have the word used in that remarkable prophecy of Habakkuk', 'The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak.' In several passages of the Proverbs", it is also rendered speak;' and between these places, and Habakkuk's prophecy, there is a similarity worthy of our notice. The Proverbs mention a false one speaking lies,' the prophet says, his vision shall speak, and 'not lie,' hezib, the same Hebrew word in both, that is, should not blow or breathe in vain, as the false pretenders did, but be the Amen,' the true and faithful witness 3; as the Proverbs had expressed it before, He that speaketh truth, (Heb., ipilih amune, the same with amen') shall shew 'forth righteousness,' the sun of righteousness, Jehovah our righteousness, made unto us righte'ousness,' &c. These places, compared with one another, for mutual elucidation, will apply, and give light, to the passage before us, 'till the day, the day-spring, as in St Luke, blow, breathe, expand itself, and give warning of the Sun's approach,' &c. then shall the shadows flee away. Not the 6 shades only, as we call them, of night and darkness, of black dark heathen ignorance and obscurity, which we know gradually vanished and fled away at the very breathing, blowing, beginning of Christ's appearance, when there were universal expectations of, and, as it were, preparations for, the I Chap. ii. 3. 3 Rev. iii. 14. 2 Chap. vi. 19. xiv. 25. xix. 5.9. the coming of some mighty person upon earth, but the shadows likewise, as represented in scripture, of types, emblems, ordinances, yea of the whole law itself. These were but the shadows of heavenly things', of good things to come*, a shadow of • things to come, but the body is of Christ 3.' So says the Evangelist St John, The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' Truth, not as signifying verity in opposition to falsehood, for in this sense the antithesis will not hold, but as implying reality and substance, in contradistinction to the figures, patterns, shadows of institution before. This truth, reality, substance, was, (not given,' as the law was, as a new thing that had not been before, but yɛveto), became, existed by, in, and with Christ. He was, and is the realizer of all, the light to dispel all darkness, the truth to re-assume all shadows into himself, the true vine, the true witness, the true one . This therefore was the faith of the fair one here, the then church, that though she was for a time under shadows, under the gloom, as it were, of but a typical, adumbrating dispensation, and waiting in hope and patience for the breathing of the day, the perfect accomplishment of all that had been promised, yet she knew that in the mean time her Beloved was not idle, but still employed, unknown to, and unseen 1 Heb. viii. 5. 3 Col. ii. 17. 5 See Gal. iii. 16-19. 2 Heb. x. i. 4 Chap. i. 17. 6 St John v. 20. unseen by her, in his grand undertaking, disposing, adjusting, ripening things for the execution of the glorious scheme. So we see christianity, as we call it, is not a random accidental stroke, a sudden display only, some hundreds of years ago, of Divine power, but a preconcerted, well-ordered, constantly and uniformly carried on plan of wisdom and love, hid, in a great measure, from the sons of men', but opened up by degrees, and revealed unto the church. Hence she could say, as here, in comfortable feelings of the present, and fixed assurance of futurity, that till the day break, and the shadows flee her Beloved feedeth among 'the lilies.' away, VER. 17.—Turn, my Beloved, and be thou like a roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether. A prayer this of the church, adapted to, and connected with, her foregoing declaration. What the roe and the young hart mean, we have seen already in the 9th verse. Turn, my Beloved.--Not return, or go back, as may at first be thought, but , sab, circui, turn, as in going round*, go on in, or go about, thy great round, the mighty design thou hast undertaken, pursue the plan of thine own wisdom, by thine own means, and in thine Upon the mountains of Bether.—The LXX. render this nowμaтwv, as from a, hollow. The margin has it of division.' There is no place own way. VOL. II. Q ૧ or 1 Ephes. iii. 5. * See chap. i. 12. or mountain of this name, to be met with elsewhere in all the scripture; so recourse must be had to the radical sense of the word, which the margin has very properly given of division, not in the general sense, but more particularly of dissecting, or 'dividing into halves.' It seems to be of sacrificial acceptation, and so is used' where Abraham, 17, ibether, divided his sacrifices in the midst, and laid each piece, division, or half, against the other. And Jeremiah speaks of those, who having cut the calf in twain, had passed between the AS, betheri, halves, parts thereof.' This act of bether, cutting in two, consituted the ceremonial part of the ♫, berith, the purification scheme, which we call covenant, and appears to have been of universal use. For we read in Curtius, that the Macedonians pretended to purify their army, by making it pass between the parts of a bitch cut in 'two.' And Fleury, in his church history, tells us, that in a persecution in Persia, two christian virgins were accused of having poisoned the queen, and that the Magi declared nothing could 'cure her but by passing through between the bo'dies of these virgins cut in two, which was ac'cordingly done.' May not the mountains of division' here have reference to this practice, with a view to the future sacrifice of him who was to be our berith, our covenant, our purification, and 1 Gen. xv. 10. 5 Anno 344. 2 Chap. xxxiv. 18. 19. 4 Lib. xii. sect. 29. was See Isaiah xlii. 6. xlix. 8, &c. was to be cut in two by the separation of the two constituents of his compound person, the Divinity from the humanity'? Or, if this shall be thought too mystical, and, as it were, looking too far forward, may not the idea of dividing in two, signified by the word bether, lead our thoughts to his then state of not being as yet united to flesh, but divided from it? And might not the church, in prospect of this union, though not yet effectuated, describe him, speak of him, pray to him, as, sab, going round with various purposes, but still to the same great end; 'like a young hart,' having her eye directed to some particular meaning under this comparison, and expressing her faith that his then bether, divided, condition, would be done away, and a gracious, perfect, wonderful junction succeed, in accomplishment of that old, comfortable promise, of the seed of the woman, explained upon another occasion, by 778 728 7778, aeie asher acie, ero quod ero, I will be what I will be. Or, even after all, in application to the present church, and to accommodate this description to her in general, and to every faithful member in particular, the bether, division, here, may refer to a future period of final and irrevocable division, when the Son of man, the King (one of the Beloved's titles in our Song) shall make a separation, (division into two parts), as a shepherd (another of his titles) divideth his Qq2 ૨ I Psalm xxii. I. St Matth. xxvii. 46. 2 Gen. iii. 15. 3 Exod. iii. 14, |