or by supernatural intervention,—­who can tell?  “Zion shall arise and shine....  The Gentiles shall come to its light, and kings to the brightness of its rising....  Violence shall no more be heard in the land, nor wasting and destruction within its borders....  They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord....  And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.”

This is the sublime faith of Christendom set forth by the most sublime of the prophets, from the most gifted and eloquent of the poets.  On this faith rests the consolation of the righteous in view of the prevalence of iniquity.  This prophecy is full of encouragement and joy amid afflictions and sorrows.  It proclaims liberty to captives, and the opening of the prison to those that are bound; it preaches glad tidings to the meek, and binds up the broken-hearted; it gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.  This prediction has inspired the religious poets of all nations; on this is based the beauty and glory of the lyrical stanzas we sing in our churches.  The hymns and melodies of the Church, the most immortal of human writings, are inspired with this cheering anticipation.  The psalmody of the Church is rapturous, like Isaiah, over the triumphant and peaceful reign of Christ, coming sooner perhaps than we dream when we see the triumphal career of wicked men.  In the temporal fall of a monstrous despotism, in the decline of wicked cities and empires, in the light which is penetrating all lands, in the shaking of Mohammedan thrones, in the opening of the most distant East, in the arbitration of national difficulties, in the terrible inventions which make nations fear to go to war, in the wonderful network of philanthropic enterprises, in the renewed interest in sacred literature, in the recognition of law and order as the first condition of civilized society, in that general love of truth which science has stimulated and rarely mocked, and which casts its searching eye into all creeds and all hypocrisies and all false philosophy,—­we share the exultant spirit of the prophet, and in the language of one of our great poets we repeat the promised joy:—­

     “Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise! 
      Exalt thy towering head and lift thine eyes! 
     See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
     See future sons and daughters yet unborn! 
     See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
     Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend! 
     See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
     And heaped with products of Sabaean springs! 
     No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
     Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
     But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
     One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze