"earth. The Lord did not set his love

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upon you, nor choose you because ye "were more in number than any people, "but because the Lord loved you, and "because he would keep the oath, which "he had sworn unto your fathers," &c. Deut. vii. 6, &c. This declaration was

not made to the Israelites as individuals, nor exclusively to those who were faithful and obedient among them; but to the Israelites in their collective character, as a nation, a nation expressly selected by God to constitute, as it were, an intermediate link in that divine chain of Redemption, which was in the fullness of time to be compleatly made manifest to the world. The election of the Jewish nation then was not an election unto salvation, but an election for the time being, and for the promotion of a particular object, in which all mankind were equally interested with themselves. On this account they are distinguished in holy writ by the titles of the chosen, the elect, the peculiar people of God; whilst to them in that privileged character, "pertained "the adoption and the glory, and the "covenants,

"covenants, and the giving of the law, "and the service of God, and the pro"mises;" Rom. ix. 4, as means intended to be preparatory and introductory to the more perfect manifestation of divine grace, in the incarnation and sufferings of the promised Redeemer.

But when this favoured people, through their spiritual blindness and corruption were become unworthy of their distinguished privileges, the pale of the Gospel covenant was thrown open to the world at large; and the Gentiles who, in the words of the Apostle, were aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, and who had long been living without God, were admitted into it, in common with those among the Jews, who possessed not so bigotted an attachment to their own peculiar dispensation, as to prevent their "For partaking in the same advantage.

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as in the days of Elias, when he com"plained against Israel, that of all the "worshippers of the true God he alone "was left, the answer he received from "God was, that he had reserved to him

"self

"self 7000 men who had not bowed the "knee to Baal." "Even so," continues the Apostle," at this present time also "there is a remnant according to the "election of grace." Rom. xi. 5.

By "the remant according to the election of grace," is to be understood that portion of the Jewish nation who received Christ on the preaching of the Apostles; who are therefore said to have been elected by grace to the privileges of the Gospel Dispensation, in common with the Gentiles who believed. The distinction between the remnant which received Christ, and the great body of the Jewish nation which rejected him, the Apostle thus points out to notice: "Israel" says he, "hath not obtained that which he “seeketh for;" the great body of the -Jewish nation sought for justification by the works of the law, and obtained it not, because they sought amiss; " but the elec"tion hath obtained it ;" the "remnant "according to the election of grace" obtained it, because they saw Christ as the end of the law for righteousness; whilst -the rest, or the great body of the Jews,

who saw not Christ in this light, and therefore rejected him, are said to be "blinded." Rom. xi. 7. Or as the Apostle, in the preceding chapter, distinctly describes the case, when speaking of his unhappily blinded countrymen, he says, that being ignorant of God's righteousness," in other words, of the Gospel mode of justification, through the righteousness of Christ, " and going about "to establish their own righteousness" (by the law,)" have not submitted them"selves unto the righteousness of God;" namely to that righteousness of God in Christ, which constituted the foundation of the Gospel system.

Abraham, and his spiritual children, understood the nature of the promised inhe ritance, in the land of everlasting rest, and looked forward in faith, "to a city "which hath foundations, whose builder " and maker is God." The eyes of his carnal children, who had "a zeal for God, "but not according to knowledge," at the time of our Saviour's appearance among them, were so covered with the mire and clay of this world, that they

could

could not see what their father Abraham would have seen, and have acknowledged with exceeding joy in the person of Christ in the flesh, as "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that be"lieved."

In reference then to the Jewish nation the Apostle, as it has been observed, for distinction's sake, speaks clearly of two elections, in which that nation was concerned; the one general, which respected the nation at large, as chosen for their father's sake, to be God's peculiar people for the time being, under the legal dis pensation: the other, partial, which respected that remnant of the nation only, who, for their belief's sake, were elected to the privileges of the Gospel Dispen

sation.

But in neither case were the parties concerned absolutely elected unto salvation, but only to the means which, under God, were intended to lead them to that desired end. For instance, the design of the law, of which the Jewish nation, as God's elected people, were the appointed keepers, was, "not to make the comers "there