(I sware) to give it to your fathers: and there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings wherein ye have been defiled, and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils which ye have committed." And in the 36th chapter we read, "I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land: then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean, &c. ..... (24, 25.) Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. (28.) I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen: then shall ye remember your own evil ways," &c. (30, 31.) Also in Zechariah, chap. xii. 6, we read, "Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son; and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born." From these and similar passages, it might seem, at first reading, that the national penitence of the Jews is not to be expected until after their restoration to their land. But we must carefully distinguish between their national penitence, properly so called, under an acknowledgment of their deserved punishment; and their subsequent godly sorrow, under a perception of their undeserved forgiveness. The passages now before us seem to me to predict the conversion of the Jews to the faith of a crucified Messiah,* after they are in their own land; and when the Lord, whom their fathers pierced, shall appear personally among them, for it is in the land, even on the Mount of Olives, that his personal appearance to them shall take place. Zech. xiv. 4. This, therefore, does not interfere with the view already advanced, from other predictions, of a preliminary penitence as Jews, preparatory to their restoration. I understand the 31st chapter of Jeremiah as embracing this whole subject in its order. In verse 18, the preliminary penitence of Israel is declared: "I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unacustomed to the yoke. Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou my God. Surely after I was turned (here is the secret grace of God securing the repentance), 1 repented; and after I was instructed, I smote art the Lord *It is of this conversion that the Apostle Paul speaks in Rom. xi. 23, and 2 Cor. iii. 16. upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth." Then follows the kindling mercy of God towards the penitent (20): "Ephraim, my dear son! a pleasant child! for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” In the next verses, the restoration of the people to the land is the theme: "Set thee up way-marks, make thee high heaps; set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities............there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all the cities thereof together, husbandmen, and they that go forth with flocks...........I will sow the house of Israel, and the house of Judah, (the two kingdoms, however diversely treated in the interim, are associated as one in the predictions of final and permanent blessedness) with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast: and it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict, so will I watch over them, to build and to plant, saith the Lord." (21-28.) And then follows a description of their true change of heart, when the Lord shall make with them a new covenant, and write his laws in their inward parts.". (29—34.) A penitential cry, therefore, to the God of their fathers, uttered by them as Jews, and as a nation, is what we are first to expect. Already, as we have heard from an eye-witness of the interesting scene, some of them assemble themselves on the eve of their Sabbath, under the walls of Jerusalem, where the abomination of desolation still standeth, and chant in mournful melody the lamentations of their Jeremiah, or sing with some thing like a dawn of hope— "Ail Bene, Ail Bene, Bene Betkha bekarob! Bimheira, bimheira, beyamenu bekarob ! "Ail Bene, Ail Bene, Bene Betkha bekarob! Bimheira, bimheira, beyamenu bekarob! Bimheira, bimheira, beyamenu bekarob! Lord, build-Lord, build Build thy house speedily. In haste! in haste! even in our days, "Lord, build-Lord, build Build thy house speedily. In haste! in haste! even in our days, In haste! in haste! even in our days, We conclude, for the present, with what Bishop Lowth calls a "formulary of humiliation," a penitential confession and supplication of the Israelites in their present state of dispersion." "Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and thy glory. Where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels, and of thy mercies toward me? Are they restrained? Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O God, art our Father, our Redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear? Return, for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The people of thy holiness have possessed it but a very little while:* our adversaries have trodden * According to the chronology of our most learned writers, about 3740 years have elapsed since the promise first made to Abraham, that the land of Canaan should be given to him and his seed for ever. During these 3740 years, it will be found that the whole period during which any part of the posterity of Abraham have possessed the promised land, has not exceeded 1481 years; for, from the entrance of Israel, under Joshua, into Canaan, till the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, are 1551 years, from which, the seventy years captivity in Babylon being substracted, there remain 1481 years; and as the ten tribes were carried captive into Assyria in the year 721 before Christ, this part of Abraham's seed have possessed the land of promise only 730 years out of the whole period of 3740 years. If there is to be no |