It is useless to seek to escape the profound meaning of thia fundamental OT teaching: by recalliiiff the undeveloped state o^ the doctrine of a future life in Israel, and the national scope of its election,— as if the sovereign choice which is so insisted on could thus be confined to the choice of a people aa a whole to cerlaiii purely earthly blessini^s, without any reference whatever to the eternal destiny of the individuals concerned. We are here treading very close to the abysa of confusing progress in the delivery of doctrine with the reality of God's saving' activities. The" cardinal question, after all, does not concern the extent of the knowledj,'e possessed by the OT saints of tlie nature of the blessedness that belonjjs to the people of God ; nor yet the relation home by the election within the election, by the real Israel fomiint^ the heart of the Israel after the llesb, to the external Israel : it concerns the existence of a real kingdom of Cod in the OT dispensation, and the methods by which God introduce<l man into it. It is true enough that the tbeocrac.v was an earthly kingdom, and that a prominent place was jfiven to the proniisea of the life that now is in the blessings assured to Israel ; and it is in this engrossment with earthly happiness and the close connexion of the friendship of God with the enjoyment ol worldly poods that the undeveloped state of the OT doctrine of salvation is especially apparent. But it should not be for- gotten that the promise of earthly gain to the people of God IS not entirely alien to the NT idea of salvation (Mt 6", 1 TI 48), and that it is in no sense true that in the OT teaching, in any of its stages, the blessings of the kingdom were summed up in worldly happiness. The covenant blessing is ratlier
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decUrcd to be Me, inclusive of aU th.it that coinprehcnsive word i9 fitted to convey (Ut SO"; c( 4" Si, IT 12-^' S^); anJ it found its best exprtsaion in the high conception ol the favour of God' (Lv aj", I'» 40 162-6 63?); whUe it concerned Itaclt with earthly prosiK-rity only as and bo far as that is a plcdne of the Divine favour. It 18 no false testimony to the or saints when they are described as lookins for the city that lias the foundations and as enduring as seeiiiB the Invisible One : it their hearts were not absorbed in the con- templation of the eternal future, they were absorbed in the contemplation of the Ktcrnal Lord, which certainly is some- thi.iK- even better; and the representation tliut they found their supreme blessedness in outward things runs so grossly athwart their own testimony tlmt it fairly deserves ' -'Ivin s terrible invective, that thus the Israelitish peojile are thought of not otherwise than as a 'sort of herd of svvine whuh (so, forsooth, it is pretended) the Lord was fattening in the pen of this world" (Iiut. u. x. 1). And, on the other hand, though Israel as a nation constituted the chosen people of Oral (ILh 16>3 I's Si* VXfi- 12 1CKJ»), vet we must not lose from sight the tact that the nation as such was rather the symbolical than the real people of God, and was His people at all, indeed, only so tar as it was, idcallv or actually, identified with the inner body of the really ' chosen -that people whom •Jehovah fornicd tor Himself that thev might set forth llis praise (Is 43* »»•" -i^), and who constituted Uie real people of llis choice, the remnant of Jacob ■ (Is 61S, Am 8*10, Mai 31" ; cf. 1 K 1919, u sia. 18). Nor are we left in doubt as to how this inner core of actual people of God was constituted; we see the process in the call of Abraham, and the discrimination between Isaac and Ishniael, between Jacob and Esau, and it is no false Ustimony that It was ever a 'remnant according to the election of grace that God preserved to Himself as the salt of His people Israel. In every aspect of it alike, it is the sovereignty of the Uivine choice that is empliasized,— whether the reference be to the ■egrcgation of Israel as a nation to enjoy the earthly favour ol G«l as a sj-mbol of the true entrance into rest, or the choice of a remnant out of Israel to enter into that real communion with Him which was the Joy of llis saint«,-of Enoch who walked with God (Gn 6=2), of Abraham who found in Him his excec<ling great reward (Gn 151), or of David who saw no good beyond Him, and sought in Him alone hia inheritance and his cup. Later times may have enjoye<l fuller knowledge ot what the grace of God had in store for llis saints— whether in this world or that which is to come ; later limes may have possessed a clearer apprehension of the distinction between the children of the flesh and the chiUiren of the promise : but no later teaching has a stronger emphasis for the central fact that it is of the tree grace of God alone that any enter in any degree into the participation of His favour. The kingdom of God according to the OT, in every circle of its meaning, is above and before all else a stone cut out of the mountoin • without hands ' (Dn 2*i «- ■i').