south, rise against the last Antichristian king, and prevail not. Of these the northern power is found standing at the end of the conflict (ver. 41); but the south hath been swallowed up in the overflowing conquests of the wilful king, who establisheth himself in the holy land. These two kings of the north and south are commonly understood of Russia and Austria, the two powers which shall oppose the infidel king of Rome, the personal Antichrist, the Assyrian who is to arise. Now it is diligently to be observed, that the Russian power is fast encroaching upon the territory of the ancient Assyrians; and it may be, and indeed is prophesied to be (Dan. xi. 40-45), that the infidel king, notwithstanding the assaults of the kings of the north and of the south, shall prevail to possess himself of the ancient conquests of Babylon: so that it will come to pass, that, while Gog, the Prince of Ross, Mesech, and Tubal (Russia, Moscow, and Tobolsk), possesseth the territory of Assyria, in the north of Asia; the infidel king, or the Assyrian, shall possess the southern regions of Babylon and Egypt and Lybia. Which two potentates, coming in succession against the Jews, shall by these seven shepherds and eight principal men be overthrown, and their countries ravished. So that in this prophecy, as in many, perhaps in all others, the symbolical doth in the end turn to become also the literal interpretation; the land of Assyria (that is, Magog, the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian), and the land of Nimrod (that is, Shinar), are the two regions which shall be wasted with the sword of Messiah's valiant captains " in the entrances thereof," or "within the gates thereof."

The marginal reading, " with her own naked swords," though adopted in the Vulgate, hath hardly any authority from the original word, and I think little congruity with the context, which hath already mentioned "the sword" as the manner of the devastation, and is not likely to mention it over again in the very next clause. I prefer the translation "within the gates thereof," or "within its own gates," which hath been adopted by the LXX. and is the proper meaning of the Hebrew word, as may be seen by consulting the viith chapter, ver. 5, of this Prophet, and the xiiith chapter, ver. 2, of the Prophet Isaiah. The meaning of this additional word in the description of our prophet, whose single words are full of meaning, is, I conceive, not so much to signify, that the war should be carried into the enemy's country by these royal officers of our King, as to point out the way in which it should be carried on, even by the overthrow of his strongholds. In all the songs of Zion's triumph, the overthrow of "the strong city," "the city of the terrible ones," "the city of strangers," is a principal theme (Isaiah xxv. 2, xxvi. 5, 10, &c. &c.), because, as we have already ofttimes explained, a city is a capital part of the mystery of God, as being

the proper symbol of society and government. And in this strain of Messiah's birth-place, beyond almost any other, doth the city occupy a prominent place; insomuch as that it might be entitled "God's controversy for Zion, the tower of the flock, against Babylon, the daughter of troops, and her triumph at the hand of her Ruler, whose goings forth were from eternity, and his birth from Bethlehem-Ephratah, one of the meanest of the thousands of Israel." Being so that the fates of Jerusalem are a main part of the burden of this prophecy, it is very fit that the overthrow of her adversary should be a part of the triumph; and indeed it is hardly possible to conceive of the prophecy as complete without it: and here we have it represented in one word, which is, that the seven shepherd kings and eight mighty princes of the Bethlehemite shall waste the land of Assyria, possessing the gates and strongholds thereof; or, as it is in the strong and poetic language of Obadiah, "Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's." If I err not, there was a type of this given in the miserable end of Sennacherib, whose army being smitten, for his blasphemy against the Lord and the city of his name, he himself fled headlong to his stronghold, and came to his death in the temple of his god at the hands of his own children: "So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh and it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia: and Esar-haddon his son reigned in his stead" (Isai. xxxvii. 37, 38). And I think there is a prophecy applying this type to the fate of the last Assyrian, in these words: "Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited: and he shall pass over to his stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem" (Isai. xxxi. 8, 9). And there are footsteps of the same prophetic event in the other prophets; as in the desire of the Redeemer to be led into the strong city of Edom: "Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?" (Ps. lx. 9). And answerable to this longing after the gates of his enemy is the triumph when the battle hath been turned to them, and their strength hath been surmounted: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?" &c. (Isai. Ixiii. 1). These things do sanctify valour and hallow the profession of arms. When I read and expound these mysteries of future times, I seem to feel rising within my breast all which the crusaders and the errant knights

of chivalry felt; and the glory of heroism and chivalry, and the romance and song of noble deeds of arms, come all glowing into my heart; and I feel assured that they were not follies, but the anticipations of things most noble and Divine, which shall yet be led out in glorious array under the banner of Emanuel, the "Man of war," who shall ride prosperously at the head of his hosts, for the sake of meekness and truth and righteousness, to "scatter all them who delight in war," and to bring peace to the troubled earth in virtue of which achievement of arms he shall sit down upon his throne for ever the Prince of peace; whose throne is "for ever and ever," and "the sceptre of his kingdom a right sceptre." Thus shall "he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders."

"And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men and the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people, as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots; and I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong-holds" (Micah v. 7 to 11).-Oh that I had language to express my admiration of the words of the Lord, of the diction of the Holy Ghost! If man's taste were not altogether debased by current books and living men, he would recognise the Divine original of the prophecies by the style of the language. I cannot tell how I am moved and ravished by the simple reading of the prophetic word. It frees me so that I feel like one drunk: it confines me so that I can find no orderly utterance. And when I attempt to reduce the "fine phrensy "into forms of speech, it seems as if the quintessence of it escaped-the flavour and the aromatic odour, yea, the delight and the edification also-in the transition from the spirit to the understanding, from the self-enjoyment to the communication of it. There needeth not to explain to me how he who spoke in tongues, not understanding what he spoke, was most abundantly edified; so much so, that he was in continual danger of preferring this enjoyment and profit to the duty of edifying the brethren by endeavouring to produce and exhibit the inward delight in the form of intelligible discourse. Criticism is to me, being compared with the inward generation of truth, what land-measuring or garden-plotting is compared with the flower and fruit bearing of the summer and harvest.

O God! who hast made me to understand these things, make me also to know them: give me to speak with tongues, and to prophesy !

These thoughts and prayers are suggested to me by the two verses (for properly they are but two, and in the Jewish division they occupy one section) which now come before us for interpretation, containing the after-destinies of the Jewish people in respect to the other nations of the earth: their place, their prerogative, and their occupation given by two strokes of the Divine pencil, dipped in the unfading colours of nature; which all people upon the earth can understand, except systematic divines and sectarian preachers; whereof the former, in order to understand Calvin and Arminius, and such like system-builders, do blind themselves to God's prophetic method of discourse; the latter, in order to rule the conventicle, do preach and pray and speak and understand according to their several fraternities. But, alas! such is the growth of the mechanical methods of discourse and discussion, and such the rage for working men and useful things, that I think very soon all the educated classes will speedily fall out of sympathy with God's word, and find it the most unprofitable and unintelligible of all books. The diligence with which God's word is read, the clearness with which it is understood, and the force with which it is felt, are the measures to every age of its capacity for spiritual truth, in all its forms of law, logic, poetry, philosophy, and invention; in all which the present is surely the most barren that hath been known since the introduction of the Christian religion among How foolish and envious to all, or only not all, must such a judgment seem! which is yet a judgment arrived at by a thousand different views of and reflections upon the men of this time, amongst whom I live, or rather sojourn, waiting for the city of my habitation.

men.

The former of these two verses, under the similitude of the dew upon the grass and the showers that water the earth, sets forth the office and dignity of the Jewish people as the instructors, the prophets, of the world, through whose ministry of wisdom and labours of cultivation the wilderness is made glad, and the desert doth rejoice and blossom like the rose; the latter, under the similitude of the lion amongst the flock of sheep, doth represent their supreme mightiness, their investiture with the sovereign power at the hand of God, which, if they were to put forth, would utterly tread down and tear in pieces the nations. Both similitudes bespeak a royal precedency of and tutelage over all nations, yielded " to the people of the saints of the most high" (Dan. vii. 27): which the nations shall willingly acknowledge, saying one to another, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob;

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and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more "(Micah iv. 2, 3). That the office of watering the earth with instruction, and making it to bud with the fruits of righteousness, is set forth under the figure of the dew and rain, is manifest from many parts of Scripture-as Deut. xxxii. 2; Isaiah lv. 10, 11-but in the lxxiid Psalm it is referred to Christ's sweet and genial influence, in the days of his kingdom: "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth :" and, as in the text, there immediately follows thereupon the extent of his dominion; He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." In Moses and in David, but in Moses particularly, who was king in Jeshurun, these two offices of the teacher and king of the people did sweetly combine. He found them as a dry and thirsty land, and upon them his "speech did distil as the dew, and as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." And in the same strain went also the last words of David, concerning the virtues of a king: " He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God: and he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain" (2 Sam. xxiii. 3, 4). And so also spake the wisdom of Solomon: "The King's wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass " (Prov. xix. 12). What God hath promised to be to Jacob, under the emblem of the dew, in the following most elegant and exuberant passage, that shall Jacob be to the nations: "I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon: his branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine; the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon" (Hosea xiv. 5-7). It is one of the high offices of a king, which few kings think on, to be the instructors of their people. Such was Solomon, such was Numa, and such was our Saxon Alfred. Out of this indefeasible right and glorious prerogative of a king, which God will require at his hand, groweth the duty of supporting out of the royal bounty an order of learned and pious teachers, the clergy of the kingdom, whose part it shall be to attend upon the instruction of the people continually. And in a lesser degree the same high and holy function devolveth upon the nobility, and the magistrates of towns,