short months amused with the semblance of a crown, was compelled to take leave of his palace, and deliver himself up with his mother, his princes, and his servants, to the conqueror, whence he was carried in chains to Babylon! On this second capture of Jerusalem, the palace and temple were despoiled of their treasures, many of the golden vessels were seized, and cut in pieces, and all the nobility, the army, and artificers, to the number of eighteen thousand persons, (three thousand having been sent out of the country before the fall of the city,) were carried away, leaving only the meaner classes of the people. Over this miserable remnant, Mattaniah, the uncle of the late king, was constituted a sort of chief, yet with the empty title of king, and his name changed to Zedekiah. This name, which, signifying the justice of the Lord, was designed to keep him in mind of the vengeance that would follow his violation of the oath, which had bound him a vassal to Babylon. (B. C. 599.)

CATHERINE. What became of the prophet Jeremiah ? was he included in this sad deportation of the principal men of Jerusalem ?

MRS. M. He was still left by Providence, to serve an unworthy master. The Babylonians having left Jerusalem, a deputation came from several neighbouring kings, all tributaries of the great Nebuchadnezzar, to engage Zedekiah in a revolt from that monarch. Whereupon Jeremiah was commanded to make "yokes and bands," and send them by the ambassadors, to their several masters, commanding them to say, when they delivered these expressive emblems, that "the Lord of the whole earth had given their dominions to the king of Babylon"-that submission would be beneficial to their people, but, on the contrary,

revolt would involve them in utter ruin. And, by the same arguments, he persuaded the king of Judah not to listen to those who would but hasten his destruction.

CATHERINE. Of what use was the advice of Jeremiah to idolators unacquainted with the Supreme Being, in whose name he addressed them?

MRS. M. It did not, indeed, produce obedience to his commands, but these divine messages, together with their continual intercourse with the Jews, were calculated to shew them the difference between their graven images and the supreme Jehovah, and left them without excuse when the predictions were fulfilled.

A messenger from Zedekiah, to the king of Babylon, in the second year of his reign, afforded an opportunity to the active and benevolent Jeremiah, to write to his unhappy countrymen, expostulating with them on the folly with which they had listened to those who falsely prophecied a speedy restoration to their own land; assuring them, the appointed seventy years would not be diminished, and advising them to consider themselves as settled inhabitants in the dominions of the conqueror; and ameliorate their deplorable misfortune as well as they could, by application to business and obedience to the laws.

And, farther to console them in their present sufferings, and give them confidence in his advice, in the fourth year of Zedekiah he wrote that ample prediction of the fall of their oppressors by the Medes and Persians, which we have in the fifty-first chapter of Jeremiah; and sent it into Babylon, with a charge to the messenger to read it publicly, on the bank of the Euphrates, and then binding it to a stone, to cast it into the river, denoting by this sig

nificant action, that so Babylon should sink to rise no more !

In the fifth year of Zedekiah, the miserable captives were comforted by an eminent prophet amongst themselves, EZEKIEL, who had been carried from Jerusalem with king Jehoiakim. He was this year commissioned to preach resignation to his countrymen; and to promise to the penitent a return to their own land. The subsequent fall of Jerusalem, the dreadful end of Zedekiah, and the utter desolation of the whole land of Israel, were revealed to Ezekiel about this time.

The utter ruin of Judah being the determined object of the insatiable Nebuchadnezzar, in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, Jerusalem was again menaced by another Babylonish army. The inhabitants, in great consternation, made a show of repentance by a partial reformation of the abuses in which they had long indulged.

The near prospect of servitude to themselves, now brought them to reflect on the injustice they had exercised towards their servants, whom they had detained beyond the seventh year, the time of release prescribed by the Mosaic Law. In a moment of terror, these injured persons obtained the liberty to which they were entitled, and both the king and the people entered into a formal covenant,* to revive the neglected institutions of their still venerated lelislator. But the apprehended siege being suspended awhile by the march of Nebuchadnezzar against the neighbouring princes, who, together with Zedekiah, had manifested a disposition to rebel against their tyrant, no sooner

* A covenant was made, by dividing an animal in two parts, and the covenanting parties passing between the separated parts.

was the pressure removed, than the liberated servants were again brought into bondage by their late masters!

Once more the intrepid Jeremiah was commissioned by the Moral Governor of the world, to tell the hypocritical king, that for this gross act of perjury and oppression, in refusing liberty to their brethren-" liberty was proclaimed to the sword, to the pestilence, and to famine ;”—“ that the king of Babylon should return, Zedekiah and his people be given into his hand, and their cities be burnt with fire, and remain without an inhabitant."

Disheartened at length by the total insensibility of both king and people, and knowing that the evils he had been threatening for more than forty years, were now fast approaching, the prophet determined to abandon them to their fate, and provide for his own safety, by retiring to Anathoth, his native city. But always obnoxious to the resentment of the people by the faithful discharge of his duty, his quiet departure was now made the pretext for seizing him as a deserter to the Chaldeans, insulting him even with blows, and confining him in the house of one Jonathan, a scribe, which was at that time the common jail of Jerusalem.

CHARLES. What do you mean by a scribe?

MRS. M. A scribe, in the commonwealth of Israel, was equivalent to a lawyer with us. They were the expounders of the law, and writers, as we see, in the instance of Baruch, who wrote the prophecies from the dictation of Jeremiah.

Before the conclusion of this ninth year of Zedekiah, the appearance of a Chaldean army before the walls of Jerusalem convinced him of the wickedness and folly of wasting that time in the persecutiou of a prophet which

ought to have been employed in providing against an enemy whose perseverance and power he had already experienced. The city was rigorously besieged; provisions soon became scarce, and the terrified king, whom no argument could move, whilst he wickedly believed himself secure, had Jeremiah brought from the prison, to try whether he would yet soothe his apprehensions, by prophecying "smooth things."

Yet the divine oracle varied not. Zedekiah was to fall into the hands of the king of Babylon. But adversity, which is seen to soften the most obdurate, inclined him to listen to the entreaty of the prophet, not to remand him to the common jail of felons; he was therefore confined in the guard-house of the court, and allowed a daily portion from the scanty stock of bread which yet remained to flatter their delusive hopes of resisting the mighty monarch with success. This favour, however, was withdrawn, when pestilence and famine spreading universal distress over the mourning streets of Jerusalem, he was again called upon for a word of hope and comfort from the Lord. No abatement or disguise of the unalterable decree being allowed— nor any alternative but to perish in the city, or to save their lives by going out, and surrendering themselves to the besiegers, the exasperated princes denounced their best friend, as one who weakened the hands of her defenders by his terrifying predictions, and an enemy to his country, and threw him into a deep and noisome dungeon; where he must have perished inevitably, but for the compassion of one of the king's servants, who obtained for him the privilege of another transfer to his prison.

Whilst the holy city was in this miserable state, Ezekiel, in Babylon, declared the judgment of God against