Those tremendous revolutionary tempests in the political world, which have at different times desolated the fairest portions of the earth, and in which the chosen people of God, and that holy temple which was constructed under his own immediate direction and blessing, have had so large a share of suffering; were not the effect of chance, but were divinely permitted, or excited at the command of God, The ends which the Supreme Ruler had in view were beforehand revealed in prophecy, and have been respectively and punctually accomplished by fact. In the recurrence of similar contingencies, the regular carrying on of one grand and continued scheme of Providence is to be presumed upon. How dark soever, or unfavorable to truth and righteousness the aspect of things may seem for a season, yet "light shall burst forth from obscurity, and righteousness as the noon day" spring up from the temporary prevalence of error and wickedness. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall be slay the wicked;"-Then a new scene will

open in favor of religion and its friends, Messiah's kingdom, or the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established upon the tops of the mountains, and all nations shall flow in to it, in the last days."(Isaiah. ii. 2. &c. Micah. iv. 1. &c. Ezekiel xvii. 24.) "The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor." (Psalm lxxii. 3.) Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned rhild shall put his hand on the cockatrice

them.

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den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah xi. 4.-)

The day of the Lord, a prophetic phrase of various import-foretold by our Saviour explained from the prophecies.-The wickedness and miseries of the Jews in the day of their visitation-unexampled, but not beyond hope.

THERE are certain particular periods of the christian dispensation, pointed out in divine revelation by peculiar signs of those times, as signal epochas of Christ's administration of the government of his church and kingdom; after his ascension, and announcing to the believers that "all power, both in heaven and earth," was thenceforwards given into his hands. They are spoken of under the general phrases of the day of Christ—the coming of the Lord the day of the Lord-and are

described by the ancient prophets in such magnificent terms of a terrific grandeur, that they have been sometimes understood as applicable only to the great day of general judgment, when "be shall sit upon the throne of bis glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations," to hear and receive their everlasting doom.

That lively description which our Saviour himself has given in the twenty fourth chapter of Matthew, of his "coming in the clouds of heaven" to execute upon Jerusalem "the judgment written" in their prophets, and the sentence of condemnation pronounced by himself, is of this sort; and cloathed in the same sublime imagery and language which the prophets had made use of. It is introduced by that beautiful apostrophe to the devoted city, which he delivered with the tears of compassion streaming from his eyes, while he beheld in prophetic vision the dismal realities which were so soon to follow, and make good his words. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them