promised the safety of his own has promised that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall ever be able to separate you from his love, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And therefore, when people read these prophecies, which I do not invent, which I do not pervert; and when they see these things predicted as things that are one day—what day God only knows-to overtake our world, they should not say, Oh, how dreadful! how shocking! how painful!

But they should ask, Where shall we be in that day? Where are we now? What is our trust now? Are we clothed in that righteousness which no flame can penetrate? Are we washed in the efficacy of that precious blood which all creation will reverence? If you be Christians, you have not an enemy in the very universe that can touch you. If you be children of God, death's sting dare not touch you; the grave cannot hold you longer than Christ allows it; fire and flood cannot scathe you. Happy are the people that are in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.

After predicting these things, and alluding to the judgments upon Idumæa, God speaks in figures or metaphors of human speech, that to a Jew, to an Eastern, and perhaps not much less so to us, are most expressive: "My sword shall be bathed in heaven." The Hebrew word translated "bathed ' means "intoxicated;" and the verse might strictly be rendered, "My sword shall be intoxicated in heaven;" that is, it shall be radiant, as it were, with my wrath; it shall gleam with judgments long

provoked, and now at last descending upon their heads. It is extremely expressive language, and is meant to convey to men, by these figures and under these symbols, how dreadful will be the day, the day of wrath, the day of righteous retribution --not upon Christians, for they are safe enough—but upon all that reject or neglect the Gospel; of whom even an apostle asks, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"

Then, in language employed to denote the extent, the breadth, and intensity of the ruin, he says, "The stream thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone; and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever." Now, what this exactly alludes to perhaps we cannot say; but there are words in the New Testament so perfectly corresponding to this that evidently both Isaiah and the New Testament writers sketched the same great scene. For instance, Jude says, "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." We read in the Book of Revelation, "The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name." We read again, "They cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city ?" "And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and

ever." Then in another passage in the same book we read, “And the beast was taken,” literally “the wild beast." I might here just interrupt my remarks by stating that there are two words in the Book of Revelation unhappily both translated by our translators "the beast." For instance, we read of "the four beasts;" but the Greek word there for beast is ζωον.

But when it speaks of the head of that great apostacy it delineates, it is not wor that is employed, but θηριον, which means "the wild beast." And therefore in that passage, for instance, "the four beasts fell before the throne, and worshipped him that liveth for ever," it ought to be translated, "the four living creatures;" for it is not an earthly symbol at all; and in this passage, where it says, "The beast was taken, and cast into the lake of fire," it ought to be translated, "the wild beast." What wild beast? The image drawn from Daniel's four pictures, hieroglyphic pictures, of the four great kingdoms. "The wild beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."

Whatever, therefore, be the scene, whenever it may occur, or wherever it may light, it is quite clear that there is perfect harmony between the prediction of Isaiah and the predictions of the Book of Revelation, and indeed of the whole New Testament. And that the scene contained in this chapter is to be at the eve or the end of this present economy is plain,

for immediately after the judgments in this chapter we come to one which we shall read in the next chapter, the most exquisitely poetical and beautiful, containing a picture-I call it a photograph-of that blessed rest that remaineth for the people of God, when "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them;" when "the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose;" when "it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing;" when "the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God."

THE FUTURE SUNSHINE.

ISAIAH XXXV.

WE read in a previous chapter the awful judgments, mingled with the deepest gloom, that were destined to overtake the world in that day when the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree. This chapter opens like a beautiful summer morning after a night of storm, and darkness, and wind, and rain. It is the burst of the millennial sunshine upon an earth long scathed and scarred, and groaning and travailing in pain, in the hope and expectation of deliverance. It begins

with a picture the most exquisite; a picture which I cannot believe to be the mere material and figurative picture of merely moral and spiritual character. I regard the first two verses as the prediction of what shall literally, and strictly, and fully be; namely, that the wilderness and the solitary place, where there is only the burning sand or the riven rock; where there is no spring of water, no grass for cattle, no food for man, where all is dreariness around, and all is barrenness below, and all is burning heat above; that that is part of the earth's disease; that that disease shall be removed; and that literally the deserts of Africa shall rejoice, and that literally the wildernesses of the earth shall blossom even as the rose, rich in all that is beautiful and fragrant, and full of joy and thanksgiving. I regard these words, therefore, as destined to a literal fulfilment. I cannot see why people, and good people, and thorough Christians, should some of them object to this. Barnes, for instance, in his Commentary, in most respects a sensible commentator, looks upon this as altogether figurative; and yet he is so puzzled and perplexed, poor man, with the richness and fulmess of the imagery, that he thinks there may be something more than the figurative, and that it may after all be the delineation of a transformation in the future such as eye hath not seen, and heart hath not conceived. Now if the earth had been created originally as we now find it; if, when it came forth from the plastic hand of God, and he pronounced it very good, it had been scarred with graves, blasted with barrenness; if it had bleak places, and ruins, and wrecks, and all the evidence of that disaster