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may then, I think, take the seven Churches of Asia as types of all the various stages through which a church must pass on its way through earth. We have, in fact, in these Churches what may be called representative characters of all the different states of life in which they exist, or have existed. We have the highest degree of faith and love (in Smyrna) to that of almost absolute abandonment of the same, with the intermediate degrees of half-heartedness and failing zeal. Thus the warnings as well as the consolations requisite to the spiritual condition of each one of us, as well as of every form and condition of Churches, find here what is applicable to their particular cases.

If this be so, then it follows that this wonderful book was given in the form best adapted for the guidance of professing Christians in all ages. It was, in fact, designed by our Lord to be a comfort and a help to His suffering people during the period of His absence, and who can doubt that it has been so ? Who can doubt that that blessed Spirit who alone is Christ's representative on earth, has spoken by and through it to the hearts of myriads, and that it has been to many and many a weary and anxious soul, a lantern to the feet, and a light to the path."

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With regard to the Seven Churches, I agree in the main with Mr. Maude's article on this subject.* We have, I think, here traced out before us, an epitome of the future of the Church of Christ. We see at Ephesus very much that is good, purity in life, and love of truth and righteousness; but beginning soon to be accompanied with loss of the original zeal and love. The church, too, like, alas, all human things, starts well and nobly, but after a time her first love begins to slacken. It may even be thought from the words (EEλines, altogether left thy first love, not simply left as in our translation) that the love of the many was waxing cold. Then comes a period of persecution, which cleanses and purifies, and, as in Smyrna, great heroism and love. This is followed by (as in Pergamos) much zeal and devotion, but also by considerable corruption of truth and development of heathen religion. Then (as in Thyatira), though much love and patience and martyrdom are still exhibited, it would seem now that these qualities are confined to the few, and that heathen rites and worship of a very degraded and cruel character (typified by Jezebel, who was a worshipper of Baal) began to abound. Then follows a state of spiritual deadness and corruption, so much so that it is difficult to find even a few names who have kept their garments unstained. This period (the Sardis state) I consider to represent the long dark night of the middle ages, when heathenism was very largely developed in the Church, and Baal all but literally worshipped, as for instance, when they literally "made their sons and daughters to pass through the fire to Baal," in autos da fi. We then come to

*"Our Hope," Vol. II., page 288.

the Philadelphia stage-that of the Reformation, when "a little strength" was manifested by the Church, and a considerable amount of real love and genuine righteousness was displayed.

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Last of all comes the Laodicean state-that state which seems to me, as to so many others, indicative of our own times, viz., lukewarmness. With many noble exceptions in every division of the professing Church, we may say that, as a whole, it is at present neither cold nor hot. Mr. Greg, in his "Enigmas of Life,' says, "Our social atmosphere is thick and hazy with insincerities and unrealities. We are not exactly bad, but neither are we strong or good," which is saying, in so many words, we are neither hot nor cold. I think it will generally be admitted that there is much in the condition of professing Christian nations, to justify Mr. Greg's remark, and if so, it makes it extremely probable that we are at present living, so to speak, in the Laodicean age.

We are undoubtedly living in an age when events advance with extreme rapidity, when science has all but abolished the distinctions of time and space. This is clear, and I cannot help regarding it as a sign that the present state of things is one of preparation for another. The immense and extraordinary development of railways and telegraphs has often struck me as a proof that changes of some great and considerable character are at hand. The harvest of the earth seems nearly ripe, and just as in the natural world we observe that after the seed is sown, a long period of cold and storms intervenes before the plant is full grown, but that when once the ears of corn appear the ripening frequently goes on with marvellous rapidity, so is it with this mundane economy. The discovery and opening up of the positions and sites of long-buried, long-forgotten cities, the universal spread of knowledge, and finally the wonderful way in which the thread of prophecy seems to be unravelling itself, all point in the same direction. I know that every age is apt to think that it is near the coming of the Son of Man; but there are many very extraordinary events that seem to distinguish the present from former ages and to justify the hope that the "earnest expectation of creation" will before very long be brought about. T. W.

IT

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT.

CHAPTER I.-INTRODUCTORY.

I. TT is very wonderful that God should at any time have entered into covenant with His creatures. Nevertheless the Holy Scriptures assure us that the Infinite One has on several occasions made friendly league with man-thus displaying His own surpassing condescension, and raising men into a position of peculiar dignity and responsibility.

The covenant made by God with the patriarch Abraham concerns the whole human race; and is so fundamental to the whole work of redemp

tion, so inwrought into the structure of Holy Writ, and so decisive an indication of God's designs for the world, as to demand devout and careful study.

It is the second covenant recorded in sacred history. Based on the covenant made with Noah after the flood regarding the earth and the seasons, this covenant takes up the spiritual development of the human race, and carries it on to the ultimate point where the curse is lost in blessing, and out of the old world of sin and sorrow, appears a new world of eternal peace and joy.

In tracing the Abrahamic covenant we once more begin with an individual; and this conduces to simplicity: we are again at the beginning of the ways, and can take care to make good our start in studying the great theme of redemption. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; the Hebrew nation with its twelve tribes; the Messiah in the fulness of the times; all nations, first in elected representation, and afterwards in aggregate fulness these are the finger posts to guide us on our journey.

The formation of the Abrahamic covenant lies embedded in the biography of that prince of pilgrims, the father of the faithful, the friend (the beloved) of God. To understand the life we must study the covenant which gave the life its purpose and dignity. This is a great advantage-it is biography and divinity combined. Abraham lived

one hundred and seventy-five years; speaking roughly, the covenant was proposed to him when he was seventy, was fully accepted and acted upon by him when he was seventy-five; its most critical and improbable pledge was fulfilled to him when he was one hundred; and the final trial of his faith and the last confirmation to him of the covenant took place when he was one hundred and twenty-five; after which he lived fifty years more to see the precious covenant confirmed to his son Isaac, as his joint-heir and successor. These figures focalise the covenanting transactions between God and Abraham, which are thus seen flooding the large ripe centre of Abraham's manhood with a divine splendour.

The covenant which was first and most fully made with Abraham was afterwards renewed, as we have said, to Isaac. After that it was confirmed to Jacob. These three pilgrim fathers thus became three covenantees of the covenant now to be investigated. These three are God's great bondholders. The promises are made over to them expressly by name. God was, and is, and ever will be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The covenanting is complete from this point-and being complete, and the covenantees having run their course, the covenant is abiding. God is not the God of the dead but of the living.

That

The people of Israel, in their generations of old-at least some of them-had a clear insight into the peculiar force of the Abrahamic covenant. It was as a rock beneath their feet. Their own national covenant, entered into at Sinai, was another thing. Its code was onerous, its demands exacting, its sanctions alarmingly severe. was their law. When they kept it, in a measurable national sense, so as to be free from apostasy from their God,-then it was well with them as a nation. But when they widely and generally broke it, it gave them no foothold of security. It denounced them. to invade and smite them, or even to carry them away captive into foreign lands. Not so the covenant made with their fathers-when

It invoked their enemies

they remembered that, they remembered that behind the law there was grace. And so it came to pass that when for very shame they could not plead the covenant made with themselves as a nation in the wilderness they still could plead the covenant made with their fathers at an earlier date. What bearing this has on unfulfilled prophecy may be discussed further on in our inquiry.

Meantime, if anything were yet wanting for arousing in the minds of CHRISTIANS an interest in the Abrahamic covenant, it would be supplied by the way in which that fundamental compact is spoken of in the New Testament. When the child Jesus was born, the godly Zachariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke of the event as a proof that God had "remembered the holy covenant, the oath that He sware to our father Abraham" (Luke i. 72, 73). The Apostle Peter, preaching in Solomon's Porch, and wishing to conciliate his Hebrew brethren, exclaims: "Ye are sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed" (Acts iii. 25). Most true! their national life was derived primarily from the Abrahamic covenant, and so they were its sons. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans (chap. iv.), attributes it to the covenant with Abraham that the patriarch was constituted father of all believers, and that all believers, Gentiles and Jews alike, are heirs of the promise, heirs of the inheritance, heirs of the world with the renowned patriarch: writing to the Galatians (chap. iii.), he finds in the Abrahamic covenant a preintimation of the good news of the justification of the Gentiles by faith and of the further bestowment of the Spirit; affirms the Abrahamic covenant to be both older and mightier than the law; and distinctly teaches that the "one seed" of that covenant "is Christ," into whom by faith Gentiles are incorporated. The letter to the Hebrews (chap. vi.), if possible, goes further still, since it makes the covenant-oath of God sworn to Abraham to be one of two immutable things by which we have mighty consolation and a sure hope of an inheritance within the veil whither Jesus has already entered as our fore

runner.

II. The Hebrew word for covenant is "berith." The first interesting circumstance regarding this word is that in ordinary dealings between man and man it means the very same as our word "covenant"-namely, a coming together, a mutual agreement, a compact, a league. Thus brith is used of the mutual agreement come to by Abraham and Abimelech (Gen. xxi. 22-32), by Laban and Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 44-54), by Jonathan and David (1 Sam. xviii. 3; xxiii. 18), by Abner and David (2 Sam. iii. 12, 13), by all Israel and David (2 Sam. iii. 21; v. 3), and by the Gibeonites and Israel under Joshua (Jos. ix. 6, 7, 11, 15, 16). In several of these examples, and notably five times in the last named, berith is rendered "league" in the "Authorised" English Version. We may add that in Mal. ii. 14, "the wife of thy youth" is termed "the wife of thy covenant." In each of these cases the agreement was mutual. The proposal might come from one side only, and the parties might not in all respects be equal, and in some of these they were not, but in all alike both sides are at least consenting parties to the transaction. This element of mutual consent becomes supremely interesting when the word brith is applied to transactions between God and man. For we naturally

expect to find the same element still present, and yet are constrained to admire the Divine condescension which is evident when we find that element there. We reflect that it is proper to the Divine Being to command; but does He then at the same time seek His creatures' consent? We may indeed be tempted to shrink from so representing the Eternal Majesty, and may be ready to suppose rather that the word berith must, when applied to Him, lose something of its ordinary significance. Still, however true it may be that the higher usage throws a sacred halo around the word, we do well to recollect that the association of ideas springing from its familiar application must always cling to it more or less closely. God enters into a brith with Abraham-what is a brith? Well, whatever it is, Abraham entered into a brith with AbimelechLaban into a brith with Jacob-Jonathan into a berith with David,— and so forth freely all round. There is one instance in which brith is so used twice in the same connection, first of a transaction between God and men and then of a transaction between men and men, as that only an unjustifiable violence can hinder the effect on the reader's mind. "And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal unto Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I swear unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my brith with you, and ye shall make no berith with the inhabitants of this land" (Judges ii. 1, 2). Is brith "covenant?" Then you must say "I will not break my covenant with you, and ye shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land." Or do you prefer league ?" Then it must run thus: "I will not break my league with you, and ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land."

We thus find the word brith in its general usage to be so strongly charged with the notion of a real compact by free consent between two or more parties, that we should clearly not be justified in assuming the word to be divested of that significance, even when the brith itself is on one side Divine, save under stern necessity. Hence it follows that if in point of fact we discover the Most High earnestly wooing the consent of His servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to accept His terms of treaty—if we observe Him diligently cultivating their willinghood-if we perceive Him renewing His proposals to them from time to time and seeking to enamour them of His plans that they may freely and deliberately acquiesce in the great transaction (and certainly these are marked features in His recorded dealings with them),-then surely our warrant is ample to hold fast the true covenant conception of the word brith even when applied to the Divine arrangement now to be considered.

Yet we must not therefore become hard and narrow in our interpretation of the provisions of this covenant. It is a covenant-it has its stipulations-we may speak of its bonds. But it does not follow that we can measure and weigh all its promises. For let us remember that even among men there are covenants and covenants; and that in merely human treaty-making it may happen that although the superficial acreage conveyed is perfectly definite, yet the precious deposits beneath the surface, also conveyed, may be practically illimitable. Most assuredly the Abrahamic covenant has in it something of an unknown quantity; for one of its most marked provisions is the bestowment by the Divine Covenanter of HIMSELF upon those whom His gracious treaty primarily

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