form which the Divine government may assume in its relation to the good and the evil, the same Divine love is the essence of it all, and the same Divine wisdom directs all its operations. He whose tender mercies are over all His works has the same Divine purpose in all the dispensations of His Providence, whether they be for pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow, freedom or restraint. The desire to save is that which enters into all His dealings with His creatures; and even when salvation cannot actually be effected, that desire constantly operates to moderate the evil which it cannot remove, and alleviate the suffering which it cannot prevent.

This general fact is to be understood not only with reference to the two opposite classes of human beings, the good and the evil, but with reference also to the two opposite principles of good and evil; and therefore to evil persons so far as they are good, and to good persons so far as they are evil,-for there are none so evil as to be entirely destitute of good, and none so good as to be entirely free from evil;-good has pleasure, and joy, and freedom; evil has pain, and sorrow, and restraint. This is the reason the children of God, as well as the children of the world, are subject to pain, and sorrow, and restraint. It is evil still adhering to them that makes them subject to these afflictions. But while these remind them forcibly of the evil root being not yet destroyed in themselves, it reminds them at the same time of the superintending care of a wise Providence, which permits these as symptoms of spiritual disease, in order to draw their attention to the existing malady, and lead them to apply to the Divine Physician for relief and cure. Hereditarily, the seeds of all evils are latent in every one. These do not all necessarily come forth into distinct evil acts in every one; but they no doubt, till they are removed by repentance, all enter into every act which any one performs. Every act we perform in our unregenerate state has within it, however unconscious we may be of the fact, all the evil tendencies of our corrupt nature.

Every act we perform has within it all our will and all our understanding; and the affections of the will and the thoughts of the understanding are as numerous and diversified as the nerves of sensation and of motion in the body through which they operate. But although the hereditary evils of our nature may not all come forth into distinct evil acts, or form distinct evil habits, yet they for the most part obtrude themselves into the thoughts. And it is of Divine permission that they should do so; for they must be perceived before they can be condemned and removed. The removal of evils from the inner life of man is the constant aim and operation of Divine Providence.

One of the prevailing permissions of that Providence, therefore, is to allow the latent evils of our nature to be excited, so far as to be brought to our consciousness, so that the Divine power may remove them. This permission and its purpose explain a somewhat singular feature in the historical and prophetical parts of Scripture, in which it is represented and described. The surrounding nations are raised up to punish and afflict Israel and Judah, and yet those nations are punished and afflicted for doing so. Such is the law of Divine Providence and of saving mercy. Evil is excited that it may afflict the soul, that the soul, through affliction, may be delivered from the evil. Many instances of this occur in the Scriptures, especially in the book of Judges. A striking representative description of it is also given in the latter part of the prophecy of Jeremiah. From the 46th to the 51st chapter, we have a series of judgments pronounced against the nations that had assailed and oppressed the children of Israel and Judah. Egypt and Philistia, Moab and Ammon, Damascus and Edom, Babylon and Chaldea, are successively brought up and made the subjects of reproach for the evils they had committed, and of judgment for their crimes against the people of the Lord. In this enumeration Egypt is first and Babylon last, the places of the first and last captivity of the Jews, representing the first and last states of the regenerate life, which begins with science and ends with love, to which false science and evil love are opposed.

These prophecies were first fulfilled in the Jewish Church; they were afterwards spiritually fulfilled in the Christian Church. In the book of Revelation, which relates to the Christian Church, we have prophecies respecting the nations in general, and Babylon in particular, very similar to those which occur in the Old Testament. Jerusalem is to be trodden by the nations under foot forty and two months. Babylon is represented as corrupting all nations, and making them drunk with the wine of her fornication, and as herself being drunken with the blood of the saints. In all the descriptions of this gigantic power and its crushing dominion, we are presented with an expressive type of that most insatiable and domineering of all the principles of our fallen nature, self-love, and the love of dominion originating in it. It is the deepest source in human nature of all that is corrupting and destructive. And every church which has hitherto existed on the earth has fallen under its dominion at last, for the ascendancy of this principle in the church is the ultimate state of its corruption. We therefore find a Babel or Babylon in every dispensation described in the Scriptures-every one at least which has hitherto existed.

But in the particular sense of the Scriptures, where the experience of the individual is treated of, and individual regeneration is the subject, these descriptions have for us a more practical use. They teach us important lessons of personal interest. They tell us that this domineering and corrupting principle has a place in every human heart, and that it never fails in some way to assert its claims and exhibit its character; and which it does, not merely in our natural state, but when we are passing through the regeneration. But to the regenerate there is a comforting promise, as well as an afflictive description; for the promise. is that Babylon shall be utterly destroyed, and Israel and Judah restored: "Their captivity shall return, and the children shall come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads."

A partial restoration is described in the altered condition of Jehoiakim under the new king of Babylon, and it is remarkable that this is the last historical transaction in regard to Judah that is mentioned either in the Prophets or in the Kings. It is only in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which have no internal sense, that the return of the Jews is related. Perhaps the reason that no actual record of the destruction of Babylon and the restoration of the Jews is given may be, that the judgment of Babylon and the restoration of the church takes place as a distinct and sensible event in the spiritual and not in the natural world. There only is the judgment, which ends one dispensation and begins another, as an actual, immediate, and historical event: in the natural world "the Son of Man comes as a thief in the night." The great change steals upon men silently and imperceptibly-so silently and imperceptibly that they are wont to say-"Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the foundation of the world." And the same sentiment is uttered now in the day of the Second Coming of the Lord. There is no visible judgment or ending, no personal appearing of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, no visible descent of the holy city. There are indeed signs discernible to those who look for them, but it is wisely and mercifully ordered that they are such as to force themselves on no one's convictions, the freedom of the human mind being left to accept or refuse the warning and the message.

In our individual experience our final judgment and restoration are also in the spiritual world. There is the full and final separation effected between the flesh and the spirit, the world and heaven, self and the Lord. All this must be essentially effected here, but there the work is perfected the emancipation of the spirit is complete. There old things completely pass away, and all things become completely new.

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GOD'S BENEVOLENCE IN MAN'S DEPENDENCE.

No part of the Divine economy is more conspicuous for its wisdom and benevolence than that which makes the members of the human family dependent on each other for the supply of their simplest wants, and so makes man the medium of good to man. This condition of their nature serves to bind them to each other by the ties of mutual affection, which is a ground of their happiness, and produces union and coöperation, which is a means of providing for their common welfare. Man's helplessness thus becomes his security, his weakness his strength, his destitution his abundance. Brought into existence the most feeble and helpless of all creatures, he falls into the arms of those who receive him as a most precious gift of heaven, and who cherish and nurture him with a love which heaven only can inspire and sustain; for even natural affection has an immediate Divine origin. As the stem branches out, and the central love extends through a wider circle, families become tribes, and tribes become nations, having common interests and common duties. These interests and duties are not material only, but are moral and spiritual also. Dependent as we are upon each other, and upon all, for the supply of our physical wants, we are still more dependent upon them for the supply of our intellectual and spiritual wants, and for the very use of the faculties by which we acquire knowledge and religious truth. Admirable as are the faculties which God bestows upon us, they remain in a great measure dormant till called into action by the agency of others. The human faculties are capable, indeed, of a high degree of independent culture; but this work, as prosecuted by individuals themselves, is but a continuation of what has been commenced by others. The mind owes its final development to the labour of minds already developed. By them the ground is first cultivated, and by them the seeds are first sown from which we are enabled afterwards to reap the harvest. In this field other men have laboured, and we have entered into their labours. But how gradually do the fruits of human labour accumulate! How slowly has the human race advanced in knowledge! and yet such is the extent of human capacity, that one individual is now able to acquire, in the brief space of a modern life-time, a considerable share of what it has required the labour of so many ages to discover. This strikingly shews how much we owe to the labours of others; and with what comparative ease and rapidity the mind can be improved, when it has the advantage of being aided by other minds which have profited by the labours of those who preceded them.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that the ignorance from which man has risen so slowly into his present measure of intelligence and mental

development, was not his primeval condition. The low state from which he has arisen was the result of his fall. In his unfallen state he had an intuitive perception of whatever was required for his welfare and happiness; but when he had fallen from his original innocence, and as conseq ence lost the faculty of intuitive perception, he gradually sunk into a state of ignorance and barbarism, from which he has risen but partially and by slow degrees. If mankind had been capable of more rapid improvement, Providence would certainly have supplied the means necessary for the purpose; for we cannot suppose that the infinite Father of the human race could leave them destitute of anything for which their capacities fitted them as means conducive to their real interests.

As the past ages in the life of man have been necessary for the attainment of the present measure of natural knowledge, so have they been for his present measure of spiritual intelligence. The successive dispensations of religion which have existed on the earth, have all had an intimate connection with and orderly relation to each other. The last could not have existed unless it had been preceded by the others. The Christian dispensation is but the development of those that have been before it; hence the Christian Church is but the ancient church unswathed. All churches that existed before the Christian Church were representative; and the truths which were plainly revealed by the Lord, when He came into the world, had been presented and indirectly seen through the types of their representative worship. By means of those earlier dispensations, preparation was made for the establishment of the Christian Church. The Apostle Paul uttered a profound truth, grounded in the perception of this fact, when he said, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." The law was the means of preparing the world for the reception of the Gospel. Moses was a necessary precursor of Jesus Christ. One of the means by which he prepared the way for the Lord and Christianity, was by his being instrumental in revealing the Sacred Scripture. The Lord could not come into the world as the Incarnate Word till he had come as the written Word. One of the objects for which He came into the world was to fulfil the law. He could not have fulfilled the law till the law had been revealed; and this fulfilling of the law by the Lord was a far more important and stupendous work than we sometimes suppose. The Lord's fulfilling of the law did not consist simply in His obeying its moral precepts, but included such a fulfilment of the whole Word, in its light and depth, as made Him the Law itself, thus exalting the Word, which had become a dead letter, into a living power in the person of the Lord, that He might with His own finger write the law anew upon the hearts of His