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which treats of the year of jubilee. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." Of this, we believe, we have given the meaning already. Then, in continuation, we read, "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." What does this mean? This points, I believe, to Israel's chief ordinance, the JUBILEE. Within the cycle of Seventy Weeks there were (see Plate 2, figure 5,) ten years of jubilee, which added to the seventy Sabbaths above-named make up fourscore years. So that according to this, the dispensational lifetime of Israel is to be viewed, on the one hand, as "THREESCORE YEARS AND TEN," on the other, reckoning the jubilees, as “FOURSCORE YEARS." But, however we view it, it all tells of failure. View man in whatever aspect you will, in weakness or strength—in his meanest estate, in his best estate-and what is he? A creature of vanity—a being whose years are spent as a tale that is told. Of this, Israel, through the whole of their history, whether we mark it as linked with the Sabbath alone, or with the Jubilee also, was once the living memorial.

Then further we read, " Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil." Such is the cry of these captives. His wrath had been according to the dishonour done to his Name; and, they having accepted the punishment due to their sin, they pray to the Lord for deliverance; they look for blessing, moreover, according to the years of their sorrow. And not only so, but they ask for power so to number their days, that they may apply their hearts unto wisdom; so to mark the times and the seasons, which from one age to another spoke only of grace, so as to enter by faith into the joy of that rest of which the Sabbath in Israel was ever the pledge. And all this the Lord will at last do for Israel, as we gather from this beautiful psalm, which surely passes beyond the Babylonish Captivity, to glance at their present dispersion and sorrow. Already he has turned man, even Israel, to destruction. But a thousand years in his sight are but as yesterday—even as a watch in the night. And though Israel has been cut off from his hand now for nearly two thousand years, with the God of

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resurrection these years are as nothing. He has only to speak, to say, "Return, ye children of men Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in dust," and Israel at once will revive. The beauty of the Lord will at length be upon them, the work of their hands will in the end be established. All this the Lord will do for his people, so that their years will no longer be spent as a tale that is told, but in delighting themselves in his goodness— in owning his mercy through all their past failure, in singing his praises, and saying, in the words of this Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting thou art God."

THE SABBATH LOST TO THE JEWS AFTER THEIR REJECTION OF CHRIST.

Or the third and last Cycle we have spoken already, having seen how the week of grace to the Jews, namely the time of the testimony of John and of Jesus, stood at its close, so as to fill up the term of Seventy Weeks from Nehemiah's return to the rejection of Christ. We also have seen how the same hand which has blotted out the memorial of Israel for a while from the earth, has, at the same time, cancelled this week of Messiah's rejection, so as to leave the period which, according to the divine purpose, is destined to pass before Israel is redeemed, as yet incomplete. We have seen too how the "ONE WEEK" of Daniel-the brief space of the wilful one's power-will come in at the end, so as to supply the place of the suppressed week, above named, and thus to fill up the time which is to usher in blessing to Israel.

All this we have seen, therefore it is needless further to enlarge on the subject; but we may pause at this point for a little to take a glance at the past, and to mark the peculiar character of the sin of the Jews with regard to the sabbath.

The whole course of time under the law presented, as it were, a long chain of sabbaths; as may be seen by referring to figure plate 2, figure 5; which, as they passed on in succession, from one age to another, were so many signs between God and his people,

-blessed pledges to Israel of their interest in him. Thus not only did the ministries and shadows of the tabernacle, from the altar of burnt-offering to the mercy-seat in the holiest, speak the language of grace, but even time itself, as it rolled on from generation to generation, told out the secret, day unto day uttered speech, night unto night showed knowledge, witnessing of Him whose very existence itself is a sabbath, and whose purpose it is in the end to bring all his elect into fellowship with himself in that rest, which is from everlasting to everlasting —which never began, and which never will end. But the whole history of Israel, on the other hand, showed that man in the flesh has no heart for the Lord, that the rest which he covets is merely rest in the creature, and therefore the sabbath of God is actually nothing to him. Hence Israel, as we have seen, by the sword of one Gentile power after another, was smitten. But still the patience of God was unwearied; again and again, they were forgiven; and in the end what do we find?-nothing less than the blessed Jesus coming forth to speak peace to his people, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that were bound, to bring Israel into the freedom and joy of the true year of Jubilee. But we see on the other hand, how this last act of grace, instead of subduing the proud heart of man, only called forth its enmity; and thus Israel's last sabbath beheld him whom his people had slain, the very Lord of the sabbath himself, lying wounded and dead in one of the sepulchres of that land which he came to redeem and to bless with his presence. This was indeed a dark day in Israel; but dark as it might be, it was, as we read, "a high day" in Jerusalem; so holy in the thoughts of this people, that the bodies of Jesus and of the two crucified thieves were not suffered to hang on the cross, lest both the holy day and the land might thereby be polluted. Thus lost to all shame were this people, thus little did they deem that their land could not now be more deeply polluted; little, alas! did they think that the deed they had done had sealed the doom of the nation, that THEIR SABBATH WAS GONE, never to shine upon them again, till they should own him whom they had crucified as the Messiah of Israel, the hope of his people. But still in the midst of it all, while the Jewish elders were busy in sealing the stone and setting a watch over the tomb which contained the body of Jesus, there were those

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in Jerusalem who were in truth keeping the sabbath day holy; a few faithful disciples who came the next morning at day-break with their spices and ointments, to anoint the body of him whom they loved, not knowing that already, ere the sun had arisen, this blessed sheaf of first fruits, to speak in a figure, had been waved, that Christ had been raised from the dead. And this occurred, as we read, “in the end of the sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week," (Matt. xxviii.) words designed, I believe, not merely to state a fact, but also to glance at a principle, showing that this indeed in a moral sense was THE END OF THE SABBATH" to Israel, and that the FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK had now dawned on a new order of things altogether; and that now the hope of rest in a world which had crucified him having ended, and he being on his way from this polluted earth, which had proved itself unworthy of him and his love, back again to that bosom from whence he came forth, his saints, from that moment, were called to find their sabbath in Him whom the world around them depises and hates. Alas! that the heart should ever turn away in its folly from such a friend, such a Saviour as this; or seek its rest for a moment in a world that knows nothing of rest because of its alienation from Him: to dream of joy in a world where he was a stranger. "Love," we read in the Canticles, "love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave;" meaning, I believe, that as death with irresistible strength lays its hand on its victim, so love arrested us in the midst of our wanderings, and drew us home to itself, and having thus made us its own, with all the fond "jealousy" that infinite love only feels, resists every rival that would put in its claim to our hearts; just like the grave, which coldly and cruelly deaf to the cry of the mourner, keeps its prisoner fast locked in its keeping, and will not resign him. "The coals thereof," we read further, with regard to this love, "are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame; many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love it would be utterly contemned."-Such is the love of Christ to his Church-so fervent, so strong, so enduring, that not all the waves and the billows that went over him in the dark hour when he suffered could quell or destroy it. Love outlived all, and was more than conqueror.

Then, too, it was free, without money or price. Love, we are

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each of us conscious in our hearts, corrupt and base as they are, is too noble, too generous, to be purchased. A slave or a flatterer we know may be bought, but not surely a friend. And is the love of Christ less unmercenary? The heart shrinks from the thought; no obedience, no beauty, no attraction on our part drew him forth from the bosom of God, to become a man of sorrows on earth, and then, in the end, for the love that he bore us, to die the death of the accursed;-such is the love that first found, and still keeps us, which no suffering could quell, which no money could purchase. "Herein," we may well say, "is love" --the yearning of Christ's heart over his Church before the world began, which caused him at length in the fulness of time not to count his life dear to himself so that we might be happy. May we then (to return from this digression), when we muse that sabbath which Israel has lost, see therein just a type of that rest of which CHRIST IS THE SUBSTANCE, and feel that repose for the poor weary heart is to be found only in Him. May we learn too more and more, that if a day in his courts is better than a thousand, on the very same principle, that such moments as we too often spend at a distance from Him, occupied it may be with something in which he has no pleasure, are unworthy of being numbered among the years of our life, like those lost periods, those blanks, which we already have traced in the course of Israel's history, which so expressively marked the estrangement of God from his people—their loss of His presence. Thus we may learn a deep moral from the Lord's dealings of old with his people—most true in all ages, and under all dispensations-most appropriate too, in an individual way, to ourselves, as his people.

TWO PERIODS SHOWN TO FORESHADOW THE CYCLE OF SEVENTY WEEKS.

(See Plate 2, Figures 3 and 4.)

I Now proceed, in the next place, to notice two septenary periods with which the law of Moses presents us; both designed, I believe, to express in a miniature form the great dispensational Cycle which we are considering at present.

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