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usual and proper signification, is the remarkable perspicuity which it gives to the ensuing distich, clearly demonstrating the person of whom it is predicated that he shall be a king; which person it will be no easy matter to ascertain, if, by adopting any other meaning of this word, we lose the description of him which this line affords. "He shall be king." The Preacher, whose inheritance is Jacob, shall be king. Our public translation has it, "He was king;" making the sentence an assertion of something past, instead of a prediction.

And this assertion some understand of Moses, who was no king, nor ever bore the title, and some, of God, of whom it were improper to say that he was what he ever is, king in Jeshurun. With the authority of the Seventy therefore on my side, I throw away the letter which gives the verb the preterite form, and understand it of time future. "He," the Preacher, "shall be king in Jeshurun.' The word "Jeshurun" is no patronymic of the Jewish nation; but, by the natural force of it, seems rather to denote the whole body of the justified, in all ages the world, and under all dispensations: And it is to be taken with more or less restriction of its general meaning, according to the particular times which may be the subject of

of

discourse. It is sometimes descriptive of the Jews, not as the natural descendants of Jacob or of Abraham, but in their spiritual character of the justified, while they formed the whole of the acknowledged church: But in prophecies which respect the adoption of the Gentiles, it denotes the whole body of the faithful gathered from the four winds of heaven. In this Jeshurun, the monarchy of God was from the beginning, is without interruption, and shall be without end: But the Messiah's kingdom commenced upon our Lord's ascension: and its establishment will be then complete, when the rebellious Jews shall acknowledge him. This kingdom I conceive to be here predicted, in the assertion that the Preacher shall be king in that Jeshurun which shall hereafter be composed of Jews and Gentiles, living in friendship and alliance, professing the same faith, and exercising the same worship.

Thus it appears, that in this prophecy of Moses, if we have rightly divined its meaning, the Messiah is explicitly described under the character of a preacher, in whose spiritual kingdom Jews and Gentiles shall be united as the subjects of a common Lord. This interpretation of this remarkable passage will receive, I think, considerable confirmation

from the elucidation of another prophecy of an earlier age, in which Christ's character of a general teacher, or his business at least of teaching all the world, is described in terms less liable to ambiguity of interpretation. And this I shall consider in my next dis

course.

SERMON XXVI.

JOHN, iv. 42.

We have heard him ourselves; and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

THIS fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel con

tains a narrative of our Saviour's visit to the town of Sychar in Samaria; and in the text we have the testimony which was publicly borne by the people of the place to the truth of his pretensions.

Extraordinary as the fact may seem, this portion of the evangelical history affords the most unquestionable documents of the truth of it, that the Samaritans of our Saviour's day not only believed in a Christ who was to come, but had truer notions than the Jews, their contemporaries, of the nature and ex

tent of the salvation to be expected from him, and of the means by which it should be accomplished: The nature of the salvation, spiritual - the extent, universal the means, teaching. They expected a deliverance of the whole world from moral evil, by a person who should appear in the character of a universal teacher of the true religion.

Of these just views of the Samaritans, the books of Moses, which were the only part of the Jewish Scriptures which the Samaritans received, were the only possible foundation. The conclusion therefore seems infallible, that prophecies do actually exist in some part of the books of Moses, which describe the Messiah as a general teacher of the true religion, and express this character in terms which were clearly understood by the ancient Samaritans. If these prophecies are now not easy to be found, the difficulty must arise from the obscurity which time hath brought upon particular passages of those very ancient writings which originally were perspicuous. If, by the assistance of Him who hath promised to be ever with us, we should be enabled to succeed in our attempt to do the injuries of time in some degree away, and to restore defaced prophecies of this great im

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