occurs no prophecy which is not chronologically determined; and all prophecies so determined stand in regular order. In the external predictions also the chronological prevails. But a certain deviation must be allowed, otherwise things intimately connected must have been separated. The prophecies are here arranged according to the nations, so that, for ex., all those referring to Egypt come together. Among the prophecies referring to Egypt, that in ch. xxix. 17 goes before the one in ch. xxxi. 1, which belongs to an earlier period, because it stands in a close relation with the foregoing (ch. xxix. 1), and resumes it at a time when its fulfilment was close at hand. Although the main body of the external prophecies belong to the time before the term, given in ch. xxxiii. 21, of the recommencement of the home prophecies, yet the date of some external prophecies precedes that in ch. xxxiii. 21 (ch. xxxii. 1, 17), because the external prophecies forming a connected cycle should not be separated from one another, and because the following cycle of home prophecies also should meet with no interruption.

The first part contains in all a decade of prophecies—four native and six foreign. At the close of the first part in ch. xxxiii. 1-20 follows, in vers. 21, 22, the historical introduction to the discourses of the second period; in vers. 23-33, the warning and admonishing preparation for the new message,-the mediation, as it were, between it and the first part. With ch. xxxiv. begins the communication of the comforting message. From this forward the prophet is as inexhaustible in comforting as he was before in threatening. The dangerous foe was now despair, as it was before false confidence. Common to the comforting and to the threatening discourses is the pictorial character; the viewing of that which is not as if it were, a result of dependence on God, in whose nature salvation as well as judgment is founded. The comfort is in this first group unfolded in seven paragraphs. In the first discourse (ch. xxxiv.) the prophet meets in a soothing manner the grief for the loss of civil government, and places before the eyes of his hearers and readers the bright form of the glorified David, in whom the civil government of the future will culminate. In the second (ch. xxxv.) he portrays the desolation of Seir. The light of Israel is relieved by the shade of Edom, who here represents the nations, who, in their hatred of the kingdom of

God, are not fit for it, but are ripe for destruction. The third discourse (ch. xxxvi. 1-15) relieves the pain occasioned by the desolation of the holy land. The fourth (ch. xxxvi. 16-38) lays down the name of God as the pledge of salvation. The fifth announces the restoration of Israel as a covenant people (ch. xxxvii. 1–14); the sixth, as a brotherly people (vers. 15–28). The seventh (ch. xxxviii. xxxix.) represents the renovated people as victorious in every conflict.

The second principal part has only two dates (ch. xxxiii. 21 and ch. xl. 1), and thus presents only two sections, which increase the ten of the first part to twelve. In the great closing picture in ch. xl.-xlviii. the prophet portrays in detail the recovery of all that was lost, in fulfilment of the words of the psalmist, "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken;" and points in the midst of it, in ch. xlvii. 1-12, to the great progress of the kingdom of God in the future.

In the picture of the future drawn by the prophet, the following are the principal traits. Vain is every attempt of the people to avert the threatening misfortune. They must drain to the bottom the cup of the divine wrath (ch. xxi. 26). Egypt, the power on which their hopes chiefly rest, proves a broken reed the time of its political importance is for ever gone. But what earth denies, heaven will grant in its own time. After the people have attained to repentance, wrath is followed by grace; all that is lost-the temple, with its priests and worship, the city, the land-is restored. Yet not this alone: the fu ure brings an enhancement of salvation. The people receive a r ̧ch treasure of forgiveness of sins (ch. xxxvi. 25, xxxvii. 23); the Lord takes away the heart of stone, and gives them a heart of flesh (xi. 19); He awakens them by His quickening breath from spiritual death (ch. xxxvii.). The centre of all graces is an exalted descendant of David, who will spring from His family when reduced and wholly deprived of the sovereignty, and connect the high-priestly with the kingly office (ch. xxi. 27, xxxiv. 11-31). The blessing is so potent that it extends also to the heathen, who will join themselves to Israel in the time of salvation. According to ch. xxxiv. 26, "the environs of his hill" will be partakers of it with Israel; according to ch. xvii. 22-24, the descendant of David, at first small and inconsiderable, is raised to the sovereignty of the world; according to ch.

xlvii. 1-12, the waters of the Dead Sea of the world are healed by the stream from the sanctuary. This great revolution of things, however, will give the old covenant people no cause for self-exaltation; it will rather tend to their deep humiliation. They find salvation only through the redeeming mercy of God in common with the heathen world, sunk deep in sin, to whom they are become like, as in sin, so in punishment (ch. xvi. 53–63). And then in the future, along with grace, which is only for the willing, comes also judgment. The prophet announces in ch. v. 4 a second annihilating judgment, which after the Chaldean will come upon the people restored by the grace of God,—a fire which will devour the people as such, and leave only an election of them which participates in the blessings of salvation.

The name of the prophet denotes one in relation to whom God is strong (p. 5), who speaks not out of his own heart, but is moved and determined by a supernatural power. The verification of this name we have in the prophecies before us. That which the Lord said to Peter applies to him, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but the Father in heaven." None of His words have fallen to the ground. The whole course of history has verified His word in ch. xxxiii. 33: "They shall know that a prophet was in the midst of them."

APPENDIX.

AW

THE CHERUBIM.'

I.

HAT Christian should not feel a desire to know the nature of the cherubim? When we sing the Ambrosian anthem, we dwell with special emotion of heart on the words: "The cherubim and seraphim, and all angels, serve Him." As long as the nature of the cherubim is concealed from us, a whole series of scriptural passages is inaccessible to us. The cherubim occur in the Old Testament no less than eighty-five times. They meet us in the very first pages of revelation: the cherubim and the flame of the blazing sword repel the parents of our race from the tree of life. In the tabernacle and in the temple of Solomon the cherubim receive an important place. The grand visions of Ezekiel in ch. i. and x., even on a superficial examination, awakening the anticipation of a glorious meaning, and presenting a fulness of earnest warning and comfort, are sealed to us, if we have not learned the nature of the cherubim. In the Psalms God appears enthroned on the cherubim, as the firm ground for the confidence of His people; and whosoever will be a partaker of this confidence, must before all know what the cherubim are to signify. Even in the New Testament the holy enigma of the cherubim meets us. John, in the Revelation, sees in the midst of the throne, and about the throne, four beasts full of eyes before and behind, that had no rest day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty.

The right knowledge of the cherubim, however, has a 1 From the Ev. Kirchenzeitung (Evangelical Church Gazette), 1866.

special interest for our own times. The opposition therein existing has its last root in the proper foundations of this knowledge. All questions that now move the heart most deeply go back to the one, whether the first article in our Confession of Faith be true or not. Whosoever is at home in this article, into which he has entered in heart and life, to him the other two give no trouble; and whosoever shrinks from these, thereby shows that he has not yet truly received the first article into his heart, even though he may have confessed it with his mouth. Janet, in his work On the Materialism of our Time in Germany, says: "Two fundamentally different views of the world and of nature prevail at present. According to the one, the world is only a descending series of causes and effects: something exists from all eternity with certain original properties. From these properties spring phenomena; from the combination of these phenomena arise new phenomena, which on their part give existence to others, and so on without end. There are undesigned and unforeseen wild movements and leaps, which, thanks to the co-operation of a boundless term, have carried on the world as we now see it to-day. According to the other, the world is an organic and living being, that developes itself according to an idea, and raises itself gradually to the completion of a nature eternally inaccessible in its infinite perfection. Each of these steps is conditioned not only by that which precedes it, but also by that which follows it. Each step is designed for progress by the effect which it must introduce. Thus we see nature ascend from dead matter to life, and from life to feeling and thought. According to this view, nature is no longer a kind of play, in which all things are due to accident, whereby an effect is brought out somewhere it has a plan, a reason, an idea. It is not a kind of improvisation, where each speaks, and thence arises an apparent discourse: it is a real poem, a drama directed by wisdom, where all the threads of the action, however intricate they may be, unite to a definite end. It is an ascending series of means and ends. A first thought has selected and directed. Among the endlessly varied tendencies in which the world was involved by the unconscious and irregular impulse of mechanical causes,

1 Translated, with introduction and notes, by Fr. v. Reichlin-Meldegg, with a preface by Fichte, Leipzig 1866.