SEVENTH DIVISION.

Shows when the Millennium may be expected. The method pursued in this division, to ascertain the arrival of that period, will be, 1st, by a compared and concise view of the several kinds of ancient Jewish Sabbaths; and, 2d, as analagous to the same point, will be presented a view of natural and supernatural periodical recurrences. 3d. An illustration of the three visions in the book of the prophet Daniel, will be given, so far as it is thought they refer to the Millennium, or to the time when the sanctuary shall be cleansed.

The sevenfold Sabbaths, kept by Israel's kings,
Had couch'd beneath those numbers, mystic things!
And nature, from her deeps, her latent periods pour.
Her ceaseless powers move on, her oceans roar;
And heaven its wonders, too, sometimes to men disclose,
As once was shown a Daniel, where Ulai's water flows.

MANY have been the uninspired prophecyings of the period in which the Millennium is to come. A certain anxiety for its speedy commencement probably has driven many, who delight in the joyous anticipation, beyond the proper boundaries assigned for its commencement by the great chart-book, the Holy Scriptures; for the accomplishment of all those things foretold in the Scriptures, must be realized before its glory can bless the world. The measurement of every thou

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sand cubits, which characterized the length of that river which Ezekiel saw measured by an angel, must be realized in its dispensations before that day shall come. The account of that symbolical river, which is so minutely described by Ezekiel, and its final envelopment in the sea, is precisely what is meant in other places in the word of God, where the sanctuary is spoken of prospectively, anticipating a time when it must be cleansed. I suppose there will be no disagreement with the following opinion: That the sanctuary, as spoken of in the Scriptures, is spoken of as being the visible church, whether under the patronage of Jews or Christians. This appears to be the meaning in Daniel, chap. 7, verse 11, By him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. This is spoken of the temple at Jerusalem, at which place the church was organized; therefore, the term sanctuary is the church. But this church, this visible sanctuary, is contemplated as being composed of good and bad, otherwise a cleansing would not be contemplated, and agrees with the similitude of our Lord, who represents the gospel by a fishing net, bringing to the shore both the good and the bad; but the good are preserved, while the bad are cast away. From which it is clear, that the sanctuary may be thus contaminated, and so continue, till the great era of cleansing it shall come.

The period for cleansing it is the grand point at which all books, written upon this subject, have aimed. Different periods have been fixed upon for its accomplishment, and some of these periods have already

passed by, and yet the sanctuary is not cleansed-the watchmen do not yet see eye to eye, foul members yet stain its lovely whiteness.

I have now before me the opinion of Edward Irving, that the prophetic time, times and a half time, making 1260 years, as foretold by Daniel, should be considered as having ended at the era of the French revolution in 1793. But such cannot be the fact, because the sanctuary is not cleansed. There are three notable Scriptural modes of calculation, which must have their fulfilling at the same period, namely, when the river, which Ezekiel saw, commenced with Abraham, flows into the great sea, which is the Millenniumwhen the 1260 years of Daniel shall witness the cleansing of the sanctuary-when the 2300 days or years of the same prophet, though commencing at an earlier era, shall also have their ending at the cleansing of the sanctuary. See Ezekiel, 47th chap. from the 1st verse to the eighth inclusive; Daniel, 7th chap. 25; do. 8, 14. When, therefore, these three are accomplished, the Millennium will commence.

It appears to me to be the heighth of folly to fix upon any partial revolution, which has been effected in favour of religion since the resurrection of Christ, as of sufficient universality to justify the opinion, that the sanctuary has been cleansed. Perhaps we cannot fix upon any era when the church has not been infested, more or less, with wicked members, and will unquestionably continue to be thus afflicted, till the time of its universal cleansing shall come. This, then, we look for, with unvarying confidence, to be accomplished

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when this river of celestial light, and those two peririods spoken of by the prophet Daniel, shall be completed at one and the same time. Till that time, it cannot be said the sanctuary is cleansed-till that time, the church cannot be called the HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

The following extract from Mr. Carrington's remarks, under the head of Holy Catholic Church in the apostolic creed at evening prayer, corroborates the above opinion, I am indebted for the extract to a work entitled "Second Advent," by an American layman, who states that he extracted it from a Mr. Warner, who, it appears, wrote upon the subject of the common prayers of the Church of England, who introduced the following remarks from Mr. Carrington, upon the idea of what constitutes a Holy Catholie Church.

"Considering the general state of the Christian church, from the first hour of its foundation almost to the present, there doth not appear to have been an interval, when the two affections of Holy and Catholic. have been fairly compatible; and all attempts to reconcile those jarring qualities of sanctity and universality, have only occasioned a constrained and unwarrantable interpretation of the terms. It is too evident that the church in general (much less the holy church) hath, as yet, been far from being universal. From hence, expositors have been obliged to recur to partial and figurative constructions; to distant and even sometimes to forced interpretations; in order to support their unnatural solutions with arguments the most

specious, many of which tend, at best, to prove how the church may, with some show of probability, rather than how it necessarily must be termed at once, both holy and catholic. But as in Scripture we ought not to recede from the letter, without apparent necessity, so why may not the same rule obtain here? Why should we quit the full and genuine sense of a word for one partial and emblematical, when it may with safety and consistency be adhered to? Suppose, then, we can find a state or tine, when the whole of this article, in the plain and literal meaning of the words shall be found to be strictly true; when this complicated affection shall belong to the church of Christ by a just and unquestionable right; when both the holy church shall become catholic, and the catholic church shall become holy? Ought we not rather to direct our attention to that than to any other period wherein we meet with the least difficulty or obstruction. In a word, the great mistake seems to lie in referring that to either past or present which belongs solely and entirely to futurity. For if there be any force in words; if there is any dependence to be had on the sacred writers, either under the old or new dispensation; we are certainly to expect, even on this side Heaven, a state, an age, a period in which the church of Christ shall appear in a form, in all respects greatly transcending any it has hitherto enjoyed, when the holy few shall no longer be hid and obscured amidst a sea of iniquity; no longer seem an undistinguished handful in the midst of a wicked and idolatrous world; no longer be contracted within so narrow a compass, as that even their existence

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