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In the thickness of the walls, which measure from eighteen to twenty feet, run the galleries; these are so ingeniously contrived, as to render it nearly impossible for the arrows, or missive weapons of an enemy, to do any execution within them. The same cautious policy is observable in those windows, or rather loop-holes, which preserve their original form, where the arches are so contrived, that no arrow, having the least elevation, could be shot into the apertures, without striking against the wall.

The new works recently formed for the defence of this important fortress, consist of different batteries, furnished with a very formidable train of artillery, casemates dug in the solid chalk-rock, magazines, covered ways, and various subterranean communications and apartments for soldiery; the latter are sufficiently capacious for the accommodation of about two thousand men, and, with their inhabitants, form a very curious spectacle; light and air are conveyed into them by well-like apertures cut in the chalk, and by other openings carried through to the surface of the cliffs.

Near the edge of the cliff stands a beautiful piece of brass ordnance, twenty-four feet long, cast at Utrecht, in 1544, and called QUEEN ELIZABETH'S Pocket Pistol, it having been a present from the States of Holland to that Queen: it carries a twelvepound shot. The touch-hole is gold, and has suffered considerably by the hand of violence, in endeavouring to pick it out: it is entirely unfit for use. There are several curious devices upon it, and some lines in old Dutch, of which the following translation has been given :

O'er hill and dale I throw my ball,

Breaker my name of mound and wall.

THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH.

(Continued from page 46.)

ADVERSITY is not at all times an efficient teacher Human pride, though

in the school of wisdom. galled by chastisement, too frequently rejects the admonition which parental kindness sees it necessary to enforce by stripes. Increasing obduracy, the consequence and punishment of such resistance, then renders more severe corrections indispensable; and stroke succeeds to stroke, until the stubborn heart is conquered, or judgment breaks the spirit which the discipline of mercy could not bend.

JEHOIAKIM, the King of Judah, was a memorable proof of the perverse insensibility induced by opposition to divine control, Instructed neither by the wisdom of his father, the excellent Jostau, nor by the sufferings of JEHOAHAZ, his disobedient brother, no sooner was he placed upon the throne, by PHARAOH-NECHO, King of Egypt, than he commenced a course of iniquity, which terminated only with his life. This awful inattention to preceding judgments, accelerated the destruction of the King, and his offending people; but that their pride and obstinacy might be wholly inexcusable, JEHOVAH Sent, by many messengers, the most explicit warnings of that. dreadful vengeance which in the end should overtake their crimes. The Prophet JEREMIAH was especially commissioned to sound the rumpet of alarm; and

▪ HABAKKUK and ZEPHANIAH prophesied at this time, as well as UZZIAI, whom JEH01AKIM caused to be put to death.. fder, xxvi. 20-23.).

that his voice might be distinctly heard, he was instructed to go into the palace of the King, and there proclaim the judgments which would quickly overtake the Monarch and his family, unless averted by repentance, and the abandonment of all their sins. He was then commanded to go up into the Temple, and to denounce the threatenings of the LORD against that sacred edifice, which, with the city, whose boast and pride it was, was to be speedily brought to desolation, if they persisted to provoke the wrath of Heaven. The priests, incensed at this unwelcome declaration, seized on the Prophet; and dragging him before the council, requested that he might be put to death but Gon, who had appointed him to be the bearer of his message, permitted not their malice to prevail. Powerful and pious friends protected him from the devices of his enemies, and asserted, in the presence of his judges, the right of those to whom JEHOVAI made his revelations to declare them to the people in his name.

These solemn admonitions were, however, equally neglected by the King and his rebellious subjects, who, perversely bent upon destruction, adhered to their delusions until the time allotted for repentance was expired.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR, King of Babylon, who was ordained to be the instrument of vengeance in the hand of the Almighty, was at this time exalted to the throne. His predecessors having desolated Ninevek, the ancient capital of the Assyrian empire, and trans. ferred to Babylon its glory and dominion, this mighty prince exulted in the subjugation of surrounding potentates, and ill endured the rivalry of the King of Egypt, who had subjected Palestine and Syria to his sway.

Not

HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH.

79

only had this formidable adversary of the South obtained authority over these intermediate countries, but he had also crossed the stream of the Euphrates, and gained possession of Carchemish, a city on its eastern banks. To an intrusion so offensive, the king of Babylon could not be accessary by an indolent repose. He therefore armed for battle, and, with the fierceness of a lion roused in anger from his thicket, fell suddenly upon his trembling prey. Carchemish was re-taken, and became a direful sacrifice to merciless revenge. The hosts of Egypt were driven back, scattered, pursued, and slaughtered; a remnant only being suffered to return to PHARAOH, to report the devastation which had overwhelmed the rest. But neither the destruction of a city, nor the annihilation of a numerous army, could satiate the pride or vengeance of an incensed, aspiring Monarch, who regarded the whole world as too confined a theatre for the display of his magnificence, and its inhabitants as only worthy to exalt his state. Elated with success, and animated with the hope of universal empire, he therefore speedily resolved to lead an army into Egypt; and, in his progress towards the rival coun try, to reduce Judea, and the rest of the revolted provinces, to a renewed subjection to the power of Babylon.

During these transactions, wherein the wisdom of JEHOVAH was rendering human restlessness and passion subservient to his own unerring purposes, repeated warnings of the scourge that was approaching were delivered, in the most pathetic, urgent, and expostulating terms, by the afflicted Prophet JEREMIAH, to his still obdurate and incorrigible countrymen. By various signs which he was ordered to employ for the

more striking exhibition of impending judgments, he strove to rouse them to a sense of danger, and to induce them to take refuge in the clemency of the MOST HIGH. By the illumination of that SPIRIT who can alone reveal the secrets of futurity, he at this time predicted, not only the immediate victories of the King of Babylon, and the calamities in which he would involve Judea and Jerusalem, but also, the duration of their bondage, the restoration of the city and the temple, and the destruction of the Babylonish empire at the end of seventy years. On the delivery of this prophecy, he solemnly recalled to their remembrance the admonitions, warnings, and reproofs, which God had, by his means, conveyed to them during the space of three-and-twenty years; upbraided them for their unkind and contumelious conduct towards himself; and bewailed their obstinate rejection of his counsels, to their own confusion and dismay.

But nothing could induce this hardened people to renounce their sins. The only consequence of these predictions, therefore, was to excite their rancour against JEREMIAH, whom, to escape his further threatenings, they shut up in prison; but GoD, who sent him for a witness, commanded him from thence to bear his testimony to the truth. That this might be performed in the most striking manner, he was ordered to collect the several prophecies he had delivered against Israel, Judah, and the neighbouring nations, to write them on a scroll, and to cause them to be read to all the people, on the solemn fast of expiation, in the temple of the LORD. This was accomplished by the aid of BARUCH, a ready scribe and a faithful friend of JEREMIAH, who wrote the words

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