his Christian Orthodoxy (p. 296), "That the event (described in the Apocalypse) was the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, appears to us perfectly certain. The argument for this has been put in a very simple and popular form by Mr. Desprez (Apocalypse Fulfilled; London, 1854), and we think that his general reasonings are unanswerable."

But whilst the Author rejoices that he can now come forward as the accredited advocate of a newly discovered truth rather than as the solitary apologist for a dubious and uncertain theory, he is not insensible to the fact that his views are by no means generally entertained. He would attribute this partly to that unconquerable aversion to change, especially in questions of a religious nature, which is a conspicuous feature in our national character, and partly to an unwillingness to investigate a new and unpopular subject with impartiality and attention.

Praiseworthy, however, as is the determination to regard opinions hallowed by age and grey with custom, with a holy jealousy, there are limits beyond which this conservatism may be carried with disadvantage to the cause of truth. Systems of theology (it has been observed), like systems of political government, are liable to be incrusted with the rust of former ages, and it does not follow that in contending for them men are fighting the battle of the Lord. This observation is true of the defence of that theory of Apocalyptic interpretation which has endeavoured to bring down the visions of the Book to the period supposed to be assigned for the second coming of Christ; the anxiety to maintain a view capable of adding support to a foregone conclusion deepening in proportion to the importance of the principle endangered by an opposite exegesis. But such a system of interpretation, although proceeding from a laudable anxiety to preserve intact the sacredness of old opinions, does not necessarily yield an increase on the side of truth. In the earlier ages of the Church, a view was held of the Apocalypse more in accordance with the prophetic teaching of our Lord and his Apostles than that commonly entertained in the present day, and it is possible that in upholding the later theory, men's sympathies have been more enlisted in support of incrustations which have gathered round the truth, than in behalf of the truth itself.

The principle which is at the root of a satisfactory interpretation of the Apocalypse, and which must be determined before it is possible to restore the meaning which it had to the mind of him who wrote it, is the time of the second coming of Christ. This Advent is the obvious and continuous theme of the whole book, and the point to be set at rest is, whether the visions refer to past developments of wrath upon the Jewish people, or whether they look forward to future scenes with which we are supposed to be concerned. An enquiry, therefore, into the scriptural view of the Advent might help to bring to a settlement this long agitated and most important question. To this we proceed to address ourselves; and if in the course of our investigation we unavoidably come into contact with received opinions, we would desire to remember that the Scriptures are not to be made responsible for

human errors, and that to deliver them from the charge of inconsistency should be the untiring effort of every lover of truth.

When Professor Jowett asserts, in his " Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture" (p. 346), that St. Paul was "corrected by the course of events in his expectation of the coming of Christ," his language suggests a painful inconsistency between the Apostolical statements and the issue of the events themselves. Nor was St. Paul the only inspired historian against whom the charge of inconsistency can be laid. A similar accusation lies at the door both of St. Peter and St. James. Indeed, if existing theories respecting the future Advent of Christ be true, the writers of the New Testament generally were "corrected by the course of events in their expectation of that coming."

This is a grave accusation. It evidently lies at the foundation of the much disputed question of the inspiration of the Scriptures of the later dispensation: for to predicate futurity in the nineteenth century of an event which in the first century was universally taught and believed to be imminent and impending, is necessarily to call in question the authority as well as the veracity of the writers of the New Testament. The position, however, taken up by the Essayist is neither solitary nor original. Gibbon long ago directed a polite sneer against the same patent inconsistency. In chap. xv. vol. 1, of his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," he says, "In the primitive Church it was universally believed that the end of the world and the kingdom of heaven were near at hand. The near approach of this wonderful event had been predicted by the Apostles; the tradition of it was preserved by their earliest disciples; and those who understood in their literal sense the discourses of Christ himself were obliged to expect the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man in the clouds before that generation was totally extinguished which had beheld his humble condition upon earth. The revolution of seventeen centuries has instructed us not to press too closely the mysterious language of prophecy and revelation, but so long as for wise purposes this error was permitted to subsist in the Church, it was productive of the most salutary effects on the faith and practice of Christians."

This taunt, while it has been evaded, has never been answered. Like an unquiet spectre, it rises up to confront us in the nineteenth as in the seventeenth century. Grotius, indeed, hazarded the conjecture that God purposely concealed his will from the Apostles on this important subject; but this supposition fails to meet the objection, that the sacred historians were suffered to enunciate as inspired truth what the event proved to be false. When Apostolic men are "corrected” or in "error,” or give out authoritative declarations which are negatived by the course of events, it is natural to enquire, "What then did they know?" "What dependence is to be placed upon their teaching?" or, "What obligation rests upon mankind to obey their instructions?"

In this distressing disagreement between the statements of Scripture

and the conclusions of theological learning, it would be the part of piety to relieve the sacred historians of the charge of inconsistency, and to show that they were neither in " error," nor "corrected by the course of events," when they announced " the end of all things" to be imminent in their own day for whilst it would undermine the foundations of religious faith to discover a want of truthfulness in divine teaching, it argues only an error in judgment, to find imperfection in that which is merely human. We are free to confess, that it is only on the latter supposition that we are honestly able to rescue the writers of the New Testament from the charge of want of knowledge or veracity for it must be self-evident, that successfully to maintain the Inspiration of men whose statements are supposed to be contradicted by the course of events, is simply an impossibility.

Impaled then, as we are, on the horns of a dilemma, and destitute of any satisfactory mode of reconciliation, we prefer to call in question human authority to that which is divine, and to give more credit to the faintest whispers of Inspiration, than to the loudest assertions of uninspired men. We do this with the less hesitation, because we have not failed to perceive, with regret, that "Biblical criticism has been hitherto found truer to the traditions of the Church, than to the words of Christ." Justice compels us, however unwillingly, to give our assent to the accusation that, in order to preserve intact the sayings of antiquity, the "resources of knowledge have been turned into the means, not of discovering the true rendering, but of upholding a received one"; the obvious and literal meaning of words has been perverted; and when Scripture has been inadequate to furnish the sense required to support a foregone conclusion, no feeling of shame has been experienced in borrowing a more congenial sense from the use of a word in heathen writers. Thus yEveà, contrary to the sense in which it is used throughout the whole range of Scripture, has been Homerically made to signify a "race," instead of a "generation ;" and the vicious principle has been put into force, which, contrary to every true canon of interpretation, is driven "to have recourse to the meaning of a word in Polybius for the explanation of its use in Plato, or to the turn of a sentence in Lycophron to illustrate a construction in Eschylus."

And, more than this, the same phrases have been made to have opposite meanings, not only in the writings of the same age, but in the mouths of the same men. When our Lord says "My time is at hand," or St. Paul, "The time of my departure is at hand," then indeed the expression "at hand" is allowed to mean something near and impending; but when the Apostle says "The Lord is at hand," or St. Peter, "The end of all things is at hand," the same expression is distorted to mean something distant and future. In like manner, when St. Paul says, "I will come unto you shortly, if the Lord will," the passage is naturally explained of a visit which was soon to take place; but when he says, "But this I say, brethren, the time is short," the event is dishonestly and indefinitely postponed. So when our Lord affirms, "Yet a little while I am with you," it is allowed that he referred to a brief sojourn

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of a few months; but when St. Paul declares, "Yet a little while and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry," the little while is made to embrace an interval of hundreds of years. "If" (says Mr. Maurice) the writer told the hearers and readers of his day that the time was at hand, did he not mean them to understand that it was at hand? Can he possibly have designed, that what he expresses so definitely should be taken indefinitely? Can he have supported a Divine promise with an assurance which was belied by the event, or else with what, in an uninspired writer, we should call a pious fraud?" It may well then be asked, upon what principle of legitimate interpretation can an event said to be "at hand," ""nearer," "approaching," "drawing nigh," ready to be revealed," about to take place" shortly," and within "a little while," A.D. 60 or thereabouts, be wire-drawn to refer to an event which is supposed not yet to have been consummated? The Bible does not countenance such elastic systems of interpretation. Jeremiah (xxvii. 16) rebukes the false prophets for saying that a long time was a short one. "Hearken not (he says) to the words of your prophets that prophesy unto you, saying: Behold, the vessels of the Lord's house shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon: for they prophesy a lie unto you.' In his opinion, short and long were not convertible terms, but seventy years was a long time and not a short one. Such a principle as that we have condemned is vicious enough, if carried out to its full extent, to overthrow every doctrine of Revelation, to do more harm than Voltaire ever contemplated, to hold up the interpretation of Scripture to the merited scorn of the infidel, and to make "the more sure word of prophecy" the most uncertain of all.

This textual inconsistency, the weakness of which perhaps has not been sufficiently considered, must necessarily be a grave objection to every thinking mind, and can scarcely fail to be painfully contrasted with the positiveness which ignores the existence of any difficulty respecting the common theory of the Second Advent, in the pulpit. But, not to insist upon this at greater length, we prefer to avail ourselves of this opportunity of showing some of the practical advantages which a literal reception of the Scriptural doctrine of a Past Second Advent would be likely to produce.

Uniform belief on this point would serve to establish the harmony of Scripture.

According to present theories, Scripture is most inharmonious. The sounds struck, especially by Apocalyptic divines, grate harshly upon a critical and a truth-loving ear. A more painful position can hardly be imagined than that of the honest interpreter, who endeavours to reconcile a Coming which our Lord declared should take place before the generation which heard his words had passed away, with an imaginary Advent yet future. He endeavours to separate the day of judgment from the destruction of Jerusalem; but he finds the same qualities of grandeur, and the same indications of speediness, predicated

of the one as of the other. He is disposed to look for an end of all things yet future; but inspired teaching assures him that "the end of all things is at hand." He is anxious to realise the popular notion of the destruction of the material globe; but criticism tells him that the so-called "end of the world" is the end of that age, and the supposed "last days" of Christianity are the last days of the Mosaic economy. He is told of a Millennium in some way connected with the period of the Advent; but whether the Advent is premillennial or post-millennial; whether it is a personal reign on earth, or a spiritual reign in heaven; whether Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, sacrifice restored, and the Jews made the authors of salvation to the human race, or whether the Jews are to be scattered and destroyed,are questions for which no answer can be found. He is required to believe that the "Gospel must be preached as a witness to every

creature before the end should come," and that the various Missionary Societies of Christendom are diligently fulfilling the words of Christ; but he learns that in Apostolic days the sound of Evangelical truth had "gone forth into all the world," and that the "Gospel was preached to every creature which is under heaven" (Col. i. 23). He is invited to assist a Society which has for its object the restoration of the Jews to their own land; but a slight examination is sufficient to show, that all the Old Testament prophecies which speak of the return were written either before the Babylonish captivity, during the captivity, or during the actual return from the captivity; that our Lord was silent on the subject altogether; and that the words of St. Paul, "Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant, according to the election of grace," must be limited to those Jews who, repenting under the Gospel ministry, "saved themselves from that untoward generation." His reason, moreover, is insulted by the conclusions at which they have arrived who have wandered from the simple facts of Scripture. Although the speedy accomplishment of its visions is one of the most frequently reiterated and urgently expressed facts of the Apocalypse, he is surprised to find that there is scarcely an event in secular or ecclesiastical history, from the days of Constantine to those of Napoleon, which is not thought to have its corresponding symbol in its pages. Although it is most unreasonable to suppose that our Lord could have left the chronological character of his Advent an open question, or that the preachers of his Gospel could have uttered on a subject of such moment an uncertain sound, his religious sensibilities are pained to learn that, the end of the world having been vainly fixed for 1716-1793-1814-1825—1843—1849 — 1852, is once more definitely settled for 1864: the falsification of former periods being found unable to deter modern prophets from attempting to fix another epoch, to be again deferred, and again falsified, in its turn. Neither is he much helped in his enquiry by calling to his aid that safety-valve of modern interpreters called "the double sense of prophecy." Under the application of this principle, as has been said, Scripture becomes "Gallus in campanili: The weathercock upon the church tower," and may be made to mean whatever the interpreter chooses. The "burden of Nineveh" in such a case may be made to pre