family of Judah, preserved in the New Testament, thus much I think is certain, we have the genealogy of Solomon and Coniah in Saint Matthew, and that of Nathan in Saint Luke. And mark the termination of the royal branch in a solitary virgin! the lineal issue now must fail for ever; Coniah must now of necessity be "written childless" in the genealogies of Israel. The tree of his pedigree is finished. The honours and regal rights of the family must now be transferred to some collateral branch, a female cannot be enrolled among the sons, the first-born sons, of David and of Solomon. Joseph, the son of Heli, her espoused husband, the head of the line of Nathan, must stand for her, as the son of her father Jacob on the tables, to whom by marriage she is to convey the rights of her family.

Some writers, however, on the subject, I think with great probability, and evidently supported by the numbering of the fourteen generations, maintain that the Joseph mentioned in Matthew i. 16, as "the husband" or "man of Mary," was, in truth, not her affianced husband, but her father, literally the son of Jacob, and that Joseph, the father, was the only male child or man, through whom the blessed virgin could connect her name, with the genealogy of Coniah and Solomon. Thus Mary stands not in the twelfth generation, as she must have stood if she were the daughter of Jacob, but, as she should do, in the thirteenth generation, as a daughter of that Joseph whom Jacob begat. And thus we have in the fourteenth generation from

the Captivity, "the Christ of God,"-" the Holy Offspring of Mary's unpolluted womb," born miraculously, in right of his virgin mother, "King of the Jews:" and the prodigy announced to her progenitor Ahaz is accomplished, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel."

At the annunciation of his birth, the promise of the kingdom is repeated: "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." The blessed Jesus, "born of the seed of David according to the flesh," "made of a woman," did not, as we all know, during his First Advent, "sit upon the throne of David." But he compares himself, with respect to this matter, to a person of noble birth, who is going into a distant country, to receive the investiture of his royal authority-as the circumstances of the times explain-from imperial hands; and then to return again.

That epocha is contemplated in the prophecy now before us: and at the time of God's "sending the rod of the Son of David's power out of Zion," we find with astonishment that the family of David upon earth is not extinct; that several branches of it are among that first restoration that finds its way to Jerusalem, and is besieged there by the last enemy. Four distinct branches of the royal house are distinguished as mourning apart, on the discovery that Jesus of Nazareth, whose name they, with their fellow-citizens, held in abomination, is

indeed their king. The families enumerated areof David, of Nathan, of Levi, of Shimei. Joseph, the son of Heli, as we have seen, on the anticipation of extinction of the regal house of Solomon, was set down as David's representative and heir. He, we have every reason to suppose, died without issue. The Virgin's Son was rejected, at any rate, and now "numbered with the dead." But the scribes and genealogists of the family would readily point out the legal heir to Joseph's adoptive rights; he would be, of course, the supposed representative of the elder branch. Nathan's own "inheritance would not be marred," his house would have its representative in another son. And it appears that two other of his sons, Levi and Shimei, or Semei, (Luke iii. 24, &c.) had in similar ways their own distinct inheritances. And these four families of the house of David are now actually in existence, and are hereafter to be manifested among that first restoration, of which we have treated before.

We saw reason to conclude that this restoration consisted of a people, not converted to the Christian faith, but now :

"In that day shall be a fountain
Opened for the house of David,
And for the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
For sin and for uncleanness."

It is at this time that the guilt of that blood which their forefathers so impiously imprecated upon themselves is removed. (Joel iii. 20, &c. Isaiah iv.)

"But Judah shall dwell for ever,

And Jerusalem shall remain from generation to generation;

And I will purify them of the blood shed by them, which

I had not purified ;

And Jehovah will dwell at Zion."

"And there shall be a shoot of Jehovah,

Beauteous * and glorious,

Even a sucker from the earth,

Elevated, and spreading its boughs,

For the escaped of Israel.

And there shall be that remaineth in Zion,

And that which is left in Jerusalem,

Holy shall it be called,

Every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem;

When Jehovah has washed away

This filth of the daughter of Zion;

And when this blood of Jerusalem

Shall be removed from the midst of her,
By the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning."

And this is the prayer of the same penitent, (Ps. li. 14.) "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness," &c.

How severe these chastisements will be, that reduce this restored people to that small "cut-short remnant," on whom the Lord will shew his mercy, we may judge from what is here said in the prophecy of Zechariah: (ch. xiii.)

"And it shall be in all the land, saith Jehovah,
Two parts thereof shall be cut off, and die;

But a third shall be left therein.

And I will bring that third through the fire,
And I will refine it as silver is refined,
And will assay it as gold is assayed.

They shall call upon my name,
And I will answer them.

I will say, This is my people,
And they shall say, Jehovah is my Elohim."

Thus, while the enemy was being prepared for that destruction foredoomed, their armies led to the destined spot, the Lord had, in the midst of these great judgments, separated his preserved remnants. That of Judah and of Ephraim in "the desert of the peoples," and that at Jerusalem, in the midst of a siege where half, or a division of the city is seized by the enemy. This was his last effort. He now "comes to an end, and none helps him." Now the Elohim of Israel is manifested to be Jehovah--the self-existent Deity come into the world, incarnate in the person of the Son, who now "takes to him his great power, and reigns;" and all his enemies are made his footstool.