of destruction, Tho doom of gre11t cities-what ie it but the doom or individuals "writ lRrge"? In that doom may be seen eternal justice; can we find mixing with it eternal mercy, eternal love? la these scenes of horror on earth, in the reflected miseries of Hades ? Must history ever pursue its spiral course, and epicycle upon epicycle or sin and de.mnaUon eternally succeed? Let ns fall back upon our deepest hopes, and think that the yearning of the creature cannot exceed that of the Creator, and that at the foundation of hell's floor must still be Divine justice and lhve. So Dante sang- "Justice the founder of my fa.bric moved; To rear me w11e the task of power Divine, Buprcmest wisdom, e.nd primeval love." J. Vera. 24-28.-Oracle concerning Asshwr. The fate of Sennacherib and his host appears to be introduced in order to confirm the solemn oracle just delivered con- cerning Babylon (see Exposition); I. 1'HE STRONG ASSlJilANCEB OF JEHOVAH. He is represented here and in other passages as taking an oath that he will fulfil his Word. But in such oaths he can appeal to no mightier name, he can invoke no power more awful than his own. Homer makes Zeus swear by the Styx, the dark river of the underworld. And Zeus is himself subject to necessity, to fate. But the God of the Hebrews comprises in himself all the associations of woeful necessity, of irresistible fate; in a word, of law, of intelligence at one with will, of will equal to the execution of all the designs of intelligence. Where nien are weak it is that the brain is separated from the hand and the foot, The thoughts that rise before them, they either cannot or they dare not translate immediately into fact. A chain of means, of secondary causes, lies between them and their ends. And so we have the great thinkers who cannot act, and the great actors who fa.ii in thought. Magnificent poets, philosophers, drea,ners, on the one side;· on the other, magnificent conquerors-Alexanders, Napoleons; both stupendous failures.· In God are united omniscience and omnipotence-the All-Thinker, the All- Doer. His purposes are equivalent to deeds; his deeds are living and visible thoughts. II. 'l'HE noou OF THE ASSYRIAN. (See eh. x.) The ·prophetic tense and the pro- phetic mode of contemplation may refer to the past; so here. The thought is expressed in Jer. I. 18, 19," Behold, I will punish the King of Babylon aud bis land, as I have punished thij King of Assyria." The one eveut was a pledge of the other (Delitzsch). Asshur had heen broken in Canaan, had been subdued upon the mountains of the Holy LaDd, and the people been released from his yoke and his burdens. "Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, The host with their banners at sunset were seen ; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn bath blown, That host on the morrow lay wither'd e.nd strown .. "And the widows of Assbur were loud in their wail, And the idols were broke in the temple of Bao.l; And the might of the Gentile•, uusmote by the sword, Hath moiled like snow iu the gbnce of the Lord I"
III, THE IMMUTABLE COUNSEL OF JEHOVAH. 1. Its contents. It is earth-embracing, and its symbol is the" hand stretched out over all the beatheu.". Assyria aml Babylon destroyed, heathendom must vibrate through all its extent, and totter to its fall. Turning from the pai:ticule.r to the general-for only in this way can we reap the full instruction of such oraole..-and standing amidst the ruins of fallen, or on the ground of now shaking empires, we me.y listen in awe to the over-living voice of him who saith, "I will shalj:e all nations, till their Desire come," About a thousand years later, ancl we find Rome shaking beneath that outstretched hand. We may see the mementoes of that shock to-day, in the ruins of tho Palatine and the Forum aml the ::;acre,\ Way. Yet a. thousand years, e.nd again she shakes, this time to her inmost conscience, beneath that hnnd, that voice of judgment. At the Reformation it might seem that thll Almighty was about to make I\ short work in the earth. llut e. thousand years w-e in 256 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, [OH, XIV, 1--82,