h Isai. v. 3, 4. > Heb. ii. 3, 4.
k 2 Cor. viii. 3 — 5.
service1." I would, in the name of the Most High God, lay claim to every soul here present, and say, " Ye are not your own ; ye are bought with a price : there- fore glorify God with your bodies and your spirits, which are hism." We call upon you, not to perform a work of supererogation, but to pay a debt : for God's debtors ye are ; and this debt must be paid to him at the peril of your souls.
2. In the next place, having secured this salvation for ourselves, we should endeavour to make the Jews of this and future ages partakers of the same —
It may be thought, perhaps, that though we are debtors to the Jews of former ages, we owe nothing to those of this generation. But we would beg leave to state a case, which we apprehend will place this matter in its true point of view. Let us suppose, that a man of vast opulence had disinherited his own children on account of their misconduct towards him, and had bequeathed his whole possessions to us. Let us further suppose, that, after his descendants to the third or fourth generation had suffered all the most lamentable effects of his displeasure, it were in our power to benefit them, without at all injuring our- selves ; yea, and perhaps to elevate them to their former rank and happiness, without the smallest diminution of our own property; should we not think that it was our duty to help them ? Would not the very consideration of our having, without any merit or service on our part, come to the possession of their inheritance, give them some claim upon our compassion ; so far at least as to benefit them, if we could do it without any loss to ourselves ? Here then is the very case : " They were broken off from their own olive-tree, that we might be graffed in" :" and it is " of the root and fatness of their olive-tree that we are partaking" from day to day0 : and, as we may by God's help be instrumental to the " grafting them again upon their own olive-tree," it is our bounden
1 Rom. xii. 1. m 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
n Rom. xi. 17 — 19. ° Rom. xi. 24.