This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ...state, and there is little likelihood that it ever will. His conception of a great world-monarchy, embracing Egypt, Assyria, and Palestine, is now sin1p1Y 3 monument to his genius. J eremiahs noble thought of 3 regenerated Israel is also destined to remain an unrealised ideal. The model king of Davidic type never came. There were some good kings, such as Hezekiah and Josiah, but they came far short of the prophetic ideal, and most of the kings were such as would break a prophets heart. But it does not follow that prophetic ideals were idle dreams containing not even a kernel of truth. 1 Isa. liii. 11. In the first place, if there was any reality in the election of Israel, then the thought which underlies all Messianic prophecy, so-called, must be true, viz. that a great good is coming. When Jehovah chose Israel, He had a purpose in view which must be fulfilled, He commenced a process which must reach its consummation, He planted a vine which must bear its fruit. If no good is coming, then Gods election of Israel is a failure, or rather it never took place; it is simply a notion of the Hebrew people having nothing answering to it in the realm of reality. What form the coming good is to take may be beforehand very uncertain; of its nature the prophets themselves may have had but a vague idea largely coloured in the case of each prophet by the circumstances of his own time. In consequence of the vagueness of their delineations, it may not be easy for us afterhand to detect a very striking or convincing correspondence between their pictures of the good that was coming and the good that came through Jesus Christ. It is certainly not so easy as many people imagine. But this at least ought to be true, that the prophets were...