seen in maintaining this principle. But it would appear that much war has yet to be passed through, before others can be made practically to submit to its restraint. Mere brute force may do this by repeated battles on the aggressors, but religious principles can alone teach such people, as it has taught ourselves, that commerce and agriculture are the real sources of happy employment for man. God, however, "shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off." Mic. iv. 3. War will gradually grow out of fashion, because it is abhorred. Those who have persisted in it to the last shall be punished "with the rod of his mouth ” in Scriptural scourges. It will be no longer adopted as a profession, when its armies are useless. Its arms in their rusty indolence, are converted into agricultural instruments of tillage. Cases of individual wrong may be judged by the common tribunals, but cases of national wrong shall be managed by appeals to reason and religion, and War, as a universal scourge, will be banished for a long period from the world. Is. xi. 4- 10. Such a new political condition of mankind may surprize, but it cannot render us incredulous. For all things are easy when once the principle of movement or power is ascertained, and is equal to the work. Christianity is this motive power, and is quite equal to the task. She has already done so much, that this her last triumph is casting the shadow of its appearing on our own days. Its length is defined precisely by a Rev. xx. thousand years of happiness and peace. Then many nations will be again deceived, and imagine that such righteous principles are injurious, and amid the peace of the world thus wickedly disturbed, God will appear M 7, 8. by his Son, and take signal vengeance upon these miserable men, and the end of the world will immediately succeed such a miraculous interposition. The causes by which such changes are effected, though in their first origin the power and Spirit of God, are yet, in a secondary sense, shewn to be in operation by human agencies. They are closely connected in all the prophecies with the restoration of the Hebrew kingdom, and particularly united to Jewish conversion ; and the universal worship of One God, by one Creed and Revelation. Those Jews who remain still in their homes among the different nations, instead of taking up a new residence in Palestine, are mentioned as assisting in the practical diffusion of religious truth. "Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations." Thus the Jew who remains in the land of his birth, will be a witness for the truth, and a zealous servant of God. And the Hebrew who returns to his fatherland, shall at Jerusalem find the representatives of many nations; they "all shall be gathered" unto it, they "shall not walk any more after the imaginations Jer. iii. 17. of their evil hearts." The nations which fought against the Jews, shall also assist in dispersing the principles of true Religion, "those who are afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory, they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles." "Many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day." "Yea many people and strong nations, shall come to seek Is. lxi. 9. 11. Is. lxvi. 19. Zech. ii. 10 - 13. 22. -20. the Lord of Hosts at Jerusalem." They will look to Zech. viii. Jerusalem as the Holy city, and general centre of religious influences and information. Religion will be a Ch. xiv. 16 thing of daily observance, and make itself felt in the most minute as well as the most important concerns of life. Domestic and public life, will be equally familiarized to an acknowledgment of God's presence, and the fear of the Lord shall be seen in the commonest carrier's van, as in the most potent throne and Government, for " on the bells or bridles of the horses," shall be Ch. xiv. 20, cast the inscription-" Holiness to the Lord." Thus Christianity will reign in her principles, and Christ by his Gospel. Thus religion will at length be found to be the true interest of national bodies and individual families. Joy and cheerfulness, universal plenty, poverty without distress, wealth without oppression, the prosperity of nations without territorial ambition, the Empire of the Book, and therefore the intellectual empire of literary usefulness and pleasure, with occasional extraordinary manifestations of invisible things, will keep the world in a happy state of universal harmony, which serves in its sabbatical rest, to yield a foretaste of those more exalted joys, whose never-setting revelation shall be made to all the servants of the living God, in the new heavens and new earth. 21. XII. THE SCRIPTURAL CONNECTION BETWEEN THE In the course of these Dissertations, my argument has developed two points, which are of the utmost importance to be preserved in the mind. 1. The Prophecies on Jewish Restoration are literal, and not merely spiritual. Their return therefore as a people in their nationality, is announced as one of the verities of Holy writ. Their conversion is an object of vast importance, but it depends less on man's agency, than does their Restoration. The work of his Spirit reserves to itself, in all such cases, its divine supremacy; and he often teaches us by the magnitude of our efforts, and the comparative paucity of results, our nothingness, in thus changing the household secrets of the heart, and uniting man with God. But in the work of stirring up a people politically, to undertake their national construction, much more is done by man, ostensibly, than in the spiritual alteration of a change of creed. Hence then we find such an abundant supply of Prophecies, all bearing directly upon the subject of Jewish Restoration. Take them out of the Bible, and it would be deprived, not only in bulk of a large portion of its contents, but its internal evidence would present a great vacuity that could not be supplied. In them man's agency is everywhere appealed to as the machinery of the work. The Spirit of the movement, like the expansive force of some great natural power, requires to be entered into combination with human politics, and the effects of individual persons and nations, before its stupendous changes are effected in the world. This appears every where in the sacred writings. Men are to act here as well as to wait. They are to feel stirred up to it, and not merely to sit down and wish. Association for a divine purpose becomes in these great popular movements, the scriptural warrant for their being guided by One, whose ends are co-operative with them for their fullest manifestation. So that a literal Restoration of the Nationality of the Jew, peaceably, and by emigration and treaty to his own land, is amongst the plainest possibilities of Prophecy; and the only question that can arise to cast doubt upon the subject, is that asked by the Apostles of the Messiah, more than eighteen hundred years since. 'Lord, wilt thou AT THIS TIME restore again the kingdom to Israel?" 66 No answer can be given to this inquiry unless by events. These must be tried and consulted. The gold of the hidden secret is beneath us, but where shall we strike the rich vein? The action can be attempted, and if it fails, it is because it is too soon, but not because it will not be done. The opportunity of action may be lost by a nation, if they will not ask this question from the events of God in the world; and then some other agency will obtain the honour, the power, the credit, and glory of the work. But the finality of the event in its certainty, is I think,—and hope it is so to my reader,-from the series of Prophecies I have examined, as much a fixed intention in the Divine counsels, as was the erection of the second temple after the first, and the destruction of both until a new one should arise out of the dust trampled on by eighteen centuries of scorn and desolation. 2. The second point equally important and clear is — That as in all former great events and revolutions, the motive power has been visibly the agency of man in nations and persons, so we have no reason to expect Acts i. 6. |