A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

Another thing, that the Jews in their ancient writings mention as being now withdrawn, was the fire from heaven on the altar. When Moses built the tabernacle and altar in the wilderness, and the first sacrifices were offered on it, fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt-offering, as in Levit. ix.24.; and so again, when Solomon built the temple, and offered the first sacrifices, as you may see in 2 Chron. vii.1. And this fire was never to go out, but with the greatest care to be kept alive, as God commanded, Levit. vi.13. "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar: It shall never go out." And there is no reason to suppose the fire in Solomon's time ever went out till the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. But then it was extinguished, and never was restored. We have no account of its being given on the building of the second temple, as we have at the building of the tabernacle and first temple. But the Jews, after their return, were forced to make use of their common fire instead of it, according to the ancient tradition of the Jews. Thus the lights of the Old Testament go out on the approach of the glorious Sun of righteousness.

3. The captivity into Babylon was the occasion of another thing which did afterwards much promote the setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world, and that was the dispersion of the Jews through the greater part of the known world, before the coming of Christ. For the whole nation being carried away far out of their own land, and continuing in a state of captivity for so long a time, they got them possessions, and built them houses, and settled themselves in the land of their captivity, agreeable to the direction that Jeremiah gave them, in the letter he wrote to them in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah. Therefore, when Cyrus gave them liberty to return to the land where they had formerly dwelt, many of them never returned; they were not willing to leave their settlements and possessions there, to go into a desolate country, many hundred miles distant, which none but the old men among them had ever seen; and therefore they were but few, but a small number, that returned, as we see in the accounts we have in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Great numbers tarried behind, though they still retained the same religion with those that returned, so far as it could be practised in a foreign land. Those messengers that we read of in