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through the great High Priest who hath rent the vail, and opened a new and living way into the holiest of all (Heb. ix. 7— 11; x. 20). " Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering....the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee (Ezek. xxviii. 13-15).

This iniquity comes from traffick in the people, from pride of heart in the king: the people attributing their wealth to their own skill and industry, and forgetting God the giver; the king claiming to rule in his own right, or by wisdom, or by the will of the people, and so no longer continuing the representative of God. "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee" (ver. 18). And of the king it is said, "Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas....Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God; behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations " (vers. 2,7).

Now we think it is so manifest as to need little if any proof, that the country designated Tyrus in this prophecy cannot be interpreted of ancient Tyrus, nor applied to any kingdom before Gospel times; as such a constitution of things cannot with the least shadow of foundation be asserted of any people but the people of Israel, as to them alone the cherub and mount of God will apply; and not truly of them, as Tyrus is a maritime people, and all the imagery is derived from commerce. But if applicable to no people before the destruction of Jerusalem, there is but one nation to whom it is applicable since that time, which is England. The constitution of England dates its origin, or at least its fixed character, from the pious Alfred, who would allow nothing to be introduced which was not sanctioned by the word of God. Magna Charta, the Statutes of Westminster, the Bill of Rights, and every other public document of former times, assume the laws of England to be fixed, and make it their professed object to confirm these laws, not to change them. Nolumus leges Anglia mutari was their motto; and they unanimously declared Christianity to be part and parcel of the law of the land. The king reigned "by the grace of God:" and every legal act, from the coronation oath down to the bill of lading

of a ship, was a confession of faith, " In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." All this is now passed and gone: our heart has been lifted up because of this beauty; our wisdom is corrupted by reason of the brightness; we have said we are wiser than Daniel, there is no secret they can hide from us; we have been "replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas:" but " our rowers have brought us into great waters, and the east wind is about to break us in the midst of the seas" (xxvii. 25, 26).

This judgment upon Tyrus is manifestly at the last time, and when all the other oppressors of the earth are in like manner visited; and the language points us to the time when the Lord shall punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and slay leviathan and the dragon of the sea, in order to restore the worship of the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem (Isai. xxvi. xxvii.); and it prepares for that great end of prophecy and object of hope, The glory of God in the land of the living. "For thus saith the Lord God, When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee; when I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; AND I SHALL SET GLORY IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING; I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. xxvi. 19-21).

Let it here be remarked, that Tyrus is brought low when the Lord comes in glory to the earth; and that the instrument employed to destroy her is the Assyrian, or king of Babylon (Ezek. xxvi. 7), called "the terrible of the nations" (xxviii. 7); but the same instrument destroys Egypt (xxxii. 12), and is itself destroyed immediately afterwards, together with Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom and the princes of the north, and all the Zidonians, by the sword of the Lord, when He shall cause HIS TERROR in the land of the living (xxxii. 17, 32). And be it also remarked, that this is the time spoken of in all Scripture, when the Lord shall cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and lay low the haughtiness of the TERRIBLE" (Isai. xiii. 11); when the city of the terrible nations shall fear before the wrath of God" (Isai. xxv. 3; Rev. vi. 16); and when, by the same act, the Lord shall perfect the deliverance of his waiting and oppressed people, who shall sing, "O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name....for thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when

the blast of the TERRIBLE ONES is as a storm against the wall. And the Lord will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people will he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it." (Isai. xxv. 1-8; Rev. xxi.)

From the similarity of condition in Tyrus (Ezek. xxvii.) and Babylon (Rev. xviii.) some have supposed Tyrus to be but another name for Rome, which is usually called Babylon; and the judgments upon both being similar, and coming at the same time, seems to strengthen the idea. But this cannot be, for many reasons, two of which may suffice: first, that Babylon never designates a true church, as Tyrus undoubtedly does; secondly, Babylon is the destroyer of Tyrus, and therefore cannot be the same. The resemblance, both in character and punishment, is most instructive to us, if we will lay it to heart; for as there will be found to the last hour some of the people of God in Babylon, to whom the call is made, "Come out of her, my people" (Rev. xviii. 4), so we may be assured that those of the dwellers in Tyrus who do not partake of its sins, shall save their own souls, and find deliverance from the general destruction of a sin-laden people.

The sins of Tyrus are of the same kind with those for which Babylon is engulfed; and this is the reason why the punishment of both is similar. And the cause of the earlier visitation of Tyrus may be its aggravation of sin, in having known the truth, which Babylon did not; in having been set for a witness in the earth, and not only ceasing to witness for truth, but being witness to a falsehood instead. "It had been better not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them " (2 Peter ii. 21).

The sins which call down the judgments of God on Tyrus help us the better to understand what are the crying sins which weary out the long-suffering of God towards Babylon, and to avoid the snares employed by the three unclean spirits (Rev. xvi. 13) to gather the kings of the earth and the whole world to the war of Armageddon, the gathering for final excision. The three evil principles now at work in Tyrus, and throughout the whole of Babylon, are, despotism, infidelity, and superstition; or, fear, the pit, and the snare (Isai. xxiv. 17; Jer. xlviii. 43); or, the lion, bear, and serpent (Amos v. 19), slain by the antitypes of Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha (1 Kings xix. 17); or, the fearful, the unbelieving, and the abominable (Rev. xxi. 8).

Independent self-will is the foundation of despotism; and it forms a perversion of the orthodox doctrine, in which the true

standing of kings under God is set forth, quite as remote from the truth as if the doctrine were wholly denied. This perversion, under the name of Divine right, has brought odium on the true doctrine, which by no means asserts that kings are ordained by God to govern as they please; but that they must govern as He pleases, and that they are His representatives only long as they administer His laws. But because rulers have not regarded this, and have each governed according to his own will, therefore "the Lord of hosts hath purposed to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth" (Isai. xxiii. 9). The king of Tyrus, lifted up in heart, hath said, "I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas" (Ezek. xxviii. 2); and he therefore "shall be made to feel that he is a man, and no god, in the hand of him that slayeth him" (ver. 9).

And all the kings of the earth, who have followed the same course, "shall drink the same wine-cup of fury at the hand of the Lord; all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them" (Jer. xxv. 26). The king of Sheshach, or Lord of Misrule, was shewn in a former Number to be the head of that monstrous confederacy of evil who shall mount the ascendant in the last times, both the creature of and the despot over the mob; like Bonaparte, both the child and the champion of Jacobinism. He is the king "that shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god" (Dan. xi. 36): "he is that man of sin, the son of perdition, who exalteth himself above all that is called god.... whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy with the brightness of his coming" (2 Thess. ii. 8).

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To this engine of Satan, fear is the spirit that first ministers; fear, not of HIM whom we ought to fear, and "who can destroy both body and soul in hell;" but the base fear of them who can only kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do" (Luke xii. 4). For the last despot shall cause that as many as will not worship the image of the beast shall be killed: and all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, excepting those whose names are written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; though Scripture declares, that "if any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb 9, 10; xiii. 8, 15).

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(Rev. xiv.

This spirit of fear is undeniably and confessedly the leading

motive of conduct with all the powers of Europe at the present time; and under its influence they make the preservation of peace the sole rule of foreign policy, and keeping the people quiet at home the sole rule of domestic policy. Principle is made to give way before expediency, and it is no longer inquired, What has God commanded? or, What do the principles of government require? but, What do the people demand? or, How much of these demands dare we refuse? God ordained kings and governments to circumscribe by some fixed bound the fluctuations of popular opinion, and to set a barrier between the righteous and the wicked, who" are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt" (Isai. lvii. 20). But those who were set by God to keep the barrier, instead of repairing its breaches have widened them, and for the most part assented to the monstrous proposition that the sea has constituted its own barrier; that none may be maintained which its surges have shaken; that none ought to have been constructed to stem or moderate its tides. One bulwark after another has been yielded to "the floods of ungodly men" (Psalm xviii. 4), before whom our rulers have been afraid; the waters are sapping and loosening the foundations of the few barriers which remain the next heavy surge may sweep them all away; may make Christendom "the desert of the sea, the grievous vision, from a terrible land" (Isai. xxi.); like a waste howling wilderness of arid sand; or like a Chesil-bank of pebbles jostled into uniformity by the dashing of the waves.

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We scarcely need point the application to our own country, it is so obvious. It is perfectly notorious that intimidation has been the power employed to break down the bulwarks of the English monarchy. Our Protestant standing first gave way, in the repeal of the Test Act and of the Papal disqualifications. Our Royalty next yielded a concession to intimidation which reason and principle had just before refused, as being inevitably fatal to monarchy. The Nobility of the realm next gave way, and from fear assented to the very same measure which but a few days before they had deliberately rejected. And we now see the waves gathering mountains high" in the horizon, ready to burst upon the Church in such a mighty rush as in all human probability will not leave one stone upon another which shall not be overthrown.

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This first spirit of Fear prepares the way for the second spirit, which is Infidelity, the spirit of the pit. From the bottomless pit came the infidel hordes which darkened the Eastern sun, and tormented all those men who had not the seal of God in their foreheads (Rev. ix. 1-4); from the bottomless pit ascendeth that beast who maketh war with the witnesses of Jesus (Rev. xi. 7); and from the bottomless pit shall ascend that blasphe

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