CHAPTER VII.

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PROPHECY, DERIVED FROM THE WRITINGS OF BISHOP HORSLEY.

THE proud situation which Great Britain occupies at the present day, among the nations of the earth, is well calculated to raise emotions of the warmest gratitude in the breasts of pious and reflecting Britons. Dwelling under the shadow of this mighty empire, they will not forget that its greatness is far less dependent upon the arrangements of civil authority, than upon the influence which the Almighty Governor of the Universe connects with its moral and religious destinies; and, once a-week at least, the innumerable company of her Saints, in every quarter of the world, will take up the Holy Psalmist's words, and joyfully exclaim, as it were in simultaneous accents, "O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and show ourselves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all

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the corners of the earth: and the strength of the hills is his also."-Ps. xcv. 1—4.

Surely then a nation such as this will not forfeit its allegiance to the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords; nor be ready to dishonour the rituals and appointed ordinances of that tolerant Church, which, united to the State, has, from the earliest dawnings of the Reformation, been foremost in defence of the Protestant cause. Have we not gone forth with the Bible into every nook and corner of the earth; and as long as we continue to abide by the conviction that there is a God who governs the world, and that he will give permanency to none but a righteous people, may we not hope to go on and prosper? May we not hope, above all, that the privilege attached to our present religious pre-eminency, of being chiefly instrumental in making known the glad tidings of salvation to heathen nations, will not be withdrawn from us; but that we shall be conspicuous in the Redeemer's procession, whenever the glorious epoch of the fulness of the Gentiles shall arrive, to which the eyes of all considerate Christians turn without ceasing? Yet there is an epoch of still more transcendent importance, and appalling grandeur, than this-a day when the heavens and the earth themselves shall pass away, and time shall be no more. "For, behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him." Yes! He that died to save us, lives for ever, and "shall come, at the last day, to judge the earth,

and with righteousness to judge the world; and the people with his truth." For we have Moses and the prophets, both of the Old and New Testament, and Christ himself, the corner-stone, for our guides; and believing them, we rest assured that the connexion between seed-time and harvest is not better established, than that between the fall and the restoration of man, between the sacrifice of our incarnate Redeemer and his appearance at the last day as the Sovereign Lord and Judge of all the world. These are the great truths which we require to know; these the rays from heaven which irradiate the Bible throughout, and which are to Revelation what those of the sun are to the natural world. Without the sun, all nature would be in darkness; without the doctrine of the cross, the Bible would be a dead letter.

"Scripture prophecies," we are told by that great and learned expositor of them, Bishop Horsley, "are not detached predictions of separate independent events; but are united in a regular and entire system, all terminating in one great object, the promulgation of the Gospel, and the complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom. Of this system, every particular prophecy makes a part, and bears a more immediate or a more remote relation to that which is the object of the whole. And as there cannot but be harmony and connexion in the knowledge and the thoughts of God, so there cannot but be unity and consistency of design

in all his communications with mankind. All the promises given to the patriarchs-the whole typical service of the Law-the succession of the Jewish prophets-all these were means employed by God to prepare the world for the Revelation of His Son; and the later prophecies of our Lord himself, and his inspired apostles, are still means of the same kind, for the further advancement of the same great design-to spread that divine teacher's doctrine, and to give it full effect upon the hearts of the faithful. The great object, therefore, of the whole word of prophecy, is the Messiah and His kingdom; and it divides itself into two general branches-as it regards either the first coming of the Messiah, or the various fortunes of his doctrine and his church, until his second coming. With this object every prophecy hath immediate or remote connexion; inasmuch as the secular events, to which many parts of prophecy relate, will be found, upon a close inspection, to be such as either in earlier times. affected the fortunes of the Jewish people, or in later ages the state of Christendom, and were of considerable effect upon the propagation of the true religion, either as they promoted or as they obstructed it. Thus we have the predictions of the fall of the old Assyrian empire, and the desolation of Nineveh, its capital,-of the destruction of Tyre, and the ravages of Nebuchadnezzar in the neighbourhood of Palestine,-of the overthrow of the Babylonian empire, by Cyrus,—of the Persian, by Alexander,-of the division of the Eastern

world, after the death of Alexander, among his captains, of the long wars between the rival kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, of the propagation of Mohammed's imposture, of the decline of the Roman empire,—of the rise and growth of the papal tyranny and superstition. Such events as these became the subject of prophecy, because their consequences touched the state of the true religion; and yet they were of a kind in which, if in any, the thoughtless and inconsiderate would be apt to question the control of Providence. Read the histories of these great revolutions; you will find they were effected by what you might the least guess to be the instruments of Providence,-by the restless ambition of princes,-by the intrigues of wicked statesmen,-by the treachery of false sycophants, by the mad passions of abandoned or of capricious women,-by the phrensy of enthusiasts,— by the craft of hypocrites. But, although God hath indeed no need of the wicked man, yet His wisdom and His mercy find frequent use for him, and render even his vices subservient to the benevolent purposes of Providence. The evidence of a vigilant Providence thus mercifully exerted, arises from the prediction of those events which, while they result from the worst crimes of men, do yet in their consequences affect the state of religion and the condition of the virtuous." "This comfortable assurance, therefore, that all things work together for good to them that love God,' is derived from prophecy, especially from those parts of prophecy