LECTURE V. THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL, IN CONNECTION WITH THE SCULPTURES IN NINEVEH. "Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God."-Ezekiel i. 1. "CAN the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may they do good that were accustomed to do evil." The truth of this inspired maxim is remarkably illustrated in the history of the people of Judah, after the death of Hezekiah. They returned to their idolatrous and unholy practices, and for more than a hundred years, and under seven successive sovereigns, continued to provoke the patience, forbearance, and long-suffering goodness of Jehovah. During that long period one sovereign alone, the youthful Josiah, attempted to recover his subjects to their Divine allegiance. L He was only eight years old when he came to the throne, and during his long minority, idolatry, if not patronized, was at least tolerated by the men who administered the government. When he came of age, however, a work of reformation was commenced in earnest, and for more than twenty years he laboured to improve the morals of the people, and to restore the worship of God to the simplicity and purity of its primitive state. Still, governments can do but little to reform the morality of nations-that work must be done by the people themselves; and if they are fully set to do evil, the wise enactment and equitable administration of righteous laws, are not sufficient to turn them from transgression. Thoroughly opposed to the work of national regeneration, which their devoted sovereign had so long laboured to accomplish, the people of Judah were forsaken of God, and left to follow their own ways. King Josiah was slain in the battle of Megiddo, fighting against the Egyptians, and was succeeded by a worthless son, named Jehoahaz. After a weak and wicked administration of only three months, he was deposed by Pharaoh-nechoh, king of Egypt, who sent him a prisoner to Riblah, in the land of Hamath, and set up his brother Jehoiakim as a tributary prince in his stead. "He was a man," says Josephus, "of a wicked disposition, and ready to do mischief. He And was neither religious towards God, nor goodnatured towards men." In fact, he must be numbered with the worst of the kings of Judah, destitute alike of all reverence for religion, and all regard for morality. In defiance of the Most High, he put the prophet Urijah to death, because he had prophesied in the name of the Lord against Jerusalem and against Judah, (Jer. xxvi. 20-23;) and he seized the volume of Jeremiah's prophecies, that had been laid up in the temple, and having indignantly cut it with a knife, consumed it with fire on the hearth of his own chamber. with equal contempt for the rights of his subjects, he exacted labour without wages, and did not scruple to enforce their submission by acts of cruelty and blood. Although he had put the faithful Jeremiah under restraint, if not in a dungeon, yet the prophet boldly uttered against this godless tyrant the denunciations of Jehovah : "Therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim king of Judah; he shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them," Jer. xxxvi. 30, 31. And so he did. The most potent king that ever led forth the armies of Assyria came up against Jerusalem, put Jehoiakim into fetters, plundered the temple, and carried into captivity about three thousand persons of rank and family. These humiliations were followed by still more afflictive events, in which he himself perished; and, as Josephus states, the words of Jeremiah were fulfilled : "Concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, They shall not lament for him, [saying] Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! They shall not lament for him, [saying] With the burial of an ass shall he be buried, dragged along, "a Amongst those persons of dignity and station who were carried away captives into Assyria, the Jewish historian says, was "the prophet Ezekiel, who was then but young;" yet he was destined, within five years, to make the last efforts of inspired eloquence to arrest the downward course of his rebellious and apostate countrymen. The period of Ezekiel's ministry is usually thought to have extended over more than twenty years, and which comprised events of stupendous interest the overthrow of Jerusalem, the captivity of the Jews, and the final destruction of Nineveh. « Jer. xxii. 18, 19. Blayney's Translation. The learned Grotius has said of the prophet, "that he had great erudition and genius; so that if we set aside his gift of prophecy, which is incomparable, he may be compared with Homer, on account of his beautiful conceptions, his illustrious comparisons, and his extensive knowledge." But it does not devolve on me at this time to consider the characteristics of this inspired poet and Divine orator, beyond those passages of his prophetic writings which relate to Nineveh and the Assyrian empire, and, therefore, I shall proceed First: To NOTICE THE INCIDENTAL ALLUSIONS TO ASSYRIA WHICH ARE FOUND IN THE WRITINGS OF THIS PROPHET. That the prophet Ezekiel did really sojourn in Assyria is placed beyond question, by the manner in which he describes the places and the facts he had to mention connected with it, and the remarkable agreement between these graphic sketches and the discoveries of Dr. Layard. A portion of the captive Jews were settled at a place called Tel-abib, by the river Chebar, (Ezek. iii. 15,) whither the prophet went to dwell, that he might prosecute his ministry amongst them. It is at present somewhat difficult to identify this river, as we learn from Dr. Layard that there are two in those regions of nearly the same name; the one, |