DISC.

X.

Remember, O Rachel, my mother, the days that are past, and call to mind God's wonders of old time. Remember how thou forrowedft, when thou broughteft forth my father Benjamin, as fearing left he should have died with thee, or before thee. Yet after thy pains hadst thou this joy, that a man was born into the world. And though thou didst impose upon him a name betokening forrow, yet his father wifely changed it into one predictive of better things. Remember, when Benjamin, for the good of his brethren, was called to go down into Egypt, how Jacob fuppofed him loft, and complained that he was bereaved of his children. But, notwithstanding thefe ill bodings, Benjamin, at length, returned in fafety, with his brother Judah; the father was again bleffed with the fight of his youngest and best beloved fon, the light of his eyes, and the ftaff of his old age. Such, at this time, my mother, is thy fear and sorrow; but greater, hereafter, fhall be thy comfort, and thy joy. Benjamin is indeed led

captive

X.

captive into Babylon; but Judah is once DISC. more gone with him, as his pledge; and if he bring him not back again, let the blame be his, yea mine, yea God's for ever. "For thus faith the LORD, if my cove"nant be not with day and night, and if I "have not appointed the ordinances of hea"ven and earth, then will I caft away the "feed of Jacob and David my fervant, fo "that I will not take any of his feed to "be rulers over the feed of Abraham, "Ifaac, and Jacob-for I will cause their

captivity to return, and have mercy on "them-yea I have fworn by my holiness "that I will not fail David." Now, my mother, while this promise lafts, in general, to Ifrael, as Abraham's feed, Benjamin must have his portion in the bleffing. And while it remains good in particular to the feed of David, Benjamin, for his faithful adherence to Judah, in profperity and adversity, must participate with him in the prerogative. And when the kingdom fhall be restored, as reftored it will be, whoever fhall fit on the left hand, faithful Benjamin muft

T 4

DISC. must fit on the right hand of the throne of

This, taking all circumftances into the account, feems to have been the import of Jeremiah's confolatory address to Rachel, in the day of her calamity. And his words, or rather those of the Almighty, were, in their fulleft import; made good to her. Within feventy years, it came to pass, that the pofterity of Benjamin returned, with Judah, into the land of Promife, and inhabited Jerufalem, Bethlehem, and other bordering cities, promifcuoufly with the royal tribe. "Her work was rewarded;' her patient expectation, in faith and hope of the promises made her, failed not of it's fruit, in the appointed season: her "chil"dren came again from the land of the enemy to their own border," as the LORD had foretold by his prophet; they

"returned, and came to Sion with fongs;

joy was upon their heads," and in their

hearts; and forrow and fighing flew " away!"

We

We are now prepared to take a view, as DISC. was propofed in the

Second place, of those parallel circumftances which offer themselves, in the lamentation of the Bethlehemitish mothers, and the cause thereof, with the confideration which was to adminifter comfort' to them in the day of their great and most bitter affliction.

The death of the tribe of Benjamin, in conjunction with the tribe of Judah, in the time of Jeremiah was a civil death, a departure into captivity. Their restoration from it was, confequently, a civil restoration, a restoration to their ancient city and polity in their own land. The death of the Bethlehemitish infants was a bodily death, by the fword of Herod; their reftoration must therefore be a restoration to the bodily life, thus violently taken from them, that is, it must be a refurrection. Rachel's present lamentation for the bodily death of her children must have a

comfort

X.

DISC. comfort answerable to it, as her former la

X.

mentation for their civil death had a comfort answerable to that. Let us fee what analogy and proportion the forrow and joy in one cafe bear to the forrow and joy in the other.

There is no need to fhock your feelings, by endeavouring to draw a picture at large of this day's most abominable maffacre. Suffice it to say, that the bloody murder of children, in their tenderest and most helplefs eftate, torn from the arms, and butchered in fuch multitudes, before the eyes of their mothers, muft again cause "a "voice to be heard, lamentation, and

weeping and great mourning" great, beyond the conception of any, but those who then expreffed, or were witnesses to it. We cannot read the words which describe it, without imagining that we hear Rachel, called from her tomb near Bethlehem, " weeping for her children;" that we see her turning away, and " refufing to "be comforted for her children, because

"they