the Lord thy God shall choose, to cause His Name to dwell there'."

(2.) But, further, it may be objected, that the change was internal, not external only: not only did the Church change from local to Catholic, but it became a Church of Gentiles instead of a Church of Jews. Its members were changed as well as its locality, though Christ and His Apostles happen to have been Jews. This certainly is a weightier objection, yet this too will perhaps be removed on an attentive consideration of the subject.

Consider, then, that changes also of this kind had already occurred in the history of Israel, yet the Church remained one and the same. How unexpected, for instance, was the change which destroyed the substantive existence of the ten tribes, which amalgamated Judah and Benjamin almost into one, and absorbed into them the fragments of the ten whose sceptres were broken! At first, the principle of continuity seemed to lie in the twelve sons of Jacob; then one is set apart for a peculiar office in the body politic,-the priesthood, and is deprived of its share of the territory; and another of the twelve is divided into two to make up the full number without that one; and then, at length, the favoured line is narrowed to Judah. Again, in an earlier age, only two of those who left Egypt with Moses entered the promised land. The line of continuity, surely, was not less definite when the Church became Christian. Christ and His Apostles were all Jews; the first converts were Jews; the centres of conversion throughout the Roman empire were com

1 Deut. xii. 11.

posed of Jews. In one place, we are even told, that "a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith'.'

And let it be observed, that the sacred writers show themselves quite aware of this peculiarity in the mode in which God's purposes are carried on from age to age. They are frequent in speaking of a "remnant" as alone inheriting the promises; the phenomenon of a remnant has been a sort of law of the Divine Dispensations towards man hitherto, and is declared, especially by St. Paul, to be such. "God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew. Wot ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias? but what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to Myself seven thousand men;" and then the Apostle adds, "Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant, according to the election of grace'." No word is more frequent in the Prophets than this word remnant, as we must be very well aware. Thus, in the first chapter of the prophet Isaiah, "Unless the Lord had left us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom." And it was promised that "the Lord should set His hand to recover the remnant of His people." And the very threat denounced against the people was, not that the nation should be lost, for that was too certain, but that even the remnant should perish. "I will take the remnant of Judah," says Almighty God by Jeremiah, "that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed." And Ezekiel asks, "Wilt Thou make a full end of the remnant*?"

1 Acts vi. 7.

Jer. xliv. 12.

[8. D.]

Rom. xi. 2—5. 4 Ezek. xi. 13.

And Johanan wishes to take a certain course, lest "the remnant of Judah perish." And Ezra confesses the sin of his people, who had sinned again, when, "now for a little space grace had been showed from the Lord their God, to leave them a remnant to escape'." And Haggai says, that "the Lord stirred up the spirit of all the remnant;" as if it were an acknowledged and almost technical term. And, in like manner, to the remnant is the great recovery and the victory promised, as in the text, "The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward." And in Joel, "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call." And Micah, "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people, as a dew from the Lord,

and the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, in the midst of many people, as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through, both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver." And Zephaniah, "The coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; . . . the residue of My people shall spoil them, and the remnant of My people shall possess them." And Zechariah, after promising that "the seed shall be prosperous, and the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew," adds, in the Name of the

1 Jer. xl. 15. Ezra ix. 7, 8.

Hagg. i. 14. Joel ii. 32. Micah v. 8. Zeph. ii. 7-9. Zech. viii. 12.

Lord, "I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things." It was not promised then that all Israel should be a light of the earth, and should possess the nations, but that the remnant should thus be favoured to the remnant it was promised; and how small the remnant might be, is plain from St. Paul's reference to the time of Elijah, when it was but seven thousand men. As then no one would say that the chosen people did not continue one and the same after the captivity in Babylon, though instead of Israelites they had become Jews; as the Church remained the same as before, though the nation was gradually changing; so when it changed altogether and became Gentile for Jewish, still there was no substitution of a new Church for an old: it was but a manifestation of the old law of "the remnant," by which the many were called and the few were chosen. And so it has been ever since; the Church has lasted, but as a pilgrim upon earth, having a secure dwelling-place in no country; first identified with one nation, then with another; losing children and gaining them; sure of a sojourn nowhere, yet sure of it somewhere; Israel being but the first of many nations in which she had been lodged, and from which she takes her name in prophecy.

I consider, then, that the word "remnant," so constantly used in Scripture, is the token of the identity of the Church, in the mind of her Divine Creator, before and after the coming of Christ. Express and precise as are the sacred writers in declaring that the Gentiles shall be called, and again, that the Jews as a body shall be rejected, still, instead of stating the solemn appoint

ment of God in a simple contrast like this, and thus drawing a line of demarcation between His two Dispensations, they are accustomed to speak of the remnant of Israel inheriting the Gentiles; as if to make the Law run into the Gospel, and to teach us, as St. Paul expressly inculcates, that the promises made to Israel are really accomplished, without any evasion, in the Divine protection accorded to Christians.

To conclude: the object of the foregoing remarks has been to remove some difficulties in the way of looking upon the prophecies made in the Old Testament to the Church, as having been already fulfilled, and literally fulfilled, in Gospel times. At first sight, any one, looking first at the prophecies, then at the history of the Christian Church, would say that they have been strikingly fulfilled; but still, in spite of this broad fulfilment, there are certain points to clear up, and with these I have been engaged.

1. I will but observe, first, that whether we can clear them up satisfactorily or no, they are not greater than the difficulties which attend on other confessedly fulfilled and very chief and notable prophecies, as that of the dispersion of the Jews. No one surely can read the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, and then survey the actual state of the Jews at this time and since our Lord came without being sure that their present state is indeed a fulfilment of the prophecy; yet, observe, they were threatened with the evils which have befallen. them, supposing they did not keep their Law; whereas in the event the punishment has come upon them, apparently for keeping it; because they would not