Rom. xi. 30, 31. As ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
ONE can scarcely conceive how such a chapter as that before us should be in the hands of Christians, and be read by them from time to time, and yet the great subject of the restoration of the Jews, and of their union with the Christian Church, be as little
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known as if no information whatever had been given respecting it in the Bible. Till of late, it should seem as if there had been as thick a veil upon the hearts of Christians, in relation to it, as there has been upon the hearts of the Jewish people in relation to Chris- tianity itself. Methinks the words which I have just read to you, if there had been no other, were sufficient to unfold to us the whole plan of Divine Providence in relation to this matter. For in them we see,
I. The mysterious way in which God has dispensed his blessings to mankind —
Mark the plan, as it is here developed —
[The whole world having departed from God, they were, with the exception of one family, overwhelmed by an universal deluge. The surviving family soon followed the footsteps of their ancestors ; and the whole world, in the space of less than five hundred years, was again involved in darkness and idolatry. It pleased God then to give a new revelation of himself to one single individual, and to confine the knowledge of himself, not to his descendants generally, but to his descendants in the line of one particular son. But that revelation being merely oral, it was preserved only by tradition. Then, after about four hundred and thirty years more, God, for the first time, vouch- safed to man a written revelation. Yet was this written word confined to that single people. The rest of the world, for the space of four thousand years, were left without any written instruction from on high, and were given up to the delusions of their own hearts. Our Lord himself said he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; and he forbad his Disciples to enter into any city of the Samaritans, to instruct them. But at last, when this nation had so abused the light afforded them, as to reject and crucify their Messiah, God took it away from them, and imparted it to the Gentile world, who hitherto had lain in darkness and the shadow of death. Yet, alas! it is to but a small part of the Gentile world that this light is come, notwithstanding it has shined these eighteen hundred years. But it is God's purpose that, in due season, it shall spread over the face of the whole globe ; and that they, to whom the knowledge of his will has been now committed, shall be his instruments for communicating it to all the rest of mankind, both Jews and Gentiles.]
Now I call the whole of this mysterious — [St. Paul calls it so, in the chapter before usa: and so
a ver. 25.