holding, uniting or dissolving, giving strength or bringing age upon them, and directing man's freeagency, like the wild uproar of the sea, to His own ends, unseen by man His work, but ever present with and within His work,)" the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will'." Pharaoh, Cyrus, the "Assyrian, the rod of His angers," but "who meant not so, neither did his heart think so," Nebuchadnezzar, of whom God saith by Jeremiah, "I who made the earth, the man and beast upon the ground, and have given it unto whom it seemed good unto me, and now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant,— and all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the very time of his land come, and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him',"-these are but so many specimens and instances of His universal empire, doing all that is good, and ordering what is evil, so "that the wrath of man doth but praise Him"."

And this should be understood not simply of certain fixed laws, whereby the rise and decay of states are regulated, as that an enduring self-denying state should prosper, a luxurious self-indulgent people should decay, an upright state should acquire might, a crafty (like Carthage) should be taken in its own craftiness, and the like,-as if God were b Ver. 7. Jer. xxvii. 5 -7.

f Dan. iv. 25. k Ps. Ixxvi. 10.

8 Isaiah x. 5.

separate from His Providence and His laws, and His law were an abstraction to which He had committed the government of things, and not rather that His laws were His own continued action, dispensing in one uniform way His sovereign will, because "in Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," but still Himself, personally present and personally measuring out to every nation its portion according to its works, in His will, whose will is the law of things created. For so personally doth Scripture speak, speaking universally; "with Him," it is written in Job', "is strength and wisdom, the deceived and the deceiver are His: He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools: He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle: He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged: He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty :-He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way." Nay it seems one object of the relations of the Old Testament to correct man's Atheistic way of contemplating things, whereby he would substitute for the Living God some abstraction; as law or nature, or general Providence, or order of things, for the Giver and Maintainer of laws and nature.

1 Chap. xii. 16 ad fin.

"the Lord who will provide" and order all things; and therefore it may be, doth God, in this place of Job and elsewhere, speak in such detail and so vividly, shewing that not only the ends but the means, not only the victory but the strength, not the power to persuade, but the eloquent speech, and the understanding of the experienced, are His, that He giveth or withholdeth, turneth them to foolishness or taketh them away, as He will. Not the great results only, (as men call great,) but the smallest, most insignificant means, every step of the countless multitudes who march along the high-way of God's Providence, is ordered by Him, so that they should "march" every one on his ways, and not break their ranks, neither one thrust another, but walk every one in his path." And hence God's saints so often in holy Scripture confess, that all their power and wisdom and might cometh from Him, not in general terms only, but in particulars, that He "girdeth" them with strength," giveth swiftness to their feet", "maketh them wiser than the aged"," "teacheth their hands to war";" for this faith in God's aid and presence in details, is the life of all belief in His general Providence, and without this, that more general belief is little better than an empty abstraction.

But if the history of God's dealings with the Jewish Church is a key to His governance of

Joel ii. 7, 8. cxix. 100.

n Ps. xviii. 32. Ibid. xviii. 34.

• Ver. 33. P Ibid.

that His larger family, who had "gone away into a far country," to follow their own desires uncontrolled, much more is it to the governance of the Christian Church. For here we have not only the general correspondence of God's sovereignty, whereby the creatures of God's hands must either willingly, or against their will, be under His rule, must bear the sceptre or the rod of iron, and carry on His ends in their preservation or destruction, by their obedience or their perverseness, but we have the happier lot of being His family, the kingdom which He has chosen out of all nations to dwell in them. The Theocracy is continued, only invisibly. As God dwelt before by the Shechinah in the temple, so now the universal Christian Church is one temple, wherein it pleaseth Him to dwell, not now for a time-but "the Lord will abide in it for ever," by virtue of His own promise, “ Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."

We must not think of the law or its blessings as passed away; our Lord forbids it; what does not yet remain is fulfilled, i. e. filled up and realized, as an outline by the substance; the moral law remains; the ritual and the political had their fulfilment in Christ and His Church; the particular Providence of the Jewish people continues on in the Christian Church; only in the Christian higher far and more enduring as the spiritual is higher than the civil Government, the relation of

Luke xv. 15.

sons than that of servants, Heaven than Canaan. "The whole kingdom of the Hebrew nation," says S. Augustine'," was one great prophet, because it prophesies of one Great One. In the actions as well as the words of their holy men must we look for prophecies of Christ and His Church; but for the rest of the nation, collectively in God's dealings with them. For all these things (as the Apostle says) were our ensamples," " i. e. types and images of us. From the mutual connection of the Head and His members, the Jewish people, wherein they image forth our Lord, reflect also His Body, the Church, as well as in their more direct resemblance; nor is it in their waywardness, or their rebellions, or their turning back to Egypt only, that they shadow out individuals, but in God's dealings with them, they picture His dealings with His Church, which He formed into one in Christ out of them and of the Gentiles.

God's dealings with them, then, not only give instruction, (as any knowledge of God must,) but are a prophecy; peculiar situations of the Jewish people are prophetic warnings or encouragements; and it may be that a very minute correspondence will be found between the histories of the Jewish and Christian Church. At all events, we ought to look to striking occasions, where God's dealings were more visibly manifested, as grounds whereon to build our conduct and our hopes. The passage