proach upon the cause of Christ. They will hold out unto the end; and their path will shine more and more unto the perfect day. Moreover, it would have a happy influence towards the same end, if the converts, both before and after their entering the church, could be in some mode instructed and trained for the work before them, as a sort of catechumens, under the peculiar watch and care of the pastor and the older and more experienced members of the flock. They are too soon lost sight of, as the objects of any special care or supervision. This prepares the way for many grievous backslidings after a revival.

One thing more. Let the church be distinctly and fully apprized of the danger which exists on this subject. Let them be taught to apprehend some re-action, and to watch and guard against it. The evil, in general, commences with themselves. The strongest guard is to be placed over their own hearts. Proper vigilance at this point will go far towards remedying the whole difficulty.

How shall opposition to a revival be met and its evil effects. be obviated? It is well known, that wicked men hate religion; and such men there are scattered throughout all our parishes. Religion as exhibited in revivals, they peculiarly hate; because, it is in revivals, that religion is presented to their minds with peculiar vividness and power. Then, the truth stings, and wounds, and irritates, as it does not at other times. Now how shall the opposition of wicked men to revivals be met? We answer, Let it entirely alone; take no notice of it; go right on with the good work. Unopposed opposition will soon die away, or will defeat its own ends. Is it alledged, against the revival, that persons will lose their health, or lose their reason by it? that there is a needless waste of time in attending on so many religious meetings? that religious subjects are kept too constantly before the mind? that men's worldly business is too much neglected? that, after all, revivals are only the work of man? The best way to dispose of such charges is, to take no notice of them, unless it be to pray and live them down, and to shew the authors and propagators of them, in your whole temper and deportment, an invincible love for their souls. This will be heaping coals of fire on their heads with a witness.

Whatever form the opposition may take, meet it as Nehemiah did: "I am doing a great work and cannot come down; why should the work cease while I come down to you." In extreme cases, it may possibly be needful to meet opposers in the field of argument, and to reason and expostulate with them. But in general, silence, kindness, humility, prayer, are the best

weapons with which to contend against them. We have never known much gained in a revival by disputing with avowed opposers. Loss of temper, loss of time, and the loss of men's souls, are the usual consequences.

On the expediency of introducing foreign aid in the management of revivals, we wish to add a word. We do not believe, that a church, which is supplied with a pastor in whom they have confidence, and who is ready and able to serve them, needs ordinarily to have any aid brought in from abroad to help on a revival among them. If aid is introduced from abroad, to any such extent as to become a ground of reliance, or to operate in producing a diminished sense of responsibility, on the part of the church and the stated ministry, we believe the effect is decidedly bad; the revival is hindered rather than promoted by it. There are obvious reasons for this belief. The great secret of sustaining a revival of religion, under God, is, that the church and the minister feel, that to carry on the work devolves on them; not on another, but on themselves. And as long as this feeling is kept up, and they see souls around them perishing in their sins, they will pray, they will labor, for their conversion. But as soon as they begin to feel, that this work is taken out of their hands by another, and that they are released in a measure from the labor and the responsibility connected with it, and that they may go and look on in the capacity of inactive and idle spectators, that moment the mighty pressure which had previously lain upon their hearts is taken off; the stimulus to exertion is gone; and they do not, they can not feel, the same engagedness of soul, or disposition to work for Christ, which they would feel, if the burden of responsibility lay, where it should lie, upon themselves, and if they felt it lying there. This is not saying, that aid from abroad, in a revival, is never useful. We know the contrary is often true. But it is saying, that no such aid from abroad is useful, as tends to release the church and the stated ministry of the gospel from a full, undivided sense of responsibility, or as sets aside their earnest, active, personal endeavors to carry on the revival. And such, usually, is the tendency of introducing help from abroad, and of placing reliance upon it. If the church and minister will come up to the work and do their duty, let them, we say, have the work to themselves; let the labor and the responsibility be undivided; and they will have, as the consequence, a more abundant and glorious reward in the fruit of their labors. But if a church and minister will not labor and pray without assistance from abroad; if they must have such

assistance in order to do any thing themselves; why then let them send, if they will, for some itinerant revival-preacher, some unsettled, supernumerary, roving helper in the work of waking up slumbering churches, and let them devolve the task, which they ought to do themselves, upon his hands. There may be a propriety in it. Better so, than that the wise and the foolish should slumber on, and both perish together. We are supposing, however, a different case. We are supposing, that the pastor and his people are willing to go forward and labor jointly and faithfully for God and for the good of souls. In this case, we say, they need no foreign aid. They are competent to perform all that needs to be done, all that human agency can do in such a work, and the less of foreign aid, in such a case, the better. And here, indeed, we cannot but admire the happy manner in which the Lord Jesus Christ has constituted his churches, and the peculiar adaptation of Congregationalism to compass the ends for which local churches are gathered. The great desideratum, when local churches were first organized, seemed to be, to select such an organization as would be best adapted to perpetuate and diffuse christianity among men. At least, this must have been a commanding object in the early gathering of the converts into churches. Something more was needful, than the personal religious comfort, and safety, and growth in grace, of these converts themselves. They were, also, to be the means of perpetuating and extending among men the true religion; and that, too, in opposition to very many and very powerful tendencies, in the existing institutions of that day, to root out the infant cause of Christ from the earth. They were to contain in themselves, under God, the principle of selfprotection and self-propagation. They were to be the leaven which should change, by a silent but powerful process of moral assimilation, the whole mass. Now our proposition is, that every separate distinct church is most happily formed for this important end, and is directly calculated to subserve this design. This is especially true of churches organized on Congregational principles, that is, of churches who hold themselves to be competent to manage their own affairs, without any foreign interference whatever. Where a pastor and church are united and happy in each other, mutually enjoying each other's confidence, and prepared to labor together for the good of souls, and not feeling, that they must rely on extraneous aid, in seeking to promote revivals, and in bringing about the conversion of sinners to God, we do not know what happier instrumentality could have been devised and put in operation to secure the end

in view. And we cannot but admire the wisdom and goodness of God evinced in such an organization of the church. What a blessed spectacle for the eye of christian benevolence to rest upon, is a church thus constituted, with its officers and its members, each and all in their appropriate sphere, harmoniously acting together, in the midst of an extended revival of religion! Their knowledge of each other; their knowledge of the community around them; their perfect conviction, that they have a character at stake on what they do, in the eyes of that community; their consequent sense of responsibility for the measures they employ; their identity of interests, not only among themselves, but with the interests of the population generally, among whom they dwell; the fact, too, that many of that population are their own kindred and friends, in whose welfare they cannot but feel a livelier interest than any mere stranger, whatever excellence of character he possessed, could be supposed to feel; let these, and other things of a like kind, be duly considered, and the happy organization of our Congregational churches, with reference to the most efficient promotion of the interests of religion around them, cannot but be seen, and churches and ministers will feel little disposition, we think, to rely upon external aid in revivals of religion, or to go very far to obtain it.

ART. IV.-DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE.

BIBLICAL Critics have been much divided in their opinions as to the true date of the Apocalypse. Its origin some* have traced back as early as to the reign of the Emperor Claudius, A. D. 41-54. Otherst have put it in the time of Nero, A. D. 54-68. It has also been referred to the reign of Galba, or the period between Nero and Vespasian, to that of Vespasian,§ of Titus, and of Domitian.

The importance of ascertaining the date arises from its bearing on the interpretation of certain of the prophetic portions of the book, more especially those which are supposed by some to relate to the destruction of Jerusalem. If the composition of

Epiphanius, Grotius.

+ Subscription to the Syriac version of the Apoc. Theophylact, Arethas,

Andreas.

+ Lücke.

§ Eichhorn.

the book were fairly ascertained to have been posterior to that event, it might seem, that such an application were out of the question.

The data for solving the problem, are, 1, historical testimony; and, 2, internal evidence.

The bold opinion has, indeed, been advanced, and zealously supported, that all historical evidence seeming to bear on the point, being, as it is maintained, exclusively derived from the book itself, can have no authority in the case, except so far as its results fall in with the conclusions drawn from the internal evidence. In such a case there would be some little force derived from the consideration, that both ancient and modern interpreters had been harmonious in their mode of explanation. This would be all the weight which, in any case, could be accorded to all the historical evidence that can be furnished on the point in question.*

But it is obvious, that this opinion can never rise higher than a mere hypothesis, since its correctness, from the very nature of the case, does not admit of demonstration; and it is very difficult to believe, especially with no other evidence than that the supposition is not demonstrably inconsistent with other historic facts, that the early fathers, who speak of this book, and assign it its date, should never have met with any other sources of information respecting it but the book itself. Irenæus, and it is his testimony, chiefly, which this device is framed to set aside, was the pupil of Polycarp, who was himself a pupil of John. Irenæus, moreover, was educated in the bosom of the seven churches to which the Apocalyptic epistles were more directly addressed. Is it for a moment supposable, now, that Irenæus should never have received any trustworthy information, save from the Apocalypse itself, of the apostle John; of his banishment to Patmos; of the events which befell him while there, so remarkable in themselves, of such momentous interest to christianity? None of that wonderful book itself, of its author, its origin, its date?

The defenders of this hypothesis, evidently the offspring of attachment to theory, are certainly reduced to this rather unpleasant dilemma.-Either Irenæus and Origen, with the other ancient critics who receive their opinions on this subject, no very despicable names, have found enough in the Apocalypse itself to warrant their opinion, and consequently the au

* Lücke, Versuch einer vollständigen Einleitung in die Offenbarung Johannis, c. v. §44. VOL. X.

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