DISC.

X.

-Remember, O Rachel, my mother, the days that are paft, and call to mind God's wonders of old time. Remember how thou forrowedft, when thou broughteft forth my father Benjamin, as fearing left he should have died with thee, or before thee. Yet after thy pains hadft thou this joy, that a man was born into the world. And though thou didst impose upon him a name betokening forrow, yet his father wifely changed it into one predictive of better things. Remember, when Benjamin, for the good of his brethren, was called to go down into Egypt, how Jacob fuppofed him loft, and complained that he was bereaved of his children. But, notwithstanding thefe ill bodings,` Benjamin, at length, returned in fafety, with his brother Judah; the father was again bleffed with the fight of his youngest and beft beloved fon, the light of his eyes, and the staff of his old age. Such, at this time, my mother, is thy fear and forrow; but greater, hereafter, fhall be thy comfort, and thy joy. Benjamin is indeed led

captive

X.

captive into Babylon; but Judah is once DISC. more gone with him, as his pledge; and if he bring him not back.again, let the blame be his, yea mine, yea God's for ever. "For thus faith the LORD, if my cove

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nant be not with day and night, and if I "have not appointed the ordinances of hea"ven and earth, then will I caft away the "feed of Jacob and David my fervant, fo "that I will not take any of his feed to "be rulers over the feed of Abraham, "Ifaac, and Jacob-for I will cause their

captivity to return, and have mercy on

them-yea I have fworn by my holiness "that I will not fail David." Now, my mother, while this promise lafts, in general, to Ifrael, as Abraham's feed, Benjamin must have his portion in the bleffing. And while it remains good in particular to the feed of David, Benjamin, for his faithful adherence to Judah, in profperity and adverfity, muft participate with him in the prerogative. And when the kingdom fhall be restored, as reftored it will be, whoever fhall fit on the left hand, faithful Benjamin muft

T 4

DISC. must fit on the right hand of the throne of

This, taking all circumstances into the account, feems to have been the import of Jeremiah's confolatory addrefs to Rachel, in the day of her calamity. And his words, or rather thofe of the Almighty, were, in their fullest import, made good to her. Within feventy years, it came to pass, that the pofterity of Benjamin returned, with Judah, into the land of Promife, and inhabited Jerufalem, Bethlehem, and other bordering cities, promifcuoufly with the royal tribe. "Her work was rewarded

her patient expectation, in faith and hope of the promises made her, failed not of it's fruit, in the appointed season: her "chil"dren came again from the land of the

enemy to their own border," as the LORD had foretold by his prophet; they

"returned, and came to Sion with fongs;

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joy was upon their heads," and in their

hearts; " and forrow and fighing flew

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" away!"

We

We are now prepared to take a view, as Disc. was proposed in the

Second place, of those parallel circumftances which offer themselves, in the lamentation of the Bethlehemitish mothers, and the cause thereof, with the confideration which was to administer comfort to them in the day of their great and most bitter affliction.

The death of the tribe of Benjamin, in conjunction with the tribe of Judah, in the time of Jeremiah was a civil death, a departure into captivity. Their restoration from it was, confequently, a civil restoration, a restoration to their ancient city and polity in their own land. The death of the Bethlehemitifh infants was a bodily death, by the fword of Herod; their reftoration must therefore be a reftoration to the bodily life, thus violently taken. from them, that is, it must be a refurrection. Rachel's prefent lamentation for the bodily death of her children must have a

comfort

X.

DISC. comfort anfwerable to it, as her former la

X.

mentation for their civil death had a comfort anfwerable to that. Let us fee what analogy and proportion the forrow and joy in one cafe bear to the forrow and joy in the other.

There is no need to fhock your feelings, by endeavouring to draw a picture at large of this day's most abominable maffacre. Suffice it to fay, that the bloody murder of children, in their, tenderest and most helplefs eftate, torn from the arms, and butchered in fuch multitudes, before the eyes of their mothers, muft again cause "a "voice to be heard, lamentation, and "weeping and great mourning;" great, beyond the conception of any, but those who then expreffed, or were witneffes to it. We cannot read the words which defcribe it, without imagining, that we hear Rachel, called from her tomb near Bethlehem, "weeping for her children;" that we see her turning away, and " refusing to "be comforted for her children, because