oppression.....Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law. of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel" (Isai. v. 7, 24).

But this expansion of the application of these burdens and exhortations of Isaiah to churches as well as to individuals carries with it a consequence, which we shall follow out in this paper, as far as our limits will allow. For, as the slightest attention will convince any one that the burdens of Isaiah stretch down to an end, if this end be not that of an individual, but of a church, and this church our Gentile church, then they stretch to the end of this dispensation, and the introduction of the millennial. And this the natural understanding of the language would lead to: for the time is "the last days" (ii. 2); and it is not merely the establishment of the church, but its universality— "all nations shall flow into it;"-not merely the tendency of pacific principles, but their prevalency, and the annihilation of all other principles: "neither shall they learn war any more (ver. 4); "And the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day" (ver. 19). Seeing, then, that some of these burdens may (we might even say, must) be so expanded as to cover the whole time of this dispensation, and include "all nations" within their scope, we shall examine that complete series of burdens from Isaiah xiii. to xxxv.; and doubt not of being able to shew that they contain ample instruction for the guidance of the church through her perils, and sufficient warning to the nations of their doom, if haply some may repent, and be saved from perdition.

to man,

Every word of God gives origin to an eternal progression. The first word spoken of man," Let them have dominion" (Gen. i. 26), gave origin to that purpose of God commemorated in the eighth Psalm, and to take effect when "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. xi. 15), and we shall reign on the earth" (v. 10); and the first command "Thou shalt not eat of" the forbidden fruit, " for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17), gave origin, by way of threat, to the endless death," the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched." In like manner, every prophecy, taking its rise from the actual circumstances of the people to whom it is addressed, and primarily given for their direction under impending calamities, has yet a further largeness, which these circumstances do not come up to; has an extent which passes beyond those times, and reveals a purpose of God which shall stand for ever. But, as the actual state of things around him were laid hold on by the Prophet, and made the ground-work of his addresses to the people, we must bear in

mind these circumstances, if we would understand the prophetic strain. And as we shall find that all these strains actually reach to the end of the present dispensation, so we shall find reason to conclude that the peoples and nations, to whom the prophecy becomes applicable at the end of the time included in it, shall be brought into similar circumstances with those peoples and nations whom the prophet saw around him, and whose condition gave occasion to the prophecy-types, in short, of our own contemporaries, and the prophecies applicable to us.

The time, when this portion of prophecy was delivered, lies between the last years of Ahaz, whose death is recorded Isaiah xiv. 28 (B. c. 730), and the fourteenth of Hezekiah (B. c. 713). At the beginning of this period the people sought help from Assyria against their enemies; but found in the king of Babylon, not an ally, but an oppressor: they therefore, at the end of this period, seek to Egypt for help against Assyria;—their dependence on Babylon being the clue to a right understanding of the first five chapters, xiii. to xvii., and their trust in Egypt being the clue to the following chapters, from xviii. to xxxv.; a large portion, but one which is best understood by being contemplated as a whole, and to the understanding of which a knowledge of the leading points may suffice.

The house of David had been threatened with destruction by Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel. Isaiah is sent to encourage Judah and their king, saying, "Take heed, and be quiet; fear not" (vii. 4); but, instead of relying upon the Lord for deliverance, Ahaz and his people trusted to expedients of their own devising-made a confederacy with the Assyrianand are told that destruction should come upon them by means of that very power in whom they placed their confidence (x. 5). But, this Assyrian being but the rod in the hand of the Lord, and lifting" up itself as if it were no wood "(ver. 15); when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he declares that he will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks; and will bring forth a Rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots (xi. 1), who stands as an ensign to the people, to which the Gentiles shall seek; and his rest shall be glorious; and the earth becomes full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; and the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah are gathered from the four corners of the earth, and Jah-Jehovah becomes their strength and their song: they "sing unto the Lord, for he hath done excellent things this is known in all the earth. Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion; for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee" (xi. 9; xii. 2, 6).

Their confidence in Assyria is thus shewn to be futile and

:

vain, and the person and acts of their true Deliverer are clearly, though briefly, revealed in the six preceding chapters and on these circumstances the burdens on Babylon (xiii. xiv.), on Moab (xv. xvi.), and on Damascus (xvii.) are based; an existing state of things, with suitable instructions, typical of a future state of things, and containing instructions suitable thereto. But as the predicted events rolled on, and the threatened oppression of the Assyrian began to be felt by the Jews, again they refused to seek the Lord, but applied to the Egyptians for deliverance from the yoke of the king of Assyria, and are reproached with it by Rabshakeh (xxxvi. 5): "Now, on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him." And the issues of this their trust are declared XX. 5: " They shall be ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory: and the inhabitant of this country shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria." And these last burdens, which make the trust in Egypt the ground of their reproof, differ in character from the preceding series, having not so much a typical as a symbolical and enigmatical form: as, "Ho to the land shadowing with wings" (xviii.); "The burden of the desert of the sea (xxi.); "The burden of the valley of vision (xxii.); "Woe to Ariel " (xxix.); "Woe to thee that spoilest." (xxxiii.) And this symbolical character, so obvious in these instances, we shall endeavour to shew attaches without exception to the whole series from xviii. to xxxv.

A very little attention to any of the burdens in Isaiah will convince, that, though they may begin from a state of things actually existing, that they may be intelligible and instructive, yet that they do all pass far beyond the present scene, and lead the mind of a believer forward to the restitution of all things, and the full manifestation of the glory of God in the new heavens and the new earth which commence the millennial state. In the burden of Babylon (xiii. 13), the Lord says, "I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place;" but we know (from Heb. xii. 26, Joel iii. 16, Haggai ii. 6) that this is still future, and that there shall be but one more shaking: "But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that may be shaken..that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore, we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved," &c. And this dissolving of the old gives place for the new; as 2 Peter iii. 13, "Nevertheless we, according to his promise,

look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" and Rev. xxi., "I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.' Contemporary also with the new heaven and earth is the manifestation of the lake of fire: "Babylon shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah" (xiii. 19); "It shall not be quenched day nor night; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever" (xxxiv. 10); "And her smoke rose up for ever and ever" (Rev. xix. 3). Israel's final restoration also takes place at the same time: "For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land;" "The Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve;" "The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked;""The whole earth is at rest and is quiet" (xiv. 1, 3, 5, 7). And so in all the other burdens, especially chap. xxvi., where the song sung in the land of Judah takes its rise from the destruction of the oppressing city in the preceding chapter, and they "trust in the Lord for ever; for in Jah-Jehovah is everlasting strength. For these three things will be always found either expressed or implied in the prophecies, as brought in at the same time: 1. The new heavens; 2. The lake of fire, by the destruction of Babylon; 3. The final establishment of Jerusalem, and the restoration of all Israel to their inheritance.

One objection may be made to the interpretation we contend for, by saying that the full purport of the prophecies has already been fulfilled on old Babylon; grounding the assertion on the loose way in which commentators have referred to the actual state of Babylon-exaggerating, on the one hand, the devastation which has fallen upon it; and explaining away, on the other hand, the literal import of the tremendous denunciations of the word of God. We therefore think it well to shew, in the first place, the present state of Babylon and its environs, extracted from the best accounts of those who have visited Mesopotamia, that we may shew what an admirable type it furnishes of the wrath of God against an oppressor of his people, and yet how far it falls short of the judgment denounced against the oppressor, the Antichrist.

When Cyrus attacked Babylon, he cut three hundred and sixty channels, to drain off the waters of the river (Herodot. lib. i. p. 189; Diod. Sic. xvii. 220). The river had been kept in its course by embankments of great height and solidity. On the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, B. c. 536, and the subsequent transference of the seat of empire to Susa, these and other great works were suffered to fall to decay. The Euphrates, overflowing its banks at the summer solstice, quickly completed

the work of devastation which Cyrus began, and reduced the whole district adjoining the river, particularly its western bank, into one vast morass. Mr. Rich says, "The Euphrates rises at an earlier period than the Tigris; in the middle of winter it increases a little, but falls again soon after; in March it again rises, and in the latter end of April is at its full, continuing so till the latter end of June." The ruins of Babylon are then inundated, so as to render many parts of them inaccessible, by converting the valleys among them into morasses. This neglect of draining, producing disease, would itself depopulate the district; but it was accelerated by the building of Seleucia, about forty miles higher up, and about nine miles from Bagdad. But Seleucia is now, like Babylon, a mere mound; and both of them not only have supplied building materials for the cities of Ctesiphon, Bagdad, and Bassora, and many smaller towns, but are still resorted to as inexhaustible quarries of bricks far superior in quality to any manufactured by the present inhabitants of those regions. Babylon, according to Diodorus and Berosus, was originally three hundred and sixty furlongs in circumference; but when Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem, in beautifying Babylon he enlarged its extent to four hundred and eighty furlongs, that it might equal Nineveh in size; and these larger dimensions are those given by Herodotus, who also states the walls to have been two hundred cubits high and fifty cubits thick ;-enormous dimensions, but not incredible; for Mr. Rich, speaking of the largest mass which he examined, says, "some of the walls appeared to have been sixty feet thick." Of the wall which surrounded the city not a trace has yet been satisfactorily ascertained: nor were geographers agreed on the site of Babylon, till Major Rennel deduced certain positions, from Herodotus and the older travellers, which subsequent observations, particularly those of Mr. Rich, have confirmed. From hence we are now sure of the position of the temple of Belus, and of a palace on the western bank, about seven miles distant; and between these the "daughter of the Chaldeans, the lady of kingdoms," sat, "saying in her heart, I am, and none else besides me; I shall not sit as a widow" (Isai. xlvii. 5—8). And now where is she? Shapeless mounds of earth, mountains of brick, are all that remain of that mighty city, of which the king of kings spake in the pride of his heart and said, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (Dan. iv. 30.) Sic transit gloria mundi!

These remains lie near the town of Hella, forty-eight miles south of Bagdad, lat. 32 deg. 28 min. Those on the eastern bank of