advent (see Isai. xiii. 19; xxxiv. 8; Jer. 1. 40; 2 Pet. ii. 5; iii. 10; Rev. xviii. 8; xix. 3, and their parallels in the marginal references.) Now, as it is certain that this last destruction has its type in that of Sodom, and as it is certain that the church has its type in Abraham, and as it is certain that God declared his purpose to Abraham before he executed it, is it not reasonable to expect-nay, would it not be unreasonable not to expect-nay, may we not be certain of the fact, that He will not hide from his church that thing which he is about to do in these our days? In our preceding Numbers it has been proved, from the fulfilment of all the preceding signs, that we stand very near the dawning of the day of the Lord; and the marvellous unfolding of prophecy which we have witnessed is the precise counterpart of the Lord's discourse with Abraham. "Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos iii. 7). "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of the Father I have made known unto you" (John xv. 15).

Abraham being a type of the true church, Lot cannot be also a type of it; at all events, not in the same aspect. Lot's whole character is worldly: Lot chose the plain of Jordan, because it was well watered, even as the garden of the Lord (Gen. xiii. 10) and he continued to dwell in Sodom, though vexed from day to day with their unlawful deeds (2 Pet. ii. 8). His deliverance, too, was not on his own account, but for the sake of Abraham: "And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow" (xix. 29). His subsequent history, and the character of his descendants, the Moabites and Ammonites, will not allow us to make him a type of a faithful church; and we think that he typifies a church professing the truth, but worldly minded; rescued from captivity once before (xiv. 16), saved again from utter destruction, for the sake of its kindred to the true church, yet saved so as by fire (1 Cor. iii. 15); and finally sinning and apostatising from God, and so abandoned to destruction.

The birth of Isaac, the child of promise, manifested the specialty of election still more strongly than the call of Abram; for not only was Isaac chosen, but Ishmael was rejected. And the doctrine was put in a still clearer and most indisputable point of view in the birth of Jacob and Esau ; " for, the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, that the elder shall serve the younger" (Rom. ix. 11). But the chief truth typified in the birth of Isaac is the resurrection preceding

the inheritance: "He sprang from one as good as dead" (Heb. xi. 12): which truth of the resurrection was shewn forth in another aspect, as life passing through death, in the sacrifice on mount Moriah (Gen. xxii.): both of which events are put together, as types of the resurrection, Heb. xi. 19: "Accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure." Isaac typifies the heir, the possessor of the land: and that he may do this completely, and the type not be broken, he is the only one of the patriarchs who never left Canaan he is expressly commanded, "Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries" (Gen. xxvi. 3). So strictly is this kept, that Isaac does not leave the land even to procure a wife, though he must not take one of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom he dwelt. Abraham accordingly sends his servant into Mesopotamia, to his kindred, to bring home a wife for his son; a beautiful type of the Father giving the church to the Son: "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.. Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am" (John xvii. 6, 24). "And I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven" (Rev. xxi. 12.) "And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints" (xix. 8). Isaac, again, is the only Patriarch who had but one wife: therein again typifying Christ, who has but one church. And with the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, which typifies the Millennium (when the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God), this aspect of the typical history necessarily concludes; being the personal aspect, or what is realized as doctrine in the experience of each individual believer.

There is also another mystery, concerning which instruction is to be derived from this ever-memorable portion of sacred history we mean, the sublimest of all mysteries, the purposes and actings of the Ever-blessed Trinity.

That God the Father should be typified at all, is a wonderful thing; but his actings towards the Son of his love are certainly typified in Abraham's conduct towards Isaac; and by Sarah's standing towards Abraham, the standing of the church towards God the Father is as exactly shewn forth, as by Isaac and Rebecca Christ and his church are typified. The eternity of God's purpose towards his church could not be shewn in any other way than by such a mode of introducing it as may set it before time and this is done when the promises to Abram are

first introduced: Gen. xii. 1, "Now the Lord had said unto Abram." Before this record of God's intentions towards Abram, he is married to Sarai, and Lot has joined himself to him; shewing that they too who typify the recipients of the promises made to Abram, were included also in the purpose of God from all eternity. In like manner, the eternal, unchangeable priesthood is indicated by the abrupt introduction of Melchizedek. (Gen. xiv. 18; Heb. vii. 3.) But in all these cases we must be exceedingly careful to distinguish between the personal and the typical character of the individual: Melchizedek is the typical one, in blessing Abrani; who stands in his personal character, as the representative of his race. Now Sarai typified the Jerusalem which is above, and is the mother of us all (Gal. iv. 26): this is the city whose builder and maker is God, which he hath prepared for all the faithful (Heb. xi. 10, 16): to this the Apostle says "ye are come" (Heb. xii. 22); but only in the present realization of faith for "here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come" (Heb. xiii. 14); which shall in the fulness of time be manifested, and commence the new dispensation, when the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and the New Jerusalem shall come down from heaven, as a bride prepared for her husband (Rev. xxi. 2, 3). This "true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man" (Heb. viii. 2, ix. 11)-" the heavenlies," so often spoken of (Eph. i. 3; Phil. iii. 20; 2 Cor. v. 1), constitute the "mansions" to which our Lord departed, to prepare a place for his faithful followers: and these elect ones, "chosen in him before the foundation of the world" (Eph. i. 4), he shall come again and receive unto himself, that where he is there they may be also (John xiv. 3). Sarai also re

presents the church in its relationship to God the Father. In the Old Testament this is often the case: "I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord" (Jer. xxxi. 32). "Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord, for I am married to you" (Jer. iii. 14). "Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, saith the Lord?" (Isai. 1.) "Thy Maker is thine Husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name" (Isai. liv. 5). This is the Old-Testament aspect of the church and its New-Testament aspect, as the bride the Lamb's wife, is typified by Rebecca; whom the Father provides for the heir, by sending his servant to his distant kindred, and who hesitates not to follow to the promised land of inheritance. When Abraham received the long-promised heir, he had lived a century, a complete period of time: typifying that "fulness of time" in which Christ came (Gal. iv. 4); and that still more advanced "dispensation of the fulness of times, when he shall gather together in one all things in Christ" (Eph. i. 10). (Eph. i. 10). And Abraham being called to offer his

son for a burnt-offering, very strikingly typifies that act of love in God the Father, who spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all (Rom. viii. 32).

66

From this period down to the time of Solomon the sacred history typifies different aspects of the church, in the various forms of trial it should have to encounter. The first aspect of trial is in the struggle for the birthright, typified in the history of Esau and Jacob. This has been well applied, in a paper 'On the Seed of Isaac," read before the Society for the Investigation of Prophecy; in which it was shewn that Ishmael typified the Jewish church "cast out;" Isaac, the Gentile church, the seed of promise: and that "we must look in the Gentile church for two seeds in the same line; the one, the elder, answering to the character of the Red Esau (namely, Rome); the other, the younger, answering to the character of Jacob (namely, the Protestant church), who succeeded to the blessing which naturally appertained to the elder." Jacob had gone forth a solitary wanderer; "With my staff I passed over this Jordan" (Gen. xxxii. 10); and so the church was sent forth : " Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, nor scrip for your journey, nor yet two staves" (Matt. x. 9, 10). Jacob returned "two bands;" and the church shall become "a great multitude, which no man could number" (Rev. vii. 9). Jacob, on coming to the border of the promised land, wrestled with an Angel until the ascending of the morning, and received the name of Israel, Prince of God; and the church, at the resurrection morn of that day which puts it into possession of its inheritance, shall receive all that Israel typified, from "Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father: and we shall reign on the earth."

Jacob's wives typify the church under another aspect; Rachel, the best beloved, being the Jewish church; Leah, the fruitful wife, being the Gentile church. Leah bears all her sons while Jacob continues a wanderer: in like manner the Jews are scattered, and Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled (Luke xxi. 24); and "until the fulness of the Gentiles shall be come in," all Israel shall not be saved (Rom. xi. 25). Rachel bears Joseph just before Jacob's return to his native land; Joseph signifies adding ;" and there will probably be a large addition of Jewish converts to Christianity just before their restoration to Palestine. Benjamin is born in the promised land after Israel's return his mother dies at his birth, and calls him Benoni, "son of my sorrow;" shewing in the type that time of great tribulation which attends Israel's restoration wherever it is spoken of: as, Dan. xii. 1, “a time of trouble, such as never was;" Jer. xxx. 7, "none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob's trouble." This day of

trouble is the time of the national conversion of the Jews, typified by Rachel's death. Zech. xii. 10: "I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son." Chap. xiii. 9: "And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, The Lord is my God." Benoni also becomes Benjamin, “son of the right hand:" Mic. iv. 7, "I will make her that was cast off a strong nation." Chap. v. 8, "And the remnant of Jacob shall be as a lion among the beasts of the forest." Zech.ix. 13, "When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man." Rom. xi. 26, 27, "There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins."

The different forms of trial which the church in its personal aspect should have to encounter, and its deliverances from them all, being typified in these personal histories; its aspect as a body politic delivered from oppression, brought under the government of just laws, and placed in peace and security in their promised rest, notwithstanding their own perverseness and all the opposition of their enemies, is next shewn, in the history of the children of Israel, from the time of the twelve Patriarchs till Joshua. This most instructive history we shall treat in a separate paper, and therefore only touch upon the great facts here; and upon them only slightly, to keep them in agreement with the rest. As in the preceding history man's personal total corruption was shewn forth by the antediluvian world; so in this history man's collective misery and bondage is shewn forth in the four hundred years' bondage of Israel in Egypt. "And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour : they made their lives bitter with hard bondage" (Exod. i. 13). "And their cry came up unto God by reason of their bondage : and God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob" (Exod. ii. 24). "And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped (Exod. iv. 31). This is the faith which precedes the deliverance, like that which led Noah to build the ark, and is the bringing together of a church. This faith is to be kept in act and exercise during the whole time of the deliverance, which is effected by the strong hand of the Lord alone: "And Israel saw that