320

CHRISTIANITY REVIVED BY JUDAISM.

exhausted with their multitudinous superstitions and the philosophical schemes and scoffs which have encoun them. Then there has come a revival always brought by a recurrence, too often a partial and one-sided. rence—to old Hebrew maxims and principles. Ma.. anism proclaiming an absolute divine Sovereign, to all owed allegiance and devotion, struck at one part heathenism to which Christendom had yielded. It blessed effect of teaching Christendom by its grea practically as well as theoretically to grasp the tru if the Sovereign is to be a Father, there must be a is honored even as He is honored. When that be degenerated into the acknowledgment of an earth as the centre and bond of Christian society; wher notions of sacrifices, heathen confusions between fice and Him to whom it was presented, had crep the shadow of that doctrine; when the classical which arose with the revival of letters, had par the ecclesiastical heathenism, partly incorporated it;-the Jewish faith of the Reformers appeared test against idolatry, with its assertion of a dir ship between God and man, with a Gospel from But it must not be concealed that Christ

322

PROPHECY FULFILLED.

[Serm.

standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee." High minded Greeks, Latins, Teutons! surely we may all think of this solemn saying, and tremble lest God's vineyard, the fruits of which we have not rendered to Him but taken to ourselves, should be given to another race. Nor will I quench any hope which has been drawn from the words. "And they also if they abide not in unbelief, shall be graffed in. For God is able to graff them in again." A thought most cheering surely, with whatever punishments to ourselves it may be accompanied; a promise that the new heaven and the new earth shall both have their realization. But I would desire that we should connect these thoughts with two others. One is that this blessing can only come to the outcasts of Israel when they shall give up saying to themselves, "We have Abraham to our father;" when renouncing all faith in the power of their gold, in their intellectual gifts, in their Caucasian blood, they shall cry, "Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not." So they will establish their spiritual descent from all the great men who have been before them, so they will claim to be parts of an organic nation which has never been extinct, because though it has been banished from its old soil it has stood in the person of its divine King.

The other caution is this. We, brethren, have no right to believe that these prophecies, whatever fresh fulfilments may come out of them, are yet unfulfilled. We exist only to witness of their fulfilment. Easter-day says to us, a new and regenerate life of the universe has begun. We baptized men are to tell all nations that it has begun. If you say, "Doubtless Thou art our Father,"-to whatever

XVIII.]

WE MAY ACT AS IF IT WERE.

323

tribe, or race, or nation you belong,-"our Father who hast redeemed us, justified us, reconciled us, given us a new and divine life in Thy Son," you dwell in a new heaven. If, in the faith of that heaven and of your citizenship in it, you go forth to all your duties as members of a nation, as members of families-if you remember that the Lord by whom you live, has died and lived for every man whom you meet, that any good you do that man is a good done to Him, that any wrong you do that man is a wrong done to Him— you will prove that there is a new earth receiving light from that new heaven, an earth wherein also dwelleth righteousness and peace. The visions in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, visions for Gentiles as well as Jews, are visions indeed of all spiritual blessings, of that which the eye cannot see, nor the ear hear, nor the heart conceive. But grounded on these are visions of earthly blessedness which God has joined to them, which we must not put asunder. "They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not plant and another eat. For as the days of a tree, are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of thine hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble. For they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call I will answer them, and while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord."

Y 2

SERMON XIX.

THE VILLAGE GREATER THAN THE CITIES.

LINCOLN'S INN, 1ST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.-APRIL 18, 1852.

MICAH, V. 2.

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."

MICAH the Morasthite was a contemporary of Isaiah. The word of the Lord is said to have come to him in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. From a passage in Jeremiah, which I shall notice hereafter, it would seem that his prophetical work belongs to the last of these reigns. He was therefore younger than Isaiah. He may have been one of those disciples to whom he committed his testimony. There are many striking resemblances in his short book to the one which we have been examining during the last six weeks. He quotes the passage respecting the last days' which Isaiah himself probably quoted from an older prophet. Though his commentary is very different, his attention may first have been drawn to it by hearing Isaiah's discourse. The woes which he denounces upon the great 'men of the land who practise evil because it is in the power of their hand, who covet fields and take them by violence, who oppress a man and his house, even a man