call ; but go when and where the Lord is pleased to send them : and, unconscious of the ends for which they are sent, they fertilize the ground in God's appointed time, and diffuse life wherever they descend. So are the Jews scattered unwit- tingly, and unconscious of the ends for which they are sent, over the face of the whole earth, to impart, in due season, all the blessings of life and salvation to a perishing world. And to this effect does the Prophet Isaiah also speak, when of them, in their present scattered state, he says, " They shall declare my glory among the Gentiles ; and shall bring all their Brethren, as the Children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the House of the Lord0." "Whether the persons, here called their brethren, be their brethren of the ten tribes, whose place of residence is not known ; or of the Gentiles, who may be called brethren by anticipation; I cannot exactly say: but this is plain ; " They shall declare God's glory among the Gentiles." And speaks not the Apostle Paul also to the same purpose? He says, " If the fall of them (the Jews) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness ? If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead^V Yes, it is the admission of the Jews into the Christian Church that will be the means of awaken- ing the attention of the whole Gentile world; who, beholding and admiring the grace of God in them, will, with holy zeal, embrace the Gospel of Christ, and fly to him with unanimity, " as a cloud," and with speed, " as doves to their windows'1."
Thus I think it appears, both from the Scriptures in general,
and from my text in particular, that the Jews must be converted
first, before the great body of the Gentiles be gathered in ; and
that they are ordained of God to be his honoured instruments
for the conversion of the whole world.
As for the notion of some Commentators, that Christ is the Jew, on whose skirt the Gentiles shall lay hold, it really is so foreign to the whole context, that it does not deserve a mo- ment's consideration. The Jews themselves are far nearer to the true interpretation than such expositors as these. The Jews adduce this passage, to prove, that, instead of their ever embracing Christianity, the Christian world are to become Jeivs ; since it is said, that the whole world shall " take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you ; for we have heard that God is with you." The Jews, I say, are so far right in this interpretation, that they are the persons de- signated in the text: only the passage must be understood of Jeivs ivho have embraced their Messiah, and not of Jews who
0 Isai. Ixvi. 19, 20. with Rom xv. 16. p Rom. xi. 12. 15. i Isai. lx. 8. with Zeph. hi. 20. and Jer. xxxiii. 9.