wisdom, which cannot fail either from want of power or judgment. Zophar, then, though otherwise mistaken, was right when he said:

Canst thou find out the secret of God, and canst thou discover the final purpose of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?' But, then, he and his friends should have shaped their own conclusions with reference to Job's sufferings by the application of the same principle of human shortsightedness as contrasted with the inscrutable counsels of God. How can mortal man be just with God?' is a sufficient explanation of the existence of misery in the world. Anyhow, it was not the excessive exhibition of mercy, but the rigour of God's justice, which has more or less bewildered reflecting believers in every age. Justice was, according to the Book of Job, the predominant principle in God's moral government: and if so, with what tremendous force and appalling emphasis does the question present itself, when viewed with reference to the eternal destinies of the soul? How can man be eternally just, or, what is the same, eternally happy with God? This momentous question has received as many practical answers as there are creeds in the world. They all claim to be Divine revelations, for the simple reason that it is God alone who can solve this mystery. It is beyond the grasp of the human intellect, and even if speciously solved by man, such a merely human solution must fail completely of inspiring us with any degree of confidence when on the threshold of the grave. Man's eternal fellowship with God, which alone constitutes eternal happiness, is rendered impossible by man's innate impurity. There is a mutual, deeply rooted, and invincible aversion between human refinement and human vulgarity; what must it be between God and unregenerate man? Repentance and amendment are of no avail in a human court of justice. They cannot avert the consequences entailed by a violation of the laws which govern the human body. The Mosaic law knows of no pardon for

wilful transgression, nor even for inadvertent delinquencies, without a propitiatory offering. The attribute of mercy must not destroy, it must not supersede, though it may prevail against, that of justice. The two should blend harmoniously together. A Divine revelation is therefore absolutely necessary for the adjustment of these difficulties. And does Judaism give a clear, decisive, as well as authoritative answer to the question, 'How shall man be just with God, and how shall he be clean that is born of woman?' Why, Dr. Benisch, one of the highest exponents of Jewish theological thought in this country, labours hard to prove that Moses knew at least of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and he says that it was the prophets and the rabbis who shifted the centre

of gravity, as it were, from this to the next world. And yet he calls the Old Testament a Divine revelation, silent as it is about the question whose solution can alone adequately account for the long chain of miraculous interpositions on behalf of his people! In this age of scepticism he wants the world to believe that the infinite condescension of God on Mount Sinai served no other purpose than to fortify the religion of a single people by earthly promises and penalties; or what amounts to the same thing, to regulate their temporal affairs for a time and then to give up the attempt as a complete failure! For if we take the Pentateuch for a guide, nothing is more certain than that for the last 1,800 years the Jewish people have experienced all the judgments and none of the blessings of the law, and consequently that they have lived all the time without religion in its scriptural sense. And can there be anything more wild than such a theory? The rev. gentleman said the question between Jews and Christians was one of Old Testament interpretation by two classes of Jews, the Hebrew heralds of the Gospel and the modern rabbis, and the correctness of the views of these different interpreters may be gauged by the effects which each had exercised upon the world at large. He concluded with an im

pressive appeal to Jews and Christians, telling the former that a thrill of exquisite delight should throb their hearts at the thought that the proudest nations of Europe owed a debt of gratitude to their Hebrew forefathers which they could never repay."

The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer of the 5th ult., gives the following epitome of the next sermon by Mr. Wolkenberg :

"On Sunday evening last, a special sermon to the above was, according to previous announcement, preached by the Rev. M. Wolkenberg, at St. Mary's, Leeds. The rev. gentleman's subject was The Evidences of Judaism,' and he chose for his text Isa. xli. 21. He said that faith founded in reason is the golden mean between superstitious credulity on the one hand and unbelief on the other. Hence a great Jew, who had left his mark upon the world as very few had done before or after him, the Apostle Peter, insisted that every one should be able to give a reason of the hope that was in him. His authority is not generally acknowledged by his Hebrew brethren, but his admonition is so self-evident that it must commend itself to the approbation of every thinking man. It is only darkness that flees the light, and a creed for which nothing more can be said than that it has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers has clearly no foundation in truth. Isaiah therefore, though speaking with the authority of Divine inspiration, is ready to listen calmly and dispassionately to the most degraded idolaters of his time. But is not Judaism so rational as to be above all reasonable dispute? What need can there be to prove the existence and the glorious attributes with which that system invests the God of Israel? It is only the fool that says in his heart there is no God, and him it would be a vain attempt to convince, because it is not his mind that is at fault, but his heart. True; but then Judaism maintains that the sime God, who is exalted far above the highest heaven, and before whose glorious majesty all created things re less than nothing, had also for

several centuries dwelt visibly in the midst of the Jewish people, and that He had selected them as His peculiar treasure out of all nations. Now this is far from self-evident. How do the Jews account for this Divine preference? God is no respecter of persons. Why then should He have lavished His favours upon a single people, and neglected the rest of mankind? Supposing even that God would be so partial, what benefit have the Jews themselves derived from this unaccountable and one-sided selection of their race? Have they as a nation been socially and politically happier than the Gentiles? Is it not an indisputable fact that, for any social, civil, intellectual, or political advantages they enjoy above their down-trodden brethren in other countries, they are indebted to their residence in this Protestant land? Here, then, we are confronted with an insurmountable barrier at the very threshold of Judaism. Before this is removed, no other proof in favour of the Divine origin of that creed can be of any weight. Accept the Gospel as the ultimate end designed in the election of Israel, as the completion and fulfilment of the Old Testament, and the difficulty disappears. There is no inconsistent Divine partiality. There is only a

choice of human instruments for the spiritual restoration of all mankind, which has been effected to a large extent by a Jewish agency so utterly inadequate that nothing short of Omnipotent power could have operated through it and rendered it effectual. The Jews themselves have, as a nation, so far derived no benefit from it, because they have mistaken its object, which has, nevertheless, been realised by the Gentiles, through the self-sacrificing labours of the Hebrew disciples of Jesus, who had a correct apprehension of the Divine purposes as designed in the Old Testament. We have thus the best vindication of the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures; for is it not a most striking confirmation of the Divine origin of the Gospel, as well as of Moses and the prophets, that both are the acknowledged source of religious truth to millions of the human race? And

who gave the impetus to that mighty movement? Who first set the wave of the knowledge of God rolling over mankind, till it has covered a large portion of the globe? Who but the Jewish believers in the crucified Saviour? The Jews reject the Gospel because it is opposed to their inherited prejudices, and they find themselves in the presence of inexplicable difficulties which undermine the very foundation of Judaism. Is it right? is it profitable to reject the truth because it is not such as we like?

"There were many Jews and Jewesses in the church, who were also addressed in German, and listened with great attention."

The Nottingham Journal of the 19th ult., gives the following account:

SPECIAL SERMONS TO JEWS AND GENTILES.-On Sunday evening, a special sermon was preached in St. Nicholas' Church, Nottingham, by the Rev. M. Wolkenberg, on the subject, The destiny of the Jewish people.' The rev. gentleman took for his text Isa. xliii. 21, and after stating how, even in the material creation, everything had a function to perform and an object assigned to it by God for its existence, the end of the works of the Creator being the showing forth of His glory, he pointed out that this testimony was intended for man who alone had an intelligent appreciation of it. As a rational and accountable being, conscious of his actions and able to discriminate between good and evil, man's whole life, whether passive or active, should be one unceasing proclamation, and one unbroken reflection of the love, purity, and holiness of his Maker. Men, he held, whether willing or not, advanced the glory of God to all eternity, either as terrible monuments of his anger or as memorials of His redeeming love and mercy. Referring to nations, which he said had no existence in eternity, he went on to say that political declension and extinction followed moral depravity as inexorably as darkness succeeded the removal of our hemisphere from the direct rays of the sun. He made allusion to Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome as illustrating his remarks,

and proceeded to say that Israel alone had survived the wreck of the ancient world. Oppressed by all nations in turns, the fierce wave of adversity and the raging billows of persecution had for centuries rolled over them, threatening to engulf them, but here were the Jewish people as full of vitality as ever they were in the days of David and Solomon, and ready to take rank side by side with the most advanced nations of Europe. What then was the task assigned to them? Had they in any way benefited the world? Could they point to a single nation that had been restrained from heathenism and barbarism by Jewish instrumentality? Had not they themselves discarded their own great and glorious destiny by the adoption of the hackneyed axiom that every one must live and die in the religion in which he was born? How did they account for the fact that, so far from conferring any benefit upon the Gentiles, the vast majority of their own brethren residing in other parts of the world were left far behind in the race of social progress and mental culture? How could they logically maintain the saving efficacy of all creed, or the possibility of salvation in spite of all religion, true or false, and at the same time profess their belief in the Divine origin of Judaism? If they would but see the absurdities in which they involved themselves by this rejection of the Gospel, how they detached themselves from the Divine anchor of their national and individual hope, and how they drifted away from their Scriptural moorings only to lose themselves on a limitless ocean of doubt and perplexity! Had not, then, the Divine election of the Jewish people entirely failed in accomplishing the end designed by it? Compare the present state of the world with what it was when the Hebrew disciples of the Jew Jesus first proclaimed, in His name, the knowledge of God to the nations of the earth. Left to themselves, they would have bequeathed to future generations a terrible legacy of festering corruption which must have ultimately involved mankind in irretrievable ruin both of body and soul.

From this catastrophe the world was saved by a noble band of Jews, who traversed the length and breadth of the then known world, and, holding forth the banner of the cross, infused new life into the dead body of Paganism. The rev. gentlemen then viewed the question in its individual aspect, pointing out that eternal salvation depended upon it, and urged upon his Jewish brethren, of whom many of both sexes were seen in the densely crowded church, to examine the claims of the Gospel prayerfully and impartially."

THOUGHTS ON

REALITIES OF THE FUTURE LIFE.

BY REV. W. STONE, M.A.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST RESURRECTION AND MILLENNIAL

LIFE.

"This is life's eternal spring,

This, the coming joy, we sing! Look we ever toward this day, Be it near or far away. "Mid the sorrow and the strife, "Tis the music of our life; And the song hath this refrain, Our Redeemer comes again !"

S. J. S.

WE understand the millennial life to be the intermediate happy state on earth between the present and the eternal life, as the state of departed saints is intermediate between the present and the millennial.

Passing onward through a period of about 6000 years from the creation of our first-parents and from the death of Abel the first martyr in the human family,-the first body that we know of committed to the dust of death, and the first soul to the intermediate state of paradise,-we come to a new and wondrous phase of the future life. It is the 66 great and terrible day of the Lord." The last of God's children has reposed in the tomb, and the last spirit of the faithful "remnant according to the election of grace" has been gathered in to inherit one of the many mansions in the Father's house, for a very brief interval. The Gospel has been preached "for a witness" in all nations. The fulness of the number of the chosen from among Jews

and Gentiles has been brought in, and Israel is restored to their promised land, after nearly nineteen centuries of banishment and dispersion. The "many" have hitherto slighted or openly rejected and opposed the "glad tidings of great joy," as announced by angels at the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. The "few," comparatively, have received the engrafted word, and found pardon through faith in the blood of the Lamb and repentance toward God, walking by the Spirit in the narrow way of holiness, with joyful hope and expectation of the coming King.

Thus the last conversion has taken place, and the last soul has been saved, and the number of His elect accomplished, before the binding of Satan, and the beginning of the millennial life, at the second coming of the Lord Jesus in the clouds of heaven, to introduce and establish the new blissful dispensation of 'peace on earth," and fulfil the promised Messianic reign.

66

66

Preparatory to this there has been great tribulation." For the day of the Lord's second advent is announced, first, as the day coming that "shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble;" and so complete shall be the consuming flame, that "it shall leave them neither root nor branch." (Mal. iv. 1.) The tares must be first gathered in bundles for the burning," before the wheat shall be gathered into the Lord's barn. (Matt. xiii. 30.) So, observe, in the remarkable vision presented in Rev. xix. to St. John, just previous to the binding of Satan and the first resurrection, and the reign of the saints (Rev. xx.), the personal advent of Messiah with "the armies of heaven is foreshown in the apocalyptic picture, as that of a great and mighty conqueror, treading down his enemies, "who would not have him to reign over them," beneath His feet, and triumphing openly over them, with all His faithful band of followers. Then, as soon as this act of necessary judgment is effected, and the earth in a manner cleared of its worst dross and refuse, "the trumpet (of the archangel of the resurrection) shall