title of Abraham's friend, and shield and exceeding great reward. He stands before us as Abraham's God; and, oh! how much is comprised for us in such a name! May we not take up Noah's words, and bless Jehovah as the God of Abraham? Blessed be Jehovah, God of Abraham! What does not that title contain for us? For they that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. His name, as the God of Shem, taught us and pledged us much; but his name as the God of Shem's offspring-the God of Abraham-teaches and pledges

more.

4. As the God of Shem, he is the God of Israel.-In this nation, what was there to attract his love or win his favour? Nothing, truly. Yet his name is the Lord God of Israel. In spite of ten thousand provocations, age after age, he still avows himself their God. They are beloved for their fathers' sakes -for the sake of Shem-for the sake of Abraham. Rebellious, unfaithful, ungrateful, yet not cast off! He has called himself their God, and he will not deny the name, nor cancel the covenant. Israel's God! How much of Jehovah's character is wrapped up in this! As the loving, long-suffering, patient, compassionate, unchanging One, well might we say, Blessed be Jehovah, God of Israel!

5. As the God of Shem, he is the Church's God.-For what is the Church? God's eternally chosen company; redeemed from among men, having their names written in the Lamb's book of life before the foundation of the world. In Shem himself we have the woman's seed, as it appeared on earth in these early ages. In the Church we have the woman's seed of all ages; and just as truly as Jehovah was the God of Shem, so truly is he the God of that glorious company, that multitude that no man can number, that bear the name of the Church of God, the body of Christ, the bride, the Lamb's wife. As the God of Shem, he upholds, protects, comforts his Church. He who was to Shem a covenant God, will be to that body which Shem then so truly represented a covenant God. As members of the one true Church of God, the Church of all ages and kindreds, the Church of the first-born, who have passed from this world of evil to the kingdom of the holy, let us say with Noah, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem!

6. As the God of Shem, he is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.-It is Shem that is selected as the branch of Noah's family, in whose line the promise of the woman's seed was to be fulfilled. It is to Shem and his posterity that God is specially to be revealed. It is with Shem that he is to pitch his tent. It is the dwellings of Shem that he is to over

shadow with his glory. It is to Shem that he is to give the land which he claims as so specially as his own. It is to Shem that he is to intrust his oracles of heavenly truth. It is of Shem's race that he is to come, who is over all God blessed for ever. It is on Shem first that the Sun of righteousness is to arise. It is among the sons of Shem that He is to be found who is the Word made flesh; and who alone could say, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Truly the God of Shem is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And remembering that it is specially in this relationship that the apostles so often speak-saying, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ-may we not, with triumphant gladness, join in Noah's praise, "Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem?"

And thus, then, we bless Jehovah with the very blessing wherewith Noah blessed him 4000 years ago, finding in that blessing a fulness of love and peace and gladness, such as makes us feel the Lord himself is in it. It has lost none of its fragrance or strength. The great Assyrian traveller of the present day was not long since, as he records, surprised with the peculiar fragrance that seemed to fill the air, hard by the ruins of Nineveh. He found that it arose from some great beams of cedar dug out of the Assyrian palace, which the workmen were burning. It was cedar wood that had come from Lebanon 3000 years before; yet there it was, giving out its fragrance undiminished and unweakened. Like that cedarbeam from Lebanon is this patriarchal promise. It is upwards of 4000 years old, yet we find it as fragrant as at the first-as refreshing and as gladdening as if come newly from the patriarch's lips!

And now, in closing, let us mark the meaning of that word upon which the whole promise turns-" Blessed." As expounded to us in the New Testament, it must mean "well spoken of." Let Jehovah, God of Shem, be well spoken of. Speak well of him, all ye that know his name. Speak well of him for what he is. Speak well of him for what he is to us. Speak well of him as our covenant God. Speak well of him as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Speak well of him as the God who "so loved the world that he gave his Son."

Our speaking well of God must, of course, be the fruit of our thinking well of him. If we think ill of him, we cannot speak well of him. If we think of him as a hard master, we cannot bless him-we cannot praise. Yet surely he has taken pains enough to prevent us thinking ill of him. He has so made known his character as that it seems impossible that we should think ill of him. Nay, is not this the very substance of

the gospel-God is the God of all grace, just such a God as a sinner may go to? And is not this the message which, the proclaimers of that gospel, we address to each sinner upon earth, "Think well of God;" and in thinking well of him, learn to speak well of him? Learn, in looking at Him, in whom the gospel finds its glorious embodiment, to say, Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem! Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

ART. VII.-THE PEACE.

THE sword has been sheathed, the warriors are returning home, the sound of war has died away!

Peace has been proclaimed between the warring nations. The East, and West, and North are once more in friendship with each other. After a two years' struggle of unequalled havoc and suffering, the kingdoms lay aside their weapons, and would fain rest. There is not an empire at this moment that is not desiring peace. There is not a sovereign, there is not a statesman that does not rejoice in the prospect of a calm after so fierce a storm. War is dreaded, hated, shunned by all. Peace is welcomed as a common blessing; and universal amity between kingdoms and peoples is hailed as nigh at hand.

Is it so? Is the peace solid and sure? Has the storm really gone down, or merely shifted its course and quarter?

More than two years ago, we turned the attention of our readers to the different points bearing on the Eastern question and the Russian quarrel. We maintained that we are not, as many suppose, under the sixth vial; and that the drying up of the Euphrates does not symbolise the waste or ruin of the Turkish Empire. We asked for proof of the assumption that Babylon was Constantinople, or that Babylon's river was the kingdom of Turkey. We asked, moreover, how the destruction of Turkey, or the possession of Constantinople by Russia, could facilitate the journey of the kings of the East, whoever these kings might be?

We took our stand upon several clear prophecies, especially on the 38th and 39th of Ezekiel. We shewed that Russia was the Prince of Ros, Meshech, and Tubal, there so largely spoken of,—that he has a commission to execute in the latter days, but not till Israel is restored to Palestine,-that before that, he will make efforts to pour down his hosts upon the nations of the South, that he will always be restrained in his career till the time appointed for his great invasion of Israel's land,—that

God will put "hooks into his jaws" to control him, and prevent his moving southwards before his time,-that it is this process (of restraint) that is at this moment going on, through means of the alliance of the Western Powers,-that this war would be but brief, and would not extend beyond the eastern circle where it commenced,-that the issue would be the defeat of Russia, and her consequent chaining up within her own limits.

Such were our views two years ago, at a time when many, professing to read the prophetic Word, were proclaiming Turkey's downfall, Russia's triumph, and the defeat of the Allies. We held that the war would be simply an Eastern war,-a parenthesis or digression in the progress of events,-after which the scene would shift to the West, and the ten kingdoms of the fourth empire become the seat and centre of movements, the issues of which are far beyond the vision or calculation of kings or statesmen,-issues which no man dreams of, save those who study the prophetic Word of God.

We do not know if there has ever been a war of such havoc and death limited to so brief a period as two years. Half a million of Russians, and about one hundred thousand of the Allies, have perished in the short strife! Six hundred thousand men swept away in four-and-twenty months! And then, after this terrible bloodshed, suddenly the war terminates,—all parties eager to regain a peace which had been so reluctantly broken. How notable the hand of God in this matter, both in its beginning and in its ending! Russia needed repression ; for its time was not yet come. Repression, we say no more -repression such as would bar its progress southward before the time appointed. That repression has been gained-the premature invasion has been barred, and the invader flung back into the dark recesses of his Northern strongholds, there to nourish schemes of more perilous ambition, and prepare for an enterprise in which he shall perish utterly. (Ezek. xxxix.)

We are not going to discuss the question of the peace and its satisfactoriness. That a conquered nation, with a broken army, a sunk or burnt navy, a ruined fortress, a drained exchequer, a paralysed executive, a destroyed commerce, a murmuring population, might have been compelled to yield more -and that a victorious alliance, with undrained resources and overwhelming appliances of war by land and sea, might have insisted on more-is quite true. But the end was served. God's purpose was fulfilled-Russia was checked, and peace has come. It will be worth our while to inquire into the bearings of recent events, and especially of the memorable campaign now ended. We shall find some things which Christians would do

well to ponder things that tend to cast light on the word of prophecy-to unfold the purposes of God-to mark our position in the development of these purposes, and to point forward to the rapidly-approaching crisis in the destinies of man and his earth. Statesmen, politicians, rulers, senators, editors of newspapers, have all been busily sifting the various points, and examining the temporal meaning and issues. Let us look deeper, and see how the things of the world to come stand affected by them, and how they have contributed to the side of the evil or of the good, of the darkness or of the light, of Satan or of Christ in that strife between heaven and hell, of which for so many thousand years our world has been the field.

That Satan has got his advantages out of them, we doubt not. This he is allowed to do in everything during this day of his power and liberty, when he is walking to and fro on the earth, eager to work his work of death and ruin ere he be chained and cast into the abyss. That Popery may have served her own ends in this warfare-that infidelity may have gained something by the latitudinarian way in which Popery and Protestantism-the Bible, the Breviary, and the Koran-priests, dervishes, ministers-nuns and nurses-have been mingled together, as all equally right or equally wrong;-that France may have secured a greater amount of influence in the East than was desirable,these may be admitted. But still, with these deductions, let us look at what the war has done in other respects.

1. It has opened a way for the Gospel in the East. Of this there can be small doubt. The Word of the Lord has free course in many regions from which it was, till lately, shut out. The war has thrown down the barriers of law, of custom, of bigotry, making it a safer thing to preach the gospel, by removing, in some degree, the Moslem unwillingness to hear it. The trumpet of battle has been made use of by God as herald of the tidings of peace. Mohammedans feel that something else than contempt is due to a message coming from a nation which was the great prop of their empire, and the great protector against the ambition of their Northern enemy. The strongholds of Islamism have been shaken and rent by the reverberation of the cannon directed against the fortress of their foe. At these crevices and seams, light is stealing in; and greater things may be yet in store for Turkey. May there not be an ingathering to Christ such as that empire has not seen-an ingathering for which these shakings and tossings may be preparing! Turkey has long been feeble; and no doubt, even before the war began, that feebleness prevented her casting out the missionaries of Christ, so that the work of ingathering had made some previous