which there was a trace of purple, yet they shall be like the wool before it receives its dye, perfectly white, and pure. How rich is the compassion of God in Christ Jesus! what a sublime economy is the gospel! what grace is that which is abashed at no guilt, and wearied by no provocation! How great is his sin who disregards it! How shall we escape if we neglect the great salvation? But then he adds, if you refuse and rebel, this judgment shall overtake you; you shall not be only struck and smitten with chastisements, but you shall be devoured by the sword, as the great destroyer of a people laden with sins. Then he says, "How is the faithful city become an harlot! Thy silver that was once so pure is now mixed with dross; thy wine which was once so cheering and refreshing is now diluted with water; your princes are become rebellious, they are the companions of thieves; they follow after rewards; they judge not the fatherless. Your best things are your worst. Therefore, saith the Lord, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries;" I will fling them off as a man carrying a heavy load, and weary of it flings it down, so I will fling off mine adversaries. I will grieve my heart no more by looking at a people so hopelessly and entirely, and, what is worse, wilfully depraved.

But still God gives a promise, which in such circumstances is most remarkable. You rarely see black clouds in the sky without some shafts and streaks of sunshine breaking through them; you never hear God denouncing his most awful judgments on the most guilty without seeing even there intervals of bright sunshine and brilliant promises.

It seems as if God, to apply the feelings of human nature to the Infinite and the Eternal, felt grieved to be compelled to denounce fearful judgments, as if to punish were his strange, unpalatable, and reluctant work; and as if he, even then, longed to return to his joyous announcements of promise, and love, and hope, and encouragement, for in them he delights. And therefore he turns aside, and promises for the future what he denies now. "I will restore one day thy judges as at the first; and thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city."

But he adds, "The destruction of the trangressors shall be together. And they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired." The druids were called so from Apus, the Greek, perhaps from an earlier word, which means the oak, because the oaks were the first temples; and very magnificent and solemn ones they were too. In fact the architecture of a magnificent mediæval cathedral is merely man's poor copy of a more magnificent forest. If you go into a great forest of full-grown trees, when the leaves have all dropt off in winter, you will be able to see the exquisite interlacing of the branches, and stretching forward you will see the long-drawn aisles, nave and transepts, and choirs, and you will feel the effect of the beautiful perspective, heightened by the deep and sombre gloom that settles over it all. All this was the original type of a mediæval cathedral; only man's copy falls far short of God's grand original. The Jews also worshipped idols below oaks; but they shall be ashamed of them. "And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it

as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them."

Now some have believed, and I think there is great force in it, that much of this chapter was fulfilled not in the deportation of the tribes into Babylon, and their delivery and return, but in the days of our Lord and at the fall of Jerusalem. To see this let us notice the vivid similarity between certain phrases that are used in this chapter and expressions used by our Lord, when speaking to the guilty Jews in his day, and we shall recognize a similarity so great that we cannot but infer that this chapter probably extended its application over 700 years, and, contemplated the destruction of Jerusalem and the great guilt of that sin-laden people. For instance, that passage, "The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass his master's crib," we may compare with our Lord's words, "Ye neither know me nor my Father; if ye had known me ye would have known my Father also." Then again it says, "Jerusalem shall become like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers;" a miserable hut. Compare that with our Lord's words, "But now your house is left unto you desolate, and ye shall not see me till ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Then the expression in this chapter, "Your hands. are full of blood," may be compared with what our Lord says, "I send you wise men, and prophets, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill; that on you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth." And again, these words, "Your hands are full of blood," are similar to what the Jews said, "His blood be upon us and upon our children."

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Again, the expression, "Wash you, make you clean," casts light, by the comparison, on these words, Repent and be baptized every one of you, and wash away your sins." Again the expression, "The wine is mixed with water," expresses the sin of the Pharisees, who corrupted God's word by their traditions. We read of the rulers here being companions of thieves. Judas was a thief, and the Pharisees were not only his companions, but his most earnest abettors. Again, "They judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them," is the charge here; in the gospel, “Ye devour widows' houses." Again, in this chapter we read, "Tread my courts no more;" that looks like a judgment here, it was a prophecy from the lips of our Lord, for he predicted the ruin of their temple, and that they should cease to tread its courts who had trodden under foot the blood of the covenant, and counted it an unholy thing.

May there not be in this chapter, therefore, predictions that sweep further than is generally supposed; and may not the idea of Barnes and most of the commentators upon it therefore be a very narrowminded one, that it related only to the few years that were to follow, and had very little to do with the procession of stupendous events that ended in a Cross on Calvary, and in the scattering of the Jews over all the wide world?

Their comparison to "an oak whose leaf fadeth,” was strikingly illustrated by the Saviour's parable of the barren fig-tree, and by his withering the wayside tree which presented nothing but leaves.

The general features which this chapter exhibits

as characteristic of the Jews, are, a hypocritical show of righteousness, and attention to ceremonies, joined with a real disregard of God, and a heart full of malice, envy, and avarice. How truly this was fulfilled in the Jews of our Saviour's time we know from the Evangelists. Connected with this their sin, is the threat which was afterwards executed, that the temple and its service should be no longer continued to their nation. "Tread my courts no more," which is not so much a prohibition, as a prophecy that soon they should not be able to enter those courts which they had so profaned. And Procopius justly observes, "The prophet does not accuse them at this time of idolatry, but of murder," with which the Saviour charged them, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets!" And Stephen re-asserts it, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers killed ?" *

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FUTURE SCENES.

ISAIAH II.

Ir seems almost impossible to escape the belief that this chapter was not fulfilled in any epoch in the past history of Jerusalem, or indeed in any age in the past annals of the world; but that it remains to be fulfilled in that age which is yet to come, when its magnificent predictions shall be taken from the pro

* Govett.