ances which shall precede or accompany the coming of God's Son, and the establishment of his kingdom? Let the pictures, by Joel, by John, and, at a far off distance, by Pollok, remain as alone approximating to the sublimity of those rehearsals of doom. Be it that they are from the pencils of poets, surely poets are fitting heralds to proclaim the rising of those two new poems of God-the New Heaven, and the New Earth; and is not the language of one of themselves as true as it is striking

"A terrible sagacity informs

The poet's heart, he looks to distant storms,

He hears the thunder, ere the tempest lowers."

A kindred event in the future lies obscurely upon Joel's page. It is the "last conflict of great principles." That this is the burden of the 3d chapter, it seems difficult to deny. Through its fluctuating mist, there is dim-discovered the outline of a battle-field, where a cause- -the cause of the world-is to be fought, fought finally, and to the watchword, "Victory or death." Nothing can be more magnificent than the picture, colored though it be by Jewish associations and images. The object of the fight is the restoration of Judah to its former freedom and power. For this, have its scattered members been gathered, organized, and brought back to their own land. God has gathered them, but he has also, for purposes of his own, to use prophetic language, "hissed" for their enemies, from all nations, to oppose them on the threshold of their triumph. The valley of decision or excision is that of Jehoshaphat, the deep glen lying between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, and which is watered by the brook Kedron. There "multitudes, multitudes," are convened for the final issue. The field has been darkened, and over those multitudes a canopy expands, unlighted by sun, moon, or stars. Under this black sky, the sea of heathen fury and numbers is advancing, and the people of God are, in deep suspense and silence, awaiting its first breaking billow. The contest at last begins, when lo! there is a

glare on Olivet, which shows also the whole expanse of Jehoshaphat's valley, and also the faces of the foemen, as they draw nigh; and hark! there is a voice from Zion which shakes earth and heaven, and tells that the delivery is near; and then, between Olivet and Jerusalem, and hanging high over the narrow vale, appears the Lord himself, "the hope of his people, and the stronghold of the children of Israel." And as the result of this sudden intervention, when the fight is decided, "the mountains drop down sweet wine, the hills flow with milk, the torrents of Judah flow with water, a fountain comes forth from the House of Jehovah, and waters the valley of Shittim," and innumerable voices proclaim that henceforth the "Lord will dwell in," as he has delivered, Zion.

Was there ever preparation on a larger scale; suspense deeper; deliverance more sudden; or a catastrophe more sublime? We stay not now critically to inquire how much there is of what is literal, and how much of what is metaphorical, in this description. To tell accurately where, in prophetic language, the metaphor falls from around the fact, and the fact pierces the bud of the metaphor, is one of the most difficult of tasks; as difficult, almost, as to settle the border line between the body and the soul. But, apart from this, we think there is no candid reader of the close of Joel, but must be impressed with the reality of the contest recorded there, with its modern date, its awful breadth of field, its momentous and final character. It is, in all the extent of the words, that war of opinion so often partially predicted and partially fought. It is a contest between the real followers of Christ, out of every kindred, denomination, tongue, and people, and the open enemies and the pretended friends of his cause. It is a contest of which the materials are already being collected. It is a contest which, as it hurtles on, shall probably shake all churches to their foundations, and give a new and strange arrangement to all parties. It is a contest for which intelligent men and Christians should be preparing, not by shutting themselves up within the fastnesses of party, nor by strengthening more strongly the stakes

I

of a bygone implicit narrowness of creed, but by the exercise of a wise liberality, a cautious circumspection, and a manly courage, blended with candor, and by being prepared to sacrifice many an outpost, and relinquish many a false front of battle, provided they can save the citadel, and keep the banner of the cross flying, free and safe above it. It is a contest which may, in all probability, become at last more or less literal, as when did any great war of mind fail to dye its garments in blood. It is a contest of whose where and when we may not speak, since the strongest prophetic breath has not raised the mists which overhang the plain of Armageddon. It is a contest, finally, which promises to issue in a supernatural intervention, and over the smoke of its bloody and desperate battle-field, to show the crown of the coming of the Son of Man.

MICAH.

He is called the Morasthite, because born in Mareshah, a village in the south of the territory of Judah. He prophesied during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find a remarkable allusion to him in the book of Jeremiah. That prophet had predicted the utter desolation of the temple and city of Jerusalem. The priests and prophets thereupon accused him to the princes and the people, as worthy to die, because he had prophesied against the city. The threat is about to be put in execution, when some of the elders rise up and adduce the case of Micah. "Micah, the Morasthite, prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah, put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls." Micah was pleaded as a precedent, nor was he pleaded in vain.

This prophet is noted principally for the condensation of his language, the rapidity of his transitions, the force and brevity of his pictures, the form of dialogue to which he often approaches, and for two or three splendid passages which tower above the rest of his prophecy, like cedars above the meaner trees. One of these records the sudden gleam of insight which showed him, in the future, Bethlehem-Ephratah sending out its illustrious progeny, one whose goings forth had been from of old, from the "Eternal obscure." How lovely those streams of prophetic illumination, which fall from afar, like autumn sunshine upon secret and lonely spots, and crown them with a glory unknown to themselves! Bethlehem becomes beautiful beyond itself, in the luster of the Savior's rising. Another, for moral grandeur, is almost unequaled in Scripture, and sounds like the knell of the ceremonial economy. "Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the Most High God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jehovah be well pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Here the burden of the 50th Psalm is uttered more sententiously, although not with such awful accompaniments. Both announce the prospective arrival of a period, when the husk of type and statutory observance was to drop from around the fruit it had protected and concealed, when equity was to outsoar law, mercy to rejoice over sacrifice, and humility to take the room of ceremonial holiness -when that "which had decayed and waxed old was to vanish away."

In this liberal spirit, as well as in certain passages of Micah's prophecy, we descry the influence of the great orb which appeared above the horizon at the same time-Isaiah. The close of the 7th chapter is almost identical with a passage in Isaiah; but the main coincidence occurs in the 4th chapter. Critics

have doubted whether the opening of this was copied by Isaiah from Micah, or by Micah from the 2d chapter of Isaiah; or whether it were communicated by the Spirit separately to both. This is a matter of little moment; certainly the strain itself was worthy of repetition.

It is a vision of the future glories of the Church. The prophet finds an emblem of it in Mount Sion, or the mountain of the temple of the Lord. This was not remarkable for height. Far loftier mountains arose throughout Palestine. There were the mountains which stand alway about Jerusalem. There was Salmon, with its perpetual snow. There were the mountains of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan, who had been lovely in their lives, in their death were not divided. There was Carmel, shadowing the waters of the west, and covered, to its summit, with a robe of undying green. There was Tabor, rising, like an island, from the plain of Esdraelon, which lies like an ocean around it. And in the north, stood the great form of Lebanon, rising above the clouds, and covered with the cedars of God

"Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,

And whitens with eternal sleet;

While summer, in a vale of flowers,

Is smiling rosy at his feet."

But dearer it was And why? because No temple stood on

Compared to these and others, Mount Sion was but a little hill -a mere dot on the surface of the globe. than any or all of them to Micah's heart. it was the mountain of the Lord's house. Tabor; no incense streamed from Carmel; to Lebanon no tribes went up, nor sacrifices ascended from its cedarn summits. Sion alone represented the position of the Church-not to be compared in magnificence or in multitude of votaries with other systems, but possessing, in the presence of the Spirit of the Lord, a principle of divine life and an element of everlasting progress.

But the prophet has now a "vision of his own." Sion in his