so also they will be kept separate unto the end. I shall confine myself to three reasons for this belief, and state them as briefly as possible.

First, it is predicted by Moses, and repeated by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that the Jews should be a taunt, and a reproach, and a proverb, and a byword, among all the nations whither the Lord their God would scatter them. (See Deut. xxviii. 37; Jer. xxiv. 8, 9; Ezek. v. 13, 14, 15.) Now it is manifest, that if at any time they should amalgamate among the nations, lose their distinguishing peculiarities, become as the people among whom they are scattered, and cease to dwell alone, these prophecies would immediately cease to be applicable to them; merging in the tide of human society, they would no longer present, as they now do, a prominent object, miraculously sustained upon its surface, in despite of all the buffettings of its angry insulting waves. Proverbial reproach, then, is a revealed characteristic of their dispersion; but proverbial reproach necessarily implies continued separation; therefore, continued separation is a revealed characteristic of their dispersion. This proves a certain continuance of separation, without doubt; but how does it appear, that such continuance is to endure till the close of the present dispensation? This leads to our second reason.

It is copiously predicted, that the cup of the Lord's anger shall continue in the hands of the Jews, until the time appointed of the Lord, not

merely to take it out of their hand, but alsó to transfer it into the hands of those who, till then, will have oppressed them. The language declaring this, is grounded on the existing circumstances of the nation, in the days of the prophets. Edom who broke the yoke of his brother from off his neck, according to the prophecy of Isaac ; (Gen. xxvii. 40 ;) The Assyrian who carried away Israel; (2 Kings xvii. and xviii ;) and Babylon, who held Judah in captivity, were the great types of all the subsequent enemies of the chosen nation, whether Romans, Turks, or professing Christians. The day of Jerusalem's recovery, is the day of their ruin. In that day, it will be a righteous thing in the servants of the Lord, to execute unsparing destruction upon his and their enemies. In the prophetic anticipation of that day, Psalm cxxxvii. seems to have been written. It opens with a description of Judah in the Babylonish captivity, maintaining his undiminished affection for Zion; and it concludes with these truly awful expressions, Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem, who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." At the time of Judah's restoration from Babylon, no event occurred, which can even be mistaken for the fulfilment of this fearful predic

tion; neither any thing typical of the event here predicted. For the types of that day, we must look back to the deliverance of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and their establishment in Canaan. They were kept in bondage, till the iniquity of the Egyptians was full; and they were delayed in the wilderness, till the iniquity of the Amorites was full. So now, they are kept in dispersion and degradation, till the iniquities of the modern mystical Edom and Babylon shall be full: and then fury shall be poured forth, and vengeance executed both by their own hands, as in the case of Joshua's exterminating conquests; and by a greater hand than theirs, stretched out to fight for them, as in the case of Pharaoh's overthrow. Here quotations might be multiplied. (See Isa. xlix. 25, 26; and li. 21-23; Jer. xxx. 16, 17; Obad. 15-22.)

There is no intimation of any gradual mixing among their oppressors; or of any the smallest mitigation of their oppression. On the contrary, in the day that judgment is executed upon Babylon, Judah is described as arising from the dust of her disgrace and shame; loosing the bands from her neck, and putting on her beautiful garments as God's holy city. Nothing can more clearly mark the separation of Judah from the nations in that day. That day of vengeance will be the termination of the times of the Gentiles; as it is written, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,

Then

until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." shall the holy city be trodden under foot no more: the power of the holy people shall no longer be scattered the king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall be broken without hands: the dominion shall be taken away from the ten horns of the fourth beast, including that little horn which, during its appointed time, times, and dividing of a time, shall have worn out the saints; "and the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, (that is, upon all the earth,) shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." (Luke xxi. 24; Dan. vii. and viii. and xii.)

A third consideration, which proves the separate condition of the Jews to the end of this dispensation, is that prophetic argument of the apostle Paul, in which he concludes, that "the receiving of the Jews again to God's favour, will be as life from the dead, to the Gentile world." "The conversion of the Jews is here described as being much more eminently beneficial to the great collective body of the Gentiles, than was the conversion of those Gentiles, who in the apostolic age had embraced Christianity; that is to say, the Gentiles collectively are represented to be much more benefited by the yet future conversion of the Jews, than they were by that partial conversion of certain members only

of their own body, which has hitherto taken place.

A great benefit, no doubt, was conferred upon the Gentiles, even by a partial admission into the church for St. Paul styles this benefit the riches of the Gentiles, and the reconciling of the world: but then he contends, that an infinitely greater benefit, a benefit which he celebrates as life from the dead, will be conferred upon them by the receiving of the Jews." This could not be accomplished in any sense at all answering the magnitude of the expressions, or harmonising with the drift of the apostle's reasoning, if the Jews were in the mean time to be mixed among the Gentiles, divested of their national peculiarities, and gradually, or even miraculously, converted to the Christian faith, in common with, or subsequent to, the Gentile world. We maintain, therefore, the uninterrupted application of the language of Balaam, "Lo! the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations."

Seeing, therefore, upon the whole, that we have such proof, direct and indirect, of our general position; and such satisfactory answers to the objections urged against it, we settle into the persuasion which has been so eloquently and justly expressed, that as the Jews have been, so till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, they shall be, "like those mountain streams, which are said to pass through lakes of another kind of water,

Faber.