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The notion is plausible; and, peradventure, it may be well-founded: but, so far as I can judge, we have not, as yet, sufficient ground for deliberately and seriously espousing it. That the Ottoman Empire still exists, is indisputable: what may be the final result of the Greek Insurrection, is uncertain. Should the present course of events terminate in the downfall of the Turcomannic Sovereignty; we should, by the then accomplished prophecy, have a positive proof afforded to us, that the sixth vial began to flow in the April of the year 1821: but, should matters turn out otherwise; we should then have an equally strong demonstration afforded to us, that the effusion of the sixth vial is still future.

On this principle, since I dare not assert that the sixth vial has begun to flow, and since at all events much that its oracle announces is still future, I deem it the most wise and the most decorous to arrange its effusion among the unfulfilled prophecies of the Apocalypse.

II. The exhaustion of the Euphrates, whenever it occurs, prepares a way for the kings from the rising of the sun.

Mr. Mede supposes, that by these kings are meant the dispersion of Judah: and, as he accounts very handsomely for their regal title on the ground of their being destined partakers of the Messiah's predicted kingdom; so, no doubt, the removal of the Turcomannic power, which at present occupies D d

VOL. III.

Palestine, would fitly prepare a way for the return of the ancient lords of that country.

Yet, in this application of the prophecy, there is a somewhat considerable difficulty. The Jews, we know, are dispersed to all the four winds of heaven; north, south, east, and west. Hence, if a commentator pronounces the Jews to be identical with these apocalyptic kings from the rising of the sun; he ought, I think, to teach us, why they are brought specially, or rather (as the terms of the prophecy seem to intimate) exclusively, from the regions of the east'.

'If there be any foundation for the general idea entertained by Mr. Mede, that this part of the oracle refers to the ancient people of God, I should incline to conjecture, that, by the kings from the rising of the sun, we ought to understand, not so much the dispersed of Judah, as the long-lost ten tribes of Israel.

The ultimate return of the ten tribes to their own land, and their political union with their brethren of the house of Judah, are alike expressly foretold both by Isaiah and by Ezekiel (Isaiah xi. 10-16. Ezek. xxxvii. 11–28.): and, in regard to their present residence, we ought most probably to seek them in those exclusively eastern regions, whither their ancestors were in old times deported.

Accordingly, in those very regions, and in other neighbouring but still strictly oriental regions, there yet subsist numerous allied communities of Israelites, who appear to have been separated from the primitive stock long before the last dispersion of the proper Jews when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans under Titus. These communities have been found in Cashmire, Tartary, Persia, Cochin, and Malabar: and, though, by successive migrations in the course of so many centuries, they are now

III. Subsequent to the exhaustion of the Eu

geographically separated from each other; yet, by letters and occasional visits, they are said still to keep up a mutual intercourse and connection. See my Treatise on the Restor. of Israel and Judah, vol. i. p. 85–90. 2d edit. Buchanan's Christ. Research. p. 310-324.

With respect to the Afghans, their connection with the ten tribes is, I think, somewhat doubtful: and, as for the discovery of the deported Israelites in the red savages of North America, a speculation first (I believe) started by Mr. Adair and since revived by Dr. Boudinot, the alleged proofs, particularly that deduced from the sacred ark which in truth was common to almost all pagan nations, are so vague and indefinite, that I confess myself to be utterly incredulous.

On the whole, I fully assent to the rational opinion of Dr. Buchanan, that the greater part of the ten tribes, which now exist, are to be found in the countries of their first captivity.

Mr. Fleming and Dr. Woodhouse, rejecting altogether the interpretation of Mr. Mede, suppose the kings from the rising of the sun to mean simply the oriental nations in general: which nations are, at present, almost universally, either pagan or mohammedan. Hence, in their view of the prophecy, the exhaustion of the mystic Euphrates will prepare a way for the conversion of those nations to the faith of the Gospel. See Fleming's Apoc. Key, p. 60. Woodhouse's Apoc. Translat. p. 404-406. The tenability of such an exposition I venture greatly to doubt.

In the first place, it does not very distinctly appear, why the oriental nations in general should be so peculiarly and as it were emphatically denominated kings. Had such nations been intended, it might seem more natural to have styled them, in ordinary scriptural phraseology, the children of the east or the men of the east. Compare Judg. vi. 3, 33. vii. 12. viii. 10. 1 Kings iv. 30. Isaiah xi. 14. Jerem. xlix. 28. Ezek. xxv. 4, 10. This difficulty might perhaps be conquered by the remark,

phrates, St. John beholds three unclean spirits, under the semblance of frogs, to go forth, from the mouth

that, in Hebrew diction, kings are put for kingdoms; so that the kings from the rising of the sun mean only the kingdoms of the east but then, in the second place, it is hard to discover, how the downfall of the Ottoman Power (for such, I think with Mr. Mede, is the only legitimate and consistent interpretation of the drying up of the mystic Euphrates) should, in any special manner, prepare the way for the conversion of the Hindoos, or the Persians, or the Thibetians, or the Chinese, or the Burmans, or the Japanese, to the faith of Christianity. In discussing this question, we must not forget the express assertion of the oracle, that the water of the Euphrates is dried up, in order that (Gr. iva) a way might be prepared for the kings from the rising of the sun. The specific object of the exhaustion, therefore, is, we see, the preparation of a way, manifestly over the now exhausted river, for these oriental princes. Hence it becomes necessary to shew, how the exhaustion of the mystic, Euphrates can be intelligibly explained, as specially preparing a way, over its now dry and sandy bed, for the general conversion of the eastern nations.

This last particular, on the contrary, would excellently correspond with a preparation for the return either of the Jews or of the Israelites to the land of Palestine; for, until the power of the Turks be broken, so that God's ancient people might pass over it as they would pass over the bed of an exhausted river, such a return is politically impossible: but I see not, how it corresponds with any conceivable preparation for the conversion of the oriental nations to Christianity.

I may add, what seems definitely to require the application of the oracle, if not to the dispersion of Judah, yet to the Israelites of the ten tribes, that the very same imagery is employed by Isaiah, in immediate and avowed connection with the ultimate general return of God's ancient people.

If, with St. John, the mystic Euphrates is to be dried up, in

of the dragon and from the mouth of the wild-beast and from the mouth of the false prophet, to the

order to prepare a way, over its deserted bed, for the kings from the rising of the sun : so, in like manner, with Isaiah, while the tongue of the figurative Egyptian sea or the delta of the widelyover-flowing Nile is to be destroyed, for the purpose of facilitating the return of the Jews from the west; the great river Euphrates is to be smitten into seven shallow streams across which men may pass dry shod, in order that, over the exhausted allegorical flood, there may be an high-way, for the remnant of the Israelites from the east, out of the land of Assyria whither they had been deported by Salmaneser. Isaiah xi. 10-16.

Now, when we recollect how perpetually and how systematically St. John borrows his imagery from the ancient Hebrew prophets, such a coincidence is, I think, too striking, to be purely undesigned and accidental. The one prediction seems naturally to explain the other prediction.

Many commentators, I am aware, from Jerome downward, have supposed the river, mentioned in Isaiah xi. 15, to be the Nile; being influenced, no doubt, in their opinion, by the mention of the imagined familiar seven streams. But, in the first place, the river in question is not smitten in its already-existing seven streams, as the matter is represented in the versions of Jerome and our English translators: but, according to the more accurate rendering of Bishops Lowth and Stock, it is smitten or divided, as in after times the Gyndes was similarly though more minutely divided by Cyrus, into seven streams, whereas before it flowed in one unbroken channel. And, in the second place, what positively determines it to be the Euphrates (which, by way of eminence, the Hebrew writers are wont to denominate simply the river), this dividing of its single stream into seven proportionably shallow streams prepares a way for the remnant of the Israelites out of Assyria: which, most clearly, on mere geographical principles, the exhaustion of the African Nile could not be decorously described as effecting.

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