and himself again so dwell in Jerusalem, as to render all its habitations secure, peaceful, and holy? we reply by asking, When was the word of Jonah concerning the destruction of Nineveh in forty days verified? No future destruction of Nineveh could possibly verify that word, no more than any future gathering of the dispersed, or any future inhabitation of the Lord at Jerusalem, could verify the words spoken by these prophets respecting determinate periods in the past. The Lord stayed the execution of his threatening against Nineveh when a state of things entered to which it did not apply. In like manner, the fulfilment of the promises referred to were partly stayed by a spirit of ungodliness among the people of the Jews, first indisposing many of them to return when the call and the opportunity came to them, and then rendering it necessary for God to withhold his hand from blessing many of those who had returned. It was God's kind and gracious propensions toward them—his desire and readiness to do them good in the manner and to the extent specified in the word of promise-it was this, properly, that was indicated there-this alone that was certainly and infallibly indicated; the rest depended on the spiritual condition and behaviour of the people; and the writings of Malachi, the last of the prophets, are simply, as to their direct and immediate object, a vindication of the Lord's dealings in not bestowing as much in the way of blessing as the people thought themselves entitled to expect.

Let the character of this vindication be carefully noted; for it proceeds entirely on the ground, that the perverseness and obstinacy of the people had, as it were, violently arrested the flow of divine mercy. Throughout the whole of the book the people have evidently in their eye the large prospects that had been held out by the prophets immediately before, and presently after, the captivity: they appear fretting and complaining that these had not been realized, and that their condition generally was poor and unsatisfactory. The prophet meets this state of feeling by telling them that God had manifestly given them tokens of his favour which had been withheld from others-that, for the rest, the failure lay entirely with themselves that their own corruptions had rendered an abridgement of the promised good absolutely necessary—that if they would but prove God by a sincere and faithful behaviour, they would find no want of the promised good; while, if they persevered in their sinful ways, matters would get worse instead of better they would be smitten with a curse, and not replenished with blessing. Yet, so far from owning that God in this was departing from his covenant engagements, the prophet represents it as rather a fulfilling of these; especially in ch. ii. 1-9, where expostulating with a corrupt priesthood, and threatening them with the greatest displeasure and contempt for their backslidings, he speaks of it as being done, "that they might know that God's covenant was with Levi;” i. e., might know how it was with him, for

what ends and purposes; so that, if these failed to be accomplished, they should justly be held responsible for the evil, and visited with chastisement.

Great misunderstanding and confusion has arisen in all ages from contemplating God's declarations in scripture from a merely natural point of view; and the same cause is now proving a most fertile source of false interpretation in prophecy. Interpreters will never see eye to eye respecting much that is there, unless they come to view it primarily and chiefly in connexion with the moral character and operations of Godhead. For what has been justly said (by Trench) of the miracles of scripture, that they differ essentially from apocryphal miracles, in being from their very nature witnesses of the grand moral design of their author, while the other are continually mere sports and freaks of power, having no ethical motive or meaning whatever, holds true also of the prophecies of that class especially to which the preceding observations apply. They stand immediately connected with the moral purposes of God, and if dissociated from these, we are in danger of giving them an import and an application which they were never meant to possess.

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PART III.

ON CERTAIN MODERN THEORIES RESPECTING THE

AUTHOR AND THE BOOK OF JONAH.

THE best antidote to error is usually the full exhibition of the truth; and if the views unfolded in the preceding pages have commended themselves to the understandings and the consciences of intelligent readers, the theories that have been propounded on the Continent for the purpose of solving the enigma, as it is called, of Jonah's marvellous history, might safely be left to themselves. Those theories, indeed, have never attained to any credit in this country, and have owed whatever countenance they have received abroad, partly to the prevalence of a sceptical turn of mind, which looks askance at every thing that wears the aspect of the miraculous, and partly to the inadequate and mistaken views that have been commonly entertained respecting the character and mission of Jonah. It is evidently difficulties proceeding from this latter source which have led Professor Stuart, in his work on the Old Testamant canon, to give only a kind of wavering dissent from some of the German

speculations on the subject, and to represent himself as chiefly influenced by our Lord's reference to the transactions in the book of Jonah, in adhering to their strictly historical character. He still regards the substance of the book as involved in inexplicable mystery. "The mission of Jonah to a distant heathen country, in his day scarcely known among the Jews, and the mission of a man who had such a temper as Jonah, to execute so grave a commission," are to his mind difficulties so great, that "he does not wonder so many interpreters should have resorted to allegory or parable in order to explain the book." But these peculiarities have been quite naturally and satisfactorily accounted for, merely by contemplating the subject from the right point of view, and considering it in its and there hence appears no proper relations; occasion or pretext for resorting to such desperate shifts in interpretation, as would imply the historical character of the book to be without any solid foundation.

If the object of the book, however, were what Professor Stuart represents, or if the view he gives of this should come to be generally acquiesced in, I fear its strictly historical character will be found to stand on a very uncertain foundation. Having announced the problem in this respect to be one of difficult solution, he presently asks, “What can the object be unless it is to inculcate on the narrow-minded and bigoted Jews (there were many such) the great truth, that God regards the humble and penitent every where