of Syria help them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me." But they were the ruin of him.

MAMA. Of that there can be no doubt. But how came he to bring gods from Damascus ? What had he to do there?

MARY. Our chapter tells us he went there to meet the king of Assyria, who had taken Damascus, and carried away the people of it captive, and killed their king.

MAMA. So I thought, Mary, as you read it before. It was then mere gratuitous folly in Ahaz to adopt gods so evidently powerless to save their own worshippers. I don't think our chapter says any thing of his bringing home gods.

MARY. No, Mama, only the pattern of an altar; but he had no business to make one like theirs you know, when he had a brazen altar of the Lord's at home.

MAMA. Certainly not, my dear. And what did he do with it, after he had transferred the daily sacrifices to his new heathen one?

MARY. He kept it to "inquire by."

MAMA. God might well answer him as he did the Jews: "I will not for this be inquired of by you." Many among us think to share the benefits and consolations of religion, while dethroning God from the altar of our hearts, and burning in

cense there to a thousand lying vanities! But we have in Isaiah (who was first called to the prophetic office in the reign of Uzziah, and prophesied under several of his successors) a striking instance of God's readiness to be "yet inquired of," even by sinners, and "found of them that sought him not." Indignant at the ferocious execution by Israel of his wrath upon Judah, the merciful God of David seems to have been moved with compassion for his people; and Ahaz was desired, through the prophet, "to ask a sign (or miracle) "of the Lord."

"

MARY. What did he ask, Mama? I am sure the Jews, in our Saviour's time, were always asking "a sign!"

MAMA. Yes, Mary; but the very same unbelief which made them ask one (in the face of innumerable daily wonders) induced Ahaz to decline one. He pretended a dislike to " tempt God;" but this could only be a pretext in one who had full authority to tax Jehovah's power to the uttermost, by asking it "either in the depths or in the height above!" To prove as it were God's indignation at his lukewarmness, and extension of his despised mercy to the whole human race, it was at this time that He was graciously pleased to hold forth, to generations unborn, that "precious sign" afterwards so remarkably fulfilled

"Behold a virgin

in our Lord Jesus Christ. shall conceive and shall bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel;" which you know, Mary, and ought always to remember, the Evangelist tells us, signifies "God with us."

X

230

MORNING TWENTY-FIFTH.

LESSON.-2 Kings, Chapter xvii.

MAMA. This chapter, my dear Mary, contains within its compass a full and fearful enumeration of those enormities which at length totally alienated God from his people Israel, and provoked him to remove them out of his sight; and of the execution of his judicial and long-threatened sentence, by his appointed minister the king of Assyria. What did I tell you he was expressly called by Isaiah?

MARY. The "Rod of God's anger."

MAMA. Yes, my dear; and, again, "In the same day shall the Lord shave witha razor that is hired;" namely, by them beyond the riverthe king of Assyria. (And still more explicitly -how could such warnings be disregarded?)"Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah, that go softly;"-meaning the pure service of the true God-" now, therefore, the Lord bringeth upon them the waters of the river,

strong and many-even the king of Assyria." In reading these contemporary prophecies, which you shall do shortly, and with more effect from your previous knowledge of the history to which many of them refer, it is most striking to see how the prophet's own mind is cheered and illumined amid the impending destruction of his nation, by the gradual unfolding of the more universal and spiritual salvation of his God! The chapter of Isaiah I quoted to you yesterday, contained (at this very season of darkness and tribulation) the first explicit revelation of Christ, as the incarnate God; and it is in the midst of the accumulated horrors which attend God's vengeance that the prophet bursts forth in that magnificent strain we have so often admired together, as the sublimest the Scripture can afford: "For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given ; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!" Though, probably, Isaiah had not, like us, the privilege of fully understanding and appreciating his own sublime predictions; yet, no doubt, promises so " great and glorious" supported and consoled him under the apostasy and rejection of his countrymen. On them many a pious heart rested during the long and frequent captivities: and to Daniel they were,