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tional animosity, represses the rage of the lion, quenches the violence of fire. The fugitive of Beth-lehem-judah finds kindness and protection among inveterate enemies; Daniel sleeps secure amongst the fiercest of the savage tribes; and the three children of the captivity walk unhurt in the midst of the flaming furnace.

We see, at first, nothing but one of those instances which every day occur, of the sad reverses to which individuals, families, states are liable; the downfal and distress of an ancient and reputable house, struggling with penury, and forced into exile; but we soon discover, that the Eternal eye is fixed on a nobler object, that the hand of omnipotence is preparing the materials and laying the foundation of a more magnificent fabric; that infinite wisdom is bringing low the royal house of Beth-lehem, only to restore it with greater splendour.

In the disasters which befall, and the successes which attend certain families and individuals, we behold an apparent partiality of distribution that confounds and overwhelms us. Death enters into that house, passes from couch to couch, spares neither root nor branch; the insatiate fiend never says it is enough. Whatever that poor man attempts, be the scheme ever so judiciously formed, ever so diligently prosecuted, uniformly fails; the winds as they change, the stars in their courses fight against him. The very mistakes of his neighbour turn out prosperously, his sails are always full, his children multiply, his wealth increases, his mountain stands strong. Is God therefore unwise, capricious, partial, or unjust? No, but we are blind, contracted, presumptuous. We can discern, can comprehend only here and there a little fragment of his works, we are gone, before the event has explained itself; it requires the capacity, the eternity of Ged himself to take in the mighty whole of his plan.

We have before us at once the cure of pride and of despair. Behold, O man of an hundred ancestors, and of an hundred thou- The house of Elimelech exhibits an affectsand acres, behold Elimelech, the son of Abra-ing instance of the inequality we have been ham, poor and despised; the head of the tribe mentioning. The sad account of famine, of of Judah, a stranger in a strange land, exist- banishment, of degradation, of dependence, ing through sufferance, supplied through fo- is at length closed with death. Disease of reign bounty; and remember by what a brit-body, co-operating with distress of mind, protle tenure thy privileges and possessions are bably the effect of it, shortens his days, and held. Consider, child of adversity, whom no terminating his own worldly misery, dreadman knows, whom no one regards, consider fully aggravates the woes of the unhappy suryonder neglected, reduced, extinguished fa-vivors. Wretched mother, left to struggle mily, and behold from the ashes of the expiring phoenix, an immortal offspring arising, whose flight neither time nor space can limit, and feel thine own importance, and aim only at high things, and trust in omnipotence for the execution of its own eternal purpose.

sons afforded only delight, because that delight was participated in, by him who had a common interest with you in them: but all is now changed, every load is accumulated sevenfold, every comfort is embittered, every prospect is clouded: the past presents nothing but regret; the future discloses nothing but despair.

alone with poverty, solitude, danger, and neglect: far from friends, encompassed with enemies, loaded with the charge of two fatherless children, not more the objects of affection, than the sources of anxiety and care! While Elimelech lived, penury was hardly In a country and among a people where felt as a burden; in exile thou wert always names were not mere arbitrary sounds, but at home; secluded from society, the converconveyed a meaning connected with cha-sation of one still dispelled the gloom. Thy racter, with history, with expectation, those of Elimelech, 66 my God is king," and of his wife Naomi, "the pleasant one," from their peculiar import, must have a reference to certain circumstances in their history which are not recorded. The former might be dictated by the spirit of prophecy, and be significant, without the intention of them who imposed, or of him who bore it, of the future greatness to which the family, through the favour of Heaven, should arise, in the person of David, of Solomon, and that long succession of princes which finally centred, and was absorbed, in the person of Christ, David's son; yet David's Lord. The particulars of his own story that have reached us, are too few and too general to admit of our discerning any reference or application of his name to his character, office, or condition: but we know enough of the character and history of Naomi to justify the suitableness of the appellation to her person, dispositions, and final attainments.

She seems to have given up at this period all thoughts of returning to her native country, and, making a virtue of dire necessity, attempts to naturalize her family in the land of Moab, by allying her sons, through marriage, to the inhabitants of the country. The sense of the loss she has sustained gradually yields to the lenient hand of time, and to the sweet hope of seeing the house of her beloved husband built up, and his name revived in the persons of his grandchildren. Alas! what is the hope of man! the flatterer has been only decoying her into a greater depth of wo; her two remaining props sink, one after another, into the dust; all that the eyes desired

is taken away with stroke upon stroke; and, to fill up the measure of a mother's wretchedness, both her sons die childless, and hope expires with them. Now she is a widow indeed, and exhausted nature sinks under the pressure.

when she speaks, how great when she says nothing, how transcendantly exalted in all she thinks, speaks, and acts! With what divine art, shall I say, is she introduced in the sacred drama? After we have been melted into pity by the calamities of Naomi's family, and seen the widowed mourner sinking under wave upon wave; and the prospect of progeny, the last darling hope of an Israelitish matron, rudely torn from her, lo an angel in the form of a damsel of Moab, a mourner and a widow like herself, appears to comfort her, and makes her to know by sweet experience that he, that she, has not lost all, who has found a kind and faithful friend. What is the sound of the trumpet, and a long train of mute and splendid harbingers, compared to the simple preparation of unaffected nature! Let us wait her approach in silent expectation; and muse on what is past.

It is the opinion of many interpreters, that the premature death of the young men was a judgment from heaven to punish their illegal intermarriage with strange and idolatrous women. It becomes not man to judge; and we know that God executeth only righteous judgment; and in wrath still remembers mercy. Thus in three short lines the sacred historian has delivered a tragic tale that comes home to the bosom of every one that possesses a spark of sensibility. It is a domestic story; it represents scenes which may, which do happen every day. It admonishes every one in how many points he is vulnerable, how defenceless he is against the thunderbolts of Heaven. It awfully displays the evil of sin, and the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man. If such be the temporal effects of his vengeance, how bitter must be the cup which his just displeasure Behold the purpose of the Eternal mind mingles for incorrigible offenders, in a state maintaining its ground amidst all the tossof final retribution! How pleasing to reflect ings and tempests of this troubled ocean, that trials of this sort do not always flow from triumphing over opposition, serving and proanger, that they are the wholesome severity moting itself by the wrath of man and the of a father, that they aim at producing real malice of hell, out of darkness rising into good, that they in the issue really " yield lustre, "out of weakness made strong," by the peaceable fruits of righteousness." The the energy of the great first cause, acquiring darkness of night at length yields to the glo- life, vigour, and prosperity from the extinction rious orb of day, the shadow of death is turn-of means, from the destruction and death of ed into the morning, and the desolate is as secondary causes. she who hath an husband.

Behold one generation of men goeth and another cometh; one planet arising as another sets, every human advantage balanced by its corresponding inconveniency, every loss compensated by a comfort that grows out of it.

and lost. I will make mention of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; of Moses and the prophets; of Boaz and Ruth; "I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me; behold Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia; this man was born there; and of Zion it shall be said, this man was born in her: and the Highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, That this man was born there." May our names be written in the Lamb's book of life, among the living in Jerusalem!

Attend to the great leading object of This makes way for the introduction of the divine revelation, to which all refer, to which heroine of this eventful history; and we be-all are subservient, in which all are absorbed come interested in her from the very first moment. The Jewish writers, to heighten our respect for Ruth, perhaps from a pitiful desire to exalt their own ancestry, make her the daughter of a king of Moab, and as they are never timorous in making assertions, or forming conjectures on such occasions, they tell you her father was Eglon, whom Ehud slew. It is hardly probable that a prince of that country would have given his daughter in marriage to a needy adventurer who had banished himself from his country through necessity. But of little importance is it whether she were born a princess or no. Nature has adorned her with qualities such as are not always to be found in the courts of kings; qualities which best adorn high birth, and which ennoble obscurity and indigence; fidelity and attachment; a soul capable of fond respect for departed worth, and living virtue: magnanimity to sacrifice every thing the heart holds dear, to decency, friendship, and religion; magnanimity to encounter, without repining, painful toil, and humiliating dependence, in fulfilling the duties of gratitude, humanity, and piety. How eloquent is she

The introduction of these personages and events, one after another, were remote steps of the preparation of the gospel of peace. And every person now born into the church of Christ, and every event now taking place in the administration of human affairs, is a little space in the great scale of eternal Providence, and a gradual preparation for the final consummation of all things. Let "thy kingdom come," O God! Let Satan's kingdom be destroyed; let the kingdom of grace be advanced, ourselves and others brought into and preserved in it, and let the kingdom of glory be hastened! Amen!

HISTORY OF RUTH.

LECTURE XCIII.

And they lift up their voice and wept again: and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her. And she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.-RUTH i. 14—18.

Female vice and worthlessness are delineated on the sacred page with equal skill, truth, and justice, from the insolence of Hagar, and the treachery of Delilah, down to the implacable vengeance of Herodias, and the insatiate cruelty of her accursed daughter.

THE calm, untumultuous, unglaring scenes | Lapidoth-in the unrelenting firmness, and of private life, afford less abundant matter the daring, enterprising spirit of Jael, the for the pen of the historian, than intrigues wife of Heber. of state, senatorial contention, or the tremendous operations of the tented field, but they supply the moralist and the teacher of religion with more pleasing, more ample, and more generally interesting topics of useful information, and salutary instruction. What princes are, what statesmen meditate, what heroes achieve, is rather an object of curiosity than of utility. They never can become examples to the bulk of mankind. It is when they have descended from their public eminence, when they have retired to their private and domestic station, when the potentate is lost in the man, that they become objects worthy of attention, patterns for imitation, or beacons set up for admonition and caution.

For the same reason the meek, the modest, the noiseless exhibition and exercise of female excellence, occupy a smaller space in the annals of human nature than the noisy, bustling, forensic pursuits and employments of the other sex. But when feminine worth is gently drawn out of the obscurity which it loves, and advantageously placed in the light which it naturally shuns, O how amiable, how irresistible, how attractive it is! A wise and good woman shines, by not seeking to shine; is most eloquent when she is silent, and obtains all her will, by yielding, by submission, by patience, by self-denial.

Scripture as it excels in every thing, so it peculiarly excels in delineating and unfolding the female character, both in respect of the quantity exhibited, and of the delicacy, force, and effect of the design. We have already seen this exemplified, in a variety of instances in the dignified, conjugal attachment and respect, in the matron-like conscious, impatient superiority of Sarahin the maternal partiality, eagerness, and address of Rebekah-in the jealous discontent and impatience of Rachel-in the winning condescension, and the melting commiseration of Pharaoh's daughter-in the patriotic ardour, the prophetic elevation, the magisterial dignity of Deborah, the wife of

Three more female portraits are now presented for our inspection, and our improvement; all expressive of characters essentially different, all possessing features of striking resemblance, all exhibiting qualities which create and keep alive an interest, all copies from nature, all pourtrayed by the hand of him who knows what is in man.

We have witnessed the wretchedness and sympathized in the sorrows of Naomi, my pleasant one, reduced from rank and fulness to obscurity and indigence, banished from her country and friends, a stranger in a strange land, robbed of her husband, bereaved of her children; having no protector save Heaven, no hope or refuge but in the peaceful grave. Behold the thrice widowed mourner bowing the head, and hiding the face in silent grief. She is dumb, she opens not her mouth, because the Lord hath done it. The miserable partners of her wo only increase and embitter it. Two young women, like herself widows, childless, comfortless; fondly attached to her, and tenderly beloved by her, because fondly attached to the memory of their husbands; but their mutual affection rendered a punishment, not a pleasure, by the pressure of poverty and the bitterness of neglect. At length she is roused from the stupefaction of grief by tidings from her country, from her dear native city, and a ray of hope dispels the gloom of her soul. She "hears in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread."

In the wisdom and goodness of Providence, there is a healing balm provided for every wound. The lenient hand of time soothes the troubled soul to peace; the agitation of the mind at last wearies it out, and lulls it

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