conclude that in his time the corruption had gone no greater length.

Now, that Job was a prophet is so universally confessed, that it is needless to dwell upon the proof of it. He was a prophet in the declining age of the patriarchal church, in the interval between Esau, from whom he was descended, and Moses, whose time he preceded; and he prophesied in an idolatrous country where the sun and moon were worshipped.

In this idolatrous country he prophesied of the Redeemer; and it is a circumstance that deserves particular attention, that he prophesies of the Redeemer, not without manifest allusion to the divinity of his nature, and express mention of the resurrection of the body as the effect of his redemption ;— two articles of our creed which we are told with great confidence are modern innovations; whereas we find them not only in the Jewish prophets, but in far more ancient prophets of a more ancient church.

"I know," saith Job, "that my Redeemer "liveth; I know that he now liveth;" that is, that his nature is to live. He describes the Redeemer,

you see, in language much allied to that in which Jehovah describes his own nature in the conference with Moses at the bush. Jehovah describes himself by his uncaused existence; Job describes the Redeemer by a life inseparable from his essence. "I know that in the latter days this ever-living Re"deemer shall stand upon the earth. He shall "take up his residence among men in an embodied "form; God shall be manifested in the flesh to de"stroy the works of the Devil: He shall stand upon "the earth in the latter days; in the last period of "the world's existence;" which implies that this standing of the Redeemer upon the earth will close the great scheme of Providence for man's restoration; "And although he shall not stand upon the "earth before the latter days, yet I know that he is "My Redeemer; that my death, which must take "place many ages before his appearance, will not "exclude me from my share in his redemption. For "though after my skin worm's destroy this body, yet "in my flesh shall I see God. Though nothing will "be then remaining of my external person, though "the form of this body will have been long destroy❝ed, the organization of its constituent parts demol❝ished, and its very substance dissipated, the softer "part become the food of worms bred in its own "putrefaction, the solid bones moulded into powder;

"notwithstanding this ruin of my outward frabric, "the immortal principle within me shall not only "survive, but its decayed mansion will be restored. "It will be reunited to a body, of which the organs "will not only connect it with the external world, "but serve to cement its union with its Maker. "For in my flesh, with the corporeal eye, with the 66 eye of the immortal body which I shall then as66 sume, I shall see the divine Majesty in the person "of the glorified Redeemer."

Such was the tenor of Job's prophecies, of a prophet of the Gentiles; and such was the light which God granted to the Gentile world in the first stage of its corruption. And that this light was not withdrawn till the corruption attained its height we learn from the second instance, the Aramæan prophet Balaam.

What might be the exact degree of the degeneracy in Balaam's country, I cannot take upon me to determine. But the bordering nation, the Moabites, were addicted to that gross idolatry which made homicide and prostitution an essential part of its religious rites. From the extreme depravity of the times, and from the wickedness of Balaam's own character, it has been doubted whether he was pro

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perly a prophet. It has been imagined that he might be a sorcerer, who practised some wicked arts of magical divination, and owed his fame to the casual success of some of his predictions; that those remarkable prophecies which he delivered when Balak called him to curse the Israelites, were the result of an extraordinary impulse upon his mind upon that particular occasion, and no more prove that the gift of prophecy was a permanent endowment of his mind, as it was in Job and the Jewish prophets, than the speaking of his ass upon the same occasion proves that the animal had a permanent use of the faculty of speech.

The difficulty of conceiving that true prophets should be found in an idolatrous nation, if I mistake not, I have already removed by the analogy which I have shewn to subsist between ancient and modern corruptions. The difficulty of conceiving that the gift of prophecy should be imparted to a wicked character, will be much soitened, if not entirely removed, if we recollect the confessed crimes of some of the Jewish prophets, and the confessed indiscretions of some persons who shared in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit in the primitive churches. And if once we admit, as the evidence of plain fact compels us to admit, that the gift of pro

phecy is not always in proportion to the moral worth of the character, we must confess it to be a question which is beyond the ability of human reason to decide, in what proportion they must necessarily correspond, or with what degree of depravity in the moral character the prophetic talent may be incompatible. Balaam's impiety at last ran to the length of open rebellion against God; for he suggested to the king of Moab, as the only means by which the fortunes of the Israelites could be injured, the infernal stratagem of enticing them to take a part in that idolatry for which, by the tenor of his own predictions, the Moabites were destined to destruction. But this apostasy of Balaam's was subsequent to the prophecies that he delivered to Balak, and was the effect of the temptation which the occasion presented, the offer of riches and preferment in Balak's court. It is probable indeed that his heart had never been right with God, or these objects could not have laid hold of him so forcibly. But this, for any thing that appears from the sacred history, might be his first act of open impiety and rebellion; and the conclusion, that in the former part of his life he had been too bad a man to be honoured with the prophetic gift, is precarious. The circumstances of the story are of far more weight than any reasoning built upon such preca.

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