even with joy and singing. This second mark of the spring was to attend upon the first: at the appearance of flowers on the earth, the time of the singing of birds was to come with them; and even the wilderness and solitary place, the haunt of wild beasts and doleful creatures, should become the resort of musical birds singing among the branches. The real meaning of which is no other than what the prophet himself hath expressed for us at the close of the chapter. The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion (the holy mountain of Christ's church") with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

While we lay in our winter of spiritual death, no song was to be heard from us: that was no time for singing; for where death is, its ordinary attendants are sorrow and sighing; which accordingly prevailed over all the world, till the ransom paid for it by Christ Jesus, put them to flight.

Who ever heard the nightingale sing in the midst of winter? the stork and the swallow, and the nightingale, and other birds, all

a Heb. xii. 22.

know

know their time, and never cross the seas to visit us, till the spring is advanced, and the quickening beams of the sun have inspired a new life into the animal and vegetable creation. How therefore could the heathen land rejoice, till the flowers appeared on it? Till the spring of Christianity approached it, and the glory of the Lord Jehovah, the holy one of Israel, dwelt in the midst of it? Then every redeemed soul broke out into songs of joy and thanksgiving:-From the uttermost part of the earth songs were heard, even glory to the righteous.

The same deliver nce which gave them cause to sing, gave them the power to do it. For as man, in his natural state, has no reason to rejoice, so has he no ability, therefore said the Prophet-The tongue of the dumb shall sing. And hence it is, that in our excellent form of common-prayer, we beseech God to "open our lips, that our mouths may "shew forth his praise."

Thus does the joy of the saints, on the appearance of the gospel, answer to the singing of birds on the arrival of the spring: the time and cause of both are alike; and they celebrate the same subject, the glory of the light. Nor do they less agree in place: the habita

tion of the Lord's redeemed being the same with that of the birds: they sit and sing in the tree of the church, which is the mystical body of Christ. For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. The kingdom of heaven is an expression in the parables, well known to signify the Gospel-state. The grain of mustard-seed, the least of all seeds, may be emblematic of Christ, who humbled himself to become the least in the kingdom of heaand who at his death was sown in the field of this world, but sprang up to power and glory at his resurrection: from the least of all seeds becoming the greatest of all trees, extending its mystical branches to the ends of the earth, and affording an habitation to birds of every sort, which sit and sing among the branches, and are safe under the shadow of it, and in it there is meat for all. Such

is

Totius enim mundi judex-qui, in corde terræ in "tumulo occultatus, tridui spatio in maximam arborem ex"crevit, ramos suas ad extremos terræ fines protendens.

is the peace of those who are called to a state of salvation, and such is their chief and best employment. Their winter is past; their rain over and gone; and the time of their singing is come. The sorrow and sighing of men without hope is fled away; and changed into the melody of the heart, breaking out into psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs -for there is no real cause of sorrow left, when once the soul is truly converted to Christ-we are to be of good cheer in the presence of him, who hath overcome the world for us.

XVI. From the singing of birds we proceed to another sign of the spring, the voice

"Ex illo propullantes duodecim apostoli, rami illi floridi "atque excelsi, gentibus, non secus ac volucribus cœli,

tegmen præbuere; quibus ramis omnes obumbrati, tansc quam volucres in nidum congregati, ejus, qui ab illis "promanabat, lautæ ac cœlestis alimoniæ participes sunt facti." Fragmenta S. Iranei, antepenult. Edit. Grabe.

There may seem to be an ambiguity, if not an impropriety, in applying the grain of mustard from the gospelstate to the person of Christ; but as the church is no other than the body of Christ, its privileges and benefits cannot be considered independent of his person: and thus he himself hath considered them on another occasion-I am the Vine, ye are the branches,

of

of the turtle, which the spouse tells his beloved is now heard in the land. The voice of the turtle is the voice of the Holy Ghost, who descended upon Christ at his baptism in the shape of a dove, and is called upon at the fourteenth verse of this chapter under that name-O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice. There is a kind of dove in the eastern countries, which in the hard weather, when it casts its feathers, hides itself in the holes of the rocks, and there lies silent till the spring invites it abroad again. Thus, while the world was in its winter, while the heathen people sat in darkness and the shadow of death, and the Jews were become an evil and adulterous generation, the true dove was departed from them. For the Holy Spirit of discipline (as the author of the Book of Wisdom hath truly observed) will flee deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without "understanding." It could no more abide with a wicked world, than the dove of Noah could settle upon a deluge of waters. But when a new people were prepared for the Lord, the dove descended from a rock out of the reach of every storm, and was sent down

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