about it and dung it." Here is shewn how the Lord will not condemn, but will act from love; will still shew his goodness and mercy to sinful man. "He is slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy." "He is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all His works." The vine-dresser would still spare the fig-tree, and dig about it, and dung it; and so will the Lord spare man, and work and strive with him, until everything is done for his salvation. The Lord did not cast off the Jewish people; He did not leave them, but they left Him; He stretched out His hands all the day long to a gainsaying and rebellious people; and at length came Himself in the flesh to save them; and only after they had rejected this His crowning mercy, did He establish His church among the Gentiles. As the vine-dresser digs about the fig-tree, loosening the soil, that he may give new life to it, so did the Lord remove the preponderating power of evil, and bring new divine influences to the hearts and minds of men. But all in vain, as regarded the Jewish church. The fig-tree would not bear fruit, and at length it was suffered to perish.

The same Divine work is done at all times in the church. The Lord comes to every member thereof; He is with him in the truths of His Word; He stands at the door and knocks; He requires every one, as a tree in His vineyard, to "bear much fruit." He knocks at the door of every heart, and nothing of man's ingratitude can send Him away. He will not leave man, but will shew forbearance and mercy, and do all that can be done to him for his salvation. He says by the prophet-" What could there have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?" (Is. v. 4.) This is a solemn appeal to the church, and it fully vindicates the Divine character and doings with men. He uses all means, and ceases not to use them, till every hope, and every ray of hope is past, and then the tree must cumber the ground no longer. "Let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and dung it; and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down."

How deeply interesting and important is the teaching of our text! We, my brethren, should take it deeply to heart, for it comes addressed to all and each of us. The Lord has created us for heaven, and placed us here on earth for a time to prepare for that kingdom, by walking in the heavenward way. He has gifted us with every means for realizing this great end of our existence. His Word is in our hands, and we have faculties and powers for understanding and practising its precepts. What love and wisdom, what glorious things are contained in His Word! He, our God, has also redeemed us, and He watches, in his Providence, continually over us. He is with us to save us individually from sin, We have but to submit ourselves, and all will be

and create us anew.

Their leaf also shall not wither,
They shall live and prosper, and

well. But while we see how the Lord is long-suffering and slow to anger, we see also that barren trees are not always to cumber the ground; not always shall they stay to mar the vineyard. The wicked are to cease out of the land. It was but for a time that the dresser of the vineyard spared the fig tree. He said—" If it bear fruit, well; and if not, then, after that, thou shalt cut it down." The same mercy which spared it for a season, would not and could not spare it for ever. The wicked must go to their own place. But the good shall inherit the land: the fruit-bearing trees shall endure for ever. Their fruit shall remain, and they shall go on and flourish. They are planted by the waters, and shall bring forth fruit in their season. and whatsoever they do shall prosper. at length shall bear fruit for ever in the paradise of God. Our text, as I have said, is appropriate at the present time. A new year has opened npon us. How short the past year appears to us! It is gone, and is now as a tale that is told. How swiftly time passes away! We look back on our past years, and say, How short they have been! How short is human life! How full of cares and troubles! How uncertain, changing, and perishing are all things human! "Man is as the grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth." Our time is short, and yet the work before us is great and important. Swiftly and silently the time may pass away, but it is fraught with lasting consequences. We are working for eternity. We are sowing now, to reap hereafter; and as we sow, even so shall we reap. Time, then, how precious! Ask a dying man its value. Ask what he would give to be able to redeem the time he has misspent.

and it is also true We have done but

These are solemn thoughts. They are truths that too many of us are still wasting time away. little of life's true duties. We have been cumberers of the ground; as barren trees we have been; and the Owner of the vineyard has come to us year by year seeking fruit, and found none, and He might justly have cut short our days. But no! Let it alone another year." Thus has our heavenly Father dealt with us, and here we are still examples of His mercy. We have now been spared another year; but at this hour we know not how long we shall experience these tender mercies. We know not what a day may bring forth.

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Let us renew our vows this day. Let us dedicate ourselves to the Lord with new earnestness. And let us do it from motives not of interest only, but of gratitude; yea, more especially of gratitude to the Lord, who, as a tender Father, is ever seeking to save and to bless us.

Let us think how He spared the fig-tree, and bless Him for such mercies as this. Let us not cumber the ground another year, but serve the Lord with diligence. So shall we be to Him as fruitful trees in His vineyard, and shall at length live for ever to His praise.

H.

ASSYRIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE WORD OF GOD,
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES.
A course of Lectures recently delivered by the Rev. T. Chalklen.

LECTURE II.

(Continued from page 496, vol. v.)

IN introducing to your attention, in my last lecture, the interesting subject of the Assyrian monuments, as illustrative of the science of correspondences, and corroborative of the doctrine of an internal or spiritual sense within the letter of Scripture, and affording, therefore, well adapted materials for the study of that science, I endeavoured to present before you a general view of life in its universal principles as organized in its source, and thence in all the successive degrees into which it flows down and manifests itself. Your attention was directed to it as first existing of itself, in the proper form of God, a divine or infinite humanity, and thence proceeding to produce the images of itself in every possible degree of existence,-this effort of life itself, or in other words, this perpetual purpose of the Lord God to create in his own image and likeness resulting in an outward material world in which are represented all things of humanity in its universal and individual forms, natural, spiritual, and heavenly; and in giving to the several parts of the universal as of the individual their respective qualities for being united into one form, one universal body or church, and in the formation, as the great end of it all, of the one grand man of heaven as the fullest finite recipient of God's infinite perfections: it was also observed, that the Holy Word is written according to the correspondence or relation which by virtue of this order of life exists between natural and spiritual things, and that therefore principles relating to the Lord's Church, or to man as created to become the church, are signified in the Word by the various kingdoms and nations mentioned therein. We also pointed out some of the characteristic features of Assyria, as described in the literal sense of Scripture and indicated in the sculp

ASSYRIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE WORD OF GOD, ETC. 11

tures, which confirm the idea that by Assyria is represented the rational faculty. The preparation of men for the kingdom of heaven being the great object of divine revelation, it comes to us clothed in language adapted to our condition. Had human nature continued in the order of its creation, there is reason to think that the truth requisite for its regeneration into the spiritual and celestial degrees of life would have been invested with a very differently constructed literal sense from that which is now given as the external form of the Holy Word. It is because of the hereditary perversions of our faculties, and the evils of life resulting therefrom, that the representatives of human principles in the Word are so much characterised by what is of evil, even when representing the good and true, and that evil and false principles themselves are representatively described by things expressed in the literal sense.

To understand this matter rightly, we must not think of the Holy Word as so consisting simply of two senses, a spiritual and a literal, as that any single natural idea expressed in the letter has just one single spiritual idea contained within it as its spiritual signification. To do so would be like thinking of a man's soul as consisting of no more than one degree of mental faculties. The fact that in the human soul are several degrees of life, either opened or undeveloped, successively interior to each other, and that within the inmost is the Lord, who is the only life itself, is analogous to the truth that in the internal sense of the Holy Word are successively interior degrees of truth, the inmost of which is the pure and perfect divine truth itself. Also, the fact that the human principles requisite to man as an inhabitant of this world, or as a natural man, are more than mere materiality, even principles of affection and thought, is. analogous to this, that the Holy Word is adapted to the condition of man's natural life by virtue of more than the mere external expressions of its letter, even by. a sense that is within these, or ideas signified by these expressions; so that when we have discovered an internal meaning lying immediately within the literal sense, we are not to conclude that we have arrived at that spiritual meaning which is understood in the heavens, much less at that which is really the divine idea iteslf, although we may know for a certainty that we have approximated nearer thereto than if we had remained in the merely literal sense. When, therefore, we find that in many instances the Scripture in its internal sense treats of unrighteousness and error, disclosing the deeply seated lusts of our fallen nature, and the fallacious imaginings of corrupt minds, we are to consider that it is the descent of divine truth into our low natural states, and its adaptation to the wants of our fallen condition, that occa. sions it to assume even in its internal sense an aspect so inferior to that

unsullied brightness with which it must shine forth as it approaches the throne of God.

It would be difficult to account for Divine Truth in its descent from the Lord clothing itself successively in this way, assuming appearances at variance with its genuine meanings to suit the states of those to whom it comes down, if we did not know that the evil and the false are not the creations of any being or beings,-not the emanations from any originating source, as all good and truth emanate from the Lord, but that they are the perversions of these, they are these wrongly received and used. A true doctrine, modified, turned, and twisted from its real meaning to suit a purpose, becomes a false doctrine. Such a false doctrine owes its existence to the true doctrine of which it is a perversion; so with these appearances of truth in the Word, and which are not to be regarded as false, although they become such in the mind when confirmed in opposition to the interior truths, they depend upon the genuine things of truth which they serve to envelop. Consequently every representative in the Word, whether immediately denoting a good or an evil, a truth or a fallacy, doubtless, as its meaning ascends towards the highest or divine degree, signifies a good or a truth, and leaves behind it every idea of the evil or the false. If this be the case, then it is not necessary that the Divine Truth, when clothing itself in natural language according to the science of correspondences, should employ opposite significations for denoting the opposites of the good and true. A genuine truth, if perverted into an opposite false notion, does not change its origin, it is the same truth spoilt; there is nothing else in God's creation that will properly represent it but the same thing which at first came forth as its natural image. Its perversions, indeed, may have occasioned the existence of their significatives in the natural world, but these will all preserve their relation to the original representative, and shew the identity of the thing signified in its genuine and its perverted conditions.

So, at least it appears to me, and in this way I think I see the reason, to drop at once upon our immediate subject, why Assyria, in the Word, while it represents man's rational principle as an essential constituent in his nature, as was shewn in our former lecture, also represents a false and perverted rationality in him and in the church, and why also the very same particulars are equally indications in both respects, whether we refer to the notices of Assyria in the Holy Word, or to those marvellous relics on which the ancient sculptor has so strongly delineated the Assyrian character. We find the names Assyria or Ashur, of Nineveh