When David had slept with his fathers above two hundred and fifty years, the Prophet Hosea (iii. 4) foretels their long dispersion and future restoration under their Messiah on David's throne, according to according to the covenant. "The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without a teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and DAVID THEIR KING, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness IN THE LATTER DAYS."

And nearly two hundred and fifty years later than Hosea, we find the same hope was cherished during their captivity, and taught them by the Prophet Ethan. "I have made a COVENANT with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant: THY SEED WILL I ESTABLISH FOR EVER, and build up thy throne to all generations." (Ps. lxxxix. 3, 4.) "My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my COVENANT shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and HIS THRONE AS THE DAYS OF HEAVEN. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and

their iniquity with stripes.

Nevertheless my

loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. MY COVENANT WILL I NOT BREAK, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my not lie unto David. HIS

holiness, that I will

SEED SHALL endure FOR EVER, AND HIS THRONE AS THE SUN BEFORE ME. IT SHALL BE ES

TABLISHED FOR EVER AS THE MOON, AND AS A

FAITHFUL WITNESS IN HEAVEN." (Ps. lxxxix. 28-36.)

Such was the language of the inspired writers from the death of David till the prophets had concluded the books of Old Testament Scripture. And from such language the people were very consistently and very constantly taught to expect that their Messiah would reign over their nation on the throne of David.

This

Such was the expectation, such the belief, till the fulness of the time was come, when "God sent forth his son, made of a woman.' woman was of the house and lineage of David. Mark the words of the angel addressed to her, "Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the LORD GOD SHALL GIVE UNTO HIM THE THROne of his father David, anD HE

SHALL REIGN OVER THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL FOR EVER, AND OF HIS KINGDOM THEre shall be NO

END." (Luke i. 31-33.) What words could be better suited to encourage the belief that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh to fulfil the covenant made with David? And what reason have we from Scripture to doubt that they were intended to encourage that belief? Truly none. From the birth of Jesus to his death, from his resurrection to the end of Scripture, nothing is said to gainsay such a belief concerning him. On the contrary, it seems impossible to understand the language of the New Testament, if we do not believe that Christ came to fulfil the covenant with David in its literal sense. There was, indeed, an error, and that a most important one, made both by his disciples, and by the people generally.

It was not an error in fact, but an error in time. They were right in supposing that Jesus was come in the flesh to reign upon the throne of David, as king over the people of Israel; but they were wrong in supposing that the time of his first advent was the time of his coming to reign. Hence, when the people were about "to take him by force to make him their king" (John vi. 15), Jesus did not rebuke them, or deny his claim to the kingdom, but simply conveyed himself away, because his time was not yet come. Why

did he not rebuke them?

Because they had person and temporal

judged rightly concerning his rights. Moses had told them, "The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me, unto him shall ye hearken." (Deut. xviii. 15.) That is to say, this prophet shall be a temporal ruler with supreme authority. And David had foretold a successor to his own throne, and the prophets had carried the promise from age to age; and all these prophecies of Moses, of David, of Hosea, of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of the Psalmists, and of the rest, the Jews had been taught to apply to their Messiah. And they were right in this. Notwithstanding, then, they erred in time, Jesus did not rebuke them, because they were right in fact.

Nay, so far was Jesus from discouraging the popular belief in truth, the national creed-that their Messiah was to be a literal king upon earth, that when he was accused before Pilate for " saying that he himself was Christ a king," and Pilate asked him, saying, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" he confessed and denied not, but said plainly, I AM. (Luke xxiii. 1-3; John xviii. 37.) And though it was written in scorn over his head upon the cross, yet the superscription told nothing less than the literal truth when it

proclaimed, "THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS." (Matt. xxvii. 37.) The chief priests (always the enemies of Christ)—the chief priests, indeed, denied his claim to the title, but their evidence helps to show that Jesus never refused it. They said to Pilate, "Write not the King of the Jews, but that he said, I am King of the Jews" (John xix. 21); and he never contradicted this accusation. To the latest hour of his life, even in his last sufferings upon the cross, the oftrepeated accusation was suffered to pass uncontradicted. "Let Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe." (Mark xv. 32.)

It is well worthy of note, that when Jesus died, he left both his followers and his enemies under the impression that he had come in the flesh, claiming to reign upon earth over the people of Israel, and that upon the throne of David. And when he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, he did not remove this impression from their minds, but rather confirmed it.

Thus, when he drew near to those two who were going to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 21), in reply to their desponding observation, "We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel," Jesus did not say, "You misunderstand the object of my coming in the flesh; my human