brew Members predominant in the Church of the First Century; Notes of the Author upon Reading, for the first time, the Acts of the Apostles; The Unchangeableness of God's Purpose with Abraham and his Seed; The Uninterrupted and Universal Influence of that Purpose; The Present Condition of Israel illustrated; The Covenant of Abraham, the National Covenant of Israel; Its Immutability; The Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel; Are the Jews still in a state of Covenant? Answered; The Expectations of the Church intimately connected with the Conversion of the Jewish Nation; the Success of our Missionary Societies limited; The Kingdom of Christ not yet; The Postmillennial Advent of Christ untenable; The Establishment of Christ's Kingdom contemporary with, and inseparable from, the Re-establishment of Judah and Israel; the Present Dispensation. PART II.-The Past Policy of the Christian Church towards the Jew; The Disciples of Moses Excommunicated by the Disciples of Christ; Its Effects; Attempted Justification of Christian apathy towards the Jews: Acts xiii. 46; Answered; The Scriptural Position of the Jew in the Present Dispensation in reference to the Gospel: Eph. ii.; Subject continued: Rom. xi.; Is the Jew in a worse state than the Gentile? Peculiar difficulties of the Jew; Inconsistent Dealings with Unfulfilled Prophecy relating to the Jew; Such Interpretations of the Prophecies a Stumbling-block to the Jew; The recent Change of Views in reference to Unfulfilled Prophecy; Zion remembered; London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews Jehovah's "Witnesses "; Israel still Subservient to the Interests of the Church in the World; The Present Existence of the Jew; His Identity; Israel's continuance as a Distinct People inevitable; For what End Preserved; The Personal Reign of Christ; Restoration and Conversion of Israel; The Converted Nation a Blessing to the World; The Position of Converted Israel; Jerusalem's Glory; Wilson's Theory of the Anglo-Saxons and the Ten Tribes; Are the Sacrifices to be Restored? The latter Chapters of Ezekiel; Signs of the Times; Changes in Judaism in reference to Christianity; Probable Impending Events; Union of Church and State in the Kingdom of Jerusalem; The Redemption of Israel to be preceded by "the Day of Jacob's Trouble"; Armageddon; The Vision of the renewed eagle PART III.-Scene, Russian Poland; Dialogue between Moses, a Secret Believer, and Samuel, a Young Jew; Extreme Ignorance of the Jewish Youth respecting Christianity-Enmity between Jews and Christians; To what to be Attributed; The Power of Conscience; Why the Jews are Wanderers among the Nations; Jewish Prejudice against Jesus of Nazareth; Effects of Nominal Christianity on the Jewish mind; Effects of Persecution; Charge against the Jews of Mixing Christian Blood with the Passover Cakes; Providence; The Gospel the Power of God; Spiritual Conflict; The Inquirer repelled by the Idolatry of the Mass; Critical Moment; The Light in which the Converted Jew is Viewed by his Brethren; How Jews have proved the Sincerity of their Faith in Christ; The Inquirer's Perplexities relieved; Antagonism between Popery and the New Testament; Continued Conflict; A New Stumblingblock; Christian Prejudices against the Jews; The Inquirer kept by the Power of God; The Messiahship of Christ objected to on the ground of His having been Crucified; Answered; Twenty-one remarkable Prophecies fulfilled in Jesus, prove Him to be Messiah; The Moral Law not Abrogated by Christ; Christ the Life and Centre of all the Types; The Doctrine of the Trinity the Doctrine of the Bible; This Doctrine taught by the Ancient Rabbies; The Incarnation and the Deity of Christ; Christian Sects; Resolution to Visit a Christian Church; Our Church Service; Its Happy Influence on the Inquirer; Ministerial Faithfulness; Sanctifying Power of the Word; Conversion; Confessing Christ; The Cross; The Consolation; Faithfulness Rewarded: The Appendix. In subsequent issues we purpose, D.V., to give digests, interspersed with notes, of the respective parts. We feel sure that we shall thus anticipate the wishes of our numerous readers. NOTICES TO OUR READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor does not hold himself responsible for the expressed opinions of his correspondents. The Editor has but very little time for private correspondence, and this he applies to old and cherished friends. Several important articles, Literary Notices, Replies to Queries, &c.—some already in type-are unavoidably postponed. AN AGGRIEVED SUBSCRIBER, G. W., A FRIEND OF MISSIONS, A MATTER OF FACT CHRISTIAN, NO ROMANCER IN HOLY THINGS, NO ADVOCATE OF PIOUS FRAUDS, and many other correspondents after their kind, must address their complaints and remonstrances to the Committees of the respective societies, whose workings, appointments, &c. &c., &c., they, our correspondents, so severely criticise and censure. state, once for all-and we shall continue the statement as a standing notice for some months to come-we do not consider that it is part of our calling to reform abuses in the modus operandi of certain societies. We HISTORICUS.-THE BANISHED ONES FETCHED HOME is intended to unfold a double tale. The principal one is a true, bonâ fide, complete History of the Jewish people in this country, their expulsion by Edward I., and their re-admission by Oliver Cromwell; the secondary tale is an illustration of certain facts which have proved stranger than fiction. "Historicus," as "a hard-working stu dent," should possess a little more Christian patience and sympathy and learn to make allowances for authors, whose peculiar circumstances all the historical lore in the world will not help him to understand. A LEARNER.-The first day of the Jewish new year, 5,635 according to modern Jewish chronological computation, falls on Saturday, the 12th inst. The Jewish Day of Atonement, this year, falls on Monday, the 21st inst. In our issue of last October, we gave a critical explanation of the significant dual sacrifice, specially appointed, for the Mosaic, typical dispensation. The first day of the Feast of Tabernacles will occur on Saturday, the 26th inst. It depends on the state of our pages, whether we shall be able to give any dissertation, this year, on the great Jewish festivals of this September and the coming October. PHILO-JUDÆUS.-We can now speak in favourable terms of The Jewish Chronicle. It has very much improved of late in tone and style. The petty impertinence and insolence, the rabid and ribald language, the arrogant and arrant defiance of truth, which so disfigure its upstart rival, have now almost altogether disappeared from the columns of The Jewish Chronicle. The Hebrew Christian Witness AND PROPHETIC JNVESTIGATOR. AN ANGLO-JUDÆO CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE. THY HY KINGDOM COME. These few words cannot possibly be overrated as to their import and comprehensiveness. Whatever construction some of the disciples may have palmed upon this laconic petition when it was first dictated, the Evangelists and Apostles fully comprehended the magnitude and vastness of meaning conveyed in the three words-two only in Hebrew, THE LANGUAGE OF CHRIST, though the Greek translators had to make them twice two-when the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father sent in Christ's name, taught the disciples all things, and brought all things to their remembrance, whatsoever HE had said unto them. We said some of the disciples advisedly; for there was one at least amongst the first twelve who put the right construction upon the prayer THY KINGDOM COME. Even he who apostrophised the Redeemer, "RABBI, THOU ART THE SON OF GOD; THOU ART THE KING OF ISRAEL."* We shall presently advert more particularly to that guileless Israelite's exclamation. The Divine Teacher, the Holy Ghost, when He brought to the remembrance of the disciples the supplication under review, must also have recalled to their mind such inspired passages as the following: "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off. . . . Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. .. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us." saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, † Isaiah xxxiii. 17, 20, 22, *John i. 49. FF "I and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."*"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off and He shall speak peace unto the heathen: and His dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water."† We might easily fill the whole of this our monthly issue with Old Testament predictions respecting the COMING KINGDOM, for which Christ's disciples have been taught and are taught to pray. The above, however, will suffice for the present. We would only remark just now on the divine presentiment which pervaded the souls of the sage, serious, and soberminded thinkers, amongst heathens as well as amongst Jews, at the first advent of the Redeemer, about the COMING KINGDOM. It was this divine presentiment which led, at the birth of the Redeemer, "wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship Him."‡ Nathanael, however, gave expression to expectations with which the thoughts of his like-minded contemporaries were exercised. Never was the whole range of God's purposes respecting Israel concentrated into two such terse declarations as when the Spirit of God inspired that Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile,-the type of the nation at large in latter days,-to exclaim, "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel." That exclamation furnished the key to the staple expectation for which the hearts and souls of the Israelites indeed yearned. Even for the coming of the kingdom, the sceptre of which was to be swayed by the Son of God as the King of Israel. That prevailing expectation, however, in Israel had a tendency to mislead, and has misled multitudes, into the belief that the KINGDOM of God would forthwith, on the first appearance of the Messiah, be established. Notwithstanding that, our people, as a nation, remained uncleansed from their filthiness, profaning the most hallowed name-in which ONLY there is salvation, "for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."§ To counteract, therefore, the prevailing notion that the COMING KINGDOM was then on the eve of being ushered in, and by anticipation to refute the unscriptural idea, even now espoused by many pious Christians, that the Jews will have their kingdom restored to them in an unconverted state, the Saviour dictated the petition THY KINGDOM COME; for it was to be then, and was to be for generations to come, a subject for prayer. Yes, it is to be a subject of prayer as long as it shall be necessary to pray, HALLOWED BE THY NAME. The Saviour Himself elucidates this part of His dictated Prayer by His rejoinder to Pilate, which the beloved disciple preserved in the following narrative "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence. *Dan. vii. 13, 14. Ş Acts iv. 12. Zech, ix. 9-11. Matt. ii, 1, 2. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness of the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice." "Now is His kingdom NOT FROM HENCE, NOT OF THIS WORLD;" but when His name shall be hallowed by Israel as a nation, when they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as the mourning for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, like the bitterness for a firstborn. Then shall the prayer THY KINGDOM COME be fulfilled, and cease to be offered up. "For what a man seeth"-using an inspired mode of logic-"why doth he yet pray for? But if we pray for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."‡ To revert for a while to the prevailing expectation about the COMING KINGDOM at our Lord's first coming. It almost passes all understanding that this prevailing expectation, which was in the days of yore so clearly understood by our people, should have become in process of time a most perplexing problem to the earnest inquirer of the house of Jacob. It seemed perfectly natural, at the first coming of the Redeemer, when the people heard that He was coming to Jerusalem, that they should take branches of palm-trees, and go forth to meet Him, and to sing, "Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the But ever since His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, though the "remnant according to the election of grace" from amongst the House of Israel own Him as the many-crowned Head of universal empire, the bulk of the nation of Judah and Israel is under a sort of judicial spell as to the glorious and prevailing expectation of our forefathers, who were stimulated thereto by the predictions of our prophets. We cannot help connecting this judicial spell with a misunderstanding of the first three supplications in the LORD'S PRAYER, of which the one under meditation-THY KINGDOM COME-is the sun and centre. We would invite the most serious attention of our brethren of the House of Israel to think well, and that prayerfully-especially on the first four days of this month, being the last four days of their group of solemn festivals this year-of the COMING KINGDOM, the claims of the Redeemer to the Kingship of Israel, and of the prerogatives which belong to those regal claims. No well-instructed Israelite could be ignorant of the Almighty's displeasure against His especially chosen nation, by reason of their asking an earthly king, as well as of the national repentance of that heinous sin. We just quote a couple of verses from that humiliating chapter in our national annals :-" And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came up against you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the Lord your God was your King. . . . And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king."§ The first king-who was chosen on account of his imposing person, stature, and strength- proved a curse to the people! What a satire on human penetration and potency! Saul-the man of enormous size and Rom. viii. 24, 25. |