_I will make Jerusalem a burden stone for all people._
Here the Jew may probably ask, How can Jerusalem, in the spiritual sense,
as signifying true religion, become a burden stone, or a cup of confusion
to the heathen? I answer, in every way. In the first place, by
frustrating, as it did, all their efforts to suppress and extinguish
it;—in the next place, by its opposing and outraging all their worldly
feelings, condemning their pride, and teaching humility, requiring them to
receive their religion from one whom they despised as the most degraded of
human beings, a crucified malefactor;—and, lastly, by stultifying all
their previous notions, enjoining the restraint and control of the
passions, instead of which their religion sanctified their indulgence as
an act of devotion. Thus was Christianity, in every way, a cup of
confusion, and a stumbling-stone to the heathen nations.
But against the spiritual exposition of the Old and New Jerusalem, as
symbolizing the Old and New Covenant, the Jew may, perhaps, further
object, that he was never taught to look for a New Covenant, and that he
finds no intimation of it in the Prophets. This being a question of fact,
rather than of reasoning, we must look to the Scriptures for the answer.
Without enumerating the many intimations of the sacrifices and ceremonies
of the Old Covenant, not being _intrinsically_ acceptable to God, but of
less estimation than the attributes of moral excellence, we find the
following direct declarations of a New Covenant to be established at the
Messiah’s coming, who is symbolically styled, _My servant David_. Thus in
Isa. lv. 3, we find, _Incline thine ear and come unto me; hear and your
soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even
the sure mercies of David._ Ezekiel also says, chap. xxxiv. 24, _And I the
Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the
Lord have spoken it; and I will make with them a covenant of peace_, &c.
And again in chap. xxxvii. 26, he says, _Moreover, I will make a covenant
of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I
will place them and multiply them, and I will set my sanctuary in the
midst of them for evermore._ But Jeremiah still more expressly declares
the superseding of the Old, and the substitution of the New Covenant;
while he describes the latter in terms equivalent to those used by Christ
himself, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Thus Jer. xxxi. 31, _Behold
the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant with the
house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. Not according to the
Covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by
the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my Covenant they
brake, although I was an husband to them, saith the Lord. But this shall
be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, After those
days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write
it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people._
Here we have clear intimation of a new law superseding the old, the
spiritual nature of the new being contrasted with the ceremonial of the
old, by its being written in the heart; while the stress laid by all upon
its everlasting duration, implies that the one preceding it was only meant
to be temporary.