all nations with religious awe. At this period the apostate faction will occupy the Holy Land. This faction will certainly be an instrument of those judgments by which the church will be purified. That purification therefore is not at all inconsistent with the seeming prosperity of the affairs of the atheistical confederacy; but after such duration as God shall see fit to allow to the plenitude of its power, the Jews converted to the faith of Christ will be unexpectedly restored to their antient possessions.

The swift messengers will certainly have a considerable share as instruments in the hand of God in the restoration of the chosen people. Otherwise, to what purpose are they called upon (verse 1) to receive their commission from the prophet? It will perhaps be some part of their business to afford the Jews the assistance and protection of their fleets. This seems to be insinuated in the imagery of the 1st verse. But the principal part they will have to act will be that of the carriers of God's message to his people. This character seems to describe some Christian country, where the prophecies relating to the latter ages will meet with particular attention where the literal sense of those which promise the

restoration of the Jewish people will be strenuously upheld; and where these will be so successfully expounded as to be the principal means, by God's blessing, of removing the veil from the hearts of the Israelites.

Those who shall thus be the instruments of this blessed work, may well be described in the figured language of prophecy as the carriers of God's message to his people. The situation of the country destined to so high an office is not otherwise described in the prophecy than by this circumstance, that it is "beyond the rivers of Cush." That is, far to the west of Judea, if these rivers of Cush are to be understood, as they have been generally understood, of the Nile and other Ethiopian rivers; far to the east, if of the Tigris and Euphrates. The one or the other they must denote, but which, is uncertain. It will be natural to ask, of what importance is this circumstance in the character of the country, which, if it be any thing, is a geographical character, and yet leaves the particular situation so much undetermined, that we know not in what quarter of the world to look for the country intended, whether in the East Indies, or in the western parts of Africa or Europe, or in America? I answer, that the full

importance of this circumstance will not appear till the completion of the prophecy shall discover it. But it had, as I conceive, a temporary importance at the time of the delivery of the prophecy, namely, that it excluded Egypt.

The Jews of Isaiah's time, by a perverse policy, were upon all occasions courting the alliance of the Egyptians, in opposition to God's express injunctions by his prophets to the contrary. Isaiah there. fore, as if he would discourage the hope of aid from Egypt at any time, tells them that the foreign alliance which God prepares for them in the latter times, is not that of Egypt, which he teaches them at all times to renounce and to despise, but that of a country far remote; as every country must be that lies either west of the Nile or east of the Tigris.

I shall now sum up the result of these long disquisitions in a translation of the prophecy, illustrated with short notes.

i Ho! Land spreading wide the shadow of (thy) wings,' which art beyond the rivers of Cush.

2 Accustomed to send messengers by sea,

1 That is, affording aid and protection to friends and allies in remote countries.

2 The land of Cush in holy writ (commonly, but by mistake, rendered Ethiopia) is properly that district of Arabia where the sons of Cush first settled. But as this race multiplied exceedingly, and spread, not only into other parts of Arabia, but eastward, round the head of the Persian Gulph, to the confines of Susiana; and westward, across the Arabian Gulph, into the region since called Abyssinia, which extended along the coast from Ptolemaïs to Arsinoë, and inland to the very sources of the Nile: the land of Cush is often taken more largely for a great tract of country, not only comprehending the whole of Arabia Felix, but having for its eastern boundary the branch of the Tigris, below the town of Asia, and for its western boundary the Nile. The rivers of Cush, in this place, may be either the Euphrates and the Tigris on the east, or the Nile, the Astaboras, and the Astapus, on the west. But which of these are meant, it must be left for time to shew.

3 "Accustomed to send"- The form of the expression in the original signifies, not a single act of sending once, but the habit of sending perpetually.

Even in bulrush-vessels,* upon the surface of the

Unto a nation dragged away and plucked,
Unto a people wonderful from their beginning
hitherto,

4 Sending by sea, in bulrush-vessels, is a figurative expression, descriptive of skill in navigation, and of the safety and expedition with which the inhabitants of the land called to are supposed to perform distant voyages.

5" Go, swift messengers"

You who, by your skill in naviga

tion and your extensive commerce and alliances, are so well qualified to be carriers of a message to people in the remotest corners, Go with God's message.

6" Unto a nation," &c. viz. to the dispersed Jews; a nation dragged away from its proper seat, and plucked of its wealth and power; a people wonderful, from the beginning to this very time, for the special providence which ever has attended them, and directed their fortunes; a nation still lingering in expectation of the Messiah, who so long since came, and was rejected by them, and now is coming again in glory; a nation universally trampled under foot; whose lands, rivers,' armies of foreign invaders, the Assy

rians, Babylonians, Syromacedonians, Romans, Saracens, and Turks, have over-run and depopulated.