The hand of God in Jewish history.
I. IN THEIR LONG DESCENT. Origin of nations is generally obscure. As difficult to find as the source of the Nile. The Jews are like their own Jordan. They are the only people that can trace their descent. "Children of Abraham." Two friends were visiting the museum at Berlin. One said how strange it was to look at the intellectual features of Julius Caesar, and to think of his triumphal march northward when the Britons were but roving barbarians. "Speak for your own ancestors," answered the other, who was a Jew; "as for mine, they were singing the psalms of David, and worshipping God as members of his true Church on earth, centuries before Julius Caesar was born!"
II. IN THE VICISSITUDES OF THEIR HISTORY. "As the modern traveller surveys the remains of the arch of Titus at Rome, he feels bewildered in endeavouring to realize the distant date of its erection; and yet it commemorates only the last of a long series of Jewish dispersions. You read of the fragments of antiquity dug up from the ruins of Babylon, and your mind is carried still further back than by the Roman arch; but the Jew possibly formed that Babylonian brick, and imprinted on it those arrow-hearted characters. The pyramids of Egypt take your imagination still further back; the Jew not improbably helped to build the oldest of them. Time was young when God said to Abram, 'I will make of thee a great nation'" (Dr. Harris). In the various dispersions we see the fulfilment of Scripture (Deuteronomy 28:64-67) and the preparation for the gospel of Christ (Acts 2:5, Acts 2:9-11).
III. IN THE PERMANENCY OF THEIR CHARACTER. From Jacob down to our own day we see the same prevailing elements of character. Their very physiognomy is that painted on the walls of Thebes. They are still a separate people. Their purity of blood, their education and training throughout the ages, have raised them high physically and intellectually. In the struggle for existence, they seem an instance of the survival of the fittest.
IV. IS THE GREATNESS OF THEIR DESTINY. Preserved—but why? Surely for some great purpose. Witnesses for God. Servants of righteousness. Ministers of the cross (Romans 11:1-27).—F.