labourer his harvest, than the artisan his bread, than the merchant his riches, than the sailor his rest, and the soldier his glory, build around that nation a high wall, that its breath may not infect the rest of the earth." (Translated by E. S. Pryce, A.B., pp. 106, 110.)

V. THE MYSTERY OF THE GENTILE DISPENSATION.* To the Jews "were committed the oracles of God." They were made from an early period the guardians and treasury of the divine revelations. From thence came the Deliverer, the Son of God according to the flesh, in whom was fulfilled the long series of prophetic promises which had formed the hope of Israel. The largest proportion of the sacred records relates to their history. It refers to their rise as a nation, to its regulations, to its continued existence, and we may add, to its yet future restoration from its present state of depression.

But here a controversy has arisen. Jew and Gentile are found striving together as to which of them belongs the glory of the coming age. The Gentile Church generally conceives that the Jew will be absorbed in its onward triumphs, and that it is its destiny, Jewish nationality being lost by conversion and oneness in Christ, to inherit the glorious promises which animate the fainting spirits of the Lord's people in their conflict with an evil world. Christian commentators are for the most part agreed upon this point, and refer to a spiritual Israel those gracious assurances of future rest, happiness, and glory, which, in the letter, seem to be the special heritage of the Lord's ancient people. Any other interpretation is carnal, judaistical, derogatory to the glories of a spiritual dispensation. That the Jews should ever again enter on the possession of the land of their fathers, or enjoy a literal fulfilment of the everlasting covenant made with patriarchs and kings, the friends of God, although they now suffer the literal accomplishment of the threatenings of that covenant, is regarded as one of the erroneous popular views prevalent of the Old Testament theocracy, "and its politico-religious code." The Jews are said to have misunderstood the plan of the Most High, proudly and arrogantly imagining the sole end of the divine interpositions to have been their personal or national glory. The carnal Israel was to perish that the true Israel might endure for ever.

And yet the carnal Israel subsists. It remains a monument of divine providence. Mingled with almost every people in the occupations of life, the Jewish nation continues notwithstanding separate, unabsorbed, intact. Is there no meaning in this? Must not this astonishing fact, so unlike all other cases of a dispersed people, have

The Mystery of the Gentile Dispensation, and the Work of the Messiah.' By Ridley H. Herschell. London: Aylott & Jones, 1848.

some relation to the solemn declarations of the Most High, when it is said, "If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them?” Shall not the word of the Lord abide for ever.

It is, however, admitted that these gross-minded Jews, who so misconstrued the spiritual design of the Levitical economy, might have found some justification for their erroneous views in the phraseology of the Mosaic code and of its inspired prophetic interpreters. Even Isaiah is allowed "to seem openly" to preach these censured doctrines of the apostates from genuine Mosaism, and to portray such a state of earthly enjoyment as abundantly to satisfy the low and greedy appetite of the carnal Jew. Such is the literal interpretation of the evangelic prophet. But if his prophecies be understood spiritually, as being for the most part highly poetical and metaphorical, then do they depict, as poets may, a state of happiness of the highest intellectual and moral kind, one in all its parts standing in broad and striking contrast to that earthly kingdom which filled the imaginations of the Jews, and to which some few modern Protestants, "non-theologians,” venture to adhere.

It is evident that the Jews have ever been, with respect to the interpretation of the sacred records, "worshippers of the letter." They have always clung with a species of dogged pertinacity, under every dark shade of their national life, after ages of bitter and prolonged disappointment, to the entire literal fulfilment of prophecy. Nor is this to be wondered at. Whatever may be their prospects for the future, they have hitherto borne the literal accomplishment of every threatening launched by their justly offended governor against their national and theocratic delinquencies. Divine anger, and judgments of a most awful character, foretold in language most solemn, pungent, and terrible, have fallen with literal severity upon them. Their young men and virgins have been slain by the sword, their cities lie desolate, every stone of their beloved Jerusalem has been thrown down, their land, once flowing with milk and honey, is a waste, and they themselves are dispersed to the four winds of heaven, outcasts from God, a byeword and a reproach in every clime. If thus the prophecies of their ruin and degradation have literally interpreted themselves, can we marvel if they yet cling with surprising pertinacity to the idea of a literal restoration which those same prophecies foretell?

But it may be doubted whether, as some say, their attachment to the letter of their sacred writings was indeed the cause of their final ruin. It is true that they looked for an earthly kingdom, for a Messiah who should reign over them as a temporal prince. All commentators freely admit that they had some grounds for this expectation in the letter of the inspired documents. Their mistake arose in the tenacity with which they adhered to this idea, notwithstanding, and

to the exclusion of the explicit literal foretelling of a Messiah who should appear in deep debasement and humiliation. The two ideas seem incompatible with each other. They need, however, only to be regarded in order of time to render both true, and the literal accomplishment of the one becomes the prelude to the literal glory of the other.

Still it must be granted that this mistake was natural. The glory of the Jewish nation is always associated with the advent of the Messiah. The same prophecy which announces the overthrow of Jerusalem also declares its subsequent exaltation. (Micah iv. 8.) It was with this idea that the apostles proposed to the Saviour the question, Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? where, we may observe, that our Lord does not correct their misapprehension, if it be one, as to the erection of a new Israelitish kingdom, but confines his reply to the time of its setting up-that, He seems to say, will not be yet.

It will be interesting to our readers to have on this point the remarks of Mr. Herschell, a Jew by birth, educated for a rabbi ; but, by God's grace, now a Christian.

"The unconverted Jew of the present day," he says, " when he has cast rabbinical absurdities from him, and has not become a deist, reads the Old Testament with the same views the apostles entertained before they were enlightened by the Holy Spirit; and therefore, he says: "I cannot believe the Messiah has come, because I find none of the prophecies accomplished that were to accompany or follow his coming. Israel is not delivered, and the world is not in a state of peace and blessedness.' The answer to this objection has usually been, that all these predictions have [been] spiritually fulfilled. If this hypothesis of a spiritual fulfilment meant nothing more than that wherever the gospel of Christ is received into the heart it delivers both Jew and Gentile from the bondage of sin, and places them in a state of internal peace and happiness, no objection would be made to this spiritual fulfilment. But to present this as a substitute for the true and actual fulfilment of these prophecies, has occasioned as great perversions of scripture as those of the boldest infidels; less dangerous in their consequences, it is true, but equally wide of the meaning of the Spirit of God. That this has been the cause of much stumbling to the Jews, there can be no question; such explaining away of the most solemn declarations of God-promises which he declares cannot be broken, unless men can break his covenant with day and with night-is sufficient to impress the Jew with the belief that there is something false and hollow about the Christian system, since it thus tampers with that which he knows to be of God."-pp. 21, 22.

In the first of the pieces in this volume, Mr. Herschell has endeavoured to ascertain what is that mystery spoken of by the apostle Paul, in Ephesians, iii. 1-11, and also referred to in some others of his epistles. We purpose to give an abstract of the views of our author upon this point.

At first sight it would appear as if the mystery here spoken of was the fellowship of the Gentiles in the promises of the gospel. But this could not be the mystery alluded to, since the blessing that should come upon the Gentiles was proclaimed to Abraham. They were also

admitted to the blessings of the covenant, and the Messiah was promised as "a light to lighten the Gentiles," as well as the glory of Israel. Others suppose the mystery is made known in the fifth verse; that although it was revealed in former times, yet it was not revealed as, or in like manner as it is now-clearly and explicitly. But in the ninth verse we are told, that from the beginning of the world it had "been hid in God." If, however, it had been even partially revealed, it could no longer be said to be hidden.

Others conceive, and this is the general opinion, that the mystery is the admission of the Gentiles into the church without submitting to Jewish rites. This indeed is an important truth, and an express revelation came to Peter to convince him of it. But this was not made to Paul, but to Peter, and by Peter speedily spread abroad among the disciples six years before Paul's conversion. It could not therefore be the mystery concerning which the apostle Paul received a special revelation.

Mr. Herschell therefore regards the sixth verse as parenthetical. The words are literally "the Gentiles to be fellow heirs," that is, it was the apostles' privilege to proclaim among the Gentiles that they were fellow heirs of this mystery. It is in the tenth verse that the mystery is explained-it is, "the church," the "called-out ones," of this dispensation.

"This present dispensation of an elect church, anointed to be kings and priests, and called out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation,' I believe to be the mystery which was kept secret since the world began; that hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory,' which hath been hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.' The ancient prophets gave no hint of any such intermediate dispensation between the coming of Christ and the accomplishment of that deliverance which his coming was to effect. They tell us indeed that the Redeemer was to be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;' that he was apparently to 'labour in vain and spend his strength for nought;' but they never give us to understand that this general rejection was to last for many centuries, and that during this period God was to gather out 'the Church of the first-born,'' the Bride, the Lamb's wife." "-pp. 9, 10.

In almost all cases the prophets give first a description of a time of trouble, then speak of the advent of a deliverer, and then of a period of blessedness as immediately consequent upon his advent. See Psalms ix., lxxii., Isaiah x., xi., Jeremiah xxx., xxxi., xxxiii., Daniel ii., vii., &c. By the advent of a Redeemer and Deliverer, the world is thus to be brought out of a state of trouble and confusion into a condition of peace and blessedness, and the glory of the Jewish nation is likewise connected with that coming of the Lord. It is true there are intimations of the humiliation of the Lord's advent; but it is not until enlightened by the Holy Spirit that we see the full development of the dispensation of humility, and that which at first seems but a feature in the individual character of our Lord expands into the characteristic of a dispensation. Glorious things are indeed in store

for the church of God. It shall participate even in a more exalted manner in the promises made to the Jewish people.

"Her humiliation is but for a season: but I find nowhere in the revelation of God a termination to this season previous to the termination of this dispensation. I find that the latter days of this dispensation, instead of being times of peace, holiness, and spiritual prosperity, are to be perilous times. I find that evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.' So far is it from being the case, that the world is gradually to slide into the church until it be entirely absorbed in it, that we find the wickedness of the world is to be most rampant, and its oppression of the children of God most grievous, at the time when Christ comes to deliver his church. While the prophets of old, overleaping this present dispensation, which was not made known unto them, end their predictions with visions of peace and joy, the prophecies of our Lord, and his apostles, which chiefly concern this dispensation, conclude with 'distress of nations with perplexity,' war, famine, and pestilence, &c. And the church, instead of being dismayed at these things, is to regard them as the harbingers of her time of rest.—Lukę xxi. 28."-pp. 27, 29.

It will not escape our readers the important bearings which these views have on the expectations and labours of the church of Christ. It has always been an article of Calvinistic theology, that the present state of the church is not that of a universal community, but of an election. We will state its application, however, in the language of Mr. Herschell.

"From the fall of Adam to the present time God has dealt with men in the way of election; in His providential and gracious dealings He has ever chosen but a portion out of the mass, to whom truth, or light, or civilization should be communicated. It is a vain attempt to fit the glorious predictions concerning the latter days upon this present dispensation of the church's humility: it is an attempt equally vain to accommodate the universality of the millenial dispensation to the essentially limited nature of a dispensation that consists of a church, a body of called-out ones, an election out of the mass. If it be an

election, it cannot be universal; if it be universal, then there is no more church or election. In this dispensation it is the church, the election alone, that are saved from wrath and made partakers of Christ's glory; but a period is coming when the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord; therefore the dispensation of election, which concludes when Christ gathers His elect, cannot be the conclusion of this earth's history; and a dispensation must wait her after this, when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.'"-pp. 42, 45, 46.

These views we deem incontrovertible. For want of a firm and clear perception of them, the modern church has been hurried into practices and labours that have diminished its vitality, and brought upon it the faintness and feebleness of disappointment. Appeals of the most glowing kind have been made to the imaginations of the people which the actual results of missionary enterprise belie. Expectations have been held out and fostered by every species of agency -from the pulpit and the press-that can never be realised; and a collapse of feeling has been the inevitable consequence. What we have failed to gather from the Word of Truth as to the probable