A REMARKABLE saying is reported by three of the Evangelists to have been uttered by our Lord on different occasions. "There are last that shall be first, and there are first that shall be last." It is evidently oracular in its character, and as such is both promissory and minatory; it is clearly intended to have a general and particular application, as intimating God's dealings, both judicial and gracious, with the children of men, collectively and individually. But it can hardly be doubted that it has, especially as recorded by St. Luke, a definitively prophetic and historic character, and that the subjects of its predictions are nations and communities, rather than individuals. Our Lord is, according to that Evangelist, primarily contemplating the existing and future position of the Jews and Gentiles with regard to the kingdom of God. He had just been addressing the Jews collectively, and anticipating the fact of their impenitence and unbelief, and of their consequent rejection and exclusion from the kingdom of God, notwithstanding their past and present privileges. He represents them as claiming admission to the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom on the ground of their relationship to Abraham, their possession of a Divine revelation, and His own affinity to them and presence among them. But their claim would be disallowed; they would find themselves repudiated, disinherited, degraded, and condemned. When they "shall begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; we have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets," He tells them that His answer will be, "I know you not whence

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ye are: depart from me all ye workers of iniquity." He adds, "shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out." He then places, in contrast with their disappointment and reverse, the unexpected, and to them incredible, advancement of other classes to the prerogatives of which they were to be deprived. They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God." In these words our Lord is clearly predicting the calling of the Gentiles. They correspond, in their relation to the foregoing, with his explanation of the parable of the vineyard: "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." immediately after this declaration that He uttered the words, "Behold there are last that shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." We can hardly doubt but that by the "last which shall be first" He means the Gentiles just spoken of, or some of them, and that by the "first which shall be last" He means the Jews. It may be added, that the fact that He is speaking here of the Jews nationally, receives confirmation from the close connection in which these words are placed by the Evangelist with His lamentation over Jerusalem and her children—that is, the whole Jewish people-which was uttered the same day. And from the tenor of this lamentation we must infer that He had in view not only the spiritual, but also the temporal, ruin and degradation which would be their punishment for their rejection of Himself and the grace and blessings of His Gospel.

We understand, then, that our Lord intended to affirm of the Jewish nation that, at the time when He spoke, they were "first"-pre-eminent among all people in religious advantages and spiritual and Divine blessings. St. Paul has summarily stated the chief of these in speaking of his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh, "who," he says, "are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." And in another place, when considering the question, “What advantage hath the Jew?" he answers, "Much every way: chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." They were the only nation upon earth, at that time, who possessed the knowledge of the true God, and of the way in which He chose to be worshipped. This was their inheritance, enjoyed by successive generations, through eighteen centuries, from the time of their great ancestor. They alone

had the inestimable privilege of a revelation of the being, attributes, and will of God, contained in books written by a series of men especially inspired and commissioned by God to communicate His truth to their fellow-countrymen of their own and succeeding ages. And now the long-expected Messiah, He to whom gave all their prophets witness, had appeared among them. They had "eaten and drunk in His presence, and He taught in their streets." "Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision, for the truth of God, to perform the promises made unto their fathers." "Unto them first, God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless them." And when our Lord was giving His last charge to His Apostles for preaching His Gospel among all nations, He reminded them that this must be done according to prophecy, by "beginning at Jerusalem;" and wherever they went forth in other lands, fulfilling their ministry, and found Jews, they deemed it "necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to them." Thus, then, they were, as a people, first of all people in the world under the new covenant, as well as under the old, in God's providential grace; first in time, nearest in place, most favoured in opportunity, highest in privileges and prerogatives; the aristocracy of mankind, the firstborn of its spiritual regeneration. What they might have been if they had recognised their position, and responded to their high calling, it is impossible to say. Undoubtedly their promises involved the possession of earthly as well as divine and heavenly dignities. The language of our Lord's lament over Jerusalem implies that He was ready to grant her at least peace, and security from oppression and ruin; and her preservation as the home of an independent and flourishing people, nationally subject to the Gospel of Christ from the beginning, would have necessarily made her the capital of Christendom, the spiritual metropolis of the world :

"Oh, had she known her day of grace, and flock'd beneath the wing Of Him who called her lovingly, her own anointed King, Then had the tribes of all the earth gone up her pomp to see, And glory dwelt within her gates, and all her sons been free." But Israel rejected their Messiah; and in so doing they rejected the counsel of God, and turned it against themselves. They put from them the Word of God, the good news of peace and salvation, and judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, and forfeited the blessings of the covenant made with their great ancestor. And they bequeathed their unbelief and disobedience, and its penalties, to the next and all subsequent generations. And so, from being first they became last. They have lost, for eighteen centuries and for ever, the opportunity and possibility of conducting the worship of God according to the law

under which they profess to live. They are placed beyond and beneath the whole Gentile world in the merciful designs of God for the conversion of mankind to Christ. They are the last, or among the last, that shall be converted. "Blindness has happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in;" that is, their unbelief and rejection of Christ shall continue until the great majority, or the whole, of the Gentile nations shall be admitted into the Church and Kingdom of God. And it is remarkable that so completely antagonistic is their nationality to the grace of the Gospel, that no one of their race can become a Christian without thereby renouncing Jewish nationality for his posterity. There have been converts from among the Jews from the first, and in every age of Christianity. But the descendants of these are not Jews; they have been absorbed into the Gentile Church and Gentile nations, and are now in no way distinguishable from Gentile Christians. And the same will necessarily be the case with all, how many soever, who are converted from Judaism to Christianity in our own times. Whether our Jewish converts consider their nationality a blessing or a curse, it is certain they renounce it for themselves virtually, and for their children actually, in becoming Christians.

But Israel had become last, not only spiritually, but temporally. In the political and secular senso of the word, they are last of the nations. They hated their liege Lord and King, and said, "We will not have this man to reign over us ;" and now they are excluded from His kingdom. But they said, also, "We have no king but Cæsar," and from that day to this they have been, in all lands of their dispersion, under alien princes and rulers. They challenged the curse which the less guilty Roman endeavoured to avert from himself, when they compelled him to shed the innocent blood of the most Just. "His blood," cried they, "be upon us and our children." And is it not upon their children still? Anticipating their impending calamities and national ruin, St. Paul testified, "The wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." But that uttermost wrath, inspired as he was to predict it, was probably, in its nature and duration, far beyond his worst fears. Its terrors are mitigated, but in substance it remains. Other people, whose country has been overrun by invaders, have perished entirely, or have been displaced, dispersed, and absorbed among the rest of mankind; but this people continues to be a people, preserving its identity and national characteristics, and yet possesses no political unity or even existence. It is indeed, in its secular relations and position, lower than the lowest of all organized communities; clearly it is the last of the nations. And not only last, but a witness and example to all of national punishment, both spiritual and temporal, for national sin.

But, at the time when our Lord uttered the prophecy which we are considering, there were those who were then "last," and, according to the sense in which we observe the expression must have been used, last in their spiritual condition relatively to the Gospel, and last in their temporal condition relatively to political or secular consideration. Which of the then known nations of the world might most justly have been regarded as, in both these senses, "last"?

Far to the west of the land of Israel-the land of Christthe first land of the Gospel-was the continent of Europe; in the centre of which was the imperial city of Rome. Far to the west of Rome, and beyond the continent of Europe, were a people perhaps entirely unknown to the inhabitants of Judæa, with whose existence, local habitation and name, even the enterprising and all-conquering Romans had but recently become acquainted; and concerning whom they still possessed but slight and confessedly inaccurate information. The people of Britain were described by a Roman poet of that age as "entirely shut off from the whole world." Another, composing a special prayer for his sovereign, when intending an expedition against them, speaks of them as the remotest nation of the terrestrial circle. More than half a century afterwards, on a similar occasion, another writer expressed a hope that the country and its inhabitants might now become somewhat known. Later still, it was held to be the last habitable region of the world, and on the confines of perpetual desolation. Such was the position of our island locally with regard to civilization and the Gospel. Socially and morally it was more distant still. The officer whom Julius Cæsar sent to survey the coast had not ventured to land on account of the ferocity of the natives. A poet, before referred to, describes the Britons as savagely cruel in their treatment of foreigners. Their religion was one of the most hideous forms of idolatry. They sacrificed to their gods captives taken in war. One of their most solemn rites was a wholesale immolation of human victims-men, women, and children.

Nor were the tribes by whose descendants this country is principally peopled in any more favourable position or condition with respect to the Gospel. The Germans and Scandinavians, especially those who dwelt in the remote north-west of the continent, were only known to the dominant race in Italy as hordes of fierce barbarians. They, too, in their dreary swamps and gloomy forests, which seemed impenetrable by Roman civilization and Roman arms, practised the horrid rite of human sacrifices. And four hundred years after the commencement of the Gospel era, when they invaded and colonized this land, they were Pagans still. And when, within two centuries after that period, they received Christianity, they received