This prophet is noted principally for the condensation of his language, the rapidity of his transitions, the force and brevity of his pictures, the form of dialogue to which he often approaches, and for two or three splendid passages which tower above the rest of his prophecy, like cedars above the meaner trees. One of these records the sudden gleam of insight which showed him, in the future, Bethlehem-Ephratah sending out its illustrious progeny, one whose goings forth had been from of old, from the "Eternal obscure." How lovely those streams of prophetic illumination, which fall from afar, like autumn sunshine upon secret and lonely spots, and crown them with a glory unknown to themselves! Bethlehem becomes beautiful beyond itself, in the luster of the Savior's rising. Another, for moral grandeur, is almost unequaled in Scripture, and sounds like the knell of

the ceremonial economy. "Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the Most High God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old! Will Jehovah be well pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Here the burden of the 50th Psalm is uttered more sententiously, although not with such awful accompaniments. Both announce the prospective arrival of a period, when the husk of type and statutory observance was to drop from around the fruit it had protected and concealed, when equity was to outsoar law, mercy to rejoice over sacrifice, and humility to take the room of ceremonial holiness —when that "which had decayed and waxed old was to vanish away."

In this liberal spirit, as well as in certain passages of Micah's prophecy, we descry the influence of the great orb which appeared above the horizon at the same time-Isaiah. The close of the 7th chapter is almost identical with a passage in Isaiah; but the main coincidence occurs in the 4th chapter. Critics

have doubted whether the opening of this was copied by Isaiah from Micah, or by Micah from the 2d chapter of Isaiah; or whether it were communicated by the Spirit separately to both. This is a matter of little moment; certainly the strain itself was worthy of repetition.

There

It is a vision of the future glories of the Church. The prophet finds an emblem of it in Mount Sion, or the mountain of the temple of the Lord. This was not remarkable for height. Far loftier mountains arose throughout Palestine. There were the mountains which stand alway about Jerusalem. was Salmon, with its perpetual snow. There were the mountains of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan, who had been lovely in their lives, in their death were not divided. There was Carmel, shadowing the waters of the west, and covered, to its summit, with a robe of undying green. There was Tabor, rising, like an island, from the plain of Esdraelon, which lies like an ocean around it. And in the north, stood the great form of Lebanon, rising above the clouds, and covered with the cedars. of God

"Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,

And whitens with eternal sleet;

While summer, in a vale of flowers,

Is smiling rosy at his feet.”

But dearer it was And why? because No temple stood on

Compared to these and others, Mount Sion was but a little hill -a mere dot on the surface of the globe. than any or all of them to Micah's heart. it was the mountain of the Lord's house. Tabor; no incense streamed from Carmel; to Lebanon no tribes went up, nor sacrifices ascended from its cedarn summits. Sion alone represented the position of the Church-not to be compared in magnificence or in multitude of votaries with other systems, but possessing, in the presence of the Spirit of the Lord, a principle of divine life and an element of everlasting progress.

But the prophet has now a "vision of his own." Sion in his

dream, begins to stir, to move, to rise. It first surmounts the hills which are around Jerusalem; then rises higher than Carmel, that solitary mountain of the west; then overtops Tabor; and springs up, at last, as far above Lebanon as Lebanon was above the meaner hills of the land. It is established on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and up to it he sees flocking all nations. It has become the center of the world. It gives law to every people and tongue. The Lord himself sits in the midst of it, distributing justice impartially to all near and far off. And around and within the shadow of his universal throne, the prophet beholds many hammering their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruninghooks-others sitting below their vine and fig-tree-and all calm, peaceful, and happy, under the solitary scepter of Jehovah.

Thus shaped itself on Micah's eye a prospect which must yet be transferred from his to the broad page of the world. Like Sion, the Church is, in one view, very small. Hindoos and Chinese speak of her as a low heresy, creeping about the mountains and marshes of Europe; and contrast her with their ancient and colossal establishments. Jews and Mohammedans deride her, as cemented by the blood of him that was crucified. And in one sense they are right in so judging; in another, they are fearfully mistaken. Christianity is nothing, except that it is divine—nothing, except that it comes from heaven-nothing, except that it is to cover the whole earth with its power and its praise. The arm of a prophet was just like any other human arm; it possessed precisely the same number of bones, sinews, muscles, and veins. And yet when raised to heaven, when electrified from above, it could divide the sea, raise the dead, and bring down fire from the clouds. So the true Church of Christ is just an assemblage of simple, humble, sincere menthat is all; but the Lord is on their side, and there we discern a source of energy, which shall yet shatter thrones, change the destiny of nations, and uplift, with resistless force, the mountain of the Lord's house above the mountains and above the hills.

This despised and struggling Church shall yet become universal. "All nations shall flow unto it." Those who wander on the boundless steeps of Tartary--those who shiver amid the eternal ice of Greenland-those who inhabit Africa, that continent of thirst—those who bask in the lovely regions of the South Sea-all, all are to flow to the mountain of the Lord. They are to "flow;" they are to come, not in drops, but with the rush and the thunder of mighty streams. "Nations are to be born in one day." A supernatural impulse is to be given to the Christian cause. Christ is again to be, as before, his own missionary. Blessed are the eyes which shall see this great gathering of the nations, and the ears which shall hear the sound thereof. Blessed above those born of woman, especially, the devoted men, who, after laboring in the field of the world, shall be rewarded, and at the same time astonished, by finding its harvest-home hastened, and the work which they had been pursuing, with strong crying and tears, done to their hands, done completely, and done from heaven. In this belief lies the hope and the help of the world. But for a divine intervention, we despair of the success of the good cause. Allow us this, and Christianity is sure of a triumph, as speedy as it shall be universal. On Sabbath, the 16th of May, 1836, we saw the sun seized on the very apex of his glory, as if by a black hand, and so darkened that only a thin round ring of light remained visible, and the chill of twilight came prematurely on. That mass of darkness within seemed the world lying in wickedness, and that thin round ring of light, the present progress of the Gospel in it. But not more certain were we then, that that thin round ring of light was yet to become the broad and blazing sun, than are we now, that through a divine interposal, but not otherwise, shall the "knowledge of the glory of the Lord cover the earth as the waters the sea."

With this coincides Micah's prophecy. From Sion, as of old, the law is to go forth; and the word of Jehovah issuing from Jerusalem seems to imply, that he himself is there to sit and judge and reign-his ancient oracle resuming its thunders, and

again to his feet the tribes going up. And the first, and one of the best fruits of his dominion is peace. "They learn war no more." Castles are dismantled, men of war plow the deep no longer, but are supplanted by the white sails of merchant vessels; soldiers no more parade the streets in their lothesome finery of blood; swords and spears are changed into instruments of husbandry, or, if preserved, are preserved in exhibitions, as monuments of the past folly and frenzy of mankind. (Perhaps a child finds the fragment of a rusty blade some day in a field, brings it in to his mother, asks her what it is, and the mother is unable to reply!) Peace, the cherub, waves her white wing, and murmurs her soft song of dovelike joy over a regenerated and united world.

All hail, ye "peaceful years!" Swift be your approach; soon may your great harbinger divide his clouds and come down; and soon may the inhabitants of a warless world have difficulty in crediting the records which tell of the wretchedness, the dispeace, the selfishness, and the madness of the past.

NAHUM.

Nahum was a native of Elkoshai, a village of Galilee, the ruins of which are said to have been distinctly visible in the fourth century.

Nahum's prophecy is not much longer than his history. It is the most magnificent shout ever uttered. Like a shout, it is short, but strong as the shout which brought down Jericho. The prophet stands a century after Jonah-without the wall of Nineveh, and utters, in fierce and hasty language, his proclamation of its coming doom. No pause interrupts it; there is no change in its tone; it is a stern, one war-cry, and comes swelled by the echoes of the past. Nahum is an evening wolf, from the Lord, smelling the blood of the great city, and uttering a fearful and prolonged note-half of woe, and half of joy, which is softened by distance into music. How wondrous that one song should have survived such a city!