Isai. xlix. 18 — 23. Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold : all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I lire, saith the Lord, Thou shall surely clothe thee with them all as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a bride
doetk. For thy tvaste and thy desolate places, and, the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants; and they that swallowed thee up shall be far aioay. The children which thou shall have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me : give place to me that I may dwell. Then shall thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I tvas left alone ; these, ivhere had they been ? Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people : and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders : and kings shall be thy tiur sing-fathers, and their queens thy nursing-mothers : they shall boio doicn to thee with their face toivard the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet ; and thou shalt knoiv that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that iv ait for me.
TO consider past events, and especially those re- corded in the Holy Scriptures, is obviously the duty of every man ; since from them we learn the true character of God, and know what we are to expect at his hands. Nor are present things to occupy a small portion of our regard : for, though we cannot judge of them with certainty, or declare what their ultimate issue will be, we behold them stamped with a visible impression of Divine wisdom and goodness : the very chastisements of heaven, if viewed aright, convey to us the idea of parental love. But we have a further duty, which is, to look into futurity, and to read in the page of prophecy the events that are yet future. We are not indeed to expect that we our- selves shall be enabled to prophesy, or to obtain such an insight into futurity as to discover the times and the seasons which God has reserved in his own hands : but there are certain great events which shall assuredly come to pass, and which it is our privilege to look forward to, as the pious Jews waited for the coming of their Lord, and looked for redemption in Jerusalem. Indeed it is for this end that the pro- phecies are given us; namely, that having expected the completion of them, we should acknowledge God in the events whereby they are completed.