“RABBI” DUNCAN

ASSEMBLY ADDRESS NO. 2

Monday, May 21st, 1860

Dr. Duncan said:

Our love to Israel was manifested early on our own exodus from the house of bondage; let it be held out steadily. Let us in this intimate the love of Jehovah, Israel’s God, who hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew, whose gifts and calling are without repentance; to whom, while, as concerning the gospel, they are enemies for our sakes, they still, as touching the election, are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. This mission is peculiarly a work of faith and labor of love. It is also pre-eminently a trial of these graces. “Go, preach, beginning at Jerusalem”—Jerusalem, the rebellious house! The words of a mission to the Jews, given of old, and still in force, are these—“Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them. For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of a hard language, but to the house of Israel. Not to many people of a strange speech and of a hard language, whose words thou canst not understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee. But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee, for they will not hearken unto me; for all the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted. Son of man, all my words that I shall speak unto thee, receive in thine heart, and hear with thine ears; and go get thee unto them of the captiviy, and speak unto them, and tell them, Thus saith Jehovah: whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear” (Ezek. III). Followers of Him who hath loved Israel with a love of perpetuity, let us prove that ours is the love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown. There is a time and a season, appointed of the Father, when “all Israel shall be saved.” The written vision makes this much plain. “But the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie,” though it tarry. Meanwhile there is the remnant according to the election of grace to be gathered into the sheepfold of the Shepherd of Israel, our good Shepherd. Never since apostolic times was the number of believing Jews so great as at this present time, though in no age has a small remnant according to the election of grace been wanting, as has been shown in an interesting historical work by one whose loss we now deplore. Gathered long since into the fold here below, gathered now into yonder fold above, Da Costa has left us—Da Costa the friend and guide of Cappa-dose (whom may God long spare to Israel, to Holland, and to the universal church of Christ), Da Costa while he lived, the prince of Holland’s poets, and greater far, a prince and a mighty man in Israel, in whom we and our mission have lost a zealous friend and able helper. Help, Lord, for the godly faileth! The daughter of Zion is the very personification of desolation and woe. Jehovah hath cast off His altar; He hath abhorred His sanctuary. Her gates are sunk unto the ground; her princes are among the Gentiles; the law is no more; her prophets find no vision from Jehovah. “O daughter of Jerusalem, what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great as the sea; who can heal thee?” One can—One who can do all things. One who knows that these dry bones can live, and who has resolved and said that they shall. “For the Lord will not cast off for ever. But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies” (Lament. III.).

Poor Jew! guardian of the ancient archives of Divine revelation, thou art thyself a library of most varied, grand, solemn and touching lessons, from oldest time to this youngest day. Child of the patriarchs, child of the promises, brother according to the flesh of my Lord the Christ, God over all, blessed for ever; from Ur of the Chaldees came thy father (the father of us all), unwitting whither he should go, but called by El Shaddai to walk before Him and be perfect, while newborn idolatries had begun to spread with the spread of Noah’s children over a lately flooded world, which, in the wisdom of long-suffering of God, should be permitted to last till the Seed promised to Abraham should come, in whom all families of the earth should be blessed. Wandering in the land of promise, with out a foot of ground thine own, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob!” But hard thy children’s lot in the land of Mizraim—the house of slaves. But high is the hand, and strong is the outstretched arm, that brought thee out, when marching through the flood on foot, thou wast glad in Him. Espoused in the waste howling wilderness, and brought into the land which thy Husband-king had purchased, thy tribes were gathered around His sanctuary, and great was the Holy One in the midst of thee. David He chose from following the ewes with young, and raised him to feed His people Israel, promising to build him a sure house, making with him an everlasting covenant of sure mercies. As time proceeds, sins bring judgments; mercy brings revivings and restorations.

At last the Lord of hosts comes to His temple. He comes to His own, and His own receive Him not. Despised, rejected, crucified, He prays, “Father, forgive them.” Rising again He commands, “Go preach, beginning at Jerusalem.” Exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, He pours on Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplications; multitudes are turned unto the Lord,—Look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him,—and, pardoned, rejoice in Him. But with some of them God was not well pleased, for they did always resist the Holy Ghost; as their fathers did, so did they. “They pleased not God, and were contrary to all men, forbidding to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved; wherefore the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.” Yes, I look on a Jew, whose “table has been made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a recompense unto him; whose eyes have been darkened that he may not see, and his back bowed down always,” and hear a voice which thunders in my ears, “How shall we escape, if we neglect?” “Because of unbelief they were broken off;” “If God spared not the natural branches, take heed that He spare not thee.” Reminded of our privileges, as no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-heirs with the saints, and of the household of God, gratitude becomes steeped in pity, when I reflect, with no room for pride, “The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in.” Rejoicing on the one side, I mourn on the other, but not without hope; for if I cut out of an olive tree, wild by nature, was graffed, contrary to nature, into a good olive tree, how much more shall the natural branches be graffed into their own olive tree!

With the destiny of Israel has always been linked that of the universal race of man. The casting away of them hath been the reconciling of the world, and the receiving of them will be life from the dead. We live—all thinking men feel that we live—in eventful times, pregnant with mighty change. The hand of Providence is hurrying on the mystery of God—the building of mercy —from the tablet of decree and the delineation of prophecy, into accomplished structure. All things proclaim that the end draws nigh. The Protestant Church in America, Ireland, Scotland, England and Sweden has experienced a begun revival; the wasting vial is being poured out fast and full on the seat of the apocalyptic beast, the fierce oppressor of Israel, who now, in decrepitude, is weakly stealing and holding fast a Hebrew child. The most ancient and most firmly compacted systems of idolatry, as of India and China, have been undermined and concussed, speedily to fall. The long waxing lune of Islam is rapidly decrescent; and all things portend that the time when the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in is nigh—even at the door. Then, too, shall Israel’s blindness be removed, the heart turned to the Lord, the veil taken away, and Jehovah be one, and His name one, in all the earth. His feet shall again be turned to the old desolations—“In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the earth; whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.”

Meanwhile, let us pray, hope, work, and wait. Israel waited long for us; longer for us than we have yet had to wait for Him. He waited, for he had a promise that we should be brought; and so we have been. We also have a promise concerning Him. It cannot fail; and we shall yet receive Him. And the long separation once happily ended, how ardently shall we salute one another with a holy kiss, when we meet to part no more!

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