tiles, "making of twain ONE new man, Eph. 2: 15;" what then is the design, object, or end, of keeping up a distinction between Jew and Gentile, through the millennial period? Paul never separated the churches under his care into two parts; why must there be a separation of Christians during the Millennium? And what is the object in gathering all the Jews into Palestine?

(13) How are all the nations of the earth to make their offerings on feast-days, in one temple, or to be accommodated in one city?

(14) In 1 Thess. 4: 17, we are told, that the saints who are alive on the earth, at the time of Christ's coming, "will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so be ever with the Lord." This is not to be understood as designating the place of their abode, but of their meeting. Their abode will be in Paradise, where Christ is; Luke 23: 43. 2 Cor. 12: 4. Yet Mr. D. tells us, in some places, that while the saints all descend and live in the new earthly Jerusalem, (in other places his representation is dubious), Christ" will habitually live in the new heavenly Jerusalem, (No. 12). How are these differences in opinion between Mr. D. and the apostle, to be reconciled?

(15) John tells us, that the new Jerusalem is to be 12,000 furlongs in circumference, i. e. 375 miles square, and of the same height, (Rev. 21: 16); how many of the saints, (if indeed they are to be at all with Christ here), can be furnished with suitable dwelling-places in such a limited city, dwellingplaces accommodated to the bodies which they have under the new order of things? And in respect to the height of the houses, viz. 375 miles, in what way is daily, hourly, momently access from the streets to the uppermost apartments, and egress from the latter, to be accomplished? These are fair questions; for, on Mr. D.'s ground, the literal construction must be followed out; and this gives us material houses and apartments, and heights and distances reckoned by actual measurements; and, of course, the inhabitants must be of a quality adapted to their abodes.

(16) On what grounds are we to satisfy ourselves of the habitual intercourse between glorified saints with spiritual bodies, (so the apostle, 1 Cor. 15: 44); and men in the flesh with material ones? How are the glorified, immortal, incorruptible saints, to dwell in material cities and houses, and

govern men in the flesh? In what manner are they to preach to them, act with them, rule over them, and manage all political as well as religious matters?

(17) According to Mr. D., men will be only entering upon their youth when they are 100 years old, and of course very few will die during the Millennium; but in respect to those saints who do die, what is to become of them? Are they to go into the heavenly or the earthly Jerusalem? Are they to be provided with resurrection-bodies, or are they to go away into a separate state, i. e. the heavenly world? He has told us nothing about a resurrection of the bodies of saints, after the commencement of the millennial period; what then is to become of the bodies of such as actually die after that tine? And what of the bodies of all the saints who are living at the end of the world?

(18) In the final assault on the new earthly Jerusalem, by Gog and Magog, i. e. by the wicked raised from the dead, (leagued with evil spirits), how is the war to be conducted by beings with spiritual bodies, (for resurrection-bodies must be of such a nature), against material cities and men in the flesh? Or against the New Jerusalem, if, as Mr. D. once intimates, that is to be the object of attack?

(19) John in Rev., and Ezekiel in chap. 38 and seq., have made the war of Gog and Magog to PRECEDE both the judgment day and the construction of the new heavenly Jerusalem; Mr. D. has made the same war to FOLLOW them; which is in the right?

(20) On pp. 166, 367, Mr. D. represents the earth as purged and redeemed, and “placed back again amidst the heavenly worlds," and made the final paradise of all the ransomed of the Lord. He says nothing of its dimensions being enlarged. How many then of the Redeemer's “countless throng" can dwell upon it? What are we to suppose of their modes of living and acting, in such a narrow space? And to what heavenly worlds is the earth to be like? If the spiritual heaven where God dwells is meant, what need of a new heaven, when one is already provided? If (as Mr. D.'s language implies) the starry worlds are meant, then we must of course assume, that the future and final world of the blessed is to be material. Yet Paul assumes, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15: 50), for the evident reason that that kingdom is NOT material.

(21) Mr. D. makes the phrase kingdom of God, almost without exception in the New Testament, to mean the visible and millennial reign of Christ on the earth before its final transformation, p. 162. He also makes the resurrection of the saints, and the only one which he has taught us to expect, to precede the Millennium. But he has omitted to urge 1 Cor. xv. in favour of his scheme-a passage which contains the most extended and graphic account of the resurrection of saints to be found in all the Bible; an account, moreover, of their resurrection only. This looks very suspicious. What is the common reader to do with this chapter, on the ground of Mr. D.? Not a word about the wicked here; and of course, according to him, not a word about a resurrection at the end of the world. Yet Paul here asserts that it takes place at that period. But how now comes this matter about, in respect to the scheme of Mr. D.? The question, as I apprehend it, may be easily solved; but I truly regret to be obliged to give any account of the matter, since I must seem to accuse Mr. D. of want of candor and fairness. Nothing can be plainer, than that two important parts of his system cannot be made to meet and coincide with Paul's view. Paul says, that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Of course Paul supposes that kingdom in which the saints will live after the resurrection, to be of a nature which is incompatible with the residence of material bodies. Yet Mr. D. makes the kingdom of God to be of such a nature, that unnumbered millions of men in the flesh dwell in it for a thousand years; yea, what is more still, of such a nature that, for a long time, the wicked and the righteous dwell in it mixed together. Again; Paul, as before remarked, puts the resurrection of saints at the end of the world, 1 Cor. 15: 24; but Mr. D., before the Millennium.

The one half is not yet told-but enough. Such a tissue of incongruities and inconsistencies has rarely made its appearance before the world, at any period since the days of Jacob Boehmen and Immanuel Swedenborg. How it is possible for any sober and educated man, in possession of his reason, seriously to believe, and earnestly to defend such things as these, I confess myself unable to see. Mr. D. often -very often-complains of the want of faith in those who differ from him. I think no one of his opponents will prefer a complaint of this nature against him; I mean, of course, a want of faith in the sense in which he would regard or de

fine it. It is difficult to read Tertullian, without feeling that the strength of his faith (alias credulity) is one of the most conspicuous of all his qualities. But the agonizing throes of this virtue (if you will so name it) in him, even when wrought up to such a height as to force from him the famous Credo quia impossible est, is but a faint prototype of the faith of Mr. Duffield.

I must not quit the repulsive task in which I have been engaged, without laying before the reader, in the briefest manner possible, some HINTS in respect to the principles which must be adopted in the interpretation of the Scriptures, where they speak on subjects of such a nature as has now been under consideration.

All language is formed by men primarily in reference to objects perceived by some of the senses. It is the mass of men who make and use language. The conceptions originally conveyed by it, are therefore such as the mass of men can entertain.

When men come, in process of time, to reflect and generalize, and thus attain to abstract and mere intellectual conceptions, they seldom, if ever, invent terms wholly new to express them. For example; understanding, comprehension, perception, idea, imagination, and terminology of the like character in all languages, are employed as qualified or tropical words, when applied to the operations of the inind, all of them having originally a meaning connected with views or feelings occasioned by objects of sense.

So it is in respect to the invisible world, and all the beings and objects that belong to it. They are not objects of sense to us. When we attain to a knowledge of them, therefore, in any way, either by reflection or revelation, we are compelled, by the poverty of language, to speak of them in terms that belong to language introduced to designate our ideas of sensible objects. God is a spiritual and rational being. But we speak of him more humano, i. e. as if he were like ourselves. The Bible speaks of his face, and hands, and arms, and eyes, and ears, and mouth, and feet; of his anger, and revenge, and hatred, and love, and pity, and repentance; of his sword, and bow, and arrows, and quiver, and shield; and so it seemingly attributes to him almost every thing that can be predicated of man. It even goes upon adventurous ground, as we should naturally think, at times, and speaks of his espousing

the virgin, the daughter of Israel, of his being married to her; and the Lamb too has a Bride, who comes to the wedding in splendid and glorious apparel. So it is, also, in respect to angels; and so as to heaven, and hell. Angels are furnished with attributes analogous to human ones; heaven is like an Eden, with its rivers, and trees, and palaces, and feasts; hell is a lake of fire and brimstone, or a pit of perpetual darkness, or a gloomy prison house; and so of all the objects of the invisible world.

All this, now, is not fancy or poetry. It comes not from the desire to employ trope and metaphor in the way of ornament or rhetoric. It comes from the necessities and the poverty of human language; which was not originally formed in view of such objects. It is not therefore adapted literally to express them.

What now would Mr. D., or any advocate of the visible and terrestrial kingdom of Christ think, should any reader of the Scriptures insist that all such language is to be literally interpreted? They would at once pronounce him to be bereaved of reason. Why? Because spiritual objects of the eternal and unseen world cannot be the same as the material ones, from which language has taken its origin. Of course, a tropical use of words, at the foundation of which some analogy real or supposed lies, is the only use which can be supposed or sanctioned, in cases like these.

So, in the next place, it is with objects in the spiritual, i. e. mental, moral, and intellectual world. For the most part our language is and must be tropical. Thus the spiritual change by which a sinner becomes a child of God, is spoken of as new birth, as a resurrection, as a new creation. None of these designations, of course, can be literally interpreted. If they should be, they would contradict each other, and contradict experience. Of course we interpret them in a tropical way. Yet this does not prove that they are not employed to designate historical facts." It is as much a matter of fact, and of history, in respect to a Christian, that he has been born again, as that he has been physically and naturally born. No one need to doubt here, nor to reason as Nicodemus did.

66

Thus far we are on plain and beaten ground. Let us now advance a step further.

All the prophecies respecting the appearance of the Messiah are invested with the costume of figurative language.