Things New and Old. THINGS NEW AND OLD. Matt. xiii. 52. THE Lord uses this form of words at the close of Matt. xiii. when He had been, either in the ears of the multitude or His disciples, anticipating the kingdom of heaven under new conditions. The kingdom of heaven, that is, the rule of the God of heaven among, or over, the people of the earth, was no new thing. Daniel had already told us of a day when the God of heaven should set up His kingdom, all nations and languages and people serving Him. The Prophets, generally, I might say, anticipated the day of the sceptre of Messiah, when the King of Israel shall be the God of the whole earth. But the kingdom of heaven, in such conditions as the Lord had been presenting it in that chapter, was altogether a new thing, foreign to all the thoughts and intimations of the Prophets. The name and word of Him who had ascended the heavens, preached and known abroad in all the world, while Israel was nationally under judgment, this was a new thing in the treasures of divine wisdom. Blindness of eye and hardness of heart, executed upon Israel as the righteous answer of God to them, who, when He called in grace and in healing, had no answer for Him; and upon this, the truth of God and the energies of His Spirit, found abroad in "the field," which is "the world," this was new, unknown, untold, by any of the prophets-at |