name to his precious little work. In general it was not in the times of boisterous anarchy and wild uproar, that Boaz cut down his barley, and Ruth gleaned after the reapers. The fruits of the field were protected to the owner by lawful authority, and justice was administered by the elders in the gate.

If we consider that the life of man was now reduced to the common standard, that David was the fourth in order of succession from Boaz, and allow thirty or thirty-five years to be the medium standard of distance from one generation to another, the marriage of Boaz with Ruth, will be thrown upon the short administration of his townsman Ibzan, the successor of Jeptha, of which we have only a brief account: "And after him, Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel," Judges xii. 8.

Samuel is generally understood to have written both this book and the preceding, and thereby to have preserved the historical series of events from Joshua to himself, almost unbroken; and also the genealogical deduction of succession down to David, in whom the royal line of the house of Judah commenced, altogether uninterrupted. And while we behold Rahab the harlot, a woman of Jericho, and Ruth the Moabitess, not only admitted to the rank of mothers in Israel, but mothers of a race of kings, mothers in the line of "Messiah the Prince," we are admonished, as Peter was long afterward, on a different occasion, "not to call that common or unclean which God hath purified."

Israel was now enjoying the blessing of good government, but the land is visited with a calamity which no sagacity of government could foresee or prevent, and no human power remove-with famine. Bethlehem itself, the house of bread, so called from the fertility of the eircumjacent fields, sinks under the pressure of this sore evil, and Elimelech, one of the chiefs of his tribe, is, like the most illustrious of his ancestors, driven to seek subsistence in a strange land.

Every land, according to its place on the globe, has

its peculiar climate, soil, production. One is watered by the clouds of heaven, another by an inundation of the waters of the earth. Here the rain descends according to no fixed law, either as to season or quantity, there it is measured to a drop, and timed to a moment. On the regularity or uncertainty of these distributions by the hand of nature, or the intervention of Providence, depend the comfort, the very sustentation of human life; on them depends all the variation of vegetable produce, as to plenty or scarcity, as to greatness, wholesomeness, pleasantness, and their contraries. Hence the same country is one year as the garden of God for beauty and abundance, and the next as the waste howling wilderness; Canaan now flows with milk and honey, and gives bread to the full, and anon eats up its inhabitants. We hear an offended and a merciful God, by the mouth of the same prophet, reproving and threatening human thoughtlessness and ingratitude in relation to this interesting subject, in these glowing terms: "She did not know that gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal. Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, These are my rewards which my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them." And thus relents the God of grace towards penitent returning children, "I will betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy." Such is the mys

I

Thus

terious scale of both mercy and judgment. universal nature is combined in one firm league to oppress and confound God's adversary. Thus every creature, every event unites in preserving the exist. ence and promoting the happiness of his repenting, du. tiful, obedient children.

Elimelech seeks and finds refuge in Moab, for "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;" and he has given commandment, "Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab;" and that one word disarms in an instant national animosity, represses the rage of the lion, quenches the violence of fire. The fugitive of Beth-lehem-Judah finds kindness and protection among inveterate enemies; Daniel sleeps secure amongst the fiercest of the savage tribes; and the three children of the captivity walk unhurt in the midst of the flaming furnace.

We see, at first, nothing but one of those instances which every day occur, of the sad reverses to which individuals, families, states are liable; the downfall and distress of an ancient and reputable house struggling with penury, and forced into exile; but we soon discover, that the eternal eye is fixed on a nobler object, that the hand of omnipotence is preparing the materials and laying the foundation of a more magnificent fabric; that infinite wisdom is bringing low the royal house of Bethlehem, only to restore it with greater splendour.

We have before us at once the cure of pride and of despair. Behold, O man of an hundred ancestors, and of an hundred thousand acres, behold Eimelech, the son of Abraham, poor and despised; the head of the tribe of Judah, a stranger in a strange land, existing through sufferance, supplied through foreign bounty; and remember by what a brittle tenure thy privileges and possessions are held. Consider, child of adversity, whom no man knows, whom no one regards, consider yonder neglected, reduced, extinguished family, and behold from the ashes of the expiring phoenix, an im

mortal offspring arising, whose flight neither time nor space can limit, and feel thine own importance, and aim only at high things, and trust in omnipotence for the execution of its own eternal purpose.

In a country and among a pcople where names were not mere arbitrary sounds, but conveyed a meaning connected with character, with history, with expectation, those of Elimelech, "my God is king," and of his wife Naomi, "the pleasant one," from their peculiar import, must have a reference to certain circumstances in their history which are not recorded. The former might be dictated by the spirit of prophecy, and be significant, without the intention of them who imposed, or of him who bore it, of the future greatness to which the family, through the favour of Heaven, should arise, in the persons of David, of Solomon, and that long succession of princes which finally centered, and was absorbed, in the person of Christ; David's son, yet David's Lord. The particulars of his own story that have reached us, are too few and too general to admit of our discerning any reference or application of his name to his character, office or condition: but we know enough of the character and history of Naomi to justify the suitableness of the appellation to her person, dispositions and final attainments.

In the disasters which befal, and the successes which attend certain families and individuals, we behold an apparent partiality of distribution that confounds and overwhelms us. Death enters into that house, passes from couch to couch, spares neither root nor branch; the insatiate fiend never says it is enough. Whatever that poor man attempts, be the scheme ever so judiciously formed, ever so diligently prosecuted, uniformly fails; the winds, as they change, the stars in their courses fight against him. The very mistakes of his neighbour turn out prosperously, his sails are always full, his children multiply, his wealth increases, his mountain stands strong. Is God therefore unwise,

capricious, partial, or unjust? No, but we are blind, contracted, presumptuous. We can discern, can comprehend, only here and there a little fragment of his works, we are gone before the event has explained itself; it requires the capacity, the eternity of God himself to take in the mighty whole of his plan.

The house of Elimelech exhibits an affecting instance of the inequality we have been mentioning. The sad account of famine, of banishment, of degradation, of dependence, is at length closed with death. Disease of body, co-operating with distress of mind, probably the effect of it, shortens his days, and terminating his own worldly misery, dreadfully aggravates the woes of the unhappy survivors. Wretched mother, left to struggle alone with poverty, solitude, danger, and neglect: far from friends, encompassed with enemies, loaded with the charge of two fatherless children, not more the objects of affection, than the sources of anxiety and care! While Elimelech lived, penury was hardly felt as a burden; in exile thou wert always at home; secluded from society, the conversation of one still dispelled the gloom. Thy sons afforded only delight, because that delight was participated in by him who had a common interest with you in them: but all is now changed, every load is accumulated seven-fold, every comfort is embittered, every prospect is clouded: the past presents nothing but regret; the future discloses nothing but despair.

She seems to have given up, at this period, all thoughts of returning to her native country, and, making a virtue of dire necessity, attempts to naturalize her family in the land of Moab, by allying her sons, through marriage, to the inhabitants of the country. The sense of the loss she has sustained, gradually yields to the lenient hand of time, and to the sweet hope of seeing the house of her beloved husband built up, and his name revived in the persons of his grand-children. Alas, what is the hope of man! the flatterer has been