the latter day glory “the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night:  for upon all the glory shall be a defence.”  Isa. 4:5.  Here “the figurative reference is to the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire in which the Lord went before the Israelites in the wilderness, and to the glory which rested upon the tabernacle.”  Henderson.  God will give to his church in the latter day that which the pillar of cloud and of fire signified, his glorious presence and protection.  A literal repetition of the miracle is not to be thought of.

Once more, God promises to his weary people, on their pilgrimage to Zion, that “in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” (Isa. 35:6, and often elsewhere), with obvious allusion to the miraculous supplies of water furnished to the Israelites in their journey through the Arabian desert to the land of Canaan.  The water here promised is the water of life, and not literal fountains in the desert.  Upon the same principle are we to interpret the river that flows out from under the threshold of the temple, and flows down eastward to the Dead sea, growing broader and deeper in its course, and imparting life to everything which comes within its influence.  Ezek. 47:1-12, and compare Psa. 46:4; Joel 3:18; Zech. 14:8.

13.  The same representative use is made by the prophets of the institutions of the Mosaic economy.  One of their offices was, to foretell the extension of the true religion over all the earth; the conversion of all nations to the faith of the covenant people, and their peaceful subjection to Jehovah who reigned in Zion. In what form should this be done while the theocracy was yet in full force?  The disclosure of God’s purpose to abolish this theocracy in the interest of a simpler and more spiritual dispensation, which should know no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, would have been a premature act.  It would, so far as we can judge, have led to much error and misapprehension; and it must have had the effect of disparaging the existing economy before the world was prepared to receive any thing better in its place.  God, therefore, allowed his prophets to portray the glories of the latter day, when all nations should come to the knowledge and obedience of the truth, under the forms of the Jewish dispensation, with its temple, sacrifices, and solemn festivals.

A striking example is the bright portraiture of two contemporary prophets:  “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people [Hebrew peoples, that is, as Isaiah, all the nations] shall flow unto it.  And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house