circumstances so dissimilar to our own, cannot furnish in themselves any exact or sufficient directions for us who live under a Christian State; nor are they to be regarded as though they were lectures on abstract duty, since they are each one of them written on specified and peculiar emergencies, and can, therefore, only apply strictly and in all their force to a Church under similar circumstances, and exposed to temptations and trials of the same kind as were those of the Galatian or Corinthian Churches.

And in consulting the Old Testament, in order to obtain principles for guiding our conduct, another element must likewise be taken into consideration, which it is the more necessary to attend to, inasmuch as it bears upon the principle itself and strikes deeper than those differences which depend upon difference of circumstances. This element is the typical character of all the Mosaic institutions, and of the children of Israel themselves, before the time of Moses and afterwards, under their judges or kings-in the wilderness or in Canaan -under Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, or the Romans. And, as it is this typical element in the history of the Jewish people which renders all that is recorded concerning them instructive to us, so we must ascertain to what time and to what condition of things these types were intended to be applied; as we shall otherwise incur the risk of distorting and perverting them by forced and strained applications, having no better foundation than ingenuity seconding our own preconceived opinions.

The children of Israel and the Christian Church are addressed in nearly the same terms, as a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people (1 Peter xi. 9; Exodus xix. 6). This is a divine declaration that the constitution of the people of God is essentially monarchical and priestly, both under the Jewish and Christian dispensations; and we may not practise equivocation or evade the force of these declarations by saying that no more was meant than what had actually been realized at the time when the words were spoken-when the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness and had not been yet brought into the promised land, or when the Church had even less semblance of the reality, and when St. Peter addresses them at the commencement of his epistle as strangers scattered abroad, and exhorts them as strangers and pilgrims to an honest conversation among the Gentiles, looking forward to a day of visitation in which God should be glorified.

This day of visitation St. Peter calls "the appearing of

Jesus Christ," and "the revelation of Jesus Christ" (i. 7, 13); and, in his second epistle (i. 11), speaks of it as "the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." But he forewarns the Church that they would be in great danger of becoming unmindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets concerning this kingdom, and of the commandments which the apostles of the Lord and Saviour had given; for that in the last days scoffers should come, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming ?-but that the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, being only longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 2-9). And Christ himself, when solemnly questioned by Pilate, declared that he was a King-that for this end he was born and came into the world; but that his kingdom was not yet come: and he taught his disciples to pray day by day that his kingdom might come, and so the will of God might be done in earth as it is in heaven. And seeing that the Scribes and Pharisees were all in error in this matter, and would have cut him short in his work and before the appointed time if he declared the whole truth plainly to them, he inculcated the duty of present obedience to the powers that be, in answering their insidious question concerning tribute, by saying, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's:" while St. Peter and the other apostles plainly and authoritatively lay it down as the bounden duty of the Church to submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them that do well, that thus we may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: for it is through ignorance and folly that these duties are questioned or neglected.

All Christians are now aware of the fact that the fundamental mistake of the Jews was that of not distinguishing between the first and second coming of Christ; and, having their minds wholly intent upon the second and glorious coming of Messiah, they despised him when coming in humility to prepare the way for the kingdom. But this mistake was not an unnatural one; for, although the sacrifices of the law typified Christ the Victim and the Lamb of God who should die for the sins of the world, yet the priests who offered that sacrifice typified Christ's subsequent work of presenting the sacrifice offered upon the cross before the throne in heaven. And the high priest and the whole ceremonial, and especially the temple service and the kingdom

which came into manifestation in Solomon at the same time with the temple, were all typical of things still future-not of the Church and its services as at present existing, but of that to which the Church is leading, or for which the Church is preparing its members. All have reference to a future condition of things which we as yet only behold in part and as through a glass darkly, but shall see face to face in the day of the Lord; for when he shall appear we shall be like him and shall see him as he is (1 John iii. 2).

From the beginning it hath been so with respect to all types and prophecies: they have ever had the final consummation in view, and have held up this as the object of faith, and the goal of the race, and the time of rewarding the victorious ones: and, as it is a distant goal, the danger has always been of fainting by the way, and so abandoning all hope or taking up with something short of the reality, and either exaggerating the present or undervaluing the future, so as to cheat ourselves into the belief that we are already in possession of all that the Lord hath promised. Abraham, the father of the faithful, is also an instance of this short-coming in manifesting impatience at having to wait so long for Isaac, and in entreating the Lord that Ishmael might be the heir. The same impatience was manifested by the children of Israel in the days of the prophet Samuel by their insisting upon having a king before the time, the consequence of which was that David, the true king, was persecuted by Saul, and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel was long delayed. And a similar spirit actuated the Jews in the time of our Lord, leading them to expect the immediate manifestation of the latter day glory in the person of the Messiah; and, because none of this appeared in Jesus of Nazareth, they rejected his claims, and were themselves rejected and another people out of the Gentiles taken into covenant with God in their stead.

But, under the new covenant, the Christian Church has too generally manifested the same kind of spirit which was manifested by the Jews under the old covenant: though it has taken different forms of manifestation, it is one and the same spirit of impatience. Some are looking for justification by works, and these quite as formal and inefficacious as were the works of the law by which the Jews sought to be justified in the days of St. Paul-an error against which he contended so strenuously in enforcing the doctrine of justification by faith on the Galatian Church. Others, mistaking both the nature of types and the objects to which all the

types had reference, have endeavoured to combine the typical ceremonial of the law with the sacramental realities of the gospel, forgetting that the type and antitype cannot co-exist, and that if the reality be in existence that which foreshadowed it is become utterly vain and useless. But it is not only so-it is worse than useless: it springs from a mistake of the true object of all types; and, therefore, it originates in error and tends to inculcate that which is false, as if the Church had already obtained a position which belongs to the next dispensation.

The Jews held a truth, which pervades the whole of Scripture, in maintaining that the reign of the Messiah would be a visible and glorious reality, co-extensive with the bounds of the earth; believing that he shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth-that all kings shall fall down before him and all nations shall serve him that his glorious name shall be blessed for ever, and the whole earth shall be filled with his glory (Psalm lxxii). The Jews were right in believing that these promises, which were only typified by the reign of Solomon in the imperfect manner and to that limited extent which the type of a thing necessarily implies, should have their full developement and exact accomplishment in the thing itself—that is, in the reign of the Messiah, which is the grand object to be kept in view for understanding all types and all prophecies. Over the Jews we have a great advantage in living after the first coming of our Lord; as, by knowing what was then fulfilled, we can both disencumber the prophecies of one of the greatest sources of perplexity to them, by seeing all that was said concerning the humiliation and rejection of the Messiah to have been already fulfilled; and also, by his transfiguration on Mount Tabor before his crucifixion and by his glorious ascension into heaven after his resurrection, we know assuredly that he, in the same personal subsistence, shall come a second time and "in like manner" to accomplish those prophecies which remain as yet unfulfilled. And this St. Peter declares in reminding us that we have a more sure word of prophecy, to which we do well to take heed; for it has been made more sure to us in our being able more fully to understand and more steadfastly to grasp in our faith the remaining prophecies; and the manner of their fulfillment is made more sure to us by the transfiguration and the ascension-namely, by the facts to which St. Peter is referring.

Christ only entered upon his glory at the ascension, when the Lord said unto David's Lord and our Lord, "Sit thou at

my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." Into that glory, his body, the Church, hath not yet entered, being still in a condition of suffering of which he was the example, as the Captain of our salvation, in the days of his abode on earth. It will be by the resurrection that the Church shall be put in possession of the kingdom, and this shall be effected by his second coming, when all that are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of Man; and until that time we must be content to bear this earthly tabernacle; and, though we may groan under its burden, must wait for the second advent to be clothed upon with our house from heaven. And as it was in the same body that Christ arose from the dead, though in a far more glorious condition, so we shall resume the same form, although this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality: therefore it behoves us to use aright the body and all external things with which the body is conversant, seeing that our Lord hath put such honour upon our flesh as to carry it with him to the throne of God; and since it is an assured verity, and a fundamental article of the Christian faith, that the body is essential to human personality, and is the instrument by which the soul is reached, and by which we bear witness for God to man, that according to the deeds done in which we may be judged: therefore a spirit without a body is not man, nor capable of human action, nor under human responsibilities-is not, in short, the image of God, and the creature which God made on the sixth day of creation. Nor will the primeval purpose which was then expressed stand out complete until the dominion then promised to man shall be taken by Christ, and given, according to their place and degree, to all his faithful followers, in that kingdom which is called the regeneration or the restitution of all things. This is called the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. viii. 19); and for it the groaning creation is represented as waiting; and we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of the body. But this implies and carries along with it a submission to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, assured that this being the discipline under which he hath seen fit to place us, it is the very means by which we are being prepared for exercising the duties of a higher sphere, and are qualifying for the kingdom of heaven, which is to be revealed at the coming of the Lord; and even when we may be unable to discern the exact bearing of our present duties upon the future state, still we may lay hold of the encouraging assurances that all things are work