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 AND THE 
 
 
 THEIR PLACE IN INSPIRED PROPHECY. 
 BY JOSEPH L. LORD, M. A., 
 
 OF THE BOSTON BAK, 
 
 Author of " Briefs on Prophetic Themes," etc. 
 
 [dub, 6 vufi<pio<; ep^erat. — Matt, xxv, 6. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 CHARLES W. QUICK. 
 
 FOR SALE AT 
 
 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BOOK STORE. 1224 CHESTNUT STREET, 
 
 ALSO BY 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO,, 135 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, 
 
 AND 
 
 762 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 18G8. 
 
PHILADELPHIA \ 
 J. MOORE & SONS, PRINTERS. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The treatise on the subject indicated by the title-page, 
 and contained in the following pages, was first published 
 in the supplementary columns of The Episcopalian. 
 The Editor of that journal begs leave to make mention 
 of the wide-spread interest which its perusal has caused, 
 and to testify to the many and high commendations which 
 have reached him from Bible students well qualified to 
 judge of the merits of such a work. A just enumeration 
 of those merits must include the literary qualities of the 
 essay. The clearness of expression, the strength and 
 purity of language and the nervousness of style will not 
 fail to attract and please all persons of cultivated and 
 refined taste. 
 
 The modest and unpretending volume is offered as a 
 contribution to the study of the prophecies relating to 
 " the ancient people," now daily rising into importance, 
 and drawing to themselves such earnest thought and 
 close attention. 
 
 The main feature of the treatise will not fail to strike 
 the mind of the reader, and he will be pleased to find 
 Scripture interpreting itself, and all the rays of distinct 
 prophetic instructions, relating to the judicial blindness 
 of Israel, united and condensed in the focal point assigned 
 to our Lord's unexplained parables. The collocation of 
 the words of Him who spake as never man spake, de- 
 livered by His Own mouth, with those words, also His 
 Own, but uttered by the prophets under the inspiration 
 of His Spirit, must be highly suggestive ; while the 
 clearness, precision and force of the logical sequence 
 between the passages of Scripture cited, and the infer- 
 
IV. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 ences of fact derived therefrom, must strongly impress 
 the mind of the reader, even if he should not feel pre- 
 pared, without further inquiry (which the author himself 
 earnestly solicits), to give a ready assent to all the con- 
 clusions of the author, in the form and related order in 
 which they are set forth in the summing-up at the close 
 of his discussion. 
 
 His readers will find they have entered a different 
 atmosphere when they turn from the strife of contro- 
 versy to peruse these pages. The position of the thinker 
 seems to us to be like that of the Lord's people in the 
 days of Malachi ; " They that feared the Lord spake 
 often one to another: and the Lord hearkened and 
 heard it." 
 
 It will be discovered by the reader that the author has 
 not entered the mazes of chronology, nor attempted to 
 assign definite dates to the fulfilment of prophecies. 
 Such definite epochs doubtless exist in the divine coun- 
 sels, and many of them are found stated with precision 
 and others symbolically and metaphorically in various 
 parts of the Scriptures. The great difficulty is to find 
 the key to those clearly-defined epochs, and to settle con- 
 clusively the beginning or ending of any one. 
 
 It is suggested, at this point, that the hour when the 
 sentence of judicial blindness was pronounced by Isaiah, 
 or the time when it began to be executed, was the be- 
 ginning of that epoch terminating with the close of the 
 times of the Gentiles, and corresponding with the " seven 
 times " mentioned by Moses (Levit. xxvi, 18-24). 
 Can either period be ascertained ? 
 
 The volume is now committed to the candid and 
 prayerful attention of the reader, with the assured belief 
 that the Divine blessing will attend its perusal. 
 
 C. W. Q. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 For twenty-six hundred years, the sentence of judicial 
 blindness has hung, like a funeral pall, over the Jewish 
 mind, covering the whole earth, wherever Israel has 
 been scattered (and where has Israel not been scattered ?) 
 with its thick and ample folds. 
 
 Ever after this sentence was pronounced by the pro- 
 phet Isaiah, all the prophecies, both judicial and millen- 
 nial, of the Old Testament, and all the prophecies of our 
 Saviour in the New Testament, so far as Israel is con- 
 cerned, either presuppose, or are directly based upon, 
 the great fact of her judicial blindness, until the close of 
 her present judicial dispensation. 
 
 Of no class of prophecies can this be said with greater 
 truth, than of those contained in the public and unex- 
 plained parables of our Lord. 
 
 The connection of these parables with the judicial 
 blindness of Israel — which blindness is the reason given 
 by our Saviour to His disciples, why He spake to the 
 Jewish multitudes in parables — does not seem to us to 
 have received that degree of attention from writers on 
 the parables, which its prophetic importance properly 
 demands. 
 
 Heuce these pages, revised from the columns of The 
 Episcopalian: the object of which has been to supply 
 in some measure, though very briefly and imperfectly, 
 and without any attempt at elaborate discussion, any 
 deficiency which may have been felt by other minds in 
 
VI. PREFACE. 
 
 the same regard ; our object being rather to suggest 
 and elicit, and not by any means to satisfy or exhaust 
 inquiry. 
 
 As is becoming in a layman, we have affected not the 
 traditions of the fathers, or the learning, or the methods 
 of the schools ; but, without disrespect thereto, have 
 sought only for what have appeared to us to be the plain 
 teachings of the Word and providence of God on the 
 subject, which, as one in a series, we have chosen for 
 our present theme, in the full persuasion, if these teach- 
 ings are what we have represented them to be, that they 
 were never of greater practical consequence to all con- 
 cerned, to Jews and Gentiles both, than at the present 
 day. 
 
 May the God of Israel hearken and hear, and own 
 and bless the words which we have written. 
 
 Joseph L. Lord. 
 
 Saxonville, Mass., June, 18G8. 
 
|sract'^ jwltrial alindnm. 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 "Therefore speak I unto them in parables ; because see- 
 ing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
 understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of 
 Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not 
 understand ; and seeing, ye shall see and shall not per- 
 ceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears 
 are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lest at 
 any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with 
 their ears, and should understand with their heart, and 
 should be converted, and I should heal them" (Matt, xiii, 
 13-15). 
 
 The parables of the New Testament are confined 
 to the personal teachings of our Saviour. 
 
 According to the enumeration of Trench they are 
 thirty in number ; according to Greswell twenty- 
 seven only. 
 
 In the present discussion we shall adopt the enu- 
 meration of Mr. Greswell, though their precise num- 
 ber is not of consequence to our purpose. 
 
 We do not propose to discuss the nature of para- 
 bles in general, or as a distinct form of our Saviour's 
 instructions ; nor do we propose to discuss any 
 general or particular classification or feature of 
 them, or any distinction existing between them, 
 except that only which is denoted by our title 
 and by the plain letter of the record ; namely, 
 that some of them were explained by our Saviour 
 when He uttered them, and that others were left 
 wholly unexplained by Him, whatever may have 
 
10 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 been recorded in connection therewith by the inspired 
 historians who relate them. This, it will be observed, 
 is not a speculative distinction, but a difference of 
 fact only. 
 
 It is well to observe, however, that the explained 
 parables form integral parts of continuous discourses 
 of our Saviour, not in the least interrupting, but 
 rather rendering more complete, the flowing narrative; 
 while, on the other hand, the unexplained parables 
 are introduced abruptly, and break in upon the con- 
 nected order of the sacred narrative, without any 
 assigned cause for the obvious interruption, or any 
 clue afforded by any accompanying note or comment 
 of our Saviour, by which His hearers might, as in the 
 case of the explained parables, readily interpret their 
 hidden meaning and design. 
 
 It will, we think, appear, as we proceed with our 
 discussion, that the unexplained parables are strictly 
 prophetic and historical in their office and character; 
 relating not, like the explained parables, to timely 
 precepts, or present duties and obligations, but to 
 future events only; not to what, in point of moral 
 duty, a particular course of conduct should be, but 
 to what, in point of fact, the inevitable results of a 
 given course of moral conduct will be; and that, not 
 so much in reference to individuals, as to mankind, 
 or some one or more of the great Scriptural divisions 
 of mankind at large. 
 
 It will, we think, not only appear that the unex- 
 plained parables are thus strictly prophetic in their 
 office and character, but that, equally with other dis- 
 tinct classes of prophecy, they have their own pecu- 
 liar place and sphere among the prophetic oracles of 
 the Holy Scriptures, and form a distinct class by 
 themselves; looking, however, not less than other 
 prophecy, to a certain moral state of things, and to 
 a certain moral condition of life and character in 
 those to whom they are addressed, and at the time 
 they are addressed, for the full vindication of the 
 wisdom of their use; but to the course of future 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 11 
 
 events onl} r , for the full and final unfolding and 
 clearing up of their hidden meaning and design. 
 
 Of the unexplained parables, however, we propose 
 to discuss those only which were intended for the 
 Jewish nation at large, and were therefore addressed 
 either to public and mixed assemblies of the Jews, or 
 to the Scribes and Pharisees as the more notable 
 representatives of the nation, and the constant and 
 inveterate enemies and persecutors of our Saviour. 
 
 It is not as yet of account to our general theme, 
 that some of the public and unexplained parables 
 were, after their delivery, privately explained b}' our 
 Saviour, in respect to their general scope and signifi- 
 cation, to His disciples. That they were thus pri- 
 vately explained, though of great account undoubtedly 
 to the disciples at the time, as it will be to us when 
 we come to their exposition, was of no account to 
 those to whom they were especially addressed, and 
 helped not to enlighten their blinded moral under- 
 standing, either as to their prophetic character, or as 
 to the reason (privately explained to the disciples) 
 why our Saviour made use of this particular form of 
 prophecy so largely to the exclusion of all other 
 forms, when, in the middle of the second year of His 
 ministry, He first began to speak to the nation in 
 parables. 
 
 The seven explained, or doctrinal and ethical para- 
 bles, with the moral taught b} T each, are as follows : 
 1. The king who took account of his debtors; or, 
 the duty of forgiveness. 2. The good Samaritan ; 
 or, the true nature of love to our neighbor. 3. The 
 rich fool ; or, the folly of putting our trust in earthly 
 riches. 4. The unjust steward; or, our accounta- 
 bilit} T to God for the use of earthly riches. 5. The 
 rich man and Lazarus ; or, the fatal folly of pervert- 
 ing earthly riches to the good things of this life, its 
 self-indulgent pleasures and luxuries, its costly and 
 voluptuous living. G. The importunate widow ; or, 
 the duty of perseverance and importunity in prayer. 
 1. The Pharisee and publican; or, the supreme folly 
 
12 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 of self-righteousness ; of self-complacency and self- 
 ostentation in respect to onr religious character and 
 attainments. 
 
 The precise prophetic and historic import of the 
 unexplained parables, on the other hand, (we do not 
 need, at present, to make an}^ distinction between 
 those wiiich were addressed to the Jewish public and 
 those which were addressed to the disciples in pri- 
 vate) is not susceptible of being either so briefly 
 denoted, or so readily determined, but mast await 
 their separate exposition. They are as follows : — 
 
 1. The- sower and his seed (Matt, xiii, 1-9 ; Mark 
 iv, 1-9 ; Luke viii, 4-8). 
 
 2. The tares of the field (Matt, xiii, 24-30). 
 
 3. The seed growing secretly (Mark iv, 26-29). 
 
 4. The grain of mustard-seed (Matt, xiii, 31, 32 ; 
 Mark iv, 30-32; Luke xiii, 18, 19). 
 
 5. The leaven (Matt, xiii, 33 ; Luke xiii, 20, 21). 
 
 6. The hidden treasure (Matt, xiii, 44). 
 
 7. The pearl (Matt, xiii, 45, 46). 
 
 8. The draw-net cast into the sea (Matt, xiii, 
 47, 48). 
 
 9. The good shepherd (John x, 1-18). 
 
 10,11. The servants left in w r ait for their lord ; and 
 the servant left instead of his lord (Luke xii, 22-48). 
 
 12. The barren fig-tree (Luke xiii, 1-9). 
 
 13. The great supper (Luke xiv, 15-24). 
 
 14. The prodigal son (Luke xv, 11-32). 
 
 15. The laborers in the vineyard (Matt, xx, 1-16). 
 
 16. The ten pieces of money, or the pounds (Luke 
 xix, 11-27). 
 
 17. The wicked husbandmen (Matt, xxi, 33-44; 
 Mark xii, 1-11 ; Luke xx, 9-18). 
 
 18. The marriage of the king's son, or the wedding 
 garment (Matt, xxii, 1-14). 
 
 19. 20. The ten virgins; and the talents (Matt. 
 xxv, 1-30). 
 
 The parables in general, without reference to any 
 particular classification of them, have often been 
 compared to apples of gold in pictures of silver, of 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 13 
 
 which the other teachings of our Saviour form the 
 silver setting. Be this as it may, it is now of conse- 
 quence only to call the attention of our readers to 
 the high and absolute importance of that portion of 
 the parables, and that strictly in reference to their 
 prophetic office and character, which is denoted by our 
 title. 
 
 We do not notice airv difference, and we are not 
 aware that any exists, between the parables as we 
 have thus distinguished them, in respect to their out- 
 ward form and structure, or in respect to what would, 
 at first sight, appear to be their obvious and prima 
 facie signification. It now concerns us to notice 
 only that some of them are briefly and pointedly 
 explained by our Saviour, and that others are left by 
 Him, on account of the judicial blindness of His 
 hearers, wholly unexplained. 
 
 We notice, moreover, that those which are ex- 
 plained are uniformly employed by our Saviour for 
 the purpose of preceptive or didactic instruction, 
 as familiar practical examples, or cases in point, to 
 illustrate and enforce particular maxims of Christian 
 ethics, or particular rules of Christian duty, binding 
 at the time and at all times, upon those to whom 
 they were addressed, and upon all men. 
 
 We further notice that parables of this class do 
 not in the least depend upon the course of future 
 events for a ready, just and full apprehension of their 
 true import and design, but upon the accompanying 
 explanation of our Saviour alone ; indeed, that the 
 course of future events is expected to add nothing, 
 and can add nothing, to the clearness, completeness 
 and force of their meaning, as timely, pertinent and 
 perpetual illustrations of ever-present duties and 
 obligations ; duties and obligations which, requiring 
 no reference to the future, or to the past, belong to 
 the case of every man, and to the ever-present now. 
 
 But we notice nothing of this kind in respect to 
 the unexplained parables. Very true it is, that the 
 unexplained parables are sometimes, like the explained 
 
14 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 parables, loosely employed, in whole or in part, as 
 familiar illustrations of particular moral and Chris- 
 tian duties and obligations. It may be very well to 
 employ them in such subsidiary sense, or with such 
 ethical reference, but it should always be with a 
 manifest reservation ; for it is not well, in so em- 
 ploying them, to fail of their primary, their higher, 
 and their intended, though less obvious meaning and 
 design, which is more vast and far-reaching and con- 
 sequential by far. Indeed, remissness or misappre- 
 hension in this respect, is apt to lead us into grave 
 and dangerous errors in regard to the nature and 
 office, the divine and human relations, of Christ's 
 spiritual kingdom on the earth under the present 
 Gospel dispensation, and the dispensational results, 
 near and remote, which, according to prophecy, are 
 to be accomplished thereby : which results, as it 
 appears to us, it is the special province of the unex- 
 plained parables, both public and private, to fore- 
 show. 
 
 In a certain sense all the teachings of our Saviour 
 are prophetic. His sermon on the mount is by some 
 expositors called the prophecy on the mount. So 
 also His various discourses to His disciples, espe- 
 cially His farewell discourses to them on the week of 
 His crucifixion; His discourse on the new birth to 
 Nicodemus; His denunciation of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees in the temple on the Wednesday evening 
 preceding His crucifixion ; and the explained para- 
 bles themselves. Indeed, all the teachings of our 
 Saviour are prophetic in the sense of being applicable 
 at all times, during the whole rounded term of the 
 present Gospel dispensation, to the moral condition, 
 and spiritual wants and necessities of mankind, in 
 the various classes into which they are Scripturally 
 divided. 
 
 But the unexplained parables, both public and 
 private, are prophetic in a very different, and far 
 higher and closer sense; for they foreshow with the 
 most literal fidelity, at the very outset of the dispen- 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 15 
 
 sation, the actual and absolute results of the moral 
 conduct of mankind, in their relations to Christ's 
 spiritual kingdom, throughout the whole course of the 
 Gospel dispensation. The}' are a prospective history 
 of the moral conduct and acts of mankind, in their 
 relation to that kingdom, to the end of the dispensa- 
 tion ; precisely as, at the end of the dispensation, they 
 will be a retrospective history thereof, without the 
 necessity, at the end of the dispensation, of altering 
 a single word in which they were expressed at the 
 beginning of it; for known unto their Divine Author 
 were all things, past, present, and to come, from the 
 foundation of the world. 
 
 Does the reader desire Scriptural evidence of the 
 prophetic office and character of the unexplained 
 parables ? Of course, the highest possible evidence, 
 which is tantamount to our Saviour's declaration to 
 this effect, is His private interpretation of some of 
 them to His disciples. He has thus, for example, 
 interpreted, in respect to their general scope and 
 meaning, without satisfying curiosity as to definite 
 particulars, the parables of the sower, the draw-net 
 and the tares. 
 
 Again; the running action, so to speak, of the three 
 last named and other unexplained parables embraces, 
 in express terms, the whole period of the Gospel dis- 
 pensation, from its earliest seed-time to the final in- 
 gathering of its harvest. This is as true of the 
 unexplained parables which were not privately ex- 
 plained at the time of their delivery, or afterwards, 
 as of those which were privately explained ; as, for 
 example, those of the leaven, the servants left in 
 wait, the servant left instead of his lord, the pounds, 
 the ten virgins, the talents, etc. 
 
 Not less decisive evidence of their prophetic office 
 and character is afforded by the literal and exact 
 fulfilment, already accomplished, of the prophecies 
 which some of them contain. Thus the parable of 
 the wicked husbandmen was fulfilled to the letter by 
 the crucifixion of our Saviour, within three days after 
 
16 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 it was uttered ; while others, not wholly fulfilled as 
 yet, are no less clearly in process of fulfilment. 
 
 Again; it is "the kingdom of God," or "king- 
 dom of heaven;" that is, Christ's spiritual kingdom, 
 or professing Church, under its present earthly 
 form and manifestation; in its divine and human 
 relations, or probationary relations, under the pre- 
 sent Gospel dispensation, and throughout the whole 
 course of it, without any limitation of time except 
 the recorded limitation of the end of the dispensa- 
 tion; which is, in express terms, presented to us 
 under the symbols and similitudes of a majority of 
 the unexplained parables; which majority are uni- 
 formly introduced with the words, u The kingdom of 
 God," or of " heaven," is like unto this or that symbol. 
 These symbols and similitudes, being generalized by 
 our Saviour into brief allegoric narratives of inimi- 
 table beauty, of strict fidelity to actual facts, and of 
 wonderful concentration and comprehensiveness of 
 meaning, therefore present to us a faithful outline, 
 in advance, of the real, but (to the judicially-blinded 
 minds of the Jewish nation, and to all judicially- 
 blinded minds) concealed history of Christ's spir- 
 itual kingdom in its present earthly form and mani- 
 festation, throughout the whole course of the pre- 
 sent Gospel dispensation, from the beginning to the 
 end of it. 
 
 Finally ; it was our Saviour's declared purpose 
 (Matt, xiii, 10-16) to veil the hidden sense of His 
 public and unexplained parables, and to conceal it 
 entirely from the judicially-blinded minds of those 
 to whom they were addressed; "lest at anytime they 
 should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
 and should understand with their heart, and should 
 be converted, and I should heal them." This is re- 
 markably true of one group of them, the first which 
 He uttered, the group in regard to which He declared 
 His purpose to conceal His meaning from His 
 hearers. We refer to those recorded in the thir- 
 teenth chapter of Matthew. 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 17 
 
 Is it asked, why should our Saviour address these 
 parables to the Jewish multitudes, if they were in- 
 tended for their instruction (as all the teachings of 
 our Saviour were), and were yet, when spoken, unin- 
 telligible to them, and intended so to be ? 
 
 Was it not, we inquire in- reply, because they 
 were intended, not for the present, but future in- 
 struction only, of the nation? because, in its present 
 judicial blindness, with which our Saviour never in- 
 terfered, t>ut only reaffirmed, the nation was utterly 
 incapable of understanding the mysteries of Christ's 
 spiritual kingdom, which it was the special office 
 (Matt, xiii, 11) of the unexplained parables to un- 
 fold? and because, in the distant future, at the ex- 
 piration of their sentence of judicial blindness, the 
 now hidden meaning of these parables would be sent 
 home to their now blinded minds by the stern and 
 irresistible logic of future events? Was it not that 
 when, at the close of the present dispensation, all the 
 prophecies of these parables, and all other judgments 
 against the guilty nation should be at last fulfilled, 
 and the sentence of their judicial blindness should 
 be ready to expire; that then, the promised "Spirit of 
 grace and of supplications" being poured upon them 
 (Zeehariah xii, 10), they should be able, by means of 
 these prophetic landmarks, to more clearly discern 
 and trace all the way their long-suffering God 
 had both in judgment and in mercy led them, and 
 thus be convicted of their sins and brought to re- 
 pentance ? 
 
 In the time of our Saviour, the nation was sunk 
 in more profound judicial darkness than ever be- 
 fore. The little light that was in them was a greater 
 darkness than ever before. Xot only had their sins 
 called down upon them, seven hundred and fifty years 
 before, the sentence of judicial blindness, as pro- 
 nounced by the prophet Isaiah, but they had been 
 daily adding to it ever since, and were more than ever 
 adding to it now, in their blind hate and rage, by 
 their daily rejection of their Messiah and scornful 
 2 
 
18 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 derision of Him as an impostor and pretender. Al- 
 ready was it in their hearts to crucify Him. The 
 very day on which the first parable was uttered, they 
 had very nearly, if not quite, committed the unpar- 
 donable sin of blaspheming the Holy Ghost, in this 
 His own peculiar dispensation, by the impious accu- 
 sation : "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by 
 Beelzebub the prince of the devils." 
 
 Moreover, it was now the middle of the second 
 3'ear of our Saviour's ministry, and all other means 
 of reaching their impenetrable hearts had been re- 
 sorted to in vain, and nothing was now left but tore- 
 iterate to the incorrigibly hardened and unbelieving 
 nation their ancient and more than ever merited sen- 
 tence of judicial blindness, and to reconsign them to 
 the judicial and peremptory wrath of a holy and of- 
 fended God. Nothing, in short, was now left, but to 
 foretell to them, not what might be, but what beyond 
 a peradventure, or possible alternative, should be, 
 the certain and inevitable consequences of their in- 
 fatuated blindness and unbelief; in the hope, the 
 forlorn hope, forlorn but for God's ever faithful cove- 
 nants with their fathers, that when, at the end of 
 their judicial dispensation, they should have filled up 
 the measure of their fathers, and all the prophetic 
 judgments both of the Old Testament and the Xew 
 should be fulfilled upon them, and they should then 
 look upon Him whom they were now about to pierce; 
 moved by "the Spirit of grace and of supplications," 
 and overwhelmed by the unexpected reappearance of 
 their crucified and still rejected .Messiah, and by the 
 infinite love that could not and would not give them 
 up, even in the uttermost extremity of their sins and 
 in the uttermost hour of a longer, and darker, and 
 guiltier dispensation than that of their ancient and 
 forfeited Theocracy; and appalled by the indictment, 
 which the black record of their sins, running through 
 the now completed term of two dispensations, would 
 present against them ; they would then, at length, 
 recognize and hail their crucified Messiah not less as 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 19 
 
 their pierced and bleeding Saviour, than as their 
 promised King, and mourn because of their rejection 
 of Him, in all the land, all their families apart, and 
 all their wives apart, as one mourneth for a first-born 
 and an only son ; and hasten with one accord to the 
 fountain which in that day will be opened to the 
 house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
 for sin and uncleanness, remembering all their evil 
 ways and their doings that were not good, and loath- 
 ing themselves in their own sight, for their iniquities 
 and their abominations. 
 
 It is not for us to speculate as to the reason why 
 our Saviour selected parables, a purely allegorical 
 form of prophecy, as being better adapted to the 
 judicial blindness of the nation, than a more direct 
 and literal method of communicating to them the 
 certain future consequences of their judicial blind- 
 ness and their sins ; but it is not difficult to con- 
 ceive that the nation, in their blind hate and rage, 
 would not have tolerated His ministry another 
 hour, if the same truths had been told to them in a 
 plainer and more intelligible form. It is enough for 
 us, that our Saviour, in accordance with the invari- 
 able practice of Old-Testament prophecy, did 
 hold up to the nation the certain future consequences 
 of its judicial blindness and its sins, and that, for this 
 purpose, He employed a new and unaccustomed 
 form of prophecy, the allegorical form of parables, 
 as better adapted than any other to the changed 
 moral and spiritual relations of a new, and more 
 complex, and more spiritual dispensation, and to the 
 then moral condition of the nation. 
 
 But it is not necessary to dwell at greater length 
 upon the Scriptural evidence of the prophetic office 
 and character of the unexplained parables; for, 
 after all, their separate exposition, in the light of their 
 own and other Scripture testimon} 7 , is the most 
 satisfactory evidence which can be adduced, that 
 such is their office and character. 
 
 To correctly understand the prophetic application 
 
20 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 of the unexplained parables, it is of great conse- 
 quence to first place before our minds, as clearly and 
 distinctly as possible, some of the leading Scriptural 
 divisions of mankind, as contemplated by both the 
 Old and New-Testament Scriptures, but especially, 
 as concerning our present theme, b} T the unexplained 
 parables. Of these divisions the four following are 
 among the most prominent : — 
 
 1. The unbelieving, but covenanted, nation of the 
 Jews. 
 
 2. The unbelieving, but uncovenanted, nations of 
 the Gentiles. 
 
 3. The Professing Church. 
 
 4. The Elect Church or " remnant according to 
 the election of grace," chosen out of the unbelieving 
 Jewish and Gentile nations. 
 
 The two classes first named are often, though by 
 no means always, spoken of in the Scriptures, in 
 respect to their common unbelief, as forming one 
 class only, but whenever the}' are spoken of in refer- 
 ence to the several Jewish covenants, they are care- 
 fully discriminated from one another. 
 
 The two classes last named, though often referred 
 to in Scripture under the third head, are yet in other 
 passages, and especially in the unexplained parables, 
 carefully distinguished. 
 
 Our Saviour first offered to the unbelieving but 
 covenanted Jewish nation in its judicial blindness, 
 or, which is the same thing, to the professing, but 
 wholly corrupt and apostate Jewish Church, which 
 hitherto was His only visible Church on earth, not 
 the Davidic and temporal kingdom which they had 
 expected, and which had been promised to them, of 
 which He was to be the Theocratic head, but of 
 which in their sins they were as yet unworth} 7 ; but 
 His spiritual kingdom only, aud that 011I3 7 , on account 
 of their sins, upon conditions which were as repug- 
 nant to their ceremonial self-righteousness, as it 
 w r as to their infatuated worldly hopes and expecta- 
 tions. 
 
iskakl's judicial blindness. 21 
 
 The result was simply as had been foretold, and 
 as could only have been expected, that they re- 
 jected Him, blindly shutting against themselves the 
 graciously-opened door of His spiritual kingdom, 
 and its graciously-offered and free salvation. ''Away 
 with Him, away with Him;" "Crucify Him, crucify 
 Him;" "His blood be on us and on our children;" 
 "we will not have this man to rule over us;" was 
 their cry. And despised and derided, rejected and 
 crucified, He returned to heaven, even as when His 
 Personal Divine Glory ascended thither, as seen by 
 the prophet Ezekiel, when, in the obstinate wor- 
 ship of their false gods, and the incorrigible apos- 
 tasy of their hearts, they rejected His Theocratic 
 supremacy over them six hundred years before. 
 
 In the judicial blindness of their hearts, they re- 
 fused to consider that it had never been covenanted 
 to them, that their Messiah should set up His tem- 
 poral kingdom of unequalled earthly glory and ex- 
 altation so long as they continued in their sins, but 
 then only, when the}' should be converted from them. 
 In their judicial blindness, they altogether refused to 
 believe that the}' were a sinful and unbelieving na- 
 tion. In their blind apostasy and blind expectation 
 of merely earthly state and splendor, an expectation 
 which honored not their Messiah, and exalted not 
 His glory, excepting in a merely earthl}' and human 
 sense, but their own worldly glory only; and iii their 
 sinful and obstinate determination to realize and en- 
 joy the covenanted glories of the Messianic kingdom 
 without repentance and forgiveness of their sins; 
 they forfeited and lost both their Messiah's spiritual 
 and Davidic kingdom ; or, if they did not wholly lose 
 them, they indefinitely postponed their covenanted 
 manifestation and glory, and doomed themselves 
 anew to the curses which Moses and the judicial 
 blindness which Isaiah had pronounced upon them, 
 and to stumble and be broken in pieces, throughout 
 the vast and weary and sorrowful round of their 
 judicial dispensation, upon the Rock, which, as the 
 
22 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 original builders they thus obstinately and fatally 
 refused. 
 
 What utterly inexcusable not less than fatal folly, 
 to deny that our Saviour was their predicted Mes- 
 siah! How plainly His primogenitive right to the 
 vacant throne of David was established by the Jew- 
 ish records, which their Kabbis could so well and 
 readily interpret in all other respects! How clearly 
 and indisputably, according to those records, did 
 He unite in Himself the right of the posterity of 
 David in both of its lines, at the time of His birth, 
 to the indefeasible possession of the throne of 
 David! According to these records, this right cen- 
 tered in our Saviour, both by the line of Solomon 
 and by that of Nathan, each of whom were alike de- 
 scended from David and Bathsheba, to whose pos- 
 terity, in particular, the original grant had especi- 
 ally restricted the promise of an hereditary temporal 
 kingdom. At the time of the Babylonian captivity, 
 these lines were united in the person of Zorobabel, 
 and at the birth of Christ they were united in the 
 person of Christ; the right of Resa, one of the sons 
 of Zorobabel, being transmitted to him through Eli 
 and Mary, and the right of Abiud, another son of 
 Zorobabel, through Joseph. Thus the indefeasible 
 right of the posterity of David to the temporal 
 throne of Israel, such as it had been covenanted to 
 them forever by the promise of God before David 
 had an}^ posterity, became finally centered in the 
 person of Jesus Christ; both in the natural sense as 
 the first-born of Mary, and in the civil and legal 
 sense as the first-born of Joseph. How perfectly co- 
 incident with this record, the announcement of the 
 angel Gabriel to the virgin Mary, "Behold, thou 
 shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, 
 and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, 
 and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the 
 Lord shall o;ive unto Him the throne of His father 
 David, and He shall reign over the house of Israel 
 forever." 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 23 
 
 So also His divine claims as the King of grace, or 
 their spiritual Messiah, were no less clearl}' attested 
 by His innumerable miracles, than were His legal 
 claims as the King of Israel, or their temporal Mes- 
 siah, by the Jewish records. But they despised and 
 rejected Him, putting Him to the base death of a 
 Roman slave, and invoking upon their own heads, 
 and upon the heads of their children, His innocent 
 blood. And there the self-invoked and bloody curse 
 has rested ever since, and will continue to rest, until, 
 red with its uncommon wrath, the covenants of the 
 divine wrath shall all be fulfilled upon them. Such 
 was the crowning iniquity, under the New-Testament 
 dispensation, of their judicial blindness, their judicial 
 condemnation and their judicial shame! 
 
 And what was the result of their rejection of their 
 Messiah ? The parable of the wicked husbandmen 
 teaches us. In this, which, it will be remembered, is 
 one of the public and unexplained parables, our Sa- 
 viour, having foretold His own crucifixion (within 
 three days afterwards), adds : — 
 
 "Did ye never read in the Scriptures, the stone which the 
 builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner; 
 this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ? 
 Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be 
 taken from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth 
 the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone 
 shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind 
 him to powder." 
 
 The nation here referred to does not mean, as is 
 sometimes loosely supposed, the Gentile nations in 
 distinction from the Jewish nation. In this the best 
 expositors are very generally agreed. Xeither is it 
 meant that the kingdom of God, or the Messiah's 
 spiritual kingdom, should be taken from the Jewish 
 nation, and given to all nations indiscriminately, Jew 
 and Gentile alike, considered as one nation ; either 
 then, or at any time during the progress of the 
 present dispensation. The meaning is, as we hope 
 to explain, that the Messiah's spiritual kingdom 
 
24 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 should be taken from the Jewish nation, considered 
 as the Jewish Church, Christ's only visible Church 
 on earth hitherto, but now hopelessly apostate, and 
 given, not, as might at first be supposed, to the pro- 
 fessing Christian Church at large, under the present 
 Gospel dispensation, but to Christ's elect Church, the 
 e$voq ayiov, His chosen ''remnant according to the 
 election of grace," chosen out of Jews and Gentiles 
 both ; chosen out of all nations, and all generations, 
 all kindreds and tribes and tongues, Jew and Greek, 
 Scythian and barbarian, bond and free. This is 
 Alford's exposition of this passage from Matthew, 
 and it appears to us to be Scriptural and sound. 
 
 Such, then, is the nation here referred to by our 
 Saviour. Such is the only nation that bringeth forth, 
 that ever has brought forth, that ever will bring forth, 
 fruit in its season. The allusion is not to auy par- 
 ticular professing Church, or to the professing Church 
 at large, which is very far from bringing forth fruit 
 in its season, excepting so far only as it includes the 
 chosen remnant, the elect Church, the holy nation. 
 The Jewish nation, under the Old-Testament dispen- 
 sation, was a professing Church, but it was as barren 
 and unfruitful as the fig-tree, which, in another of 
 our Saviour's public and unexplained parables, sym- 
 bolized it. But there was always a faithful remnant, 
 according to the foreknowledge of God, preserved in 
 it; "a chosen generation," that belonged not in any 
 spiritual sense to the wicked and adulterous genera- 
 tion which composed the professing Jewish Church 
 at large ; "a royal priesthood," which, restricted not 
 to the tribe of Levi, offered up spiritual sacrifices 
 acceptable to God by the typified blood of their 
 coming Messiah; seven thousand who worshiped 
 not at Dan and Bethel, and bowed not to Ashteroth 
 or Baal, or to any of " the hosts of heaven." This 
 holy nation ever existed, under the Old-Testament 
 dispensation, within the unholy Jewish nation at 
 large, and within the corrupt and apostate professing 
 Jewish Church at large. Preserved in the ark of God's 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 25 
 
 ancient and everlasting covenants of blessing, it out- 
 rode all the storms of God's covenants of wrath 
 under the Old-Testament dispensation, and, in its 
 Jewish successors, will outride all the storms of the 
 covenants of wrath under the In ew-Testament dispen- 
 sation ; greatly enlarged, however, by ''the remnant 
 according to the election of grace," which will be 
 gathered out of the Gentile nations (Acts xv, 14), 
 under the present dispensation ; while on the other 
 hand, the unbelieving and ungodly Gentile nations 
 at large under the new dispensation^ like the unbe- 
 lieving and ungodly Jewish nation at large under the 
 old, and the unbelieving and apostate professing 
 Christian Church at large under the new dispensa- 
 tion, like the unbelieving and apostate professing 
 Jewish Church at large under the old, will, in the end, 
 and in like manner, be disowned and destroyed. In 
 a word, and the unexplained parables, we believe, 
 will show it, the histoiy of the professing Jewish 
 Church under the Old-Testament dispensation, is an 
 exact type of what in the end will be the history of 
 the professing Christian Church under the New -Tes- 
 tament dispensation. The proud and vain hopes of 
 the Gentile nations, professing themselves Christian, 
 and of the Gentile Church, professing itself Christian, 
 will be as sorely disappointed and as ingloriously 
 overthrown at the second coming of Israel's Messiah, 
 as were those of the professing Jewish Church and 
 nation at His first coming. He was wise who pro- 
 claimed, ;t The thing that hath been, it is that which 
 shall be ; and that which is done is that which shall 
 be done : and there is no uqw thing under the sun." 
 But the chosen remnant always remains. It always 
 has been preserved. It always will be preserved. 
 Absolute]}', they are a great multitude, a multitude 
 which no man can number. But, relative!}', as com- 
 pared with the unbelieving world at large, whose 
 prince and god Satan is, and will be, to the end of 
 the dispensation, they are, as our Saviour calls them, 
 "a little flock." They only are the holy nation. They 
 
26 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 only bring forth fruits in their season. The profess- 
 ing Christian Church brings forth no fruit, excepting 
 so far only as this holy remnant are numbered among 
 its professors, precisely as the professing Jewish 
 Church brought forth fruit so far only as they were 
 members of that Church. The holy nation only, as 
 in the parable of the sower, brings forth some thirty, 
 and some sixt} 7 , and some an hundred fold. They 
 only, as in the parable of the tares, are the wheat 
 that will be gathered into the heavenly garners, 
 while the tares, that grow together with them tili 
 the harvest, w T ill be burned with unquenchable fire. 
 They only, as in the parable of the draw -net, are the 
 good fish that, when the net is drawn to the shore, 
 will be gathered into vessels, while the bad are cast 
 away. They only, as in the parables of the pounds 
 and the talents, will faithfully fulfil their several 
 trusts, and give a good account of their stewardship 
 when their absent Lord returns. They only, as in 
 the parable of the marriage ot the king's son, will 
 sit down at the marriage-supper of the Lamb, 
 arrayed in their white robes. Their lamps only, as 
 in the parable of the ten virgins, will be found 
 trimmed and burning, when the cry is heard, " Be- 
 hold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him." 
 They only, as in the beautiful parable of the Song 
 which Solomon wrote in the best moments of his 
 life, are the virgin who dwelleth among the gardens, 
 who may treat her beloved coldly, as he stands at the 
 door and knocks, his head filled with the dew and 
 his locks with the drops of the morning, but who, 
 anon, beccmes distressed for him, and calls after 
 him, and seeks for him among the gardens and the 
 bed of spices w r here he is gone down; she cften for- 
 getting, but he never forgetful, His love never chang- 
 ing, He the highest of all the sons of men, the chiefest 
 among ten thousand, and the One altogether lovely. 
 They only will inherit, in their sevenfold spiritual 
 completeness, the blessed promises of the beatitudes. 
 Their names only are written from the foundation 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 27 
 
 of the world in the Book of Life of the slain Lamb. 
 They only follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. 
 They only are the sheep who know His voice and an- 
 swer to His call. They onl3 T bear His reproach without 
 the gates, loving not their lives, if need be, even unto 
 death. Of them only is the holy army of the martyrs 
 composed. They only, of those who profess the form 
 of godliness, attest the power thereof. They only 
 will bold fast till Christ comes, for " called and 
 chosen and faithful 1 ' is their name. They only are 
 strangers and pilgrims, sometimes almost losing their 
 way amidst the storms and darkness, the allure- 
 ments and perplexities and confusions, of a ruined and 
 revolted world ; having no continuing city here, but 
 seeking one to come. They only, and not the pro- 
 fessing Church (no mention whatever is made of 
 that), are described in the Book of Revelation as 
 bearing a faithful testimony to the very end of 
 the dispensation, and in the midst of the judicial 
 terrors of its closing scenes, against the overwhelm- 
 ing odds of the thronging powers of darkness, even 
 though made war upon and overcome by them ; over- 
 come till He comes whose right it is to tread the 
 guilty world in the wine-press of the fierceness and 
 wrath of the Almighty God. The}" onh T , and those 
 of them only who are of the seed of Abraham, in- 
 heriting at last God's faithful covenants, will recon- 
 struct banished and shattered and down-trodden Israel, 
 and build again her waste places, and build again the 
 tabernacle of David which is fallen down, and build 
 again the ruins thereof, and set it up ; that the resi- 
 due of men and all the Gentiles may seek after the 
 Lord, till from the rising of the sun, even unto the 
 going down thereof His name shall be great among 
 them. Yes. they, they 011I3*, a thousand times be it 
 said, are the holy nation, to whom the kingdom of 
 God, Christ's spiritual kingdom, His precious vine- 
 yard, can in a just and legitimate, and strict and true, 
 or literal, or spiritual sense be said to have been given, 
 when it was taken from the apostate Jewish nation, 
 
28 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 and apostate Jewish Church, and given unto them: 
 "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good 
 pleasure to give you the kingdom/' 
 
 Tbe apostle Peter, in admonishing the infant 
 Church of its high calling, its privileges, its du- 
 ties and its dangers, thus beautifully and propheti- 
 cally describes the elect and holy nation, as contrasted 
 with the world at large throughout the whole course 
 of the present dispensation, down to the second com- 
 ing of our Saviour, or as the apostle styles it, "the 
 day of visitation." 
 
 "As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, 
 that ye may grow thereby; if so be ye have tasted that the 
 Lord is gracious, to whom coming, as unto a living stone, 
 disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious; 
 ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a 
 holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to 
 God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore, also, it is contained in 
 the Scriptures, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, 
 elect, precious ; and he that believeth in him shall not be 
 confounded. Unto you, therefore, which believe, he is 
 precious : but unto them which be disobedient, the stone 
 which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of 
 the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, 
 even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient : 
 whereunto all they were appointed. But ye are a chosen 
 generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar 
 people ; that ye should show forth the praises of him who 
 called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Dearly 
 beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain 
 from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul : having your 
 conversation honest among the Gentiles [the unconverted 
 world around youj : that whereas they speak against you as 
 evil doers, they may by your good works, which they shall 
 behold, glorify God in the day of visitation." 
 
 Xot less beautifully, though less in its abstract 
 and spiritual, and more in its prophetico-historical 
 relations, has the apostle Paul described that portion 
 of the hoi}' nation which consists of the Jewish 
 " election" only. 
 
 AY hen the apostle wrote his Epistle to the Romans, 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 29 
 
 the curse of judicial blindness was resting upon 
 apostate Israel, and, in respect to the covenants of 
 blessing, the remnant of Israel according to the elec- 
 tion of grace were the onty representatives of the 
 nation that were left, the nation at large being "con- 
 cluded ill unbelief." 
 
 "I say then, hath God cast away his people ? God forbid. 
 For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the 
 tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people 
 which he foreknew [that is, His elect remnant in the sense 
 above explained]. Wot ye not what the Scripture saith of 
 Elias ? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, 
 saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged 
 down thine altars ; and I am left alone, and they seek my 
 life. But what saith the answer of God unto him ? I have 
 reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed 
 the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present 
 time, also, there is a remnant according to the election of 
 grace. Israel [the unbelieving nation at large] hath not 
 obtained that which he seeketh for ; but the election hath 
 obtained it, and the rest were blinded." 
 
 The apostle tells us, directly afterwards, how long 
 Israel's judicial blindness will last. 
 
 "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant 
 of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, 
 that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness 
 of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be 
 saved : as it is written, There shall come out of Z : on the 
 Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob ; for 
 this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their 
 sins." 
 
 "•Until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in;" 
 that is, until the fullness, or full complement, of 
 the Gentile elect shall be gathered in from the un- 
 believing Gentile nations; or, which is the same 
 thing, until the times of the Gentiles shall be ful- 
 filled ; even as our Saviour said to His disciples, 
 " And they [Israel] shall fall by the edge of the 
 sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, 
 
30 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, 
 until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled." 
 
 This is the prophetic order. The events, however, 
 are s3 7 nchronous in their occurrence. The fullness 
 of the Gentiles will come in. The full comple- 
 ment of " the remnant according to the election," of 
 Christ's elect and invisible Church, of the holy na- 
 tion, being gathered in and made up from among the 
 unbelieving nations, the dispensation will end. The 
 times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled. The dispen- 
 sation of unbelief will end. The dispensation, or, 
 rather, the ages of faith, will begin. Israel's blind- 
 ness will be removed. Israel's Messiah will come 
 again, and will not be rejected. " The Spirit of grace 
 and of supplications" will be poured ou,t upon the 
 house of Israel. All the tribes of the land will " look 
 upon Him whom they have pierced," when "in 
 that day His feet shall stand upon the Mount of 
 Olives," and will mourn because of their past rejec- 
 tion of Him, and because of all their sins and un- 
 cleanness, with great and unparalleled mourning ; 
 even as one mourneth for his only son and is in bit- 
 terness for his first-born. God " will take away their 
 sins," and " will cast their sins into the depths of the 
 sea," and w r ill bestow upon them, in full fruition, all 
 the blessings of all His covenants of blessing with 
 them. The holy seed, or holy remnant of Israel, will 
 swell into stately national proportions, a new Israel, 
 regenerate, re-created, "born in a day," and, according 
 to the covenant, "set on high above all the nations of 
 the earth." David will never again want a man to 
 sit upon his now vacant throne to the end of the dis- 
 pensations which are revealed. Christ will sit and 
 reign thereon through all the millennial years, alike 
 as the King of glory, the King of David, and the 
 King of grace, in the manifested and triumphant 
 glory both of temporal and spiritual sovereignty, to 
 the utmost limit of the record of the ages which are 
 revealed; till time ends, and eternity begins. 
 
 Thus much concerning; the Jewish " remnant ac- 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 31 
 
 cording to the election of grace," and the prophetic 
 future which awaits them. Concerning the Gentile 
 "remnant according to the election of grace," and 
 the future which also awaits them, equally clear tes- 
 timon}^ is not wanting. 
 
 The apostle James speaks expressly (Acts xv, 
 14, etc.) of this holy Gentile remnant, as gathered 
 out of the unbelieving Gentile nations under the pre- 
 sent Gospel dispensation. The stand-point, as it will 
 be observed, from which he takes his survey, is the 
 close of the next, or millennial, dispensation. 
 
 "Simeon [Simon Peter] hath declared how God at the 
 first [at the commencement of the Gospel dispensation, and 
 upon the rejection by Israel of her Messiah] did visit the 
 Gentiles, [not to convert them, but] to take out of them a 
 people for his name. And to this aiTee the words of the 
 prophet ; as it is written, after this [after the close of the 
 Gospel dispensation, and at the commencement of the next, 
 or millennial, dispensation] / will return, and will build 
 again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I 
 will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: that 
 the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the 
 Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, 
 whodoeth all these things." 
 
 The apostle's allusion in this passage is evidently 
 to the future exaltation and gloiy of the Jewish 
 nation in the next, or millennial, dispensation ; and 
 to the universal in-gathering into the elect and holy 
 nation, or spiritual Israel, under that dispensation, 
 of the remaining Gentiles of the earth ; in accord- 
 ance with the covenant of God with Abraham that, 
 in its fulfilment, not Israel alone, but " all the fami- 
 lies of the earth, should be blessed." Meanwhile the 
 guilty world will roll on in its sins, until its last 
 revolution, under the present dispensation, is com- 
 plete. 
 
 The guilty and unbelieving Jewish nation — with 
 its invincible tenacity and individuality of life; its vast 
 resources of silver and gold; its universal solvency 
 in the midst of universal insolvency ; its undecaying 
 
32 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 intellectual manhood and incomparable learning; its 
 mighty and resistless hold upon the political des- 
 tinies of the very nations that tread it down ; its 
 ever-restless wanderings into all the uttermost re- 
 gions of the earth; its curious eternal countenance, 
 never varying from its one eternal type, whether as 
 seen in the tombs of Bab}don, the pyramids of Egypt, 
 on the entablatures of Nineveh, or in the highest 
 seats of European learning, and the proudest coun- 
 cils of European state ; with its judicial blindness 
 and reserve; always rejecting its Messiah; always re- 
 sisting the Holy Ghost (" as your fathers did, so do 
 ye") ; alwa} 7 s, according to the prophetic command 
 of our Saviour, filling up the measure of its fathers ; 
 always, like the bush of their own Horeb, in the 
 flames of the Divine wrath, but never consumed ; 
 always dismantled and dismembered, outcast and 
 dispersed and trodden-down — will roll on in its sins, 
 until overwhelmed at last by the fiery waves of its 
 greatest and last tribulation, and the times of the 
 Gentiles are fulfilled. 
 
 So also, on the other hand, the guilty and 
 unbelieving Gentile nations — who, as nations, 
 are of no recorded account in the prophetic 
 Scriptures, either under Israel's probationary or 
 judicial dispensation, except as Israel's op- 
 pressors only — with their Christian professions and 
 assumptions ; their mighty races and nationalities, 
 striding through the world as Nebuchadnezzar strode 
 through his halls, and looking complacently forth 
 upon the great Baby Ions they have built by the might 
 of their power, and for the honor of their majesty ; 
 with their stately and imposing civilizations ; their 
 combined and successful expositions of utmost 
 human splendor and utmost human endeavor ; 
 their social refinements and accomplishments 
 and ameliorations; their grand but unsuccessful, 
 and so often anarchical attempts to govern them- 
 selves apart from God and in alienation from Him ; 
 their " strong delusion ;" their audacious and infatu- 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 33 
 
 ated self-confidence and egotism and self-conceit, and 
 their bankrupt exchequers — will roll ou, in judicial 
 unconsciousness of their fate, to their common ruin, 
 their utter confusion and disma3 r , their complete and 
 final and judicial overthrow; melting at last, like Pros- 
 peros' spirits, from their intoxicated revels, 
 
 " * into air, into thin air, 
 
 And like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
 ****** 
 
 An insubstantial pageant faded, dissolve, 
 Nor leave a rack behind." 
 
 "We do not speak of the Gentile nations, or great 
 world-powers of the Gentiles, as being, or ever be- 
 coming, apostate, in the sense in which Israel is apos- 
 tate. They have never owned or recognized Jehovah 
 as ruling over the affairs of men, in the sense in which 
 Israel has, in time past, so owned and recognized 
 Him ; and they cannot therefore apostatize from Je- 
 hovah, in the sense in which Israel has apostatized 
 from Him. So also, on the other hand, has God 
 never owned or recognized the Gentile nations, in the 
 sense in which He has owned and recognized Israel, 
 nor made covenants with them, as He has made co- 
 venants with Israel. But their guilt and delusion is 
 not therefore any less, but only greater, and their 
 doom will be only more sudden and terrible, in that 
 they have not so owned and recognized Him. There 
 was the profoundest historic truth, reaching into all 
 the coming Jewish and Gentile generations, in the 
 prayer of the children of Israel by the waters of 
 Babylon ; " Return for thy servant's sake, the tribes 
 of thine inheritance. The people of thy holiness have 
 possessed it but a little while ; our adversaries have 
 trodden down th} r sanctuary. We are thine ; thou 
 never barest rule over them ; they were not called by 
 thy name." 
 
 The unbelieving Gentile nations, and we refer 
 more particularly to those great world-powers which 
 have the most conspicuous prophetic record as the 
 3 
 
34 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 oppressors of Israel ; to those which, in their pro- 
 phetic and collective unity, are represented by Ne- 
 buchadnezzar's image ; to Babylon, Persia, Greece 
 and Rome, and the present sovereignties into which 
 the Roman empire was divided ; cannot, with any 
 Scriptural propriety, now or ever, be called apostate 
 nations. They have had no High and Holy One, in 
 the sense that Israel had, to apostatize or fall away 
 from. They have never belonged to God. God has 
 never owned them as His people. They have only 
 been known to Him as the oppressors of His people, 
 treading them down, and treading down His sanc- 
 tuary between the seas in the glorious holy moun- 
 tain ; and prophecy only recognizes in them the 
 oppressors and treaders-down of Israel, until their 
 own evil times shall be fulfilled. God never bore 
 rule over them. They were never called by His 
 name. The} T are only known to prophecy, to 
 the Old Testament and to the New, in the 
 broad and generalized sense of "the kingdoms of 
 this world," whose prince and god is Satan ; to 
 which kingdoms " the kingdom of God," or 
 " kingdom of heaven," as it is so constantly called 
 by our Saviour, and especially in His unexplained 
 parables, is, with such antithetical emphasis, opposed ; 
 and if Israel, with her covenants, is scarcely saved, 
 where will the great unbelieving and anti-Christian 
 world-powers appear, when God makes up His account 
 and has His final controversy with "the nations?" 
 " The gods of the nations are idols." They can 
 only apostatize from their own chosen gods, which 
 alas! "the sure word of prophecy" assures us 
 they never will, certainly until the end of their own 
 times, under the present dispensation ; when, but not 
 till then, "the kingdoms of this world and the glory 
 of them," with which Satan tempted Christ in vain, 
 "shall become the sovereignty of our Lord and of His 
 Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever." They 
 may in their dreams baptize, in solemn mockery, with 
 their own unholy baptism, the stately image which 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 35 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, and call it 
 Christendom, and call themselves Christian nations, 
 Christian legs of iron, and Christian feet and toes of 
 iron mixed with miry clay, but, for all that, God will 
 not be mocked. The interpretation of the dream is 
 sure. God's destroying vengeance is sure. " In 
 the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set 
 up a kingdom which shall never be destined ; and 
 the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it 
 shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, 
 and it shall stand forever." The unbelieving 
 '•kingdoms of the world " may profess Christianity, 
 but the} T will not apostatize from their own chosen 
 gods; may array themselves in the livery of the angels 
 of light, and seek to be as gods, as Satan promised 
 them they should be , but they will not apostatize. 
 They may profess, and seek to dignify themselves by 
 the name of, Christianity, but professing Christianity 
 is not vital Christianity. To profess Christianity is 
 not to be born again. The professing Christian 
 Church may, like the professing Jewish Church, 
 apostatize ; it will apostatize ; but they will not 
 apostatize from their gods. 
 
 This great disparity, this might}^ antagonism, of 
 moral forces — a little remnant, constituting the elect 
 and holy nation on the one hand, the great mass of 
 mankind, or, as the apostle says, " the whole world 
 lying in wickedness," on the other; the rightful but 
 rejected Sovereign of the world on the one hand, its 
 usurping, but preferred and accepted sovereign cm 
 the other ; the powers of light on the one hand, the 
 powers of darkness on the other; the Great Deliverer 
 on the one hand, the great destroyer on the other; 
 Christ on the one hand, antichrists many, to the 
 final Antichrist on the other, has always existed, 
 and now exists, and will continue to exist, until the 
 present evil dispensation is ended, or, which is the 
 same thing, so long as the New-Testament revelation 
 truly represents the moral character and condition 
 of mankind, is applicable to it, and intended for it. 
 
36 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 ]N~ext in importance to the holy nation, in the 
 discussion of our theme, is the prophetic history of 
 the Jewish nation, past, present and to come, as re- 
 corded in the prophetic Scriptures. 
 
 This nation demands our special attention, not only 
 because they are God's chosen and peculiar people; 
 the central people of the earth in His plan of moral 
 government; towards whom the course of His 
 holy providence among the affairs of men always 
 tends, and around whom all history revolves ; not 
 only because they are the seed, through whom 
 alone God has appointed that all the nations of the 
 earth shall ultimately be blessed, and without whose 
 intervention and ultimate conversion, according to 
 His appointed method, and in His Own ap- 
 pointed way, the nations of the Gentiles have no 
 promised ground of hope ; and not only because 
 they have been, and are still to be, more severely 
 chastised in the heat of His great anger, and in the 
 furnace of His great wrath, than any other nation; 
 and because they are to be correspondingly exalted, 
 when, in wrath remembering mercy, He shall redeem 
 His covenants with their fathers, and avenge Him- 
 self upon their foes, and bring them to repentance, 
 and forgive their sins, and set them on high in honor 
 and blessing above all the nations of the earth ; but 
 because also, Avhich more especially concerns our 
 present theme, it was to them that the prophetic 
 parables of our Saviour were personally addressed, 
 and for reasons, as our Saviour Himself informs us 
 (Matt, xiii, 10-16), especially adapted to the circum- 
 stances of their moral condition, or, rather, to their 
 total want of right moral understanding, to the 
 judicial hardness and insensibility of their hearts, at 
 the time when they were spoken. 
 
 In our proposed review of Israel's prophetic history, 
 we shall, if we mistake not, arrive at the following 
 results or conclusions : — 
 
 1. That the prophetic history of Israel includes 
 the whole of three distinct dispensations, or alwveq ; 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 37 
 
 namely, the past or Mosaic, the present or Christian, 
 and the future, or millennial. 
 
 2. That the particular dispensation referred to in 
 any particular prophecy, or class of prophecies, is, as 
 a general rule, clearly distinguishable. 
 
 3. AYe shall arrive at a clear Scriptural knowledge 
 of the moral condition of the Jewish nation, at the 
 conjunction, ra reXy rd» alcowv, of these several 
 dispensations: at the conjunction, first, of the 
 Mosaic and Christian dispensations, when parabolic 
 prophecy, as a distinct and customaiy form of 
 prophecy, began first to be employed ; and at the 
 conjunction, secondly, of the Christian and mil- 
 lennial dispensations, when the parabolic and all 
 other prophetic judgments against Israel will be ful- 
 filled; whenceforward millennial prophecy opens the 
 glorious vista of Israel's millennial future to our 
 view ; in which gloiy " the residue of the Gentiles," 
 according to the promise, will share. 
 
 4. We shall arrive at equally clear proof that the 
 past, or Mosaic, dispensation was to Israel, as a 
 nation, a disciplinary; or probationary, dispensation ; 
 that the present, or Christian, dispensation is to 
 Israel a judicial, or penal, as it is to the Gentile na- 
 tions a probationary, dispensation ; Israel remaining, 
 according to the covenants of wrath, in ner sins and 
 judicial blindness until its close ; and that the future, 
 or millennial, dispensation will be to Israel a dispen- 
 sation of everlasting peace and repose, and honor 
 and blessing, and glory and exaltation, " above all 
 the nations of the earth," according to the covenants 
 of blessing ; when, but not till then, the covenants 
 which God sware unto Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob, that in their seed all the nations of the earth 
 should be blessed, shall be gloriously fulfilled ; when, 
 but not till then, the Gentile nations, their proud 
 spirit humbled, and their proud Babels fallen, shall 
 not only acknowledge and proclaim that Israel is the 
 seed which the Lord hath blessed, but shall hasten 
 to her light and to the brightness of her rising with 
 
38 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 songs and everlasting joy, bringing their tribute from 
 afar, and their offerings from the ends of the earth ; 
 when, but not till then, the Theocracy which Israel 
 forfeited by her sins, and of which, in the multitude 
 of her iniquities and transgressions, she was unwor- 
 thy, shall be gloriously restored, and, the warfare of 
 the elect Church militant and the predicted overturn- 
 ing and overturning and overturning of the unbe- 
 lieving nations being ended, the Root and Offspring 
 of David, the Bright and Morning Star, shall arise 
 and shine, and sit upon the throne of His father 
 David in the manifested, triumphant and covenanted 
 glory both of His Davidic and spiritual kingdom, 
 and reign forever and ever. 
 
 Such is the divine order of the dispensations, pro- 
 bationary, judicial, and millennial ; such the appointed 
 method of God's holy government, and the appointed 
 course of God's holy providence, by which He will 
 at last restore apostate Israel, and, through Israel, 
 all mankind to their original likeness and their 
 original allegiance to Himself. Such is the prophetic 
 record ; and whosoever leaves it out of account, or 
 adds to it, or takes from it, in dealing with the 
 secret, but, to the eye of faith, revealed problems of 
 man's spiritual being and destiny, or seeks by any 
 method of man's wisdom, to climb up some other 
 way to their solution, whether Church .or State be 
 the theme of his discourse, at the least that can be 
 said, darkens counsel by words without knowledge. 
 But the record is before us. Let it speak for itself. 
 
 The whole future of Israel's prophetic history, with 
 its interwoven prophetic history of the Gentile na- 
 tions as her oppressors, was foretold, in outline, by 
 Closes, the founder of the nation and its prophet 
 without a peer (Deut. xxxiv, 10), when, at the close 
 of their wanderings in the wilderness, they were about 
 to enter into the land, whither, for forty weary and 
 guilty 3 T ears, they had been going to possess it. These 
 prophecies (Deut. xxviii-xxx), including the dying 
 ode of Moses, were his parting message, his last will 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 39 
 
 and testament, to the sinful and erring nation, the 
 vox cycnea of the departing seer. They are a pro- 
 phetic mirror, revealing in general and, sometimes, 
 particular outline, the whole future history of the 
 nation, down to the eud of the dispensations which 
 are revealed; down to that utmost limit of time, be- 
 yond which inspired prophecy, in respect to man's 
 earthly condition and estate, stretches not its ken ; 
 down to that utmost limit of time, where the unre- 
 vealed dispensations begin, where the Divine Revela- 
 tion merges itself in those of ages of ages, those 
 aiw'szq ~a>v alwvatv, by which in the Holy Scriptures 
 the eternity of God is so often described. The 
 alternatives of blessing and cursing, presented to 
 the nation by these prophecies, were made to stand 
 out in impending relief, even as Ebal, the mount of 
 cursing, and Gerizim, the mount of blessing, then 
 stood before their natural eyes. The whole future 
 history of Israel, its judicial blindness in the nearer 
 future, and its final conversion and exaltation in the 
 more remote, was wrapped up in these prophecies, as 
 the mighty oak is wrapped up in the little acorn we 
 tread beneath our feet. However familiar our readers 
 may be with these prophecies, we hope they will re- 
 peruse the selections we make from them, for the sake 
 of their importance to our discussion. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken 
 diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to ob- 
 serve and to do all his commandments which I com- 
 mand thee this da} 7 , that the Lord. thy God will set 
 thee on high above all the nations of the earth ; and 
 all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake 
 thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord 
 thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and 
 blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be 
 the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, 
 and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, 
 and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy 
 basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when 
 thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when 
 
40 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies 
 that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy 
 face ; they shall come out against thee one way, and 
 flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall com- 
 mand the blessing upon thee in thy storehouse, and 
 in all that thou setlest thine hand unto ; and he shall 
 bless thee in the land the Lord thy God giveth thee. 
 The Lord shall establish thee a holy people unto him- 
 self, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep 
 the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk 
 in his wa}^s ; and all people of the earth shall see that 
 thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they 
 shall be afraid of thee. And the Lord shall make 
 thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and 
 in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy 
 ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy 
 fathers to give thee. The Lord shalt open unto thee 
 his good treasure, the heaven to give thee rain into 
 thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of 
 thine hand ; and thou shalt lend unto many nations, 
 and thou shalt not borrow. And the Lord shall 
 make thee the head, and not the tail ; and thou shalt 
 be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath ; if that 
 thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord 
 thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe 
 and to do them, and shalt not go aside from any of 
 the words which I command thee this day, to the 
 right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to 
 serve them. 
 
 " But it shall come to pass, if thou will not hearken 
 unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do 
 all his commandments and his statutes which I com- 
 mand thee this day ; that all these curses shall come 
 upon thee, and overtake thee. Cursed shalt thou be 
 in the cit} 7 , and cursed shalt thou be in the field. 
 Cursed shalt be thy basket and thy store. Cursed 
 shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy 
 land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy 
 sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, 
 and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 41 
 
 Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and re- 
 buke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to 
 do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish 
 quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, 
 whereby thou hast forsaken me. The Lord shall 
 make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he hath 
 consumed thee from otf the land, whither thou goest 
 to possess it. The Lord shall smite thee with a con- 
 sumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, 
 and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, 
 and with blasting, and with mildew; and the} r shall 
 pursue thee until thou perish. And thy heaven 
 which is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth 
 that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall 
 make the rain of thy land powder and dust; from 
 heaven shall it come down upon thee, till thou be 
 destroyed. The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten 
 before thine enemies ; thou shalt go out one way 
 against them, and flee seven ways before them ; and 
 shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. 
 The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and with 
 blindness, and with astonishment of heart ; and thou 
 shalt grope at noon-day, as the blind gropeth in 
 darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways ; 
 and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled ever- 
 more, and no man shall save thee ; thou shalt be only 
 oppressed and crushed alway. And thou shalt be- 
 come an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword 
 among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee. 
 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above 
 thee very high, and thou shalt come down very low. 
 He shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail. 
 Thou shalt serve thine enemies, which the Lord shall 
 send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in 
 nakedness, and in want of all things, and he shall 
 put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have de- 
 stroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against 
 thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as 
 the eagle flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not 
 understand ; a nation of fierce countenance, which 
 •l 
 
42 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor 
 to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, 
 and the fruit oi' thy land, until thou be destroyed! 
 which also shall nut leave thee either corn, or oil, or 
 the increase of thy kine, or Hocks of thy sheep, until 
 he have destined thee. And he shall besiege thee 
 in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come 
 down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy 
 land ; and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates 
 throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God 
 hath o-iyen thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of 
 thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy 
 daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, 
 in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine 
 enemies shall distress thee. And j*e shall be 
 plucked from off the land whither thou goest to 
 possess it : and the Lord shall scatter thee among 
 all people, from the one end of the earth even unto 
 the other ; and among these nations shalt thou find 
 no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest : 
 but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, 
 and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and thy life 
 shall hang in doubt before thee." 
 
 We ask the attention of our readers, especially, to 
 the incontestably literal character of these predic- 
 tions. They were all prophecy then. They are all 
 accomplished facts and actual history now. All the 
 world knows it by heart. Their literal fulfilment in 
 the past is attested by eye- witnesses in records with- 
 out number, written without concert, and universally 
 harmonious. The now occurring literal fulfilment of 
 many of them is but a repetition of their literal ful- 
 filment in the past, and a faithful record in advance 
 of their no less literal fulfilment in the future, " till 
 all shall be fulfilled ;" or, in other words of our Sa- 
 viour, " until the times of the Gentiles shall be ful- 
 filled." There is not a single prediction, in this long 
 catalogue of prophecies, that has not been justified by 
 the event, and, in the case of the most of them, over 
 and over aaain. 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 43 
 
 Look, for instance, at the prediction of the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem by the Romans — to whom exposi- 
 tors and historians for the most part agree, that 
 the "nation of fierce countenance" refers — which 
 took place more than fifteen hundred years after the 
 prediction was uttered. Where, in the pages of any 
 historian, will you find a more truthful, or more 
 graphic and vivid account of its actual, detailed and 
 quivering horrors, than in these few words of Moses? 
 where a description so terrible, and yet so literally 
 truthful, of Israel's whole suffering future ever since ; 
 uttered by Moses before one of the prophetic acts of 
 disobedience had been committed, or one of the pro- 
 phetic judgments had been inflicted, or one of the 
 prophetic woes had been endured, which these pro- 
 phecies with such wonderful accuracy foretell ? No 
 uninspired historian of the past ever described with 
 more faithful and literal exactness what has happened, 
 than this inspired prophet foretold what would hap- 
 pen, never failing of the exact fact, as all history 
 confirms, in so much as a single particular. The 
 future was even clearer to his eye, though sweeping 
 the vast and un revealed future of other dispensations 
 than his own, than the past can be to ours, though 
 confined to much narrower fields. His rapt and un- 
 clouded vision could not err. Our clouded and un- 
 inspired vision, even with the best lights of history 
 before us, often errs. 
 
 What a commentary upon the wickedness and per- 
 verseuess of the nation, then just entering, under 
 such glorious auspices, and under the guidance of 
 such a heaven-inspired leader, upon its early man- 
 hood, was the necessity of these predictions of the 
 consequences of its sins — always the last resort with 
 the hopelessly incorrigible — as if, indeed, it would 
 surely be guilty of them ! Already do we seem to 
 see the thick darkness of the judicial blindness, pro- 
 nounced upon them seven hundred and fifty 3-ears 
 afterwards, settling down with its baleful shadows 
 over their foolish hearts. 
 
44 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 And yet Moses, spanning the mighty arch of the 
 coming dispensations, foresaw, through the faith and 
 endurance of a chosen and holy remnant, which 
 would always be preserved, the possible recovery and 
 salvation of the nation at last ; when, as another 
 prophet foretells, they shall, at His second coming, 
 behold their King in His terror and His beauty, and 
 acknowledge Him, even in the latter days, as their 
 bleeding but victorious Messiah. Five times in the 
 dying ode of Moses (Delitzsch calls our attention to 
 the number) is Christ referred to as the Rock of 
 Israel ; the Rock alike of her vengeance and of her 
 salvation ; the Rock upon which she will continue to 
 fall and be broken in pieces, until her evil course is 
 run ; the Rock which will then fall upon her Gentile 
 foes and grind them to powder ; the Rock, however, 
 in which she will hide herself at last. How beautiful 
 the symbol, borrowed from the granite clilfs of Sinai; 
 descending through the wanderings of the children 
 of Israel in the wilderness ; through the evil hours 
 of their probationary, and the now far-spent night 
 of their judicial dispensation ; through the wrecks of 
 their own and so many other buried empires ; 
 through the psalms and hymns of so many genera- 
 tions ! the spiritual beauty and consolation of which 
 has been so sweetly caught and breathed forth by 
 one of our Christian poets : — 
 
 ''Rock of ages cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in thee;" etc. 
 
 In passing from Moses to Isaiah, who stands mid- 
 way between Moses and Christ, we approach a new 
 era or dispensation in the prophetic history of Israel. 
 Her probationary dispensation is about to end, and a 
 long and dark and dreary night of ra3dess gloom is 
 about to settle down upon the guilt}'' nation ; a night 
 upon which no day-star will arise, to chase away its 
 heaviness and anguish, until the close of another 
 dispensation, of the present Gentile dispensation, 
 and the coming-in of Israel's millennial dispensation. 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 45 
 
 It is the night of Israel's judicial blindness, judicial 
 condemnation and judicial shame. 
 
 The prophecies of Moses, which we have cited, in- 
 troduced, or completed the introduction, of a proba- 
 tionary dispensation to Israel. Accordingly, as has 
 been seen, they were expressed in an alternative 
 form. An alternative of blessing on the one hand, 
 and of cursing on the other, was presented to the 
 nation. An open choice was before her. Do this, 
 and all the blessings of the covenants shall be yours. 
 Do that, and they shall all be taken from you. 
 
 Notwithstanding these prophecies of Moses w r ere 
 thus probationary in their aspect and character, they 
 were } r et full of apprehension, lest Israel should 
 reject the offered blessing, and choose the offered 
 curse; and the apprehension was justified by the 
 event. She did choose the offered curse, and she is 
 now, under the prophetic mission of Isaiah, about to 
 reap the judicial consequences of her evil choice. 
 Since the time of Moses, she had been blessed with 
 seasons of great national prosperity and splendor. 
 Nevertheless she heaped rebellion upon rebellion, 
 and apostasv upon apostasy, until now, at last, nearly 
 all the prophetic judgments enumerated by Moses 
 had come upon her and overtaken her. and were 
 about to utterly destroy her national independence, 
 and annihilate her national glory, until all things 
 written in the law should be fulfilled upon her, and 
 the bitter cup of the self-chosen curse should be 
 drained to its dregs. 
 
 Hitherto, even in all her sins, Israel, as a nation, 
 had leaned, or professed to lean, upon the arm of 
 Jehovah alone. But now, under Ahaz, the kingdom 
 of Judah (unmindful of the calamities which had 
 come upon her sister kingdom of Israel, for casting 
 of Jehovah, and calling in the aid of Egypt) called 
 in herself, in like manner, against her sister king- 
 dom, the aid of Assyria, and from that hour Jehovah 
 was cast off by her ; and Jehovah, in turn, 
 cast her off, and delivered her over to her enemies. 
 
46 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 In that hour she forged the first link in the chain of 
 her Assyrian oppression, in that chain of oppression, 
 which, beginning with Babylon, ended not with 
 Home, nor will end, until all that is written 
 against the ungodly nation by these two great uni- 
 versal prophets of Israel, Moses and Isaiah, shall be 
 fulfilled upon her. From the hour that Israel, irreso- 
 lutely yielding to every temptation of idolatry, 
 melted her golden ear-rings into a golden calf in the 
 wilderness, and her incensed leader brake in pieces 
 the tables of stone, on which was inscribed, in the 
 hand-writing of Jehovah, first of all, " Thou shalt 
 have no other Gods before Me," down to the time 
 when Ahaz despoiled the temple of the Lord of its 
 silver and gold for a present to the king of Assyria, 
 and set up the worship of Moleeh, the savage god 
 of the Ammonites, upon the heights of Olivet and 
 under the very walls of Jerusalem, Israel's whole 
 career, especially since the last days of Solomon, 
 had been one of almost unceasing rebellion and idola- 
 try. 
 
 W hat crowning sin, what crowning act of guilt, 
 could she now commit, when she had thus utterly cast 
 off the Most High God of Israel, in Whom alone her 
 whole national life and being had consisted hitherto, 
 to render her apostasy more complete, in thought, or 
 word, or deed ? If this sin was not sufficient to call 
 down upon her the judicial wrath of heaven, what 
 sin would be sufficient to call it down? If she 
 merited not judicial condemnation now, when would 
 she merit it? True, if she now rejected and cast off 
 God the Father, she might, as she did, after another 
 seven hundred and fifty years, reject and cast off God 
 the Son, and God the Spirit, as she also did. But 
 this would be no new offense, but only a repetition of 
 the same offense against the same eternal and triune 
 Godhead, and therefore no reason why her judicial 
 sentence for the original offense should be postponed. 
 How otherwise than by her judicial condemnation 
 now, could the Divine justice, according even to the 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 47 
 
 most ordinary and limited ideas of human justice, be 
 vindicated and maintained ? How otherwise could 
 any government, or theory of government, human or 
 divine, stand for a single hour? No! for a period 
 longer than the lifetime of an}' other nation before or 
 since, a period of nearly a thousand years, Israel had 
 been put upon her probation, and her probation had 
 now proved a failure. Every recourse of the divine 
 goodness and every chastisement of the divine 
 wrath had been exhausted upon her in vain. No na- 
 tion had ever enjoyed opportunities so exalted. No 
 nation had ever thrown them so entirely away. The 
 foundations of no nation were ever laid on such 
 glorious and indestructible covenants. No nation was 
 ever established and upheld by such almight}' power ; 
 with the infinite fulness of God pledged beforehand 
 to supply all its human needs and deficiencies. No 
 nation was ever regulated and guided in its whole 
 national life and being and career by such infinite 
 wisdom, or watched over in such infinite love, or 
 borne with in its sins so tenderly or so long, or with 
 a compassion so divine, or forgiven so many times: 
 the wrath of God wrestled down for it by the heroic 
 Jacob in advance ; God dwelling ever in it in spite 
 of its sins, and walking in it, and a God unto it as 
 He was not God of any other people, that they might 
 be to Him His people above all the people of the 
 earth ; their land the most favored of all lands, in 
 respect to the independence of its natural position, 
 (yet standing midway in the highway of the conti- 
 nents) its beauty of configuration, and the various and 
 teeming fruitfulness of its soil ; with no arm of flesh, 
 but with Jehovah "s almighty arm, to lean upon. But, 
 alas ! she yielded to the great adversary of Jehovah in 
 His holy government over a fallen world, and fell. She 
 had now, when Ahaz reigned and Isaiah prophesied, 
 utterly cast off Jehovah. He had never ceased to]call 
 to her. She had never ceased to refuse. He had never, 
 ceased to stretch out His hand to her. She had never 
 erased to disregard it. There was no other god that she 
 
48 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 would not have before the most High God of Israel, 
 the one ever-living and true God. And thus, by her 
 own mad and suicidal folly, she put an end to her 
 probation ; and nothing now remains but to render 
 the verdict, and pass the sentence of a holy and 
 offended God upon her. 
 
 It is at this point, strictly speaking, that Israel's 
 probationary dispensation ends, and her judicial dis- 
 pensation begins ; though we have before spoken of 
 these dispensations, in their relations to Israel, in 
 somewhat more general terms. Up to this point 
 Israel's past history had been the history of a proba- 
 tionary dispensation. From this point we enter upon, 
 and are to contemplate only, her judicial dispensation, 
 until, through the faith and endurance of the holy 
 remnant, she reaches, at the close of her judicial, her 
 millennial, dispensation. Accordingly we find that 
 from this point onward, the predictions of the pro- 
 phets of Israel no longer assume a probationary 
 aspect and character ; presenting to the nation an 
 alternative of blessing on the one hand, and of curs- 
 ing on the other ; but that the}^ are judicial only, 
 whenever they refer to any point or period of time 
 preceding the close of her judicial, and the com- 
 mencement of her millennial, dispensation ; and mil- 
 lennial only, when the} r relate to a subsequent period 
 of time ; the second advent of her Messiah constitu- 
 ting, as we shall presently see, the boundary between 
 the two dispensations. 
 
 Henceforward, prophecy, so far as it relates to ac- 
 tual events and results in Israel's future history, no 
 longer expresses itself in an alternative, but only in 
 the most absolute form, and in the most absolute 
 terms. It no longer contemplates any possible con- 
 tingency, or any doubtful and uncertain results, in 
 respect to the future moral character and conduct 
 of the nation. The guilty nation has made its 
 choice, and its choice has been accepted, sealed and 
 registered against it in the courts of heaven, and has 
 assumed all the force and authority of a divine de- 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 49 
 
 cree. Henceforward, it is the judicial wrath of God 
 only that awaits her, and is predicted against her, 
 until she reaches the end of her present judicial dis- 
 pensation. Of this character are all the prophecies 
 of Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Daniel, 
 and of all the minor and later prophets, which relate 
 to Israel under her present judicial dispensation. Of 
 this character are all the prophecies of our Saviour, 
 which relate to the future moral histoiy of the nation, 
 including His public and unexplained parables, which 
 are thus not prophetic only, but judicially prophetic 
 also. Thus, for example, our Saviour expressed him- 
 self in clearly judicial terms, and anticipated no pos- 
 sibly contingent or conditional, or twofold, or alter- 
 native results, when, in His last public discourse, 
 He gave to the guilty nation the prophetic command, 
 " Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers ; ye ser- 
 pents, }*e generation of vipers, how can ye escape 
 the damnation of hell?" or when He no less pro- 
 phetical^ declared to the guilt}^ nation, " Ye shall fall 
 by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away cap- 
 tive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden 
 down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles 
 be fulfilled." 
 
 It was Moses who inaugurated the era, or dispen- 
 sation, of probationary prophecy. It was Isaiah, the 
 statesman-like and fiery prophet of Jerusalem, with 
 whom the era of probationary prophecy ended, and 
 the dispensation of judicial prophecy began. There 
 is not to be found a prophecy in Isaiah, relating to 
 the actual future of Israel's history, that is suscepti- 
 ble of an alternative construction or application; that 
 is not clearly and absolutely either judicial in its 
 character on the one hand, or millennial in its char- 
 acter on the other, according to the particular dis- 
 pensation referred to, or described. Isaiah, next to 
 Moses, is the universal prophet of Israel. His pro- 
 phecies embrace the nation in all its tribes, and all its 
 generations, and in both of its coming dispensations. 
 He is the great prophet of Israel outcast and dis- 
 
50 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 persed, and of Israel restored ; of Israel's present 
 shame, and of Israel's future glory; of Israel trodden- 
 down, and of Israel lifted up. As we have already 
 said, these two classes of prophecy can alwa3 r s be 
 clearly distinguished from one another. 
 
 But especially do we love to contemplate Isaiah, 
 as the prophet, pre-eminently, of Israel's millennium, 
 and through Israel, of the millennium of all mankind. 
 Indeed, he is the prophet, especially, as his name in 
 the Hebrew imports, of " Israel's salvation." There 
 is nothing in inspired prophecy that transcends in 
 touching beauty, or in lofty splendor, the millennial 
 visions of Isaiah; 
 
 " From harmony to harmony, 
 Through all the compass of the notes they run." 
 
 Of such and so great consequence to the moral 
 and spiritual destiny of Israel, and, through Israel, 
 of all mankind, was the terrible apostasy and fall of 
 this ancient, and sacred, and covenanted, but unfaith- 
 ful nation ! Thus it has always been, and always will 
 be; with nations as with individuals; and Israel is 
 the great example. A nation is simply a name which 
 a collection of individuals asrree with common con- 
 sent to assume : and what is there in a name, be it 
 Jew or Gentile, Greek or Roman, European or 
 American, that can change the moral relations and 
 responsibilities of man to his Creator, or lessen his 
 personal accountability ? Can any number of indi- 
 viduals, by binding themselves together into a 
 nation, however skillfully and well they may 
 strengthen the cords, and refine and perfect the 
 organism, and consolidate the national unity and 
 individuality, and extend the national resources, 
 and foster the national pride, and heighten the 
 national prestige, that cement their common union, 
 and bind them together as one man — all which was 
 true of tie Jewish nation, and has, at one time or 
 another, been true of all the great nations of the 
 earth — thus escape their individual accountability, 
 either singly, or as a people, to an injured and 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 51 
 
 offended God; or escape, if deserved, His judicial 
 wrath ? Let condemned and down-trodden Israel 
 answer. Let the still crumbling ruins of BabyloD 
 and Persia and Greece and Rome swell the mournful 
 echo. And why shall the present or future sove- 
 reignties of the earth return a less sad response? 
 We know from prophecies, which we shall presently 
 cite, that the}' will not. 
 
 In brief, God's method is simply this. He leaves 
 man to his own free and unrestrained moral choice ; 
 to choose what course of moral conduct he will ; 
 placing before him in His holy Word and in the 
 history of His holy providence the just, legitimate 
 and certain consequences of his acts, accordingly as 
 he elects and pursues one course of moral conduct or 
 another. If he elects and pursues a sinful course of 
 conduct, and hardens himself in guilt, and steels him- 
 self against repentance, and shuts his eyes, and his 
 ears, and his heart to every method which reason, and 
 persuasion, and judgment, and mercy can devise and 
 interpose, to turn him from his evil wa} T s — all which 
 was true of sinful and guilt} r Israel in her relations 
 to her Heavenly Father, and in the relations of her 
 Heavenly Father to her — the loving will of God to- 
 wards him becomes at length the wrathful will of 
 God, into which His loving will always changes, when 
 obstinately and incorrigibly resisted. Then ensues 
 the sentence of judicial blindness. Then, the self- 
 hardened sinner becomes the judicial-condemned 
 criminal. Then, the judicial and peremptory wrath 
 of God supervenes to deliver him over to the just 
 consequences of his own acts, his own self-chosen 
 conduct : to believe to his utter ruin and confusion, 
 the miserable lies with which the devil has cheated 
 him, and with which he has cheated himself; and bars 
 the door of repentance against him, which he has first 
 closed against himself. 
 
 Such was guilty Israel, when, more than twenty- 
 six hundred years ago, the sentence of judicial blind- 
 ness, which her prophets had invoked and foretold, 
 
52 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 was passed upon her. Such has guilty Israel been 
 ever since, abandoned alike of God and man. Thus 
 does sin bring upon itself its own punishment, which 
 is the wrath of God excited by it. With what hea- 
 venly pathos did our Saviour, the last time that He 
 wept over Jerusalem in the presence of His disciples, 
 alluding to the then and still existing execution of 
 the fearful sentence of Israel's judicial blindness, with 
 which He would not interfere, however much He 
 yearned to open their eyes, exclaim: " If thou hadst 
 known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
 which belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid 
 from thy eyes." 
 
 But who by searching can find out the great mys- 
 tery of Israel's judicial blindness ? We can do little 
 more than recite the great fact itself as we find it re- 
 corded, and such other Scripture testimony as pro- 
 perly relates to it. 
 
 In quoting from the text of Isaiah, we shall adopt 
 the translation of Delitzsch, one of the most learned 
 and evangelical Jews of our own day, partly because 
 it is his nation whom the book he translates con- 
 demns, and partly because of the critical fulness and 
 fidelnVy of his translation. We would also acknow- 
 ledge our indebtedness to the same expositor, for 
 many valuable suggestions in connection with the 
 text. 
 
 Jehovah Himself is Israel's accuser. It is God, 
 and not man, w 7 ho renders the verdict against her, 
 and pronounces the sentence of her judicial condem- 
 nation : " Hear, heavens," cries the prophet, "and 
 give ear, earth ; for Jehovah speaketh." 
 
 "I have brought up children, and raised them high, and 
 they have fallen away from me. An ox knoweth its owner, 
 and an ass its master's crib : Israel doth not know, my 
 people doth not consider." 
 
 That is ; the nation which stands so peculiarly in 
 the relation of children to Me, and to whom I stand 
 so peculiarly in the relation of their heavenly Father ; 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 53 
 
 My children, whom I have begotten \>y my promise to 
 their father Abraham, that I would make of him a 
 great nation, and bless them that blessed them, and 
 curse them that cursed them ; and by so many mani- 
 festations of My almighty power and sovereign 
 grace in their belialf; Israel, so called after Jacob, 
 their father, who wrestled with Me for a blessing 
 upon himself and his descendants, and prevailed 
 with Me ; " 2Iy people," the nation which I have 
 chosen out of all other nations to be the nation of My 
 possession, and My Own peculiar government ; — they 
 have rebelled against Me; they have fallen awaj* from 
 Me ; their rebellion and apostasy have been persisted 
 in so long, and have reached such a height, that it 
 has become, at last,. simply inhuman : they have sunk 
 to a lower level than the brutes : they have not even 
 their instinctive knowledge and perception. "An ox 
 knoweth its owner, and an ass its master's crib : Is- 
 rael doth not know, my people doth not consider." 
 
 Such is Jehovah's accusation against Israel. Such 
 is Jehovah's piercing and hopeless lamentation over 
 the apostate nation. The divine grief is even a more 
 affecting accusation against the ungodly nation, than 
 the divine condemnation itself. 
 
 Here the words of Jehovah end. The prophet now 
 breaks forth with uncontrollable vexation against the 
 ungrateful and ungodly nation. 
 
 " Woe upon the sinful nation, the guilt-laden people, the 
 miscreant race, the children acting corruptly! They have 
 forsaken Jehovah, blasphemed Israel's Holy One, turned 
 away backwards." 
 
 That is; according to the choice and determination 
 of God, Israel was to be a holy nation, but by her 
 own sinful choice and guilty self-determination, by 
 the weight and magnitude of her sins, and her con- 
 firmed apostasy of thought and word and deed — as if, 
 indeed, she were the seed, not of the covenanted pa- 
 triarchs, but of evil-doers only — she has now become 
 the meet subject, not only of Jehovah's hopeless 
 
54 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 lamentation over her, but of lamentation filled with 
 judicial wrath. " Woe upon the sinful nation !" 
 
 "Why would ye be perpetually smitten, multiplying 1 
 rebellion? Every head is diseased, and every heart is sick?" 
 
 That is ; why are ye so foolish as to heap apostasy 
 upon apostasy, and continue to call down upon your- 
 selves the judgments of God, which have already 
 fallen upon 3 7 ou, blow after blow ? Your apostasy has 
 reached such a pass, that in all the nation there is 
 not one head or heart, that is not morally and totally 
 diseased with sin. Surely 3'ou have been sufficiently 
 smitten by the wrath of God to have been brought 
 to reflection. But, alas ! the whole nation is one 
 miserably diseased body. 
 
 "From the soul of the foot even to the head there is 
 nothing sound in it; cuts, and stripes, and festering wounds; 
 they have not been pressed out, nor bound up, nor has there 
 been any soothing with oil." 
 
 That is ; the nation has rejected the merciful and 
 compassionate kindness of God so long ; and the 
 cure which He has so continually offered to effect, 
 and has now at last become so miserably and totally 
 diseased throughout, that there is no health in it, or 
 any hope of it. In a word, it is all over with the 
 guilty nation. The day of forgiveness is pas$. 
 
 The bod} 7 , thus inwardly and outwardly diseased, 
 evidently includes both the people and the land, in 
 their alike fearful condition in the prophet's time ; for 
 he thus with sharp and broken sentences proceeds : 
 
 "Your land .... a desert; your cities .... burned 
 with fire; your field .... foreigners consuming it be- 
 fore your eyes, and a desert like overthrowing by stran- 
 gers." 
 
 What a literal fulfilment and perfect realization of 
 the curses of the law, as recorded in Lev. xxvi and 
 Dent, xxviii and xxix, the latter of wdiich we have 
 cited ; and that not only in the time of Isaiah, but 
 ever since ! 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 55 
 
 "And the daughter of Zion remains like a hut in a vine- 
 yard; like a hammock in a cueumber field, as a beseiged 
 city." 
 
 That is ; although thus surrounded by the desola- 
 tions of the land, Jerusalem has, through the omnipo- 
 tent mercy of God, escaped the curses of the law ; 
 even as the prophet goes on to say : 
 
 "Unless Jehovah of hosts had left us a little of what had 
 escaped, we had become like Sodom, we were like Go- 
 morrah." 
 
 The prophet, haying thus affirmed that nothing but 
 the mercy of God had saved Israel from utter deso- 
 lation and destruction, and spared, as yet, Jerusa- 
 lem, now changes the current of his address, as if 
 anticipating that the nation would justify itself 
 against these accusations, by an appeal to its scru- 
 pulous observance of the law; and thus launches 
 forth the accusations of Jehovah anew: 
 
 "Hear the word of Jehovah, ye Sodom judges; give ear 
 to the law of our God, 0, Gomorrah nation! What is the 
 multitude of your slain-offerings to me ? saith Jehovah. I am 
 satiated with the whole offerings of rams, and the fat of 
 stalled calves; and blood of bullocks and sheep and he-goats 
 I do not like." 
 
 That is ; to what purpose the multitude of your 
 sacrifices, when offered unto Me with such hollow 
 formality, such hypocritical and ceremonial righte- 
 ousness onh r ? I am weary of them. I want no more 
 of them. I never desired them. The prophet con- 
 tinues in the same strain : 
 
 "When ye come to appear before my face, who hath re- 
 quired this at your hand, to tread my courts? Continue not 
 to bring lying meat-offerings; abomination incense is it to me. 
 New-moon and Sabbath, calling of festal meetings; I can- 
 not bear ungodliness and a festal crowd. Your new-moons 
 and your festive seasons my soul hateth ; they have become 
 a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. And if ye 
 stretch out your hands, I hide my eves from you ; if ye 
 make ever so much praying I do not hear, your hands are 
 full of blood." 
 
56 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 Thus the last bulwark of their self-righteousness 
 was now swept away. Even their praying, an instinct 
 common to all men who recognize a Supreme Being, 
 however ignorantlv, had becdme an abomination to 
 God. 
 
 As we have already asked, what crowning sin could 
 the nation now commit, that would render it more 
 deserving of God's judicial wrath ? 
 
 We come now to the judicial sentence itself. 
 
 Isaiah is admitted into the personal presence of 
 the " Holy One of Israel," by Whom is meant in the 
 scene of the present vision, as St. John, the evange- 
 list, informs us (John xii, 41), the Second Person of 
 the Godhead, or Christ Himself. This appellation, 
 in the twenty-nine instances of its use by Isaiah — but 
 five times is it elsewhere used in the Old-Testament 
 Scriptures, three times in the Psalms, and twice in 
 Jeremiah — uniformly refers to the Messiah alone. 
 
 " I saw," says the prophet, " the Lord of all sitting 
 upon a high and exalted throne, and his borders fill- 
 ing the temple." 
 
 That is; the prophet, being carried up into heaven, 
 beheld, seated upon a high and exalted throne, which 
 was the heavenly antitype of the earthly throne 
 formed by the ark of the covenant in the earthly 
 temple, the Lord of all in human form, His robes 
 filling the temple. 
 
 "Above it stood seraphim : each one had six wings; with 
 two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, 
 and with two he did fly. And one cried to the other, and 
 said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: filling the whole 
 earth is His glory." 
 
 The seraphim here described are nowhere else 
 mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, and are supposed 
 to be the media or messengers of the fire of the 
 divine love, as the cherubim are supposed to be 
 the media or messengers of the fire of the divine 
 wrath. Their ascription of holiness to the Lord 
 is undoubtedly to be understood in the same sense 
 with the doxology of the four living creatures 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 57 
 
 described in the Revelation (Rev. iv, 8); " Holy, holy, 
 holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, and is to 
 come." This ascription of the seraphim does not 
 mean, that when Isaiah thus beheld them, the whole 
 earth, or any part of it, and least of all the nation of 
 Israel, was tilled with the glory of Jehovah; but that, 
 when the purposes of God in behalf of Israel, and, 
 through Israel, in behalf of all mankind, should all be 
 accomplished, towards the fulfilment of which the 
 judicial blinding of Israel had now become a ne- 
 cessary step, then the whole earth should be filled 
 with His glory, even as Jehovah sware unto Moses 
 in the wilderness, " As truly as I live, all the earth 
 shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." It is the 
 ultimate and complete triumph onty, the millennial 
 triumph, of the merciful purposes of Jehovah, that is 
 contemplated by both of these sublime doxologies ; a 
 result, however, which could only be accomplished, 
 in consistency with the principles of God's holy 
 government, by the employment, not less of the divine 
 justice, than of the divine mercy, as God in His holy 
 providence has always shown. 
 
 This judicial and retributive blinding of Israel, if 
 we short-sighted mortals could but see it in its true 
 light, was as necessary to her final salvation, as well 
 as to the vindication of the divine glory, as was her 
 Egyptian captivit}^ before, or her Babylonian cap- 
 tivity afterwards, or her Roman, or more general 
 Gentile captivity now. What may seem to us at the 
 time but unfeeling vengeance in the necessary execu- 
 tion of justice upon a hardened and incorrigible 
 criminal, may prove, in the end, the greatest mercy 
 that could be displa3 7 ed towards him. Was it not a 
 mere} 7 to Israel thus to arrest, her in mid-career, 
 and blind her eyes to the terrible enormity of her 
 guilt? 
 
 It is not material to inquire whether this threefold 
 ascription of the seraphim of holiness to the Iiord is 
 used in any intended symbolic sense or reference, 
 as the symbol of the expanded unity of the Godhead, 
 
58 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 three being the number, which, with the kejMiote, 
 produces a perfect chord. The antiphonal chorus cf 
 the seraphim is here of interest to us alone, as showing 
 the holiness and purity of the presence into which 
 the prophet was thus graciously admitted ; in which 
 divine and seraphic presence he was about to receive 
 the absolution of his sins, preparatory to his com- 
 mission to pronounce the sentence of judicial blind- 
 ness upon his own guilt}^ but beloved Israel. 
 
 The prophet, at first entranced and overwhelmed 
 by the ineffable splendor of the scene, recovering his 
 self-possession, exclaims : — 
 
 <% Woe is me! for I am lost; for I am a man of unclean 
 lips, and 1 am dwelling among a people of unclean lips; 
 for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. And 
 one of the seraphim flew to me with a red-hot coal in his 
 hand, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 
 And he touched my month with it, and said, Behold this 
 hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away; 
 and so thy sin is expiated. Then I heard the voice of the 
 Lord, saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us. 
 Then I said, Behold me here; send me." 
 
 We recognize in connection with this whole scene, its 
 heavenly splendor, the divine and seraphic presence, 
 the sublime doxology of the seraphim, the office 
 which they filled in connection with the divine 
 holiness and love, and the seraphic absolution of the 
 prophet's sins, not only the lofty and peculiar fitness 
 of Jsaiah to become the ministerial agent of so ter- 
 rible a sentence, but his no less lofty and peculiar 
 identification with the divine purposes in respect to 
 the ultimate triumph and glory of Christ's millennial 
 kingdom, and his equal fitness to be, at the same 
 time, above all others, alike the great judicial and 
 great millennial prophet of Israel, as we have already 
 described him. 
 
 Listen now to the commission in which the heavenly 
 scene reaches its awful consummation : — 
 
 " He said, Go, and tell this people [not My 
 people, this people], Hear on, and understand 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 59 
 
 not; and look on, but perceive not [These gerun- 
 dives imply the prolonged continuance of the 
 sentence]. Make ye the heart of this people greasy, 
 and their earn heavy, and their eyes sticky [These 
 imperatives are not to be understood as simply a 
 commission to the prophet to lell the people what 
 God had determined to do. They imply, in an in- 
 tensive sense, the idea and continuous process of 
 hardening, with God as the principal and efficient 
 cause, the message the mediate cause, and the 
 prophet the ministerial cause] ; that they may not 
 see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 
 their heart understand, and they be converted, and 
 one heal them." 
 
 How mournful the commission ! How terrible the 
 sentence ! How terribly opposite to the seraphic 
 mission the prophet had experienced in himself! 
 The seraph had absolved Isaiah with the burning coal, 
 not that he as a prophet might absolve, but harden 
 his people by his word ; that he might be the prophet 
 of the destruction, not less than of the ultimate 
 salvation of his nation. 
 
 Such was the sentence of judicial blindness that 
 ever afterwards huno- over Israel during the re- 
 mainder of the Old-Testament dispensation ; which 
 hung over her during the whole earthly ministry of 
 her Messiah; to which He so often and with such in- 
 finite sorrow alluded ; which He declared to be the 
 reason why He spake to the multitudes in parables, 
 explaining them not, and not in more intelligible 
 forms of speech ; with which He would never inter- 
 fere, but only reaffirm, and ever reaffirm, though the 
 heavens and the earth should pass away. Indeed it 
 was the Messiah of Israel Himself Who was the Author 
 of the sentence, and appointed, as we shall directly 
 see, the term of its continuance ; and will He reverse 
 His Own decree, before its appointed term expires ? 
 44 Think not I am come to destroy the law or the 
 prophets: I am not come to destro}', but to fulfil. 
 For veril}' I say unto you, Till heaven and earth 
 
60 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the law, till all be fulfilled." Such, finally, is the 
 sentence which hangs over Israel now, and will con- 
 tinue to hang over her, " till all shall be fulfilled." 
 Nothing, since this sentence of judicial blindness was 
 first pronounced, has ever availed to reach the in- 
 sensible heart of the guilty nation, and nothing 
 ever will, " till all shall be fulfilled." Israel's Mes- 
 siah, in His personal ministry upon the earth, as com- 
 pletely abandoned the nation to its judicial blind- 
 ness, as He so abandoned it in the vision in which He 
 appeared to Isaiah ; and His apostles followed His 
 example : and abandoned thereto will it remain, 
 until His feet shall stand again upon the Mount of 
 Olives, and Israel shall reach the fearful climax of 
 her supernatural servitude and affliction under her 
 present judicial dispensation, all human schemes and 
 speculations to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Henceforward, Israel's judicial blindness, her judi- 
 cial insensibility of heart, her hopelessly incorrigible 
 impenitence and unbelief, is an element which enters 
 into the preaching of Isaiah, and of all the succeeding 
 prophets, and no less into the teachings of Christ and 
 His apostles. Henceforward, a moral night of deep- 
 est darkness and impenetrable gloom, in fulfilment 
 of this sentence, settles down upon the judicially- 
 blinded nation. The prophets and the apostles and 
 Christ Himself invariably recognize Israel's total 
 want of moral understanding and perception even, 
 and the utter hopelessness of preaching repentance 
 to the nation, or seeking to reclaim it from its sins, 
 " till all shall be fulfilled," at the close of her judicial 
 dispensation, against the apostate and abandoned 
 nation. Especially was the fearful condemnation 
 which rested upon the nation, ever present to the 
 mind of the prophet who first pronounced it. At a 
 later period of his ministry, he refers to it in the 
 strongest terms (chap, xliv, 18). So also Jeiemiah 
 (v, 21). So also Ezekiel (xii, 2). 
 
 So also, under the New-Testament dispensation, 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 61 
 
 does the apostle Paul refer to it as an irrevocable de- 
 cree, which had gone forth against the nation, and 
 was to last until the close of her present judicial dis- 
 pensation ; or, to use his own words, "till the fulness 
 of the Gentiles be come in ;" or, to use the words of 
 our Saviour, expressive of precisely the same mean- 
 ing, 4< until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled." 
 Sa} T s Paul, " Israel hath not obtained that which she 
 seeketh for ; but the election hath obtained it, and the 
 rest [the nation at large] were blinded ; according as 
 it is written [Is. xxix, 9-12], God hath given them 
 the spirit of slumber, eyes that the}' should not see, 
 and ears that they should not hear, unto this day. 
 And David saith [Ps. lxix, 22, 23], Let their table 
 be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, 
 and a recompense unto them: Let their eyes be 
 darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their 
 back always." 
 
 So again, the same apostle, having expourded the 
 Scriptures " out of the law of Moses, and out of the 
 prophets, from morning till evening," to certain Jews 
 who came to him at Rome, vexed at last by their 
 total moral insensibility, and total want of moral 
 perception, thus dismissed them from his presence ; 
 " Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet 
 unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and 
 say, Hearing ye shall hear, and not understand ; and 
 seeing ye shall see, and not perceive ; for the heart of 
 this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of 
 hearing, and their e}'es have they closed ; lest they 
 should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
 and understand with their heart, and should be con- 
 verted and I should heal them. Be it known there- 
 fore unto } r ou. that the salvation of God is sent unto 
 the Gentiles, and the}' will hear it." Acts xxviii, 23-29. 
 
 Did the apostle Paul give wa} T to discouragement 
 and despondenc} T , when he thus encountered an ob- 
 stacle so insurmountable to his preaching, as the 
 judicial blindness of his nation? Not at all. It is 
 immediately added, that " Paul dwelt two whole years 
 
62 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 [fit Rome] in his own hired house, and received all 
 that came in uuto him, preaching the kingdom of 
 God, and teaching those things which concern the 
 Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man for- 
 bidding him." 
 
 Paul cheated not himself with any of the rose-colored 
 and delusive expectations, with which it is so often and 
 so unscripturally sought to stimulate the tardy piety 
 of our own times. He was content if none, who were 
 appointed unto salvation, failed of the grace of God 
 by any want of diligence on his part ; tk For I speak 
 to you, Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the 
 Gentiles, I magnify my office ; if by an}' means I may 
 provoke to emulation those which are my flesh, and 
 may save some of them." "Save some of them!" 
 This was the mark towards which this wonderful 
 apostle pressed forward for the prize of his high 
 calling. 
 
 Again ; St. John, the Evangelist, briefly summing 
 up, after the supper at Bethany, the results of the 
 ministry of our Saviour, and alluding to its unsuc- 
 cessful termination, so far as the nation at large was 
 concerned, says : — 
 
 "But though He had done so many mighty works before 
 them, yet they believed not on him: that the saying of Esaias 
 the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord who 
 hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the 
 IiOrd been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, be- 
 cause that Esaias said again. He hath blinded their eyes, 
 and hardened their hearts; that they should not see with 
 their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, 
 and I should heal them." John xii. 37-40. 
 
 The immediately following words of the Evange- 
 list show that it was the Second Person of the God- 
 head, the Messiah of Israel Himself, Who appeared 
 to Isaiah in the vision. 
 
 " These things said Esaias, when he saw his 
 glory, and spake of him." v. 41. 
 
 How manifestly, also, did our Saviour recognize 
 the impassible barrier which the judicial blindness 
 
Israel's judicial blindness 63 
 
 of the nation presented to His Own ministry. Weep- 
 ing over Jerusalem just at the close of His earthly 
 ministry, how sorrowfully He exclaimed ! " 0, that 
 thou, even thou, at least in this thy day, hadst known 
 the things that belong to thy peace; but now they 
 are hid from thine eyes !" 
 
 So, also, at an earlier period of His ministry, did 
 He expressly assure His disciples that the judicial 
 blindness of the nation was the reason why He 
 spake to it in parables. 
 
 ''Therefore speak I to them in parables; because they 
 seeing see not; and hearing they hear not; neither do they 
 understand. And in them is refill filled the prophecy of 
 Esaias. By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; 
 and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive; for this 
 people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of 
 hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest at anytime 
 they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
 and should understand with their hearts, and should be con- 
 verted, and I should heal them." Matt, xiii, 13-15. 
 
 The depth and totality of their judicial blindness 
 is made still more manifest and impressive b} r the 
 contrast presented to the nation at large by His con- 
 cluding words to His disciples: — 
 
 k< But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and 
 your ears, for they hear." v. 16. 
 
 That is; you, my disciples, and the faithful rem- 
 nant, the election of grace, of which you are, and 
 which you represent, are able to understand and 
 believe the secrets of my spiritual kingdom; the 
 riches of my free salvation; the mysteries of mj- re- 
 deeming love; the infinite atonement of my precious 
 blood; my redemptive title to the usurped sove- 
 reignty of lost and fallen Israel, and of a lost and 
 ruined world. But they do not, and cannot, under- 
 stand. They know not, neither do they consider. 
 They have sunk to a lower level than the brutes, and 
 have not even their instinctive knowledge and per- 
 ception. The}' are dead in their trespasses and sins 
 and unbelief. They are wholly destitute of spiritual 
 
64 Israel's .judicial blindness. 
 
 discernment. They are insensible alike to the ap- 
 peals of mercy, and to the chastisements of wrath. 
 They despise, and reject, and deride, and persecute 
 Me. They obstinately deny My rightful claims, both 
 as their temporal Messiah, as their onyii records 
 show, and as their spiritual Messiah, as is attested 
 by My mighty works. They blaspheme Me, charging 
 Me that I cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of 
 the devils. They grieve away the Holy Spirit in this 
 His Own peculiar dispensation. The}' reproach Me 
 for My obscure origin and humble followers, My 
 fastings and My tears, and make Me the song even 
 of the drunkards in their gates. 
 
 And yet how the forgiving heart of our Saviour 
 melts over the sinful nation! u O! Jerusalem, Jeru- 
 salem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest 
 them which are sent unto thee; how often would I 
 have gathered tb}' children together even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
 would not." Matt, xxiii, 37. Therefore — 
 
 " Because I have called, and ye have refused; I 
 have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 
 but ye have set at naught all my counsels, and would 
 none of 1113' reproof; I also will laugh at your ca- 
 lamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when 
 your fear cometh as desolation; and your destruction 
 cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish 
 cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but 
 I will not answer; they shall seek me earl}', but they 
 shall not find me; for that they hated knowledge, 
 and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would 
 none of my counsel; they despised all n\y reproof. 
 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own 
 way, and be filled with their own devices. For the 
 ease of the simple shall slay them, and the pros- 
 perity of fools shall destroy them." Prov. i, 24-32. 
 And yet, alas ! " How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? 
 how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee 
 as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? mine 
 heart is turned within me, my repentings are kin- 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 65 
 
 died together. I will not execute the fierceness of 
 mine anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim; 
 for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the 
 midst of thee." Hosea xi, 8-9. k Fain would I draw 
 them even now,' does our Saviour seem to say, as for 
 the last time He wept over untoward Israel, * with 
 the cords of a man, with the bonds of love, and take 
 otf the yoke on their jaws, and lay meat unto 
 them;" but now, alas! it is only left to Me to 
 foretell to them the certain judicial consequences 
 of their own sinful conduct as judicially-con- 
 demned criminals, which, when they are all ful- 
 filled upon them, and they are moved upon by the 
 Spirit of grace, and of supplications which I will 
 pour upon them at My second coming, at the expi- 
 ration of their judicial sentence and dispensation, 
 may prove the means of bringing them, at last, to 
 repentance; for, as I told them in the wilderness, I 
 am a merciful and long- suffering God, forgiving 
 iniquity, transgression and sin. Therefore I speak 
 to them in parables, that their own past, present 
 and future sinful conduct, thus ever held up in a 
 prophetic mirror before them, maj T , at last, in their 
 own sight condemn them. It is the only hope. 
 Thus only, while justice is satisfied, can mercy su- 
 pervene, and triumph in the end. " For I would 
 not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this m3<s- 
 tery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, 
 that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the 
 fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel 
 shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out 
 of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodli- 
 ness from Jacob; for this is my covenant unto them, 
 when I shall take away their sins. 11 Rom. xi, 25-27. 
 Thus perished guilty Israel in her sins. Thus was 
 she condemned to eat of the fruit of her own ways, 
 and to be filled with her own devices. All was in 
 vain to save her. The warnings of the prophets, 
 whom, one after another, she smote, and killed, and 
 stoned, are at last all justified ; and now the wicked 
 
66 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 husbandmen seek the life of the son and heir. Moses ; 
 Isaiah ; Christ; the burning bush, with its unconsum- 
 ing flames ; the burning altar, with its seraphic 
 choirs ; the star of Bethlehem, with its angel choirs ; 
 the baptism of water, the baptism of the Hoty Ghost, 
 and the baptism of fire ; the persuasions of the divine 
 love, the beating and trembling waves of the divine 
 wrath ; all, all was in vain. The prophet who pro- 
 nounced the sentence of judicial blindness was sawn 
 in sunder. Its divine Author and Ratifier was put to 
 the ignominious death, servile swpplicium, of a 
 Roman slave, bearing His Own cross to the sacrifice. 
 Well might the conscious and astonished earth shake 
 with horror, and veil itself in darkness at the scene ! 
 
 But a holy remnant remains : it always has re- 
 mained : it always will remain : it always has been 
 preserved : it always will be preserved : a holy seed : 
 " to whom [effectually] pertaineth the adoption, and 
 the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the 
 law, and the service of God, and the promises," and 
 through whom all Israel will finally be saved. Well 
 did Isaiah exclaim, " Except the Lord of Sabaoth 
 had left us a seed, w T e had been as Sodom, and had 
 been made like unto Gomorrah." 
 
 " And is there still a tenth therein, this also is 
 given up to destruction, like the terebinth and like 
 the oak, of which, when they are felled, only a root- 
 stump remains : such a root-stump is a holy seed." 
 
 Cut down the aged oak or terebinth of Palestine 
 to the very roots. Out of the battered stump a new 
 shoot will spring, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, 
 a chosen generation, a rod out of the worn-out stem 
 of Jesse, a fruitful branch out of the withered root 
 of David ; and the wilderness and the solitary place 
 shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice 
 and blossom as the rose ; it shall blossom abundantly, 
 even with joy and singing. Then "the eyes of them 
 that see, shall not bedim ; and the ears of them that 
 hear, shall hearken." 
 
 But when, the inquiry now arises, will the sentence 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 67 
 
 of Israel's judicial blindness, the term of her judicial 
 condemnation, expire? 
 
 The divine Author of the sentence has told us, in 
 answer to the same inquiry made of Him by Isaiah. 
 He replied ; " until towns are wasted without inhabi- 
 tant, and the houses without man, and the ground 
 shall be laid waste, a wilderness, and Jehovah shall 
 put men far away, and there shall be many forsaken 
 places within the land." Isa. vi, 11. 
 
 This reply, however definite as to the desolating 
 consequences, is not definite as to any prophetic and 
 related point of time, or prophetic and related order 
 of events, in concurrence with which the sentence 
 will be finally fulfilled. 
 
 But the Divine Author of the sentence, in answer 
 to essentially the same inquiry, made of Him by His 
 disciples, just before the close of His personal minis- 
 try, renders both the prophetic and related point of 
 time and the prophetic and related order of events 
 in connection with which the term of Israel's judicial 
 blindness will expire, perfectly clear and definite. 
 " They (Israel) shall fall by the edge of the sword, 
 and shall be led away captive into all nations : and 
 Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, 
 until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. * * * 
 Then look up, and lift up 3 r our heads ; for your re- 
 demption draweth nigh." Luke xxi, 24-33. 
 
 The term of Israel's judicial blindness will there- 
 fore cease, when "the times of the Gentiles shall be 
 fulfilled," and when, in connection therewith, all 
 the prophetic judgments, both of the Old and the 
 ^New-Testament revelations, including the judicial 
 prophecies of the parables, shall be finally accom- 
 plished upon her. 
 
 But when, the supplementary inquiry arises, will 
 the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, since then it is 
 that the term of Israel's judicial blindness will cease? 
 This inquiry appears to us to be susceptible, upon 
 the testimony of the prophetic Scriptures, of a per- 
 lectly clear and definite answer; not however, in 
 
C8 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 respect to any precise, independent, and absolute, or, 
 indeed, proximate date, chronologically determined, 
 or determinable; but in respect only and clearly, to 
 the precise and related order of certain future events; 
 which events are frequently spoken of in the pro- 
 phetic Scriptures as occurring simultaneously, at the 
 close of the present dispensation, or order of things. 
 These events are rarely, if ever, described or re- 
 ferred to in prophetic Scripture as isolated events. 
 They are never confounded with an}^ other events. 
 It is impossible to mistake them, or the related time 
 and order of their occurrence, at the close of the 
 present dispensation, or rather, which more especi- 
 ally concerns our present theme, at the conjunction, 
 before referred to, of Israel's judicial and millennial 
 dispensations. The}' form a wholly distinct group 
 by themselves. They are clearly stated and defined, 
 and often in their inseparable relation to one an- 
 other. There is not a constellation in our nightly 
 heavens, that presents to the eye a clearer out- 
 line, or shines with a more distinct and constant 
 lustre, than this particular group of events upon the 
 prophetic pages. Three of them only, however, al- 
 though there are others of not less vital consequence, 
 enter into our present inquiry, as to when the times 
 of the Gentiles will be fulfilled, namely: — 
 
 1. The second advent of the Messiah of Israel. 
 
 2. The simultaneous deliverance of Israel from her 
 Gentile oppressors, and the introduction of her mil- 
 lennial dispensation. 
 
 3. The complete and final overthrow of Gentile 
 ascendency over Israel, and the close of the proba- 
 tionary dispensation of the Gentile nations. 
 
 To obtain a correct view of the three events to 
 which we here refer, in their mutually related oc- 
 currence, we must first briefl} r advert to the prophetic 
 history of the Jewish nation as it approaches the 
 close of the present dispensation. 
 
 Israel will first be restored, and, as a nation, be 
 reinstated in her own land, and exercise all the func- 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 09 
 
 tions of an organized nationality therein, as com- 
 pletely as ever before, or as ever any other nation. 
 Under the leadership of Antichrist, the last great 
 monarch of the Gentiles, the ungodly and confede- 
 rated Gentile nations — the victims of a greater than 
 Israel's judicial blindness, of the "strong delu- 
 sion" to which the apostle Paul refers in his Second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonian Church (2 Thess. ii, 
 8-12), and jealous, we may well suppose, of the great 
 wealth and political power of Israel, of the fore- 
 shadowing of her coming ascendency and exalta- 
 tion, and of her still professed allegiance to the God 
 of Israel — will gather themselves together, by their 
 representative hosts, against Jerusalem,- there to 
 enact the closing scene of that great tribula- 
 tion, to which, under Antichrist, she will have been 
 subjected, "a tribulation such as never was since 
 there was a nation, no, nor ever shall be."* It is at 
 this point that prophecy takes up the description of 
 the final conflict between Israel and the nations of 
 the Gentiles, the time of the occurrence of which is 
 so often denominated in the prophetic Scriptures, 
 "the day of the Lord," or "day of visitation," when 
 the Spirit of the Lord shall set up a standard against 
 the enemies of Israel, and the Redeemer shall come 
 again to Zion. 
 
 Before proceeding, however, to the prophetic evi- 
 dence of the joint occurrence of the three events to 
 which we have referred; namely, the second advent 
 of the Messiah of Israel, the deliverance of Israel, 
 and the final overthrow of Gentile ascendency in the 
 earth, we must not omit to call attention to a con- 
 clusion from our foregoing reasoning, of the highest 
 prophetic consequence. 
 
 We have never seen it claimed by any sacred wri- 
 ter or expositor, that a millennium is to be enjoyed 
 upon the earth, under the present Gospel dispensation, 
 which shall not include the nation of Israel. In- 
 
 * For a statement of the proofs on these points, see "The Anti- 
 Christ of Prophecy," in " Briefs on Prophetic Themes." 
 
70 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 deed, it is universally admitted, that one of the most 
 prominent and glorious features of the expected 
 millennium will be the full realization of God's an- 
 cient covenants concerning Israel and Jerusalem. 
 
 Now if Israel and Jerusalem are to be trodden 
 down of the Gentiles, or, which is the same thing, 
 are to remain under their present judicial condemna- 
 tion, until the t?mes of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled, 
 and if the times of the Gentiles are not to be fulfilled 
 until the close of the present Gentile dispensation, 
 how is it possible that God's covenants of blessing 
 with Israel and Jerusalem should be fulfilled, so 
 long as the times of the Gentiles remain unfulfilled, 
 so Jong as the present dispensation is still uncon- 
 cluded, and the tread ing-down of Israel, and her 
 judicial blindness are still unaccomplished upon 
 her? 
 
 But God's ancient covenants will at some time be 
 fulfilled. His promises are forever sure. He is a 
 covenant-keeping God. And if His covenants with 
 His covenant-people have not been fulfilled in a past 
 dispensation, or in the past of the present dispensa- 
 tion, and are not to be fulfilled in the future of the 
 present dispensation, when, we ask, will the} 7 be ful- 
 filled, if not in a future dispensation? and must not 
 such future dispensation, because of their fulfilment, 
 be a millennial dispensation ? must it not be the mil- 
 lennial dispensation? or, if there is to be any other 
 millennium, or a millennium at any other time, when, 
 what, and where, and by what authority ? Is there 
 to be a millennium, in which Israel, as a nation, and 
 the covenants and promises of God concerning Israel 
 are not to be included ? a Gentile millennium with 
 Israel left out ? God forbid ! 
 
 What is thus true of the ancient Jewish covenants 
 is equally true of the millennial visions of Isaiah, 
 which are wholly based upon them, and can only be 
 fulfilled when they are fulfilled ; which can pertain 
 only to the dispensation to which they pertain, and 
 not to Israel under her present judicial condemna- 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 71 
 
 tion, under the curse of judicial blindness which, at 
 present, rests upon her. The same is also true of 
 the millennial predictions of the Psalms, and of all 
 millennial predictions whatever. 
 
 We now invite the attention of our readers to a 
 few 
 
 SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONIES 
 
 with brief comments thereon, relating to the termi- 
 nation of the sentence of Israel's judicial blindness; 
 to the post-judicial and pre-millennial advent of the 
 Messiah of Israel for the deliverance of His people 
 and the destruction of their foes ; and to some of 
 the incidents and scenes concurrent therewith, and 
 consequent thereupon, as the millennial years roll on. 
 
 These testimonies, left to their own simple utter- 
 ance and self-interpreting and unaided light, will be 
 found, as we believe, to establish, with Scriptural 
 certainty, in perfect harmony with all prophetic 
 analogy, and without affording the least support or 
 encouragement to any vague and contravening spir- 
 itualistic h} T pothesis, the following plain inferences 
 of fact and literal and incontrovertible conclusions. 
 
 It should, however, be remembered, first and 
 always, in considering these conclusions, that all 
 prophecy, descending from the same heavenly 
 source, seeks the untroubled waters of the same 
 immeasurable sea ; that prophecy, viewing it from 
 its highest Scriptural point of view, is to be regarded 
 as a broad and might}^ stream, pressing ever forward 
 with spreading banks and swelling volume, till lost 
 in the great deep of God's fulfilled purposes concern- 
 ing Israel and Jerusalem ; the one great supreme 
 event and crowning glory of that blessed consum- 
 mation ever being the personal return to the earih 
 of the Holy One of Israel, not, however, as the 
 jealous Deliverer and recognized Messiah of His Own 
 people only, but as the victorious and everlasting 
 
12 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 sovereign of a recovered earth, the blessed and only 
 Mediator and Redeemer of lost mankind ; Israel 
 being" the chosen instrument and example, through 
 which alone, in the merciful counsels of Omnipotence, 
 the millennial and heavenly goals will at last be won 
 by the spared inhabitants of the earth. 
 
 In presenting these testimonies to our readers, we 
 shall cite, in the first place, certain prophecies which 
 look forward to the consummation of the present dis- 
 pensation ; and, in the second place, certain other 
 prophecies which are descriptive of its actual inci- 
 dents and scenes, as well as of some of the earthly 
 and millennial scenes which lie beyond. 
 
 The facts and conclusions referred to are as 
 follows: — 
 
 1. The joint occurrence of the three events to 
 which we have referred ; namely, the personal return 
 of the Messiah of Israel to the earth ; the simultane- 
 ous deliverance of Israel from Gentile oppression ; 
 and the fulfilment of the times of the Gentiles, or 
 everlasting overthrow of Gentile supremacy in the 
 earth. 
 
 2. The continuance of Israel in her present down- 
 trodden condition — that is, under her present judi- 
 cial condemnation, or sentence of judicial blindness — 
 until the consummation of these three events. 
 
 3. The total absence of any allusion in these pro- 
 phecies to a general and final judgment of mankind, 
 as occurring in connection with these events ; and 
 of any allusion to the heavenly or eternal state as 
 immediately supervening thereupon. 
 
 4. The fact that they contain, on the other hand, a 
 full and minute description of an earthly condition 
 or order of things, thereaftenvards ensuing, in respect 
 both to the moral and spiritual, the domestic, social and 
 national interests, concerns and affairs of the Jewish 
 nation, and of mankind at large; which can belong 
 only to another and purely earthly dispensation or 
 economy ; which belongs not to the heavenly or 
 eternal state, and must therefore precede it : a con- 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 73 
 
 dilion or order of things, which answers folly, and 
 precisely, and at all points, to the terms of God's 
 ancient covenants and promises concerning Israel 
 and Jerusalem, and to the millennial visions of Isaiah 
 and other prophets ; and which cannot co-exist with 
 Israel's unfulfilled sentence of judicial blindness. 
 
 The prophetic testimony upon these points we now 
 present to our readers; citing, as said before, in the 
 first place, certain prophecies which look forward, in 
 more general terms, to the close of the present dis- 
 pensation ; and, in the second place, other prophecies 
 which are descriptive of its actual incidents and 
 scenes. 
 
 Moses: — 
 
 "And it shall come to pass, when all these things are 
 come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have 
 set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all 
 the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and 
 shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice 
 according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy 
 children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; that then 
 the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compas- 
 sion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the 
 nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. And 
 the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy 
 fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do 
 thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers And the 
 Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of 
 thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and 
 with all thy soul, that thou may est live. And the Lord thy 
 God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on 
 them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. And thou shalt 
 return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his com- 
 mandments, which I command thee this day. And the Lord 
 thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine 
 hand, in the fruit of thy body and in the fruit of thy cattle, 
 and in the fruit of. thy land, for good; for the Lord will again 
 rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers." 
 Deut. xxx, 1-10. 
 
 The period here referred to is most clearty, by the 
 terms of the prediction, subsequent to the present 
 dispersion of Israel among the Gentiles, and must, 
 therefore, be still future. 
 
Y4 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken dili- 
 gently unto the voice of the Lord thy Cod, to observe and 
 do all the commandments which I command thee this day, 
 that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations 
 of the earth." Deut. xxviii, 1. 
 
 "If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of 
 their fathers, with their trespasses which they trespassed 
 against me, and also that they have walked contrary unto 
 me. and that I also have walked contrary unto them, 
 and have brought them into the land of their enemies; 
 if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then 
 accept of the punishment of their iniquity; then will I remem- 
 ber my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with 
 Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, 
 and I will remember the land." Levit. xxvi, 40-42. 
 
 God has never yet fulfilled these covenants with 
 Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in any full and just 
 sense. These covenants are everlasting covenants ; 
 everlasting, when once fulfilled, in their continuance 
 and their enjoyment, and wholly preclude the idea of 
 subsequent apostasy or falling away ; and Israel is 
 now suffering utter desolation, both as a nation and 
 as a land, in consequence of her disobedience and 
 apostasies, in fulfilment of the sentence of her judi- 
 cial blindness, and will continue to suffer utter deso- 
 lation u until all shall be fulfilled," and she shall sa}', 
 " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord." 
 
 That the covenants of blessing to Israel, one and 
 all, when once actually realized and fulfilled, will be 
 realized and fulfilled for all coming time, and will 
 never suffer any abe3'ance or abatement in their full 
 and glorious fruition to the end of time, is as clearly 
 revealed as that they will not, and cannot be realized 
 and fulfilled, or begin to be realized and fulfilled, 
 until the no less irrevocable covenant of Israel's ju- 
 dicial blindness shall expire, at the close of her pre- 
 sent judicial dispensation. The prophetic evidence 
 to this effect is simply overwhelming. Our limits 
 will admit only of the briefest reference to it. 
 
 "And I will bring again the captivity of my people of 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 75 
 
 Israel, and tboy shall build the waste pities, and inhabit 
 them, and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine 
 thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of 
 them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they 
 shall no more be pulled out of their land which I have given 
 them, saith the Lord thy God." Amos ix, 14, 15. 
 
 When, ever since this prophecy was uttered, have 
 not the children of Israel, with rare intervals of pos- 
 session, been pulled out of their land ? AY hen 
 were they ever more pulled out of it, more scattered 
 up and down the whole face of the earth, than they 
 are now? AYhen will they cease to be pulled out of 
 it, so long as their sentence of judicial blindness re- 
 mains unfulfilled? 
 
 "And T will make a covenant of peace, and will cause 
 the evil beasts to cease out of the land; and they shall dwell 
 safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. And I will 
 make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; 
 and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; 
 there shall be showers of blessing. And the tree of the 
 field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her in- 
 crease, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know 
 that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their 
 yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served 
 themselves of them. And they shall no more be a prey to 
 the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; 
 but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid. 
 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they 
 shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, neither 
 bear the shame of the heathen any more. Then shall they 
 know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, 
 even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord 
 God." Ezekiel xxxiv, 25-30. 
 
 "Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I 
 will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart 
 and with my whole soul. For thus saith the Lord; Like as 
 I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I 
 bring upon them all the good that I have promised them." 
 Jer. xxxii, 41. 42. 
 
 "Thy people also shall all be righteous: they shall inherit 
 the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my 
 hands, that I may be glorifijd." Is. ix, 21. 
 
?6 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 " Behold ! a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes 
 shall rule in judgment, and the work of righteousness shall 
 be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and as- 
 surance forever: and my people shall dwell in a peaceable 
 habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting- 
 places." Isaiah, xxxii., 1, 17, 18. 
 
 "Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a deso- 
 late wilderness. But Jit d ah shall dwell forever, and Jeru- 
 salem from generation to generation. Joel iii, 21. 
 
 "For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall 
 perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The 
 glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine 
 tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanc- 
 tuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. 
 
 " The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bend- 
 ing unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow them- 
 selves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee 
 The city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. 
 And the name of the city, from that day, shall be, The Lord 
 is there.''' Is. lx, 12-14. Ez. xlviii, 35. 
 
 " Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no 
 man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excel- 
 lency, a joy of many generations. 
 
 "Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt 
 suck the breast of kings; and thou shalt know that I the 
 Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of 
 Jacob." Is. lx, 14-16. 
 
 "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jeru- 
 salem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof 
 go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp 
 that burnetii. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, 
 and all kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new 
 name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt 
 also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal 
 diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be 
 termed Forsaken; neither shalt thy land any more be termed 
 Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land 
 Beulah, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man 
 marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the 
 bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice 
 over thee. The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by 
 the arm of his strength. Surely I will no more give thy 
 corn to be meat fur thine enemies; and the sons of the 
 stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast 
 labored; but they that have gathered it shall eat it, and 
 praise the Lord; and they that have brought it together shall 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 77 
 
 drink it in the courts of thy holiness. And they shall call 
 them, The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord: and thou 
 shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken." Is. lxii, 
 1-5, 8, 9, 12. 
 
 Is it not the barest contradiction of terms, the 
 purest solecism, a simply impossible supposition, 
 the possible realization of these prophecies so long 
 as the curse of Israel's judicial blindness, that most 
 desolating of all the covenants of the divine wrath, 
 remains unfulfilled? and unfulfilled we have seen that 
 it will remain throughout the whole term of the 
 present Gentile, or Gospel, dispensation, or, which is 
 the same thing, until the times of the Gentiles are 
 fulfilled ; which is but a description, in other terms, 
 of the limitation of Israel's judicial dispensation. 
 
 Isaiah : — (Seven hundred and fifty years after 
 Moses.) 
 
 "The Lord will have mercy upon Jacob, and will yet 
 choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the stran- 
 gers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the 
 house of Jacob. And the peoples [the Gentile nations] shall 
 take them and bring them to their place; and the house of 
 Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord, for servants 
 and handmaids; and they shall rule over their oppressors. 
 And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give 
 thee rest from thy sorrow, and thy fear, and from the hard 
 bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt 
 take up this parable against the King of Babylon, and say, 
 How hath the oppressed ceased! the golden city ceased! 
 Is. xiv, 1-4. 
 
 It is equally clear that the allusion contained in 
 this prophecy, which was uttered between two hun- 
 dred and three hundred years after the reigns of 
 David and Solomon, is to a period still in the future, 
 for when, since it was uttered, has Israel been carried 
 back to her place by the Gentile nations ? When 
 have Israel and Jacob made them captives whose cap- 
 tives they were, and possessed them for servants and 
 handmaids in their own land '! 
 
78 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 When have they had rest from their sorrow, and 
 their fear, and the hard bondage wherein they have 
 been made to serve? When has the oppressor ceased ? 
 Was it after they were restored from their Babylo- 
 nian captivity by Cyrus? But a remnant only of the 
 two tribes of Judah and Benjamin — according to Jo- 
 sophus, forty-three thousand five hundred in number 
 — were restored by Cyrus, and, instead of ruling over 
 him, they were ruled over by him, while the ten lost 
 tribes had been carried away, two hundred years be- 
 fore, into a captivity, from which the}' have never 
 to this day returned, and in which no satisfactory 
 trace of them has ever yet been discovered. In a 
 word, when has this prophecy of Isaiah been fulfilled 
 in the past ?. or, which is the same thing, when have 
 the covenants of God concerning the nation and land 
 of Israel, as expressed in this prophecy, ever been 
 fulfilled, and the curse of judicial blindness conse- 
 quently removed ? ' 
 
 Jeremiah: — (One hundred and thirty years after 
 Isaiah.) 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord, again there shall be heard in this 
 place, which ye say shall be desolate without mart [the very 
 words of the sentence of judicial blindness], aud without 
 inhabitants, and without beast, the voice of joy, and the 
 voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice 
 of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the 
 Lord ot hosts; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever; 
 and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise unto the 
 house of the Lord; for I will cause to return the captivity of 
 the land as at the first. 
 
 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, again in this place, which 
 is desolate without man and without beast, and in all the 
 cities thereof, shall be an habitation of shepherds causing 
 their flocks to lie down. In the cities of the mountain, in 
 the cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, and in 
 the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, 
 and in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks pass again under 
 the hands of him that telleth them, saith the Lord." Jer. 
 xxxiii, 10-14. 
 
 Is it Israel under the present dispensation, under 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 79 
 
 the curse of judicial blindness, or is it Israel under 
 another dispensation, when the curse of judicial 
 blindness shall be lifted and removed, and when the 
 covenants shall be fulfilled, that is described in the 
 above prediction ? 
 
 "In those days, and at that time, will I cause the branch 
 of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he shall exe- 
 cute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those 
 days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely, 
 and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, the Lord 
 
 our righteousness If my covenant be not with the day 
 
 and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of 
 heaven and earth ; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, 
 and I>avid my servant, so that I will not take any of his 
 seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob, for I will cause their captivity to return, and have 
 mercy on them." Jer. xxxiii, 15, 16, 25, 26. 
 
 Does not this prediction as plainly and literally 
 foretell the future temporal and personal reign of the 
 Messiah of Israel, in millennial gloiy, upon the 
 throne of his father David, as it describes the revo- 
 lutions of day and night, to the certain and daily 
 fulfil men t of His covenants with which God here com- 
 pares the certain fulfilment of His covenant with 
 David, concerning the Messiah's personal assumption 
 of his vacant throne ? and is not this prediction de- 
 scriptive of a dispensation, or order of things, which 
 can only ensue after the sentence of Israel's judicial 
 blindness has been removed, and the times of the 
 Gentiles are fulfilled ? Can Jerusalem ever dwell 
 safely while she is "trodden down of the Gentiles ?" 
 
 "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make 
 a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house 
 of Judah ; not according to the covenant that I made with 
 their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring 
 them out of the land of Egypt ; which my covenant they 
 brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the 
 Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with 
 the house of Israel ; After those days, saith the Lord, I will 
 put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, 
 and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And 
 
80 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every 
 man his brother, saying, Know the Lord ; tor they shall all 
 know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them: 
 for 1 will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin 
 no more." Jer. xxxi, 31-35. 
 
 The full, manifested glory of the new and everlast- 
 ing covenant of grace, described in the above predic- 
 tion, refers plainly enough to a continuing earthly 
 era or dispensation, after the sentence of IsraeVs 
 judicial blindness shall have ceased: that is, after 
 the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. The same 
 is no less true of the following description of the final 
 realization and triumph of the all-embracing Abra- 
 hamic covenant, which refers so expressly to Israel's 
 final cure. 
 
 "Behold, I will bring it [Israel] health and cure, and will 
 reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth, and 1 
 will cause the captivity of Israel and the captivity of Judah 
 to return, and will build them as at the first. And it [Jeru- 
 salem] shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honor 
 before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the 
 good that I do unto them; and they shall fear and tremble 
 for all the goodness and all the prosperity that I procure 
 unto it." Jer. xxxiii, 6-10. 
 
 We might multiply indefinitely predictions to the 
 same effect from Isaiah down to the close of the Old 
 Testament dispensation, all pointing to a period of 
 time when Israel's judicial blindness shall end, and 
 when, consequently, the times of the Gentiles shall be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 We come now to the closing scenes of Israel's 
 judicial dispensation, and the simultaneous judicial 
 close of the probationary dispensation of the Gentile 
 nations. 
 
 Joel: — (Sixty years after Isaiah, and thirty-one 
 after the extinction of the kingdom of Israel.) 
 
 "For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I 
 shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem 
 [never as yet]. I will also gather all nations, and will bring 
 them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 81 
 
 with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, 
 whom they have scattered among' the nations and parted my 
 land Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Pre- 
 pare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war 
 draw near; let them come up: beat your ploughshares into 
 swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say 
 I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye hea- 
 then, and gather yourselves together round about: thither 
 cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the 
 heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehosha- 
 phat: for there will I set to judge all the heathen round 
 about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, 
 get you down; for the press is full, the vats overflow; for 
 their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the 
 valley of decision; for the day of the Lord is near in the 
 valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, 
 and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also 
 shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; 
 and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the Lord will 
 be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children 
 of Israel. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God 
 dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be 
 holy, and there shall no stranger pass through her any more. 
 Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate 
 wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, 
 because they have shed innocent blood in their land. But 
 Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to 
 generation. For I will cleanse their blood that I have not 
 cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion." Joel iii, 1, 2, 
 9-21. 
 
 Although the weight of evidence appears to us to 
 refer these predictions very decisively to the scenes 
 connected with Israel's final deliverance from her 
 Gentile oppression, yet, in deference to the opinions 
 of those expositors, who, on account of the allusions 
 contained in this chapter of Joel to nations then 
 dwelling in the neighborhood of the Jews, are dis- 
 posed to refer them to events then nearer at hand, we 
 would request our readers, at their pleasure, to pass 
 them by, as affording, if our view be correct, cumula- 
 tive evidence only in respect to the circumstances o 
 Israel's final deliverance. Xo doubt, however, it 
 expressed by the expositors that the prophecies we 
 
82 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 shall next quote from the prophet Zechariah clearly 
 
 refer to the circumstances of Israel's final deliverance 
 
 from Gentile oppression, and to the events which will 
 
 follow. 
 
 Zechariah : — (Thirty years after Isaiah.) 
 
 "The harden of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith 
 the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the 
 foundations of the earth, and forroeth the spirit of man 
 within him. 
 
 "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto 
 all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege 
 both against Judab, and against Jerusalem. 
 
 In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for 
 all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in 
 pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered to- 
 gether against it. 
 
 In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with 
 astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open 
 mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every 
 horse of the people [of tbe besieging nations] with blindness. 
 And the governors of Judah shall say in their hearts, The 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of 
 hosts their God. 
 
 "In that day will I make the governors of Judah like a 
 hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a 
 sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on 
 the right hand, and on the left; and Jerusalem shall be in- 
 habited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. 
 
 " In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem: and^ he that is feeble among them at that day 
 shall be as David; and the house of David shall be a God, 
 as the angel of the Lord before them, and it shall come to 
 pass 
 
 In that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations 
 that come against Jerusalem. 
 
 And I w ill pour upon the house of David, and upon the 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of .grace and of sup- 
 plications: and they shall look upon me whom they have 
 pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth 
 for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one 
 is in bitterness for his first-born. Zech. xii, 1-10. 
 
 [This passage, last cited, establishes the great 
 central event in the threefold group, before referred 
 to, beyond all Scriptural question.] 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 83 
 
 •• In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusa- 
 lem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of 
 Megiddon. And the land shall mourn every family apart; 
 the family of the house of David apart, and their wives 
 apart; and the family of the house of Nathan apart, and 
 their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart, 
 and their wives apart ; the family of Shimei apart, and 
 their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family 
 apart, and their wives apart." Zech. xii, 11-14. 
 
 The description of the Day of the Lord continues; 
 but here we cannot but pause to notice the perfect coin- 
 cidence of the testimony of our Saviour, and that of the 
 angels who appeared to His sorrowing disciples upon 
 His ascension, and that also of the apostle John in 
 the Revelation, with the above testimony of Zechariah 
 concerning the day of the second coming of Israel's 
 Messiah. 
 Christ: — (seven hundred and fifty years after 
 
 Isaiah.) 
 
 "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall 
 the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 
 and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the 
 heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign 
 of the So?i of Man in heaven: and then shall all the 
 tribes of the land mourn [not the tribes of the earth in a 
 universal sense, but the tribes of the land, of Palestine, of 
 Israel, as see Robinson. Bengel, Tregelles, etc.] and they 
 shall see the Son of Alan coming in the clouds of heaven 
 with power and great glory." Matt, xxiv, 29, 30. 
 
 "And they [Israel] shall fall by the edge of the sword, 
 and shall be led away captive into all nations ; and Jerusa- 
 lem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of 
 the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. 
 
 "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, 
 and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations, 
 with perplexity [not penitential mourning ; that is confined 
 t»> Israel] ; the sea and the waves roanng ; men's hearts 
 failing them for fear, and for looking after those things 
 which are coming on the earth : for the powers of heaven 
 shall be shaken, [Joel iii, 16.] and then shall then see the 
 Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great 
 glory." Luke xxi, 24-27. 
 
 Then is Israel's national redemption at hand. 
 
84 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 "And when these thing's begin to come to pass, then look 
 up, and lift up your heads ; for your redemption draweth 
 nigh." Luke xxi, 28. 
 
 So also John, (thirty-six years after Christ.) 
 
 "Behold he cometh with clouds ; every eye shall see him, 
 and those who pierced him ; and all the tribes of the land 
 shall wail at Him. Even so, Amen." Kev. i, 7. 
 
 How can it be Scripturally doubted that the reap- 
 pearing of the Messiah of Israel, and the consequent 
 mournings of the tribes of Israel, as thus described, 
 are the same described by Zechariah ? 
 
 So also the angels to the apostles as they beheld 
 the ascension of their blessed Master : — 
 
 "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 
 this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, 
 shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into 
 heaven." Acts i, 11. 
 
 Let us now return to the description of Zechariah. 
 We dropped it at the second advent of the Messiah 
 to Israel, and at the universal mourning of the 
 tribes of Israel, when " the Spirit of grace and of 
 supplications shall be poured upon them." 
 
 "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house 
 of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and 
 for uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in that day 
 that I will cut off the names of idols out of the land, and 
 they shall no more be remembered." Zech. xiii, 1, 2. 
 
 The prophet now reverts to the complete overthrow 
 of the Gentile nations. 
 
 "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil 
 shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all 
 nations against Jerusalem to battle: and the city shall be 
 taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and 
 half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue 
 of the people shall be cut off from the city. 
 
 "Then shall the Lord go forth, and tight against those 
 nations as he fought in the day of battle. 
 
Israel's judicial blindness. 85 
 
 "And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of 
 Olives, which is before Jerusalem. And the Lord shall be 
 king over all the earth, and his name one; and there shall 
 be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely 
 inhabited. 
 
 "And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord shall 
 smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; 
 Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their 
 feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and 
 their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. And it 
 shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the 
 Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every 
 one on the hand of his neighbor, and his hand shal rise up 
 against the hand of his neighbor." Zech. xiv, 1-3, 9-13. 
 
 Thus will close the present dispensation or order 
 of things. Thus will the Messiah return, and Israel 
 be delivered, and her Gentile oppressors be over- 
 thrown. Thus will the sentence of judicial blindness 
 expire, and the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. 
 They will never again obtain ascendency over Israel 
 in the earth, nor national equality with her. They 
 will never seek to obtain it, but will rejoice with 
 Israel in the fulfilment of all her ancient covenants, 
 in the fulfilment of all the holy oaths with which the 
 God of Israel hath ratified and bound them, and in 
 the fulfilment of the predicted blessings which will 
 flow to them therefrom. 
 
 It is at this point that the dispensation of judicial 
 prophecy ends, and the dispensation of millennial pro- 
 phecy, with its full and glowing descriptions of 
 earthly blessedness, begins. It is at this point that 
 the judicial predictions of the public and unexplained 
 parables of our Lord terminate, being all fulfilled : 
 which predictions run in a line strictly parallel, at 
 all points, with the sentence of Israel's judicial blind- 
 ness. Henceforth and forever more, to the end of 
 the dispensations which are revealed, will restored 
 and redeemed Israel be exalted to the foremost place 
 among the nations of the earth, and dwell safel}* on 
 the high places of Jacob, among her vines and fig- 
 trees, her olives and her palms : u and all the nations 
 
86 ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome 
 land, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mai. iii, 12 ;) u and 
 their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and 
 their offspring among the people : all that see them 
 shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed 
 which the Lord hath blessed." Isa. lxi, 9. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us, the nations of the Gentiles, lift 
 not up our horn on high ; nor speak with a stitf neck, 
 '* for promotion cometh neither from the east, nor 
 from the west, nor from the south. But God is the 
 Judge : he putteth down one, and setteth up an- 
 other." Ps. lxxv, 6, T. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The general conclusion which we would seek to 
 impress upon the minds of our readers, may be 
 briefly stated as follows : — 
 
 At the advent, and during the ministry of our 
 Saviour on the earth, the nation of Israel was u con- 
 cluded in unbelief;" was in a state of judicial 
 blindness, which rendered it impossible for the na- 
 tion to understand the mysteries of Christ's spirit- 
 ual kingdom on the earth, under the present Gospel 
 dispensation, as revealed in His public and unex- 
 plained parables. 
 
 On account of their judicial blindness, they neither 
 would, nor could, nor was it intended that, as a 
 nation, they should, obtain a saving knowledge of 
 these mysteries, until the sentence of their judicial 
 blindness should expire ; which sentence, by the 
 very terms in which it w T as expressed, is to expire 
 only with the expiration of the present Gospel dis- 
 pensation ; or, in other words, when only, and not 
 before, u the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in," 
 or, which is a strictly synonymous expression, when 
 " the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled." 
 
 Wherefore, it follows, that, until the close of the 
 
ISRAEL'S JUDICIAL BLINDNESS. 87 
 
 present dispensation of God's judicial wrath upon 
 Israel, none of the covenants of blessing which God 
 sware unto the fathers of Israel, can, in any proper, 
 or logical, or Scriptural, or possible sense, in the very 
 nature of things, be said to be fulfilled : without the 
 fulfilment of which covenants of blessing, a millen- 
 nium, or thousand years, of un mingled and measure- 
 less blessing to Israel, and through Israel, to all 
 mankind, is a simply absurd and impossible supposi- 
 tion, whether as viewed in the light of Scripture, or 
 in the light of reason, or in any light whatsoever. 
 
 This judicial blindness, which we have endeav- 
 ored in some measure to explain, is the reason as- 
 signed by our Saviour to His disciples why He 
 spake to the nation in parables, explaining them not ; 
 which parables are veiled prophecies of the whole 
 course, progress and development of the present ju- 
 dicial dispensation of Israel, in the relation of the 
 Messiah's spiritual kingdom thereto, as affecting 
 Jews and Gentiles both — from the baptism of Christ 
 in the waters of the Jordan, down to that final ca- 
 tastrophe, when He will appear again to overthrow 
 for ever Gentile ascendency and oppression in the 
 earth. 
 
 As the judicial blindness of the nation was the 
 reason why they could not understand the veiled 
 meaning of these prophetic parables at the time of 
 our Saviour's ministry, so also, and no less, is it the 
 reason why they have not been able to understand 
 them since, are not able to understand them now, 
 and will not be able to understand them, so long as 
 the appointed term of the sentence of judicial blind- 
 ness still awaits its expiration. 
 
 And as we have found that the reason for the use 
 of unexplained parables to the nation is thus pro- 
 phetic in its character and application ; so, as might 
 naturally and Scripturally have been expected, have 
 we also found that these parables were themselves 
 prophetic. 
 
88 Israel's judicial blindness. 
 
 And so will they also appear to Israel, when, at 
 the expiration of her sentence of judicial blindness, 
 " the Spirit of grace and of supplications," so long 
 resisted and blasphemed, and grieved away and 
 quenched, shall be poured upon the house of David, 
 and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Then the 
 veil will be lifted from their eyes. Then the veil 
 will be lifted from these parables ; which, each with 
 its train of fulfilled prophecies, will theu shine forth 
 to the unclouded vision of redeemed Israel and a 
 redeemed world, as everlasting monuments of the 
 covenanted justice which afflicted, and the cove- 
 nanted mercy which spared that people, who, what- 
 ever their sins and transgressions, are the only cove- 
 nanted hope of a fallen world. 
 
BRIEFS ON PROPHETIC THEMES. 
 
 BY A MEMBER OF THE BOSTON BAR. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED iND ENLARGED. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ON 
 
 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 
 
 BOSTON: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1866. 
 12rno. pp.168. Price $1.00. Sent post-paid, on receipt of price. 
 
 "The views presented are sustained with great fulness of 
 Scriptural quotation, and seem better to harmonize with the 
 inspired oracles than any which have come under my observa- 
 tion. I have read them with admiration of the learning, the 
 style and the clearness ami strength of the Scriptural argument. 
 I trust they will be extensively circulated, and be eminently 
 useful in correcting the erroneous notions of prophecy which 
 have so long led expositors astray."— John H. Hopkins, late 
 Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. 
 
 " This book is without doubt one of the ablest and worthiest 
 and most thoiough and elegant discussions of the subjects of 
 which it treats that has been written. The author's exposition 
 of the Parable of the Leaven is perfectly satisfactory and con- 
 vincing." — A Clergyman. 
 
 " The introductory chapter on the Parable of the Leaven is a 
 very masterly specimen of exegesis, the conclusions of which 
 are irresistible." — Christian Witness and Church Advocate. 
 
 " It is refreshing, in these days of daring speculation, to see a 
 mind of such logical power and refined culture bowing so 
 meekly at the shrine of God's truth. The advantages of a literal 
 over a spiritualistic method of interpretation must be felt by 
 all who read this work. It invests the Bible with new interest, 
 especially the prophets. It divests us of a thousand vain fan- 
 cies, and reduces us to the plain realities of God's government 
 over this world." — Vermont Chronicle. 
 
 " The thousands who read the incoherent and grotesque com- 
 pilations, and who are taken with the painful rashness, or, as 
 some would sav, the amusing conceit of certain fanciful inter- 
 preters of prophecy, will find little to attract, and nothing to en- 
 tertain them in the calm, clear, and well-considered paragraphs 
 of the Boston barrister. This unpretending volume we hail as 
 one of the healthiest and most promising contributions to the 
 literature of this subject that has issued from the American 
 press. It is eminently suggestive. Its modest title well suits 
 not only its dimensions, but its concise manner, which bears 
 traces of the author's professional culture, while the style is ele- 
 gant, and the tone spiritual. We know of no work in which the 
 views which it advocates are stated with greater clearness and 
 Scriptural precision." — Waymarks, New York. 
 
 "The author is a premillennialist, and is one of the most sen- 
 sible and elegant writers on that question. It is written in a 
 style which will secure for him the respect of every reader of 
 cultivated taste. The views presented are fortified by an array 
 of proof, which entitles them to the consideration of every stu- 
 dent of prophecy." — Evangelical Repository, etc., Philadelphia. 
 
 E. P. DUTTOJY & CO., 
 
 135 Washington Street, Boston. 
 
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