ject, the language of my text appears to me to be extremely appropriate. For the apostle, having a design to promote humility in the Gentile converts, and to excite their compassion for the rejected house of Israel, cautions them against being wise in their own conceit of those privileges from which the Jews had fallen, and to which the Gentiles had been undeservedly raised, and assures them that blindness had happened only in part unto Israel till the period for the full conversion of the Gentiles should arrive; and that then, according to the word of ancient prophecy, all Israel should be saved.

These words then will afford us the opportunity of directing your attention,

I. TO THE PRESENT STATE of the Jews.
II. TO THEIR FUTURE PROSPECTS.

III. TO OUR CONSEQUENT DUTY.

I. LET US CONSIDER THE PRESENT STATE OF THE JEWS.-Blindness in part is happened unto Israel, is the short but affecting description of the apostle. It includes indeed in a single sentence the source of all that guilt and degradation which have rested for nearly eighteen centuries on this unhappy race. For the word blindness is employed by the apostle in a pregnant sense. It

it

signifies obduracy as well as ignorance'; includes a callousness of moral feeling, a stupor of mind, an obstinate contumacy, an utter ignorance of divine things, a sullen depravity of heart. And such, alas! has been the state of the house of Judah, since the period of the Messiah's advent. It began to appear when they rejected the divine mission; it was sealed when they finally spurned the testimony of the Holy Spirit, to the character and glory of the Saviour. Since that period, the veil has been upon their heart. An universal ignorance of their own Scriptures, a disdain of a spiritual Redeemer, an indifference to their guilt, whether as sinners generally, or as those who persist in rejecting their Messiah in particular; a neglect of the typical design of their religious ceremonies, a disregard of the word of prophecy, a hatred to the name of the Lord Jesus and to Christians who glory in his salvation, and a vain reliance on their supposed privileges, as the peculiar people of the Almighty, has marked the Jewish nation. The consequence of this state of mind

1Пúgwas, 1. proprie, obduratio, induratio, concretio in callum, cum v. c. cuti manuum pedumque callus obducitur, eaque crassior et durior redditur. 2. Excæcatio. 3. Ad animum translatum metaphorice significat stuporem animi, ignorantiam et inscitiam rerum divinarum, malignitatem et pravitatem animi, pervicaciam et contumaciam. Vide J. F. Schleusner in loc.

has been the utter loss of spiritual religion, of genuine repentance for sin, of lively concern for their eternal interest, and of just apprehensions of the glory of God and the obligations of man. And what renders all this blindness and obduracy still more fearful, is the consideration that it is not the ignorance and vice of the heathen who know not God, but of a people who profess to know him, who carry about the Scriptures which condemn them, guard the truth they disavow, and preserve those sacred writings for others which they make no right use of themselves.

not;

These circumstances are indeed so deplorable, as to lead us to inquire if there be not something peculiar in the blindness which rests upon them. Such we shall find to be the case. THEIR BLINDNESS IS THE EFFECT OF THE ESPECIAL JUDGMENT OF GOD. Of them it was that the Lord spake by the prophet Isaiah, Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand and see ye indeed, but perceive not; make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed: words of awful import, and repeatedly applied in the New Testament to the unbelieving Israel. I mention this affecting part of the case, because it seems necessary to a right under

standing of the subject before us. The judgment of God abides on the fallen nation. Not that this forms any argument whatever against our using every means for their conversion; for God's secret purposes and judgments are not the rule of our duty, especially those judgments which he has declared he will remove, and which we ourselves may possibly be the instruments of removing; but I notice it as forming a motive for deeper commiseration, and as throwing additional light on their actual state.

Of this judicial blindness we may, I conceive, discern THE EVIDENCES in those darker features of their case, which most differ from the ordinary effects of spiritual obduracy. Of this their infatuated conduct towards the Roman authorities soon after our Lord's crucifixion, and which ended in the destruction of their temple and polity, was an evidence. The enthusiasm with which in every age they have wasted their time and labours on their puerile and really senseless Cabbala, on their oral law, their Mishna, and their Targums, is a similar proof. The mad rashness with which they have followed pretended Messiahs during the whole period of their present dispersion, notwithstanding the misery and destruction which have uniformly attended such pretenders, is not less to the purpose. In like manner the impenetrable obstinacy they have displayed to the most calm and

irrefragable arguments on the interpretation of their own scriptures, or the evidences of the Messiah's real advent; their insensibility to the confirmation which their present state affords to the truth of the very Christianity which they hate and contemn; the entire absence of even the appearance of devotion in their various religious observances; their comparative unconsciousness to natural ties and affections; their disregard to the fair esteem of moral virtue; the dissimulation and chicane by which they are too generally characterized, and the secret infidelity which has spread among them as a people, are so many tokens of a judicial obduracy inflicted on them for their wilful rejection of their true Messiah and King.

But we have not yet a full view of their state. TRACE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS DERELICTION OF GOD in their past history and their present condition, and you will discover an affecting scene which nothing can parallel. View them, though not finally rejected as a people, yet cast away for their sins, diminished, broken off, as branches from the parent olive, dispersed by the righteous judgment of the Almighty, and pursued by his indignation over the face of the whole earth. The word of prophecy has long become the most striking and correct language of historical fact: The Lord has sent upon them cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all they have set their hand unto. They have been