f Christ, for this is the end towards which they look.
Desolating judgments prepare the way for the King of glory to appear.
After the storm of thunder and hail there follows a serene light, "as
the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without
clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining
after rain." The mind of the inspired bard hastens onward towards the
glorious _end_ of God's judgments, without pausing to give us, what it
is not necessary that we should know, the chronological distance of that
end.

(3.) The progress of God's kingdom gives continual _indications of the
end_ towards which it is tending. The first great interposition of God
in behalf of Israel contained in itself a pledge of all needful help for
the future, and thus of a final triumph in the future; for it was a
manifestation of both God's absolute power to save his people, and his
absolute purpose to save them. The full idea embodied in this
interposition is summed up in the closing words of their triumphal song
on the shore of the Red sea: "_The Lord shall reign for ever and ever_."
What was true of this deliverance was true of every subsequent
deliverance. In each of them separately, and in the whole of them
collectively, lay the promise: "Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of
Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One
of Israel. Behold I will make thee [make thee to be] a new sharp
threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and
beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them,
and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter
them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy
One of Israel." Isa. 41:14-16.

The _chastisements_, moreover, which God inflicted on the covenant
people through the temporary ascendency of their enemies, and in other
ways, gave in like manner indications of a final triumph of the cause of
truth and righteousness. However great their severity, they were always
so ordered that God's people were _never destroyed, but always purified_
by their power, and thus the way was prepared for their future
enlargement. This purifying tendency the divinely illumined eye of the
Hebrew prophet clearly discerned. What wonder, then, that he should have
constantly connected with present or impending judgments glorious
promises respecting the future. The destruction of Sennacheri