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same person that is described by Isaiah, who, speaking in the name of the whole nation, says of him, 'He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; ' and we hid as it were our faces from him: he ' was despised, and we esteemed him not,' This person, we have already proved, was no other than Jesus the Messiah. At his second coming with the clouds of heaven, (Dan. vii. 13.) which takes place at the destruction of the Roman empire, and about the time of the restoration of the Jews, Jesus the Messiah will appear to that people who pierced him, and they shall look on him whom they pierced, and mourn for him as for an only son. Mingled emotions of astonishment, grief, and shame, and holy self-abhorrence, for the crime of their forefathers, and their own long continued sin in rejecting the Messiah, will then agitate the breasts of the chosen people of God.

If the Jews object to this interpretation, then it is incumbent upon them to state unto what other great national sin, excepting that of the

crucifixion of Jesus, the passage now quoted from Zechariah can apply; and to account for the circumstance, that the only passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which seems to describe the matter of their future national repentance, should so exactly suit the Christian scheme.

Having thus endeavoured to show, from the Hebrew Scriptures, that the Jews, during their captivity, have not been the people of God, but have been afar off from him, and ignorant of his true worship, I shall now proceed to examine, whether there be any reason, from the same Scriptures, to conclude, that, during this period, God has had a people among the Gentiles.

As the Jews have not been the people of God during this period, it follows, that either God has had a people among the Gentiles, or that he has had no people in the world; or, in other words, that the worship and fear of God have become quite banished from the earth. But this seems quite contrary to many plain declarations of Scripture. In Psalm xxii. 30, it

is declared, that a seed shall serve him; it shall 'be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

They shall come and declare his righteousness 'unto a people that shall be born, that he hath 'done this.' From this passage we may infer, that, in the darkest periods of the church, God has always had a chosen seed to serve him. The psalmist, in the seventy-second Psalm, which was given by the Spirit of God in reference to the Messiah, says, (ver. 5.) They shall fear thee as

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moon endure, through

It appears from the prophecies of Daniel, (chap. vii. 25.) that, even during the reign of that tyrannical power which is symbolized by the little horn of the Roman beast, there are upon earth a people called the saints of the Most High; and though these saints are delivered into the hand of this power, to be oppressed by him, yet they are not so given up as to be quite extirpated from the earth.

Thus, then, we are led to believe, that, in every age, God has had a people in the world;

and we have already seen, that the Jews, being 'sinitten with blindness, so as to grope at noon

day, as the blind gropeth in darkness,' they are not, during the period of their captivity, the people of God. Are there, then, any passages of Scripture which can lead us to discover where we are to look for the people of God?

Very remarkable to this purpose is the declaration contained in the song of Moses. After predicting the idolatry of the children of Israel, the prophet adds, in the 19th and following verses, • And when the Lord saw (it),

he abhorred (them), because of the provoking ' of his sons and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them; I will 'see what their end shall be: for they are a

very froward generation; children in whom

is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy ' with (that which is) not God; they have pro'voked me to anger with their vanities; and I ⚫ will move them to jealousy with (those which are) not a people: I will provoke them to

anger with a foolish nation. ' Here the Lord declares his just and holy procedure towards his ancient people. As they, by forsaking the worship of God for that of idols, did move Him to jealousy, with that which was no God, He, in return, moves them to jealousy, by taking to Himself, as a people, those who were not a people, i. e. the Gentiles; and by hiding his face from his ancient people of Israel. In this most remarkable prediction, the language is evidently borrowed from the sensations of the conjugal state; by which, in various passages of the Scriptures, God was pleased, in the adorable condescension of his love, to illustrate the nature of the union between Himself and his chosen people. Thus, in the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, the city of Jerusalem is represented to us under the image of a woman, who had been united to the Lord in the state of marriage, but was, like an adulteress, gone astray from her husband. And the same image is chosen in the prophecies of Hosea, to denote the union between God and his people, as is ex