But we pro already opened many eyes, and may prove but a step towards the downfall of his whole authority. phesy not. There has been too much of this. The whole horizon of Christendom may yet be overcast, and the safety of the truth and cause of God be brought into such peril, that "men's hearts may fail them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth." But "when these things begin to come to pass," we are taught to look up and lift up our heads, for our redemption draweth nigh." The ship of the Church shall outride the storm; the gates of hell shall not prevail: the cause of God, carcering over the billows, shall reach the fair havens ; and the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." (Dan. vii. 27.)* * Mr. H. Bonar's elaborate reply to the view given in this chapter of Daniel's vision, seems to me a great deal more startling in its charges than solid and convincing in argument. I endeavoured to show how very different a judgment this upon Daniel's "fourth beast" or "little horn" of the papal antichrist will be, from the last judgment described at the close of the twentieth chapter of Revelation. I placed the difference between these two judgments not so much in the time of them (the one before, the other after the millennium), as in the character of them; the one being the trial, condemnation, and destruction of the antichristian system, interest, cause, or kingdom-the other, a judicial investigation of the state and character of individual PERSONS, for eternity. This difference is manifest from the very description of the parties judged, and of the issue. The Judge is of course the same in both; the awful pomp of the judgment is very much the same also, for it is a high judicial decision in both cases: but how totally different the parties and the issue! Says Daniel, "The judgment was set, and the books were opened. I beheld then, because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld till the beast was slain, and his body given to the burning flame. As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time." (Chap. vii. 10-12.) This slaying of the beast, and destruction of his MR. H. 30NAR. 357 body, and committal of it to the flames, is afterwards described in the same vision simply by the taking away of his dominion. "The saints shall be given into his (the little horn's) hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, and (as the result) they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And (in place of it) the kingdom and dominion shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High." (Vv. 25-27.) How clearly does this show that the whole is a question of dominion! Antichrist's dominion-here styled "the beast," "the little horn"-being usurped and rebellious, tyrannous and unholy, though tolerated for long ages, is at length to be judicially "taken away, consumed, and destroyed unto the end;" while the saints-alone acknowledging the rights and prerogatives of "our Lord and of his Christ"-shall "take and possess the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven," ruling for God over the wide world. A blessed consummation this, but how totally different from "the judgment of the great day!" "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God... and the dead were judged out of those things that were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hades delivered up the dead that were in them; and they were judged EVERY MAN according to their works." DURHAM mentions another all-important point of difference between the two judgments. "THE BOOK OF LIFE," he says, "IS NOT MENTIONED IN DAN. VII., to which there is an allusion in all this (description of the last judgment), because it is but A TEMPORAL JUDGMENT that is principally intended in that place."* Such then, is the view of Daniel's vision for which I am classed with the Pantheistic Emerson (p. 159), with the Swedenborgian Bush (p. 229, &c., &c.), with the Rationalist Henke (p. 260), and I know not what all errorists. Leaving it to the reader to judge how far such a mode of writing is for edification, I merely notice the singular ground on which such charges are rested, namely, that by representing the judgment in Daniel as a judgment on the antichristian system, cause, interest, kingdom-as contra-distinguished from a trial of individual persons "according to their works"-I make it a judgment upon a mere abstraction. The shallowness of this is too palpable to require an answer. The destruction of the Papacy has hitherto been understood to mean something real, apart from what may happen to its individual adherents. As the great proportion of these will have gone the way of all the earth ere that event occur, they at least cannot share in the destruction of the Papacy, By "principally" Durham means that though it is but a temporal judgment that is predicted in Dan. vii., it is, like all temporal judgments, an earnest and forerunner of the last judgment, and so couched in the language of it as all the great temporal judgments described in Scripture undeniably are. but will be rotting in their graves when its fall takes place. And even as to those who adhere to it at the time of its overthrow, surely it is the fall of that system of soul-destroying error, daring blasphemy, blind superstition, hypocritical priestcraft, and grinding tyranny-the termination of such impositions upon men in the name of religion, "holy, catholic, and apostolic "-this surely is the destruction predicted, the consummation hymned in the prophetic Scriptures, the deliverance which an oppressed Church longs to witness, and not the individual calamities which no one denies will overtake those who are actively mixed up with the accursed thing, which may prove very terrible, and of which Europe has already, in all probability, begun to be the theatre. Further, I have said that "One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, coming to the Ancient of days, and brought near before him," does not mean Christ's second coming from heaven to earth, but his symbolical approach to the Father, to be invested with "dominion and glory and a kingdom over all people, nations, and languages," as is in the very next verse expressed-(Vv. 13, 14.) If it means any local approach at all, it is his ascent rather than his descent-his solemn entry into heaven to receive the reward of his work. But in my view, neither his ascension to the right hand of God, nor his return in person to the earth, is here intended, but, as I have said, it is a scenic representation of his investiture with the rights of universal dominion. As in the Apocalypse we find him symbolically "clothed with a cloud, a rainbow on his head, his face as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire," and thus arrayed, "setting his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth," to claim and possess what his Father had promised him, even the "heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession," (Rev. x. 1, 2; Ps. ii. 8)—so here we have "the Ancient of days" installing him in this dominion over all people, nations, and languages. Well, in thus refusing to recognize here Christ's second coming from heaven to earth, Mr. Bonar writes as if I were imposing some unheard of and violent sense upon the vision. But is it so? "The prophet (says Maclaurin) does not represent the Son of man as coming in the clouds of heaven from heaven to earth, as at the general judgment, but as coming with the clouds of heaven from his former residence [the earth] towards the throne of God, which, according to the Scripture style, is heaven. And this is confirmed by the words immediately following, that 'they brought him near before him,' viz., before the Ancient of days."* "this (says Scott in his Commentary) must point out Christ to us.... ascending to heaven, the throne of God, to receive the kingdom covenanted to him."-(Ps. ii. 7-9.) * See Scott's Commentary, ad loc. CHAPTER IV. NO MILLENNIAL REVIVAL OF JEWISH PECULIARITIES. THAT the unbelieving Jews should look for a rebuilt temple, a re-established priesthood, the restoration of their bloody sacrifices, and an Israelitish supremacy-at once religious and civil--over all the nations of the earth, when their Messiah comes, is not to be wondered at. With these views of Old Testament prophecy, their fathers rejected Jesus and put him to death, as he neither realised their expectations, nor professed to do so; but on the contrary directed his whole teaching to the uprooting of the preva lent conceptions of Messiah's character, work, and kingdom, and to the establishing of views directly opposite. Unless they had been prepared to abandon their whole scheme of Old Testament interpretation, they could not consistently have acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah. But that any Christians should be found agreeing with the unbelieving Jews in their views of Old Testament prophecy that there should be a school of Christian interpreters, who, while recognizing Jesus as the promised Messiah, and attached in all other respects to evangelical truth, should nevertheless contend vehemently for Jewish literalism, and, as a necessary consequence, for Jewish altars, sacrifices, and supremacy-is passing strange. It is true that this Judaistic element was not wholly expelled from the minds of the apostles before the day of Pentecost; it is true that even after this it had its advocates in some of the infant churches-as the Galatian and Colossian; and it is true that, even when extruded thence by the zeal with which Paul attacked it, and the light which he poured upon the Old Testament by his rich expositions, it still lingered, and struggled for a footing, and succeeded in intrenching itself in a number of shallow minds, whose poverty of conception in things divine is supposed by distinguished historians to have given them the name of EBIONITES (from poor.) But characterised as this Ebionitic school was by low views of the Person and Work of Christ, as well as of every thing else in religion, its existence was brief and outside the orthodox Church; nor has it ever been able to raise its head, save in a few isolated cases, till the present day. The most remarkable fact of all is, that those who held the pre-millennial theory in the second and third centuries, seem not to have believed in any literal territorial restoration of the Jews at all,-much less in their millennial supremacy over all nations, and the re-establishment of their religious peculiarities. How strangely, in the light of these facts, do the following extracts from the pre-millennialists of our day strike the ear: Zion and Jerusalem," says Mr. Fry (Rector of Desford), are to be the great source of spiritual blessedness to the whole world. This city of Jehovah' is represented as the grand centre and emporium of civil and religious power, whither all nations resort for their laws and government. He shall reign in Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth.'. . . . But what most surprises us is, that a ritual of worship, so like the Mosaic ceremonial, should again be restored by divine appointment, rather than institutions more analogous to those of the gospel Church; and especially, that the sacrifices of animal victims should be again enjoined ! For we read of all the various offerings of the Levitical |