of his providence contributes something towards its progress, what wonder if we find in prophecy events separated by many centuries of time immediately connected as cause and effect?  Does the prophet predict the overthrow of Sennacherib’s army, or the coming desolation of Jerusalem by the Chaldean armies; he connects these calamities immediately with the advent of Christ, for this is the end towards which they look.  Desolating judgments prepare the way for the King of glory to appear.  After the storm of thunder and hail there follows a serene light, “as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”  The mind of the inspired bard hastens onward towards the glorious end of God’s judgments, without pausing to give us, what it is not necessary that we should know, the chronological distance of that end.

(3.) The progress of God’s kingdom gives continual indications of the end towards which it is tending.  The first great interposition of God in behalf of Israel contained in itself a pledge of all needful help for the future, and thus of a final triumph in the future; for it was a manifestation of both God’s absolute power to save his people, and his absolute purpose to save them.  The full idea embodied in this interposition is summed up in the closing words of their triumphal song on the shore of the Red sea:  “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.”  What was true of this deliverance was true of every subsequent deliverance.  In each of them separately, and in the whole of them collectively, lay the promise:  “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.  Behold I will make thee [make thee to be] a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth:  thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff.  Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them:  and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel.”  Isa. 41:14-16.

The chastisements, moreover, which God inflicted on the covenant people through the temporary ascendency of their enemies, and in other ways, gave in like manner indications of a final triumph of the cause of truth and righteousness.  However great their severity, they were always so ordered that God’s people were never destroyed, but always purified by their power, and thus the way was prepared for their future enlargement.  This purifying tendency the divinely illumined eye of the Hebrew prophet clearly discerned.  What wonder, then, that he should have constantly connected with present or impending judgments glorious promises respecting the future.  The destruction of Sennacherib’s army by the destroying angel, and afterwards of Jerusalem itself by the Chaldean armies—­the former event so joyous in its outward form, the latter so sad—­these were both alike to the prophet’s vision parts of the preparation through which God was carrying his people for the future glory and blessedness of the latter days.  He accordingly connected both with bright visions of the future, without pausing to notice the intervening centuries, respecting the duration of which he had no commission to speak.