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us with a happy imitation of a passage in the song of Moses on the triumphant passage of the Red Sea; where the poet insinuates himself, by a bold figure of eloquence, into the councils of Pharaoh, overhears their formidable resolutions, and in the close of the scene, rejoices in seeing their counsels, once so much dreaded, turned into foolishness, by the grace and power of Heaven. "The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters."* So here, Deborah brings in the matrons of Canaan as anticipating the fruits of victory, prematurely enjoying the triumph of the subjection of the Israelitish damsels to their own pride, and the pleasure of their warriors; and she inspirits the gratitude and joy of her fair country women, by gently hinting at the dreadful hazard which they had run. This too, of course, diminishes our concern for the cruel disappointment which the mother of Sisera endured, looking and looking, from her window, but still looking in vain for him who was never more to return; expecting and expecting that lingering chariot, which the ancient river Kishon had long ere now swept down its stream: flushed with hope, only to make calamity more bitter. And let that hope be for ever blasted, which could be accomplished only by what humanity shudders to think of.

Having thus enjoyed self-gratulation, and called forth the grateful congratulations of her delivered country, and with heroic ardour trampled on disappointed lust, insolence, and ambition, she now aims a nobler flight. The world and its transitory interests and employments disappear. The throne of God meets her enraptured eye. Private, personal, national animosity are no more: all, all is lost in the higher, unlimited, unchanging interests of the divine glory. "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord." This is but a prophetic enunciation of what needs must be. After one revolution has obliterated another, one mortal interest swallowed another upafter the distinctions of Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free are lost and forgotten, the honours of the divine justice and mercy shall flourish and prevail. They that are afar from him; of whatever other name or description, shall perish; and the workers of iniquity shall be destroyed.

But the pious leader of the heavenly theme, as if unwilling to shut up her song with an idea so gloomy as the awful displeasure of the great God against his adversaries, relieves herself and us, by taking up the more encouraging view of the favour of Jehovah to his friends, and thus she fervently breathes out her soul; "But let them that love him, be

*Exod. xv. 9, 10.

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Or dimly seen, in these his lowest works; MILTON. that glorious creature of his power, the sun, is the most striking and impressive of all objects. And poets of every description have enriched and ennobled their compositions by allusions to the glorious orb of day," of this great world the eye and soul," as the brightest inanimate image of Deity here below, the fountain of light, the dispenser of vital warmth, the parent of joy. The inspired sacred writers have likewise happily employed it to represent the most glorious animated image of God in our world, a wise and good man "going from strength to strength;" shining as a light in a dark place; silently, without expectation of return, with out upbraiding, in an unceasing revolution of diffusing happiness; aiming at resemblance to his Creator by becoming a god to his fellow-creatures. It is thus that Deborah concludes her song; with a warm effusion of faith, and hope, and desire, that righteousness might abound and increase, that good men might be in succession raised up, each in his day a light to his country, to mankind; "going forth as the sun in his might," from lustre to still higher lustre, from usefulness to usefulness, without diminution, and without end. By the same simple but powerful imagery, the wise man represents the progress of true goodness; "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." And Wisdom itself by a similar suggestion animates the zeal and supports the industry of those who are to teach his religion to the nations of the earth: "Ye are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

To the whole is affixed an historical note, short indeed, but highly interesting and important; " And the land had rest forty years." This is the noblest eulogium of Deborah, the most honourable display of her talents and virtues. If there be feelings worthy of envy, they are those of this exalted woman, on reflecting that God had honoured her to restore liberty, and peace to her country; and to establish such a system of administration of justice, of civil government, of military discipline, and of religious worship, as preserved the public tranquillity for forty years. How effectually may every individual serve the community! Of what importance, then, is every, the meanest individual! How lasting and how extensive is the influence of real worth! There is one way in which every man may be a public blessing, may become a saviour of his country-by cultivating the

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private virtues of the man, and the Chris- glaring, but not less instructive history of tian. RUTH, the Moabitess, and Naomi, her mo

I proceed to illustrate the female cha- ther-in-law; happy to escape the scenes racter, its amiableness, usefulness, and of horror and blood which are the subimportance, in persons and scenes of a ject of the remainder of the history of very different complexion; in the less the Israelitish judges.

HISTORY OF RUTH

LECTURE XCII.

Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Beth-lehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Beth-lehem-judah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left and her two sons. And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years. And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons, and her husband.— RUTH i. 1-5.

THE perpetual vicissitude that prevails in the system of the universe, and in the conduct of Providence, is adapted to the nature, and conducive to the happiness of man. The succession of day and night, alternate lavour and repose, the variations of the changing seasons lend to each other, as it returns, its peculiar beauty and fitness. We are hept still looking forward, we are ever hovering on the wing of expectation, rising from attainment to attainment, pressing on to some future mark, pursuing some yet unpossessed prize. The hireling, supported by the prospect of receiving the evening's reward, cheerfully fulfils the work of the day. The husbandman, without regret, perceives the glory of summer passing away, because he lifts up his eyes and "beholds the fields white unto the harvest;" and he submits joyfully to the painful toil of autumn, in contemplation of the rest and comfort he shall enjoy, when these same fields shall be white with snow. It is hunger that gives a relish to food; it is pain that recommends ease. The value of abundance is known only to those who have suffered want, and we are little sensible what we owe to God, for the blessing of health, till it is interrupted by sick

ness.

ed man may surely repose unlimited confidence in infinite goodness.

During the dreadful times when there was no king in Israel, the whole head was so sick, the whole heart so faint, the whole mass so corrupted, that an ocean of blood must be drained off, before it can be restored to soundness again. Not only one rotten limb, but the whole body is in danger of perishing, and nothing but a painful operation can save it. The skilful, firm, but gentle hand of Providence takes up the instrument, cuts out the disease, and then tenderly binds up the bleeding wounds. Relieved from the distress of beholding brother lifting up the spear against brother, from hearing the shouts of the vic tor, and the groans of the dying, we retire to contemplate and to partake of the noiseless scenes of domestic life; to observe the wholesome sorrows and guiltless joys of calmness and obscurity; to join in the triumphs of sensibility, and to solace in the soft effusions of nature; to "smile with the simple, and feed with the poor."

The little history on which we are now entering, is one of those which every where, and at all seasons, must afford pleasure and instruction. It is a most interesting display of ordinary life, of simple manners, of good The very plagues which mortality is heir and honest hearts; of the power of friendship to, have undoubtedly their uses and their and the rewards of virtue. It forms an imends: and the sword may be as necessary to portant link in the chain of Providence, and draw off the gross humours of the moral the history of redemption. There is perhaps world, as storm and tempest are to disturb no story that has been wrought into so many the mortal stagnation, and to chase away the different forms, transfused into so many dif poisonous vapours of the natural. Weak, ferent languages, accommodated to so many shortsighted man is assuredly unqualified to different situations, as the history of Ruth. decide concerning the ways and works of It is felt, from the cottage up to the palace, infinite wisdom; but weak, labouring, wretch-by the rustic and the courtier, by the orphan

gleaner in the field, and the king's daughter. The man of taste delights in it on account of the artless structure, elegant diction, and judicious arrangement of the tender tale. The friend of virtuous sensibility delights in it, for the gentle emotions which it excites, and the useful lessons which it inculcates. The pious soul rejoices in it from the enlarged, the instructive, the consolatory views of the Divine Providence which it unfolds. The inquiring and devout Christian prizes it, as standing in connexion with the ground of his faith, and contributing to strengthen the evidence, and explain the nature of "those things wherein he has been instructed," and on which he rests for salvation. Happy the man, who, possessing all these qualities, shall peruse and employ it as a corrector and guide to the imagination, as a support to the spirit, as a light to the understanding, a monitor to the conscience, a guard to the affections, and a faithful instructer to the heart.

The particular era of this story is not marked by the sacred penman, neither has he been directed to affix his name to his precious little work. In general it was not in the times of boisterous anarchy and wild uproar, that Boaz cut down his barley, and Ruth gleaned after the reapers. The fruits of the field were protected to the owner by lawful authority, and justice was administered by the elders in the gate.

If we consider that the life of man was now reduced to the common standard, that David was the fourth in order of succession from Boaz, and allow thirty or thirty-five years to be the medium standard of distance from one generation to another, the marriage of Boaz with Ruth will be thrown upon the short administration of his townsman Ibzan, the successor of Jephthah, of which we have only a brief account: "And after him, Ibzan of Beth-lehem judged Israel."*

Samuel is generally understood to have written both this book and the preceding, and thereby to have preserved the historical series of events from Joshua to himself, almost unbroken; and also the genealogical deduction of succession down to David, in whom the royal line of the house of Judah commenced altogether uninterrupted. And while we behold Rahab the harlot, a woman of Jericho, and Ruth the Moabitess, not only admitted to the rank of mothers in Israel, but mothers of a race of kings, mothers in the line of "Messiah the Prince," we are admonished as Peter was long afterward, on a different occasion, "not to call that common or unclean which God hath purified."

Israel was now enjoying the blessing of good government, but the land is visited with a calamity which no sagacity of government could foresee or prevent, and no human power remove, with famine. Beth-lehem itself, Judges xii. 8.

the house of bread, so called from the fertility of the circumjacent fields, sinks under the pressure of this sore evil, and Elimelech, one of the chiefs of his tribe, is, like the most illustrious of his ancestors, driven to seek subsistence in a strange land.

Every land according to its place on the globe has its peculiar climate, soil, production. One is watered by the clouds of hea ven, another by an inundation of the waters of the earth. Here the rain descends according to no fixed law, either as to season or quantity, there it is measured to a drop, and timed to a moment. On the regularity or uncertainty of these distributions by the hand of nature, or the intervention of Providence, depend the comfort, the very sustentation of human life; on them depends all the variation of vegetable produce, as to plenty or scarcity, as to greatness, wholesomeness, pleasantness, and their contraries. Hence the same country is one year as the garden of God, for beauty and abundance, and the next as the waste howling wilderness; Canaan now flows with milk and honey, and gives bread to the full, and anon eats up its inhabitants. We hear an offended and a merciful God, by the mouth of the same prophet, reproving and threatening human thoughtlessness and ingratitude in relation to this interesting subject, in these glowing terms: "She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal; therefore will I return and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax, given to cover her nakedness. And I will destroy her vines and her figtrees, of which she said, These are my rewards which my lovers have given me and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them." And thus relents the God of grace towards penitent returning children, "I will betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel; and I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy." Such is the mysterious scale of both mercy and judgment. Thus universal nature is combined in one firm league to oppress and con found God's adversary. Thus every creature, every event unites in preserving the existence, and promoting the happiness of his repenting, dutiful, obedient children.

Elimelech seeks and finds refuge in Moab, for " the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;" and he has given commandment, "Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab;" and that one word disarms in an instant na

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