end. The whole dispensation to the family of Abraham was but the means unto the end of shewing forth God's way of dealing with the election according to grace, from all nations, kindreds, and tongues. Consider then this end, and the adaptation of the means will appear of its own accord. The election according to grace is included under two great divisions; the first of which is the dead, and the second the living. The dead, are to all appearance lost, invisible; not active, not passive, in all the things which are done under the sun. This is one aspect, in which the election are to be regarded, as lost in the dark secret prison-house of the grave: and as I proceed I may say, that this is shadowed forth in the lost tribes of Israel. The second aspect is that of the living: for all the election have lived, and a part of them are ever living; whom it hath pleased God to put into the condition of a dispersion, calling one of a family, and two of a village, from amongst all denominations and all nations under the face of heaven. These enter into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, without a father, without a mother, without a wife, without a home, without a country: for all we are commanded to forego in order to become his disciples, and do in spirit forego. This is the personal experience of every individual during the first part of his being; and the condition of a dead man out of mind is the second part thereof: which, being put together, do complete the experience of the church. Now let it be remembered, that for the election according to grace, thus conditioned, every thing threatened and promised, done and remaining to be done, to Judah and Israel, hath been done as the ultimate end. In their history and in their condition, therefore, there ought to be a twofoldness, in order that in the Psalms, Prophecies, and other Scriptures given for their use, the election according to grace may find the completeness of their state represented. This twofoldness is found in the outcasts of Israel, and the dispersed of Judah; whose history in all various ways, being the chief subject of the Old-Testament Scriptures, and being treated according to the truth of their diversity, doth enable the church to use them,-us of Japhet's line to enter and dwell within the tents of Shem. I am able to apply unto myself, looking to my double estate of being as now a pilgrim and a sojourner, and about to be (if Christ come not in my day) an outcast in the grave and secret place of souls, all, in a true spiritual sense, which hath been written of Judah and Israel and the church, the one church, which is the reader, understander, and applier of the Scriptures, is able to use every word, whether in the Psalms or Prophets, to express her feelings towards her children, both those departed and lost out of mind, and those living upon the earth in a state of miserable persecuted dispersion. And that she might be able to do so, that the type

might answer to the antitype exactly, so as that which was truly spoken of the type might be truly spoken of the antitype also, without fiction or accommodation; this is the reason why, so soon as the Jews had served the purpose of representing the church under the curse of a broken law, and the church as she is to be in her kingdom under her David and Solomon, they were cast into two parts, to express the twofoldness of the condition of every member of Christ, and of his collective body. Some may think me rash in what I write but the thought that is expressed in the above few sentences hath cost me the reflection of many years; and I express the truth which alone can deliver the Old Testament from the allegorists: in proof of which truth, let me mention one or two facts. (1) The resurrection of the dead is never mentioned in the Prophets, but as seen through and identified with the restoration of Israel: Isai. xxvi.; Hos. xiii.; Ezek. xxxvii. (2) The bondage of the living church to the world, and her deliverance thence, are always represented by the captivity of Judah under and her deliverance out of Babylon. (3) The parables of our Lord, which are the embodied conditions of the church, are almost, if not all, taken from the prophetical discourses to the Jewish people. (4) The Christian church and the Jewish church have always been able to make use of the same Scriptures, and especially of the same Psalms; the one understanding them historically, the other understanding them spiritually and, till within the last fifty or sixty years, our church never made use of any other than the songs of Zion.And let this suffice for shewing the reason of that diversity between the destinies of Israel and Judah, which is mentioned in our text, as it is in all the other Scriptures. There are some great doctrinal conclusions to be derived from this remark, concerning the church's feelings and expressions towards the departed saints, into which I may not now enter, because it pertaineth not to my present office of an interpreter.

Ver. 13: "The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim."-To enter into the power of this promise, it must be remembered, that, at the time this prophecy was pronounced, Ephraim, out of envy to Judah, was confederate with her adversary Syria, to cut off the house of David, in which stood the glory of Judah as a tribe, that of his loins the Son of God was to be born (2 Sam. vii. 14), and to set another king over them, even the son of Tabeal (Isai. vii.6). This great emergency, into which the house of David and the tribe of Judah were brought, colours the whole prophecy; which therefore insists so strenuously that the Deliverer shall be of the root of Jesse; that one from Jesse's stem should be the rallying ensign of Judah and Israel, and of the Gentiles also; in order to establish the hearts of the people, and confirm their

fidelity to their divinely appointed King. Not only, however, at this epoch, but from the beginning, did the ten tribes, with Ephraim at their head, envy Judah. Envy, indeed, was the cause of the schism and rent at the first: "What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the house of Jesse : to your tents, O Israel. Now see to thine own house, David." (2 Chron. xii. 16.) In the like envy of Judah and Jerusalem, and with the like contempt of God's sacred ordinances and investitures, did they constitutè a false religion in Samaria, and set up calves in Bethel and Dan. Nay, from a much earlier period was Ephraim distinguished among the tribes of Israel by his envious and braggart character on many occasions: as, for example, in the two notable cases of Gideon (Judges viii. 1), and of Jephthah (xii. 1); whereof the latter instance cost them the lives of forty-and-two thousand men. This evil spirit, which Ephraim ever fostered both in himself and in the tribes of which he became the head, seems to have arisen in part from the most abundant promises which went before upon Joseph, both in Jacob's blessing (Gen. xlix. 22-27), and in the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii. 13—18), which, no doubt, were fulfilled both in the power and fruitfulness of the tribe; and in part also from the right of primogeniture, which passed over from the tribe of Reuben to that of Joseph, as is declared 1 Chron. v. 1, 2. To stimulate the sense of these disstinctions, there was ever present the sufficient reason of Judah's having the chief rule, the capital city, and the only seat of their religious worship. And when Ephraim became the head of ten tribes, and Judah only of two, and when Samaria became a rival capital and seat of worship, then was every thing present to carry into effect that envious disposition to which the tribe of Ephraim had ever shewn itself so prone: and, accordingly, we have only to read their history, as it is recorded in the Books of Kings, to see what cruel and unnatural wars it gave rise to. As the schism in the house of Jacob began from the envy of Ephraim, and continued to be fomented by the same evil principle, which now had arisen to its height, in this most sacrilegious confederacy; so for this envy, as we have shewn in the first part of this interpretation (see Morning Watch, No. I.) was Ephraim's doom decreed; under which to this day he and his brethren have suffered the loss of that national distinction in which they made their boast: for, in the providence of God, the pride, whether of nations or of individuals, is always punished with the loss even of an ordinary place. Ephraim would have exalted himself above the head of nations, and therefore he hath been degraded to the condition of not having even a name amongst the nations. Unlike all other peoples, he hath an existence somewhere, but an existence without a name: a dwelling, indeed, somewhere, but no one knows where. All this is Ephraim suffering for envy of Judah and Judah's Lawgiver.

When, therefore, it is said that Ephraim's envy shall depart, it is signified that the sentence of God's wrath should cease from resting on him, and his heart should be turned to his brother Judah, of whom, as I have shewn from the Prophets (see vol. iii. of Sermons, Lectures, and Discourses), he is yet destined to be the deliverer; doing penance in that kind in which he had offended; standing for that King Jesus whom heretofore he would have cut off; and fulfilling the promise, that of Joseph should come the Shepherd or Gatherer of Israel (Psalm 1xxx.), and the Stone or Breaker (Gen. xlix. 24; Mic. ii. 13; Dan. ii.), to break in pieces the two-leaved gates of Babylon, under the true Cyrus, and let the captives of Judah and Benjamin go free. But for the full demonstration and elucidation of this wonderful mystery, I must refer to the Discourse which I have made expressly upon that subject, as it is referred to above.

V. Besides the envy of Ephraim, Judah was at this time trembling with apprehension on account of her adversary Syria, and likewise the Philistines, who took advantage of this division to invade her borders: and her false policy, of striking a confederacy with Assyria, against which to warn her was a chief end of this prophecy, brought upon her a still more powerful adversary in the Assyrian, who was succeeded by Babylon, and by Greece, and by Syria, and by Egypt, and by Rome, and by almost every nation so that they and their land are well described, in the xviiith chapter of our Prophet, as " a nation scattered and peeled; a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled" (ver. 2). Now, of these and all her other adversaries it is declared, that they shall be cut off. This is a constant declaration of the inspired prophecy, that those nations which have oppressed Judah shall be destroyed as it is beautifully expressed in the song of triumph which in that day shall be sung in the land of Judah (Isai. xxvi. 13, 14); “O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us; but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish." The whole prophecy of the great image and of the four beasts of Daniel (ii. vii.) is the opening of the same truth; as is also the prophecy of Gog and Magog (Ezek. xxxviii.), and every other prophecy, from that sublime passage in the song of Moses (Deut. xxxii. 36-43), to the end of the Prophet Zechariah. But, to have the full measure of the humiliation of the Gentiles, read the whole of the lx th chapter of Isaiah. If I err not, these words, "the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off," which we are now interpreting from the other Scriptures, do, together with the commentary upon them which

is contained in the next verse, constitute the text of those ten burdens which follow immediately upon the conclusion of this prophecy, from chap. xiii. to chap. xxiv.: into which it is not my present province to enter, while I give it as my opinion, that their place in our Prophet is to exhibit at large the final end of all those nations which should lay their hand upon Judah, and so to stand for an assurance unto her and a warning unto them. For it will be observed, by the careful reader of the word of God, that these ten burdens open the way to a series of national thanksgivings and songs of triumph for Judah, because of her eternal deliverance out of the hands of the cruel lords who had possessed the dominion over her. And what then, I ask, can these burdens be designed for, save as the matters of prophetic history, whereof that song is the grand thanksgiving?—the history, to wit, of the destruction of all the enemies of the people of the Lord. In seeking to apply this principle to their interpretation, I am aware of the difficulties which present themselves in spite of all these, however, I am persuaded that it is the true principle to interpret with, the clue which will guide us through the labyrinth.

In addition to this, the destruction of their enemies, it is added, that there shall be a most perfect union between the two parts of Jacob, to the oblivion of all former grudges and wrongs: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." Or, as it is most beautifully expressed by the Prophet Jeremiah, iii. 18: "In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel; and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers." Perhaps the most striking illustration of this part of our prophecy, is in the xxxviith chapter of Ezekiel, when, after that the restoration of the tribes, and perhaps also the first resurrection, hath been set forth, under the similitude of the dry bones in the valley (vers. 12-14), he proceedeth to represent the cleaving union of the two parts of Jacob, by the emblem of two sticks, inscribed, the one with the name of Judah, and the other with that of Ephraim, which become one in the Prophet's hand. The Lord himself thus explaineth it: "Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one King shall be king to them all and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people,