No. III.-Page 28.

THE VINTAGE, &C., JEREMIAH XXV. 15-38.-BY THE REV. J. W. BROOKS. "Mr. Begg has an interesting exposition of it in his Connected View of the Redeemer's Advent, &c. According to him the prophet declares the relative order of a series of desolating judgments, from before the time of the publication of the prophecy, till the final destruction of Antichrist, under the figure of a wine-cup, which the prophet is directed to present to the nations in succession. He maintains that the order of succession is designed not only from the rotation in which the nations are mentioned, but from the circumstance of the same nations being in some instances made to drink twice, as in the case of Edom, under its own name in ver. 21, and under the name of Dedan in ver. 23. The names Buz, (or, despised,) and Zimri, (or, my vine, or, my field,) he conceives to be mystic appellations of Israel. The king of Sheshach, who is to drink last, he infers from Jer. LI. 45, to be mystic Babylon, showing that though Jeremiah, in ch. LI., speaks of the literal Babylon in some places, yet that the general terms of the prophecy, both there and in ch. xxv, can only accord with the mystic Babylon."

"I conceive, however, that Sheshach cannot mean here that Babylon which is represented in the Apocalypse as the harlot, and which is destroyed by the Beast that wages war with her; but rather that beast who is the destroyer, and who is the last antichristian power destroyed. This appears the more probable from the fact, that after enumeration of the various parties who are to drink of it in succession, the next parties, and the last before Sheshach, are all the nations of the world: which agrees with the intimation given in the prophecies I have just cited from Ezekiel and Joel, of the vengeance that is to be poured out upon all the heathen,' or Gentile nations.-'And all the kings of the north, far and near, one with another; and all the kingdoms of the world which are upon the face of the earth, and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.'-ver. 26.

·

"The passage in Jeremiah LI, 41, quoted by Mr. Begg as explanatory of the King of Sheshach, is as follows: How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!' Mr. Begg seems to consider the last sentence as exegetical of the former, in which opinion I entirely agree with him, and should be satisfied there to leave the matter. It may be useful, however, to the reader, as this name has given occasion to much discussion, to notice the opinions of learned men on the subject, which opinions may be classified under three heads: Jerome gives a cabalistic account of it after the Jewish manner, by substituting other letters of equal numerical value, till out of them he makes Babel; and he is quoted as authority for this signification of the word Sheshach by many subsequent writers, who enter not into his mode of deriving it. The second class includes those who say, as Mr. Scott does, 'that it evidently means Babylon, though it is not certain on what account it is so called.' This view is not more satisfactory, as to the origin of the term, than that of Jerome. The learned Selden appears to me to have given the true solution, and is followed by Calmet and some others. He says that Sesach was the name of one of the Babylonian deities, in honour of whom there was a feast which lasted five days, called Sacæa, like the Saturnalia among the Romans, after Saturn. The authority he gives for it is a fragment preserved by Athenæus, from Berosus the Chaldean. (See his work, 'De Diis Syris,' ch. XIII.) Thus the prophet calls it, in the first instance, by the name of one of its tutelar deities, just as in ch. I, II, he calls it by the names of other of its gods. 'Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces.' A writer in the Morning Watch, vol. III, p. 78, to whom I am indebted for the above reference to Selden, thinks that the name Meshach, given to Michael, was after this same deity; which is probable, if we compare Dan 1. 7, with Dan Iv. 8, by which it plainly appears that Daniel received his new surname after the manner of their god, Bel.'

"After alluding, in ver. 28, to the refusal of some to take the cup, (which can be none other than their determination to shut their eyes to the coming judg ments, and to cry peace when a sword is coming,) the prophecy continues,— 'For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished?'

"The similitude used in ver. 32, of a 'great whirlwind,' leads me to observe that the reader will frequently find the suddenness, fierceness, and rapidity of these judgments couched under this figure of a whirlwind, in the prophets.He shall take them away as a whirlwind,' &c.

"Multitudes of professors of religion are at this time under a delusion in regard to the nature of those events which are impending over the church of Christ. The generality are agreed that a great crisis is at hand, and likewise that we are on the eve of the Millennium; but the party just alluded to are disposed to think, that the period of prosperity to the church is to arrive without any previous season of tribulation ;-that we are to glide into it, as it were, by the instrumentality of our various institutions for evangelizing the heathen; by means of which there will be a gradually increasing diffusion of Scriptural light, until the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.' (Is. XI. 9.).”

No. IV.-Page 47.

ON DISOBEDIENCE TO PARENTS, &c.-BY THE REV. J. W. BROOKS. "In regard to disobedience to parents, it is a circumstance so commonly noticed by persons at all observant of the moral character of the age, as espe cially belonging to the present times, that it requires no further comment. Even our justice-rooms do not unfrequently witness instances of parents coming to complain of, and to ask protection against, their own children; whilst those who have anything to do with the education of the poor must well know how defective it is, from the want of a spirit of obedience and subordination to the wishes of their parents. A great declension has been noticed in this respect in the course of the last half century, as compared with the times immediately preceding; but if we compare the present with patriarchal times, and consider the deference shown in those days to parents, the contrast will be more remarkable. Indeed, I fear it would now provoke the laughter of many, were they to be seriously reminded, that the sons and daughters of those days rose up before their parents, and did them homage. Gen. xxxi. 31; 1 Kings XI. 19;—and see also Lev. XIX. 32, as regards the deference to elders generally. And though the Romans are described in Rom. 1. 30, as being disobedient to parents, yet we have instances mentioned in heathen authors of filial piety and reverence, and of deference to age, which might put to the blush multitudes of the present generation of professing Christians. It is daily becoming more a maxim among professors of religion to leave their children to run after pleasures or amusements which they themselves condemn, and to suffer them also to go into any company; excusing themselves under

the notion, that it is wrong to thwart them in such matters, and that restraint may disgust them with religion. But surely this is being wiser than God. He approved Abraham because 'he commanded his children and his household after him;' (Gen. xvIII. 17-19 ;) and when authority is not exercised, it is to be feared either that the welfare of the children's souls is not constantly kept in view, or that the mind is not really persuaded (though it affects to be so) of the evil of the company or pleasures deprecated. Parental authority is a talent for which all are responsible, both as regards its use and abuse; and surely a father or a mother never more legitimately exercises it than in keeping their children from that which they esteem an evil.

"The next consideration I would affectionately submit to those who are mothers in Israel. They will admit that the head of every family is undoubtedly the man in which view even the wife, though endowed with authority from him, is required to be subject to him. And women are not only reminded, under the Gospel, of the example of Sarah, 'who obeyed Abraham calling him, lord' (1 Pet. III. 1—6); but they are required to submit themselves unto their own husbands, as unto the Lord.' (Ep. v. 22.) It has come to pass, however, that the propriety of such submission is, among carnal and worldly women, greatly questioned; and I have been pained to hear even female professors of religion make a jest of that portion of the marriage service in which obedience is vowed, and treating the notion of the thing itself with anything but seriousness and reverence. Yea, I have known mothers openly inculcate on their daughters, that it would be the mark of a mean spirit in them, should they ever be married, not to contend for the mastery; and an excellent Christian woman once assured me, that she had been counselled by different females to resist marital authority; but never, in any instance, was counselled to submit to it. Now the genius of Christianity is such, that it has necessarily endowed women with a degree of liberty they did not enjoy before; but the two passages which I have quoted evince that it never intended to go to an opposite extreme: nor is it possible that any deviation from the precepts and spirit of the Gospel can take place without a series of evil consequences following. In this instance, I fear much of that spirit of disobedience which exists may be traced to it; for when children and servants perceive that individual in a house, whose duty it is first to show subjection, treat the notion of it, in their own case, with lightness, (to go no further,) must it not insensibly encourage a spirit of insubordination through all the downward gradations in which submission is required? This is the more important in the wife, seeing that it is her province to train up the children of the family to show proper reverence and respect to the father, and to impress upon them, that he is the individual to whom all must be subject."

No. V.-Page 55.

EXTRACT FROM A SERMON ON INFIDELITY. BY REV. ROBERT HALL.

...

"To extinguish human life by the hand of violence, must be quite a different thing in the eyes of the sceptic from what it is in those of a Christian. With the sceptic it is nothing more than diverting the course of a little red fluid, called blood; it is merely lessening by one the number of many miserable or contemptible beings. The Christian sees in the same event an unaccountable being cut off from a state of probation, and hurried perhaps unprepared into the presence of his Judge, to hear that final sentence which is to fix him for ever in an unalterable condition of felicity or woe. . . . This reasoning serves more immediately to show how the disbelief of a future state endangers the security of life; but though this be its direct consequence, it extends by analogy much further, since he who has learned to sport with the lives of his fellow creatures will feel but little solicitude for their condition in any other instance. :. Let the state be convulsed, and the still small voice of law be drowned in the tempest of popular fury, it will then be seen that atheism is a school of ferocity; and that having taught its disciples to consider mankind little better than a nest of insects, they will be prepared, in the conflict of party, to trample upon them without pity, and destroy them without remorse. . Atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection, that leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and with earth; its first object is to dethrone God, the next, to destroy man. . . . The efforts of infidels to diffuse the principles of infidelity among the common people is another alarming symptom peculiar to the present time;-Hume, Bolingbroke, and Gibbon addressed themselves solely to the polished classes of society, and would have thought their refined speculations debased by an attempt to enlist disciples from among the populace. Infidelity has lately grown condescending, bred in the speculations of a daring philosophy, immured at first in the cloisters of the learned, and afterwards nursed in the lap of voluptuousness and of courts; having at length reached its full maturity, it boldly ventures to challenge the suffrages of the people, solicits the acquaintance of peasants and mechanics, and seeks to draw the whole nation to its standard. . . . There is much, it must be confessed, in the apostacy of multitudes, and the rapid progress of infidelity, to awaken our fears for the virtue of the rising generation; but nothing to shake our faith, nothing which Scripture itself does not give us room to expect. The features which compose the character of apostates, their profaneness, presumption, lewdness, impatience of subordination, restless appetite for change, vain pretensions to freedom, and to emancipate the world, while they themselves are the slaves of lust. The weapons with which they attack Christianity, and the snares they spread for the unwary are depicted in the clearest colours by the pencil of prophecy."

No. VI.-Page 65.

ON THE PAPACY.-BY THE REV. J. W. BROOKS.

"Another feature in the history of the Papacy is that in Rev. XVII., the tenhorned beast is represented as of a scarlet colour, and the woman who is seated upon it is 'arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls (ver. 3, 4.) The pontifical cope worn on the eve of St. Peter, is made of fine red or scarlet stuff. The cardinals are clothed in scarlet. Eight men in long scarlet robes bear the Sedia Gestatoria,' and the palfrey, whereon the Pope rides, is covered with scarlet cloth. There is a profusion of gold and jewellery and costly stones likewise displayed. The cope already alluded to is fastened with a hook or buckle of gold, called pectoral, enriched with precious stones, which alone is estimated at more than 50,000

crowns.

"A farther illustration of the gold and precious stones exhibited on him will lead us to another singular coincidence. It is said in Rev. XIII., that the dragon gave to this beast his power, and his seat, and great authority; and the pope has actually adopted the dragon as part of his armorial bearings. For Pope Gregory removed the cross from the top of the papal tiara, or triple crown, made by Pope Julius II., and replaced it by a brilliant emerald, supported by two golden dragons; and caused his own arms to be quartered therewith, and then his name and title in diamonds, so that the dragon became at once his crest and his supporters: thus significantly, though unconsciously on his part, seeming to point out on whose authority he leaned and glorified.

"Those who see in the two-horned beast of Rev. XIII., an emblem of the secular and spiritual, or ecclesiastical power of the Pope, point to the farther circumstance of the Pope causing to be carried before him, upon state occasions, two swords as the mark of his two-fold sovereignty and dominion. (Habershon, p. 315.) And it is farther remarkable, that as the two horns of the beast are like a lamb,' whilst yet he 'spake as a dragon;' so, whilst the Popes have mounted the dragon as their crest, they have also assumed as the device upon their banner, a lamb passant.

"I am aware that some of these things are merely symbols or emblems in the word of prophecy, and are therefore significant of other things; but so are they significant emblems also in the instance of the popes, and apparently shadow forth the very same circumstances and characteristics which are designed in Scripture; and that mystically and literally there is a resemblance.

"Had the Romish church but kept the word of God continually before her, a recollection that these things are described therein would have led her upon every principle of good taste and of discretion to have avoided them, that there might be at least no external resemblance betwixt herself and the antichrist; but having shut up the Scriptures, and especially the Apocalypse, she has been led in her pride and infatuation to decorate herself with his very badges, and livery, blindly mistaking them for the garments of Messiah. "Pope Innocent III., in whose reign the inquisition was founded, writes→