain, especially the last of them, a clear prophecy of the Messiah as a universal teacher. The precise terms in which these promises were conveyed, are in some small degree uncertain; for we find, in the translation of the Seventy, the plainest indications of a small difference, in all the three texts, between their copies and those which are now received. The difference is only of a single letter in the ancient copies, which is not found in those of the present day; and this variety affects not the sense of the promise, but makes some difference in the degree of precision with which the sense is expressed. The terms of the promise, according to the one or the other of these two different readings-according to the ancient or the later copies, are unquestionably correct; and according to either, the general purport is the same: