A word of practical application. If such was Israel's experience of the Lord, as THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB; if, by virtue of His covenant engagements with them, they could bind Him to the exercise of His grace, sinful and rebellious as they were, what may not the weak and ofttimes erring "Israel of God,"1 now calculate on in the way of experienced grace, by reason of the present relation of God toward them as "THE GOD AND FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST?" How full the heart of the risen Saviour must have been of the grace and blessing involved in this relation, when the announcement of the existence thereof towards His Church, as in John xx. 17, was His first expressed thought after His resurrection; and to His forsaking disciples, and to denying Peter was that announcement made, with the following word of peace, just as we have seen were all those Old Testament manifestations of covenant love vouchsafed in the midst of Israel's unworthiness and sin. It will yield instruction and comfort to note the abounding grace and blessing which this covenant relation of our God in Christ presents to our view in the following passages:-Eph. i. 3, 17, iii. 14; 2 Cor. i. 3, &c.; 1 Pet. i. 3, &c.

NOTE [E]. PAge 99.

As here, in Psalm xxii., the adoring praise of Messiah, as the expression of His anticipating hope, is elsewhere made to spring out of the lively apprehension and confession of His low estate, of His poverty and need. Three psalms, stamped in the New Testament as of eminently Messianic character, may be referred to to elucidate this— "Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee; let such as love thy salvation say continually, The Lord

1 Gal. vi. 16.

be magnified. But I AM POOR AND NEEDY; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer."" Again, "I AM POOR AND SORROWFUL; let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving."3 Once more, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office; .... because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the POOR AND NEEDY man, that he might even slay the broken in heart."..." I am POOR AND NEEDY; my heart is wounded within me. I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise Him among the multitude; for He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul."

NOTE [misprinted as A]. PAGE 122.

Jeremiah 1. li. afford striking instances of what has been termed in this treatise the embryo, germ-containing character of Scripture. Events purely historical, and palpably of a local temporary bearing, stand before us, as here, as the shell enveloping the kernel of something which was yet to be, carrying the mind beyond the circumstances to which they primarily applied, not exhausting their full import until they clothe the thoughts of inspired men under New Testament revelation, being placed at the command either of the recorders of gospel incident, or, as in the case before us, of the Seer of "the things which shall be hereafter." We have, in Jeremiah's prophecy of the judgment of Babylon, more than the reciprocal relation of Israel and Babylon of old. In the remarkable analogies which have been pointed out in

2 Ps. xl. 16, 17. 8 Ps. lxix. 29, 30. .4 Ps. cix. 4, 16, 22, 30, 31.

this treatise between "The Song of Moses" in Exodus, and "The Song of Moses and of the Lamb" in Revelation, the suggestion has been offered, that in the former was contained, in embryo, the subject-matter of the Hallelujah Anthem of the latter, with which our earth shall yet resound on the final overthrow of the hosts of Antichrist. So the Babylon here of Jeremiah will, by comparison of his language with that of the Seer of Patmos, stand out to view as bearing a kindred relation to the mystic Babylon of the Revelation. Most striking will be found the analogies exhibited in the two following columns, taking the passages seriatim, according as they stand in Jeremiah:

Let Isaiah xiv. and Rev. xviii. 16 be also compared.

NOTE [F] PAGE 158.

"THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS."-The Church's estimate of the Lord Jesus Christ may be set forth in the Psalmist's words,-" Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I DESIRE beside thee;" and to every member thereof He is "the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely." But, in the generally received acceptation of the term, Christ was not THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS before His first coming, neither shall He be so when He comes again to "take vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the Gospel." It may be interesting and instructive to evolve from actual human experience, in the light of Scripture, in what sense Christ may be said to be THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS. Together with the groan, which even the patient expectancy of a redeemed body is unable to stifle in the favoured recipient of "the first-fruits of the Spirit," we read of an unintelligent groaning and travailing in animate and inanimate nature, which witnesses to the fact of a sin-stricken, curse-bearing creation-"The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And so it will be throughout its animal and vegetable department, until that day of Messiah's rule over a redeemed and renovated world, which shall see the wolf, the lion, and the bear laying aside their savage propensities, and companying with the lamb, the calf, and the cow, while "the sucking child shall play on the hole of the" then stingless "asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the den" of the then harmless "cockatrice;"

6 Psalm 1xxiii. 25.

8 2 Thess. i. 8.

7 Song of Sol. v. 10, 16.

9 Rom. viii. 22-25.