This despised and struggling Church shall yet become universal. "All nations shall flow unto it." Those who wander on the boundless steppes of Tartary-those who shiver amid the eternal ice of Greenland-those who inhabit Africa, that continent of thirst-those who bask in the lovely regions of the South Sea-all, all are to flow to the mountain of the Lord. They are to "flow;" they are to come, not in drops, but with the rush and the thunder of mighty streams. "Nations are to be born in one day." A supernatural impulse is to be given to the Christian cause. Christ is again to be, as before, his own missionary. Blessed are the eyes which shall see this great gathering of the nations, and the ears which shall hear the sound thereof. Blessed above those born of women, especially, the devoted men, who, after laboring in the field of the world, shall be rewarded, and at the same time astonished, by finding its harvest-home hastened, and the work which they had been pursuing, with strong crying and tears, done to their hands, done completely, and done from heaven. In this belief lies the hope and the help of the world. But for a divine intervention, we despair of the success of the good cause. Allow us this, and Christianity is sure of a triumph, as speedy as it shall be universal. On Sabbath, the 16th of May, 1836, we saw the sun seized, on the very apex of his glory, as if by a black hand, and so darkened that only a thin round ring of light remained visible, and the chill of twilight came prematurely

on.

That mass of darkness within seemed the world lying in wickedness, and that thin round ring of light, the present progress of the Gospel in it. But not more certain were we then, that that thin round ring of light was yet to become the broad and blazing sun, than are we now, that through a divine interposal, but not otherwise, shall the "knowledge of the glory of the Lord cover the earth as the waters the sea."

With this coincides Micah's prophecy. From Sion, as of old, the law is to go forth; and the word of Jehovah issuing from Jerusalem seems to imply, that he himself is there to sit and judge and reign-his ancient oracle resuming its thunders, and again to his feet the tribes going up. And the first, and one of the best fruits of his dominion is peace. They learn war no more." Castles are dismantled, men of war plough the deep no longer, but are supplanted by the white sails of merchant vessels; soldiers no more parade

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the streets in their loathsome finery of blood; swords and spears are changed into instruments of husbandry, or, if preserved, are preserved in exhibitions, as monuments of the past folly and frenzy of mankind. (Perhaps a child finds the fragment of a rusty blade some day in a field, brings it in to his mother, asks her what it is, and the mother is unable to reply!) Peace, the cherub, waves her white wing, and murmurs her soft song of dovelike joy over a regenerated and united world.

All hail ye "peaceful years!" Swift be your approach; soon may your great harbinger divide his clouds and come down; and soon may the inhabitants of a warless world have difficulty in crediting the records which tell the wretchedness, the dispeace, the selfishness, and the madness of the past.

NAHUM.

Nahum was a native of Elkoshai, a village of Galilee, the ruins of which are said to have been distinctly visible in the fourth century.

Nahum's prophecy is not much longer than his history. It is the most magnificent shout ever uttered. Like a shout, it is short, but strong as the shout which brought down Jericho. The prophet stands a century after Jonah-without the wall of Nineveh, and utters, in fierce and hasty language, his proclamation of its coming doom. No pause interrupts it; there is no change in its tone; it is a stern, one, war-cry, and comes swelled by the echoes of the past. Nahum is an evening wolf, from the Lord, smelling the blood of the great city, and uttering a fearful and prolonged note-half of woe, and half of joy, which is softened by distance into music. How wondrous that one song should have survived such a city!

In a shout, you expect nothing but strength, monotony, and loudness. But Nahum's is the "shout of a king;" not merely majestical in tone, but rises, with splendid imagery and description. Nineveh must fall to regal music. It must go down amid pomp and poetry. Especially does the prophet kindle, as he pictures the pride, pomp, and circumstance of war. Tyrtæus and Korner, nay, Macaulay and Scott, are fainthearted on the field of battle, compared to Nahum. He strikes his lyre with fingers dipped in blood.

In him, a prophetic blends with a martial fire, like a stray sunbeam crowning and hallowing a conflagration. Hear Nineveh shaking in the breath of his terrible outcry-"Woe to the city of blood! She is all full of falsehood and violence. The prey departeth not. There is a sound of the whip, and a sound of the rattling wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the bounding chariots, and of the mounting horsemen. There, too, burns the flame of the sword, and the lightning of the spear, and a multitude of slain, and a heap of dead bodies, and there is no end to the carcasses-they stumble upon carcasses."

Nahum's prophecy possesses one poetical quality in perfection. That is concentration. He has but one object, one thought, one spirit, one tone. His book gathers like a "wall of fire" around the devoted city. He himself may be fitliest likened to that wild and naked prophet, who ran an incessant and narrowing circle about Jerusalem, and who, as he traced the invisible furrow of destruction around it, cried out, “Woe, woe, woe, till he sank down in death!

ZEPHANIAH.

His genealogy is more minutely marked than that of any of his brethren. He is the "son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah." While his genealogy is thus carefully preserved, none of the facts of his life are given We know only that he was called to prophesy in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, the King of Judah. He was contemporary with Jeremiah, and, like him, "zealous to slaying" against the idols and idolatrous practices of his country.

Zephaniah is less distinguished than some of his brethren for any marked or prominent quality. He is not abrupt, like Hosea, gloomily-grand, like Joel, majestic, like Micah, impetuous, like Amos, or concentrated, like Nahum; he is rather a composite of many qualities, and a miniature of many prophetic writers. We have vehement denunciation of the sins of his own people; we have the dooms of idolatrous nations pronounced with all the force and fury of his office; we have pictures, startling for life and minuteness, of the varied classes and orders of offenders in Jerusalemprinces, judges, prophets, and priests; and we have bright

promises, closing and crowning the whole. All these are uttered in a brief, but impressive and solemn style.

But why, is it asked, do these Hebrew prophets utter such terrible curses against heathen countries? Are they not harsh in themselves, and do they not augur a vindictive spirit on the part of their authors? We ask, in reply, first, were not those curses fulfilled? Were they uttered in impotent fury? Did they recoil upon the heads of those who uttered them? Did those ravens croak in vain? If not, is it not to be inferred that the rage they expressed was not their own; that they were, in a great measure, as ravens were supposed to be, instruments of a higher power, dark with the shadow of destiny? Evil wishes are proverbially powerless; the "threatened live long"-curses, like chickens, come home to roost. But their curses-the ruins of empires are smoking with them still. But, secondly, even if we grant that human emotions did to some extent mingle with those prophetic denunciations, yet these were by no means of a personal kind. Of what offence to Ezekiel had Tyre, or to Isaiah had Babylon, been guilty? Their fire was kindled on general and patriotic grounds. Thirdly, Let us remember that the prophets employed the language of poetry, which is always in some degree that of exaggeration. Righteous indignation, when set to music, and floated on the breath of song, must assume a higher and harsher tone; must ferment into fury, soar into hyperbolical invective, or, if it sink, sink into the under-tone of irony, and yet remain righteous indignation still. Fourthly, As Coleridge has shown so well, to fuse indignation into poetic form, serves to carry off whatever of over-violence there had been in it: by aggravating, it relieves and lessens its fury. Fifthly, There is such a thing as noble rage; there are those who do well to be angry; there is anger which may lawfully tarry after the sun has gone down, and after the longest twilight has melted away; there is a severe and purged fire, not to feel which implies as deep a woe, to the subject, as to feel it inflicts upon the object. It is the sickly sentimentalism of a girl which shudders at such glorious frowns and fierce glances and deep thrilling accents, as robust virtue must sometimes use to quell vice, and audacity, and heartlessness, and hypocrisy, in a world rank with them all. There must be other sentences and songs at times than the perfumed pages of albums will endure, and

cries may require to be raised which would jar on the ear of evening drawing-rooms. Such sentences and cries the mildest of men, nay, superhuman beings, have been forced to utter. Can any one wonder at Ezekiel's burdens, who has read the 23d chapter of Matthew? Dare any one accuse Isaiah of vindictive scorn to the fallen King of Babylon, who remembers the divine laughter described in the 2d Psalm, or the 1st chapter of Proverbs? It is very idle to proceed with Watts to reduce to a weak dilution the sterner Psalms. The spirit of Jude and 2d Peter is essentially the same with that of the 109th and 137th Psalms; and never be it forgotten, that the most fearful denunciations of sin, and pictures of future punishment in Scripture, come from the lips of Jesus and of the disciple whom he loved. It is in the New Testament, not the Old, that that sentence of direst and deepest import occurs, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Were, indeed, the theory of the Germans true, that those prophetic curses were uttered after the events predicted, we should surrender them more readily to their censure, although, even in this case, there had been numerous palliations to plead for the prolonged exultation of a delivered race over foes so oppressive and formidable. But believing that

Isaiah's burden of Babylon is of a somewhat different order from the prophecy of Capys, and that all the Scripture predictions implied foresight, and were the shadows of coming events, we are not disposed to gratify the skeptic by granting that one spark of infernal fire shone on those flaming altars of imprecation, although a shade of human feeling was perhaps inseparable from the bosoms of the priests, however purged and clean, who ministered around them.

HABAKKUK.

This man, too, is but a name prefixed to a rapt psalm. He lived in the reign of Jehoiakim; was, of course, contemporary with Jeremiah; and it is generally supposed that he remained in Judah, and died there. Rugged, too, is his name, and cacophonous, nay, of cacophony often used as the type. Yet this name has been carved in bold characters upon the bark of the "Tree of life," and will remain there for ever. Rough as it is, it was the name of a noble spirit, and has,