deans; for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms." And then he says in the sixth verse, as another reason of it, "I was wroth with my people; I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand; thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke." Now mark the singular law that comes out here. God sent his people into Babylon captives, because of their sins; Babylon was to be the scene of their punishment, and its people the inflictors of that punishment; yet, strange to say, Babylon, in fulfilling God's word, or rather in fulfilling God's predictions, and doing what God said his people should be subjected to, became guilty before God. Here is a very remarkable feature in God's doings, that a nation may fulfil God's express predictions, and yet in fulfilling them it may be guilty in his sight. For instance, here is Babylon, the prison-house of the ancient saints of God, inflicting upon them the precise judgments that God had pre-intimated in his inspired Word; and yet Babylon, guilty in his sight, and punished just because it did what he foretold. You have the same thing in the case of the Jews. For instance, God's prophecy is, that the Jewish people shall be scattered, and peeled, and persecuted, and a by-word, and a hiss, and a scoff, and trodden under foot, among all nations, until they shall say, Hosannah, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." But yet, by a remarkable law, he says, the nation that gives hospitality to the Jews in their sufferings, that opens its bosom as a shelter to them in their trouble, he will prosper, and the nation that does the very thing that he says shall be done, he will

66

nevertheless punish. strange, but the reason of it is this-that we are not to make it our duty to fulful God's predictions, but to obey God's precepts. And here is the great misapprehension into which many powers have fallen. When you ask of those any who have persepowers cuted the Jews, Why do you do so?-ask the present Pope of Rome, the chief ill-treater of the Jews at this moment, shutting them up in a horrible den, as everybody knows, called the Ghetto, where they are treated like swine, why he does this? The only redeeming trait, according to M. About, if it be a redeeming trait, is that the Pope sends a monk to preach Christianity to them, and makes them pay a munificent stipend to the monk for doing so. And when M. About went to them, and told them that he had come to read the story of their sufferings and to proclaim it to Europe, you may conceive how deep that suffering must be, and how the iron has entered into their very souls, when they implored him, with one consent, not to tell it; because, they said, the very fact that we complain will bring down upon us tenfold worse punishment. Were you to ask the kind-hearted and benevolent Pope of Rome-for personally, I believe, he is all this-why do you so ill-treat the Jews? his answer would be, Are not you Protestants acquainted with your own Bible? Have you not read that they are to be trodden under foot, that they are to be a byword, a hiss, and a scoff among all nations? What would be your answer, if an enlightened Protestant? Just this: Very true, that is the prophecy; but leave God to fulfil it; he will take care of his prophecy ; the precept obligatory upon pontiffs and princes is,

Now this seems to us very

Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God; mind you that. But you see the Pope, like other people, likes to fulfil the prophecies, because it suits his convenience, his purpose, and his creed to do so; but he does not like to fulfil the precepts, because they exact a course inconvenient in the circumstances in which he is placed. Therefore, let us never attempt to fulfil prophecy; whatever God has predicted he will take care of. If he has launched a prophecy upon the winds, you may rest assured it will return to him in multiplied echoes; wherever you have a precept, mind that—that is your province. God may curse you, as he did Babylon, for fulfilling his prophecies; God will bless you, as he does all people, for obeying his plain precepts. Now this is just the reason here why Babylon was punished, though she fulfilled precisely what was predicted.

He shows that, in addition to all this, her pride, her conceit, her vanity, her presumption, had become intolerable. She said, "I shall be a lady;" that is, the capital, the city, is here represented as the virgin daughter of Babylon; she says, this great, proud capital, surrounded by walls so broad that three chariots could run abreast upon them, with hanging gardens, with greatness, and grandeur, and strength, that made her believe herself to be impregnable and immortal; she says, "I shall be a lady for ever; so thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it. Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow,

neither shall I know the loss of children; but these two things shall come upon thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children and widowhood; they shall come upon thee in perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments." How often does God make the sin the scourge with which he punishes a people! It is a great law, apparently, in the providential dealings of God that the punishment of a nation lies in the track of that nation's transgressions. If a nation becomes covetous, and thinks only of gold, he makes gold its punishment. If a nation is proud, and thinks only of its strength, its fortresses, its army, its navy, in one day he shows them that a nation's glory, like a nation's strength, is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.

And then he tells this proud Babylon, "Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness; thou hast said, None seeth me." She fancied that in those gigantic palaces, whose shadows were cast broad and far from her, she could hide herself from God; but never forget that the omniscient eye can penetrate granite walls, and the omnipotent hand can smite in spite of armed battalions, and that a word from the lips of God is stronger than all the forces of Europe.

Then he tells them, "Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off." You know how that was fulfilled. This prediction addressed to Babylon was enunciated one hundred and fifty years before the event transpired. You recollect how Cyrus turned aside the river from its channel; marched along its

Р

dry bed; found the gates that led from the inner walls to the river, by which the people drew water, open; the king and all his nobles feasting and in a state of intoxication in the royal palace; how in one night, from the king to the meanest of his subjects, they were slain; and Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the lady of kingdoms, fell in one night, and now a few molten bricks are all that remain of this magnificent capital. The eye of Christian faith, however, can read upon them what is legible upon Nineveh, and Tyre, and Sidon, and the Seven Churches of Asia, on Constantinople and on Rome, that it is righteousness alone that exalteth a people.

DIVINE REASONINGS.

ISAIAH XLVIII.

We shall understand and explain the chapter I have read by recollecting that those whom it specially concerned were captives in the midst of Babylon; and secondly, by understanding that even while members of the church of God, they were members of that church in its infancy, and needed line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. It seems that some of the house of Israel, even in the midst of that terrible national thraldom into which they were sent and plunged for their transgressions, were yet pretenders to that which they really had not, and professed an allegiance that in their hearts and consciences they did