all their religious observances were an abomination to him; and that he considered them as Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not specified in what the wickedness consisted which rendered them so hateful in God's sight, except that their rulers were rebellious against Him, and that the poor were oppressed. The chapter therefore serves merely as a general preface, constituting the summary of God's charges against Judah, the particulars of which must be sought for elsewhere.

When the language which is applied by the Prophets and by our Lord to the Jews, has been applied in this Journal, and in other places, to the present state of Great Britain, it has been objected by some, who nevertheless agree that the history of the Jews is written for our ensample," that the application is strained, because the forms of the Church of England are sound, however corrupt its administration may be that such language might be justly applied to the Papacy, whose apostasy was openly sealed at the Council of Trent; but that it could never be just towards a pure church, such as that of England, or of Scotland, with their orthodox Articles, Confessions, Creeds, &c. All such arguments would be equally valid against the use of this language towards Judah: the formularies of the church of Judah were sound; it had never apostatized, as the house of Israel had done; no idols had been erected in the temple at Jerusalem and yet such are the terms which the Holy Ghost applies to it. Moreover, in many passages Jerusalem is declared to be far more abominable in God's sight than her sister Samaria: "Thine elder sister is Samaria, and thy younger sister is Sodom; yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations, but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways. As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done as thou hast done; thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they," &c. (Ezek. xvi. 47–51; see also chap. xxiii.) The objection, therefore, falls to the ground; and every term which can be found applied to the Church of Judah may be properly applied to the Church of England, if the same crimes are found in it also. Whether these are or are not, remains to be considered.

The first chapter is a prophecy complete in itself: the next prophecy occupies from the iid to the vth chapter, both inclusive, and enters into somewhat more of detail. It begins by proclaiming a period, called the last days, in which the mountain (or kingdom and church) of Jehovah shall be established on the top of all other mountains, and that all other nations shall flow into it; when the law and word of Jehovah shall go forth of Zion; and when universal peace shall be established. Many other things are mentioned as contemporaneous,--that the Lord alone shall

be exalted, and man abased, in that day: that the Lord then arises to shake terribly the earth; and the cause of God's wrath is the pride of the people, and trusting for safety to other things than to Him: that the land shall be purified by burning; and that the people have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

It is obvious that none of these circumstances have as yet been literally and fully accomplished. No kingdom or church is established into which all others flow; the law of Jehovah does not go forth of Zion; universal peace is not established; the Lord alone is not exalted, nor are proud men abased, &c.: neither is it strictly true, but in a very limited sense, that the Jews ever cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, or despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. This was doubtless done to a certain degree; but a much greater extent of the same crime must be looked for, and must be rife on the earth, when it provokes the Lord to arise to punish it.

There is another charge, also, laid against the people, which is often repeated by various prophets, and which is the KEY to the right application of all their writings to the present day: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of? For, behold, Adon (Christ), Jehovah Sabaoth, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water; the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator; and I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them" (instead of strong men in Christ); " and the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." Thus, then, the besetting sin of the people was leaning upon human wisdom, human learning, human power, human courage, human eloquence, human skill; and the judgment was to be by causing the wise men to do foolish things; the learned men to be snared in their learning; the powerful to become weak; the brave, cowardly; the eloquent men to become empty babblers; and the skilful to labour in vain. But the worst judgment of all is, that their rulers should be childish, and that the people shall be led by puerile guides. In conclusion, it is intimated that this judgment is not final, but only one of a series, which shall entirely destroy the nation. The same judgment is announced in the Apocalypse, under the vision of trumpets; but into this we cannot now

enter.

The next chapter (vi.) unfolds still more of God's purpose: it

contains a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ in his glory, as we know by John xii. 41; in which it is foretold that a judicial cause of spiritual deafness, blindness, and want of understanding, shall be inflicted on the nation; and which shall remain as long as the people are scattered, the cities of Judah without inhabitants, and the land desolate; but it was not carried into effect until pronounced by the lips of Jesus himself (Matt. xiii. 13), nor until the Romans had utterly taken away their place and nation.

All the particulars described in these six chapters are equally applicable to Great Britain. We confess it was not without being somewhat appalled, nor without misgivings, that we at first read the charges brought against the religious portion of the community in England, in the Dialogues on Prophecy, and in Mr. Irving's Sermons on the Last Days. An attentive consideration of the subject, and an earnest desire to look at all things in the light of the written word, and apart from private partialities, or national or sectarian prejudices, have convinced us that the picture pourtrayed in the above works is but a feeble sketch, and by no means wrought out with all the minuteness of which it is susceptible: at the same time it is not to be forgotten, that what then required proofs to be sought for with some pains, now start up before us, unsought, every day; and that the very journals which were most violent in their accusation of calumny, said to have been brought against the religious world, are now the publications which afford the most abundant evidence of the accuracy of the picture. A series of Letters have been lately addressed to J. E. Gordon, Esq., M.P., by M. S. G., bringing forward the very same charges, but in much coarser language.

In church and state the avowed preference for human to Divine aid is glaring; and we are not aware of any parallel to it in history. The Atheistical mania of the French Republic was of too short duration, and bore too much the appearance of a symptom of mad excitement, rather than of a settled purpose of uniform life, to be an exception to the above assertion. Men are become so dead to the spiritual aspect of political actions, that the tendency of them must be reiterated in many ways before they can be brought to perceive it. The casting down of this nation from its exclusive Protestant standing, rather than risk a civil war; the refusal to appoint a public fast, a day of humiliation for our national sins; the reluctance with which it was ultimately conceded by the Government; the manner in which it was ridiculed by many of the people; the obvious preference given to Reform Bills, &c., to the favour of God; the systematic desecration of the Sabbath by the holding of Cabinet Councils; the mockery of the pestilence which had been seen to

be advancing to these shores for upwards of two years; the rejection of the Bible from the national schools of Ireland, in order to conciliate the priests of the Popish apostasy; and, far beyond them all, the open preference that is given by the Evangelical, and by every other party of religionists, to human learning, instead of the Spirit of God; does indeed put a despite and contempt upon the living God for which we shall in vain seek similar instances in the worst times of Israel and Judah.

No. II.

The next prophecy which we propose to examine, with reference to these days, is that contained in the chapters of Isaiah xxiv.-xxxv., both inclusive. "Bishop Lowth is of opinion that they refer to the three great desolations of Judea by Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and the Romans; Bishop Horsley, to the general tribulation of the latter ages, and the succeeding prosperity of the church in the end of the world." These chapters are differently separated by different commentators, and without any necessity. The xxivth opens with announcing the general subject of the prophecy, which is the throwing of the whole state of society into confusion; into a moral, political, and ecclesiastical chaos; out of which the Lord shall bring forth His new Eden. "Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof: and it shall be as with the people, so with the prince; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him the land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled, for the Lord hath spoken this word." The prophet proceeds to assign, as the cause of this visitation, that "the inhabitants have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, and broken the everlasting covenant." Now the everlasting covenant is the covenant in Christ-not the Mosaic covenant, which was to pass away: it is impossible, therefore, not to carry on the time of the fulfilment of the woe to the Christian dispensation. Moreover, the system upon which the judgment comes is called, in ver. 10, "the city of confusion," or Babel-a term only applicable to the actual state of our churches, but never applicable to the worst period of the Jewish church. "When thus it shall be in the midst of the land," it is said, in ver. 13," among the people, there shall be" a few scattered individuals who "shall lift up their voice for the majesty of the Lord," and proclaim the coming kingdom of Jesus; in which, also," the host of the high ones," who are the opponents and oppressors of the meek of the earth, are to be punished 66 ON THE EARTH." The fol2 ૨

VOL. V.NO. II.

lowing chapter (xxv.) contains the song which is to be sung when these events occur: the 8th verse of this is applied by the Apostle to the time of the resurrection, at the second coming of Christ. The next chapter (xxvi.) is a similar thanksgiving, to be sung by the restored Jewish nation. Chapter xxvii. announces the destruction of the person or mystery represented under the figure of Leviathan; and the 12th and 13th verses give some details of the manner of the restoration of the Jewish people.

The xxviiith and xxixth chapters enter with considerable minuteness into the state in which the church shall be when these mighty events before detailed are transacted. Although the two chapters are separated by many learned commentators, upon some loose notions respecting the time of their delivery, it is not without a wise and beneficent purpose that the church has ever preserved them in their present juxta-position. The one is necessary for the right understanding of the other. Of the latter, Bishop Horsley observes, "that it predicts the final vengeance that would be executed on the enemies of the true religion;" and Mr. Townsend says, "the Assyrian being at this time the most powerful foe and terror of God's people, stands as the type of the irreligious faction leagued against the church of Christ."

The first of these chapters commences with denouncing a woe upon Ephraim, and the second with denouncing a woe upon Judah. Thus the whole nation is included; the two tribes, with their orthodox ritual and temple service, equally with the ten tribes in apostasy at Samaria, with their golden calves. Ephraim is addressed as in a flourishing condition, which shall be suddenly overthrown by a certain "mighty and strong one, who, as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand." The suddenness of this destruction is again set forth by divers similitudes at ver. 4. At the time when this calamity falls, 66 the Lord of Hosts shall be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people; and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate." But even these are not exempt from a particular delusion which is universally prevalent: the whole body of the people, residue and all, have become the victims of it, although a few find grace to escape.

This delusion is set forth as an "erring through wine:" it is said, that "through strong drink they are out of the way the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine; they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment." As in the first chapter of this prophet, the disgusting loathsome