darker places than the dens of serpents or of lions. They exist in evil hearts, in polluted consciences, in the abodes of uttermost infamy. Innocent as the water and the bread which are there, pure as the light which shines there, yet terrible as the conscience which often there awakens, do the laws of God's moral government there stand, and exercise a real, a felt, though a disputed, sovereignty-the dawning of their full and final power. "Whither can men go from their presence?" It is not the spirit of earthly law which a great writer has so powerfully painted; it is the spirit of universal righteousness which invisibly thus hovers, and quells even those who doubt or disbelieve the righteous One. "Ascend we heaven, they are are there," for it is these which constitute our entire knowledge of the stars; these bind all worlds into one; and he who has adequately ascertained the laws of his own fire, has only to blow its flame broader, to decipher the laws of the "burning, fiery furnace" of the midnight heavens. Ye silent, steadfast, perpetual principles, so slow, yet swift—so stern, yet merciful-so low, yet so loud in tone so unassuming, and so omnipotent-so simple in your roots, and so complicated in your branches-we might sing pæans and build altars in your worship, were it not that we have been taught, and taught specially by those Hebrew poets, to see, behind and within you, one living spirit, God over all, blessed for ever, your never-failing fountain, your ever-open ocean, and have been taught to sing "Father of all, we bow to thee, Who dwell'st in heaven adored, But present still, through all thy works, Amos has had a singular destiny among his fellows. Many herdsmen tended cattle in Tekoah, or gathered fruit from its sycamore trees, but on him alone lighted the spirit of inspiration. It came to him as, like Elisha, he was employed in his peaceful toil; it hurried him to duty and to danger; it made him a power among the moral princes of the land; it gave his name and his prophecy a place in an immortal volume; and from gathering sycamore fruit, it promoted him to stand below the "tree of life," to pluck from it, and to distribute to after ages not a few clusters, as fair All honor to as they are nutritious, of its celestial fruit. the bold herdsman of Tekoah! Nor can we close, without alluding again to the unhappy poet whose name we coupled with his at the beginning-who left the plough, not at the voice of a divine, but of an earthly impulse-whose snatches of truth, and wisdom, and virtuous sentiment, were neutralized by counter strains of coarse and ribald debauchery -who struggled all his life between light, which amounted to noon, and darkness, which was midnight—who tore and tarnished with his own hand the garland of beauty he had woven for the brow of his native land-whose name, broader in his country's literature that that of Amos in his, is broadened by the blots which surrounded, as well as by the beauties which adorned it—and of whom, much as we admire his genius and the many manly qualities of his character, we are prone to say, Pity for his own sake and his country's, that he had not tarried "behind his plough upon the mountain-side," for then, if his "glory" had been less, his "joy" had been greater, or, if ruined, he at last had "fallen alone in his iniquity." HOSEA. This prophet seems to have uttered his predictions seven or eight hundred years before Christ. He was a son of Beeri, and lived in Samaria. He was contemporary with Isaiah, and prophesied nearly at the same time with Joel, He is "placed," says an eminent critic, "first among the twelve minor prophets, probably because of the peculiarly national character which belongs to his oracles." Hosea is the first of the prophets who confines his ire within the circle of his own country; not a drop spills beyond. One thought fills his whole soul and prophecy-the thought of Israel and Judah's estrangement from God, and how they may be restored. This occupies him like a passion, and, like all great passions, refuses to be divided. He broods, he yearns, his "bowels sound like a harp" over his native land. To her, his genius is consecrated "a whole burnt-offering”—to her, his domestic happiness is surrendered in the unparalleled sacrifice of the first chapter. And how his heart tosses to and fro, between stern and soft emotions, toward Ephraim, as between conflicting winds! At one time, he is to be as a "lion unto Ephraim; he is to tear, and to go away;" but again he cries out-" How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not turn to destroy Ephraim utterly." Indeed, the great interest of the book springs from the vibrations of the balance in which the nation hangs, rising now high as heaven, and now sinking as low as hell, till at last it settles into the calm, bright equilibrium in which the last beautiful chapter leaves it. The prophecy may be compared to a waterfall which tears and bruises its way, amid spray and rainbows, through a dark gully, and gains, with difficulty, a placid pool at the base, where it sleeps a sleep like the first sleep after torture. Abruptness characterizes Hosea as well as Amos; but, while in Amos it is the fruit of haste and rural habit, in Hosea it springs from his impassioned earnestness. He is not only full, but choked at times with the fury of the Lord. Hence his broken metaphors; his sentences begun, but never ended; his irregular rhythm; his peculiar idioms; the hurry with which he leaps from topic to topic, from feeling to feeling, and from one form of speech to another. The flowers he plucks are very beautiful, but seem to be snatched without selection, and almost without perception of their beauty, as he pursues his rapid way. A sublime incoherence distinguishes his prophecy even more than those of the other prophets. His passages and sentences have only the unity of earnestness, such a unity as the wind gives to the disconnected trees of the forest. From this and his other peculiarities, arises a great and frequent obscurity. He is like a man bursting through a deep wood; this moment he is lost behind a tree trunk, and the next he emerges into the open space. But, perhaps, none of the prophets has, within the same compass, included such a multitude of short, memorable, and figurative sentences. His coin is minute in size, but at once precious and abundant. 66 What texts for texts are the following:-" My people are destroyed, or cut off for lack of knowledge." Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone." "O, Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew." "Ephraim is a cake not turned." "Gray hairs are sprinkled or dispersed upon him, and he knoweth it not." 66 They have sown the wind, and they shall the whirlwind. As for Samaria, her king is cut off like foam reap upon the water." "They shall say so the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us.' "I drew them with the cords of a man, with the bands of love." "I gave them a king in mine anger, and I will take him away in my wrath." "O, death, where is thy triumph? O, grave, where thy destruction?" "I will be as the dew unto Israel." "What hath Ephraim any more to do with idols ?" We see many of our readers starting at the sight of those old familiar faces, which have so often shone on them in pulpits, and from books, but which they have never traced till now to Hosea's rugged page. He is, we fear, the least read of all the prophets. en. And yet, surely, if the beginning of his prediction somewhat repel, the close of it should enchain every reader. It is the sweetest, roundest, most unexpected, of the prophetic perorations. All his woes, warnings, struggles, hard obscurities, and harsh ellipses and transitions, are melted down in a strain of music, partly pensive, and partly joyous, fresh as if it rose from earth, and aerial as if it descended from heavThe controversies of the book are now ended; its contradictions reconciled-the balance sleeps in still light; God and his people are at length made one, through the gracious medium of pardoning love; the ornaments lavished on the bridal might befit that future and final "bridal of the earth and sky," of which it is the type and the pledge; and the music might be that which shall salute the "Lamb's wife." Hear a part of it. "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from them. I will be as the dew unto Israel. He shall blossom as the lily, he shall strike his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, his glory shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that sit under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as corn; they shall break forth as the vine; the scent thereof shall be as the vine of Lebanon." Softest of all droppings, are the last droppings from a thundercloud, which the sun has brightened, and the rainbow bound. Smoothest of all leaves, are the "high leaves" upon the holly-tree. And soft and smooth as these droppings and leaves, are the last words of the stern Hosea, whom otherwise we might have called a half Ezekiel, possessing his passion and vehemence; while Zechariah shall reflect the shadowy portion of his orb, and be nearly as mystic, typical, and unsearchable in manner and in meaning, as the son of Buzi. JOEL Stands fourth in the catalogue of the minor bards. Nothing whatever is known of him, except that he seems to have been of the tribe of Judah, and that he prophesied between seven and eight hundred years before Christ. Gloomy grandeur is this bard's style; desolation, mourning, and woe, are the substance of his prophecy. Its hero is the locust, winging his way to the fields predestined for his ravages. We can suppose Joel, the pale yet bold rider of one of those shapes in the Revelations, "Locusts like unto horses prepared unto battle; on their heads crowns of gold, their faces as the faces of men, their hair as the hair of women, their teeth as the teeth of lions, with breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings as the sound of many horses and chariots running to battle." And hark! how he spurs, instead of restraining, his terrible courser, crying out, "The day of Jehovah cometh; it is near. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of cloud and of thick darkness. As the dusk before the dawn spread upon the mountains, cometh a great people and a strong; there hath never been the like of old, nor shall be any more for ever. A fire devoureth before them, and behind a flame consumeth; the land before them is as the Garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them." So black and broad, as if cast from the shadow of a fallen angel's wings, is the ruin predicted by Joel. These locusts have a king and a leader, and, in daring consistency with his own and his country's genius, he constitutes that leader the Lord. They are his "great camp," his" army," they march at his command straight forward; with them he darkens the face of the earth, and with them, "warping on the eastern wind," he bedims the sun and the stars. These innúmerous, incessant, and irresistible insects, form the lowest, but not the least terrible of those incarnations of God, which the imagination of the Jew delighted to create and the song of the prophet to describe. Now, the philosopher seldom personifies even the universe; 'tis but a |