lieving and expecting it; neither should the apparent improbability, or even absurdity of it, interfere in the slightest degree with our faith. But, secondly, the Jewish people, who shall be re-assembled in the land, are not the identical individuals of whom the prophet speaks as being dispersed; but their literal, lineal descendants, who shall be found alive at the time appointed of God for their restoration. In like manner, the King of the Jews, who shall reign over the twelve tribes in the land, is not the identical David, or Solomon the son of David, or Rehoboam the grandson of David, who did reign over them before their division; but the literal, lineal descendant of David, the last of the line of Jewish kings who shall be found alive at the time appointed of God for their reunion into one kingdom. The last individual who was born King of the Jews, was Jesus of Nazareth, and he is still alive. He is the literal, lineal descendant of David; and the angel who announced his birth, informed his mother that the Lord God would give unto him the throne of his father David. (Luke i. 32.) The

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It is written of Coniah or Jechonias, the last king of the house of David, before the captivity, "Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah." (Jer. xxii. 30.) If the word childless, in this passage, be taken literally as an English reader would understand it, it will involve a direct contradiction to Matt. i. 12-Jechonias begat Salathiel. I think it

people have been preserved upon the earth, generation after generation. The King has been pre

has been satisfactorily argued, that the original word, the root of which is simply nudus, may, without any violence, be understood in a general sense, as destitute or deprived. It is translated in the Septuagint, by exKnpuктov. This view would limit the meaning of the word to royal progeny; and indeed the text itself seems to warrant, nay, to require such a limitation, the second clause being an explanation of the first. Write this man childless, &c.—why? because no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, &c. It is not said he shall have no seed, but that no man of his seed shall reign. If this exposition be just, it implies that he would have posterity, while it asserts, that none of them would inherit the kingdom of their father. This has been strictly fulfilled. He had two sons, Asser and Salathiel. (1 Chron. iii. 17.) But his successor in the kingdom was his uncle Mattaniah, whose name the king of Babylon changed to Zedekiah. (2 Kings xxiv. 17; Jer. xxxvii. 1.) The last king of Judah, therefore, before the captivity, was of the seed of David, though not of the seed of Coniah. The sons of Zedekiah, however, were slain by the Chaldees, as we read, 2 Kings xxv. 7. The genealogy, therefore, was continued in the seed of Coniah. Jeconiah begat Salathiel, and Salathiel begat Zorobabel, &c. But no man of his seed prospered, sitting on the throne of David. The Lord Jesus. is of the seed of Coniah, as truly as he is of the seed of David, or Abraham: but he did not prosper on the throne. (See page 150.) The clause now before us, of the prophecy of Jeremiah, has been in continuous fulfilment since the days of Coniah, even unto our own days: but this clause is not the whole prophecy; and that a limit to the period of the application of this clause was pre-determined, is manifest, from the subsequent clause, which says, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, AND A KING SHALL

served in heaven, where he sitteth on the right hand of God. We are plainly informed, that he shall come again from heaven in like manner as he went up into heaven. (Acts i. 11.) Thus king and people shall meet; and the literal, lineal descendants of David's subjects shall be governed by the literal, lineal descendant of King David himself, and "He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

In pursuance of my plan, as announced at the commencement of this discourse, I have refrained from that species of corroboration which might so largely be given to this view of the subject, by the quotation of parallel passages: satisfied that a fair investigation into the true meaning of this one prophecy, if consistently followed throughout, must shut up every candid inquirer to the conclusion I have here drawn. That the subject is capable of reiterated corroboration, from similar language used in other places, all will readily allow who are acquainted with the prophetic writings. It is, in fact, the leading theme with the Jewish prophets. The original grant to Father Abraham is never lost sight of. It is the climax of every song of tri

REIGN AND PROSPER," &c. Thus, in the history of the Jewish nation, Jer. xxii. 30 has found a literal fulfilment for many centuries; while, in the preserved genealogy from Coniah to the Virgin Mary, and since then, in the person of Christ himself, provision has been kept up, for the literal fulfilment of Jer. xxiii. 5, in his time.

umph, the key-note, in reference to which every strain is set, and without which there is no har

mony in the whole. Is the Lord, the Son of David, the King of the Jews, to return?-It is to the Mount of Olives, in the land of Judah. Is he to reign over his people?—It is in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem. Are the nations of the earth to be blessed?—It is in coming to the light which shall have arisen upon Jerusalem. (Zech. xiv. 4 ; Isa. xxiv. 23, and lx. throughout.) Yea, many hymns of praise are written in anticipation of this great accomplishment of Israel's blessedness, and left ready to be sung by the re-assembled tribes in the land of Judah. (See Isaiah xxvi. and Jeremiah xxxiii. 10, 11.)

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LECTURE VI.

JEREMIAH Xxiii. 5, 6.

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days, Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness.”

HAs it been proved, or has it not, that the Jews shall be restored?-that the outcasts of Israel, and the dispersed of Judah, shall be re-united into one kingdom; and thus the whole twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob be put in permanent possession of the land of their forefathers? Is this the meaning, or is it not, of the two sticks in the hand of the prophet Ezekiel, which God caused to become one, and then expounded, in the remarkable language which we have lately considered?

My brethren, I must be permitted to say, that the proof advanced, brief and general as it has