THERE is no phrase which it is more important to understand in connection with prophetic inquiries than “the kingdom of God." To ascertain the origin and force of this expression in the Scriptures of truth, is the object of my present communication.
It must be obvious at the outset that our inquiries must commence further back than the actual use of the phrase in the New Testament. No one can observe the way in which it is used by John the Baptist, as well as by our Lord himself and His disciples, without perceiving that it was an expression with which their hearers were conversant. It was no new expression, and the mere utterance of it communicated no new thought to the minds of men; that is, among the Jews, of course. It would be of little moment to inquire what their thoughts of this kingdom were. The only source from which they could receive right thoughts on the subject is as open to us as to them; and open to us, blessed be God, with this difference in our favor, that the Holy Spirit, by whom holy men were inspired to write the Scriptures of the Old Testament, now dwells in the saints-dwells in us, for this purpose among many others, to open to us fully, as the friends of Christ and members of His body, what was hid from saints in former ages, yea, what was but very obscurely seen by the prophets themselves. Even they are represented as “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." Yes, it was not to themselves, but to us, that they ministered those divine communications of which they were made the vehicles; and we are thus in better circumstances for understanding those communications than even the holy men through whom they were made and recorded. And it is this, and this alone, the teaching of the indwelling Spirit, the Comforter, that can enable us to understand those varied testimonies to the grace and glory of Christ. It is not any natural clearness of judgment, or any amount of humanly-acquired information, that will make us well instructed scribes in the kingdom of heaven. We are ignorant alike of the "old things" and the "new" which pertain to that kingdom, except as we sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him, whose voice it is by the Spirit that we hear in the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as in the apostles and prophets of the New. May it be in the spirit of child-like submission to Him and dependence upon Him that we pursue our present inquiry; and may it be, through His grace, fruitful in instruction and blessing to our souls!
There is one point on which there can be no question. God is often spoken of as a King. “Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God; for unto thee will I pray." (Ps. 5:2.) “The Lord is King for ever and ever." (10:16.) " The Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever." (29:10.) "Thou art my King, O God." (44:4.) "For the Lord most high is terrible; He is a great King over all the earth." (47:2.) "Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises; for God is the King of all the earth." (Verses 6, 7.) "'They have seen thy goings, O God; even the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary." (68:24.) "For God is my King of old." (74:12.) “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods." (95:3.) “With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King." (98:6.) All these are from one book of Scripture, and many more might be quoted. See also the following: "Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Is. 6:5.) "For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King." (33:22.) "I am the Lord, your holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King." (43:15.) "Who would not fear thee, O King of nations ?" (Jer.10:7.) "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts." (Zech. 14:16.) We cannot suppose that God would have so largely spoken of Himself as King if it had not been important for us to know Him in this character; and it will be found on examination of some of the above passages, along with many others of like character, that we have very explicit and copious instructions in God's Word on this subject. May it be ours to receive it in simplicity of heart and godly subjection to the authority of the written Word!
The first point to which I would solicit attention is this, that while God, the everlasting King, unquestionably reigns uncontrolled over all the works of His hands, visible and invisible, overruling by His power even the rage and rebellion of His enemies, it has pleased Him, at various periods for the display of His glory as King to delegate His authority over a certain sphere, putting those entrusted with it under responsibility to Himself to exercise their delegated power and rule according to His will. Adam, for instance, was made ruler over all the lower parts of creation, as we read, Gen. 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." The fulfillment of this we see in verse 28. The whole passage is referred to in Ps. 8:4-8, which is again quoted by the apostle in Heb. 2:6-9, as a prediction of the future dominion of Christ, the Son of man, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. I would not now dwell further on these passages except just to remark that Adam, failing to exercise his delegated power in obedience to Him who had entrusted him therewith, God's purpose to put this earth under the dominion of man was not to be set aside. The full remedy for the failure of the first man being found in the obedience unto death of the second man, the Lord from heaven, He becomes the inheritor of the dominion and glory forfeited by the first. And for Him it waits. We see not yet, as Paul says, all things put under him, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor, and in due time we shall see His dominion established over the whole sphere of Adam's delegated rule, and then will be fulfilled the first verse and the last verse of the eighth Psalm, which treats of these things " O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth." But more of this anon.
Before this great and' final result in the universal blessing of Christ's acknowledged dominion was to be accomplished, further trial was to be made of man in various ways. Not to dwell on intermediate events, we find one nation selected of God to enjoy the blessing of His kingly authority, and it is in connection with this nation that we first find God spoken of as King, But, before pursuing this, I would notice for a moment a remarkable passage, which shows alike the foreknowledge and providence of God, and the exceeding importance of the subject on which we are entering, viz. the connection of God, as King, with the nation of Israel. The passage I allude to is Deut. 32:8, 9: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance." Thus it appears that long before the children of Israel existed as a nation, long even before the call of Abraham, God had his eye upon that nation, and made it the center of all His providential arrangements in dividing the earth amongst the progeny of Noah. The perfect divine wisdom of these arrangements will be manifest in that period of universal blessing of which the eighth Psalm treats, as has been noticed, when, according to another Scripture, “they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem." (Jer. 3:17.)
The first passage in which the Lord's reign is definitely spoken of is in the song of triumph chanted by the victorious hosts of Israel, when they had passed safely through the Red sea, and left Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen “sunk as lead in the mighty waters." They not only celebrate the triumph already accomplished for them by their almighty Captain and Deliverer, but they anticipate those further victories pledged to them in the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then they add: " Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou last made for thee to dwell in, the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." (Exod. 15:17, 18.) Connect this with the passage already quoted from Deut. 32., and you can hardly fail to see how the reign or kingdom of God is connected with the place which He had made for Himself to dwell in, and the nation of which He says: " The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance."
In Exodus 19. and the following chapters, we find God exercising His kingly government over this nation which He had separated to himself; giving them laws, and statutes, and judgments to be observed by them, with suited penalties for any breach of those enactments. I do not stop here to consider the character of that covenant of works under which they were thus, with their own full consent and choice, placed. Their immediate failure under that covenant, in chap. 32., and the renewal of it, with certain modifications, through the intervention of Moses as Mediator, (typical, no doubt, of the mediation of Christ,) are points of extreme importance to any who would understand God's recorded dealings with them. But I cannot enter into them here, further than to notice, that in chap. 33. nothing less than the Lord's actual presence with them can satisfy Moses, who pleads on their behalf, and this is pledged to him in verse 17. In consequence, we find that when Balaam (inspired as a prophet, though a worthless, wicked man) pronounces a blessing upon Israel, he says: “God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent, He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them." (Num. 23:19-21.) This was what distinguished Israel from all the other nations of the earth. They were under the controlling power of God's invisible government in providence; but God was present in Israel as their King. The symbols of the divine presence, the pillar of cloud by (lay and of fire by night, went before them from the time when Pharaoh pursued them into the very bed of the Red sea, till they crossed the Jordan at the close of their forty years' wanderings in the desert. Their laws they received direct from His mouth; all their officers and judges were constituted such by His appointment; and in every time of difficulty and danger He was present to be consulted by them, nor did He ever fail, when they were obedient to His voice, to guide and to preserve them. And when they crossed the Jordan, He still accompanied or went before them. The cloud of the divine glory, which had journeyed with them in the wilderness, now rested between the cherubim which overshadowed the mercy-seat; and after their conquest of the laud under Joshua, the tabernacle of the congregation, enclosing alike the ark of the covenant, the mercy-seat, and the shekinah and cherubim above, was set up at Shiloh, which from that time became the seat of government. It was there, "before the Lord," that Joshua divided the land among the tribes for an inheritance. (Josh. 18:1-10.) The house of God was there during the period of the Judges, and up to the time of Eli and Samuel. It was in the days of the latter that the people, wearied of being under the direct government of God, who from time to time appointed judges over them, and desiring to be like the nations which surrounded them, asked Samuel to make them a king over them. This displeased Samuel, and he prayed to the Lord.
What was the answer of the Lord to him? “And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." (1 Sam. 8:7.) This is very plain. Up to this time the government of Israel had been a pure theocracy. God was their King. He might act by Moses at one time, who is himself said in this sense to have been king in Jeshurun, (see Deut. 33:4,) or by Joshua at another, or afterwards by the judges who were successively raised up. Still, God was their King. All kings have their ministers and officers by whom they exercise their government, and God had his. But He himself was King. And hence, when the people desired to have a king like the nations round about them, God said to Samuel: "They have not rejected thee "—he was but an officer, a subordinate ruler—" but they have rejected ME, that I should not reign over them." And yet he acceded to their wishes. First, he let them have a king after their own choice, a great man after the flesh, "higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upwards." (1 Sam. 10:23, 24.) Of him God says: “I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath." (Hos. 13:11.) His reign terminated in death and disaster, and defeat both to himself and to the nation. Such is ever the fruit to self-willed man of his own perverse ways, and to teach Israel this lesson their first king was given them. But God had a deeper purpose in permitting them to have a king. In His eternal counsels, he had determined that all things should be subjected to the sway of Christ, the faithful and unfailing heir of all those dignities and glories committed for a while to one and to another, but forfeited by all through unfaithfulness and sin. Just as Christ is to inherit in the millennial earth, the lost and forfeited dominion of the first Adam over all this lower creation, so is it the purpose of God that He should inherit the throne of Israel. As the first unfolding of this purpose, we find that when Saul, by disobedience, had forfeited the kingdom, God sent Samuel to anoint one to be his successor, who was a man after God's own heart. He had not the natural attractions which were possessed by Saul; even the prophet supposed that his elder brother had been the one to whom he was sent; but David was the man of God's choice; and though rejected for a time and driven out by the willful one who actually occupied the throne, he was kept from avenging his own quarrel or lifting his hand against the Lord's anointed; and in due time, when Saul and his family were set aside, he was exalted by the hand of God Himself to the throne of Israel. I need not say how in all this David was the type of a greater than himself, rejected for a while, and meekly submitting to be so, but in the end receiving from the Ancient of days a kingdom, and dominion, and greatness under the whole heaven, so that all people, nations and languages, are to serve Him. Still less need I remark, that this inheritor of a greater glory than David's was David's son according to the flesh. David had many sons, and a long line of descendants, but there is one called David's Son, in distinction from all the rest. He who is "the root" as well as " the offspring of David, the bright and morning star." God's eye was upon Him when he made choice of David to sit upon the throne of Israel. And the covenant God made with David can only be understood in the light of this fact. It was when David had built Jerusalem, the place which the Lord had chosen to put His name there, and had brought up the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem, that having it in his heart to build a house for the Lord, the prophet was sent to him to forbid this, but at the same time to assure David of the faithful mercies of his God. Not to him only were these mercies pledged, but to his seed after him. "And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee; thy throne shall be established for ever." (2 Sam. 7:12-16.) There are evidently two things contemplated in this prophecy. The mere natural seed of David, Solomon and his successors on the throne, and also that blessed One, who, besides being the seed of David, is God over all, blessed forever. If the mere natural seed of David, Solomon and others, were not regarded here, there could have been nothing said of their committing iniquity and being visited with stripes. And if David's seed had not included the Messiah, David's Lord, there could not have been this unqualified promise that his house, his throne, his kingdom, "should be established for ever." Solomon was doubtless regarded, and that very prominently, in this prediction. He was the immediate successor of his father, and he did build an house for the Lord in Jerusalem. Under his reign, Israel for a little season enjoyed the extent of the dominion secured to them in the covenant with Abraham. (Compare Gen. 15:18-21 with 2 Chron. 9: 26.) In his reign, Israel attained a pitch of glory, as well as an extent of dominion, unknown in any other period of their history. Read the whole of 1 Kings 10. and 2 Chr.9., and if you compare these with Is. 60., which is a prediction of the future reign of Christ, you will not wonder that the one is so interwoven with the other, the type with the antitype, both in the passage we are considering, viz. God's covenant with David, and in the seventy-second Psalm, which is such a magnificent prophecy of millennial times, as typified by the peaceful reign of Solomon. But Solomon committed iniquity, and he and his successors were chastened with the rod of men. And even before Solomon succeeded to the throne, the failure and disorders of David's house were such that he was quite sensible that there was to be no immediate fulfillment of the highest promises made to his seed. The last words of David show clearly enough that he looked forward to a greater than Solomon, to One whose coming (after the manner therein described) is even yet future. "David, the son of Jesse, said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spike by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God; and he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God," (here is the distinct confession that there was no present fitness in his house for the introduction of blessing like this; that He of whom the Rock of Israel spike had yet to be looked for in the distance. But His coming was no less sure because it was not immediate,) "yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure: for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands. But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron, and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." How evident that the dying monarch and Psalmist of Israel here looks forward to the day in which " the Son of man shall send forth his angels to gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
It is only thus that we can understand such a psalm as the eighty-ninth. There we have the faithfulness of Jehovah pledged to David and his house. “My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him; and in my name shall his horn be exalted... Also I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth.. Once have I sworn by my holiness, that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for over as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven." Such are Jehovah's words. But immediately after we have a strain of affecting lamentation... "But thou hast cast of and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with thine anointed. Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant; thou hast profaned his crown, by casting it to the ground. Thou hast broken down all his edges; thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin. All that pass by the way spoil him: he is a reproach to his neighbors. Thou hast set up the right hand of his adversaries; thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. Thou hast also turned the edge of his sword, and hast not made him to stand in the battle. Thou hast made his glory to cease, and cast his throne down to the ground. The days of his youth hast thou shortened: thou hast covered him with shame." Nor is this a mere passing stroke of the rod immediately followed by the sunshine of God's favor. It is of such continuance that the prophet asks, "How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself for ever? Shall thy wrath burn like fire?" Yea, so long delayed is the fulfillment of this covenant of mercy with David's seed, that the Psalmist goes on “Lord, where are thy former loving-kindnesses, which thou swearest unto David in thy truth? Remember, Lord, the reproach of thy servants; how I do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people; wherewith thine enemies have reproached, O Lord; wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed." How this reminds one of the scoffers of the last days, saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?” And how the context of this latter passage lets us into the blessed secret of the delay which is such a trial of faith to the poor persecuted remnant whose cry we hear in the psalm from which we have so largely quoted. Blessed God! thy long-suffering, thy unwillingness that any should perish, is what affords occasion to the enemies to reproach, while waters of a full cup are wrung out to those who wait for thee. But thou shalt appear to the joy of these, and all thine enemies shall be ashamed.
It would obviously be beyond the limits of a paper like the present to notice all the passages in the prophetic Scriptures, which speak of the reign or kingdom of David's Son and Lord. But there are two great divisions of the period during which the prophecies as to it were delivered; the one prior to the incarnation of Christ, the other subsequent to it. Then again, the former of these divisions is subdivided by an event of much greater importance than is generally attached to it; I mean the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the captivity of the Jewish nation. Until this event occurred, God had a nation or kingdom on the earth. In that kingdom the descendants of David's royal line wielded the scepter and occupied the throne as the anointed ones of God. They held their dominion by virtue of God's gift of it to David and his seed, and God Himself was still dwelling at Jerusalem, and it was by His laws that the royal authority had to be exercised. It was God's kingdom. It is true that many of the kings rebelled against God and set at naught His laws. And here it was that the ministry of the prophets came in. They testified against the sins of the nation and its kings; foretold the judgments by which those sins were to be punished, and called both kings and people to repentance. And then, for the comfort of any who, either then or afterwards, should hearken to their voice, they foretold the glories of the coming kingdom of the true Son of David, the heir of all the blessings promised to David and his seed. This prophetic ministry, in its most definite form, began with Isaiah in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and includes his prophecies, with those of Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Micah. After the overthrow and captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, things were entirely changed. It was not that there was any transfer of royal authority from the house of David to some other family in Israel, as there had been from Saul and his house to David and his seed. No; the covenant with David and his seed is not broken; so far from this, the captivity was a part of the chastening promised in that covenant if the children of David should fail to walk in his steps. But there was a transfer of power; a transfer of it from Israel altogether to the Gentiles. But this transfer of power to the Gentiles did not constitute them God's kingdom. Israel had ceased to be such: The city which He had chosen for His habitation was destroyed; His presence was no longer manifested in the magnified temple which Solomon had built for his glory. Ezekiel had seen that glory remove first from the temple, (see Ezek. 10:18, 19) and then from the city altogether; (11:23;) and the temple where that glory had once dwelt was now burned with fire. Israel was given over into the hands of the Babylonian king; and to the king of Babylon it was said: "'Thou O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all." (Dan. 2:37, 38.) But, large as was this gift of power, it did not constitute Nebuchadnezzar God's anointed, nor did it make his empire the kingdom of God. All that had made Israel such was now removed from that guilty nation, but not bestowed on their Gentile oppressors. There was no shekinah at Babylon; no sacrifices there to the God of heaven; nor was there any divine code of laws to regulate the exercise of the imperial power with which the monarch was invested. One of the first acts of that power was to establish idolatry and punish with death all who refused to worship an idol. And all that is foretold of Gentile dominion is its being used in one act of rebellion against God after another, till it is destroyed at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then, we are told, " the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." (Dan. 2:44.) This is quoted from a prophecy delivered and recorded during the latter subdivision of the period preceding the birth of Jesus. Ezekiel in a manner belongs to both subdivisions. He was himself a captive in Chaldea, but his prophecy was in part addressed to those who still remained at Jerusalem. Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, belong to the period which succeeded the carrying away captive to Babylon. These last prophesied to a poor feeble remnant who had been permitted to return. Not that the dominion was restored to them, or the kingdom of God again set up. No; they were tributaries and subjects of the king of Persia; and the chief end for which they seem to have been restored to their own laud is, that among them Christ might be born, and that to them He might be presented as their long-expected king; the seed of Abraham and the Lord of David, as well as the seed of the woman and the Son of God. But, before considering this great crisis in the history of the world as well as of Israel, let us glance at some of the principal points in the Old Testament prophecies touching Christ's kingdom. In doing this, I can only refer to the passages without quoting them; and let those who may be interested in the inquiry consult them with their contexts, in God's holy Word. There seem to me to be four great leading traits in the prophetic picture of the kingdom so often spoken of There are, of course, innumerable details: I confine myself to the grand leading features.
1. He who is to reign as King is the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ps. 2: 6-9; 21.; 24.; 45.; 72.; 110.; 118:22-26.Is. 9:6, 7; 11:1-5; verse 10; 32:1, 2. Jer. 23:5, 6; 33:14-17. Ezek. 34:23, 24; 37:22-25. Dan. 7:13, 14. Mic. 5:2-4. Zech. 6:12, 13; 9:9, 10.) All these passages, and many more, under various names and titles, set forth our Lord Jesus Christ as the One who is to reign in Israel and over all the earth.
2. Jerusalem or Zion is the place of the special display of the glory of Christ on earth in His kingdom. (Is. 1:26, 27; 2:3; 12:6; 24:23; 27:13; 33:20, 21; 60:14; 62:1-12; 66:10-20; Jer. 3:17; 33:10, 11; Joel 3:16, 17. Mic. 4:7, 8. Zeph. 3:14-17. Zech. 2:10-12; 8:2-8; 14:16-21.) I say on earth, because the rejection of Christ by Israel and the putting off, as it were, of His reign, have made way for the unfolding of God's purpose, that His Son should have an heavenly Bride as well as an earthly kingdom; that He Himself should have a family in heaven, as well as a kingdom on the earth. But as to the kingdom of Christ on’ the earth, it is clear from all the passages cited, as well as from others, that in it Jerusalem has the chief place; that it is, so to speak, the center, the metropolis of Christ's kingdom on the earth—" the city of the great King."
3. In the kingdom of Christ, the Gentiles are to be subject to Israel; they are to hold a subordinate, an inferior place. This is important, for under the present dispensation the great truth is, that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free." For proof that it will not be thus in the kingdom of Christ, foretold in the Old Testament, see amongst others the following passages: Is. 11:10; 14:1, 2; 49:22-26; 60:3-16; 61:5-9; 66:12; Mic. 5:7, 8. Zech. 8:22, 23.
4. The effects of this reign of Christ will be universal righteousness and peace. (See Ps. 72; Is. 2:2.4; 11:6-9; 25:7; 59:19; 60:1-22. Mic. 4:1-5. Zeph. 3:9, 10. Zech. 14:9.)
The light shed on this subject by the further revelation of the New Testament may be considered, if the Lord will, in another communication. Meanwhile, the Lord grant us, in deep reverence of spirit, and yet in the joy which His own presence alone can inspire, to pursue these meditations on His Word, and to be by phew more and more separated from all else to Himself! W. T.