of glory, after which, by an act of terrible retribution, the whole Jewish economy, both civil and ecclesiastical, was utterly exterminated, or swept off by the "besom of destruction" from the face of the earth. The question of our present verse follows quite naturally in the train of such a contemplation. Hath God then entirely rejected His ancient people? Hath He wholly and conclusively cast them away? to which question Paul's answer is a prompt and emphatic negative; and, in confirmation of which, he quotes himself as a specimen. He himself was an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham and tribe of Benjamin, or as he elsewhere says, an Hebrew of the Hebrews-yet, so far from being an outcast, was a convert to the new faith, and in full possession both of its hopes and privileges. It is perhaps somewhat gratuitous in some to imagine that he particularises his tribe, because it was the last and least of the twelve, and at one time indeed on the eve of its extermination-as all the more striking illustration or proof, that, great and signal though the days of their calamitous visitation had been, yet "the Lord will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance." But, instead of straining at ingenuities of this sort, let us be satisfied with the idea, that Paul meant nothing more by the specification of his tribe, than simply to authenticate his genealogy as a Jew, and so make it all the more palpable that he incurred no forfeiture thereby-seeing that he was not only 1 Psalm xciv, 14.

himself gifted with the unsearchable riches of Christ, but commissioned to preach, and thus make a full tender of them to others also.

Ver. 2, 3. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.' God did not reject all Israel. He did not cast off those of whom He foreknew, and who were the objects not of His prescience only, but of His predestination to eternal blessedness. Whom he did foreknow

them he did predestinate." We are here reminded of the expression, that “ they are not all Israel which are of Israel." God knoweth His own. He hath known them from the beginning, and all His purposes regarding them shall stand.

And these gracious purposes of the Almighty often extend to a greater number than we think ; and of this the apostle gives a most memorable historic illustration in the case of the prophet Elijahwho cast a despairing eye over the land of Israel, and could not recognise over the whole length and breadth of it, even so much as one true worshipper. He made complaint to God of a universal apostacy

grounding, as is often done in all sciences and all subjects, a hasty generalisation on his own limited and personal experience. But, God seeth not as man seeth. He knew the children of His own election, His own "hidden ones," as they have been

termed; and could discern no less than seven thousand, when the prophet, gifted and endowed as he was, could not fix on a single individual. God knew them now as well as foreknew them (ver. 2) from all eternity; but it is altogether worthy of observation, that it is not by their election that He marks them out to Elijah. He does not read their names to him out of the book of life in heaven, or make any revelation of the secret purposes respecting them which He had from everlasting. He singles them out to the prophet by a sensible and a present mark, by a great and palpable act of obedience to His will upon earth. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.'-Ver. 4.

Now we hold it of great theological importance to notice this peculiarity. God might have told Elijah of His primitive decree respecting these men. But no He prefers telling him of their present doings. Known to Himself are all His works, and among the rest, the state of these seven thousand men from the beginning of the world; and on this high and transcendental ground, He could have told the prophet of their safety. But, instead of this, He chooses what may be called a lower and experimental ground, on which to indicate or make known to him the condition of these men as children of God's own family. bowed the knee to Baal; and this

They had not

He thought to

be ground enough on which to satisfy the mind of

Elijah-thereby maintaining and exemplifying the distinction between the secret things which belong unto God, and the revealed things which belong to us and to our children.

And surely if God, even at the time of a special and extraordinary communication to one of His highest prophets-when telling him of these seven thousand men-reserved the secret of their predestination, and laid all the stress upon their practice -Surely it is not for us, unvisited by any such illumination, to explore the dark recesses of a past eternity, or seek to open the book of God's decrees, that we may find the names of the persons who are recorded there. There is a better method, and one nearer at hand, by which to assure ourselves that we are the subjects of a blessed ordination, even by doing as these Hebrew saints in the days of Elijah, by keeping ourselves unspotted from the world. The Lord knoweth them that are His, and so knew them from all eternity. But man knoweth them that are the Lord's in another way; and this in virtue of the perfect, the never-failing harmony, which obtains between the election and the sanctification. It is true that God predestinates to eternal life, but never without predestinating those whom He designs for this glorious inheritance to be conformed to the image of His Son.1 Election is anterior to character-Yet so unbroken is the connection between them, that character becomes a criterion by which to ascertain the election. For 1 Romans, viii, 29.

this we need not aspire to the inaccessible steeps which are above, but have only to persevere in the toils of our appointed task below. "The Lord knoweth them that are his," and some there are who love to carry upward their speculation there, even to the highest point of a high and supralapsarian Calvinism. Let not this supersede the carefulness wherewith every Christian should observe, nor yet the earnestness wherewith every Christian minister should urge the saying "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity."

But there is something more in this verse which we have not yet adverted to-fitted to animate and cheer the heart of him who eyes with despondency the present moral and religious state, whether of the country or of the world. We mean the superiority by which God's estimate, or the true estimate, of what was still good in Israel, exceeded in amount that of the prophet. The even so' of the next verse warrants our making this application. Elijah's imagination was, that he stood alone; but God knew better, and told him of seven thousand who were like-minded with himself. And so are there many in this our day, and sometimes the more saintly and spiritual are the most liable to this miscalculation, who, as they contemplate the prevalence of infidelity and wickedness around them, underrate the Christianity both of their own neighbourhood and of the nation at large. The 1 2 Timothy, ii, 19.