temporary institutions, that Divine purpose is for ever overleaping every limit, every transient localization and restraint, and claiming as its proper sphere "all the souls that are" and shall be. Thus, for example, Abraham and his family are chosen for special teaching and privilege; but it is in order that in him and them "all the families of the earth," without distinction of name and race, and whatever the moral condition to which they have sunk, "may be blessed." 1

In what sense this great promise was meant, how wide and far-reaching its scope, we are taught by two of the greatest Christian apostles. St Peter standing in the temple at Jerusalem, and addressing part of that vast multitude "out of every nation under heaven" which had come together to keep the sacred Feasts that immediately followed the death of Christ,—many of whom, remember, had clamoured for his death and invoked his blood on their heads-did not scruple to say to them, "Ye are the children of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities." This, then, as St Peter read it, was the blessing promised to Abraham and his family,-the blessing of 1 Genesis xii. 3; and xxii. 18. 2 Acts iii. 25, 26.

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becoming a blessing. They themselves were to be redeemed from iniquity, to be recovered to righteousness, by Him who was at once the seed of Abraham and the Son of God; but they were to be saved in order that from and through them this great salvation might extend to "every one" of the Jews and to "all the kindreds” of the earth. This salvation had indeed been sent to the Jews "first; " but that very word “first” implied that it was to be sent to the Gentiles also.

And what St Peter both implies and asserts St Paul emphatically confirms. Writing to the Celtic and Asiatic tribes of Galatia, he argues 1 that as many as believe in Christ become, by their very faith, children of faithful Abraham; and affirms: "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached beforehand the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed."

Both the holy Apostles therefore saw, and teach us to see, in the promise made to Abraham a disclosure of the Divine intention to redeem men, to make them just, or righteous, by the Gospel of his Son; and both affirm that this intention extends to the whole family of man, though the one applies it mainly to the Jewish tribes and the other to the

1 Galatians iii. 8.

St Peter, indeed, does not

nations of the Gentiles. shrink even from asserting that this blessing has been "sent," has been conferred upon the most flagrant and enormous sinners the world then held, those who, because they loved darkness rather than light, had with lawless hands put to death the very Life of men.

And from the time at which this great and farreaching promise, or gospel, was given to Abraham, the universal scope of the Divine Redemption is insisted on with growing emphasis even in those Hebrew Scriptures which we too often assume to be animated only by a local and national spirit. That such a spirit is to be found in them is unquestionable; but it is equally unquestionable that from the very first we may also find in them a generous and catholic spirit which contemplates the salvation of the whole world, and that this deeper broader spirit more and more disengages itself from all that is national and local in them as the years roll on. The Psalmists, for example, are full of the happiest and largest forecasts. When they speak of the coming Messiah they are at the furthest remove from claiming the blessings of his reign exclusively for themselves. On the contrary they say, “His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun and men shall be blessed in Him; all nations shall call Him blessed."1

1 Psalm lxxii. 17.

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They look forward to an age when "the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and the kingdoms shall

serve Him." 1 They constantly breathe forth the invitation, "O praise the Lord all ye nations; praise Him all ye peoples,—an invitation, by the bye, which St Paul cites when he is arguing that Jesus Christ was sent, not only to confirm and fulfil the promises made to the Hebrew fathers, but also "that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy."3 And, in fine, the Psalter closes with the noble, far-resounding, yet most characteristic, strain, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord." 4

Nor do the Prophets come behind the Psalmists of Israel; rather they excel them in the large gladness with which they recognize the breadth and length, the height and depth of the Divine Redemption. I need not detain you by quoting the noble strains in which Isaiah and the major prophets depict the golden close of time, the age, or ages, during which a regenerated race is to dwell on a renovated earth. They are familiar to you; they have entered into the heart and reappeared in the poetry of all Christian races. From him who, because he so clearly foresaw the day of Christ, has been christened "the Evangelical Prophet” take only this one sentence; and take it mainly

1 Psalm cii. 15, 22.
3 Romans xv. 11.

2 Psalm cxvii. 1.

4 Psalm cl. 6.

because St Paul echoes it back, and interprets it as he echoes it. It is Jehovah who speaks these words by the mouth of Isaiah: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none other I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bend, and every tongue shall vow."1 Could any words more emphatically declare it to be the Divine purpose that the whole earth, to the very ends of it, shall be saved, that every knee shall bow in homage before God and every tongue take the oath of fealty to Him? Are we not expressly told that this declaration, since it has come from the righteous mouth of God, cannot return to Him void, but must accomplish its object, that object being the salvation of the human race? St Paul echoes this great word, and interprets it in his Epistle to the Philippians; and though on his lips it gains definiteness and precision, assuredly it loses no jot nor tittle of its breadth. He affirms that, because Christ did not clutch at his equality with the Father, but, to fulfil God's ancient promise, humbled Himself to manhood, to servitude, to death, therefore "God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, in order that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow"-not only every knee of man, 2 Philippians ii. 6-11.

1 Isaiah xlv. 22, 23.