and the question and answer contained therein, whilst primarily relating to Idumea, refer to it, nevertheless, as the pedestal, for the exhibition of scenes and circumstances and persons long subsequent to the period of the existence of Idumea as a nation, - even the scenes, and circumstances, and ages in which our lot is now cast.

Now at this time, which I believe to be the very era in which we now stand, and which I think to be so from great prophetic epochs rolling rapidly to their conclusion, a solitary watchman some Christian minister, whose heart sympathizes with the Jew, not with the inhabitants of Edom rejoicing over their ruin some Christian minister, who believes God's word, that his ancient people are not cast off for ever, and that there is a bright day yet for those who have been the children of so long and so black a night is seen by the prophet standing tiptoe upon the loftiest rock, boulder, or ruin of ancient Jerusalem, and straining his eyes, as he gazes into the East, if, peradventure, there shall fall upon that eye some solitary straggling beam that will prove to him that the great Sun of Righteousness is but a very few degrees below the horizon, and is soon to emerge; that the night of Jerusalem is drawing to its close, and the light of the millennial day beginning to dawn with the rising sun. The vision of the prophet is, that of a watchman a Christian minister, standing amid the ruins of that once great capital, looking up and gazing if he can catch the least token that the sun is about to rise, the night of sorrow about to retire, and the daylight of joy and peace to take its place. Whilst this watchman is thus waiting, looking, listening, marking all the signs and symbols that denote the approaching day, and hoping, and misgiving, and hoping again, but still clinging to God's promises, convinced that what he has predicted is sure to be performed, a proud scorner, seated on Mount Seir, the

mount on which Petra, the capital of Idumea, was built some proud, insolent, haughty sceptic, whose Messiah is money whose millennium is the predominance of the moneyed interest-calls from Mount Seir, in scorn and derision, and says: "I have heard that you watchmen, you prophets, you ministers, you millenarians, if there be any of the name, believe that these Jews are to be restored. Why, watchman, Providence is very long about it. You have been standing amid those ruins and those dismantled towers for some eighteen centuries, straining your eyes, neglecting the making of money and the duty of providing for your children, and getting a comfortable place and a rich living, and have been looking and longing for the return of that miserable outcast nation, the Jews: well, watchman, you have waited so long, What of the night? What evidence have you that this morn will ever break? For my part,” says this proud scorner this rich inhabitant of this rich capital, "I don't believe one word of your prophecies. They are antiquated notions-old remains of the old prophets of a dispensation that has passed away. There are no more signs that the Jews will be restored in 1851, than there were when Jerusalem was broken down by the ploughshare of Titus, and the Jew sent a wanderer and a by-word over all the earth." This scorner from Mount Seir, this atheistic man, whose whole worship is money-making, and whose God is mammon, will also say: "Palestine is still just as it was, a people without a nation, and a nation in Palestine without a people; the rocks and the arid sand are its only soil; dust is its only rain; the plagues of the people are still many; the bird of prey still flaps his broad wings upon its air; the jackal is the only inhabitant of its dreary caves, and graves, and dens; and the "whole land," even a sceptic will be obliged to say, because he must acknowledge facts facts which are

simply the echoes of God's ancient prophecy — "the whole land is brimstone, and salt, and burning: there is nothing that it bears, nor is there any grass in it." And even Châteaubriand, who went to visit Palestine, in the course of his travels, when he walked over it, and saw its terrible desolation, made the following striking commentary on ancient prophecy: "We perceived Jerusalem through an opening in the mount. I did not at first know what it was. I believed it to be only a mass of shattered rocks. The sudden apparition of this city of desolation in the midst of such wasted solitudes, had something about it altogether fearful. She was then, indeed, in the valley of the desert."

So the scoffer from Mount Seir, or, if you like to change the locality, the scoffer from our own metropolis, or from that across the Channel, asks, "Watchman, what of the night? Are those ruins beginning to rise into that glorious structure of Ezekiel that you have talked about? Does the grass begin to grow green beneath the hoof of the Arab's horse? or beneath the naked foot of the tonsured monk? Is there any evidence that the sun is about to rise above the horizon? Your prospect is poor, watchman leave the rocks; show more common sense; go and make money, try to be rich and renowned; cease to anticipate any such impossibility." Let me remind such of what one has said, whose testimony a Christian at least will not dispute: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying (just the very thing that was said here), Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." This, these scoffers "willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God, the heavens were

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of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men;" or, as the word should be literally rendered, "The earth that now is is stored with fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But," adds St. Peter, turning from these scoffers," beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness' as the watchman from Mount Seir declares "but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; just when men see no sign of his advent unexpectedly; "in the which, the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up." We have thus considered the question put to the watchman by the scoffer, predicted by Isaiah, who is only a type of the scoffers predicted by St. Peter to arise in the last days.

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Then the watchman replies to this insolent, derisive question for do not forget that such is the light in which you are to look at it with great calmness, and with a quiet confidence that indicates his thorough conviction of the truth: "The morning cometh; you may say what you like, you may talk of prospects as you like; you may lay down probabilities as you like; but "the morning cometh;" it is a fixed thing. God's word is stronger than man's facts; you may stand upon a promise of

the Almighty firmer than on the strongest building of man, or on the everlasting hills. "The morning," says the watchman, "cometh, and also the night. If ye will inquire, inquire ye."

"The morning cometh."

Now let me look at this

first. As the question of the scoffer is derisively asked with reference to the restoration of the Jews, (for such is the allusion,) so the answer of the watchman is decidedly given, in reference to the same thing — "The morning cometh.” "Your scoffs," says the faithful watchman, "do not damp my hopes; your derision does not move me one inch from the strong ground of the sure and faithful promise on which I stand. God has said it, and my utterance is but the echo of the mind of God. The Jews will be restored; improbable as it may appear, it is, notwithstanding, absolutely certain." In order to confirm our faith in the statement of the prophet, I may here refer the reader to the 60th and 61st chapters of Isaiah, which clearly describe the restoration of the Jews. These chapters directly relate to the Jews. We, Gentiles, act very hardly by these Jews. Every beautiful promise that we read in the Old Testament we seize, and say, "That is for us Gentiles;" and of every threat of desolation, judgment, and destruction, we say, "That is for you, Jews." We take the kernel for ourselves, and give the shell to the poor Jews. We subtract from the prophecies every thing that is bright and beautiful, and say, That is ours; and then all that is dark and threatening, we fling in scorn to the Jew; and not only fling curses at him, but trample him under foot, and treat him as if he were the very offscouring of the earth, instead of being one of a people embosomed in glorious promises, with title-deeds, beside which those of the greatest men in the world are but of yes