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 spurious good which was then so prevalent in the church, and which mingled in all the wickedness of Ahab's reign. Polluted bread in connexion with false persuasions—the flesh in the bills of ravens—is all that the church, in a state of famine and desolation, has to offer. The prophet received this food to shew the people their state of wickedness and perversion, and that instead of eating the bread of heaven and drinking the water of life, they appropriated what was evil and false. To shew them this, he ate the food brought by ravens, and drank of the brook that was soon to be dried up. In this condition the church is in ruins, and in prophetic language, "the cormorant and the bittern possess it; the owl and the raven dwell in it." (Isa. xxxiv. 11.) The knowledge that is suitable to a corrupt age, gives no lasting or permanent delight, it fails to reach the wants of immortal beings, and like Elijah's brook, Cherith will soon dry up! If heaven be our object, we must eat of the bread that Jesus gives, and drink of Him, the Fountain of Living Waters.

EW, perhaps, at first sight will be able to discern in the words, "Ephraim is a cake not turned," any instruction that may be called religious, as connected with man's progress in the Christian life; and yet it will be found that if any one should, in this world, live and die in that frame of mind denoted by an unturned cake, his religion will prove a deception,