three centuries such that true believers were much of the time debarred from it, and at best obstructed in their access to it by formidable barriers? Was there any part of the pure church, during the long night of the dark ages, that was reluctant to receive genuine converts to its bosom? Has there been since the Reformation? No one will affirm that there has. Nor were the gates of the Israelitish church ever closed against converts from paganism. Express provision was made by the law of Sinai for the admission of proselytes from the Gentiles. The interpretation of the continual accessibleness of Jerusalem, from the ever-open gates, foretold in the prophecy, as denoting the continual accessibleness of the Christian church, thus implies a state of the church, Christian and Jewish, that has never existed. It is mistaken, therefore, and with it falls the hypothesis on which it is founded, that the Israelites and the Jerusalem of the prophecy, are mere representatives of the Christian church. The prophetic sense of the prophecy, is indubitably its plain grammatical sense. It is the Israelites in their national land whom nations and kings are to serve, in the spheres predicted in the passage; and it is Gentile nations and kings, in contradistinction from Israelites, who are thus to aid and serve them. Nations that refuse that service will thereby refuse to recognise them as Jehovah's chosen people, and to recognise and acknowledge him as God; and will, therefore, directly rebel against him, and be justly punished for it by destruction. The nations, accordingly, which it is foreshown are to resist the establishment of the Israelites in Jerusalem, are to be met by the direct intervention of Jehovah, and consumed by the fires of his avenging justice, Zech. xiv. 119; Rev. xix. 11-21.

"The glory of Lebanon shall come to thee, cypress, plane, and box together, to adorn the place of my sanctuary, and I will beautify the place of my feet," vs. 13. The place of Jehovah's sanctuary is Jerusalem, in which it is erected; and the place of his feet, the temple itself, as is seen from Ezekiel xliii. 5-7. "And behold the glory of Jehovah filled the house. And he said unto me, Son of Man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my name shall the house of Israel no more defile."

Those who treat the prophecy as representative, reject the literal sense here as in every other part of the prediction, as material, mean, and unworthy of Jehovah. But how unworthy of him? Was it unsuitable to him to plant a garden for the residence of the first pair in their innocence? Was it unworthy of him to cause a material tabernacle to be erected, and afterwards a temple, as the place of his visible manifestation of himself to his people, the communication to them of his will, and the reception of their homage? Is it unbecoming the incarnate Redeemer to reveal himself in his glory in this world to those whom he has perfectly sanctified? For it is that revelation of himself that is the real object of dislike to these expositors, and it is to escape that that they venture arbitrarily to set aside the philological sense of the prophecy, and assign it a wholly foreign, false, and absurd meaning. If it is unsuitable to the dignity and grandeur of Jehovah-Jesus, to reveal himself personally to his people here, how is it that he has announced, in so many prophecies, that he is to come in the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory, and that every eye shall see him, and they that pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth shall wail because of him? How is it that it is foretold of him, in so many passages that he shall receive the earth as his kingdom and reign over its nations for ever and ever? Are these expositors better judges of what becomes his perfections, his rights, and the ends he is pursuing, than he himself is? Unbecoming-a degradation to the Redeemer in his glorified human nature-to reveal himself to those whom he saves, while it is infinitely glorious to him to save them? But these bold assumptions are as senseless as they are irre-. verent. Mankind are to continue to be human beings after Christ comes and redeems them. They are to need shelter, they are to reside in dwellings, chap. lxv. 21, 22, they are to plant and rear fruit and shade trees, they are to be susceptive of pleasure from objects of beauty; and Christ has expressly taught us that he is to provide for those susceptibilities and necessities of their renovated nature, by restoring the earth from the curse with which it was smitten at the fall, new-creating it in fertility and beauty, and making it again a paradise suitable to the residence of a ransomed race, chap. xxxv. 1, 2, xlix. 18-20. Unworthy this, it seems

in the judgment of these expositors, of the spirituality, of the grace and the majesty of the incarnate Jehovah; beneath the grandeur of his station, and the ends he is pursuing, to deliver the world he redeems from the curse with which revolt has defaced it, and adorn it with the beauty of an unfallen Eden! To accord with their beau-ideal of a ransomed earth, it should be stript of its forests, its fruit and shade trees and its verdure, and made a waste; and its inhabitants—though new-created in his image, and delivered from the doom of suffering and death-turned out of their habitations erected by art, and left to scorch and freeze in the open air, or cower with the beasts in the dens and caverns of the mountains. If not, why object to this prediction that Jerusalem is to be adorned with a temple suited in its magnificence to the grandeur of the Redeemer who is to reveal himself in it; that the dwellings of its inhabitants are to be formed of tasteful materials; and that its streets and environs are to be set with rare and graceful trees from the forest.

"Then shall the sons of thy oppressors come bending to thee; then all thy despisers shall bow down to the soles of thy feet; and they shall cry out to thee, The city of Jeho vah! Zion of the Holy One of Israel!" vs. 14. This is a prediction that the sons of the oppressors of the returned Israelites, and they who had before despised them as hypocrites and fanatics in their pretence that they were the chosen people of Jehovah, and had gone back to the land of their ancestors under his auspices-are now publicly and solemnly to recognise them as his people. They are to approach them in the attitude of awe and homage, and cry out and avow to them-'The city of Jehovah! Zion of the Holy One of Israel!'-which will be a specific and solemn acknowledgment that Jerusalem is, as its ransomed inhabi tants will claim, the city of Jehovah, the place where he has regathered his exiled people, where he has reinstituted his worship, and where he reveals himself in his glory. It is the inhabitants whom they are thus to address; while it is the city they are to acknowledge and proclaim as the city of Jehovah. This is wholly destructive of the hypothesis that the city is used as a representative of the Christian church for by that hypothesis, Jerusalem, at the time this prophecy is to be fulfilled, is not to be the city of Jehovah,

but is to be a ruin, deserted of him and desecrated, because of the apostasy of its inhabitants. The hypothesis assumes, accordingly, that a city which God has deserted and consigned to eternal desecration and ruin for the sins of its population, is used as a representative of the Christian church-which is absurd, revolting, and impossible.

9, 10. Metaphors. "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, that no one would pass through thee, therefore I will make thee the object of perpetual admiration, a joy of the age of ages. And thou shalt suck the milk of nations, and the breasts of kings shalt thou suck: and thou shalt know that I Jehovah am thy Saviour, and (that) thy Redeemer (is) the Holy One of Israel," vs. 15, 16. It is the population that is addressed here, as in the preceding verse, not, as some have supposed, the material city. That cannot recognise Jehovah as a Saviour and Redeemer. It is the Israelites who have been deserted, hated, and debarred from intercourse with other nations. It is they, restored, redeemed from sin and the curse, that are to be objects of wonder and joy, through all after ages; and it is they who are to be treated with the love and bounty, denoted by the sucking the milk of nations and the breasts of kings; that is, receiving from them the sustenance and other gifts they are to need in returning and re-establishing themselves in their ancient land, and being cared for with the affection and solicitude with which parents nurse and cherish their offspring. And the redeemed nations also, as well as they who had once oppressed them, are to acknowledge and glorify Jehovah as the sovereign Author of their salvation. All this again is wholly irreconcilable with the hypothesis that Israel, at the time to which this prophecy refers, is not to be the chosen people of Jehovah, but rejected and apostate. If they are then to be apostate and abandoned of God, it is solecistical and absurd to use these acts of the nations and kings towards them as though they were Jehovah's chosen people, as representative of analogous acts by the nations towards the Christian church. It were to make the treatment of apostates as though they were true worshippers, the symbol of treating true worshippers according to their genuine character, which is to put darkness for light and light for darkness.

"Instead of brass I will bring gold, and instead of iron I

will bring silver, and instead of wood brass, and instead of stones iron, and I will make thy government peace, and thy rulers righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation and ruin in thy borders; and thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise," v. 17, 18. They are to abound in the finest and most useful metals, brought from abroad; not, however, to be wrought into weapons of war; for there are to be no more violences among themselves, nor incursions of enemies strewing their territory with desolation. And their walls, because the walls of the city of God, they are to regard as rendering them for ever safe, and their gates as occasions for perpetual praise.

"The sun shall no more be to thee for a light by day, and the moon for brightness shall not shine to thee; for Jehovah shall become thine everlasting light; and thy God thy glory," vs. 19. As the way in which the sun and moon are to cease to be lights to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, is declared to be by the presence of Jehovah himself, their everlasting light and glory, it indicates that Jehovah's presence there is to be signified for ever by an effulgence that shall render the light of the sun and moon unnoticeable.

11, 12. Metaphors indirectly denominating Jehovah their sun and moon. "Thy sun shall set no more, and thy moon shall not be withdrawn. For Jehovah shall be unto thee for an eternal light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended," vs. 20. Jehovah, it is thus explained, is their sun and moon that are never to set: and the reason that he is called by those names is, that he is for ever to fill the office to the inhabitants of Jerusalem of sun and moon; being to them an eternal light. These predictions, like all that have preceded, admit only a grammatical construction: they are incapable of a representative sense. If the relation in which Jehovah is to be a light, were simply a moral or spiritual one, it would be absurd to represent his shedding forth that light on the minds of men, as a reason that the sun and moon should no longer shine as lights to their eyes. The light of those orbs would continue to be as necessary to men as bodied beings, as it was before.

"And thy people shall all of them be righteous; they shall inhabit the land for ever: the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified; a little one