the land nor the people had ever really rested; and that though the Sabbath at first had been graciously given to tell of the good will of the Lord to his people, they had slighted the blessing, and had polluted this ordinance. Hence the Lord was constrained to give them up, again and again, to be trodden down by the Gentiles. Seven times, as we have seen, they were punished in this way. But this did not prove that the Lord's love to his people had failed; because though thus often constrained to afflict them, he as often, by the sword of Gideon, of Samson, of Jephthah, and others, redeemed them out of the hand of their enemies; and not only so, but at the time fixed in his own gracious purpose, that is, when the Seventy Weeks had expired, he gave them a king in the person of Solomon; a man who, if any mere man could have borne the glory, was surely fitted to do so. But this could not be. One, and one only, of all the children of men, has proved himself worthy of reigning over God's elect nation; and Christ, the blessed Lord, is that one. Solomon failed, as we know, at the outset; his sun, which had risen so brightly, was speedily clouded. Thus the present hopes of the nation were blasted, the time of Israel's glory delayed. But still the patience of God was unwearied: another trial of Israel is made another crisis occurs in their history, and that too after the same lapse of years as the former. Seventy weeks from the time when the glory of God filled the temple, in the days of King Solomon, Nehemiah was given to be the healer of Israel. But did this cycle find them more true to the Lord than the last? had they at length learned to take delight in his Sabbath? No; the heart of this people was still hard and rebellious. All their ways were unequal; and hence, ere the cycle had closed, ere the full measure of weeks between Solomon and Nehemiah was filled up, plucking his hand out of his bosom, he arrested them in the very height of their sin, calling for the sword of a Gentile-even of King Nebuchadnezzar, to chastise them. And now I come to the point at which I have been aiming. Moses had told them before, when the law of the Sabbath was made, that if they would not observe it, their land should keep sabbath. And now, they having failed in giving heed to this ordinance, so expressive of grace on the part of the Lord, this threat is accomplished. The land is now doomed, not in the shape of blessing, as God originally purposed, but of

N

judgment, to rest. For the space of full seventy years, the temple of God and the city were doomed to lie waste; while those valleys and hills which, had Israel been obedient, would surely have flowed with the richest abundance of honey and milk, failed to give forth their increase for the few whom the hosts of Chaldea had left in the land. During these years, according to the warning word of their lawgiver, the land kept its Sabbaths, it lay like a wilderness, unproductive and fruitless. And not only so, but in a dispensational sense, this, like the seven blank periods aforesaid, was not reckoned at all, being itself a complete blank, in God's thoughts, in connexion with Israel. And why, I would now ask, why did he fix on this period, on seventy years, more especially as the time of their chastening? Had this any connexion with our cyclical period-with seventy weeks? Yes, surely it had; and the connexion illustrates what it is here my object to show, namely, the retributive justice of God, so equally balanced, in his dealings with Israel, because we here find him acting exactly according to Israel's sin, in the following way. Within the compass of seventy weeks the number of Sabbaths was seventy; the amount of weeks and of Sabbaths, of course, being exactly the same. Hence it is clear, that the Lord in chastising his people kept his eye upon this. He took note, as it were, of the SEVENTY SABBATHS FROM MOSES TO SOLOMON; one and all of which in succession his people, for want of due faith in his love, had profaned. And not only so, but also of the SEVENTY SABBATHS WITHIN THE FOLLOWING CYCLE; and while breaking in on this cycle, and setting their Sabbaths aside ere they had reached to the number appointed, ere the period had closed, he gives his people to know that he did so, that he doomed their land to KEEP SABBATH FOR SEVENTY YEARS, because of their sin in not allowing it to rest in his way, in obedience to him, through their dispensational periods, from the very beginning.*

And now, in closing this part of the subject, I will cite the three Scriptures on which the above reasoning is founded; and bearing in mind that SEVENTY WEEKS WAS A DIAPENSATIONAL CYCLE in Israel, we shall easily see how their sin and their chastening coincided exactly.

The sin of the nation at large, and that of Hezekiah individually, in reference to the King of Babylon's servants, (2 Kings xx. 14-18.) was in principle exactly the same. In both cases it was the soul failing to find rest only in God.

First,-"If ye will not," says the Lord by the mouth of the lawgiver Moses, referring to the law of the Sabbaths, "If ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me, then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times* for your sins. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate ; and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her Sabbaths; as long as it lieth desolate it shall rest, because it did not rest in your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it."-Levit. xxvi. 27-35.

Secondly,-"This whole land," said Jeremiah the prophet, after the above law had been broken, when denouncing judgment upon Israel, even the fulfilment of the threat connected therewith "This whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the King of Babylon seventy years."-Jer. xxv. 11.

And then, thirdly, we read, "Them that escaped from the sword carried he (Nebuchadnezzar) away to Babylon, where they were servants to him, and to his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths; for as long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years."— 2 Chron. xxxv. 20, 21.

THE NINETIETH PSALM, THE TENTH VERSE ESPECIALLY,

NAMELY,

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten.”

"ALL our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear so is thy wrath. So teach us to number

* Observe, in connection with the sin of the nation with regard to the Sabbath, how the number seven is never lost sight of. Four times in this chapter Israel is thus threatened with seven-fold punishment.-Levit. xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 23.

our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants." Now that which I purpose to notice especially here is the expression the "threescore years and ten" in this passage. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten," or as we read in the margin, "As for the days of our years in them are seventy years." This is commonly thought to apply to the lifetime of man as an individual; and while this, I allow, may in a restricted sense be perfectly true, I am strongly disposed to consider that we are warranted to take this psalm in a much wider sense, the above passage especially, and to believe that, prophetically speaking, this is the language of Israel, not as individuals merely, but as a nation; and that in this way these words refer to what may be termed the DISPENSATIONAL LIFETIME OF ISRAEL, namely, the great cycle of weeks which we are at present considering.

And now, as serving to show what I mean, let us look at Leviticus xxv. which treats of the law of the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee: "And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years, and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty-nine years." Such was the mode in which time, according to the Levitical law, was measured in Israel, not by ordinary years merely, but also by sabbaths; so that that which is spoken of here on the one hand as "forty-nine years," is treated as "seven sabbaths of years" on the other; and this being the case with regard to this period, it must also be true with regard to our cycle, inasmuch as the cycle is nothing more than the above period TEN TIMES REPEATED. Hence, according to the above rule, what is actually 490 years on the one hand, may be viewed as seventy sabbaths of years on the other; and in this way, I believe, the cycle is referred to in the 90th Psalm. There the Spirit of God, as it were, loses sight of the ordinary years of all time, in fact, saving that which was peculiarly linked with the name of the Lord, and dwelling alone on those years which were especially marked as memorials or signs between the God of Israel and his people-the Sabbaths, I mean-speaks of the great dispensational period neither as seventy weeks, nor as 490 years, but as threescore years and ten, thereby pointing alone to the SEVENTY SABBATHS OF REST TO THE LAND INCLUDED THEREIN.

Why, let me ask, why were the Jews sent into captivity, there

to spend their years "as a tale that is told?" Because they had polluted their Sabbaths. Why was the land, not in the way of grace, but of judgment, to rest, to keep Sabbath for seventy years? Because, as I have shown, the number of Sabbaths thus defiled within the course of Seventy Weeks had been seventy. The Lord, in fact, in this case was just measuring to Israel as they themselves had measured to him. "According to thy fear," we here read, "so is thy wrath :"-that is, as I take it, according to the allegiance, the service due by the creature to God, so was his wrath, seeing that such allegiance never was rendered. These words then of this Psalm I believe to have been put by the Spirit of God into the lips of the children of Judah in Babylon, who, while hanging their harps on the willows, and refusing to sing the Lord's song in the land of their captivity to please the children of strangers, are led by the same Spirit to muse on the sin of the nation from one dispensation to another, to remember that the days of their years had been threescore years and ten, or, as we read in the margin, that this was their dispensational lifetime-the period allotted for Israel in which to do the will of the Lord, to honour his Sabbaths, to show that they had his "fear" in their hearts; but that instead of all this, the land in none of these years had been suffered to rest—that their Sabbaths had all been defiled—and hence to look on their seventyfold sorrow in Babylon as just the fruit of their seventy-fold sin in despising his ordinance, the Sabbath, the sign of his good will to his people from the very beginning, even from the time of their redemption from Egypt. And here, before leaving this part of our subject, I take occasion again to refer to the margin, which gives, as I have said, the passage in question as follows, "As for the days of our years, in them are seventy years." This, which I am informed is more correct than the text, seems to me at the same time more clearly and definitely to express what the Spirit. means to convey. This reading, perhaps, may be paraphrased thus: "Within the circle of days which make up the 490 years of Israel's national lifetime, there are 70 years which the Lord especially claims as his own, namely, seventy Sabbaths-all which, profaned as they have been, tell of only labour and sorrow, instead of gladness and rest, as they ought to have done."

Then there is another point, which, though it belongs to this place, will be better understood as we advance to the section