PAGE 147

The book of Psalms has always been allowed both by Jewish and Christian churches to be a code of divine prophecy. Now one main subject of the Psalms, and that which chiefly bears the stamp and characteristic of prophecy, consists in predictive declarations and descriptions of a glorious, happy state of God's people upon earth, when the Lord shall reign and make his glory to appear in Zion, which will then be the joy of the whole earth, when he shall build up Jerusalem, and gather together the outcasts of Israel; nay, shall have the heathen for his inheritance and reign over them, for that the princes of the (heathen) people shall be joined to the people of the God of Abraham (47, 72). God will establish the seed of his David (his beloved, his Christ) for ever, and his throne from generation to generation (89).

This seat of his kingdom hath been prepared for him ever since the world began (85). The ungodly shall perish, and the horn of their power be broken, and the meek-spirited possess the earth (37).

These and a hundred other particulars relating to the future blessed reign of Christ on earth throughout the Psalms, were

PAGE 148

written, as he tells us, for them that should come after, and for a people that should be born, to praise the Lord (102). That this could not be meant of the times when David lived is plain from the unpromising state of things in his days, and from his many and grievous complaints of the overflowings and triumphs of ungodliness, when the righteous were so far from inheriting the land that the adversaries of the Lord everywhere lifted up their banners; nay, the prosperity of the ungodly and the tyranny of the wicked were at such a height that he had utterly fainted, as he tells us, but for his belief and hope in a better state of things, when he should be one day raised up again to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

How it went with the Jews afterwards, we may learn from their history and prophets, in the sad accounts they give us; from their origin down to this very day, they will perhaps appear to have been as stubborn and suffering a people as any upon the face of the earth: nor shall we be able to find any one period of their history wherein the blessings of the covenant which God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have as yet been fulfilled to them as a nation in any satisfying sense of the Promises, nor do they themselves pretend so much, but look forward for their accomplishment, whilst they remain ignorant of that Saviour who is already come and shall come again to be the glory of his true Israel (Jew, and Gentile of the inward circumcision) in his blessed kingdom, after saving them from their sins by a sound conversion. 116