them; the smallest cloud upon the inner firmament blackens and spreads until it encompasses the soul in midnight, as we allow our attention to settle upon it. Let the mind be drawn away from itself, and the dungeon shall loose its dreariness, and the rack and flame, their agony.

Secondly Of all subjects, religion has the most power to draw away the mind from itself. David felt more interest in the ark now, than he felt in the loss of his throne, the wreck of his kingdom, the peril of his life. And so the good man ever feels in his religion. What a soul-abstracting power has Christianity!-Look at it how you please,-look at it as a history of the past, or as a prophesy of the future, look at it as a system of truth, or as a revelation of love, and of all the divine perfections; and what power can you imagine more effective to engross the entire attention of man? Paul felt this: "Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss," &c. If the philosophic dictum be true, that all sensation is in the soul; that soul can feel but little, if any, pain, whose thoughts and sympathies are absorbed in Christianity. Oh to live in this upper and enchanting realm of thought!

We learn from the feelings of David in the text:—

II. THAT SPIRITUAL RELIGION RECOGNIZES GOD'S SUPERINTENDENCE UNDER TRIAL. "If I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back again." He saw God in his trials. He regarded the superintendence of God, as being personal, sovereign, and adequate.

First: He regarded it as personal. If "I shall find favor." I. There are some who do not believe in God's superin-. tendence of the world at all; there are others who believe in His superintendence over the whole, but not over the part; the great, but not over the small. The good man believes in his superintendence over every part of the universe, even the minutest. David regarded God as having to do with him, individually.

scriptural.

This view is as reasonable as it is

Secondly: He regarded it as being sovereign. If “I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again,” &c. As if he had said, It is all with Him; everything connected with my future life and destiny depends upon His WILL. "Our times are in His hand." "Go to now," &c. Thirdly: He regarded it as being adequate. If it is agreeable to His mind, "he will bring me again." He has the power to do so. All that is required, is His will. "He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly," &c. There is no peril that He cannot deliver from, no want that He cannot supply, no desire that He cannot fully satisfy.

Does not religion, by giving us this view of God's superintendence, give us a power to bear up under the greatest trials? Let me feel amidst the most distressing events, that there is a Being whose eye is on me, whose will is love for me, and whose arm is Almighty to help me, and with this feeling I shall rise buoyant above every wave of trouble.

III. THAT SPIRITUAL RELIGION IDENTIFIES MAN'S WILL WITH GOD'S, UNDER TRIAL. "But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth him good." A thorough surrender of our being and will to God is the first duty of all intelligences, and the necessary condition of all true progress in power and blessedness. "Into thine hands I commit my spirit"; this language, which is generally applied to the dying act of the saint, is in truth most literally applicable to the first act of a religious life. The creature's will should always move with the will of God in the same line, for the same reason. God's will is absolutely right, and essentially benevolent; harmony with it, therefore, is the only virtue, and the only happiness. What is the will of a being, but the expression of his nature? If God's nature be malevolent, the volition will

be so, and we may well tremble at it, and rebel against it; but if the nature be unmixedly benevolent, the volition will be so, and we may joyfully acquiesce in it. In doing, our language should always be this:-Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? In suffering, it should be this:-Not my will, but thine be done.

Vol. IV.

S

Who does not see, that with this surrender of ourselves to God, this absorbtion of our wills in His, or rather this moving eternally within the circle of His will, would secure for us a holy magnanimity and peace, amidst the most trying circumstances of life? All the objects around us move with, and by, His will; and there is harmony in their motions, and beauty in their forms. Oceans move, and stars revolve, the winds breathe, and the countless tribes of instinct life pursue their varied lines of action by, and with, the will of God. These have no power to do otherwise. Man has, and he has dared to do so. He must fall in again with the great righteous, benevolent, and almighty WILL of the universe to be happy.

SUBJECT:-The Third Scene in the History of Redeemed Humanity; or, the Age of Moral Reaction. *

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison," &c.-Rev. xx. 7-10.

Analysis of Homily the Hundred and Thirty-ninth.

THE long ages of earth's millennial glory described in our last sketch are run out. The harmony which had reigned through indefinite centuries is broken into tumult; the sun of absolute truth and blessedness, under whose genial and unclouded beams unnumbered generations had come and gone, getting new vigor and catching new inspiration in every successive step of their mortal life, is veiled in clouds again; the arch-foe of humanity has burst his moral chains -is "loosed out of his prison," and is once more deceiving the nations "which are in the four quarters of the earth.” There is a tremendous reaction.

This age is here presented under a veil of imagery, if possible, more variously coloured and thickly folded than either of the preceding epochs already noticed. Our work is not to describe the veil, but gently to draw it aside, in order to discover the great facts which lie beneath. Disrobing this passage of its highly symbolic garb, we discover three facts which will mark the moral reaction of this age.

* Continued from p. 126.

I. THE REACTION WILL BE BROUGHT ABOUT IN THE MANNER IN WHICH MANKIND HAVE EVER DEGENERATED. Let us mark the process:-First: Here is deception. "The nations" are deceived. Certain ideas, directly opposed to the eternal principle of truth, the settled conditions of virtue, and means of true blessedness, but at the same time most plausible to the reason, prompting to the lusts, and gratifying to the self-hood of the human heart, are put into circulation; men receive, follow them, and fall. Sin came first into the world through deception, and it has been propagated and nourished by it ever since. Men fall by error, and rise by truth. Hence the seducer and the Saviour alike deal with the judgments of men. Hell and Heaven are acting on our world through thoughts, the one through the false and the other through the true. Secondly: Here is deception employed by Satan. "Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations.' Christ, who knows his entire history, has declared that he "abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him ;" and that "he is a liar and the father of it." He has filled the world with lies,-charged our atmosphere with lies-political, social, moral, and religious; "every man walketh in a vain show." Who can fathom "the depths of Satan" He "beguiled" our first parents; he prompted Ananias "to lie to the holy ghost." He "hath blinded the minds" of men. Thirdly: Here is deception employed by Satan, first upon those who are most assailable, and afterwards through them upon others. "He goes out to deceive the nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog," &c. No one has been able to determine, with certainty, who Gog and Magog are.* We are inclined to believe with Bloomfield, "That no particular nations are meant, but that these are only names designating bodies of men inimical to the gospel." Probably through all the ages of the millennial period, there had always continued some disaffected towards Christ, some who loved darkness rather than light, some

*"Great diversity of opinion has been entertained concerning the situation of Gog and Magog, and the various alternatives suggested, have given occasion to no common amount of discussion."-Kitto.

"Gog and Magog." Upon these, Satan now acted. By his suggestions he evoked their latent depravity, kindled into a flame the long smouldering fires of their rebellion against heaven. The more evil there is in a man, the more accessible that man is to Satan, and the more susceptible of his influence. The more virtue in the heart, the stronger its safeguard. Hence, he ever begins his work with the most assailable-with those who are morally the most remote from Christianty, who dwell "in the four quarters of the earth."* And through them goes on to propagate his cause. From Eve he proceeds to Adam, from Gog and Magog he proceeds to the very "camp of the saints." We infer :—

II. THE REACTION WILL BE OF A CHARACTER THREATENING.

suggest this:

THE MOST

There are two things in the passage which

First: The vast number of its agents. Those whom Satan enlists in his cause from the "four corners of the earth" —these moral tribes, called Gog and Magog, constitute a great multitude," the number of whom is as the sand of the sea:" a figurative expression indicating their numerousness. It is not necessary to suppose that these unbelievers had been numerous through all the centuries of the millennial times. Nor is it necessary to suppose that any genuine Christians had really and finally been tempted to renounce their principles. It seems to us highly improbable that a man whose nature has been thoroughly Christianized will ever finally degenerate into a life of sin. We may suppose that for many ages, there were but few whose spirits did not flow with the clear and majestic stream of Christian truth and practice. If however, at one time there were only a dozen, or even fewer, of sinners among the teeming millions of saints, it is easy to see how they could multiply in the course of time, without causing any of the really good to apostatize. These

* "It is certain that by the four corners of the earth we are to understand the nations which lay at the greatest distance from the city of the saints, and we may suppose that those who live in that situation shall be least instructed in the gospel, and so capable of being most easily engaged to rise up against it."-Doddridge.