last. Old age without God?—it is graphically described, in this chapter, as the overturn of all worldly pride and glory-" Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth;" it is the spoliation of the earthly temple, the pillage of everything that ministered to earth's ephemeral happiness. Old age with God-it can stand with the prophet, even in the midst of catastrophe and ruin and death, claiming as its own the sustaining words, "Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."

"O joys, that sweetest in decay,

Fall not like withered leaves away;

But with the silent breath

Of violets drooping one by one,

Soon as their fragrant task is done,

Are wafted high in death!

Say not it dies, that glory,
'Tis caught unquenched on high;
Those saint-like brows so hoary

Shall wear it in the sky.

No smile is like the smile of death,

When, all good musings past,

Rise wafted with the parting breath,
The sweetest thought the last."

"And I with faltering footsteps journey on,
Watching the stars that roll the hours away,
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone;
And like another life, the glorious day

Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height

With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light."

"Kings shall see Him and arise;

Princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;

Because of JEHOVAH who is faithful,

The Holy One of Israel, that hath chosen thee (Barnes).
Thus saith JEHOVAH,

In the time of favour have I heard thee,

And in the day of salvation have I helped thee:

And I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of

the people,

To raise up the land, to colonise again desolate heritages (Delitzsch and Wordsworth):

Saying to the bound, 'Go forth;'

To them that are in darkness, 'Come to light' (Delitzsch) : They shall feed beside the ways,

And on all bare hills shall be their pasture (Alexander).

They shall not hunger, neither shall they thirst;

And there shall not blind them the mirage and sun:

For He that hath mercy on them shall lead them,

And by bubbling water-springs shall He guide them (Delitzsch).

Lo, these shall come from afar ;

And, lo! these from the north and from the sea,

And these from the land of the Sinese."

-ISAIAH xlix. 7-12.

XIV.

"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,
saith your God."

"They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them."

Desert

Mercies.

-ISAIAH xlix. 9, 10.

LET us briefly glance at the context with which this beautiful verse stands connected.

The eight preceding chapters constitute the first portion of the great Gospel of comfort; and as they seem primarily to have been designed for the consolation of the Jews in their exile, they contain frequent allusion to Babylon, the Captivity, and to Cyrus; while only here and there is interjected a reference to a mightier spiritual Deliverer.