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From the Morning Watch.

ON THE RETURN OF THE JEWS.

It is frequently urged, even by pious persons, as a strong objection against the attempt to form any calculation as to the period when events predicted in prophecy shall be fulfilled, that when the Apostles put to our Lord the question, "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" he replied, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power:" and they argue (at first sight plausibly enough), that if the favoured Apostles were not permitted to know the times, it would be presumptuous in us to attempt to form any conjecture. But in thus arguing they overlook both the promise which immediately follows, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you," and also two very important passages in Scripture, which no less decidedly speak of the possibility of being able to learn when certain events are about to take place, from the observation of certain signs: "Behold the fig tree and all the trees: when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand: so, likewise, when ye see these things begin to come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.' From which words of our Saviour we may infer that signs would be given, from attending to which the believer might be able to form a tolerably correct idea as to the nearness of the Lord's kingdom, though he could not fix the day nor the hour.

It was by the study of the book of the prophet Jeremiah, not by any direct or additional revelation, that Daniel understood when the seventy years of desolation on Jerusalem would be accomplished (ix. 2). It was also from attending to the signs which our Saviour gave of the destruction of Jerusalem, that so many of the primitive Christians fled in time from the unparalleled tribulation of that unhappy city; and hence we may conclude, that, so far from its being presumptuous to examine and attend to the signs and periods which are written in the word of God, it is profitable, yea, our bounden duty, to take heed unto the more sure word of prophecy; especially, as in the twelfth chapter of Daniel, that "the words are to be shut up and the book to be sealed" (only for a limited period), "until the time of the end," and then "the wise shall understand."

And, truly, there is no subject in which the student of prophecy should take a more lively interest, than the return of the Jews to their own land; as therewith is connected every blessing which the Lord has promised to the earth: as St. Paul argues in the eleventh chapter of Romans; "If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"

In Isaiah, the return of the Jews is frequently spoken of in connexion with the blessedness of the Messiah's reign: thus, in the eleventh chapter, "when the Lord has set his hand again, the second time, to recover the remnant of his people," then shall that happy era have commenced, which is described in this chapter with so much force and beauty, when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, &c., and the knowledge of the Lord cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." And, again, in the

fifty-second chapter, we read, that when he "hath comforted his people, and redeemed Jerusalem, that all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God."

According to Ezekiel, it is when the Lord takes the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and brings them into their own land, that "one King shall be king to them all; David my servant shall be King over them: my tabernacle also shall be with them; yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (see the whole of the thirty-seventh chapter).

From Micah we learn, that when the Lord assembles her that halteth, and gathers her that is driven out, and her that he has afflicted; that in that day men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, &c.; and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth even for ever. And the inspired Psalmist assures us, that "when the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in his glory" (Ps. cii. 16). If, then, such signal blessings are connected with the return of the Jews, the question of the Apostles must often arise in our minds, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" and the Lord has been pleased to give us various marks in the inspired volume, from a close attention to which we may gather that this glorious event cannot he now far distant; for, in addition to the several prophecies relating to the Christian church, and prophetic numbers given for her edification, from which she supposes that the Lord is about to come, there are other signs and chronological predictions respecting the times and seasons of Israel's return, which demand our serious consideration.

1. The year of Jubilee, while it certainly had reference to the preaching of the Gospel, must also

be considered a striking type of the restoration of the Jews: for we learn from the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, that when the trumpet of the Jubilee was sounded, liberty was proclaimed throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; and then they returned every man to his possession and every man to his family; and if his property had been forfeited, it was then restored to its rightful owner; and if any man had been sold, he was then released from his captivity. What could more appropriately prefigure that happy period when the children of Israel, so long scattered and peeled, shall return every man to his possession, that land which God gave unto their fathers as an everlasting inheritance? when once more they shall be settled in that land, which for so many centuries the rivers have spoiled? when their city shall no longer be trodden down of the Gentiles; but the Lord shall inherit Judah, his portion, in the Holy Land, and shall choose Jerusalem again?

Therefore we may fairly suppose that the return of the Jews, preparatory to the kingdom being restored to Israel, will occur in a year of Jubilee: and there is no Jubilee in which we might more reasonably infer that such an event would take place, than the SEVENTIETH; seven being the number of perfection, and seventy having been already applied in two other instances to circumstances connected with the history of Israel-e. g. the, seventy years in which they were kept captive in Babylon, and the seventy weeks determined upon their city and the holy people (Dan. ix. 24).

Now, according to Hales's system of chronology, which by many judges is now esteemed the most accurate, the first Jubilee was held in the year A. c. 1589: to which if we add the seventy Jubilees, returning after each other at an interval of forty-nine

years, the seventieth, or great sabbatical Jubilee, will fall in the year A. D. 1841, about which time we may expect that the Jews, as a nation, will have returned to that land which God gave unto their fathers.

2. In the twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Leviticus, the Lord, in denouncing judgments on his chosen people if they should rebel against him, frequently declares that he will chasten them seven times (vers. 18, 21, 24, 28); and the outcast condition of Israel is most accurately portrayed, in the fourth chapter of Daniel, under the appropriate emblem of a tree stripped of its branches and its leaves, and bound down to the earth as a dry stump until seven times pass over it.

This tree, in its primary signification, certainly exhibits the punishment of the Babylonian monarch; but it contains a more deep and comprehensive meaning, also, and in every particular agrees most exactly with the history of the house of Israel, as described in other parts of Scripture. This widespreading and fruitful tree, under which the beasts of the field had shadow, and in whose boughs the fowls of the heaven dwelt, is in other places applied by the Holy Spirit directly and expressly unto Israel; especially in the eightieth Psalm: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it: the hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars; she sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the rivers" (compare Jer. ii. 21.; Isa. v.; and Ezek. xix. 10): where the description of Israel strikingly agrees with that given in Nebuchadnezzar's dream: "Like a vine she was fruitful, and full of branches: her stature was exalted among the thick branches; and she appeared in her height with the multitude of

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