figure the calamities of Babylon; and not yet exhausted (as the phrase is), may be also premonitory of the woes coming on Jerusalem. This fictitious coinage of the theological brain stands out in painful contrast to our Lord's declaration that the affliction then approaching should never be repeated. "Neither shall be"; "No, nor ever shall be." They who suppose the judgments pronounced upon Jerusalem to be typical of judgments yet future, can only suppose so: but it is not well to rest the faith and hope of the Church on a supposition not borne out by the precedents of similar prophecies, and negatived by the prediction itself.

It would then appear almost self-evident, that a system of interpretation which could render the sacred volume consistent with common sense and with itself would stand out in agreeable contrast from this discord of the theological mind; and no small aid would be given to the Biblical student if it could be shown that the prophecies of our Lord in the Gospels, and the reiteration of those prophecies in the Epistles and the Apocalypse, proclaim one continuous and harmonious fact, the precise period of the accomplishment of which can be accurately determined, the particular object satisfactorily ascertained, and whose near approach was the unvarying theme of the universal Church in Apostolic days.

Neither should it be overlooked, that the admission of the positive statements of Scripture respecting the Advent, in their widest sense, would do much to establish Christianity on a firmer basis.

To deny that a " smouldering scepticism" does not pervade religious thought in the present day, would be to contradict observation and experience. Thinking men are scarcely satisfied with the arguments generally adduced in defence of existing systems, and reason has already entered into an unholy contest with faith. The Christian advocate, unable to bring forward any solid argument in behalf of the truth of Christianity from prophecy, is disarmed of his best weapon. Unlike the Jew, who could point to the fulfilment of prophecy as an evidence of the inspiration of the Old Testament, the Christian, by a suicidal act, weakens, if not destroys, the prophetic argument of the New. When pressed by the intelligent Hindoo to reconcile the words of our Lord and his Apostles with an Advent delayed over nineteen centuries, he is powerless in the hands of his opponents; or when required to accommodate the persuasion of immediate blessedness or misery after death, to the idea of a distant day of retribution, he is driven to invent what may be called a Protestant Purgatory. And even amongst Christian assemblies the anachronous exhortations of the preacher respecting an Advent which, like the sword of Damocles, is thought to be ever suspended over the Church, exert no visible influence on the lives and conduct of men. The doctrine of an approaching Millennium has no sensible bearing on the transactions of business, or on the commercial speculations of its advocates. Applicable as such exhortations may have

been in an early age of the Church, when even the term of natural life was to be anticipated by the day of the Lord, they have now only a tendency to cause weak and feeble women to part with their possessions and goods, or to become hysterically anticipative of an imaginary convulsion of all things. But it is not by arguments of such a doubtful kind that the truth of Christianity is to be supported. It is capable of a firmer basis and a more certain defence. Above the proof to be derived from the excellence of its moral precepts and their universal adaptability to the wants of mankind, above even that afforded by its miracles and its mighty works, the argument from fulfilled prophecy would be an incontrovertible and an enduring evidence that Christianity is from God. Unlike the prophecies of the Old Testament, of which it has been said (whether correctly or not) that the predictive element is less abounding than the moral, it is impossible to eliminate prognostication from the prophecies of our Lord. The fulfilment of these prophecies demonstrates his religion to be true: and we cannot but regret the weakness which, in these days of distrust, would invalidate the proof we have, by extending it to the support of theories with which it is not concerned.

Another advantage which might not unreasonably be expected from a recognition of the Second Advent as a past event, would be the effect it might have in the conversion of the once chosen people.

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The Jew, it must be allowed, in spite of strenuous efforts for his Chistianization, is as stiffnecked and unimpressible as in the days of St. Paul; and the arguments employed for his conversion are not calculated to effect much alteration in his sentiments. The Saviour, when sinking in weakness before the malice of enemies who, unconvinced by miracles, still called in question his Messiahship, held out as a last and convincing proof the threatened vengeance of an approaching and a decisive Advent. In answer to the solemn interrogatory put to him by the High Priest in the presence of the Jewish Sanhedrim, I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said; nevertheless I say unto you, hereafter (from just now, i.e. immediately) shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." This was the confirming proof which he declared he would give them of his divine mission. For that proof they waited forty years. During that unique and extraordinary period two Religions, equally claiming divine origin, and equally attested by miracle, ran parallel and side by side. It was then a legitimate question which of the two was the most worthy of credit -The Law or the Gospel? Sinai or Calvary? Moses or Christ? This most important question was not then decided: the Christian stoutly affirming, "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night," and the Jew asking in sublime scorn, "Where is the promise of his coming?" But when the "End" came upon the Holy place and the Sanctuary; when Temple and Priest, Altar and Sacrifice, Religion and Nation, sank in one common and irremediable ruin, then

there was something to witness to the fact, and the proof, so long withheld, was undeniably manifested, that Jesus was the Christ.

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This proof, the object of which was to bring a terrible conviction to the Jew of that age, is ignored, explained away, or withheld from his descendant. In order to induce him to embrace Christianity, he is chiefly reminded of the terrors of a distant Advent, although he has not sufficiently pondered the consequences of one already past. A different theology might have produced a different result. What if he had been told that Christians are in possession of a Book descriptive of the scenes accompanying that Advent of wrath upon the chosen people that his nation is principally concerned with the sublime visions of the Apocalypse-that the Book is thoroughly Jewish in its complexion and character that in chap. vi. "the souls of them that had been slain are seen under the Altar-that the saved ones of chap. vii. are sealed "from the twelve tribes of the children of Israel". - that in chap. ix. mention is made of a city spiritually called Sodom and Egypt," and identified with Jerusalem, for it is added, "where also our Lord was crucified"- that in chap. xviii. the same city, mysteriously called Babylon, must also be identified with Jerusalem, because in her was found the blood of saints, apostles, and prophets, and "it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" -that "Babylon is fallen, is fallen," in hopeless and irremediable desolation, never again to become the city of God; and that the "New Jerusalem" (Christianity still inscribed with a Jewish name) is from henceforth to be the universal and imperishable religion of mankind ;-might not such a representation of the calamities which have fallen upon the Jewish house have long ago convinced the Jew of the futility of his persevering rejection of the Messiah, and have assured him that the proof which he demanded at the Crucifixion has been abundantly afforded?

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We may add to this, that a recognition of this truth would do much to preserve the Church from divisions and uncharitableness.

This prolongation of an event beyond its dispensational limits, this attempt to fill up a space respecting which Scripture is silent, has been the starting point of error as well as the fruitful source of unkindness. The followers of Mr. Irving, having rightly concluded from Scripture that certain gifts of healing, tongues, prophecy, &c., were to be exercised in the Church until the period of the Lord's second coming, have been naturally led to expect a continuance of these miraculous powers. On the supposition that the event has not occurred, they are consistent in saying they ought to have the gifts. Yes, they ought to have them but where are they? Show us but one miracle, and it sufficeth us. This futile attempt to revive miraculous powers which were intended to be only of a dispensational character, demonstrates either that the Advent has passed and the gifts have ceased, or that, if not now exercised, they are in abeyance in the Church. The disciples of Swedenborg have equally made the Advent the starting point of error. Admitting an Advent in power instead of in person, and conceding

(which is a still greater point) that it is "un fait accompli "; with a strange recoil from truth they suppose the time of the Advent to be that of the French Revolution in 1775, and the evidence that it is past is sought for in the enlightenment of modern Europe. Calvinists and Arminians have wrangled fiercely on the much-disputed questions of election and final perseverance; but what if it had been seen that the election of Scripture simply comprehended those gathered from the four winds of heaven by the Apostolic ministry, and that final perseverance was a quality distinguishing those who should "endure unto the end," amidst the persecutions of Gospel times? Difficulties have been experienced in attempting to reconcile the life-lasting priesthood of Melchisedec with the everlasting priesthood of Christ; but these would have been lessened had it been perceived that he "appeared the second time without sin (no more as an interceding priest) unto salvation;" and that the continuous (ɛiç rò diŋvɛkés, not Aaronic but Melchisedekian) priesthood of Christ ceased with the coming of that end, when all Jewish opposition being subdued, the Son "delivered up the (mediatorial) kingdom to God even the Father, that God might be all in all." High Church and Low Church have said bitter things in defence or in disapproval of Apostolical Succession; but the contest might have been less sharp had the words, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," which seem to countenance such a heaven-sent commission, been fairly and critically rendered, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age." A more Scriptural understanding of the mind and purposes of God respecting the Second Advent would have rendered variety of theological sentiment on these and cognate subjects a thing impossible, and would also have effectually precluded that unsatisfactory mode of meeting difficulties which either passes by "things hard to be understood" without notice, or else consigns them in despair to an ever distant and unassailable futurity.

And uncharitableness as well as confusion is the necessary consequence of being at sea upon principles. The Advent having been postponed beyond the limit assigned to it in Scripture, events which were to precede it have been postponed likewise. Antichrists of whom St. John wrote in his day, "Now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time," have been anachronized to signify Neologian teachers, and epithets applicable to the heretics of those "last and perilous times" have been rashly transferred to our own. The Apostacy foretold by our Lord as the precursor of his Advent, and declared by St. Paul to be "already working" in his own day, has been accommodated to refer to modern efforts to rescue sacred truth from what has been called an "invincible ignorance;" and the unrighteous deceits of the man of sin then "sitting in the temple of God" have been wrested to stigmatise the thoughtful labours of men whom the Church should delight to honour. Ah! if it had been possible to have foreseen another apostacy beyond that predicted of those last days, an apostacy over which angels might weep, might it not have been that of those who, "turning away their ears from the truth unto fables," prefer the

falsification of Scripture to the contradiction of their own theories, whilst they affect a supreme contempt for the laborious conclusions of others?

And whilst the advantages arising to our common Christianity from a uniform perception of this truth would, it is conceived, be neither few nor unimportant, the objections which might be raised against it are less insurmountable than the arguments which may be opposed to them.

Ecclesiolatry might adduce the argument from antiquity in support of opinions hoary with age and grey with the consentient acceptance of centuries; but it might be answered, that the voice of our Lord and his Apostles is before the symbols of the Church, and if the argument from antiquity were universally conclusive, then would the Mosaic law be more trustworthy than Christianity, and Protestantism itself be nothing better than a criminal schism.

Bibliolatry might assert that no event which has yet taken place has come up to the literality or the sublimity of the predictions; but it might be replied, that the desolation of Babylon, Idumæa, and Egypt is couched in similar terms, and that "expressions which would be regarded as rhetorical exaggerations in the Western world, are the natural vehicles of thought to an Eastern people."

Affection might desire an Advent in person, rather than in power, without deigning to remember that a divine Advent equally personal is depicted (Isaiah xiii. 5,) as coming upon Babylon: "They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land."

Fanaticism might wonder that the Mount of Olives has not been yet cleft asunder, nor the saints caught up to meet the Lord in the air; but caution might well fear to rest a solution of the question on an obscure passage, historical rather than predictive, of Zechariah; or on a rhetorical (yet definitely expressed with regard to time) sentence of St. Paul.

Ignorance of the laws of biblical criticism might found an argument in favour of the futurity supposed to be denoted in the Apocalypse from "the things which shall be hereafter" of Rev. i. 19; but the undeviating use of the Greek verb forbids a future signification, and the words translated "hereafter" may be proved (Rev. iv. 1) to mean things immediately consequent, and not indefinitely future.

Religious veneration might suggest, that the doctrine of a Past Advent invalidates the idea of a future Day of Judgment; without sufficient regard for the consideration, that "the judgment is set and the books are open," and that the conviction of a judgment past and passing upon every child of man must necessarily have a more constraining influence upon human conduct than the supposition of a judgment day