degenerates into licence. England is the Pharos of Europe, the lighthouse of the earth. Founded on the Everlasting Rock she holds up the imperishable light of an open Bible; and in its light the ships of all lands pass and repass on the sea of life with thankful salutations. The great hurricanes of successive revolutions have struck it, and spent their force on it, and retired, The great sea-waves of the agitated nations have smitten it and recoiled in spray, shattered and broken. Shoals of priests, and flocks of cardinals and bishops and Jesuits, attracted by its brightness, and anxious to quench it, have rushed at it like the wild sea-gulls, only to dash themselves in pieces, and fall dead at its base. She still says:- "Sail on, sail on, ye stately ships, And with your floating bridge the ocean span; LECTURE XVI. THE APOSTASIES IN EUROPE. The safety of our country is synchronous with the removal of the corrupt churches of Christendom. All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. For so the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling-place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.”—ISAIAH xviii. 3-6. The TARSHISH, we are told, is to bring home God's ancient people to their own land, in her ships, and there replace them as a present to the Lord of hosts. Lord says, in Isaiah xlix.: "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; and thou shalt know I am the Lord." In Isaiah 1x. 9: "Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee. The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish." The whole of Isaiah lx. describes the glory that has not yet come to Jerusalem; and, therefore, Tarshish is to be in existence, and powerful at the time of its end. A very important question then is, What is the Tarshish constantly spoken of, not in one place, but in several, as the nationality that is to bring this people, peeled, and scattered, and broken, as a present to the Lord of hosts; and that, so far, is to enable them to fear his name from the west, and to see his glory from the rising of the sun? Mr. Chamberlain has brought very great research and learning to this special subject. I have followed his reference with care. I state nothing original, if new. The Tarshish of prophecy, mentioned in Ezekiel and Isaiah, is not any one country that existed then, or belonged at all to the ancient world, before the Christian era. In prophecy, it is some great country, great at the time of the restoration of the Jew --maritime, manufacturing; a country with vast fleets, and with possessions in Dedan, in Sheba, and in Seba, which is now part of our empire. This country Tarshish, which also comes up in the 38th and 39th of Ezekiel, at the last crash of nations and crisis of the world is, I am satisfied, our own country, Great Britain-which, separated from what are called the ten kingdoms into which the whole of apostate Europe was anciently divided, at the era of the Reformation. A tenth part of the great city-that is, the great city Babylon-comprehending the ten toes of the image, or ten kingdoms, the decem-regal Babylon, separated from the rest, and stood aloof, and would have nothing more to do with Rome. This was our own land; and upon that ground I believe, when God's judgments shall come upon the decem-regal Babylon, or the ten kingdoms of the apostacy, that England, or Britain rather, will be spared, and remain comparatively unscathed. I proceed to show, from another point of view, and a very interesting one, that as the restoration of the Jews is to occur at the close of this present economy; and as the restorer of that people, in its steam-ships, and under the shelter of its shadowing wings, or white canvas, is to be England; and as this country, when it restores that dispersed people, shall be in full possession of all its maritime, commercial, and social strength, with its Eastern possessions unreduced; our country will live in all its national integrity to the end; and that, at the close of our present economy, it will be the mightiest, the most honoured, and the most prosperous nation upon earth. However right it may be to have recourse to all the means of its defence which common sense suggests, and which our rulers are now adopting, yet I have not the least doubt of our ultimate emergence from the severe conflicts into which we may be plunged; and that the sun of our country will not set till it is lost in the splendour of that sunshine that has no western declension. So far we have arrived in explaining this prophecy. I will now endeavour to submit what seems a textual and impartial explanation of the 3rd, and 4th, and 5th verses of this same prophecy. First of all, we find an appeal in the 3rd verse, "All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye." This is an appeal to the whole world to witness the next act of the grand drama which is to take place at that crisis. "All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye." The eminent prelate from whom I have several times quoted, Bishop Horsley, says: "The prophecy in verse three announces a display of God's power and providence, which shall be notorious over all the world; the mountains on which it is to take place are the mountains of Israel;" the mountains, not naming them, because well known. The whole world, like spectators in the ascending tiers of a vast amphitheatre, is to look down, with amazement and awe, many with alarm, many with trust and confidence in God, upon these last scenes on the world's arena, scenes which end a dispensation in which we have so great a stake, of which angels are the spectators, and eternity the culminating issue. Jehovah calls on all nations to witness Him, while he lifteth up a standard. Let us try to discover what the standard is. The Hebrew word for standard is Niss. That word—and you will see how fastidiously exact, if I may use the phrase, is Scripture language-occurs in Exodus xvii. 15, where we read: "Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi." The last is the same word which is here translated ensign; "Jehovah, our ensign." Again, in Numbers xxi. 8, God says to Moses: "Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it" for a niss-that is, "place it for an ensign;" the very word used here. But what does the brass serpent suggest? It reminds us of Him of whom it is the type and the symbol. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but have eternal life." I therefore infer that this standard that is to be lifted up upon the mountains, which all the world is to see, which is to be the rallying banner under which the dispersed of Israel are to gather, and around which they are to cluster, is none other than the "sign of the Son of man," the manifestation or apocalypse of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And, accordingly, we read what confirms this in Zechariah xiv. 3: "Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet -now mark the words" and his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east; and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof, toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great |