But when the Messiah’s kingdom is the acknowledged subject, to look to political events for its fulfilment, is surely to run into the error of the Jews, and to disregard the intimation expressly given by him; who declared that _his kingdom was within us_; or as the prophets had previously foreshewn—_behold, I will put my law in their inward parts; and write it in their hearts_. One example more shall suffice, for shewing the superiority of the spiritual view, in affording the solution of passages, which upon any other must appear utterly inexplicable. It has been stated that Zion is also represented as a woman, and a mother; of which the most remarkable instance occurs in the following extraordinary passage in Isaiah lxvi. 7, 8. _Before she travailed she brought forth; before her pains came she was delivered of a man-child._ _Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children._ The Christian may perhaps suppose, as some have done, that Christ is the man-child here intended; but that cannot be. For Zion is the mother, and a mountain can never be literally understood to bring forth a man; the mountain is a figurative mother, and the child must be a figurative child. What does the mother figuratively signify? is then the question most likely to lead us to the nature of the child. We have already seen that this term is constantly applied to Israel, and especially with reference to their spiritual state of regeneration through Christianity. Such we may presume, then, is the meaning of Zion here; and that the regeneration of the Jews through Christianity is the birth and parturition here spoken of. Upon this view Judaism, or the Jewish Church will be the mother, and the Christian Church or Christianity her child—the man-child, who was ordained to rule all nations. Ps. ii. The next question is, how the birth can be said to have preceded the labour-pains. Mr. Lowth, to whom more than any other I feel indebted for much valuable assistance in explaining the Old Testament prophecies, supposes the labour-pains to be “the destruction of the Jewish Polity, making way for the growth of Christianity.” And this seems a plausible explanation, as these troubles of the Jewish Church followed the birth or promulgation of Christianity forty years. But the solution is only plausible; for the growth is not the birth; or if it be taken as the birth, then it no longer precedes but follows the labour-pains, for whatever effect the destruction of Judaism had in promoting Christianity, this effect was subsequent and not prior to that event; and thus the solution fails in the main point.