was, in a word, to be a spiritual kingdom, whose subjects were to be children of Abraham, not by birth merely, but by faith," born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,"-spiritual subjects of a spiritual reign.-Such, in conformity with all that had thus been intimated by prophetic testimony, is the declaration of Jesus in the passage before us:-" If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews: but Now is my kingdom not from hence."-I am aware that some modern millenarians have interpreted our Saviour's expression, not as retrospective, but as anticipating a period to come, when the character he had just given of his kingdom should cease to belong to it; when it should assume appearances and attitudes more worldly; when his servants should fight, and that, too, under his own visible and earthly banner :-the amount of all which is, that his kingdom should be most worldly at the period of its highest and brightest prosperity a sentiment at variance with all the lessons taught us in the divine word respecting the true glory of the New Testament reign, which consists not in worldly pomp and power, but in holy spirituality; the glory of the Church advancing as her spirituality increases, and the perfection of her spirituality being the meridian splendour of her glory. The words are more truly interpreted, as contrasting the present with the past, the spirituality of the new covenant reign with the worldliness of the old; the "chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people," being no longer, as formerly, one particular separated tribe of men, but true believers of every kindred.-What, then, is their conduct, who insist on our adopting the national constitution of the Jewish Church as a precedent for our imitation? Do they not wilfully go back to the worldly and corrupt state of things, that has "waxed old and vanished away?" Do they not take that for their model, which he by whom it was instituted has set aside? Do they not give preference to the "beggarly elements," and choose the introductory and

carnal condition of the Church, rather than the spiritual which it introduced? This is to invert God's procedure. It is to "build again the things which he has destroyed." It is to go back, not forward. It is to frustrate, as I have said, the very purpose of God, by making the Old the model of the New. When the whole of the typical and prophetic Scriptures intimate a purposed change at the fulness of time, and all the recorded facts of the New Testament are in accordance with the previous intimations, can any thing be imagined more perverse, than to recur for our ensample," to the very system from which the change was to take place ?

Thirdly, Even with regard to the most essential part of every religious Establishment-a national provision for its ministry-there is a lack of evidence that, under the Jewish dispensation itself, such provision was compulsory.-There was, it is true, a specified proportion of their substance the tenth, namely-which the Israelities were commanded to devote to the support of religion. But it is deserving of observation, that while there is a command to give, there is no commission to exact. There are no precepts authorizing the priesthood to maintain a vigilant look-out after their tithes, and warranting them, by civil prosecution or otherwise, to compel their payment. There are no instructions to the civil authorities, to assess, to distrain, or to punish. Neither is there a single fact on record, of such a kind. Every thing, on the contrary, bears the aspect of voluntariness. It is left with themselves to obey or to disobey the divine requisition; while Jehovah takes into his own hands the punishment of delinquency, and the vindication of his impoverished ministers and his neglected sanctuary. On what other hypothesis can we find a consistent explanation of the charge against the Jews by the Prophet Malachi, and the divine expostulation and demand with which it is accompanied :-" Will a man rob God? yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed

me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house; and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”*The Lord appears to have placed the requisition of the tithe on the very same footing with the requisition of kindness to the stranger, and liberality to the widow and fatherless. In the latter case, there were commands; but they were commands accompanied by no compulsory assessment, leviable by legal force. All was left to the impulses of individual charity, while Jehovah avowed himself the Patron of the needy, and the judicial avenger of their wrongs. So was it, it would appear, in the former. And the whole of the Old Testament records are in harmony with this view of the fact. Was it by compulsory taxation that the Tabernacle was reared in the wilderness? Was it not, on the contrary, by the freewill offerings of a people whose cheerful contributions, requiring not to be stimulated but to be restrained, put Christians, even at this day, to the blush? And was it by legal impost, in the days of David and Solomon, that the Temple, in all its costly magnificence, was erected? No: it was still by the gifts of spontaneous liberality. The question was, Who, then, is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the Lord ?" and the scene of emulous munificence, on the part of king, princes, and people, is one of the intensest and most delightful interest,-a scene, in which the "willing mind" is a characteristic, acknowledged by the exulting monarch, in the fervour of his grateful piety, with peculiar emphasis "Who am I, or what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort ?" In later times, too, all the offerings cast into the treasury of the Temple were of the same voluntary description; and, by this means, they became tests of the existence, and measures

*Mal. iii. 8-10.

1 Chron. xxix. 1-19.

Exod. xxxvi. 4-7.

of the amount, of rectitude of principle and generosity of disposition.

Fourthly, Those who plead for imitating the Jewish system, should feel the obligation to imitate it consistently. I do not at present mean, in the infliction of all the peculiar pains and penalties annexed to the omission or the violation of religious rites; for I am aware that principles may be obligatory, while special modes of punishment are not. I refer to the necessity, on their principles, of giving the national church the same extent of comprehensiveness which it had amongst the people of Israel. The nation and the church were, in regard to the members included in them, convertible terms; so that to belong to the political body was, at the same time, to belong to the ecclesiastical. The nation was the church, and the church the nation. There are not many, I presume, in Scotland at least, of the very warmest friends of Establishments, who are disposed to plead for such an extension of Church-membership as this. Even where there prevails the most reprehensible laxity in practice, such indiscriminate latitudinarianism is seldom contended for in principle. It is assumed, however, as a fundamental maxim, by Hooker, the oracle of Episcopacy, in regard to the constitution of the English Church :-" We hold," says he, "that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any member of the commonwealth who is not also of the Church of England; therefore, as in a figure triangle, the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the self-same line is both a base and also a side—a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: so, albeit properties and actions of one do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a church, to be given to a multitude, yet one and the self-same multitude may in such sort be both. Nay, it is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied also to be of the other." And again: "Our state is according to the pattern of God's own ancient elect people;

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which was not part of them the commonwealth, and part of them the church of God; but the self-same people, whole and entire, were both under one chief governor, on whose supreme authority they did all depend." How like you this? How sounds it in Scottish ears? If you revolt from it—if you think it is going too far-I would have you to think again whether you must not relinquish your plea for Establishments derived from the example of Israel; for it certainly goes no farther than that did, and is, indeed, the only consistent imitation of it.

The most egregious misapprehensions of the Jews respecting the nature of their Messiah's kingdom arose from their misinterpretation of the prophetic scriptures, if, indeed, this order of cause and effect was not, in some instances, reversed, their misinterpretation of the prophets being imputable to the secularity and earthliness of their desires and habits of mind. The worldly alliances of the kingdom of Christ have at times been vindicated by similar misinterpretations. Thus, the promise of Jehovah to the Church, that "kings should be her nursing fathers, and their queens her nursing mothers," has ever been a favourite passage with the abettors of Ecclesiastical Establishments. Yet, on the supposition of official power being at all meant, no terms can well be more general. They contain no description of the nature, no definition of the limits, of this royal patronage and support; no directions either how, or how far, the authoritative influence was to be employed. Is it not, therefore, obvious that they ought to be understood in consistency with what the rest of Scripture teaches us respecting the nature and distinctive characters of the Church of God? If, throughout the Bible, and especially the New Testament, we find asserted and implied, the spirituality of the kingdom of the Redeemer, and its independence, alike in its exigencies and in its nature, of all political association with the governments of this world,—then must the promise in question be interpreted in a sense that shall harmonize with such representations. Were the import of the passage, that the Church should be