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Popery. Nevertheless, down into this lowest state of his apostate church does the faithfulness and love of Jesus condescend, and bring up from thence a people who shall be to Him a praise in the earth. The subject of this book is a second, spiritual Exode, out of a spiritual Egypt, the Egypt of Rev. xi. which is identical with Sodom and Babylon. Thus is it fulfilled now to every child of God, as it was to Jesus of Nazareth, "out of Egypt have I called my Son." The book commences with causing the prophet to take a wife whose character represents that of the church, even a wife of whoredoms;" out of whom should nevertheless spring Jezreel, the seed of God. In ver. 4, the kingdom of the house of Israel is to cease, for the blood of Jezreel is to be visited upon the house of Jehu: the church as a polity shall be destroyed, but God's seed in it shall be preserved. God will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel the seed of God are a despised people, dwelling in the lowliness of humiliation, looked down upon by the strength of the church, yet it is by these little children that the power of the church shall be broken. God will have especial mercy upon Judah: upon that portion which yet cleaves to the Lord as the coming King. They who are first delivered are called upon to plead, in chap. ii., for the children of God their brethren, and for the church, who hugs adulteries to her breasts,-the two ordinances, by which she ought to have fed her children: she is threatened to be stript of her outward covering, when surely she will be bare, for she has nothing else. She is remonstrated with for following her lovers again after she has been brought up out of her fleshly standing, thinking it was these who had given her food and raiment: these lovers are her Luthers, and Calvins, and Knoxes, and Cranmers: wherefore the Lord makes her to feel injustice and straitening, thorns and a wall; till she learns to remember that it was the Spirit in these men which nourished her. In her state of destitution she is spoken to comfortably in the wilderness; and the valley of Achor, in which she gives up the last Babylonish vestige which stuck to her, is a door of hope that she shall sing again with the joy of the Spirit, as she did at Pentecost, when she was originally brought up from the wisdom and power of the carnal mind.

The faithfulness of God in bringing up a people out of Christendom after it had become apostate; and out of the best part of it, Protestantism, but still apostate; and out of the best part of Prostestantism, even that which stood for the coming King, but which too is apostate; is beautifully set forth throughout the remainder of the Prophet: while the election, so brought out, is continually rebuked for their proneness to turn back to their fleshly standing, and to set light by the spiritual guidance of Jehovah in the midst of it. This Prophet, therefore, is of

peculiar value to the church, which the Lord is now guiding by His Spirit the warnings are solemn; that no one may fancy himself the more safe for belonging to the true church, but take heed that he cry continually to be upheld by the power and love of Jesus.

Until the Lord in his mercy sent the voice of his Spirit again into the midst of us, we never saw so clearly that the Christian dispensation had not only its apostasy, but also its return, exactly as the Jewish dispensation has; only with this difference, that the whole of the Christian dispensation, with its apostasy and its return, both spiritual withal, is an episode which is entirely completed before the recovery of the Jewish dispensation commences. The apostasy of the Jew is fleshly, and his return is fleshly, to a fleshly inheritance: the apostasy of the Christian is spiritual, and his return is spiritual, to a spiritual inheritance, Let us take, by way of illustrating this, chapters xxx. and xxxi. of Jeremiah. The word is "concerning Israel and Judah "-all Christendom-and specially addressed to that part which testifies to the coming King: the promise is, that it shall return to its land: the land which the church was given to possess, was the whole realm of flesh, which it was called upon to rule over by the Spirit and bring it into complete subjection: the inhabitants were to be subdued, or destroyed the science, wisdom, learning, and affec tions were to be used only for the service of the temple; and all feelings rebellious thereto were to be put to death. The promise is, that we shall be restored to that dominion; that the Spirit of the living God shall again come into the midst of us, giving us his wisdom; his knowledge; his utterance; his healing of disease; his casting out of devils; his discernment of spiritual existences; his power over the elements of nature, so that we shall dread neither poisons nor injuries; his speech, to speak the very mind of God; and his heart, to have the very affections of Jesus. No sooner has this purpose been effected in the church below, than straightway she is fit to meet her Lord; who, leaving his Father's throne, descends to meet her, receives her to himself in the clouds, betroths her, and abides with her for ever. Thus does she then fulfil the name of Benjamin by becoming the "strength of the right hand" of her Father, by which he rules over the nations; the Naphthali, the "wrestling" church which prevails, and "the hind let loose" from the bands of mortality; the Dan, the "judgment" of God, in the execution of which she is partaker. In like manner the qualities indicated by the other names are all brought out and realized in the spiritual Christian church, Israel, as they shall be subsequently in the fleshly Jewish church, Jacob.

NO. VII.

Moab: the Evangelical World.

"In that day, when the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left from Assyria and from Egypt....and from the islands of the sea, he shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth....and they shall lay their hand upon Edom and MOAB, and the children of Ammon shall obey them” (Isa. xi. 11—14). “And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us : this is the Lord; we have waited for him; we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation: for in this mount (Zion) shall the hand of the Lord rest, and MoAB shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill" (Isa. xxv. 8-11). "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will punish all the circumcised with the uncircumcised; Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon and MOAB; and all in the utmost corners that dwell in the wilderness" (Jer. ix. 25, 26). "MOAB shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet" (Amos ii. 2). "I have heard the reproach of MOAB, and the reviling of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people and magnified themselves against their border: therefore, as I live, saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely MOAB shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah; even the breeding of nettles and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation....This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of hosts" (Zeph. ii. 8—10).

The peculiarly prominent action and doom of Moab in the great and terrible day of the Lord, demands especial attention at this time, when the hosts are being mustered and marching to the Valley of Decision with such fearful haste. Both in the historical and prophetical books we find very many and very marked references to Moab, at all the turning points of Israel's history; and in every one of these the description of his character and the circumstances of his destruction are set forth in the very same language which is throughout the Scriptures employed to describe the last enemies of God's people, and the desolating judgments of the confederate hosts of those who shall fight against the Lamb, and by the Lamb be overcome. the reader turn up and compare Isa. xxiv. 17, 18, which is part of the utter breaking down and clean dissolving of the earth (and in the detail of which, xxv. 10, MOAB is the only one of the enemies of the Lord there named), with Jer. xlviii. 43, 44,

Let

where the very same words are used of the destruction of Moab, by the fear, and the pit, and the snare, and the flame of devouring fire.

Where then is Moab now? Where is that proud and cruelly reproachful foe of Israel now? He must be present, yea, and fully developed also; for the prophets of old have pointed him out by so many unequivocal tokens, that unless our eyes had been holden we surely should have seen, and watched against him, and warned him, and wept sore for him; for his doom is fixed, and his desolation shall be fearful, yet righteous withal; and even when he falls no more to rise again, songs of "glory to the Righteous One" shall be heard from the uttermost part of the earth. Now, we are called to have the mind of Christ; to answer "Amen, Hallelujah!" to his works of judgment, as well as his words and works of mercy and in order to do this, we must see the righteousness of the doom of Moab, which can only be through our seeing the character and actings of Moab now. Who then, and where, is Moab now?

This is no vague inquiry, exposed to an empirical or superficial answer; for the Spirit of God has recorded of him such a precise and most peculiar character, such a continuity and consistency of action, and such an appalling doom of desolation to be inflicted on him by the hand of the Lord in the day of his wrath, that we may, without any risk of rashness, or using detrimental comparisons, pronounce the mystery of Moab, next only to the overwhelming and all-including mysteries of Babylon and Egypt, to be the most remarkable, instructive, and monitory subject of examination for the people of God in these days, and especially in these lands, where the distinctness of every feature in the antitype is too unequivocally defined to admit of any reasonable doubt as to his complete identification. To the law, then, and the testimony.

Moab's incestuous origin; his implacable hatred of the Israel of God; his relentless cruelty towards the seed of Abraham, his father's friend; his refusal to bring bread and water to refresh the weary tribes of Israel when they came from Egypt; his denying them a simple passage through his border; his cruelty in hiring Balaam to curse them; his craft in seducing them to idolatry through lust; his desperate oppression of the people in the days of the Judges; and his repeated revolts and invasions and confederacies and wars, and his inhuman rage and barbarity, together with his pride, haughtiness, self-conceit, and spirit of mockery and reproach-all combine to form a character so fearfully and minutely peculiar, that not only are we constrained to look for his antitype among the bitterest enemies of God and of His people now, but are assured also, that, when we

have found him, we shall discover the true Israel of God, as he was ever found of old, at the point of his sword, as the mark for his arrow, as the object of all his raging wrath and cursing, all his mockery and scorn, all his proud and arrogant defiance and cruel oppression.

Let us seek, therefore, to trace him step by step, according to the order of the sacred narrative. And, first of all, consider his incestuous origin, and the meaning or number of his name. In Gen. xix. we find the circumstances attending and following the escape of Lot and his daughters from Sodom recorded with peculiar minuteness. In 2 Peter ii. we have the counterpart of at least one portion of the mystery of the cities of the plain, which sufficiently explains the unclean lusts and presumption, brutality and adultery of the Papacy; while it also connects the cursed children, who have fallen through covetousness into the way and curse of Balaam, with the descendants of Moab, as we shall have abundant occasion to see in the course of our examination of the unaccomplished prophecies respecting Moab. Lot and his daughters, therefore, clearly typify the Reformers, and the churches delivered from the doom of those who had long vexed their souls by their unrighteous deeds: and still more particularly the conduct of the daughters of Lot finds its perfect and most undeniable counterpart in those churches, who, after being so delivered, and finding refuge for a while in the caves of the mountains-in gross ignorance of the true mystery of the church, the bride of Christ, the chaste virgin espoused to Him, and specially prohibited from adopting the names even of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas (1 Cor. i.)-did nevertheless most wickedly and incestuously set up to themselves, as lords and heads and husbands, those spiritual fathers, who, under the guidance of the Lord, had led them from the doomed plains of Sodom and Gomorrah; adopting their names and their creeds, as banners of distinction and standards of faith; and thus giving birth to a race of incestuous children, whose names, though various and multiform now, are still expressed in the sight of God by the one word MOAB, which signifies," of the father;" and whose characters, though infinitely diversified through the multiplicity and variety of outward circumstances, are still closely and strictly analogous to those of the literal descendants of Moab and Ben-Ammi,

Here, then, we have a simple and most incontrovertible answer to our question, Where is Moab now? We point to the hosts of those who, adopting the names and creeds of men, even the best of men-of whom the Lord says, that they were righteous, as he said of Lot-do thereby commit the incest which the soul of the Lord abhors and never fails to visit fearfully; thereby do