But, if this be true respecting unavenged blood, it is no less true of the wages of the earth? When the people had confessed that the Lord he was God, and turned away from their idols. In Ireland, the two provocations are combined. The idolatrous priesthood of Rome promote, by their denunciations, the murder of her victims, and then stretch out the shield of her protection, and the influence of her absolution, over the misguided agents of her iniquity; and the land is defiled with blood. For these causes God has a controversy with Ireland; neither will he be entreated of for her, until either the people confess their sin and give up the transgressors, or, in default of this, until God himself purge the land of the shedders of blood, by the famine and the pestilence, and turn many from their idolatry; which things have combined to bring this evil upon their heads. But it may be asked, Why should we suffer, in our measure, in consequence of the sins of Ireland? Because we have been the abettors of a system which we are bound by every sacred principle to oppose, and which system God has unreservedly condemned in his Word, and from which He commands his people to "come out." If it should be yet further argued against me, that Scotland has in part shared this judgment, I reply, her sufferings are not to be compared with those of Ireland; and she has within herself the means of help, and her people are putting them forth to meet the emergency; and it yet remains to be seen whether these do not shortly come to an end. But with respect to Ireland, the most sanguine politicians of the day are constrained to confess, that they can anticipate no such result in her case. hireling kept back by fraud. Look at that recorded proof of it, when the children of Israel came out of Egypt. For a long season the Egyptians had oppressed them, by taking their labour for nought; but, when the time of their deliverance arrived, and God brought them out of that iron furnace, he gave them favour in the sight of the people, and they borrowed of them jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and they spoiled the Egyptians. And, is this no type of what the Lord will do when he revisits Israel with mercy? Have they not been oppressed and trodden under foot of the Gentiles, in the house of their bondage, for eighteen hundred years? And has not our own land been verily guilty of this thing against their fathers? And will not the Lord visit for these things? And shall there be no requital for all that they have endured, under Gentile dominion, for so long a season? Assuredly there must be, and here it is proclaimed:-for "men shall bring unto thee the wealth of the Gentiles, and their kings shall be brought." "Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob." (Is. lx. 16.) And we meet with this condition of earthly greatness in a figure in the days of Solomon:-" And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the vale, for abundance" (1 Kings x. 27), saith the historian in informing us what has been; "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness" (Is. lx. 17), saith the prophet, in revealing to us what shall be; and as the one was existing in the days of Solomon, the other shall surely come to pass at the time appointed. : 2. But she shall be the metropolis of the world, from which the law will go forth, and the centre of worship to the whole earth. Men are proud of this great city, because she is the metropolis of the greatest nation at this time under heaven: because of the influence which she exercises among the kingdoms of the earth; and, many justly rejoice, because she employs a measure of that influence in sending the law of the Lord among the nations. But, when we call to mind our national sins, the manifold imperfections in our civil and religious institutions, they form a mighty drawback to those feelings of satisfaction which the above considerations might call forth. But to be the metropolis of such a world, to be the centre of worship to the whole earth, the place from which, in such a condition of things, the law shall go forth to every kindred under heaven, will prove to be a distinction of a hitherto unexampled kind. That this shall then distinguish Jerusalem above every other city, is apparent from the words of the Prophet," And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Is. ii. 2, 3.) "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord." (lxvi. 23.) "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left, of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, shall even go up, from year to year, to worship the King the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." (Zech. xiv. 6.) And of this future distinction of the holy city, an intimation has been given; for "Thither the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord." (Psalm cxxii. 4.) 3. His people shall be exalted above all others. We turn again to the prophet. "And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the ministers of our God; ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves." (Is. lxi. 5, 6.) When I read such passages as these, do I marvel that the heart of an Israelite, according to the flesh, should beat high in prospect of the future glories of his nation? Why, the blood runs faster through my own veins, when I consider the predictions of their national greatness upon earth in the ages to come: much more, then, must it kindle the affections of that people who are the subject of these promises. It would appear from this passage that the ordinary avocations of life, such as the dressing of vines and the tending of flocks, will be performed for them by the Gentiles, whilst they are to be engaged in the higher offices of being "the priests of the Lord, and the mi |