for their sins, and give clear and minute descriptions of the nature of these punishments.

Every thing that they declared took place every word spoken by the prophets was fulfilled. When the period arrived in which the Jews were to suffer the afflictions due to their impenitence, they did suffer; and, when humbled by adversity, perceived that the prophets whom they had despised, had, by divine inspiration, anticipated the records of history.

The afflictions which they endured in their long captivity, had, in some respects, their proper effect. They produced a more entire hearty dependence upon God, and a more uniform performance of their religious duties. In their prosperity they had forgotten the promise of hope, but they clung to it in their adversity;

and though their views of its nature were extremely erroneous, their faith was from henceforth steady and sin

cere.

The voice of prophecy now ceased; for the purposes of God were accomplished. The law had fulfilled all for which it was intended. The people for whose use it had been instituted were convinced of its divine authority; they had a full experience concerning the exact fulfilment of the promises and threatenings by which it had been sanctioned; and built upon that experience a certain confidence concerning what yet remained to be accomplished, and waited in aweful expectation of the desired

event.

In contemplating these divine interpositions we cannot but be filled with aweful ideas of the immutability of the Supreme Being The scheme

of

of Providence is far too extensive for

'our grasp. All beyond what he has. beef pleased explicitly to declare, is involved in darkness; but of what he has explicitly declared we are bound to make the proper use. In all that we have seen displayed of it in the many revolving ages that have passed under our review, we perceive the most perfect harmony; we perceive the indications of never-failing truth. Where do we find that God promised and did not fulfil his promise? Where do we find that he threatened and did not punish? For a certain length of time, such a time as was sufficient to give an ample room for the operation of experience, these promises and threatenings were confined to objects of sense. They were seen, felt, and understood by the learned and unlearned; and as they were, in many instances, not individual, but na

tional,

tional, the accomplishment of them was too conspicuous to admit of doubt or controversy.

Could they who had thus experienced the immutable veracity of the Divine Instructor, imagine that though he fulfilled his promises with regard to what was near, he would not fulfil them with regard to what was far off? No. They could not thus think! And is the nature of the Eternal changed? If the promises and threatenings given through Moses and the prophets were fully and completely accomplished, can we believe that those given by a greater than Moses shall fail? The nature of the dispensation is, indeed, in some respects changed, but he who gave it can never change!

The punishments and rewards declared by Moses, were national and temporal. The punishments and rewards

wards declared by Jesus are individual and eternal. And as surely as the children of Israel obtained possession of the land promised to their fathers, so surely shall we obtain possession of that inheritance promised by God through Jesus Christ, if we, on our parts, perform the conditions of the engagement. As surely as the children' of Judah were led into captivity by the king of Babylon, according to all that had been foretold them by the prophet, so surely shall you and I be condemned at the day of judgment, if we, like them, refuse to listen to the prophet's voice.

In the words of the prophet to whom I have so lately alluded, I may now make an appropriate conclusion of this letter. "Have ye "not known?" says Isaiah the son of Amos, "Have ye not known?