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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 5

Constitution of the Kingdom

Constitution of the Kingdom.

A nation requires religion, laws, and government for its well being. Israel being God's nation, he only could of right confer sovereignty upon it. He gave the tribes their religion, their civil institutions, and their governors, which he constituted by a covenant styled the Old Covenant, because he intended to supersede it by an amended covenant called the New. The New Covenant* grows out of the promises made to Abraham concerning the everlasting possession of the land by the nation under the Christ. The things of this covenant are matters of faith and hope to Israel, and "the called" from Abraham, till the Christ shall reign over the Twelve Tribes in the land for the Olahm, when they will become matters of fact. The things of the Abrahamic covenant were peculiarly, and in a few years after him, exclusively the hope of the descendants of Jacob, among whom, when in Egypt, transgressions began to prevail. They served the gods of Egypt, and did evil—Josh, xxiv. 14. Because of these transgressions the Mosaic law was added—Gal. iii. 19—to "the hope of the covenant" and sacrifice, which covenant was of no practical force in national affairs, because the mediatorial testator had not come and had page 17 not died—Heb, ix. 16-17. The Mosaic law or covenant was designed for the instruction of the nation in the things pertaining to its hope, as well as for the organization and regulation of its affairs as the kingdom of God. The law was their school master until the Christ, the promised Seed of the covenant came—Gal. iii. 24; and contained within it "the form or representation of the knowledge, and of the truth"—Rom. ii. 20. When the time comes to place the nation of Israel under the new covenant of the kingdom, the representative things will have been removed, and "the knowledge and the truth" will alone remain.

* Called the New Covenant, because, though made previous to the Mosaic, kept in abeyance in the letter of the Word, until the seed should come to whom the promises were made.