The fig-tree is used by our Lord as a figure of the Jewish nation. It was to enforce upon them the necessity of repentance that He uttered His well-known parable, in which a fig-tree planted in a vineyard, fruitless after three years' visitation, is made to shadow the peril of their condition.

Israel had been of old God's vine, planted in a very fruitful hill, fenced and cared for as He only could care. But they had repaid it all as only man repays the toil of the divine Husbandman. They had brought forth but wild grapes; and He had to take away the hedge, and break down the wall, and lay the vineyard waste.

Out of the Babylonish captivity a remnant had been allowed to return to their land once more, and to be planted, not as the vine that once was, but as a fig-tree planted in the vineyard. This it was that God had now visited. Christ had come to His own, but His own had not received Him. He found but a cross; yet at the cross intercedes, like the dresser of the vineyard, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." So after the cross, Jerusalem gets the gospel, and, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, is digged about and dunged. Nationally, there was rejection still, and the Roman ax cut down the tree.

But there is still hope of a tree, though it be cut down ; and for Israel there is hope. The same prophetic Word that centuries before its occurrence predicted her long dispersion declares its end, their national revival, their partial return (still in unbelief) to their own land, the consequent judgment of God, inflicted by the hand of surrounding nations, which befalls them there, the deliverance of a repentant remnant in their last extremity by the coming of the Lord from heaven, and their final complete restoration and blessing.

It is only with a small part of this that we shall be occupied at present. The large part of it waits for fulfillment at a time which (near as it may be,) will find the present dispensation at an end, and when Christians will be with their Lord. Let us trace briefly what has been fulfilled only, and look at what is being fulfilled before our eyes, the witness given by a nation in its unbelief to Him whom it has rejected and still rejects.

Seven hundred years before it came to pass, the prophet Micah foresaw this rejection. Looking on to a day even yet future, he beholds the last trouble of Jacob, out of which they will be delivered, and announces the reason for all this coming upon them:"Now gather thyself in troops, thou daughter of troops :he hath laid siege against us :they smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. . . . Therefore will He give them up." (Ch. 5:i, 3.)

Here is a plain declaration of the reason why Jehovah delivers His people into their enemies' hand. But who is this "Judge of Israel"? The verse between the two that I have quoted gives a perfect explanation :" But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me who is to be Ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting!" Born at Bethlehem, yet the Eternal, spite of man's rejection, ordained of God as Israel's King,-could it be more perfectly declared that for their refusal of the Lord Jesus Christ they have been nationally given up?
But there is a limit to the period of this setting aside of the people:"Therefore shall He give them up until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth ; then the remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

Israel herself is this travailing woman :when she hath brought forth for God, (as yet she has not,) then will the purpose of His chastening be attained, then will He withdraw His hand and speak comfortably to her; and then, mark, "the remnant of His"-the divine Ruler's-"brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

That is, Israel will have again, as of old, her distinct place with God. Now, if a Jew be converted, he becomes a member of Christ's body, and there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In the time of which we speak, the present dispensation will be over, the body of Christ complete :a converted Jew will be henceforth once more a Jew.

The cause of Israel's long abandonment by God is here fully revealed in those very Old-Testament Scriptures which they own to be of God. But we see also distinctly that on their repentance they will be received nationally once more. In the meantime, as the apostle says, "Blindness in part is happened unto Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in ; and so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, ' There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." . . . As concerning the gospel, they are enemies,"-treated by God as enemies,-"for your sake; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake ; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." (Rom. 11:26-29.)

As long as the gospel-our Christian gospel-goes on, then, Israel (far from being brought in by it,) remain as enemies. The least true sign of national revival among them is a sign, therefore, of the gospel dispensation nearing its close. It is a sign that Christ is coming, that the blessing of the earth which comes with Israel's blessing (Rom. 11:12,15) is at hand ; and therefore that Christians shall be soon gathered home to be with Christ. And so the Lord says; after having announced His appearing in the clouds of heaven, He adds, " Now learn a parable of the fig-tree:When his branch hath now become tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh ; so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors." We do not see, indeed, nor can we as Christians expect to see, all the things of which He speaks, for His words clearly contemplate a Jewish remnant in Jerusalem after the Church is removed ; but the fig-tree beginning to put forth leaves we do surely already see.

In a book which has been recently issued in a second edition,* Dr. Kellogg has so well summed up the evidence of this that there can be no need to do more than refer to its deeply interesting pages. *"The Jews:or, Prediction and Fulfillment." By Samuel H. Kellogg, D. D. May be had from Loizeaux Brothers, 63 Fourth Avenue, New York. Price, $1.25, post-paid.* He there first of all reminds us how literally have been accomplished the prophecies of the long season of Israel's humiliation. They were to be scattered from one end of the earth even to the other; to go into captivity; serving their enemies in hunger, thirst, and nakedness; and among these nations they were to find no ease, nor the sole of their foot to have rest, with a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind,- great plagues, and of long continuance. They were to be left few in number, an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations (Deut. 28:41-67).

Their religious condition is pictured in a few striking words by Hosea :"The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." Thus, while not idolaters, they would be without the ordinances of their own religion. A strange thing indeed, but which must be the case while they are not in possession of the place where alone their offerings can be offered. It is significant that according to their own ritual atonement for their sins can be no longer made. How clear a testimony to them that the true atonement has been made !

As to the land itself, the predictions are no less exact. It was to become "utterly desolate." "The land shall not yield her increase, neither the trees of the land their fruits." (Lev. 26:20.) "I will bring the land into desolation ; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it." (5:31.) " Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house shall become as the high places of the forest." (Mic. 3:12.) "And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24.)

Details as to the accomplishment of these things are given by Dr. Kellogg; but it scarcely needs to follow him here, for they are facts more or less familiar to us at the present day. He goes on to consider the promises of their restoration to their land " in the latter days," the reunion of the ten tribes with the two (Jer. 30:31; Ezek. 37:), this restoration being final (Jer. 31:40; Am. 9:15) and complete (Ezek. 36:8, 10 ; Isa. 27:12). He notices also their political condition to be an independent one (Jer. 30:8), and (the history of their long apostasies at an end,) the sanctuary of God to be in the midst of them for evermore (Ezek. 37:28). In all this, he is still upon ground familiar, through grace, to an increasing number of believers in the literal truthfulness of such prophetic Scripture in the present time.

Our practical interest begins with Dr. Kellogg's book when he asks the question, "Have any signs and beginnings yet appeared of a literal fulfillment of the ancient promises to Israel, such as, if the literal interpretation of these promises be correct, we have sooner or later to expect?" He adds,-

"The answer which history gives to this question is clear as the sunlight. That answer is without doubt affirmative. It is the indisputable fact that for now more than a hundred years the Jews have been steadily rising out of that depth of subjection and abasement in which they had lain for centuries; and that, concomitant with this have appeared among both Jews and Gentiles many other exceptional phenomena predicted by the prophets, as to accompany or usher in Israel's final restoration. The facts which support this assertion are most impressive when we look at the past, and full of very solemn omen as to the swiftly approaching future."

The emancipation of the Jews from civil and legal disabilities began in the middle of the last century, the first act being the enfranchisement of the Jews in England in 1753, though parliament was compelled to repeal this the next year. About the same time, a Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, in Germany, by his influence upon his own people, and the effect of his life and writings upon the European nations, began the breaking down of hostile feelings on both sides. On the other hand, in France, as the result of manifold oppressions, both civil and religious, began the propagation of the reactionary doctrine of the absolute equality of men which brought about the revolution which convulsed at a later period, not only France, but Europe. In 1776, the United States of America embodied in their constitution this principle, that all men, without regard to creed or race, Gentile and Jew, should be held equal in right and privilege before the law.

"In Europe, the new and decisive movement began in 1783, when Joseph II. of Austria sounded the signal of the approaching revolution in an edict of toleration liberating the Jews throughout his dominions from the oppressions of centuries. By this decree, the odious 'body-tax' was abolished, and most of the vexations restrictions upon them (such as, for example, forbade the Jew to wear a beard, or to leave his house on the festival days of the church, or to frequent places of pleasurable resort, etc.,) were removed. All the schools and universities of the Austrian empire were thrown open to the Jews. The spirit of revolution was now abroad. The air was full of voices presaging impending change. In 1784, Louis XVI. of France also abolished the body-tax, which reduced the Jew, as far as possible, to the level of a beast. In 1787, Frederic William of Prussia repealed many of the oppressive laws against the Jews which Frederic the Great had enacted ….

"So things were going on, when the French Revolution, with all its unprecedented terrors, burst upon bewildered Europe. The Lord had said by the prophets that when the hour of Israel's deliverance should come, He would make them that had oppressed her 'drunk with their own blood' (Isa. 49:24-26), and that He would then take the cup of trembling out of the hand of Israel, and 'put it into the hand of them that had afflicted her' (Isa. 51:22,23). And so, as every one knows, it came to pass at that time. The great timepiece of the dispensation struck the predestined hour, the great revolution began, and Europe was straightway filled with fire and blood. Throne after throne went down in flame and judgment; and as the thrones of the Gentiles fell, everywhere fell with them the chains of ages from the limbs of Israel."

Space will not permit further detail. Dr. Kellogg next points out, from the thirty-seventh of Ezekiel, that a "tendency to external organization in the scattered nation was to be looked for, antecedent and preparatory to their actual reinstatement in their land and their conversion to God by the power of the Spirit of life." And he says, " In this again do we find fulfillment answering to prediction in the age in which we live." He adduces especially in proof of this "the formation, in 1860, of 'The Alliance Israelite Universal,' an organization which has for its object the promotion and completion of the emancipation of the Jews in all lands, and their intellectual and moral elevation, as also the development of the Jewish population of the Holy Land."

He proceeds to speak of their predicted wealth, to be derived from the Gentiles that oppressed them (Isa. 60:9; 61:6), and points out the startling way in which they are becoming the actual or virtual owners of the soil through a large part of Central and Eastern Europe.

"One of the liberal papers of Germany is quoted by the New-York Tribune as saying that ' the rapid rise of the Jewish nation to leadership is the great problem of the future for East Germany.' The writer justifies this opinion by the statement that 'all the lower forms of labor, in the workshops, the fields, the ditches, and the swamps, fall to the lot of the German element, while the constantly increasing Jewish element obtains enormous possessions in capital and land, and raises itself to power and influence in every department of public life.' "

Again, we are told,-

" ' It is a fact which can no longer be denied, that the population of the remote districts of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Roumania are only the nominal possessors of the soil, and, for the most part quite strictly, cultivate the land only for the Jews, to whom they have mortgaged their estates for their liquor debts.' 'In Russia, it is said already in 1869, seventy-three per cent of the immovable property of certain provinces in the west, where the Jews are the most numerous, had passed from the hands of the Russians into those of the Jews.'"

"According to Le Telegraphe, Constantina, Algiers, and Oran belong almost completely to the Jews. The whole trade of Algiers is in their hands; and, in consequence of high and usurious rates of interest, a large proportion of the natives are fallen into the power of the Jews."

Again, in the matter of education, " Every where, they have entered eagerly into the intellectual contest; and already, as compared with Christians, are found in a much larger proportion of their total number, among the educated and educating classes."In Berlin, where the Jews are but five per cent of the population, they are thirty per cent of the students. In the University of Berlin, at a recent date, out of 3,609 students, 1,302 were Jews. In the High Schools of Vienna lately, of 2,448 students, 1,039 were registered as Jews. Prof. Treitschke, of the University of Berlin, is quoted as saying that, " while in the whole German empire the proportion of Jews is only one in seventy-five, yet in all the higher institutions of learning the proportion of Jews is one in ten. Prof. Von Schulte argues, from the educational statistics of the German empire, that "it needs no prophet to foretell that the offices of state, the legal and medical professions, trade and industry, will pass in ever-increasing proportion into the hands of the Jews;" and he adds, "The educational returns show the same state of things in Austria also."

After the statement of many like facts, Dr. K. gives the opinion of M. de Lavaleye, the eminent publicist of Belgium, that "the rapid rise of the Jewish element is a fact which may be observed all over Europe. If this upward movement continues, the Israelites, a century hence, will be the wasters of Europe."

The increase of the Jews is another prediction (Isa. 60:22; Jer. 31:27; Ezek. 36:37), according to the book before us, being now remarkably fulfilled. Basnage, a hundred and seventy-five years ago, estimated their number to be about 3,000,000. The lowest estimate at present more than doubles this. A high authority reckons them at not less than 12,000,000. There are said to be among them a larger proportion of births, and an exceptionally low average of mortality.

There is much more of exceeding interest in Dr. Kellogg's book, but it must suffice us now to mention one thing only-the preparation for their restoration to their land which is evidently being made. The crippling of Turkey, the power in possession of it, the increased and increasing interest in the " eastern question " on the part of the powers of Europe, the effect of recent Russian hostility in directing the eyes of many of the Jews in those parts to the land of their fathers, lying nearly vacant for them,-with these things almost all are familiar. We are all aware, also, that they are increasing in number in the land. Dr. Kellogg's statement, however, will add definiteness to our knowledge. I quote briefly, and fragmentarily only :-

"Until the year 1841, only three hundred Jews were permitted to live in Jerusalem. In that year, this restriction was removed, though the Jews were still confined by law to a narrow and filthy district of the city, next to the leper quarters. In 1867, however, by a firman of the Sultan, this restriction also was removed, and the Jews were allowed, in common with all foreigners, to purchase and own land in Palestine without becoming subjects of the Sultan." " Many Jews began at once to avail themselves of the right. The movement was further accelerated in 1874 by the adoption by Russia of the German system of military conscription, whereby the Jews-for the most part previously exempt from military service-found themselves all obliged to serve in the ranks for their worst oppressor. At once began a movement of the Jewish population from Russia to Palestine." "The outbreak of the Jewish persecutions in Europe, especially in Russia, has still further quickened this Palestinian movement." "Mr. De Haas, lately U. S. consul at Jerusalem, numbers those there as high as 20,000. This estimate, which takes no account of Jews found in other parts of Palestine, is yet nearly one-half the whole number that returned in the restoration from Babylon. " Even before the recent Russian persecutions had given new impulse to the movement of the Russian Jews toward the Holy Land, The Jewish Chronicle wrote, "We are inundated with books on Palestine, and the air is thick with schemes for colonizing the Holy Land once more.'""There is abundant evidence that the desire for the restoration of the Jewish nationality in Palestine, however it may have died out with most of the comfortable Jews in Western Europe and America, is keenly alive and active in that larger part of the nation which is found in Eastern Europe. A writer in the Jewish Chronicle says,
'Israel must once again take up the staff of the wanderer, and abandon the graves of his ancestors. Where are the poor people to go? This question the Jews of Russia have themselves answered. The greater portion have determined to proceed to Palestine, the scene of our former glory and independence. 'The Russian Jews number about 4,000,000, or about a third of the whole Jewish race.'The Russian and Roumanian Jews,' again says The Jewish Chronicle, 'are bent on going to Palestine.

Whatever we may think or say as the practicability of the new exodus, it is evidently to take place. To all the objections that can be pointed out, the Jews of Russia and Roumania have one all-sufficient reply,–We cannot be worse off there than here! The movement is irresistible.'"

We close these extracts from Dr. Kellogg's book with sincere thanks to him for it. May our hearts be stirred as we realize in this budding of the fig-tree the sign of the summer at hand. While no signs are necessarily to precede the coming of our Lord, but we are to watch as not knowing the time, yet who can deny that there is all abroad in the air the voice of One who speaks in human history as the Governor of all its course; and that this voice says to us now, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"
"Surely, I come quickly."May His whole church be roused to give Him welcome, as it should!