one fulfilment; and the fulfilment is a new prophecy. Wheresoever in the Church we perceive a new Galilee of the Gentiles, we may, upon the ground of this passage, confidently hope that the saving activity of the Lord will gloriously display itself. Chap. ix. 1 (2). "_The people that walk in darkness see a great light, they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them light ariseth._" "The people" are the inhabitants of the countries mentioned in the preceding verse; but they are not viewed in contrast to, and exclusive of the other members of the covenant-people,--for [Pg 76] according to chap. viii. 22, darkness is to cover the whole of it--but only as that portion which comes chiefly into consideration. _Light_ is, in the symbolical language of Scripture, salvation. That in which the _salvation_ here consists cannot be determined from the words themselves, but must follow from the context. It will not be possible to deny that, according to it, the darkness consists, in the first instance, in the oppression by the Gentiles, and, hence, salvation consists in the _deliverance_ from this oppression, and in being raised to the dominion of the world; and in ver. 2 (3) ff., we have, indeed, the farther displaying of the light, or deliverance. But it will be as little possible to deny that the sad companion of outward oppression by the Gentile world is the _spiritual_ misery of the inward dependence upon it. _Farther_,--It is as certain that the elevation of the covenant-people to the dominion of the world cannot take place all on a sudden, and without any farther ceremony, inasmuch as, according to a fundamental view of the Old Testament, all outward deliverance appears as depending upon conversion and regeneration. "Thou returnest," so we read in Deut. xxx. 2, 3, "to the Lord thy God, and the Lord thy God turneth to thy captivity." And in the same chapter, vers. 6, 7: "The Lord thy God circumciseth thy heart, and _then_ the Lord thy God putteth all these curses upon thine enemies." Before Gideon is called to be the deliverer of the people from Midian, the Prophet must first hold up their sin to the people, Judg. vi. 8 ff., and Gideon does not begin his work with a struggle against the outward enemies, but must, first of all, as Jerubbabel, declare war against sin. All the prosperous periods in the people's history are, at the same time, periods of spiritual revival. We need only think of David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah. Outward deliverance always presents itself in history as an _addition_ only which is bestowed upon those seeking after the kingdom of God. Without the inward foundation, the bestowal of the outward blessing would be only a mockery, inasmuch as the holy God could not but immediately take away again what He had given. But the circumstance that it is the _outward_ salvation, the deliverance from the heathen servitude, the elevation of the people of God to the