SERMON XVIII.

THE JEW CONQUERING THE NATIONS.

LINCOLN'S INN, EASTER SUNDAY.-APRIL 11, 1852.

ISAIAH LXIII., 16.

Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; Thy Name is from everlasting.

THE last passage in Isaiah's prophecies to which I alluded, was that which begins with the words, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?" I could not doubt that these words contained the description of a mighty conqueror; I could not deny the Jewish assertion, that the whole scenery of the passage, as well as the context of it, led us to think of a Jewish conqueror returning from a victory over Gentile hosts.

This being admitted, the question to be considered was, what is the nature of the triumph here described, how was it or will it be won, in what sense and upon what terms has the Gentile world, represented by these cities of Edom and Bozrah, done homage or will it do homage to the Jewish race and to a sovereign of Jerusalem? With the consideration of this question, I shall conclude what I have to say upon this great prophet. Without it I believe we could

X

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THE CLIMAX OF ISAIAH'S HOPES. [Serm. neither understand the visions which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem-when he declared that God had nourished and brought up children and that they had rebelled against Him, that God would ease Him of His adversaries and avenge Him of His enemies, that the strong should be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and that they should both burn together and none should quench them-nor that vision of a new heavens and a new earth, when Jerusalem should be a rejoicing and her people a joy, when the voice of weeping should no more be heard in her nor the voice of crying, which cheered him, as we have been wont to believe, before his race was run and the torch of prophecy was given into some other hand.

I am aware that an argument may be drawn from those allusions to Gentiles upon which I propose to speak, in favour of the notion that the later chapters of this book were not written by Isaiah. Why, it will be asked, should such allusions be so much more frequent in these discourses than in the others? Must not we suspect that they belong to a later stage of the history when the Jews had been groaning under Gentile government, as in the seventy years' captivity, rather than to the time of Hezekiah, when they had had no such experience? To the first suggestion I answer, that the relations into which Samaria was entering with the heathen Syria, and Ahaz with the heathen Assyria, were the hint and occasion of Isaiah's earliest inspirations; that a struggle between heathendom concentrated in the person of the Assyrian monarch, and the holy city ruled by Hezekiah, is the subject of the chapters preceding the fortieth; that what one finds in the succeeding chapters is not the record or anticipation of a conflict of a different kind, but a clear intimation that the same conflict would be prolonged for

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many generations. To the reason given for referring these discourses to the later years of the captivity, I answer that the symbols of the warrior who fights with Edom and Bozrah, are the symbols of a native prince, and that I cannot see why upon any view of Isaiah's mission these should have been more natural in a time when there was no native prince and no prospect of any when the restoration of the city, of the temple, of the order of the priests and sacrifices, not the establishment of a throne in Jerusalem, was that which patriots and holy men were expecting-than to one living in a time when there was such a throne, an actual heir of David sitting upon it, a righteous ruler, one who had been permitted to assert the glory of Israel and of the Lord God of Israel.

I do not refer to the authority of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans to decide this question. It may be said. reasonably enough, that he would of course quote any prophecy by the title which it ordinarily bore in his day, and that he was too much occupied with his subject to engage in a discussion which had no direct bearing upon it. But I refer to him for the light he throws upon the actual intention of the passages which I am considering.

In the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans he had been speaking of the great heaviness and continual sorrow which he had in his heart when he thought of the condition of his countrymen. They were his kinsmen according to the flesh; to them pertained the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the promises. Their's were the fathers; "of them," he adds, " as concerning the flesh, Christ has come, who is over all, God blessed for ever." The inheritors of all these mighty blessings were, it seemed to him, cutting themselves off from them.

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ST. PAUL'S SORROW.

[Serm. He could not help seeing that a tremendous crisis was at hand, that in a few years the holy city and the temple would be trampled under foot by the Gentiles, that the great empire of the world would extinguish the nation which it had subdued. With that prospect before him the Apostle had wished-could even then wish-that he might himself be accursed if his race could be preserved. And this was not merely a patriot's passion. The truth and faithfulness of God upon which his own existence and all his hopes stood, seemed involved in the continued preservation of the people who had been called out to be His witnesses. To contemplate the world without them, was like believing that all the past had been nothing, that the whole scheme of the divine government had been set at nought and defeated by man's wilfulness. No dream of a possible future, no thought of blessings for new tribes and kindreds of the earth, could console the apostle under such a thought. It was anguish to him, not as a Hebrew of the Hebrews only, but as a man. For what had man to hope for but the knowledge of God? And if God were other in the present and the future than He had revealed Himself in the past, what knowledge could there be of Him or of His ways?

But a deep discovery had been made to the inmost heart of St. Paul, which had sustained him through that tremendous personal conflict that is described to us in the seventh chapter of his Epistle, and which was not less available in these doubts concerning the destiny of his own race and of mankind. He had been taught that in himself, that is in his flesh, dwelt no good thing. As a separate creature, he could do nothing that was right to do. Yet there was that in him which was perpetually aiming at something good, perpetually struggling and desiring to be in conformity

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HIS DISCOVERY.

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with this good. This will, this spirit in him, what was it? Whence did it come? It pleased God to show him that there was a mighty Deliverer who had asserted His own dominion over this feeble, struggling, sinking spirit, who had declared that it had a life in Him which it had not in itself. He believed that this Deliverer was the Son of God, that He had been manifested that men might become sons of God in Him.

Saul of Tarsus, circumcised the eighth day, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel in the straightest sect of his religion, had learnt in mature life that his descent from Abraham, his circumcision, his knowledge of the law, and his strictness in fulfilling it, did not make him a true and righteous man; that circumcision and the law were witnesses that he had no righteousness of his own, but was righteous only in virtue of his relationship to the righteous God. This relationship he now knew to be a real one. Christ by taking flesh, by dying, by rising again, had proved it to be fixed, eternal, dependent on no accidents, grounded on the divine constitution of things. What a light did this throw upon the calling of the Jewish nation, upon the end for which it existed! Was it not chosen out to testify of this divine relationship? Were not the covenant and the law and the promises, all so many declarations that God who is a Spirit claims the spiritual creature whom He has formed in His own image, as His servant and His child? Was not the sin of the Jews of St. Paul's day, of the Pharisee as well as of the Sadducee, that he did not estimate enough his own high calling, that he was content to be a child of Abraham, when he should have asserted his right to be a child of God? What was his denial of Jesus, cry "This Man blasphemeth, because he saith he is the

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