Jewish history, as well as the whole system of types, and the spirit of prophecy, pointed to the coming Saviour, by confirming the truth of the progressive, yet undeveloped and still mysterious revelation.

But the ultimate object of the prophetic testimony was not answered till it had been fulfilled in the manifestation and work of the Son of God in the flesh. Then, and not till then, was it clearly understood, and came into full operation, as furnishing the credentials of our Lord's mission, the identification of his person, the explanation of that grand stumbling-block his sufferings, and an irrefragable evidence of the truth of Christianity to the end of time.

We may now proceed to inquire, what is the character of those prophecies which yet remain unfulfilled? Mysterious, enigmatical, they confessedly are; adapted, Mr. Irving says, only for the wise and learned, which is not the usual character of Divine Revelation. Judging from analogy, we might presume that their obscurity was designed to repress curiosity, rather than to excite speculation. Sir Isaac Newton thought, that these prophecies were given, not to gratify men's curio، sity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that, after they. were fulfilled, they might be interpreted by the event.' Mr. Irving tells us, that then they will be of little or no use. 'is,' he says, as if you should say, that the cask was not to be opened till the liquor was all evaporated.' And so he would, as it were, bore a hole for his quill in the cask ! Again, waxing wroth, he adds:

• A very silly and shallow-minded thing it is, therefore, and no less wicked than vain, for lazy and incurious ignorance to seal the book which with such strength the Lion of the tribe of Judah prevailed to unloose, and which was forbidden to be ever sealed again. A thing it is most stupid and preposterous, to study the prophecy with reference only to the part which is fulfilled, which hath become history, and is no longer prophecy, and remains but as an empty vessel, in which the odour of the rich contents may yet remain, but from which the sluggard and tasteless owners have allowed the spirit to escape. And if they would but give diligent and faithful study to the part fulfilled, they could not hinder themselves from passing onward into the unfulfilled, which is written in the same language, and by the same rules to be interpreted. So that whoso affirms that he useth prophecy only with application to the past, doth merely confess that he useth no part of it in the way in which it ought to be used.' Vol. I. p. 30.

When a writer thus deals about his hard words and petulant sarcasms, he should be a little careful on whom they may light. A little reverence for such names as Calvin, Howe, and Newton, would not have been discreditable to our worthy Seer.

The great Reformer was, we apprehend, neither lazy, nor ignorant, nor incurious, and he might even be supposed to have known the use of prophecy; yet, Scaliger observes, that he was wise in not writing on the Apocalypse. Howe considers the attempt to decipher unfulfilled predictions as the symptom of a carnal and a sickly mind; and without meaning to intimate that Mr. Irving is chargeable with this, we must say that one of his arguments goes strongly to confirm the truth of the remark as regards the tendency of such prophetical studies. He contends, that otherwise the Christian is obliged to look out, by the help of his own natural foresight, and to calculate by the rules of political sagacity, those things which are to hap'pen to the Church.' Every man,' he adds, must be a prophet to himself, or God must be his prophet.' And again, he speaks of the knowledge and faith of future events as necessary in order to redeem us from the bondage to worldly poli'ties,' and to form the rule of our conduct.

• And if,' he says, any individual member of Christ remain in the dark with respect to the future condition of the Church, he must be the prey of a thousand fears and false apprehensions, of a thousand hopes and false anticipations, from which a little light would altogether have delivered him; and if he have any thing in hand or in mind towards the advancement of the Church, he may, in his ignorance, be working or designing against the purposes of God: which are re-, vealed for this very end, to give a right direction to our hopes, and thereby a right scope to our undertakings.' p. 31.

This, we must take the liberty to say, is bad reasoning, and worse theology. It is, in effect, making the Divine decrees the rule of man's duty; one of the most pernicious tenets of the Antinomian heresy. Why must the Christian turn prophet, to escape being a politician? Why must he study the Apocalypse in order to lay asleep his visionary hopes and fantastic fears, when the word of Christ points out 66 a more excellent way?"-"Secret things belong unto God, but the things "which are revealed, to us and to our children." A man liable to become a prey to such false apprehensions and anticipa tions, would be the last person to derive benefit from brooding over the mystic rolls of prophecy; and his political sagacity would only become less harmless by running into fanaticism. It appears to us, that the proper cure for such a morbid desire to penetrate into the future, would be the study of the practical parts of the sacred volume; and that it was precisely such a temper that our Lord wished to discountenance, when he answered a question put to him just before his Ascension by saying: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons. "which the Father hath put in his own power." (Acts i. 7.) VOL. XXVII. N.S.

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We cannot but think then, that Howe is right, when he says: The safest course is, without God's warrant, not to prophesy at all.' The danger of tampering with unfulfilled prophecy could not, indeed, be placed in a stronger light, than it is by Mr. Irving's plea for its necessity. We cannot conceive of a much more pernicious and mischievous notion infecting the Christian Church, than that we are to suspend any exertions for the advancement of religion, to withhold our countenance of any religious undertaking or institution, till we can ascertain from the page of prophecy,-in other words, from the expounders of prophecy, from Mr. Frere or Mr. Faber,-whether we shall, in so doing, be working with or against the purposes of God. It was not in this spirit that Carey and Martyn set forth on their heroic enterprise. It was not under the guidance or from the impulse of such prophetic discoveries, that the various Institutions have been formed, and the vast exertions made for the spread of Divine truth, which distinguish the present era. The Gospel of St. Matthew contains, in the last chapter, all the warrant and all the promise that are necessary to sanction and to inspirit such undertakings. And as to those who would stand at a gaze,' trying to read the stars in the canopy of prophecy,' the aphorism is but too likely to be verified-" He that observeth the clouds shall not sow, and he "that regardeth the winds shall not reap."

We cannot allow the remark to pass, that prophecy, when fulfilled, ceases to be prophecy-is no more than an empty cask. What! have the prophecies of Isaiah become spiritless and useless to the Church of Christ, because they have been historically fulfilled? Is the evidence supplied by fulfilled prophecy of no avail or importance? If Mr. Irving has lost his relish for these sublime portions of the Inspired Volume, and prefers the Book of Esdras, he is indeed far gone in fanaticism. He cannot mean this. But he further maintains, that the notion that the prophecies were not intended to be known 'till the event should reveal their application,' is contradicted by the whole testimony of Scripture.'

First, with respect to time. Daniel knew by books when the captivity of Babylon was to be accomplished. And he revealed by date when Messiah the Prince was to come. Then, with respect to person, Cyrus is named by his proper name in the prophecies of Isaiah, and both the Persic and the Greek empires are named by name in the prophecy of Daniel. Then, with respect to place, the place of Messiah's birth was so well known and decided upon from the prophecy, that the chief priests at once agreed upon it when asked by Herod; and every burden of Isaiah is directed, with the exactness of a letter, to the city for which it was intended, and to which,

doubtless, in some way or other, it was made known. But it is useless to contend with ignorance in its dark places.' Vol. I. p. 27.

We unfeignedly wish that our Author would leave off this discreditable habit of imputing ignorance, stupidity, shallowmindedness, and wickedness, to those who differ from him. If the view we have taken of the broad distinction between the two collateral series of prophetic revelations be correct, the instances here cited will make little to his purpose. No one doubts or can deny, that many of the prophecies were intended to be known, and would not fail to be understood, prior to the event. Their definiteness and explicitness prove this, as well as the obvious design for which they were given. But does it follow that all prophecy was intended to be understood, before the event interpreted it,-even when the prediction was implicated in mystery and indefiniteness? Would not the marked contrast of character rather imply a difference of design? And does not the fact, that the one class of prophecies were not understood, with the exception of the definite predictions respecting the place and time of Messiah's birth, and his royal lineage, render it in the highest degree probable that they were purposely veiled till the event should interpret them? If so, it is at least supposable, that the prophecies which still remain unfulfilled, may not be intended to be known till the event shall reveal their application.

In the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew, we have a remarkable instance of both descriptions of prophecy in immediate succession; the one strikingly definite, the other purposely indefinite; the one intended to warn the disciples of the coming event, the other designed to check and to regulate their hasty anticipation of the final issue. The double question of the disciples, which gave occasion to our Lord's uttering the twofold prediction, evidently betrayed mistaken ideas respecting the consequences of the overthrow of their temple and polity. Their first inquiry, "When shall these things be?" referred simply to the preceding prediction relating to the destruction of the temple. But with that event were associated in their expectations, the second coming of our Lord, and "the end of the world." It is evident, too, that having as yet no correct conception of the spiritual nature of our Lord's kingdom, they expected his speedy return for the purpose of restoring the Jewish commonwealth. Instead of giving at once a direct answer to their question, Our Lord begins by cautioning them against becoming the dupes of those impostors who should come in his name or assume his character; intimating that they must pay no attention to such rumours of

his return, for a succession of events must previously take place, which should try their faith, and put the characters of his professed followers to a severe test. Many, it is predicted, would apostatize; but, to inspire them with confidence in the issue, it is added, that the Gospel should triumph over all opposition, and spread through the whole of the known world, and that then "the end" of the Jewish polity should come. Having thus intimated that the predicted event was not to ensue immediately or as yet," Our Lord proceeds to communicate to them the unequivocal signs which should precede the horrors of the siege, in order that, warned by the presage, they might effect their timely escape: "When ye shall see," &c. (ver. 15). So specific was the event foretold, so distinct the mark, that the Christians were at no loss how to understand its application, but, when the event took place, profited by the information, and were saved from the miseries which befel their unbelieving and devoted countrymen. Arguing from analogy,' Mr. Cooper observes, it might not be unreasonable to suppose, that, in the present crisis, the Lord might be pleased to grant some one signal and specific mark which might strongly arrest the attention of his people, and rouse them without hesitation or delay to the faithful discharge of those peculiar duties on which their safety and happiness at this 'juncture would depend.'* And he imagines that the appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte was such a mark. But the object of the distinctive signal furnished by our Lord, was not to rouse his disciples to the discharge of any duty, but simply to enable them to avoid, by timely flight, a specific calamity. It seems to us very unwarrantable to suppose that any sign from heaven, any specific note of preparation, will be given to rouse Christians to the faithful discharge of their duties. Mr. Cooper wholly fails, in our opinion, to establish the most distant resemblance between the sign given by our Lord, and the event which he fixes upon as the distinctive mark' of the present Crisis. And had such sign been given, it might naturally have been looked for, not in the book of Daniel, but in the chapter now under consideration, where it is confessedly wanting.

At verse 29, the prediction respecting the "tribulation of "those days," closes. And now we find our Lord proceeding, in language as highly poetical and figurative as that of the former part of the chapter is distinct and literal, to intimate the changes and transactions which were to take place, subse

Cooper's "Crisis." p. 96. See Ecl. Rev. vol. xxv. p. 521.