trusts in the Lord, and that the Lord will deliver you ; but come now, like good people, who look to your pockets as your great thing, whose patriotism is only worth so many pounds; come now and listen to me, and then I will give you what I know you will like much more than the glory of your country or the worship of your God—“I will give you to eat every man of his own vine, and every one of his fig-tree, and to drink every one the waters of his cistern." He believed that every man had his price; and he thought that if he fed the people well and housed them well, they would value too heartily these carnal comforts to care much about the glory of God or the good of their own land. But never does a people sink till these things come to predominate in their hearts ; and never does a nation fall except by its internal corruption. A people, however frail, that fear God, that fulfil their social obligations, that do what is right in the sight of the Lord God of hosts, may hurl defiance at the mightiest potentate upon earth; for depend upon it, one man whose heart is filled with true religion, and whose trust is in the Lord God, and whose motives are pure and patriotic, and who has a good cause behind him and a grand object before him, will chase a thousand, and that nation which righteousness exalteth will never be forsaken or forgotten by Him who looks down with contempt upon all the Rabshakehs and kings of Assyria that despise him, and never leaves and never forsakes that nation whose God is the Lord.

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HEZEKIAH AND SENNACHERIB.

ISAIAH XXXVII.

You recollect that in the previous chapter Rabshakeh, the representative and ambassador of the king of Assyria, not only boasted of the inevitable success of his royal master, and the utter worthlessness and weakness of all opposition to his sword, but he spoke also in the Jew's language, and incited the rabble to acts of conspiracy and treason, if possible, to sap the foundations of Hezekiah's throne, and it might be to intimidate them so that they might be the more easily struck down when Sennacherib should come with his countless and invading host. In such circumstances, Hezekiah, without giving up the courage of the hero, for a moment gave way to the devotion, and the trust, and the piety that become the Christian. When he heard it, he put on sackcloth, the symbol of sorrow, and sent Eliakim, a confidential servant in his household, and Shebna the scribe, to Isaiah, the author of the prophecy that bears his name, and knowing that he received communications from God, he thought that he was the best person to put up prayers to God, and pray for him and his subjects, and counsel and advise him in this most

urging and pressing emergency. It may be, said

Hezekiah, that the Lord thy God has heard these blasphemous words of Rabshakeh, and if so, Isaiah,

let me entreat you to put up prayers for the remnant of Judah that are now left. Well, Isaiah instantly replied to his master, on the authority of his God, "Thus saith the Lord, be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land." Here is the absolute certainty of the issue; than which nothing could be more comforting to Hezekiah, the king of Judah.

We then read of Sennacherib sending a blasphemous letter, full of the same vain-boasting and pretentious assumptions, to Hezekiah; he tells him in this letter, now your trust is all nonsense; let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee ; you may depend upon it he deceives you to your ruin, as if he had said; and you will find it your disastrous and bitter experience, when it is too late to repair the damage that will be done. "Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Thelasar ?” and you may depend upon it that the power that destroyed these will not be arrested by your God, whom you call the living God; but you shall be added to the roll of dethroned and slaughtered kings; and you had better therefore come to terms before the issue convinces you when it is too late. Well, Hezekiah received the letter as an act of courtesy, and read it; and then what did he do? He had God's honour committed to the issue; he had com

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mitted his kingdom and its destinies to God's holy keeping; and he took the letter and laid it where he had laid his lot and the faith of his realm, before the Lord, and prayed: "O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubim; bow down thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them." And then he prays, not for himself, not for the lives of his subjects, but primarily for the glory and the honour of his God; for you must be struck in reading this chapter with the fact that Hezekiah subordinates all secular, national, social, personal interests to this great and supreme one-what shall be for God's glory, the vindication of his name, and the establishment of his truth. In other words, Hezekiah seems to have felt, if he did not know the very words of the first commandment in a well-known popular but precious document: "What is the chief end of man ?” "To glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever." He commits, therefore, the whole thing to him. And Isaiah the son of Amoz sends to Hezekiah: "That which thou has prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard, saith the Lord. This is the word that the Lord hath spoken concerning him; the virgin the daughter of Zion, on whom he has made an assault, will lift up her magnificent head, and shake it in scorn and contempt against this ruthless and blaspheming invader; and she will

say, whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed ? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy. One of Israel." You have talked very fine things, says the virgin daughter of Jerusalem (by a beautiful figure representing Jerusalem speaking to Sennacherib); by thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord; you have said that you will cast down the tall cedars; that is, strike down our nobility, and cut down the choice fir trees; that is, our best, and most useful and valued men; and you have said, “I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel;" and you state as evidence of this, or rather as a precedent to warrant you concluding that the future will be like the past: "I have digged and drunk strange waters;" that is, as if a person should say, I have drunk of the Thames,. the Danube, the Tiber, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ganges; meaning, I have visited all these,: and mastered or defeated the inhabitants that dwell

upon their banks. "And with the sole of my feet. have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places;". that is, depopulated them. Now then God answers in verse 25th, where you are very apt to suppose the same speaker goes on; it is not the virgin the daughter of Zion, or Jerusalem, that speaks in the 25th verse; but after she has spoken thus to the king of Assyria, God says, "Hast thou not heard, Sennacherib, long ago, how I have done it," or, as it. is in the margin, "how I have made it; and of ancient times that I constituted it? now I have brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay. waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps;" as much as