ners; were offences which, rapidly staining the purity of the national faith, were scourged with terrible severity.

Protestantism in Europe now stands precisely in the same position with Judah in the midst of the fallacies and temptations of the ancient world. Germany, the land of the Reformation, seems, even at this moment, to invite the scourge. The scandalous corruption of domestic life in her courts and cities, the jacobinical turbulence and vice of her colleges, and the enormous and even ostentatious infidelity of her theologians, have made that great country long a fearful object to every man who knows that for such things there is an inevitable reckoning. How far the innate virtue of Protestantism may be able to sustain itself, must be a trying question. But the era is already begun which shall see a general struggle of truth against fallacy and religious contamination throughout Europe. The scourge fell on the Jewish Church, in the interval succeeding the partition of the Macedonian empire. The interval succeeding the fall of the French empire, takes the same place in providential history, and will witness the same extent of evil, for the same exorbitant offence, upon the inheritor of the spirit and privileges of Judah, the Church of European Protestantism. As Epiphanes prostrated the Jewish altars, crushed the nation, and dragged the people in chains to a senseless and abhorred

worship; Europe may yet see the Church all but extinguished, its temples desecrated, and some new shape of tyranny, thoroughly infidel, forcing upon all men some new and monstrous observances, on penalty of the worst vengeance that belongs to the heart of a tyrant. From this intolerable shame and torment some may escape; but they will be protected only for their clearness from the original crime of the nation.

But many even of the pure will suffer, as in all persecutions; and be called on by Heaven to give up their lives in attestation of their faith. There will be finally a renewal of martyrdoms to a great extent, followed by reactions, and those again followed by new horrors of pollution and blood; until the full satisfaction shall have been made.

Strong and high coloured as views of this kind may appear, they are but the mere restatement of facts which have already been before the eyes of mankind. We have but to read the Book of Maccabees, to see what miseries may await nations which allow religion to fall to the ground through native negligence, or the adoption of foreign crime. If we are to be told, that in a civilized age such things are impossible, we have only to turn to the pages of the last half century, and refer the doubter to the transcript there by the hand of Revolution, in the most polished period of the most polished nation, the Greece of the modern world. We are now actually entering on

that period known in prediction as the Fifth Seal; in which it is declared to the spirits of those who in the early ages died for the faith, that but a comparatively brief time shall elapse before they shall see their number completed'. Those views are not offered to excite needless alarm, but to awaken salutary caution. The future decay of Christianity was undoubtedly contemplated by its Divine Author. He declares that, at his second coming, he shall scarcely discover a trace of religion: "where shall he find faith upon the earth?" that mankind shall be totally engrossed by the objects of the senses, and all that belongs to the future world will be almost totally obliterated from the human mind; yet that a remnant shall exist, and be finally secure. is in every man's power to make one of that remnant; just as much as it is in his power to avoid any penalty of human law. The vigilant will be generally secure, even in the time of religious casualty. The virtuous, in the worst extremity, will be universally secure from the "sting" that

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"And when he had opened the Fifth Seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." (Rev. vi. 9—11.)

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alone makes death an evil. In what form the penalty may approach; whether, as in the days of the Syrian and Egyptian wars, in the concussions of governments, and the furies of that struggle between the great powers of the North and the South, for which such ample elements seem to be stored up at this moment; whether in civil havoc; or in some inconceivable generation of public evil, some fire-winged and iron-fanged destroyer, springing up from the black abyss of sacrilege and infidelity;—those are things wrapt in the mysteries of time. But they will come; and woe be to the nation and to the man who is not awake when they come1.

'There are no data whatever for the time, more than for the The usual calculations of the coming of" the kingdom," taken from Daniel, are entirely erroneous. The 1290 days, and the 1335 days, (xii. 11, 12.) solely refer to the period of the devastation under Antiochus Epiphanes, "when the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the abomination of desolation," his standard, was set up in the captive city; they are literal days, answering to the literal period of the desolation; and they are completely and obviously separated from the prophecy of "the end," the coming of that period, when Daniel, with the other saints, is to rise, and "stand in his lot." On the other hand, the prophecy of the "time, times and a half," by its very expression (its date is 1000 years later), is different. It refers to the 1260 years of Christian depression, under the influence which, beginning in the year A. D. 533, restrained the liberty of the Scriptures, until the period was wholly closed by the French republican war, in 1793. No prediction whatever gives us ground for calculating the epoch of the second coming.

It is to be added, that the work now offered to the Christian is not controversial. It scarcely alludes to opinion; it does not willingly contain a syllable offensive to the opinions of any body of Christians. While all are objects of the compassion of God, there can be no reason why even their errors should divorce them from the good-will of his creatures. Even where the truth of history has pressed hardest, the pressure has certainly not been aggravated by any contumely. Nothing has been an object of solicitude but the argument. Let it be calmly examined. If it be established, we shall no more have infidel historians. Instead of perplexing himself with looking for the principles of national change among the blind intricacies and stolid subtleties of the world, the historian will look upward, and make his way by the lights hung in heaven'.

And this is only conformable to the declaration of our Lord, that it was a knowledge entirely reserved from man. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man." He revealed the date of the fall of Jerusalem freely, fixing it within the living generation; but the remote and final catastrophe was essentially to be a surprise to all mankind.

The writer desires the more peculiarly to express this opinion, as in his "Interpretation of the Apocalypse" he had given way to the concurrent idea of the commentators, that the numbers of Daniel were in this instance connected with the numbers of the Book of Revelation. He omitted the statement in the subsequent edition.

1 Historians, even when unstained with infidelity, seem