daughters, or ladies of honour of her court. And in this manner, the type is used in many parts of the prophet Isaiah, and very remarkably in this psalm.

In the part of it which we are now about to expound, the holy psalmist having seated the King Messiah on his everlasting throne, proceeds to the magnificence of his court, as it appeared on the wedding-day; in which, the thing which first strikes him, and fixes his attention, is the majesty and splendour of the king's own dress, which, indeed, is described by the single circumstance of the profusion of rich perfumes with which it was scented. But this, by inference, implies everything else of elegance and costly ornament: for among the nations of the East, in ancient times, perfume was consi. dered as the finishing of the dress of persons of condition when they appeared in public; and modern manners give us no conception of the costliness of the materials employed in the composition of their odours, their care and nicety in the preparation of them, and the quantity in which they were used. The high-priest of the Jews was not sprinkled with a few scanty drops of the perfume of the sanctuary; but his person was so bedewed with it, that it literally ran down from his beard to the. skirts of his garment. The high-priest of the Jews, in his robes of office, was in this, as I shall presently explain, and in every circumstance, the living type of our Great High-Priest. The psalmist describes the fragrance of Messiah's garments to be such, as if the aromatic woods had been the very substance out of which the robes were made.

“ Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia." The sequel of this verse is somewhat obscure in the original, by reason of the ambiguity of one little word, which different interpreters have taken differently. I shall give you what in my judgment is the literal render

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ing of the passage, and trust I shall not find it difficult to make the meaning of it very clear.

“ Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia, “Excelling the palaces of ivory,

“Excelling those which delight thee.” Ivory was highly valued and admired among the Jews, and other eastern nations of antiquity, for the purity of its white, the delicate smoothness of the surface, and the durability of the substance; being not liable to tarnish or rust like metals, or, like wood, to rot or to be wormeaten. Hence it was a favourite ornament in the furniture of the houses and palaces of great men; and all such ornamental furniture was plentifully perfumed. The psalmist therefore says, that the fragrance of the King's garments far exceeded any thing that met the nostrils of the visitors in the stateliest and best furnished palaces. But this is not all: he says besides, that these perfumes of the royal garments “ excel those which delight thee.” To understand this, you must recollect,

. that there were two very exquisite perfumes used in the symbolical service of the temple, both made of the richest spices, mixed in certain proportions, and by a process directed by the law. The one was used to anoint every article of the furniture of the sanctuary, and the robes and persons of the priests. The composition of it was not to be imitated, nor was it to be applied to the person of any but a consecrated priest, upon pain of death. Some, indeed, of the kings of David's line were anointed with it; but when this was done, it was by the special direction of a prophet, and it was to intimate, as I apprehend, the relation of that royal house to the eternal priesthood, to be instituted in due season in that family. The other was a compound of other ingredients, which made the incense that was burnt upon the golden altar as a grateful odour to the Lord. This too

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was most holy, and to attempt to make the like for pri. vate use was a capital offence.

Now the perfumed garments of the psalmist's king denote the very same thing which was typified under the law by the perfumed garments of the high-priest; the psalmist's king being indeed the real person of whom the high-priest, in every particular, of his office, his services, and his dress, was the type. The perfumed gar. ments were typical -- first, of the graces and virtues of the Redeemer himself in his human character; secondly, of whatever is refreshing, encouraging, consoling, and cheering in the external ministration of the word; and, thirdly, of the internal comforts of the Holy Spirit. But the incense fumed upon the golden altar was typical of a far inferior, though of a precious and holy thing, namely, of whatever is pleasing to God in the faith, the devotions, and the good works of the saints. Now the psalmist says, that the fragrance breathing from the garments of the King far excels, not only the sweetest odours of any earthly monarch's palace, but that it surpasses those spiritual odours of sanctity in which the King himself delights. The consolations which the faithful, under all their sufferings, receive from him, in the example of his holy life, the ministration of the word and sacraments, and the succours of the Spirit, are far beyond the proportion of any thing they have to offer in return to him, in their praises, their prayers, and their good lives, notwithstanding in these their services he condescends to take delight. This is the doctrine of this highly mystic text, that the value of all our best works of faith and obedience, even in our own eyes, must sink into nothing, when they are contrasted with the exuberant mercy of God extended to us througli Christ.

Such is the fragrance breathing from the great King's wedding garments. We proceed to other particulars in

the magnificent appearance of his court on the weddingday, figurative of the glory of the church in its final condition of purity and peace, and of the rank and order of particular churches.

Kings' daughters are among thy honourable women." You will observe that the word “women,” in the Bibles of the larger size, is printed in that character which is used to distinguish the words which have been inserted by the translators, to make the sense perspicuous to the English reader, without any thing expressly corresponding in the original. Omitting the word “ women,” our translators might have given the verse, according to their conceptions of the preceding word which describes the women, thus:

“ Kings' daughters are among thy honourables;" i. e. among the persons appointed to services of honour. But the original word thus expressed by “honourable women," or by “honourables,” is indeed applied to whatever is rare and valued in its kind, and, for that reason, to illustrious persons, ennobled and distinguished by marks of royal favour: and in this sense, it certainly is figuratively applicable to the persons whom I shall show to be intended here. But the primary meaning of the word is “ bright, sparkling ;” and it is particularly applied to brilliant gems, or precious stones. Sparkling is in all languages figuratively applied to female beauty; and the imagery of the original would be better preserved, though the sense would be much the same, if the passage were thus rendered:

Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of

thy court.” The beauty certainly is mystic, the beauty of evangelical sanctity and innocence.

But who, and what are these kings' daughters, the lustre of whose beauty adorns the great monarch's court? “ Kings' daughters," in the general language of holy writ, are the kingdoms and peoples which they govern, of which, in common speech, they are called fathers. The expression may be so taken here; and then the sense will be, that the greatest kingdoms and empires of the world, converted to the faith of Christ, and shining in the beauty of the good works of true holiness, will be united, at the season of the wedding, to Messiah's kingdom. But, inasmuch as Messiah's kingdom is not one of the kingdoms of the world, and that secular kingdoms will never be immediately, and in their secular capacity, vassals of his kingdom, I rather think, that the kings' daughters mentioned here are the various national churches, fostered for many ages by the piety of Christian princes, and now brought to the perfection of beauty, by the judgments which shall have purged every one of them of all things that offend: for they may well be called “kings' daughters,” of whom kings and queens are called, in the prophetic language, the fathers and the mothers. From these, the psalmist turns our at. tention to another lady, distinguished above them all, by her title, her place, and the superlative richness of her robes. “ Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of

thy court; At thy right hand the consort has her station, “ In standard gold of Ophir.” Some expositors have imagined, that the consort is an emblem of the church catholic in her totality,—the kings' daughters, typical of the several particular churches of which that one universal is composed. But the queen consort here, is unquestionably the Hebrew church,—the church of the natural Israel, re-united, by her conversion, to her husband, and advanced to the high prerogative of the mother church of Christendom: and the kings' daughters are the churches which had been gathered out of the Gentiles, in the interval between the