enforced by an appeal to the approaching day of the Lord upon all the heathen. This day of the Lord is variously represented by the prophets as one of judgment, of punishment, and of battle. It is designed for the illustration of the attributes of the Most High, especially his righteousness in the destruction of his people's enemies and of his own. Although in prophetic representation "a day," it proves in actual fact to be not a single point of time, in which judgment shall be simultaneously executed upon all nations, but a continuous period, in the course of which all shall in succession receive the punishment that they merit. This day is "near," not from the historical position of Obadiah, but from the ideal prophetic one which he has taken in the future. When each nation has completed its deeds of iniquity, the time of retribution is not far distant. That which here appears as the matter to be avenged on that day is the hostilities which have been committed against the people of God. Viewed under one aspect, the destruction of Jerusalem and all that Israel suffered from other nations was the consequence of their own sins. Viewed under another aspect, it was a consequence of the hostile disposition cherished by the world toward them as the people of God, and in them toward God himself. This disposition, it is true, he uses as an instrument for the correction of his people's sins, but it finds in that fact no justification. It is under this latter aspect that Obadiah in this prophecy regards the sufferings of Jerusalem. Their own sins are not once referred to as concerned in the treatment they experience, but only the hostility of other nations, and particularly of Edom, the most unrelenting and inexcusable of all, and who appears here not in his individual character merely, but as the representative generally of all the enemies of God's people.

This coming day of retribution upon all nations affords a sure guarantee of Edom's doom; for if no deed of criminality. against Israel from any quarter shall pass unavenged, theirs shall not. As they had done, it should be done to them. For as ye (Edom) have drunk upon my holy mountain, indulging your profane revels over the scene of my people's overthrow, so shall all the heathen, and you of course among them, drink continually, but in another sense, drink the cup of divine wrath, and that in large, copious draughts, because forced so to do, and to their complete undoing; they shall be as though they had not been. That they shall drink" continually," does not imply that the same nations are to be for ever drinking, for the draughts are productive of speedy extinction. But one or another of the nations shall be always experiencing divine judgments.

The principal constructions, in addition to that given above,

which have been proposed for this passage, are the following: 1. As ye (Edomites) have drunk exulting over the ruin of Jerusalem, so shall all nations drink exulting over yours. 2. As ye (Edomites) have caroused upon my holy mountain, so shall all other nations inflict similar injuries upon Jerusa lem, carouse there and perish. 3. As ye (Edomites) have drunk the cup of divine wrath for your treatment of God's people (their future punishment, from its certainty, spoken of as already experienced), so shall all nations. 4. As ye (Jews) have in the destruction of Jerusalem drunk of the divine wrath, so shall all nations drink of the same, but more largely and for a longer term.

The last division of the prophecy opens with a contrast to the doom denounced upon Edom, and upon all nations. Mount Zion shall have a fate directly opposite to the fate of those who have desecrated and wasted it. The contrast here stated is not simply that in the time of the utter extinction of the nations Israel, instead of being totally destroyed as they are, shall have still some survivors. The day of retribution which had been announced was for the nations, not for Israel. The latter is already judged in the (ideal) present, and only the judgment on the nations for what they have done to Israel lies yet in the future. The time in which the nations are visited for their sins will be the time of Israel's security and triumph. The escaped from all past and present tribulations will then be found on Mount Zion, which is thenceforth to be a sanetuary and inviolable. The house of Jacob shall retake their former seats. Israel, no longer divided into two opposing kingdoms, but acting in concert, shall find Esau powerless to resist them. Their former coasts will prove too strait for them, such shall be the increase of their numbers. They shall spread southward over the territory of Esau, westward over that of the Philistines, northward into the possessions of Ephraim, to whom a district still farther north must consequently be assigned, and eastward beyond Jordan.

From the body of the nation, who, after the calamities that awaited them (ver. 11), should return to repeople and enlarge their ancient seats, the eye of the prophet turns to those in captivity in his own times, and he predicts for them also a return and a similar enlargement. This captive host of the children of Israel who are scattered up and down among the Canaanites as far as to Zarephath, and those in Sepharad, shall occupy the cities of the south, where room will be made for them by the previous occupation of Edom by the inhabitants of these cities. Sepharad is not to be taken in its appellative sense as meaning dispersion, but the name of some definite locality, situated most probably in the distant west (compare

Joel iii. 6.) The Chaldee and Peshito render it Spain, and in modern Hebrew this is the name of that country.

Another construction of this passage is that this captive host of the children of Israel, i.e., those of the kingdom of the ten tribes carried captive to Assyria, shall on their return possess the land which belonged to the Canaanites as far as Zarephath.

And there shall go up, return out of exile, saviours (compare Judges iii. 9) for the defence of Israel and the subjugation of their foes, and particularly of Edom: "And the kingdom shall be the LORD'S." By the protection and deliverance which he shall afford to his people, and by his destruction of their foes, he shall demonstrate to the world that he does indeed reign.

ART. VI." The Marrow" Controversy: with Notices of the State of Scottish Theology in the beginning of last Century. To the generality of our readers the title of this article will no doubt sound strange, and to few will it present a very inviting bill of fare. It may be well, therefore, to announce that it refers to a controversy which agitated the Church of Scotland in the early part of last century, the bone of contention being a small treatise, bearing the somewhat equivocal and unpromising title of "The Marrow of Modern Divinity." The reader, however, need not be alarmed at the prospect of being dragged through the length and breadth of an obsolete controversy. We adopt the title simply because it indicates, more precisely than any other we can think of, the course of investigation we mean to pursue, which will embrace a general view of the state of theology in Scotland in the beginning of the eighteenth century, reintroducing on the stage a few characters which do not deserve to be forgotten, and presenting a curious phase of religious sentiment, interesting to all who love to trace to their remote causes those ecclesiastical movements which are seen and felt in their effects to the present day.

The Revolution of 1688 was not less remarkable for the religious than it was for the political change which it wrought in Scotland. Itself the product of two reigns of infatuated policy, it became the seed-plot of a new set of growths hitherto strange to Scottish soil, and destined to bear their peculiar fruit. In many respects the age that succeeded is tame and unattractive. Wanting the graphic interest of the two preceding centuries, which abound in picturesque scenery and original character, the eighteenth century presents a flat and featureless aspect,

varied only in the State with low political feuds and contemptible Jacobitical plots and risings, and in the Church with melancholy schisms and sickening controversies, reminding us of the feverish throes of a patient dying in consumption. No historian can infuse life into its dull details, no poet can throw a charm over its swampy surface. Its heroes shine only in the pages of fiction, its achievements never rise above the level of the ballad. The eye of the spectator, wearied with the monotony of the landscape, is glad to revert to the old ark of the covenant, to the days of Knox, Henderson, or Argyle, when men were at least in earnest, and fighting for something worth while. Nevertheless, to the Christian inquirer it is always interesting to trace, even amidst the most unpromising materials, the varying fortunes of the great cause of truth and godliness.

Let the reader, then, transport himself back for a little to the close of the seventeenth century, and imagine himself seated in the old Assembly Aisle in St Giles' Church, where the General Assembly held its annual sessions from the days of Henderson till the year 1829. Let us suppose ourselves in that ancient aisle, at the first meeting of the General Assembly after the revolution, in 1690. Thirty long years of bloody persecution had passed over the Church of Scotland since that venerable court had met there before. During all this time the ecclesiastical timepiece had stood still. Presbyteries and synods indeed may have met, obedient to the occasional call of the bishops; but the mainspring was gone, the wheels were deranged, and the dial-plate no longer announced, with living finger true to its wonted hour, the regular action of the machine. Every thing, however, was now done, that could be done in such an extraordinary and anomalous state of things, to put the old machinery in motion. The presbyterian ministers, taking heart from the favourable turn of affairs, had met in Edinburgh, and, on the 22d of July preceding, had presented an address to the King's commissioner, which was read before Parliament; in which, after all due acknowledgments to God and to his Majesty King William, for their wonderful and unexpected deliverance from the great oppressions they had suffered under the cruelty and ambition of the Prelacy of Scotland, they besought the Parliament "that they would be ciously pleased by their civil sanction to establish and ratify the late Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, which contained the substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches; the Directory of Worship and Presbyterial Church Government, all agreeable to the Word of God, and formerly received by the general consent of the nation; praying also, "that the church government might be es

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tablished in the hands of such only who, by their former carriage and sufferings, were known to be sound Presbyterians; that those ministers yet alive who were thrust from their churches might be restored; and the church established upon its former good foundations, confirmed by many acts of parliament from 1560." To these requests the parliament acceded, and having restored the ministers ejected from the year 1661, they invited the General Assembly to meet on the 16th day of October 1690. On that day, therefore, did the General Assembly sit down, under the sanction of parliament. Lord Carmichael appeared as the king's commissioner, and the bells of St Giles' announced to the citizens of Edinburgh that the Church of Scotland had entered on a new era. The number of members present is variously estimated; the Jacobites asserting that there were not above fifty or sixty, while Principal Rule, who should have known best, informs us that there were an hundred and sixteen ministers and forty-seven ruling elders, and these only representatives from presbyteries. † Mr Hugh Kennedy was chosen moderator; and the business of the church proceeded as if it had never been interrupted by the hand of violence and oppression. "In the year 1690," says one who was present, "the Assembly was as full as any Assembly since that time; and for the age, piety, learning, prudence, and gravity of the members, it is much to be doubted if they were not equal, if not superior, to any convocation of churchmen that ever were in Britain in our day."

On glancing around this venerable Assembly, one is struck with the number of grey heads and furrowed cheeks which present themselves. It is literally "an assembly of the elders." It looks as if the bodies of these old saints had come out of their graves unto the holy city, to witness and attest the resurrection of their beloved church. The storm had fallen upon them in the prime of life, and for thirty years these heads have been blanched and bent under the winds of persecution. There are men there who were at the battles of Pentland and of Bothwell Bridge; who fled from mountain to morass, and hid themselves, with their Bibles clasped to their bosoms, in the dens and caves of the earth; men who bear on their bodies the marks of the rack and thumbscrew, and can tell of the horrors of Dunottar Castle and the Bass Rock; men on whose heads the late government had laid prices, varying according to their supposed guilt and real

History of the late Revolution in Scotland, pp. 182-184. London: 1690.

+ Rule's Second Vindication of the Church of Scotland, p. 153. According to this account, the total number of members in this Assembly was 163. Other accounts state them at 181, and some at 184. "The first Assembly met 16th October 1690, consisted of an hundred and forty-seven ministers and forty-seven ruling elders."—(Áccount of Proceedings of the Parliament, &c., apud Presbyterian Loyalty, p. 399.)

Toleration's Fence Removed. By Mr James Ramsay, Minister at Eyemouth.