sometimes allusively to the other. Jezreel may be either the valley which bore the corn, wine and oil; or the obedient part of the nation, restored to the country from which they had been carried away, cultivating its soil, and enjoying its rich produce. I incline to the latter interpretation, as naturally indicated by the connexion: but the diversity is only a trifling variation of the figure, and does not at all affect the meaning and scope of the passage. Among other calamities, preludes, as it were, of the great desolation of their captivity, the Israelites had probably experienced that of unfruitful seasons. The heavens had withheld their genial showers, and the earth locked up her stores in churlish barrenness, and even the inhabitant of the sheltered and fertile Jezreel had sought vainly for its usual bountiful return of corn, grapes, or olives, to his labors. These were threatening intimations of the heavier storm that was coming. They were predictive warnings, which, however disregarded by the people, must have affected the prophet's mind with peculiar solemnity, seeing, as he did, the mass of misery which they foreboded. Well was it for his own feelings that his mission included something more, and extended beyond the threatening of the evil day, to the promise of a bright and peaceful evening. One of the characteristics of this book is the frequent transition from the most distressful, to the most delightful annunciations of futurity. Amid all that was adapted to alarm the disobedient many, there was a tender regard for the consolations and hopes of the pious few. The text is a passage of this description; rendered, as I have already intimated, more appropriate and beau

tiful by the probable fact of their having suffered from seasons of barrenness. It practically, yet philosophically, depicts the harmony of universal nature, operating under the benignant direction of Providence for the good of man. "I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens," petitioning, as it were, for the fiat of Omnipotence to pour down the rains that cause to vegetate, or to shine propitiously upon, and ripen, the produce of the earth: "and they shall hear the earth," which, parched with drought, seems to look up in supplication for those showers, or, pointing its green fruits towards the sky, begs for a glowing sun to bring them to maturity ; "and the earth shall hear the corn, the wine and the oil," suppliants for its maternal aid, and dependants on the bounty of its soil to receive their roots, and nourish their growth, and send strength through every stem, and branch, and fibre; "and they shall hear Jezreel," the husbandman or vine-dresser, personified Israel, (the seed of God, and in this position representing humankind,) who deposits the seed, or trains the plant, and watches it in wistful earnestness, and depends upon its increase for the support of his frame and the gladness of his heart. What a golden chain is here formed from man to the productions which constitute his immediate nutriment, from them to the earth which is their nurse, from that to the heavens on whose influences its fertilizing powers depend, and from those heavens to His throne who is the Father and Lord of all, the source of all good. One seems to feel the piety of the sentiment more for this circuitous tracing of man's enjoyment to his Maker's bounty. We find that all second causes, tarry in them as long as we will, and multiply them as

we may, yet must terminate in a great first cause. The more we delay to arrive at that conclusion, the more inevitable do we find our coming to it at last. On whom does man depend? is a question which may be evaded once, twice, or thrice, by the introduction of intermediate agency; but it cannot be evaded forever. The Deity cannot be excluded from his own universe. And piety, assuredly not wishing to exclude him, but rather to trace him the more generally, and feel his presence the more deeply, looks round from one object to another, and sees how each is linked to each by mutual influences, and beholds his Providence in their connexion, and rejoices to see all suspended from his footstool; and adores him, as, not less benignantly than powerfully, pervading the whole system.

The prophet's description is, in the true spirit of poetry, the selection of a particular instance which is adorned with all the beauty of imagery, and then put forward as the illustration of a principle. It may be usefully generalized. I would do this by two remarksfirst, it is the fact that there is such a connexion as he has intimated, not only in that particular case, but in all the regions of matter and of mind, blending them together, making them one; and secondly, that the influence of this fact upon our feelings and conduct, its righteous tendency, or unrighteous application, its gloom or gladness, must arise from the notions of the divine character with which it is associated in our convictions.

And first, of the fact itself; if we regard only the material universe-I mean by the expression only that which is visible and tangible-there is not merely a community of properties, but a reciprocity of influence,

from the minutest to the mightiest substances, from the nearest to the most remote, from the grain to the mass, from the mass to the mountain, from the mountain to the island or continent, from that to the solid globe, from our globe to the solar system, from that system to other systems, having their relative positions and combined movements, until it expands beyond our sense or imagination in the multiplicity of worlds, and the boundlessness of space.

And as this connexion seems to have for its boundaries only those of all present existence, as to space; so it appears to have only those of all past existence, as to time. It extends through the universe; it goes back to creation. The natural phenomena of any one month, its heat or cold, rain, snow or sunshine, its serenity or storms, the quantity and quality of its vegetation, in short, the whole assemblage of its combinations, in all the diversity of their appearances, is obviously influenced by those of the preceding month, and those as obviously by the phenomena of the season before that, and so on, in unbroken series backwards, from month to month, season to season, year to year, and age to age, till we ascend in the natural history of the world up to the very starting point of its existence, the fountain of its being, the original endowment of its atoms with those simple properties which are the ultimate physical solution of what is and has been.

We have been referring only to what is unconscious: if we take the mind and life of man, it will be seen that the thoughts of the one and the events of the other, have a similar connexion, and, are under similar influLet a man recal at night, so far as he can

ences.

recal, whatever has passed through his mind during the day; or rather, let him analyze the thoughts of a smaller portion of time, and one more easily brought under review. He will find no idea springing up spontaneously in his mind, without something to introduce it, and account for its occurrence; something which stands to it in relation of a cause, itself the effect of something which preceded. The whole amount of his thoughts, for that period of time, will be assignable to but two sources; the mental stock which he possessed at its commencement, and external influences, the objects he has beheld, the books he has read, the friends who have addressed him: and it would consist of several series of ideas of which the latter were the exciting causes, while the former furnished the materials. Thought follows thought, in the order in which they have been formerly associated, till some new sensation (i. e. external impression) interrupts that sequence, and originates a new one. Could the process be applied to past days and years, the result would be still the same; the mental store and external impressions would account for all; but the former would be constantly diminishing, until we arrived at intellect in the nakedness of birth, receiving its first ideas from without. Thus the conviction over which some one is brooding in delight, and which is ministering consolation to the sorrows of his lot, or brightening its enjoyments, he can ascribe to the instructions of a venerable friend, now perhaps mouldering in his grave, but who, by this memorial,

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though dead, yet speaketh;" while he derived it from some volume, the depository of the lessons of wisdom of one who lived in ages long gone by; and he acquired it