Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

DISCOURSE X.

RACHEL COMFORTED.

JE R. XXXI. 15, 16, 17.

Thus faith the LORD, a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping: Rachel, weeping for her children, refufed to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus faith the LORD, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, faith the LORD, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, faith the LORD, that thy children hall come again to their own border.

[ocr errors]

X.

F the events which befel the church DISC. of Ifrael in old time, many were by Providence ordained and disposed to be figurative

DISC. figurative of other events, in the latter X. days, relative to the church Christian, or Univerfal. Let it be fuppofed, for example, in the present instance, that the Babylonish captivity, and subsequent restoration, to which these words of Jeremiah relate, did, like the Egyptian bondage, and the redemption therefrom, reprefent that more wretched, durable, and general captivity, in which mankind were detained by their grand enemy, with the restoration from it, which the Son of God, as at this season, was born to effect. And let us try, upon this plan, to fhew the beauty and propriety of the application which St. Matthew has made of the paffage to the flaughter of the Bethlehemitish infants, and the lamentations of those who were thus bereaved of their children, by the fword of Herod.

It is not eafy, perhaps, to find a more judicious illuftration of the cafe in hand, than the following one, given by the excellently learned Dr. JACKSON, to whose moft useful labours, on a curious and

difficult

X.

difficult fubject, I must here, once for all, DISC. acknowlege myself indebted for the fubftance of what I am now about to lay be

[blocks in formation]

"We know," fays this able Divine, “that a map, though in itself a thousand “times less than the leaft parcel of in"closed ground, may represent the exact "form or proportion of the country whose "name it bears, though that be ten thou"fand times bigger than the largest field "that our eyes can look upon. And thus "hath the wifdom of God, under the "fame words and phrases, included two "deliverances, of which the one is a map "to the other. He therefore who fhall deny paffages to be literally meant of the "deliverance of Judah and Benjamin from

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Babylon, because they are only fulfilled "in our deliverance by Christ, will give "the Jew no small advantage; he will "commit as great an oversight, as if an

heir, poffeffed of a goodly estate, should "burn the map, or terrar of it, which

DISC." his ancestors had truly taken for the be

X.

"nefit of their fucceffors, if they should "know how to use it, when any contro

66

verfy should arife concerning the bounds " or extent of their inheritance. The Jew, "on the contrary, in denying these places "to be meant of Chrift and us, because

[ocr errors]

they have been literally verified of the "deliverance of his fathers by Zorobabel "and Joshua the priest, is like a man dif"tracted, who boasts he hath a goodly he"ritage, because he can fhew the map or

66

engroffed terrar of those lands, of which "the law has deprived him, fince he knew "not how to use them aright."

In the profecution of this design, permit me, in the

First place, To collect and present to you the hiftorical circumstances concerning the perfon introduced by Jeremiah, as making lamentation over her children, and the occafion of her fo doing, with the prophet's

« ForrigeFortsett »