shall be deliverance." "Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for their violence against Judah; but Judah shall dwell for ever, and” the new "Jerusalem from generation to generation. For I will cleanse their blood which I have not cleansed: for the Lord" (Jehovah-Shiloh) "dwelleth in Zion." And the prophet describes the means of this cleansing in this noted promise, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy," &c. A capital promise this, of which our Lord gave an earnest on the day of pentecost, when he sent a gracious shower on his little vineyard, as a pledge of the mighty rivers of righteousness which will, by and by, cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Joel ii. 21, 28, 32; and iii. 19-21.

Should you deny, sir, that the Lord, who will thus roar out of Zion, and then pour out his Spirit on all flesh, is the Messiah, the mighty God described by Isaiah, I prove it by the following reasons, which I entreat you never to forget:1. The bruising of the serpent's head belongs to the wonderful seed of the woman, to the child born to us, whose name is "the mighty God," and not to "the Father," who "hath committed all judgment unto the Son." If you deny this, sir, you not only represent Christ as a mere man, but as a man who renounces one of the Messiah's titles, which is "the true and faithful witness;" for he hath expressly laid down in John the proposition on which I built my argument. 2. The nineteenth chapter of the Revelation contains a description of the Lord's strange work in the place which Joel calls the "valley of decision," or "of Jehoshaphat ;" and that terrible work is there declared by St. John to be specially the work of the Son, whom he calls "the Word of God." 3. Joel promises that "whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered;" and St. Paul, in Rom. x. 12, 13, applies the words to our Lord Jesus Christ, as appears from the apostle's doctrine in Rom i. 16, and Acts xvi. 31. 4. The Lord, who in Joel acts the part of a deliverer, is "the Lord" who "shall call the remnant" of the Jews, and shall at last reconcile Jews and gentiles

in himself; and therefore is indubitably the Shiloh, unto whom the gathering of the people shall be. Compare Joel ii. 32, with Genesis xlix. 10. And, 5. “The Lord who dwelleth in Zion," and who cleanseth the blood and sins of mankind by pouring out his Spirit upon all flesh, is certainly the Messiah, or Jehovah-Shiloh, to whom the very words of Joel are applied by St. Peter, in Acts ii. 16, 38.

Hoping, sir, that you will not lose sight of these five arguments, I proceed to show you how some of the other lesser prophets speak of the Messiah's days of vengeance and of refreshing.

Amos, as the other prophets, shows the apostasy of the church, foretels her sifting punishment, her preservation during the great tribulation, and the day of vengeance, in which "God with us," the Messiah, will destroy all the wicked.

When the church shall thus have been cleansed, and the wicked destroyed, the times of refreshing will come, which are thus foretold by this prophet: "In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old,” as in the days of Solomon, a type of the Prince of peace, who is the mighty God, the Lord of David as well as his son. Then shall the prosperity of God's people keep pace with their righteousness, and overflow their peaceful habitations. They "shall possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen who are called by my name, saith the. Lord who doeth this. Then shall the ploughman overtake the reaper, and the treader of the grapes him that soweth the seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine. will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and plant them in their own land," rendered like the garden of Eden. "And they shall no more be pulled out of it, saith the Lord God," Emmanuel, the Shiloh, to whom shall be the gathering of the converted nations. Amos ix. 11, &c.

I

Micah thus speaks of the second coming of the Messiah to do this strange work as Lion of the tribe of Judah: "Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth; and let the Lord

:

God be witness against you from his holy temple. Behold, the Lord will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth the mountains shall be molten under him as wax before the fire, and the valleys shall be cleft." Micah i. 2-4. But this terrible judgment shall begin at the house of the Lord, even at Zion and Jerusalem: "Hear, ye heads of the house of Jacob, that pervert all equity, and say, Is not the Lord among us? no evil come upon us. Zion for your sake shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps." Micah iii. 11, 12.

can

When the Lord's people shall have borne his indignation, Shiloh will gather the purified remnant of them, and use them as his glorious instruments for the conversion or the punishment of the wicked: "I will surely gather the remnant of Israel, I will put them together as the flock in the midst of the fold. The breaker" (the bruiser of the serpent) "is come up before them; their king shall pass before them, and the Lord" (Jehovah) “on the head of them, to redeem them from the hand of their enemies." Micah ii. 12; iv. 10.

The Messiah's strange work in the valley of decision is thus described by this prophet: "Many nations are gathered against thee, O Zion, who say, Let her be defiled. But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they his counsel: for he shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and thy hoofs brass; and thou shalt beat in pieces many people." Micah iv. 11-13.

After this day of vengeance, the days of refreshing shall come; and they are thus foretold by Micah, who had the brightest discoveries of the glory of Shiloh, and of the gathering of the people unto him, after the destruction of the antichristian powers: "But in the last days," saith that prophet," the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains; people shall flow unto it, and many nations," both awed by the Lord's tremendous judgments, and encouraged by his offers of grace and pardon, "shall come, and say, Come,

let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law" of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making men free from the law of sin and death, "shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he' (Jehovah-Shiloh) "shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more: but they shall sit every man under his vine, and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it. And the Lord shall reign over them in mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever." Micah iv. 1-7.

That the Lord Jehovah, who shall thus reign in mount Zion, when all spears shall be beat into ploughshares and into pruning-hooks, is our Melchizedek, the King of Salem, the Solomon of the Christian church, the Prince of peace, whose name is called "the mighty God" by Isaiah, and of whose government and peace upon the throne of David there shall be no end, can be proved even to a Jew by the following reasons:-1. This divine King is described as doing the things which characterize the Messiah, namely, bruising the serpent, destroying the wicked, gathering Israel, and reigning over the nations: "for unto him shall the gathering of the people be." 2. Micah calls him "the Ruler of Israel, the Messiah," and describes his human and divine nature as clearly as does Isaiah: "Thou Bethlehem, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come forth he that is to be ruler in Israel," (here we see the child born unto us in Bethlehem,) "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting," Micah v. 2; and in these last words we behold the eternal generation and divinity of the Son of God. And that Herod. himself, with the Jewish priests and the scribes, made no doubt but this prophecy related to the Messiah, is evident from the account given by St. Matthew: "For when king Herod had heard that the King of the Jews was

born, and when he had gathered the chief priests," &c., by quoting this very prophecy of Micah, they proved to him, that the Messiah, he "whose goings forth have been from everlasting," was to be born at Bethlehem.

The prophet Habakkuk, in that sublime hymn called his "prayer," has many expressions very descriptive of the days of vengeance. "God came from Teman," says he, "and the holy One from mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. He stood and measured the earth: he beheld and drove asunder the nations, and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. The mountains saw thee, and they trembled; the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation. Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed. Thou didst wound the head out of the house of the wicked." And as the prophet considers these desolating judgments as being preparatory to the salvation of God's people, so, speaking in the name of the whole church, he describes the greatness of that salvation when he says, a few verses after, Although the fig-tree should not blossom, and there should be no fruit in the vine; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me walk upon mine high places." For, as he assures us in the preceding chapter, "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea;' a passage which contains a most glorious testimony to the days of refreshing, during which, as Isaiah bears witness, "the people shall be all righteous, the work of his hands, and the branch of his planting, that he may be glorified."

66

Zephaniah is very express upon this subject. Having