be regarded as mere accident that, within a few years after the appearing of this King who has thus gathered the Gentiles to His standard, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the nation scattered to the four winds of the earth--that the polity of Israel for ever ceased, that the Temple shook, and that revival was rendered thenceforward impossible? Shall we say that it is mere argument that for eighteen centuries--a period as long as that which elapsed from the proclamation of the law by Moses to the fulfilment of the law by Christ--this state of things has remained? Or should we not rather say that in this coincidence also there is a Divine significance--that He proclaimed with no uncertain sound the obituary of the old order and the commencement of the new--that God's seal is stamped upon the character of the Church, whereby Israel after the Spirit is substituted for Israel after the flesh? Do we ask what it was which gave the Jewish people this toughness, this vitality, this power? The answer simply is, "They are Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power, and by Thy stretched out arm." It was the consciousness of this close relationship with Jehovah, the omnipotent and ever-present God--it was the sense of their glorious destiny, which marked them out as the teachers of mankind. It was the conviction that they were the possessors of glorious truths, and that those truths must in the end prevail, whatever present appearances might suggest--this was the secret source of their strength, notwithstanding all their faults, and despite all their disasters. Do we ask again how it came to pass that, when Israel called to the Gentiles, the Gentiles responded to the call and flocked to its standard? Here, again, the answer is simple--"Because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel." The Gentiles had everything else in their possession, but this one thing they lacked--knowledge of God, their Father; and without this all their magnificent gifts could not satisfy--could not save them. Therefore, when at length the cry went forth, "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," they hurried to the fountains of salvation to slake their burning thirst. Culture and civilisation, arts and commerce, institutions and laws,--no nation can afford to undervalue these; but not only do all these things soon fade, but the people themselves fall into corruption and decay if the Breath of Life be wanting.