children of God, and if children then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. And lastly, He will comfort us, as He will comfort the Jews, by delivering us from all our troubles, and introducing us into a rest more glorious than Canaan ever was, and more bright and beautiful than eye hath seen, or ear hath heard, or man's heart in its happiest imaginings hath ever con

ceived.

Thus we have Palestine as it was, like the Eden in which we were; we have Palestine as it is, like the earth that we now dwell on; we have Palestine as it will be, like the Rest that remaineth for the people of God; we have the Jew redeemed, as we must be, by precious blood; we have his return to his land, and our restoration to our rest, by the guiding hand of the Spirit of God; and lest our hearts grow too heavy, and our spirits despair, and our exile become intolerable, and our yearning for our home too intense to enable us to fulfil life's duties, He comforts Jew and Gentile now by intermingling with our troubles great comforts, by interweaving with our darkness bright lights; and by showing us that our afflictions are all needed, and are all sanctified, and that they are all working together for good to them that love God, and are the called according to his purpose.

LECTURE XV.

ENGLAND'S FUTURE AND MISSION.

Our country is neither to become effete, nor the prey of the foreigner. It is the Israel of Christendom.

"Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.”—ISAIAH xlix. 22, 23.

THE subject of the promise to Israel is the restoration of the Jews. This restoration is delineated at greater length, and with far greater minuteness, in a previous chapter of this book, to which we will refer-namely, the 18th chapter-where we read as follows: "Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose lands the rivers have spoiled!" Omitting, at present, the rest of the chapter, let us come down to the end: "In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a

nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion." I will ask attention less to a popular exposition, and more to a simple and clear analysis of the remarkable words contained in the 18th chapter. I look upon this chapter of Isaiah as the exposition of the 60th chapter. Lately I have read upon it an admirable letter, written by Bishop Horsley; and, secondly, a very learned volume discussing its meaning, written by a clergyman, a friend of mine, the Rev. Mr. Chamberlain, of Bolton. I have read both with intense interest and profit. Guided by these I want to show, first, that the people spoken of here are the Jews; and, secondly, that they are to be presented to the Lord, in the language of this chapter, as a present, as an offering; and that this is to be done by a people who are called a people that "send ambassadors," which people are to bring them in "vessels of bulrushes," and present them an offering unto the Lord. I will try to show the meaning of these words. But first let us take the 18th chapter, as Mr. Chamberlain does, in reverse; and begin by expounding and unfolding the meaning of the last verse, which is to a certain extent a repetition of the first: "In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled;" this people shall be presented unto the Lord. Bishop Horsley justly remarks that the 11th verse of the previous chapter refers to the dispersion of Israel by the Romans; and that the allusion to this dispersion leads, as it almost always does, to a prediction of their final restoration. So that the 17th chapter is in all respects historically connected with the imagery and substance of the 18th.

Now let us examine these expressions; a people scattered;" "a people peeled;" "a people meted out;" "a people trodden under foot ;" a people terrible

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from the beginning." I have analyzed and studied each word thus translated; and I will give you the result. The word "scattered" is applied in the Bible to the sowing of seed, to the scattering of corn seed upon the earth; and denotes something spread over a large area. It is also applied in the sense of "extended;" that is, extended in time as well as spread over space; and therefore the idea conveyed is, a people scattered over every land, scattered like the seeds of spring over the length and breadth of the bosom of the globe, and this process extended over many years; they there remaining ungathered until a time specified in the sequel. The word "peeled" is the next feature. What is meant by it? Professor Lee, one of the ablest Hebrew scholars, says it means ruined; another says it means stripped naked; Mr. Chamberlain says it means worn down and galled by affliction; and Bishop Horsley says the Spanish Bible gives the exact meaning of the original Hebrew, a people dragged about by force, and their hair pulled out by the roots." Combine all these, and you have the picture of a people who are maltreated; whose teeth in the history of England have been extracted, that their purses might be emptied for our benefit; whose maltreatment is a proverb; and whose symbol, Sir Walter Scott says, is the flying fish which has no peace either in the sea or in the air, either in the heights or in the depths. The next expression is "meted out and trodden under foot." The word "meted out" is translated literally in another place, "line upon line;" and it denotes a nation lined with sorrow as with furrows. It is used in the sense of judgment: "I will stretch on Jerusalem the line of Samaria;" that is, I will thus destroy it. "Line upon line" is also employed to denote the limit of judgment or affliction; and therefore, Mr. Chamberlain says, it is a people under judicial treatment, prescribed as to its length and its limits in the lines of ancient prophecy, beyond which it cannot go, and on this side of the exhaustion of which it cannot possibly

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cease. The next expression is, "A people terrible from the beginning.' The literal translation, says Bishop Horsley, is "a people awfully remarkable." The expression "from the beginning," is scarcely correct; it is literally, "from that day forward:" and the date of the 66 day forward" is not that of the prophecy, but of their being "brought as a present to the Lord of hosts in Zion;" meaning, that from the day when they shall be recovered, restored, and reinstated in Zion, they shall appear then a people awfully remarkable; that is to say, they will present a brilliant close to a bitter and disastrous career; and the people of every nation shall gaze and marvel that, once the scoff and the offscourings of Christendom, they have become the joy of the earth, the beauty of the nations, the admiration of all lands. The next mark of them is, "whose land the rivers have spoiled," The preceding chapter, the 17th, closes with a similar expression, This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us." Now if we take the phrase," the rivers have spoiled," in the strict, rigid, literal sense, there is no land, either Ethiopia, Egypt, or Palestine, of which it can be said that the rivers have destroyed it. Never Palestine, for the overflowings of Jordan do not injure it; certainly not Egypt, for the overflowings of the Nile benefit it. We must therefore take the phrase, "Whose land the rivers have spoiled," in a figurative sense; and accordingly when we refer to the Scriptures we find that rivers and floods are employed to denote hostile forces. Thus, in Isaiah

viii. 7, we read: "Now, therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory;" that is, hostile forces. Again, in Isaiah lix. 19, we read: "When the enemy shall come in like a flood." And Bishop Horsley in his letter says very justly: "Rivers, that is, armies of devastating conquerors, have destroyed it." Read the history of Palestine, and you find all historically fulfilled. After the Roman, the