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to them. But the new objects, which are immediately brought in view, evidently represent, under the usual emblems of sacred prophecy, other parts of the same entire action; and declare, with the greatest perspicuity, the purport, the season, and the effect, of the message. An ensign, or standard, is lifted up on the mountainsa trumpet is blown on the hills-the standard of the cross of Christ-the trumpet of the Gospel*. The resort to the standard, the effect of the summons in the end, will be universal. A pruning of the vine shall take place, after a long suspension of visible interpositions of Providencet, just before the season of the gathering of the fruits. A vine, in the prophetic language, is an image of the church of God; the branches of the vine are the members of the church; and the useless shoots, and unfruitful luxuriant branches, are the insincere nominal members of the church. And the pruning of such shoots and branches

*"The banner of the cross, to be lifted up more conspicuously than ever before; the trumpet of the Gospel, to be sounded more loudly, than ever before, in the latter ages." Letter on Isaiah xviii.

"This verse (Isaiah xviii. 4.) represents a long cessation of visible interpositions of Providence, under the image of God's sitting still; the stillness of that awful pause, under the image of that torpid state of the atmosphere in hot weather, when not a gleam of sunshine breaks for a moment through the sullen gloom; not a breath stirs; not a leaf wags; not a blade of grass is shaken; no ripling wave curls upon the sleeping surface of the waters; the black ponderous cloud, covering the whole sky, seems to hang fixed and motionless as an arch of stone; nature seems benumbed in all her operations. The vigilance nevertheless of God's silent providence is represented under the image of his keeping his eye, while he thus sits still, upon his prepared habitation. The sudden eruption of judgment, threatened in the next verse, after this total cessation, just before the final call to Jew and Gentile, answers to the storms of thunder and lightning, which, in the suffocating heats of the latter end of summer, succeed that perfect stillness and stagnation of the atmosphere. And, as the natural thunder, at such seasons, is the welcome harbinger of refreshing and copious showers; so, it appears, the thunder of God's judgments will usher in the long desired season of the consummation of mercy. So accurate is the allusion in all its parts." Letter on Isaiah xviii.

It may here be observed, how exactly Scripture corresponds with Scripture. The long cessation of the visible interpositions of Providence has led the members of Antichrist to deny that such interpositions ever took place: yet in this very denial they have unwittingly accomplished the prophecies. In the last days were to arise scoffers, walking after their own lusts, contemptuously asking where is the promise of God's coming, denying that the earth was ever overwhelmed by the deluge, and asserting that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. The Lord however hath already begun to shake both the political heavens and the political earth; and, ere long perhaps, Infidelity may be constrained with unwilling eyes to behold the restoration of Israel amidst such signs and wonders, as she can neither contradict nor oppose.

of the vine is the excision of such hypocritical professors, at least the separation of them from the church by God's judgments. This verse therefore and the following clearly predict a judgment to fall upon the church for its purification, and the utter destruction of hypocritical professors of the truth*. The purification of the Christian church, by the awful visitations predicted in this passage, seems to be the proper preparative for the renewal of the call, to them that are near, the Jews; and to them that are yet afar off, the Gentile tribes not yet converted. Immediately after this purgation of the church, at the very time when the bird of prey with all the beasts of the earth, Antichrist with his rebel rout, shall have fixed his seat between the seas, in the holy mountain†, a present shall be brought to the Lord of hosts; the nation, described in ver. 2. as those to whom the swift messengers are sent, after their long infidelity, shall be brought as a present unto Jehovah. They shall be converted to an acknowledgment of the truth; and they shall be brought to the place of the name of Jehovah, to mount Sion: they shall be settled in peace and prosperity, in the land of their original inheritance ‡.

"This then is the sum of this prophecy, and the substance of the message, sent to the people dragged about and plucked. That in the latter ages, after a long suspension of the visible interpositions of Providence, God, who all the while regards that dwelling place which he never will abandon, and is at all times directing the events of the world to the accomplishment of his own purposes of wisdom and mercy; immediately before the final

*"God, in the latter ages, will purify his Church with sore but whole. some judgments. Compare John xv. 1, 2." (Letter on Isaiah xviii.) These judgments will probably be the troubles occasioned by incessant war.

"It was a prevailing opinion among the early fathers, that Antichrist is to possess himself of the Holy Land, and that there he is to perish." (Letter on Isaiah xviii.) This opinion was manifestly founded on Dan. xi. 41, 45, not to mention other parallel prophecies.

+ "When the present offered consists of persons, the offered, as well as the offerers, must be worshippers. For to be offered is to be made a worshipper; or, in some instances to be devoted to some particular service in which the general character of a worshipper is previously implied, both in the person who hath authority so to devote, and in the devoted, as in the instances of Jephthah's daughter and the child Samuel. The people therefore, brought as a present to Jehovah to mount Zion, will be brought thither in a converted state." Letter on Isaiah xviji.

gathering of his elect from the four winds of heaven, will purify his church by such signal judgments, as shall rouse the attention of the whole world, and, in the end, strike all nations with religious awe. At this period, the apostate faction will occupy the holy land. This faction will certainly be an instrument of those judgments, by which the church will be purified. That purification therefore is not at all inconsistent with the seeming prosperity of the affairs of the atheistical confederacy. But, after such duration, as God shall see fit to allow to the plenitude of its power, the Jews, converted to the faith of Christ, will be unexpectedly restored to their ancient possessions. The swift messengers will certainly have a considerable share, as instruments in the hand of God, in the restoration of the chosen people. Otherwise, to what purpose are they called upon (Ver. 1.) to receive their commission from the prophet? It will perhaps be some part of their business to afford the Jews the assistance and protection of their fleets. This seems to be insinuated in the imagery of the first verse. But the principal part, they will have to act, will be that of the carriers of God's message to his people. This character seems to describe some Christian country, where the prophecies, relating to the latter ages, will meet with particular attention; where the literal sense of those, which promise the restoration of the Jewish people, will be strenuously upheld; and where these will be so successfully expounded, as to be the principal means, by God's blessing, of removing the veil from the hearts of the Israelites—

"In what people of the earth, of the eastern or the western world, the characters of the messenger people may be found, when the time shall come for the accomplishment of the prophecy, is hitherto uncertain in that degree, that we are hardly at liberty, in my judgment to conjecture. But I cannot but say, that it seems in the highest degree improbable, that the atheistical democracy of France should be the people, for whom the honour of that office is intended. The French democracy, from its infancy to the present moment, has been a conspicuous and principal branch at least of the western Antichrist. The messenger people is certainly to be a Christian people. For I think it cannot be doubted, that the messenger

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people, and the leaders of the present to Jehovah to mount Sion, are the same people. And the act of leading a present to Jehovah to mount Sion must be an act of worshippers of Jehovah; for it is an act of worship. They therefore who lead the present will be true worshippers, performing that service from religious motives. Those, who shall thus be instruments in this blessed work, may ́ well be described, in the figured language of prophecy, as the carriers of God's message to his people. The situation of the country, destined to so high an office, is not otherwise described in the prophecy, than by this circumstance; that it is to be beyond the rivers of Cush: that is, far to the west of Judea, if these rivers of Cush are to be understood, as they have been generally understood, of the Nile and other Ethiopian rivers; far to the east, if of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The one, or the other, they must denote; but which, is uncertainMy notion of the prophet's geographical language is, that it is the language of the Phenician voyagers of his time. And, in those times, the most distant voyages being made along the coasts, the Phenician mariners would speak of every place which lay to the west of the mouths of the Nile, as beyond the Nile, that is, in the poetical language of the prophet, beyond the rivers of Cush; because, keeping always along the coast, they would pass within sight of the mouth of the Nile, before they reached that western place. According to this nautical phraseology of the voyagers of those times, the circumstance of being beyond the rivers of Cush was alike applicable to France, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, in short any part of Europe without the streights. Not more to any part of Europe, than to any part of Africa, without the streights. Not more to any part of Europe or Africa, than to the whole eastern coast of North and South America. The particular situation of the country therefore is by no means ascertained by this circumstance*." Yet, however indefinite the present prophecy may be in fixing the precise quarter of the globe where we are to look for the messenger people, others, which will be discussed hereafter in their proper place, give us sufficient reason to believe that they will

*Letter on Isaiah xviii.

be some European nation. What European nation indeed, is wholly uncertain; but their character, as described by Isaiah, necessarily leads us to conclude, that they will be a maritime nation of faithful worshippers.

The prophet has now foretold the chief matters relative to the restoration of the converted Jews; such as their being opposed unsuccessfully by the army of Antichrist, and their being assisted in their return to their own country by a great maritime nation of faithful worshippers: he proceeds therefore next to detail certain collateral events, which will be closely connected with their restoration. He had already foretold in a former prophecy*, that the Lord should smite with a drought the tongue of the Egyption sea, and that he should shake his hand over the great river of Assyria with a vehement wind; in order that there might be a high-way for the remnant of his people, and that they might return, as they did of old out of the land of Egypt. He now enters more diffusely upon the subject, connecting it, as before, both with the exploits of Antichrist, and with the restoration of the Jews. In a strain of awful sublimity, he represents the Almighty as riding upon a swift cloud, and as confounding the counsels of Egypt; as sowing discord among her governors, and as giving her over into the hand of cruel lords and fierce king. The tyrant and his inferior lords, here described, I take to be Antichrist and his vassal kings, during the period of his temporary success. In a parallel prophecy of Daniel, his character is largely set forth: and it is intimated, that, at the epoch of the restoration of the Jews, the land of Egypt shall not escape him; but that he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and that the Libyans and Cushim shall be at his stepst. Hence Isaiah, in perfect accordance with Daniel, predicts, that, at this very epoch, Egypt shall be delivered into the hand of a fierce king for, that the conquest of Egypt by the fierce king is to be referred to this epoch, will be manifest to any one, who compares the language used by Isaiah in his former prophecy with that which he uses at the close of the present prophecy. In the former, he foretells, that

Isaiah xi. 15, 16.

† Dan. xi. 41.-xii. 1.

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