Righteousness as the righteous branch of David, he adds, 'In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely. . . . Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, the Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.'* Here are three great features impossible to be mistaken, not one of which is to be discerned in the deliverance from Babylon. The first, a general return of the two houses of Judah and Israel-the second, an universal restoration from all countries-the third, the fulfilment of all this at a definite time, the days of Messiah. Whereas the fugitives who came from Babylon were almost exclusively of the house of Judah they returned from that region only, and the time of this partial restoration preceded by five hundred years the advent of Messiah. The prophet Ezekiel is equally definite in prediction of the final settlement of the Jewish people in the land of their fathers, and the prediction to which I refer, contained in the thirty-seventh chapter, beginning at the fifteenth verse, is particularly remarkable, from its containing, first, a symbolic representation, and then a divine interpretation of the symbols. The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel first with this * Jeremiah, xxiii. 6, 7.

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command, 'Son of man, take unto thee one stick, and write upon it, for Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: and join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.' This is the symbolic action. How men might have interpreted it we know not; and it is now of little import, for God himself has in the following verses explained the meaning of the symbol. 'When the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not show us what thou meanest by these? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in my hand. . . . And say unto them, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions .. And David my ser

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vant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they also shall walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever.' Here are promises as different from the state of things which followed the return from Babylon as health is from sickness, or the vigour of manhood from the feebleness of infancy. It is promised, not only that the two tribes and the ten tribes should be restored, but united for ever into one kingdom-not only that they should have a king, but that this king should be the Messiah-not only that they should inherit the land, but possess it, they and their children for ever and ever in peace and piety. The most careless reader of the prophecy will perceive that the history of the Jewish commonwealth, from the going forth of the decree of Cyrus to its termination in the days of Titus and Adrian, contains nothing like a fulfilment of these predictions. It is notorious that from the days of Shalmaneser no such united kingdom of the twelve tribes has ever existed-no such king has ever been the shepherd of Israel—and no such piety has been known amongst the sons of Jacob. The dispersion of the Jews in the midst of us, and the continued occupation of their land by strangers, attest to the most superficial observer, that the promise of an eternal

possession of the Holy Land has not yet found its accomplishment. The Jew, therefore, is right in asserting that some of the most remarkable of the prophecies remain still unfulfilled, and consequently some other answer must be sought which may invalidate the force of his objection.

The principle of allegoric interpretation is generally considered to supply the true and universal solution. For many centuries, and with few exceptions, controversialists have endeavoured to evade the difficulty by insinuating to the Jew that his faith in the words of the living God is an effect of national blindness-and that the divine promises are to be fulfilled, not according to the expressed sense, but mystically. Now, however arbitrary, insufficient, and dishonouring to God's veracity this answer may appear to the Jew, and to every other man of common integrity, its early adoption by a portion of the Christian Church, and the extent of its subsequent diffusion, give it a claim upon our attentive consideration. The allegoric principle implied in it appears in the earliest Christian writers, and after the time of Origen attained to an almost universal empire. Its antiquity, its diffusion, and the lengthened term of its continuance, seem to demand an unconditional assent, and he who starts at some of the monstrous productions to which it has given birth, must also hesitate, lest, in rejecting it, he renounce a sacred deposit once committed to the saints. Examination will, however,

show him the needlessness of his scruples, and convince him that this principle, though general, was never universal. On certain points, the literal interpretation of the prophecies was maintained by apologists and martyrs of the first and purest ages of the Christian Church. The allegoric principle has therefore no catholicity which could compel its adoption. It appears merely as a matter of opinion, and as a matter of opinion must be examined, and then received or rejected according to its intrinsic value. The most venerable name can claim for a private opinion nothing more than an attentive consideration. In such a case the question is not, Who held it, but, Why it was holden? In matters of interpretation, not only the piety and devotedness of a commentator, but his learning and judgment, and general qualifications for this office, must be taken into the account and, after all, however high these may be, his opinion must still be received as that of a being limited in understanding-liable to the warping influence of prejudice, and born to

error.

With reference to the fathers, it must be confessed, that however venerable for zeal and devotedness, however respectable for piety, and authoritative when they appear as the bearers of a genuine catholic tradition, yet as private interpreters of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament, their qualifications are far from commanding our assent. Ignorant of the language of Moses and the pro