condition. We learn from it the nature of their own blessings and the character also of the power which, through them, governmentally will reach the nations. We can easily understand, therefore, how their land should be called the joy of all lands, and themselves the blessed of the Lord. Israel will be known as God's inheritance.

There are three nations which, in past days have been, and in days yet to come will be, peculiarly marked by pride, rebellion, and sin. These nations are Israel, Assyria, and Egypt. Egypt has been a country in which natural powers and natural advantages have been eagerly seized on by the evil energy of man, and directed against God. There are other countries where man's constructive skill has systematized the methods of his pride; and where the sense of the greatness of man's natural and individual energy is lost, as it were, in the presence of the systems of his constructive wisdom. Assyria has been. There has been to whom God has granted peculiar favour and peculiar light, intended to preserve from both these forms of evil-from Egypt and from Assyria; and to strengthen for testimony against them. Such a

Such a country another nation

people were Israel. But there also iniquity has been found. Assyria, and Egypt, and Israel have weaved, and will yet once more weave again, sometimes separately and sometimes together, webs of iniquity and cords of falsehood.

But when sovereign grace acts it loves to find in

that which is most distant from itself, the sphere of its operation. It can and it will reach, in the power of its blessing, Israel, and Egypt, and Assyria too. And so it is written: "In that day shall Israel be third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the earth (), whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." (Isa. xix. 25.) The three that have often been sisters in iniquity will be sisters in righteousness then. Israel, permanently blest, will stand as with two handmaids at her side-handmaids, and yet her sisters in blessing and in the knowledge of God. They will together sing the song of joy and thanksgiving, they will together draw water out of the wells of salvation. Sorrow and sighing will have fled away.

THE nineteenth chapter of Isaiah, to which I have referred at the close of the preceding section, holds, in respect of Egypt, very much the same relation that the thirteenth of Isaiah holds in respect of Babylon. On both, premonitory judgments have already fallen.

Nebuchadnezzar and others smote Egypt; Cyrus and others have smitten Babylon : but these desolations very imperfectly foreshadow the greater events yet to be. Both chapters, if strictly interpreted throughout, are as yet unfulfilled. Both chapters speak of a future season of overwhelming desolation that is to come respectively both on Babylon and on Egypt. In both cases the desolation commences with the agency of man, but is consummated by the manifested intervention of the Lord in glory. In the case of Babylon and Babylonia, the blow given by the hand of the Lord in the great day of His visitation brings a desolation that is never removed. It will continue till this Adamic earth ceases to be. Throughout all

the blessedness of the Millennial reign, Babylon

and its Land, as well as Edom and its Land, abidingly remain (like Sodom and Gomorrah now) memorials of utter and irremediable ruin. But it will be otherwise with Egypt. It will be fearfully smitten; and for forty years after the Millennium has commenced, it will be utterly desolate. "No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years." (Ezekiel xxix. 11.) But, finally, it shall be revived, and together with Israel and Assyria shall receive that wondrous blessing which the concluding verses of the nineteenth of Isaiah describe.

Scripture admits not of disjointed fragmentary interpretation. Its statements are to be taken in their entirety. Its connexions are to be carefully observed. Associated links in a chain must not be severed, if the integrity of the chain as a whole is to be preserved. In continuous narratives will be found commencement, succession and end. Events that are avowedly declared to be the immediate precursors of results not yet developed, must necessarily be themselves future. We know, for example, that no past infliction on Jerusalem can constitute that unequalled season of tribulation of which Matthew and Mark speak, because that unequalled season of woe is IMMEDIATELY to be followed by the darkening of the sun, and of the moon, and stars, and convulsions both of earth and heaven such as never yet have been; consequently, the tribulation on Jerusalem which is immediately to

precede those convulsions must still be future. So also in the chapter before us. The fearful desolation that is described as coming upon Egypt is declared to be the close precursor of a season of tranquillity, and blessing, and joy, such as neither Egypt nor any other nation has ever yet known, and which shall never end till this Adamic earth shall cease to be.

Strong and vivid is the description of blessing that is to come upon Egypt when, at last, the Lord shall turn from it His wrath, and shall bring to it health and cure. "In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction. In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and perform it. And the Lord shall smite Egypt; he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt,