ful!" With these, greater blessings than were clearly known to David, before our eyes, we may still adopt his beautiful language:-"Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed, and delivered from the hand of the enemy; and gathered them from the east, and from the west; from the north, and from the south." No Christian, with all the blessings of the Gospel in his mind, could have devised more appropriate phrases to express the mercy of God in the redemption of man, than those in which David has here described the deliverances of his people Israel; let us take care that, when we adopt his language, we cultivate his spirit also; he saw but "as through a glass, darkly," the truths which we see "face to face;" yet his adoration and praise were such as we cannot hope to imitate. Let us labour to imbibe some portion of his pious disposition; and whilst we utter his words with our lips, let us endeavour to feel his sentiments in our hearts, and express them in our lives!

1 Psalm xxxiii. 1.-Prayer-book translation.

SERMON XIX.

THE MIRACULOUS DELIVERANCES OF HEZEKIAH,

KING OF JUDAH.

2 KINGS XIX. 19.

Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.

THERE are few passages in the Old Testament history which more strongly fix the attention, or excite the feelings, than the chapter from which the text is taken. The chapter preceding prepares the way for the narrative which is so wonderfully closed in this; and the effect of the whole history on the reader, is to excite in the minds, even of us who are so far removed from the event and its consequences, a feeling

of honest triumph that the Almightyshould thus conspicuously magnify the glory of his own name, and the honour of his people Israel. Let us, then, look back a little into the Jewish history, in order that by a view of the situation and character of king Hezekiah, we may perceive how worthy he was for whom the Almighty should do this, and how great was the effect which such a deliverance was calculated to produce, on the Jews, and on surrounding nations.

It is well known that, on the death of Solomon, his kingdom was divided into two parts his son Rehoboam succeeding to the dominion of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin,—and the other ten choosing Jeroboam for their king. These two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, or, as the latter was sometimes called, from its principal tribe and the situation of its capital,Ephraim, were never afterwards united; and this division was not only a cause of weakness to both, but led to unnatural wars with each other, which tended still

when Isaiah is predicting happier days to each, he mentions among the coming blessings, that "Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim1."

Separated, however, they continued, till they were both finally destroyed; and, to ensure this separation, and to prevent the ten tribes from returning to their allegiance to the house of David, Jeroboam established, and his successors on the throne of Israel encouraged, a sort of modified idolatry,-setting up two golden calves, one in the central position of Bethel, and the other in the remote city of Dan, to which the ten tribes were to go up to worship the Lord, instead of resorting, as they were bound to do by the law, to the holy, but now rival city of Jerusalem. One degree of idolatry soon led to another; and the kings of Israel, from corrupting the worship of the true God, soon fell into the snare of worshipping the false gods of the heathen around

them. This wickedness arrived at its height under Ahab, who, having married Jezebel, the daughter of the king of Sidon, introduced into Israel the abomination of the Sidonians, the worship of Baal, or the sun. From this time, therefore, the kingdom of Israel gradually sunk into sin and profligacy, and, in the same proportion, into misery and disgrace. With the kingdom of Judah, however, the case was different. Though many of its kings were vicious, and some idolatrous, yet many of them served the Lord God of their fathers, and were to the same degree prosperous and great. Amongst the latter class was Hezekiah, the king to whom the narrative before us refers. Succeeding a father who had been even more idolatrous and depraved than any of his predecessors, it was his pious wish to restore, in all its original purity, the worship of the one God of Jacob. "The temple was cleansed; the rites restored with more than usual solemnity; the priesthood and Levites reinstated in their privileges; every vestige