V. 27.-Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:

Having spoken in the 24th verse of those whom God had called, both among Jews and Gentiles; and having referred in the two preceding verses to what had been foretold of the Gentiles, the Apostle, in the verse before us and the two that follow, introduces the predictions relative to the Jews. He quotes the prophet Isaiah, as loudly testifying the doctrine which he is declaring. Hosea testifies with respect to God's purpose of calling the Gentiles; and Isaiah, in the passage here quoted, x. 20-22, testifies of the rejection of the great body of the Jews, and of the election of a number among them comparatively small. The Israelites looked on themselves as being all the people of God, and on the Gentiles as shut out from this relation. The prophet here shows that out of all those vast multitudes which composed their nation only a remnant were to be among the number of the true Israel of God. Whatever fulfilment the prophecy had in the times of the Old Testament, this is its full and proper meaning, according to the Apostle.

At first sight it might seem that the prophet speaks only of the return of the Jews from the captivity of Babylon; but, in regard to this, two things must be remarked. One is, that all the great events that happened to the Jews were figures and types, representing beforehand the great work of redemption by Jesus Christ. Thus, the deliverance of the Israelities from Egypt, their passage through the Red Sea, and through the wilderness, the passage of Jordan, and their entrance into Canaan, were representations of what was

to take place under the gospel, as is declared, 1 Cor. x. 11, "Now, all these things happened unto them for examples (types), and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Hence it follows that the deliverance from the captivity of Babylon, and consequently the predictions respecting it in Scripture, are typical of the future condition of the Church of Christ. This prophecy, then, has two meanings; the first literal, the second mystical. The other thing to be remarked is, that in the work of God, in regard to his church, there being several gradations which follow each other, it often happens that the prophets, who viewed from a distance those future events, join together, many of them, as if they related only to one and the same thing,—which is a characteristic of the spirit of prophecy. The prophet, then, in this place joins the temporal re-establishment of the Jews with the spiritual building up of the Church of Christ, although these two things are quite distinct and separate.

These words in this prophecy, "They shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel in truth," can only have their full accomplishment in believers in Jesus Christ. The same is the case respecting the words, "The remnant shall return;" for this returning or conversion denotes much more than that of the return of the Jews from Babylon-even that glorious turning to God which takes place by the gospel. And when the prophet says, though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return, it is clear that this is an allusion to the promise made to Abraham that his posterity should be as the sand of the sea, and that he means to say, that whatever I i

VOL. II.

confidence the Jews might place in that promise, taking it in a carnal and literal sense, yet that those who were saved should be a small remnant, whom God would take to himself in abandoning all the rest to his avenging justice. As one event, then, in Scripture prophecy is often made to shadow forth and typify another, so the events of the Jewish history are made to illustrate the spiritual things of the kingdom of God. In this way the prophecies quoted in the New Testament from the Old are to be viewed, and not to be explained in a manner which ascribes to the Apostles of Christ that false and deceitful mode of quotation called accommodation, so disparaging to their character as stewards of the mysteries of God, and so degrading to the Holy Scriptures.

V. 28. For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness; because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.

This refers to God's judgments poured out upon the Jews for rejecting the Messiah. They were then cut off manifestly from being his people. He cut short the work in righteous judgment. The destruction determined, denotes the ruin and desolation of the whole house of Israel, with the exception of a small remnant. It was to overflow in righteous judgment, which gives the idea of an inundation. But this not having place in the re-establishment of the Jews after the Babylonish captivity, must necessarily be understood of the times of the gospel. It was then that the consumption decreed took place; for the whole house of Israel was rejected from the covenant of God, and consumed or dispersed by the fire of his vengeance by the Roman armies, with the exception of a small remnant. Formerly God had borne with them in their sins, but

now when they had heard the gospel and rejected it, they were destroyed or carried away into captivity as with a flood. The Lord made a short work with them at the destruction of Jerusalem. This verse, and the preceding, confirm what is said in the 22d verse, that although God endures the wicked for a time, he determines to punish them at last with sudden and overwhelming destruction.

V. 29. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.

This again verifies another prediction of Isaiah, i. 9. It was no doubt fulfilled in the events of the Jewish history; but in its proper and full sense, it extended to the times of the Messiah, and predicted the small number of Jews who were left, and the purpose for which they were left. The Jews who escaped destruction at the overthrow of their city by the Romans, were spared merely as a "seed" from whence was to spring all the multitudes who will yet arise to Jesus Christ out of the seed of Abraham. Had it not been for this circumstance, not one individual at that time would have been left. They would have been all cut off as Sodom and Gomorrah. "Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened," Matt. xxiv. 22. Instead of remnant, the word employed by the prophet, the Apostle substitutes the term seed, from the Septuagint translation, which, though the expression is varied, has a similar meaning, implying that after the whole heap besides was consumed, the remainder was reserved for sowing with a view to a future crop.

By this quotation from Isaiah, the Apostle proves

that the doctrine of the unconditional election of individuals to eternal life-that doctrine against which such objections are raised by many-far from being contrary to the ideas we ought to entertain of the goodness of God, is so entirely consistent with it, that except for this election, not one of the nation of Israel Iwould have been saved. Thus the doctrine of election, very far from being in any degree harsh or cruel, as many who misunderstand it affirm, is, as we see here, a glorious demonstration of divine goodness and love. Had it not been for this election, through which God had before prepared vessels of mercy unto glory, neither Jew nor Gentile would have escaped, but all would have remained vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. In the case of the angels who sinned there was no election, and the whole were cast down to hell. Had there been no election among men, the whole must in like manner have perished.

V. 30.—What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith:

What shall we say then?-What is the result of all this discussion ? The conclusion from the whole is, that those Gentiles who are called by God, of whom the Apostle had spoken in the 24th verse, who were not following righteousness, but were abandoned to every kind of wickedness, obtained true righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith, This is an astonishing instance of mercy. Men who were "haters of God," and guilty of all abominations, as Paul had shown in the first chapter of this Epistle, were thus made partakers of that righteousness which is commensurate to all the demands of the law.