confederacy, one member of which is certainly the atheistico-papal king, having sanctified their war by procla→ mation, will successfully invade Palestine by land, will Occupy Egypt, will return and sack Jerusalem, and will plant the curtains of their pavilions between the seas in the glorious holy mountain. 8. Their triumph however after this last exploit will be but short. Assembling themselves together at Megiddo, they will suddenly be overthrown by the divine Word of God, and will be agi tated by such a preternatural confusion as to draw every man his sword against his fellow so that the bulk of this mighty northern army shall miserably perish between the seas of Palestine; and the infidel tyrant himself come to his end, none being able to help him. 9. The Latin city will be divided by an earthquake into three parts at the first effusion of the seventh vial; the earthquake, the expedition of Antichrist, and the rout at Armageddon, being equally comprehended under the same vial. 10. Two out of three parts of the bestial confederacy will be destroyed at Megiddo. 11. The power of the beast and the false prophet will be for ever broken by their last decisive overthrow in the valley of the Lord's judgment. 12. The third part of the bestial confederacy will be spared, and converted. 13. This third part will be scattered among the nations, and will be instrumental in preparing the way for the restoration and conversion of the ten tribes. 14. The ten tribes will be restored and will be for ever united with the tribe of Judah, so as to form - with it only one nation. 15. At the end of 75 years, after the termination of the 1260 years, the season of millennian rest will commence.*

Though I am unable to assent to the ingenious Mr. King's scheme of apocaJyptic interpretation, his remarks upon Palestine, considered as the centre of the millennian empire of Christ upon earth, are highly worthy of notice. "How capable this country is of a more universal intercourse, than any other, with all parts of the earth, is most remarkable; and deserves well to be considered, when we read the numerous prophecies which speak of its future slpendour and greatness, when its people shall at length be gathered from all parts of the earth unto which they are scattered, and be restored to their own land. There is no region in the world, to which an access from all parts is so open. By means of the Black sea, and the Mediterranean, there is an easy approach from all parts of Europe, from a great part of Africa, and from America. By means of the Red sea, and the Persian gulph, and the well-known roads from thence, there is an approach from the rest of Africa, from the East Indies, and from the Isles. And lastly, by means of

All these matters are clearly predicted by the prophets. The manner, in which they will be accomplished, affords a vast field for conjecture: but their accomplishment itself is no vain speculation: in God's own good time, that must take place how it will take place, we know not beyond what is revealed. Respecting the yet future and mysterious Millennium, the less that is said upon the subject the better. Unable myself to form the slightest conception of its specific nature, I shall weary neither my own nor my reader's patience with premature remarks upon it. That it will be a season of great blessedness is certain further than this we know nothing definitely. "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this Law."*

CHAPTER XII.

Recapitulation and Conclusion.

FROM what has been said we learn, that the 1260 days are the appointed hour of the powers of darkness, the space of time allotted for the prevalence both of Popery and Mohammedism and for the short-lived triumph of Antichrist.

In the year 606, the saints seem to have been first given by the secular power of the Roman empire into the

the Caspian, the Lake or sea of Baykall, and the near communication of many great rivers, the approach is facilitated from all the northern parts of Tartary. In short, if a skilful geographer were to sit down to devise the fittest spot on the globe for universal empire; or rather, a spot, where all the great intercourses of human life should universally centre; and from whence the extended effects of universal benevolence and good-will should flow to all parts of the earth; and where universal and united homage should be paid, with one consent, to the Most High: he could not find another so well suited, in all circumstances, as that which is with emphasis called The Holy Land. These observations perhaps may not deserve great weight, but they ought not to be wholly neglected; especially when it is considered, how many passages of Scripture there are, which plainly declare, that the time shall at length come, when Zion shall be the joy of the whole earth." Note to Hymns to the Supreme Being, p. 126.

* Deut. xxix. 29.

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hand of the Papal little horn; consequently from this year the 1260 days ought most probably to be computed. The desolating transgression of the Mohammedan little horn however is destined to prevail during the same space of time, that the Papal little horn is permitted to reign. Hence, in order that the two periods of 1260 years each might be made to synchronize together, it seemed necessary, that the desolating transgression of Mohammedism should first make its appearance in the very year that the saints were delivered into the hand of the Papal little horn. Accordingly we find, that it did first make its appearance in that year; for the year 606 is the most proper date of the Mohammedan imposture, because in that year Mohammed first retired to the cave of Hera.

1. The Papal horn arose, as we have seen, at the preeise time when Daniel predicted that it should arise; namely, while the Roman empire was falling asunder, and while ten independent kingdoms were springing up out of its ruins. It arose gradually and almost imperceptibly among and behind the ten horns of the fourth beast; three of which were successively eradicated before it, and by their fall gave it an opportunity of becoming a temporal no less than a spiritual power. For some time after its rise it was only an ecclesiastical kingdom: but that kingdom, though small at first, continued perpetually to increase in size; till, in the year 606, when the Pope was declared Universal Bishop and supreme head of the catholic Church, it became a mighty ecclesiastical empire. At this era, which seems to be the proper date of the 1260 years, and the epoch when the old pagan Roman beast which had been mortally wounded by the Sword of the Spirit under his sixth head revived under the same sixth head by setting up a spiritual tyrant in the Church and by relapsing into idolatry, St. John first introduces upon the stage the power which Daniel symbolizes by the little horn of the fourth beast. That power however was now become an universal empire, instead of being, what it had hitherto been, a limited ecclesiastical kingdom. Hence the Apostle, instead of representing the ten-horned beast as having likewise a little horn, describes him as attended by a second beast,

whose character precisely answers to that of the little horn. By the instigation of this corrupt spiritual power, the ten-horned beast, or the secular Roman empire, wages war with the saints during the period of the 1260 days, through the instrumentality either of his last head or his ten horns.

2. The desolating transgression of Mohammedism arose in the same year that the Papal horn became an universal spiritual empire. A few years after its rise, it acquired its predicted character of a little horn of the Macedonian he-gout; and soon, agreeably to the prophecy, waxed exceeding great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. In the course of its progress it cast down many of the symbolical stars, or Christian pastors, to the ground; took away the daily sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; polluted the spiritual sanctuary; and presumed to magnify itself against even the Prince of princes. As for its character, it was notorious for trampling upon the truth; for prospering in a wonderful manner; for making its appearance, exactly when the transgressors were come to the full by publicly re-establishing idolatry; for teaching dark sentences; for being mighty not through its own unaided power; for exterminating its opponents with the utmost barbarity; for persecuting with peculiar violence the people of the Holy Ones; for advancing itself by craft; and for destroying many while in a state of negligent security.

In the Apocalypse a more full account is given of the agents by whom this apostate religion should be propagated. A fallen stur opens the bottomless pit, and lets out the destroying king of the locusts. These locusts are permitted to continue their ravages during the space of five prophetic months or 150 years; which is found from history to be the precise period allotted to the continuation of the Saracenic incursions. The locusts are succeeded by an immense body of horsemen under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose commission is limited to an hour and a day and month and a year, or 391 years and 15 days, and who are empowered to kill a third part of men or the Roman empire, which their predecessors the Saracenic locusts had only been permitted to torment.

History accordingly teaches us, that the Saracens were succeeded by the Turks: who came under four leaders from the banks of the Euphrates; whose armies consisted almost entirely of cavalry; whose career of conquest exactly continued 391 years; and who subverted the Constantinopolitan empire, which the Saracens, severely aş they harassed it, had never been able to effect.

The Mohammedun little horn itself, or the religion of Mohammed, is to prevail to the end of 2200 years from the invasion of Asia by Alexander the great; which is found to bring us down exactly to the year 1866, and thus to allow precisely 1260 years for the triumphs of Mohammedism, reckoning from its commencement in the yeur 606.

3. After the era of the Reformation, and in the last days of atheism and insubordination, but previous to the commencement of the time of the end, the infidel king, according to the sure word of prophecy, was destined to arise; that Antichrist, who was alike to deny both the Father and the Son; that audacious tyrant, who should magnify himself above every god, who should speak marvellous things against the God of gods, who should neither regard the God of his fathers nor the desire of women, who should nevertheless honour a foreign god and acknowledge gods protectors, and who should be allowed to prosper till the indignation be accomplished.

As the contemporary rise and progress of Popery and Mohammedism is described in the Apocalypse under the two first woe-trumpets, so the appearance of the great Antichrist is announced by the third. His full developement however is to be immediately preceded by the last event of the second woe-trumpet, a tremendous earthquake by which a tenth part of the great Latin city, or one of the ten horns of the Roman beast, is to be overthrown. This last woe, which extends beyond the termination of the 1260 years at least to the end of the seventh vial, if not to the commencement of the Millennium, comprehends the periods of the harvest and the vintage.

Thus, after the epoch of the Reformation, and immediately after the French Revolution of the year 1789, we have seen the manifestation of a terrific monster, which