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 and conceal not; say, Babylon is taken. For out of the north there shall come up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein; they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast;" or, in other words, every celestial and spiritual blessing, to be learned from the Divine Word of the Lord, shall be withdrawn and utterly vastated.

The sole and exclusive purpose of every species of infliction upon man by the Most High God, is to bring him to a proper sense of his weakness and his depravity, and induce him to place an entire dependence on a power superior to himself: we may always console ourselves with this encouraging reflection, that our Heavenly Benefactor never afflicts His children willingly, and but to bring about some important end in connection with their, eternal welfare, for "whom he loveth, he chasteneth."

HATEVER may be the effect produced on men by the cry of the Watcher and the Holy One, the consequences of turning a deaf ear to it are no less clear than decisive. We will consider the cry of this Watcher—this Holy One—as the voice of the Divine Truth; in other words, as the Word of the Most High God Himself. Now, what would have been our state at this moment, had we been left to the