waiteth to be gracious; that he willeth not the death of a sinner; that so far from taking advantage, as it were, of the first occasion of inflicting punishment, he reprieves, invites, remonstrates, and holds out the free offers of mercy to the last. Though he is a Judge strong and powerful, he is provoked every day. Though his wisdom could in one moment confound our folly, and his strength triumph over our weakness, yet, like that heavenly charity which springs from himself, he "suffereth long and is kind." He pities our ignorance; he bears with our way wardness; he deigns even to conciliate our affections; and it is not till after innumerable provocations, that he at length "swears in his wrath that we shall not enter into his rest." How nearly any of us may have approached the period in which this tremendous declaration shall go forth can be known only to the Almighty himself: two points however are perfectly clear. The one is, that each new instance of rebellion and ingratitude is hastening on that awful period, and may prove, when we least expect it, the filling up of the measure of our iniquities. The pardon now offered may not be offered again; the grace now despised may be finally withdrawn; the Saviour who now extends the arms of his mercy to receive all who flee to Him for refuge may soon pronounce that dreadful sentence," Because I have called and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." The other equally clear point is, that, so long as the heart is tender and there is really a wish and endeavour to return to God, God is willing to turn to us. Though when God spoke once, yea twice, we disregarded it; yet if even now we desire at length to obey his voice, we need not despair of his mercy. His compassion is not gone for ever; the way of reconci

liation is still open; the blood of the Saviour is still available for our pardon, and his Holy Spirit is promised to give us a new heart and to renew a right spirit within us.

To impress this subject more fully on our minds, we shall consider, First, Some of the ways in which God speaks to men ;

Secondly, The intention of his speaking; and,

Thirdly, The reception usually given to his declarations.

First, we are to inquire into some of the ways in which God speaks to men.-In the early ages, before the sacred Scriptures were completed, the Almighty was often pleased to reveal his will by extraordinary methods, and among others by those mentioned by Elihu, in the words which follow the text: " in a dream,in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men." But since the completion of his revealed word, the only sure declaration of his will which we need, or ought to wish for or expect, is contained in that infallible record. "God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last times spoken unto us by his Son." We are not to look to impressions on our fancies, either waking or sleeping, to learn the will of God; but to what he himself has disclosed respecting it in his word. Are we living in our sins? He plainly declares, that "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God." Are we humbled under a sense of our transgressions, and desirous of forsaking them? His voice is, "Whoso repenteth and forsaketh shall find mercy." Are we inquiring the way of pardon and salvation? His answer to our inquiry is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved:" "He hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Do we wish to know what he commands? Every part of his holy

word teaches us our duties to himself and to our fellow-creatures, and abounds with gracious promises of Divine assistance to enable us to perform them. In short, there is nothing necessary for us to know for our spiritual and eternal welfare which is not therein clearly explained.

The truths thus revealed in God's word are impressed upon us by many assistant means. The voice of creation is the voice of God, telling us of his wisdom, and power, and goodness. The ministers of Christ also are his voice, repeating his declarations to a thoughtless world, as Elihu mentions, in the sixth verse, "I am, according to thy wish, in God's stead;" and again, in the twenty-third, "A messenger, an interpreter, to shew unto man His uprightness." And particularly are the events of Divine Providence, whether prosperous or afflicting, his voice. The chapter before us shews how the Almighty thus " opens the ears of men and sealeth their instruction." Sometimes he speaks by pain and sickness; warning the sufferer to humble himself under the mighty hand of God; to be grieved for his past sins; and to turn in his affliction to his long forsaken Creator. At others, by a merciful restoration to strength and comfort; "the flesh of the sufferer becomes fresher than a child's: he returns to the days of his youth," being thus invited by the endearing voice of love and gratitude to "acquaint himself with God and be at peace." Again, the Almighty speaks in the still small whispers of conscience, or the more terrible accents of terror and remorse. "A dreadful sound is in the ears of the wicked:" he cannot escape from the murmurs of conscious guilt; from the dread of sickness and old age; from the terrors of death, of judgment, and of eternity. God speaks equally in his promises of pardon, and his invitations to lay hold on his mercy. His voice is, "Come unto me, all ye that labour

and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

This leads us to consider,

Secondly, The intention of God's speaking. This intention we have already in part seen in the foregoing remarks. The great object of the Almighty in his communications to a guilty world is to shew us our sin and danger; to point out the way of pardon and reconciliation; to urge us to accept his gracious offers of mercy; and to return to him in newness and holiness of life. His language is, as it were, Sinner, thou art mortal! thou art perishing! prepare to meet thy God! the Judge standeth at the door! Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. But not to dwell upon all the points contained in these merciful disclosures, I shall allude only to two or three, which are particularly mentioned in the chapter from which the text is taken.

Now one intention of the Almighty in speaking once, yea twice, that is repeatedly and earnestly, it is said is "to withdraw man from his purpose." The purposes of the unrenewed mind are all more or less sinful. The too frequent purpose of men is to live as happily as they can without God in the world; to indulge in the pleasures of sin, more or less gross or refined, for the short season of life; and to put far off, as long as possible, all thoughts of eternity and all preparation for it.. The voice of God, especially in pain and sickness, to which the chapter particularly refers, is to withdraw us from this evil purpose; to impress us with serious thoughts; to humble us in contrition; to lead us to the Saviour; and to produce in us a holy desire and resolution, by God's grace, to live no longer to ourselves or to the world, but to the praise and glory of our Creator and Redeemer. When, in any case

heard in the hour of sickness and solitude. Death has a voice that will utter mournful presages of ever lasting woe. And then, when all the sounds of this dizzy life are for ever over, will be heard in the awful stillness of the judgment hour that appalling voice, "Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.' Yes-even He whose mercy is over all his works; He who now calls upon us, once, yea twice, and without inter mission, in the accents of infinite mercy and compassion, to repent and turn to the Saviour and live; whose constant language is, "Why will ye die, O house of Israel!" will then as a just and inflexible judge pronounce and carry into execution that irrevocable sentence. Let us then "seek the Lord while he may be found;" let us "call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. THE importance of the prophetic parts of Scripture may be naturally presumed, independently of direct demonstration of their value, from the large space which they occupy in the revealed word of God. Reckoning from Moses to Malachi, a succession of prophets flourished in a regular series for more than one thousand years; besides other manifestations of God's will and inspired predictions of future events, before the time of the former, and after that of the latter, including in the first period the paradisaical and patriarchal ages, and in the last the New Testament prophecies, which are by no means less important or remarkable than those of the Old. What God has thought thus worthy of inditing and preserving, as a very considerable por

tion of his revealed word, must surely well deserve the attentive study of all Christians; and especially of those whose leisure and opportunities of information allow of their acquiring a large and intelligent acquaintance with this extensive department of holy writ. The following may be mentioned as among the uses of the prophetic parts of Scripture.

1. In the first place, and chiefly, they confirm the truth of Divine re velation.-Should the faith of the Christian be assailed by the sophistries of scepticism or infidelity, there is no one evidence of the Divine inspiration of the Bible to which the resort is more easy, and the force of which is more conclusive, than that of its minute and numerous prophecies. Reason teaches that none but the Omniscient himself can infallibly know the events of futurity, and that none but persons inspired by him could certainly predict them. An unenlightened age might be imposed upon by a pretended prediction built upon knowledge with which they were not themselves acquainted, as Columbus is said to have astonished the native Americans by announcing an eclipse of the sun. But moral events, the fluctuations of nations and empires, and the distant occurrences of unborn ages, are so completely hidden from human foresight, that not even a rational conjecture can often be hazarded. The most shrewd observer, the most calculating philosopher, must confess his utter igno

rance.

He only who made all worlds, who directs all hearts, and who interposes in all events, effecting all that is good, yet, by an inscrutable mystery free from the act or promptings of all evil, can foretel the rise, the fall, and the manycoloured lot of nations or individuals. A probable guess might indeed prove in some particular instances correct; but such a solution will not account for the long and accurate tissue of Scripture propheey; in which are foretold occur

occurrence.

rences of the most minute character, in common with others of the most magnificent; events personal, and events national; events many centuries distant, and events near at hand; events local, and events extending to the very limits of the world; and all connected with such a detail of particulars, and such an unbroken chain of facts, that no human sagacity could by any possibility be equal to the foreknowledge of their The Old Testament prophecies respecting the Messiah, with their fulfilment in the New, were there no others, are of themselves amply sufficient to confirm the most wavering faith. The whole scheme thus unfolded, part by part, through successive ages, must have been all present at once to the Omniscient mind. The dismembered materials of the prophetic edifice, delivered to mankind fragment by fragment, apparently without symmetry or order, were all at length found to belong to each other, part uniting with part, member with member, till the whole was exhibited complete in the advent, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the long-predicted Saviour of the world.

One peculiarity by which the prophecies become so powerful a means of confirming our faith in the truth of the sacred Scriptures, is, that they are not only a standing, but a growing, proof of their infallibility. For the truth of a miracle we must depend upon the testimony of the relators, combined with corroborating circumstances; but prophecy has been a miracle for all ages. Its predictions not being so clear as, on the one hand, either to frustrate or to precipitate their own accomplishment, or, on the other, to interfere with the freedom of human actions, have, by their successive fulfilment, added in every period of time new testimonies and illustrations for the establishment of our faith. In the present age, the actual state of theJews, for example, is an irrefragable argument

for the truth of the inspired records; an argument not at all weakened by the objection of the infidel, that any nation similarly circumstanced, and intermarrying only in its own community, would preserve equally strong internal marks of peculiarity and identity. For the question is not,by what physical or moral causes these effects may have been produced; but how came it to be foreknown many hundreds and thousands of years ago that such causes or such effects would come into existence? how could anomalies which excite wonder even when actually and familiarly beheld be minutely prophesied of many ages before there was any shadow of natural reason to anticipate their occurrence? Surely the finger of God is in this.

2. But another important use of the inspired word of prophecy is doubtless to exhibit to our view an enlarged idea of the providential arrangements of Almighty Wisdom, especially in reference to the economy of human redemption. Without prophecy we might have been at some loss to ascertain clearly what is the great purport of the universal history of our race; what final consummation the infinite Disposer of events intended to result from the arrangements of his allwise providence. But in this respect prophecy furnishes an infallible clue to history. Both point one way; both tend to one end. The whole series of human annals is a development of the Divine glory; particularly as connected with the redemption of mankind, and the final glorification of the church of Christ in heaven. That first prophetic promise, "The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head," was not only a prelude to numberless other disclosures of future occurrences, but a key to the solution of the greatest events which have been accomplished on this terrestrial stage. follow the march of successive ages, and, especially, when we trace the

When we