Page 191 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXVII. 385

The meaning therefore seems incontestable, save to
men whose minds have been corrupted by the Patristic
or Puritan schools, who can see none of the ways of
God in Israel for the earth, any more than they read
aright His heavenly counsels for the church; and this
because the starting-point of both, though in different
forms, is the substitution of self for Christ. Their
interpretation of prophecy in particular is vitiated by
this fatal mistake, which practically razes the hopes of
Israel from the Bible and lowers ours to a mere succes­
sion to their hope and inheritance with somewhat better
light and privilege. It is a part of the first and widest
and most tenacious corruption of Christianity against
which the apostle fought so valiantly. And it comes
in the more insidiously, because it seems to those under
its influence that they are pf all men the most distant
from the false brethren Paul denounced. To their
minds the truest guard against judaising is to deny that
the Jews will ever be reinstated as a people, or be restored
consequently to their own land. All the predictions of
future blessedness and glory to Israel they turn over to
Christendom now or to the church in glory. Most
pernicious error! For this is exactly to judaise the
Christian and the church by making them simply follow
and inherit from Israel. The truth is thus swamped;
Israel's bright prospects are denied; Gentile conceit is
engendered; and the Christian is rendered worldly, in­
stead of being taught his place of blessing on high in
contrast with Israel’s on the earth.
But there is another and connected revelation. The
revival of Israel as a people is not all that the prof het
here learns and communicates. This was given in the