to be expedient for us. Admit for one moment that chance is the parent of your troubles-that accident is the author of your bereavements—and what a gloomy place must the grave be! what a sad heart must the mourner's be! what an unhappy man must the victim of trouble be! But when we know that the blow that strikes the heaviest is from our Father's hand; that the sorrow that pierces the heart with the keenest agony lay in his bosom before it received its mission to touch us; surely it is a truth, “I, even I, am He that comforteth you." And in the third place, God comforts us by showing us the end of that trouble. If the sorrows, bereavements, disappointments, griefs, secret and open, had no end, and no grand object, and no great purpose to accomplish, then they would be intolerable; but He tells us, "Though no tribulation for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous, yet afterwards it worketh out the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby." He tells us that "all things work for good to them that love God ;" and through the mouth of an apostle He has said, "Our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory." And therefore the necessity, the end, and the source of our troubles, revealed to us by God, take away the edge of them, and make at least tolerable that which if inexplicable would be altogether intolerable. He also comforts us by compensatory enjoyments in the meanwhile. Have you not sometimes felt that your bitterest hours, on the reminiscence of them a few years afterwards, were, after all, your sweetest? Have you not often found springs unexpected in the desert? When one joy has died out,

has not another and a brighter taken its place? when one sweet flower has been cut down has not a lovelier and a more fragrant one sprung from its root? There is no condition in which you have ever been, as there is no condition in which a Christian can be placed, in which you will not find that if God takes away one blessing, He gives not another blessing, richer, more beautiful, and more precious. Then "I, even I, am He that comforteth you." God comforts us in the midst of troubles by sanctifying those troubles to us. Not only are they needful, but God makes them work for good. The tear that springs from the heart cleanses the eye, and enables you to see beyond the limited horizon of time, and to catch a glimpse of the glory of that better rest that remains for the people of God. We cannot live always in sunshine; we need shadow. I pity those whose life is one uninterrupted, prosperous I pity from my heart the man who has no aches, nor sorrows, nor troubles, nor griefs, nor trials. He may be a Christian; God forbid that I should pronounce; but he wants one of the marks of God's children; for "what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? If ye be without chastisement, then are ye bastards, and not sons;" but if you have chastisement, then you bear the seal and mark from heaven that you are the 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 conceived.

career;

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 homes 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 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 refernamely, 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