they shall be his people ; and God himself shall be with them, and be their GodV]
See then from hence,
1. How groundless is the objection which so many raise against the efforts that are making for the con- version of the Jews, that they are useless —
[Many ask, not with grief and sorrow, but with a kind of malignant triumph, What good have you done ? Your society has now been instituted several years, and what has been their success ? I answer, that no person can reasonably expect to sow and reap on the same day. No other society has pros- pered at the first moment of its institution. Inquire of missions to the heathen ; Have they prospered all at once ? How much less then can it be expected, that the Jews, with all their deep- rooted prejudices, should in a moment lay them all aside, and, overcoming obstacles greater than can be conceived, become at once the disciples of the despised Nazarene ? But the Christian world have conceived a notion, that the Jews are to be con- verted all in a day. This however is a mistake. What God may do at a future period I presume not to say. I do myself conceive, that in God's appointed time, when God's servants shall " prophesy unto them," and " the great trumpet be blown" throughout the earth, there will be a resurrection of the dry bones ; and they will rise "a great armyc." But this is not to be expected at the first commencement of our endea- vours, as you have already heard. We are not taught to expect, in the first instance, more than the gleanings of an olive-tree : and, if we get " one of a city, and two of a tribe," and gather them from different places, " one by one," we are to account ourselves richly recompensed for our labours. How many, I would ask, did our Lord Jesus Christ, and his twelve apostles, aided by seventy other disciples, convert in the four years previous to the day of Pentecost? Yet they wrought miracles in confirmation of their word. Was the smallness of their success during that period any ground for saying, that they had lost their labour, and that it would be useless to pro- secute their object any further, especially since they must do it at so great a risk to themselves, and to all who should embrace their religion? Thus then I say, that as many have been gathered as, considering the contracted scale on which the efforts have been used, and the total want of a proper medium of access to them which till lately we have experienced, could in reason be expected. We grant that the converts have hitherto been few, and that yet for a season they may continue
b Rev. xxi. 2, 3. c Ezek. xxxvii. 9, 10.