his necessary obedience to the original mandate of Isaac; who, after telling him that he had made Jacob lord over him, proceeds to say that he had also sustained Jacob with corn and wine; and as if this comprised all that was most essential, adds pathetically, "And what can I do now unto thee, my son?" The corn and wine are, therefore, as to the mode in which Isaac meant to confer them, really given away from Esau; and we must conclude that his posterity cannot be sustained by them in the same especial manner in which Jacob's posterity can; and that corn and wine were bestowed upon Jacob's posterity in an especial, or mystic, manner, is evident from the certainty, that the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, which Isaac had alike conferred upon the brothers, would in a common way afford it to each.

We have then to seek among the remote fulfilments for some statements, to show that Isaac's blessing did eventually confer the corn and wine in an especial, or exclusive manner, upon Jacob's posterity.

It is distinctly shown in Scripture, that Ishmael

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was born of the flesh; and also distinctly that Esau was obnoxious to God: he, therefore, could not be the promised seed which was to be born of Isaac. Jacob then must either be the promised seed, or one spiritually born, from whom the promised seed might descend; and one born of the spirit can be spiritually sustained as well as bodily.

When then we find, that upon the miraculous deliverance of the posterity of Jacob from the bondage of Egypt, they were instructed, and enjoined, by the divine word, to commemorate for ever their escape, by the feast of unleavened bread and the drink offering of wine; do we not perceive in that ordinance a remote fulfilment of the mystic blessing of Isaac, when he exclusively endowed Jacob's posterity with what he termed the sustenance of corn and wine? And the ceremony of taking them at the appointed times has ever since cemented that people, and distinguished them from all other nations, and no doubt mystically sustains them; and, as if in continuation of that divine ordinance, when our Saviour, who was descended in perfect generations from Isaac, dispensed a somewhat

new covenant from the bosom of the old one-he, as if in lineal succession, ordained likewise a sacramental memento like unto it, of bread and wine ; by which we of the new covenant might also for ever commemorate his glorious death, and our deliverance thereby from the bondage of sin. And although the new covenant is as yet more generally accepted of by Gentiles than Jews, it still holds the purport of Isaac's blessing to Jacob in the elements of bread and wine; because when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, and the blindness of the Jews removed, they will, upon accepting the new covenant, and taking the Lord's supper, perceive that it is but a slightly varied continuation of their own feast of unleavened bread, and the drink offering of wine; and in which there is probably that hidden manna, promised to him that overcometh, that is, to him that receiveth worthily. But THIS bread and wine the Mahometan cannot taste, or be sustained by, having renounced all allegiance to either of the covenants of the revealed God of Abraham. The Mahometan, therefore, cannot be nourished, or sustained by those ordi

nances which conferred the predicted bread and wine upon Jacob. And thus do the posterities of Ishmael and Esau remain beyond the pale of the inheritance, which Sarah originally declared that Ishmael should do, and which Rebekah afterwards prevented Esau from obtaining: while we of the new covenant, instructed by our Lord himself, pray daily for bread.

LATER PROPHECIES RESPECTING EDOM.

THE whole chapter of Obadiah treats upon the subject of Edom and his confederacy, describing it apparently in the different stages of its course.

First, in the second verse, as "small among the heathen; thou art greatly despised." Then in the third verse, giving intimations of a dominion which "the Lord will bring down;" adding, at the sixth verse, the following corroboration of Jeremiah's information concerning the future discoveries to be made in respect to Esau, "How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!" And the last verse of this explicit chapter says, "And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.".

The fourteenth verse of the thirty-fifth chapter of Ezekiel also, when addressing Mount Seir, apparently alludes to the end of the world, as thus: "When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make