Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

I.-EZEKIEL AND HIS MISSION.

WE have witnessed the closing in of the shadows of disaster upon Jerusalem in the pages of Jeremiah, both prophet and historian. The first invasion of the land by Nebuchadnezzar had issued in the captivity of King Jehoiakim. Fettered and manacled, he was carried away to Babylon, and with him some noble youths, most probably as hostages. Among them was Daniel, and the three famous confessors of the Jewish Church, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

After the death of Jehoiakim, weak and unwise to the very close of his life and his reign, Nebuchadnezzar appeared a second time at the gates of Jerusalem. Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, at once

a Called also Jeconias or Coniah. No. 68. THIRD SERIES.

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yielded at discretion, and, together with the whole of his family, the chief of his nobles and captains, the main body of those who exercised handicrafts, and the treasures of the Temple that remained, was carried away into captivity.

We have seen, too, how Zedekiah, (called also Mattaniah,) the youngest son of the good Josiah, now mounted the spoiled and vacant throne. For nine years he pursued a dishonourable reign. In the tenth, he madly rebelled, with a vain hope of help from Egypt. That hope soon failed, and again the Assyrian came Assyrian came on again the city was besieged. Again Jeremiah nobly remonstrated: but a dungeon became his portion. The city opened its gates to the irresistible Assyrian. The king vainly attempted to break through the hostile lines. He was made captive; his children slain in his sight; his eyes put out, and he himself led away into perpetual captivity.

The levelling of the city walls, its palaces, and high places in one undistinguished mass. by the stern commands of Nebuchadnezzar, and by the hands of his captain Nebuzar

adan, formed the last act in the chastisement of the obstinate and rebellious city.

Before Jeremiah had fulfilled his few remaining years, a new voice had begun to sound in the ears of a portion of the captivity. That voice was Ezekiel's. Full of native power, and impressed with the grandeur of the features of the Assyrian empire, imbibing sublime images from the vast temples and palaces and gardens, for which that mighty people were famed, and above all, gifted with large measures of the mysterious afflatus, which he received not only in vision, but in word and in symbol, his whole book presents to the eye of the student a won

In the Tract on Jeremiah, p. 1330, l. 11, for “Johanan" substitute "Ishmael." In that page, to make the history more complete, it should be stated that Ishmael having slain Gedaliah, compelled the remnant of the Jews in Mizpah to retire with him to the country of the Ammonites. Johanan raised a force, (Jer. xli. 11-15,) pursued Ishmael, recovered the people, and forced him to fly with only eight followers. Afterwards Johanan himself, with unaccount ble infatuation, and in spite of the remonstrances of Jeremiah, determined to seek a refuge in Egypt, and actually went there.

drous assemblage of beauty of painting, and of mysterious awfulness of description. "In force and impetus, in weight and in grandeur," there is no one of all the prophets that can be called his equal. Such is the well-weighed opinion of Bishop Lowth. He may, in truth, be not untruly termed the Eschylus of Hebrew literature.

The commencement of the prophetic life of Ezekiel has been very clearly laid down by the Prophet himself. It was about two hundred miles to the north-east of Babylon that he spent the greater part, and in all probability the whole of his days, subsequently to his election to the prophetic office. Where the river Chebar pours its tributary waters into the eastern bank of the Euphrates we first meet him. The time is about the fourth year of the captivity of Jeconiah, the place is the little town of Tel-Abib in its immediate vicinity. Here Nebuchadnezzar had planted a colony of the captive Jews, and among them was Ezekiel, the son of Bazi the priest. In other scenes and in another land had the Prophet's youth been passed. In the Holy City, beneath its

sacred walls and its battlements not yet removed, he had spent his early life. Destined to the prophetic office, he had in all probability attended the schools of the prophets. Beneath the holy mountain on which the Temple stood he had undoubtedly a thousand times passed and repassed. In the intimate acquaintance which five or six and twenty years would have given him of the place and all its greater and lesser accidents, he would be prepared for the entertainment of those visions which in so large a measure Almighty God was intending to pour upon his soul.

As he was carried away in the captivity of Jeconiah, and only makes his appearance among the captives at Chebar in the fourth year after that event, we may surmise that he spent some part of that time among the captives of Babylon. Then in all probability he became acquainted with those por tentous monuments of idolatrous worship which mingle so strangely in his visions. To one accustomed to the pure worship of Jerusalem, and all the romantic beauty of the

c Jer. v. 10.