great and glorious It; but then, each beautiful, or dire, or strange shape passing over the earth, or through the heavens-the shower, the rainbow, the whirlwind, the locusttroop, the mildew, the blight-was God's movable tent, the place where, for a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwelt, the tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode. Promises of physical plenty alternate, in Joel, with threatenings of physical destruction. And rich are the years of plenty which he predicts to succeed those of famine. "O ye children of Zion, be glad in Jehovah your God; for he giveth you the former rain in measure, and will cause the former and the latter rain to come down on you as aforetime. And the floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years which the locusts have eaten-my great army which I have sent unto you. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied; and shall praise the name of Jehovah your God." Such smooth and lovely strains seem less congenial, however, to Joel's genius than is the progress of the destroyers. Into that he throws his whole soul. The "sheaf" of plenty he bears artistically and well; but he becomes the "locust," as he leads him forth to his dark and silent battle. But there are still nobler passages than this in Joel's prophecy. As the blackness of a cloud of doom to that of a swarm of locusts, is Joel's description of the one to his description of the other. There are two or three passages in his prophecy which, like the dove of the deluge, "can find no rest for the sole of their feet," till they reach the cliffs of final judgment. Touch, indeed, one does, for a moment, upon the roof of that "one place," where Peter, inflamed beneath the fiery Pentecost, is preaching to the disciples; but ere the speaker has closed, he has risen and soared away toward a higher house, and a far distant age. Another and fuller accomplishment there must be for the words, "I will show wonders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come." Nothing, save the great last day, can fill up the entire sphere of this description. That there is what we may call a strange and mysterious sympathy between the various lines of the divine procedure that when God's providence smiles, his works in nature often return smile for smile-and that when his moral procedure is frowning, his material framework becomes cloudy, threatening, and abnormal, too, seems proved by facts, as well as consistent with the dictates of true philosophy; for although there be those who stand cowering below such singular correspondences with the vulgar, and those who stand above them, like angelic creatures, and those who stand apart from them, as they do from all strange and beautiful phenomena, like the minions of mathematics and the slaves to a shallow logic, there may be those who can stand on their level and beside them, and see all God's works reflecting, and hear them responding to, and feel them sympathizing with, each other. And that, when God shall close our present economy, and introduce his nobler and his last, this may be announced in the aspects of nature, as well as of society-that the heaven may blush, and the earth tremble, before the face of their king-that there shall be visible signs and wonders-seems at once philosophically likely, and Scripturally certain. An earthquake shook the cross, darkness bathed the brow of the crucified, the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened. Jerusalem, ere its fall, was not only compassed, but canopied, with armies. A little time before the French Revolution there is peace on earth; is there peace in heaven? No; night after night, the sky is bathed in blood-blood finding a fearful. comment in the wars which followed, in which France alone counted her five millions of slain-a "sign of the times," which did not escape the eye of Cowper, as his "Task" testifies. Since then, once and again, pestilence and civil convulsion have danced down together their dance of death, and their ball-room has been lighted up by meteors, which science knew not, nor could explain. But what imagination can conceive of those appearances which shall precede or accompany the coming of God's Son, and the establishment of his kingdom? Let the pictures, by Joel, by John, and, at a far off distance, by Pollok, remain as alone approximating to the sublimity of those rehearsals of doom. Be it that they are from the pencils of poets, surely poets are fitting heralds to proclaim the rising of those two new poems of God-the New Heaven, and the New Earth; and is not the language of one of themselves as true as it is striking "A terrible sagacity informs The poet's heart, he looks to distant storms, A kindred event in the future lies obscurely upon Joel's page. It is the "Last conflict of great principles." That this is the burden of the 3d chapter, it seems difficult to deny. Through its fluctuating mist, there is dim-discovered the outline of a battle-field, where a cause-the cause of the world-is to be fought, fought finally, and to the watchword, "Victory or death." Nothing can be more magnificent than the picture, colored though it be by Jewish associations and images. The object of the fight is the restoration of Judah to its former freedom and power. For this, have its scattered members been gathered, organized, and brought back to their own land. God has gathered them, but he has also, for purposes of his own, to use prophetic language, "hissed" for their enemies, from all nations, to oppose them on the threshold of their triumph. The valley of decision or excision is that of Jehoshaphat, the deep glen lying between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, and which is watered by the brook Kedron. There "multitudes, multitudes," are convened for the final issue. The field has been darkened, and over those multitudes a canopy expands, unlighted by sun, moon, or stars. Under this black sky, the sea of heathen fury and numbers is advancing, and the people of God are, in deep suspense and silence, awaiting its first breaking billow. The contest at last begins, when lo! there is a glare on Olivet, which shows also the whole expanse of Jehoshaphat's valley, and also the faces of the foemen, as they draw nigh; and hark! there is a voice from Zion which shakes earth and heaven, and tells that the delivery is near; and then, between Olivet and Jerusalem, and hanging high over the narrow vale, appears the Lord himself, "The hope of his people, and the stronghold of the children of Israel." And as the result of this sudden intervention, when the fight is decided, "The mountains drop down sweet wine, the hills flow with milk, the torrents of Judah flow with water, a fountain comes forth from the House of Jehovah, and waters the valley of Shittim," and innumerable voices proclaim that henceforth the "Lord will dwell in," as he has delivered, Zion. Was there ever preparation on a larger scale; suspense deeper; deliverance more sudden; or a catastrophe more sub lime? We stay not now critically to inquire how much there is of what is literal, and how much of what is metaphorical, in this description. To tell accurately where, in prophetic language, the metaphor falls from around the fact, and the fact pierces the bud of the metaphor, is one of the most difficult of tasks; as difficult, almost, as to settle the border line between the body and the soul. But, apart from this, we think there is no candid reader of the close of Joel, but must be impressed with the reality of the contest recorded there, with its modern date, its awful breadth of field, its momentous and final character. It is, in all the extent of the words, that war of opinion so often partially predicted and partially fought. It is a contest between the real followers of Christ, out of every kindred, denomination, tongue, and people, and the open enemies and the pretended friends of his cause. It is a contest of which the materials are already being collected. It is a contest which, as it hurtles on, shall probably shake all churches to their foundations, and give a new and strange arrangement to all parties. It is a contest for which intelligent men and Christians should be preparing, not by shutting themselves up within the fastnesses of party, nor by strengthening more strongly the stakes of a bygone implicit narrowness of creed, but by the exercise of a wise liberality, a cautious circumspection, and a manly courage, blended with candor, and by being prepared to sacrifice many an outpost, and relinquish many a false front of battle, provided they can save the citadel, and keep the banner of the cross flying, free and safe above it. It is a contest which may, in all probability, become at last more or less literal, as when did any great war of mind fail to dye its garments in blood? It is a contest of whose where and when we may not speak, since the strongest prophetic breath has not raised the mists which overhang the plain of Armageddon. It is a contest, finally, which promises to issue in a supernatural intervention, and over the smoke of its bloody and desperate battlefield, to show the crown of the coming of the Son of Man. MICAH. He is called the Morasthite, because born in Mareshah, a village in the south of the territory of Judah. He prophesied during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find a remarkable allusion to him in the book of Jeremiah. That prophet had predicted the utter desolation of the temple and city of Jerusalem. The priests and prophets thereupon accused him to the princes and the people, as worthy to die, because he had prophesied against the city. The threat is about to be put in execution, when some of the elders rise up and adduce the case of Micah. "Micah, the Morasthite, prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Zion shall be ploughed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah, put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls." Micah was plead as a precedent, nor was he plead in vain. This prophet is noted principally for the condensation of his language, the rapidity of his transitions, the force and brevity of his pictures, the form of dialogue to which he often approaches, and for two or three splendid passages which tower above the rest of his prophecy, like cedars among the meaner trees. One of these records the sudden gleam of insight which showed him, in the future, Bethlehem-Ephratah sending out its illustrious progeny, one whose goings forth had been from of old, from the "Eternal obscure." How lovely those streams of prophetic illumination, which fall from afar, like autumn sunshine upon secret and lonely spots, and crown them with a glory unknown to themselves! Bethlehem becomes beautiful beyond itself, in the lustre of the Saviour's rising. Another, for moral grandeur, is almost unequalled in Scripture, and sounds like the knell of the ceremonial economy. "Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the Most High God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jehovah be well pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Here the burden of the 50th Psalm is uttered more sententiously, although not with such awful accompaniments. Both announce the pros |