from another sacred writer, "will indeed be a crown of glory." My principal reason for this is, that the promises made to the church and to its Redeemer; the benevolence of the Godhead, and the triumph of mercy over the malignity and craft of Satan; and also the analogy of all God's purposes and doings, in which there is always an advance towardt he highest good-all unite in seeming to require such an interval of rest and peace and prosperity to his church. How long this will be, how many will become sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, I do not pretend to know. But so much we may believe, viz., that “the Seed of the woman will bruise the serpent's head;" and therefore that the number of the redeemed, from our fallen race, will at last immeasurably exceed that of the lost.

and has long But is it to be to the church Numbers as

What a consoling hope, in such a world of sin and misery as this! Few indeed, thus far, can with any probability be numbered among the children of God. Every year is sending its thirty millions to his tribunal, been executing the same tremendous task. always so? The thousand years of triump we have seen not to be strictly universal. the sand of the sea are still in the regions of Gog and Magog. And shall one thousand years only, of the reign of Christianity thus limited, be allowed for the Redeemer's triumph, and more than six thousand for Satan's? Forbid it, all that is benevolent in the Godhead! Forbid it, dying love of Jesus! Forbid it, all the precious promises which the words of everlasting truth present, engraved in characters of light, and elevating the hopes of dying man to a heaven of unfading glory, filled with countless beings 'made in the image of their God and Saviour!

But while I do most earnestly hope, and cannot but believe, that the close of the world's existence will be a period of great prosperity and glory to the church, I cannot

in any degree harmonize with those views respecting this period, which apply to it the descriptions in Rev. xxi. XXII., and the corresponding portions of the Old Testament prophets. The new heaven and the new earth, in Rev. 20: 1, is plainly not the old heaven and old earth refitted and repaired. "The first heaven and the first earth have passed away, and there is no more sea," Rev. 21: 1. Peter says, also, that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements burning shall be dissolved, and the earth and the works therein shall be burned up, xαταиańσɛται, shall be utterly consumed." 2 Pet. 3: 10. The general judgment, preceded by the universal resurrection of the dead, Rev. 20: 11-15, is evidently, in the view of the sacred writers, the end of the probation-state of the human race. So Paul, who also informs us, that then the mediatorial office itself will be given up, so that the work of redemption can no longer proceed; 1 Cor. 15: 24-28. These facts, being thus plainly established, it follows that a place (so to speak) entirely new, fitted for the residence of beings with "spiritual bodies," (as Paul calls them 1 Cor. 15: 44), is absolutely necessary. The apprehension that the present material world is to be so improved and modified, as to become the future residence of the blessed, agrees neither with the future state and condition of the blessed, nor with the declarations of the Scriptures, nor with the most ardent hopes of spiritual Christians. No; all true believers " are to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord,” 1 Thess. 4: 17.

But I am wandering from my theme, allured by the delightful prospects of the church which are unfolded in the Apocalypse. Let us return, and briefly conclude the present discussion, in which mere hints have been aimed at

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and suggested, by a simple recapitulation of what has been done, and the grounds on which it stands.

§ 5. CONCLUDING Remarks.

There must be, there are, some principles applicable to the interpretation of language, which all men are bound to acknowledge and observe. If this be not true, then there is an end to all certainty in the results of interpretation, and we never can tell what the Scriptures do mean, or what they may not mean.

The reason why I have endeavored to show that the double or occult sense of Scripture is inadmissible, is, that if we admit it, then we must give up all hope of ever fixing with certainty upon the original meaning of many portions of Scripture, and specially of the prophecies. If a part of what Daniel predicts, for example, must be applied first to Antiochus Epiphanes (which is certain), and then may be applied, as to its occult meaning, to Antichrist, to the Pope, to Mohammed, or to all of these, then there is an end to all certainty in exegesis, because there is no tribunal before which the occult sense can be brought and by which it may be tried. It is because the prophecies have been so extensively interpreted in this way, specially in the English and American churches, that I have thought it important to say so much on this subject. He, who understands the lengths to which this principle of interpretation has been carried, will not accuse me of having overrated the importance of the subject.

It has also been a very common thing, even among the better class of interpreters in some cases, to speak of some of the prophecies, and to treat them, as having been unintelligible at the time when they were uttered, and as coming to be understood only after they are fulfilled. Such a

supposition of course throws to the winds some of the leading principles of hermeneutics; for if the language ever had a meaning, it must have been discoverable by the aid of those principles; and if a meaning is ever assigned to it, it must be in accordance with these, or else it can be of no solid worth. An arbitrary application of language to particular events, without support from grammar and exegesis, is conjecture, not exposition. Besides all this, such a prophecy was at most no prediction surely, no revelation; for, by the supposition, it meant nothing intelligible before the events took place to which it relates, and therefore could make and did make no revelation at all.

It is time for the Christian church to have done with such problems as these. On such a ground, the Bible is no "light shining in a dark place," as Peter affirms it to be. It only adds another deepening shade to the gloom already spread around. Why should not, then, such a principle, so dishonourable to divine teachers and to that word which is " a light to our feet and a lamp to our path," be held up to view, and its deformities exposed?

As to that portion of this little work which has respect to the times designated in the Apocalypse and in the book of Daniel, the disputes of the present day sufficiently show the necessity of such inquiries. I have endeavored to walk in a straight and simple path. My first great position has been, that the Bible means what it says. When it designates times and seasons, therefore, the simple and obvious sense of the words is always to be followed, unless there is some special reason for departing from it. That reason can be only one, viz., when the context gives us information that such a departure is to be made. This is done in Exek. 4: 5, 6, and in Num. 14: 34. The passage in Dan. 9: 24 plainly, as we have shown pp. 79 seq., does not belong to this category. Other cases than these, I am

not aware of. In all others, therefore, where no such departure from the obvious sense is intimated, it follows of course that we are not at liberty to depart from it. If this be not a principle plain and certain, I know of none in the so called science of hermeneutics.

My second aim has been, to prove that history has preserved to us such a knowledge of facts, as will serve to show that the prophecies in question have been fulfilled, in their plain and obvious sense. If this effort has been successful, then the whole subject is at rest. The controsies of the present day, about the Pope, and Mohammed, and the French Revolution, and the infidel corps of Illuminati, and all like matters or persons, is a thing which has no specific ground or basis in Daniel or in John. What John declared would take place shortly, happened according to his prediction; and if so, the dispute, whether it is all to happen over again, after so many centuries, cannot be a dispute of much interest or importance. One fulfilment is enough.

Even if we should concede that 1260 days mean so many years, and that Romanism is the object of John's predictions, yet I do not see how we can ascertain where to begin this period. The Romish church was three or four centuries in coming into being; or rather, one might even say with truth, that it was not consummated until the Council of Trent. Where then is the terminus a quo? I am aware of the usual periods to which so many refer the beginnings of this apostasy. But they are not at all of a nature sufficiently definitive or decisive to be entitled to such a bad pre-eminence. It must be mere conjecture which fixes upon the beginning of such a period for such reasons; and of course the end must be like the beginning, i. e. indefinite. The truth is, that heathen-idolatry, and that only, is characterized in Rev. XIII. seq.; and all efforts