e sea," without pausing to indicate any
intervening period of darkness and depression.

Still a third pure specimen of this form of prophecy occurs in
the fifty-ninth and sixtieth chapters of Isaiah. The former of
these two chapters is occupied with a description in very dark
lines of the sins of God's covenant people (ver. 1-15), and of
God's interposition in awful majesty to vindicate his own cause
(ver. 16-21). Immediately upon this follows, in the sixtieth
chapter, a vision of the latter-day glory that has no parallel
in the Old Testament for brightness, extending down to the full
establishment of the millennial age. But _when_ shall these
things be? How long shall the present age of iniquity endure?
And when Jehovah appears to save the cause of truth and
righteousness, shall it be by a single interposition or a series
of interpositions? If by the latter, how widely shall they be
separated, and what dark scenes shall intervene? When shall the
promised Redeemer appear, and how long shall his work be in
progress before that blessed consummation contained in the
promise: "Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon
withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be ended?" On all these
points which involve the element of time the prophecy maintains
a majestic silence. The closing promise indeed is: "I the Lord
will hasten it in his time;" but with the Lord one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The time for
the consummation of God's plan to rescue this apostate world
from the dominion of Satan--how many slowly revolving centuries
may it include, and what fierce and bloody assaults of the
adversary, compelling God's suffering people to cry out: "O
Lord, how long!"

The whole of the prophecy of Joel belongs to the class now under
consideration. It begins with impending judgments, and closes
with the conflict and triumph of the last times: "Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is
near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be
darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord
also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem;
and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the Lord shall be
the hope of his pe