and increased the capacity for doing ill. Scotland, which hallowed the instruction of her children, by making the reading of God's holy word an inseparable part of the course, has enjoyed peace and tranquillity in all her borders. Ireland, from whose borders the blessed word has been almost universally excluded, has been with difficulty subdued to a reluctant abstaining from evil. The one country has furnished that beautiful picture for the poet, in this case not the inventor, but the painter of a portrait.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face
They round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er wi' patriarchal grace
The big ha' Bible, once his father's pride:
His bonnet reverently is laid aside,

His lyart baffets wearin thin and bare,
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care,

And let us worship GOD! he says with solemn air.

Then kneeling down to HEAVEN'S ETERNAL King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays.

What a painful thing to mark the contrast which even late pictures of manners in Ireland with all its supposed improvement presents!

The people of Scotland have uniformly furnished to the empire its most useful citizens of the town classes, while the amiable and mildly-judging Bishop Heber glances from India to Ireland to obtain an illustration of the recklessness, proflicacy, and violence of the Hindoos. Within our own limits there is speaking evidence of the value of an acquaintance with the Bible. Peace and prosperity abound where it is read; and where it is not, there "Rock's the boy to make the fun stir"- the fun of massacres, and burnings, and perjuries-such fun described in a gay and airy style by a popular writer.

It is the bounden duty of a wise governmeut to furnish due instruction to its subjects. The public mind has, we trust, been enlightened, and led to feel the indispensableness of religious instruction. Scotland shows 'the blessings entailed on a country by a reverence for the holy word: it encourages us to hope, that such a course of instruction might, even in this country, be made salutary; and the Kildare-place Society might furnish the model. The managers of that Society will feel gratified, no doubt, at the respectful notice taken of their labours by those two publications. To their approbation we would add ours, at the same time remarking, that a little draw-back must be made. The society commenced with the adoption of the Scriptures in their schools, with the spirit of men who felt their value, but they seemed to waver, and it is to be feared, in the spirit of worldly expediency: and from what has been so mistakenly called conciliation, have given up some of their Christian liberty, and paralyzed in some degree their exertions, by restricting the reading of the Scriptures to a certain time, and a certain manner.

The result in many cases has been, that those masters who were by principle opposed to the Scriptures, sought out modes of evasion by which they could comply with the letter of the regulation, but defeat its spirit, and we believe, in no case has an enemy been coneiliated. Let it be earnestly recommended to the Society that they take up their old ground, and let them, and us, and all who love their country, join in earnest prayer to the God and Father of all, that he will stir up fit men to make known the blessed charter of our salvation to others, and that he will give to us grace to abide unto death, by that teaching in which he has made us rejoice.

The Last Days: A Discourse on the Evil Character of these our Times: proving them to be the "Perilous Times" of the "Last Days." By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. Minister of the National Scotch Church, Regent-square. London: Seeley and Burnside, 1829.

Bishop Burnet, in his History of his own times, gives an account of a waggish semi-papist, who being invited to address a prayer to some Saint Kilmaclotius, whom he knew not, uttered only somewhat to the following effect, "If thy excellencies do me no good, at least let thy defects do me no harm."

We seldom take up a book now-a-days, without a feeling much in unison with the spirit of this pithy collect. For never was there a time since Solomon first protested against that "making of books, of which there was no end," in which a man had greater need to be cautious. Of a surety as there has been among men four ages, the golden, the silver, the brazen, and the iron; so also with the press: and having fallen from the folio to the large quarto, from the large quarto to the small, we are now in all the degradation of the octavo state. Now, to write a book is comparatively a thing of nothing; and consequently every crude innovator, aided by the frightful facilities of modern printing presses, publishes monthly his hot-pressed volume, and poisons half a nation with bad metaphysics, and worse theology in less time than any worthy calligrapher of the King of Israel's day could have fashioned his reed pens, and smoothed out his rolls of parchment or papyrus.

Such a prolegomenon as this might incline our readers to say that we are in no good humour with the Rev. Edward Irving; and, to confess the truth, neither are we. Not that we have the slightest feeling of personal disrespect toward him, but that we conceive he has been actively instrumental in propagating and maintaining a religious system which is any thing but Scriptural. And certainly against this system we do protest in the very heart and spirit of sincere Protestantism. The notion of the personal advent of Christ to reign with his saints upon earth for a thousand years, is becoming, if we might so express ourselves, absolutely fashionable. And among its many advocates, the Rev. writer in question towers

aloft, a very Ajax above his fellows. With Mr. Irving, as the minister of the Caledonian church, or as the wonder of wondering London, or as the putter forth of certain strange orations in a cumbrous Gothic dialect, we have no quarrel. We have never questioned the reality of his pretensions to eminence as a preacher, or instituted any enquiry as to the causes of his popularity. But when we find this popularity (and it is confessedly very considerable) engaged in advocating what is "not according to the law and to the testimony," and in exciting false and unfounded expectations in persons of weak minds and heated imaginations; we think it our duty to state freely our opinions upon the matter, and give to our readers an opportunity at least of knowing what are the sentiments of the Christian Examiner on a subject becoming every day more engrossing and important.

We do not propose to take a complete review of Mr. Irving's entire book, but shall confine ourselves rather to the introductory discourse, which is in fact to the rest of the volume as is the root of a tree to the stem and branches. The whole volume consists of a series of discourses upon that portion of Scripture contained in the first six verses of the third chapter of St. Paul's second Epistle to Timothy, with an introductory discourse tending to prove that the last times and last days of Holy Scripture are the conclusion of the Jewish captivity, and the Gentile dispersion. In this discourse it is that the peculiar views of our author relative to the personal advent of Christ are chiefly set forward; and therefore with these, as contained therein, we would directly grapple.

We have not advanced "far into the bosom of the land," till we find the Millenarian doctrine broached. Having enlarged upon the nature of that apostacy and spirit of Anti-Christ, which, discernible in the embryo state even in the Apostolic time, was to wax gradually worse and worse till the bringing in of the last and perilous (that is our) times, Mr. Irving proceeds

"In the view of which mighty work of Satan in the church, he giveth Timothy such a charge concerning his preaching, as is not to be found in all the Scriptures besides, upon his responsibility to Christ at his appearing, when he should be raised up from the mouldering dust of the grave to stand in honour before the Great Head of the church; or if not at that judgment of the quick, then at the judgment of the dead, he should not escape. And this I take to be the reason why the judgment of the quick and the dead, separated from one another by the Millenium, are named together in the charge, in order to meet both possibilities of his proving faithful and of his proving unfaithful; the judgment of the quick being in Scripture continually pointed to as the day of the church's reward; the judgment of the dead as the day of second death and destruction unto the wicked. Now, I think, that this allusion to Christ's coming to judge the quick and the dead, besides being intended to stir Timothy up with the sense of his responsibility, or the hope of his reward, is intended to carry his mind forward to the time when these seductions of the seducer should have their end, and the mystery of Satan's iniquity should be judged.”pp. 8, 9.

Now Mr. Irving is very liberal in the use of terms of disappro

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bation (and contempt even) of those who hold not with him in the interpretation of Scripture, and who will not see with his eyes.— He must not therefore be offended if we maintain that he exhibits himself as completely to be a theological babe' (we use his own phrase) as ever did any of those whose reputation he so unsparingly vilifies. In the place above quoted, he speaks of two comings of Christ, one for the judging of the quick, the other for the judging of the dead, between which the interval of Millennial glory is to take place.

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But what think you gentle reader of his venturing to refer to 2 Timothy iv. 1, as corroborative of this view. We shall insert the scriptural passage here, to save our readers trouble, and to afford them an opportunity of estimating the character of a sound Millenarian interpretation. "I charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom-preach the word," &c. &c. Now we will venture to assert, that not one individual in five hundred, of plain ordinary sense and unbiassed minds, perusing this place would understand it, as speaking of two judgments with a thousand years between. If there be any meaning in language, the Apostle declares here that the judgment of the quick and dead shall be coincident, and that "his (Christ's) appearing and his kingdom," shall begin to take place together. But 'no' says Mr. Irving, St. Paul speaks here of two judgments;' and so the Socinians gravely assure us, that they can find nothing at all in the commencement of St. John's Gospel, declarative of the Divinity of Christ. Is there any use in arguing with such persons? Seriously we think it a very waste of time. Were it not for the sake of others, we would not pause a moment on the matter. To proceed then upon the subject: our Author arguing for the literal Millennium says

1st, That the Jews shall be made God's instruments of wrath on the Gentile world.

2d. That the Saints in their natural bodies shall dwell with Christ at Jerusalem.

3d. That the Redeemer shall be seen visibly among his people resigning as a king.

Now we shall meet those positions with Scriptures directly opposed to them

1st. "Now if the fall of them (Israelites) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their `fulness.” Rom. xi. 12.

2d. "Now this I say brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." 1 Cor. xv. 50.

3d. "Whom (that is Christ) the heaven must receive until the tinies of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.":

We are aware, that the Millennarians will object to the two last quoted texts as not making against them. As to flesh and blood inheriting the kingdom of God,' they will say, we do not con

ceive it, we believe that the bodies of the saints shall be changed.' And so do we believe it, for the Apostle tells us so, but at what time? "We shall ALL be changed," says he, " in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," but when? AT THE LAST TRUMP." Either then the Saints shall reign with the bodies of flesh and blood, and in them be partakers of the kingdom of God, or else Christ's appearing shall be at the last trump; which of the two is more consonant to Scripture let the reader judge. As to the other passage concerning Christ's continuing in heaven till the restitution of all things, they will assert that this restitution means nothing more or less than the Millennium. We would ask them, however, can all things be said to be restored, till the "new heavens and new earth" be fashioned, "wherein dwelleth righteousness."? They will hardly assert this; but it is by the fires of the judgment-day, that the whole heavens and earth shall be removed previously. Christ's coming then will be at the time of this world's passing away, not at a thousand years previous to its final consummation.

There is one grand magazine of Scripture, however, from whence modern Millennarians draw, as they conceive, unanswerable arguments against all opposers, Revelation xx. Particularly, they ask triumphantly, 'How can you account for the two resurrections spoken of there? To which our answer is, just as well as you can.' For instance, why not suppose, that the first resurrection is a resurrection not to earth, but to heaven. The thing is quite possible, and infinitely less encumbered with difficulties than the other opinion. Jude quoting a prophecy of Enoch, says. "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints." Perhaps those who have been distinguished by the blessedness of the first resurrection shall form this triumphant host, who shall wait upon the Redeemer at his appearing. Make this supposition (much more probable than the opposite one,) and the whole strength of the 20th chapter of Revelations is gone in a moment, and that reduced, where is there a strong hold which they can safely deem impregnable.

As we stated already our sole intention in meddling with Mr. Irving was, that we might express our sentiments upon a system of which he is a chief supporter, and which we strongly deprecate as contrary to the genius of Christianity. The whole thing is earthly, carnal, grovelling. "We walk by faith not by sight," said St. Paul. Modern Apostles would reverse this principle, and bid the Church labour after that better way of walking by sight, not by faith. But what is at the bottom of the entire ? A disinclination to wait God's time. An anxiety to force things on faster than the the scheme of Providence would have them. The child who will have flowers and fruit upon his tree the very day after he has planted it, we smile at; but we could weep over pious and reverend men, who from that inward eagerness to realise a coming happiness natural to our race, constituted as it now is, insist upon interpretations of the Bible inconsistent alike with the analogy of Scripture, and the deductions of common sense. As for the system which Mr. Irving advocates, its appropriate motto would be found (just