THE REASON WHY MEN ARE SO LITTLE PROFITED BY THE GOSPEL.
Heb. iv. 2. Unto us was the Gospel preached, as well as unto them : but the word preached did. not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
IN these words there is a pecuharity of expression, which, till it is explained, seems almost unaccount- able. Had the Apostle said that the Gospel was preached unto the Jews, as well as unto us, it would have been inteUigible enough : but the text, as it stands, seems to give the preference to them, as if they had enjoyed a pre-eminent display of God's favour, and a clearer revelation of his will than our- selves. But the true meaning of the Apostle will appear from a due attention to the context. The Apostle is shewing the superiority of Christ to Moses, Moses being a servant only in God's house, but Christ being a Son and Lord over his own house. " That house are we," says he, " if we hold fast the confidence, and the rejoicing of our hope, firm unto the end^" To impress this idea the more strongly on our minds, he, in the language of David, urges us to guard against a departure from God, lest, like the Israelites of old, we provoke God to cut us off from his promised rest. But, regarding the very passage which he quotes as needing some explanation, since, though all the adults who came out of Egypt perished in the wilderness, their children did enjoy the pro- mised rest, he intimates, that the very expression of David shewed that Canaan was only a shadow of the rest promised to Israel, and that the true rest was common to all the children of Abraham, whether Jews or Gentiles. Of this rest he exhorts us not to come short : for that the promise relating to it be- longed to us as much as to the Jews in the time of Moses : and, as they came short of it in consequence
a Heb. iii. 6.