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Show &R 260 -CONCLUSION. then receive asignal fulfilment; “ Andthe redeemed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and God gives them “the valley of Achor fora door of hope.” The first encampment of the Hebrews inthe valley of everlasting joy upon their heads ; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” Upon this final restoration of his brethren, this prophet exults in lofty strains. Several of the many of these strains shall be here inserted. Isai. xlix. “ Listen, O isles, unto-me; (or ye lands away over the sea) harken ye people from afar. I will make all my mountains a way; and my highway shall be exalted. Behold, these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north, and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.— Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O» mountains; for the Lord hath eomforted his people, and will have mercy upon his af- flicted.”? Such texts havea special allusion to the lost: tribes of the house of Israel... And called being their over mountains, and over seas, from the west, and from afar, receives an emphasis from. the consideration of. their being zathered from-the vast wilds of America. With the prophet Hosea, the rejection and recovery In chapter 2d, of the ten tribes are a great object. their rejection, and the cause of it, are stated, and also God threatens to strip them a promise of their return. “ And | naked. and: “make them as.a wilderness.” will visit upon ber the days of Baatim, wherein she burned incense to them,”’ i.e. to Baalim, her false sods. This visiting uponher her idolatries, was to be done in her subsequent outcast state, In which God. eee says; “ she-is-not my wife, neither am I her husband. allure But he says, v. 14—‘“ Therefore, behold, | will orn speak and her, and bring her into the wilderness, vineyards fortably unto her.—-And | wilt give her her from-thence, and- the valley of Achor for a door of oe days hope; and:she shall sing there as in the the 0 out ‘outh. and.as in the day when she came up it = Jand-of. Egypt.”” Here is Israel’s restoration : had been planis from-the wilderness, where long they In this: states ted during the period of their outcast them, to. wilderness God eveitually. speaks comfortably - t. and restores them,, as he restored from Kgyp Here 261 - CONCLUSION. Achor, was to them a pledge in their eventual posses- sion of the promised tand, after the Lord had there turned from the fierceness of his wrath; Josh. vu. 26. Upon the same event God says; Isai. xlil. 19, 20; ° /* Behold, f will do a new thing; now it shall spring = 7 fforth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way i . (in the wzlderness and . rivers in the desert. _ of the field shall honour me; \ because I give water ‘lhe beasts the dragons and the owls; in the wilderness, and rivers in \the desert, to give drink to my people, to my chosen.” MN such texts have a glorious, general, mystical ment in the conversion of pagan fulfil- lands; yet this does not preclude, but rather implies the fact, that the people whose restoration is in them particularly foretold, shall be recovered from a vast wilderness ; and their conver- sion shall be almost like the conversion of dragons and owls of the desert. Rivers of knowledge and grace shall in such wiids be open for God’s chosen. then God ‘ truly be _ will “make felfilled her that It will in comforting wilderness like Eden, and Zion me her desert : like the garden of the Lord ;”’ Isai. li. 3. Such passages will have a degree of both literal and mystical fulfilment. A signal beauty will then be discovered in such passages as the following; Isai. xli. 14. ‘Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee saith the Lord Israel. God, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Twill open rivers in the high places, and foun- tains in the midst of vallies: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water, I will plant in the wilderness the cedar. the shittah tree and the myrtle, and the oil tree; and I will set in the desert the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together that they may see and know and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this. and the Hol One of Israel hath created it.” The view riven of the Hon of the long banishment of the ten tribes, gives : it here UL hi predictions of their | restoration,— These riking fuliilment in the vast wilds of our |
