SERMON XXVI.

JOHN iv. 42.

We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeeti the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

THIS fourth chapter of St. John's gospel contains a narrative of our Saviour's visit to the town of Sychar in Samaria; and in the text we have the testimony which was publicly borne by the people of the place to the truth of his pretensions.

Extraordinary as the fact may seem, this portion of the evangelical history affords the most unquestionable documents of the truth of it, that the Samaritans of our Saviour's day not only believed in a Christ who was to come, but had truer notions than the Jews their contemporaries, of the nature and extent of the salvation to be expected from him, and of the means by which it should be accomplished: the nature of the salvation, spiritual-the extent, universal-the means, teaching. They expected a deliverance of the whole world from moral evil, by a person who should appear in the character of a universal teacher of the true religion.

Of these just views of the Samaritans, the books of Moses, which were the only part of the Jewish scriptures which the Samaritans received, were the only possible foundation. The conclusion therefore seems infallible, that prophecies do actually exist in some part of the books of Moses, which describe the Messiah as

a general teacher of the true religion, and express this character in terms which were clearly understood by the ancient Samaritans. If these prophecies are now not easy to be found, the difficulty must arise from the obscurity which time hath brought upon particular passages of those very ancient writings, which originally were perspicuous. If, by the assistance of Him who hath promised to be ever with us, we should be enabled to succeed in our attempt to do the injuries of time in some degree away, and to restore defaced prophecies of this great importance to their original evidence, we trust we shall have rendered some part of the service which we owe to that great cause to the support of which our talents and our studies stand solemnly devoted.

In my last discourse, I produced a passage from the book of Deuteronomy, which, in whatever obscurity it may have lain for several ages, with fewer and slighter emendations than are requisite to bring it to any other consistent meaning, admits an interpretation which makes it an illustrious prophecy to our purpose. You will recollect, that the passage in the proem of that prophetic song in which Moscs, just before his death, described the fortunes of the twelve tribes of Israel. My translation, which it may be useful to repeat, that the agreement and resemblance between this prophecy and some. others which I now purpose to consider niay be the ‘ more readily perceived, --my translation of the second and three following verses of the thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, is in these words:

“ Jehovah came from Sinai; “ His uprising was from Seir: “He displayed his glory from mount Paran, “And from the midst of the myriads came forth the

Holy One, “ On his right hand streams of fire. แ O loving Father of the peoples !

“ All the saints are in thy hand;

They are seated at thy feet, " And have received of thy doctrine. “ To us he (the Holy One) prescribed a law, “ Jacob is the inheritance of the preacher: “He (the preacher) shall be king in Jeshurun, When the chiefs of the peoples gather themselves

together " In union with the tribes of Israel.”

The interpretation of this remarkable passage will receive great confirmation from the elucidation of another prophecy, of an earlier age, which I now take in hand. The examination of this prophecy will consist of two parts. The first point will be, to ascertain its meaning, as it stands in our modern copies of the Hebrew text, without any alteration; and the second, to consider an emendation suggested by the old versions, which, without altering the sense, considerably improves the perspicuity and heightens the spirit of the expression.

When the patriarch Jacob was setting out for Padanaram, to form an alliance by marriage, according to the customs of those early times, with the collateral branch of his mother's family, his father Isaac's parting blessing was to this effect: “God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee; and thou shalt be a multitude of peoples.” This blessing was repeated, it seems, to the patriarch, in his dream at Luz; for though this circumstance is not mentioned by Moses in its proper place, in his narrative of that extraordinary dream, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, it is, however, apparent, by the words which in the forty-eighth chapter he puts into the mouth of Jacob upon his death-bed. “God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me--Behold I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee; and I will make of thee a multitude of peoples.” You will ob.

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serve, that it is not without a special reason that I choose in these passages to sacrifice the propriety of my English expression to an exact adherence to the letter of the Hebrew text, in the use of the word " peoples" in the plural. In the original language of the Old Testament, the word "people" in the singular always signifies some single nation, and, for the most part, the individual nation of the Jews; the plural word “ peoples" signifies many nations, either Jews and Gentiles promiscuously, or the various nations of the Gentiles, as distinguished from the Jews. Our translators, in this instance over-studious of the purity of their English style, have dropped this important distinction throughout the whole of the Old Testament; and thus the force and spirit of the original, wherever it depends upon this distinction, which is the case in many prophetic texts, is unhappily lost in our public translation. But, to return.

This same blessing was again repeated upon the patriarch's return from Padan-aram, when God appeared to him, and said-" I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee." It is the same word in the original which is rendered in our English Bibles in this third benediction, by a "company," and in the two former passages by a "multitude:" but it is of great importance to ob serve, that in the promise made to Abraham that he should be a father" of many nations," or, according to the margin," of a multitude of nations," a very different word is used. Were the marginal interpretation adopted, the terms of this promise to Abraham, and of the blessings pronounced upon Jacob upon three different occasions, in our English Bibles would be very much the same: whereas in the original they are essentially different; and the difference lies in the principal word, in the word which expresses the matter of the promise.

Now, as a sameness of the terms, if it really existed, would be an argument for assigning one and the same meaning to the promises, so a regular variation of the terms in which the promises to Abraham and to his grandson were conveyed, when the promise was repeated twice to Abraham-to Jacob three times, creates a strong presumption that the promises to these different persons, in which so striking a difference of the terms was so constantly observed, had different objects: and the event of things confirms the suspicion. Of Abraham, who was the common ancestor of the Israelites, the Arabians, the Idumæans, and many other nations of the East, it might be said with truth, in the literal sense of the words, “ that he should be the father of many nations." But, of Jacob, whose whole posterity was contained in the single nation of the Jews, I cannot see with what propriety it could be said that “a company of nations should come out of him," or that he should be “ made a multitude of peoples.” To say that nations or peoples stand only for tribes, is an ill-devised subterfuge of Jewish expositors: it is founded upon a principle which will ever mislead, because it is in itself false (though, by the way, it is the favourite assumption of our mo. dern Socinians, and is the foundation of their whole system), that the prophetic style describes little things by gigantic images. Even in the spiritual sense, the expression that Jacob should be a multitude of peoples, or that a company of nations should come out of' him, would be improper and unprophetic; for the various races of men, who, by embracing the faith of Christ, are become in a spiritual sense the children of Abraham and of Jacob, are in the same spiritual sense, by virtue of their adoption into the blessed family, become parts of the one nation of the spiritual Israel, and are no longer to be called in any spiritual sense a multitude or a com. pany of peoples or of nations. It is a just observation

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