as the locomotive and the iron rail; and afraid lest the dominions of obscurantism should be upset by the introduction of the simplest facilities of mechanical science. Nor is his mistake very great! And then if you take again the comfort, the social peace, the kindly feeling, the reciprocal good feeling, that exist in our country as a whole, the contrast between Italy and England is between the dark, sepulchral crypt, and the illuminated cathedral; between night and day; between the middle ages and this nineteenth century of ours. Now what makes Italy so dark, so wretched? Just the want of the religion that we have. What makes England so great? Just that religion that enables us all to feel that in one light we are peers; that raises up the humblest and does not bring down the highest, and that creates that beautiful arrangement in all our social condition that makes us, like Jerusalem, and Zion, and Palestine of oldwith all our faults, and I would not conceal them; with all our sins, and they are very many and very great-the joy and the beauty of the whole earth. And hence I have often ventured to say to you, what I think is perfectly true, that our country has a mission very much analogous to that of the Jews before the Christian era; and that this mission is to spread the Gospel over all the earth, till England having done Christ's work, our sun shall not set, but blend its last rays with the brighter rays of that millennial sunshine in which there shall be no shadow and no cloud for ever.

Then the picture is given us, in the next place, of the awful destruction of those who thus come up against Israel. Behold, their valiant ones shall

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cry without; the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly." "Now will I rise, saith the Lord; now will I be exalted; now will I lift up myself." Then we have the description of the effect of all this upon those that hate him. "The sinners in Zion are afraid," when they hear of God lifting up himself. The cry of the sinner is, "No God;" and the very sound of God's footsteps strikes terror into the hearts of those who are living in conscious sin. "Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" The idea is by asking the question to exhibit the awful condition of them to whom such a doom is finally assigned.

And then the picture of God's people is perfectly exquisite. "He that walketh righteously, he shall dwell on high; his eyes shall see the king in his beauty, and shall behold the land that is very far off."

Next we have a picture of Zion at the close of the chapter beautiful and graphic. "Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities." I believe that this refers to that day when Zion's hill shall again be crowned, and Jerusalem shall again be rebuilt. Among all the students of prophecy it is almost a universal opinion that Jerusalem will be rebuilt, that God's ancient people will be restored to it; that as soon as the Euphratean flood retires, or, translated into another figure, the Moslem crescent wanes, and Jerusalem emerges with Palestine, God's people then, by an inspiration from on high shed into their hearts, will return, and Jerusalem be rebuilt; and

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the glory, the ancient shechinah, illuminate it with no perishable splendour; and those people long downtrodden, because of their ancient sin-the awful sin of rejecting and crucifying the Lord of glory-shall take the pre-eminence and have the precedence. And it is a remarkable fact, which has been brought out by the Rev. Mr. Chamberlain, in his remarks which have been recently published on the eighteenth of Isaiah, that there the evidence from Isaiah is irresistible proof that this country of ours is the country destined to facilitate the return of the Jews to their own land; and to provide and make ready a way for their restoration to their own capital. And hence this chapter closes with, I believe, a picture of what will be when that takes place. "Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities; thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation." Mark the exquisite poetry in this; Jerusalem means Yerusalem, "the vision of peace." Well, then, he says, you shall see Jerusalem no longer a vision of peace, but a reality of peace, a quiet habitation; and though it looks like a tabernacle, yet, unlike the tabernacle, it shall not be taken up : "not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken." And then, as you find in capitals that the rivers that flow past them, or the deep moats that are around them filled with water from those rivers, constitute their defence, so Jerusalem will have no deep moat, and no bulwarks, and no battlements of stone; yet the glorious Lord God himself will be a better defence than broad rivers and streams; and he will be a greater protection than galley with oars or gallant

ship that may ride therein: "for," says the restored Jew in this chapter, "the Lord is our judge," and therefore it will be just judgment: "the Lord is our lawgiver," and therefore we shall have perfect law: "the Lord is our king," and we are his subjects; "he will save us." And then the inhabitant of that Jerusalem shall not say, I am sick: there shall be no more sickness. What is sickness? Not natural. When you hear people say it is natural to have headaches and heartaches, and to be ill, nothing is more absurd; it is most unnatural to die; it is most unnatural to be ill; it is most unnatural to be troubled in mind, in body, or in estate: the reason of them all is that sin has entered, and death by sin, and these are the progeny of sin. The instant sin is exhausted from our earth, and eliminated from our hearts, that instant the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick; for all sickness shall flee away; the people that dwell therein shall have the blessedness of that people whose sins are forgiven, whose transgressions are covered, and to whom the Lord imputeth no iniquity.

It is really poetry to read such a chapter; it is encouragement, and hope, and joy, to cherish the bright prospects it reveals.

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JUDGMENTS.

ISAIAH XXXIV.

Ir is not difficult to see, chiefly from the chapter that immediately follows, the thirty-fifth, the most beautiful, eloquent, and expressive picture of the glory that is to be revealed, that this chapter speaks of those desolating judgments which, like the black cloud, are to precede and usher in bright and everlasting sunshine. Originally the words of this chapter refer to the destruction of Edom or Idumæa; but Edom and Idumæa are used constantly throughout the Old Testament predictions as the picture of some situation of things that is yet to come within the horizon; and in which those terrific calamities that are contained in this and kindred prophecies shall all be actualized. The prophet begins this chapter in words that indicate the ushering in of some great calamity or catastrophe. He calls upon the nations to come and hear: "And hearken ye people "—that is, ye Gentiles-" let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it." It is therefore no local catastrophe that he threatens, or he would not call the whole population of the earth to listen, and to watch its development; it must be, wherever it may light, or whatever is to be the nature of the calamity, it must be something coextensive with the habitable

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