every step of inductive inquiry. Presumptive evidence needs, almost in every case, to prepare the way of exact and full inquiry. This is plain in our own jurisprudence, and the appointment of grand juries is a practical and hourly commentary on the truth. The Ptolemaic system only confirms and illustrates the same principle. In its own day, it was really the ripest fruit of inductive inquiry, as much as the Newtonian system in our own times. Hipparchus and Ptolemy, to whom we owe it, were not loose theorists, but the most accurate and careful observers of ancient times; and their tables, for long ages, were the nearest approach to a correct view of the heavenly motions. The very writers who declaim against presumptions, are often the most ready to embrace and amplify them, when they think them favourable to their own system.

Next, in its immediate reference to the Horæ, and similar works, the objection is equally baseless. The presumption, here referred to, is in reality only a postulate, assumed for convenience of arrangement, while the question is fully and closely discussed in another place. Mr. Elliott has elsewhere given his reasons, at great length, for rejecting both the Preterist and the Futurist systems, not only in his Preface, but in two distinct supplements of considerable extent. To place this discussion in the forefront of a work designed for general readers, would be as unnatural and unwise, as to prefix to every almanac an abridgment of the "Principia," and a laboured proof of the Newtonian system. Hence no charge can be more destitute of the least shadow of truth, than the one thus carelessly advanced, that he has neglected even general survey of the ground to be explored." As for the two maxims themselves, whoever objects to them must be prepared to maintain, either that there is no principle of wise selection in the Divine prophecies, or that it consists with the Divine wisdom to predict trifling changes, rather than the more important, and to choose inappropriate rather than appropriate symbols, to describe them. What person, of any sobriety of thought, will venture on such extravagant assertions? Nothing has less warrant in the fact, than one part of the objection; and nothing can be more unreasonable than the other.

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III. Let us now examine the opposite presumption, advanced, though with such evident contradiction to the general maxim, in behalf of the Futurist system. All the prophecies of the Old Testament, it is affirmed, relate only to the national history of Israel. This history is now suspended.

The present dispensation forms a parenthesis, passed by in silence in all the elder prophets. Hence it is reasonable to expect a similar break in the Apocalypse, and that it will refer only to events at the coming of the Lord, and the great crisis of Israel's restoration. Since this presumption is the main pillar of the whole scheme, even where all presumptions are condemned as mischievous, it must clearly be held of great force, and therefore calls for an exact inquiry.

1. First, it is natural to inquire, why the earlier prophecies all centre around the people of Israel. Was it an accident, or an arbitrary circumstance, in which no principle of God's moral government was involved? This would be a foolish notion, and almost profane. Was it because of their natural descent from Abraham? Clearly not, for then the Ishmaelites, Edomites, and Amalekites, would have been equally conspicuous in the sacred narrative. The true reason is very simple and plain. Israel were then the covenant people of God. So long as they remained the people of the covenant, all Divine prophecy centred around them. But, ever since the days of St. John, the Jews have not been the people of the covenant, but this privilege has been transferred to the visible Church among the Gentiles. The kingdom of God, as our Lord warned the Jews, has been taken from them, and given to others. Hence the very same principle, which made all Old Testament prophecy, from Moses to Malachi, centre in the Jewish nation, requires that all New Testament prophecy should centre, not around the Jewish nation, but around the Gentile Church, the actual people of God's covenant, who have been ingrafted in their stead. Such is the voice of reason, and the instinct of every spiritual mind. Hence the appeal to the Old Testament prophets, to support an opposite conclusion, must be utterly vain. To sustain a mere circumstance, it sets aside a main principle of God's moral government, and destroys a fundamental law of Divine revelation. It infers that God will leave His covenant people, for near two thousand years, without any direct light of inspired prophecy, because His covenant people always enjoyed that privilege, in a dispensation of dimmer light and less abundant grace.

2. But the Church, it is objected, has not come into the place of Israel, with regard to the earthly standing they enjoyed. "It is apart from any such local or visible condition, as appertaineth and will again appertain to Israel. Nations, as such, are not dealt with by God under this dispensation. With the nations of Christendom, indeed,

God is now dealing, but not as nations, but as aggregates of individuals, or visible churches. It is of importance not to confound dispensational truth, but to distinguish between the direct and the indirect, the regular and the incidental. Failure here leads to many mistakes."

Here the attempt to be unusually profound has led to a series of demonstrable contradictions to the truth of Scripture. And first, that the Church has come into the place of Israel is distinctly affirmed by Moses, St. Paul, and our Lord himself, and no ingenuity can set aside their plain and concurrent testimony. (Deut. xxxii. 21; Rom. ix. 21-25; xi. 11-15; Matt. xxi. 43.) Next, that God deals with nations, as nations, in every age alike, is a fundamental truth of Scripture, and to deny it involves a dangerous heresy against the ceaseless dominion and providence of the Almighty. Again, that Israel were dealt with of old, not simply as a nation, but as a holy nation, or a visible Church, set apart for God, is clear from every page of their history. An election were also taken out from among them, as truly as from among the nations of Christendom; and hence the real analogy is the very reverse of what the objection would affirm. Further, if the Church has a heavenly calling, and her children are to be strangers and sojourners on the earth, the very same was true of all pious Israelites, and of the patriarchs their forefathers. (Gen. xxiii. 4; xlvii. 9; Lev. xxv. 23; Ps. xxxix. 12; 2 Chron. xxix. 15.) Also, if Israel were connected with earthly arrangements, the same is true of the Church, until the time of glory shall come. Her trials, helps, duties, hindrances and temptations, all depend on the course of Providence here below. If the hope of the Church is now centred on the Second Advent, so was that of Israel on Messiah's First Coming; and still this did not hinder them from receiving a whole series of prophetic messages, that were partly fulfilled, even before He came. Thus no valid reason can be found, in any feature of contrast between the two dispensations, why the Church should be deprived, for two thousand years, of that special help and light from the word of prophecy, which the Jewish Church enjoyed largely for so many ages before. God's providence is not less real now than in the days of old, nor less profitable to be revealed to His servants, for their guidance and warning, and holy meditation on the ways of the Most High.

3. The present dispensation, it is further alleged, is only a parenthesis. One advocate of the Futurist view has even asserted, that, "although the result has shewn that many

centuries have intervened (between the Apostolic age, and the day of Christ), we have no reason to believe that this formed any part of the counsel of God." A doctrine more unscriptural it is surely impossible to conceive. The times of the Gospel may be called a parenthesis, in a certain limited sense, and with reference to the purely Jewish promises. But then, in a sense exactly similar, the whole Mosaic dispensation is itself a parenthesis, between the times of the patriarchs, and of the Christian Church; while the Millennium is another parenthesis, between the dispensation of the Spirit, and the final glory, when the redemption is complete. Viewed apart from such a special reference, the present dispensation is not only one main part of God's eternal counsel of love, but exceeds in dignity and moral grandeur all former ages of the Church before the incarnation of our Lord. It is thus even more natural that some of its main events should be revealed beforehand to the servants of God, than that a similar revelation should have been made by the prophets in those earlier ages of the world.

4. Again, the earlier prophets are not wholly silent respecting this interval, as the objection requires us to believe. Their notices of it are sparing and scanty, because it was still remote, and a premature revelation might have been only perplexing to Jewish believers. It held a similar place, in their messages, to that which the Millennium holds in the New Testament. Still it is not omitted entirely; and nearly all the criticisms by which an opposite view is maintained, against the common faith of the Church, prove themselves, on examination, to be erroneous.

The first of these is on 1 Pet. i. 11, of which a more literal translation is proposed. "Who testified beforehand, unto Christ, the sufferings, and after these, the glories." These sufferings and glories, it is suggested, are "chronological boundaries, or outlines, between which the present, peculiar dispensation was to run its course." The prophets saw and defined these boundaries, but could not discern what lay between them; and hence, the calling of the Gentiles is styled by St. Paul "the mystery which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God."

The emended translation, however, as not seldom is the case, is really less faithful than the common version, since the force of the Greek article is entirely set aside. The most literal, perhaps, would run as follows: "Who testified beforehand the sufferings that pertained to Christ, and the

glories that are after these." There is here no mark that there are two chronological limits, but the reverse. The glory of our Lord, as he himself expounds to his disciples, Luke xxiv., followed at once upon his sufferings. The sufferings of his members, which also pertain to him, continue long after his glory has begun; nay, even their glory is often described as already begun, even before the time when it is completed in their Lord's Advent. In like manner the prophets clearly announced the resurrection of Christ, and his session at the right hand of the Father, as one main part of "the glories that were to follow." The very passage in Daniel, to which St. Peter chiefly alludes, is fatal to the hypothesis now examined, since it includes many events that belong to the present dispensation.

5. The next passages alleged are Eph. iii. 5, and Rom. xvi. 26. The word, prophets, is here explained to denote the apostles themselves, and not the prophets of the Old Testament. But the criticism, in each case, is certainly erroneous. In Eph. iii. 5, the word is not a title of the apostles, but refers to a second and distinct class of inspired teachers in the Church, as will be plain on comparing 1 Cor. xii. 28, 29, and Eph. iv. 11. In Rom. xvi. 26, the expression does relate clearly to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament; as may be proved from the second verse of the Epistle, with which the close forms a kind of parallel, and from many other passages (Acts x. 43; xiii. 27, 29, 3240; xv. 15-17; xvii. 2, 3, 11; xviii. 28; xxiv. 14; xxvi. 6, 22; xxviii. 23). All these statements prove evidently that the elder prophets were not wholly silent with regard to the events of the present dispensation.

6. It is alleged, further, that Isa. xlix. 6, relates to future times, after the recovery of Israel, and that the opposite view is gratuitous and unfounded. Now here, the grammatical force of the word is consistent with either view; but there are several reasons which establish firmly the usual interpretation. The promise to the Messiah is represented as a gracious recompense for the seeming failure of his ministry among the Jews, and hence must naturally follow at once after his rejection by his own people. The kings are to arise, and the princes to worship, at the very time, apparently, when he is still the abhorrence of the nation of Israel. Thirdly, the time of its fulfilment is in the acceptable time, the day of salvation; and this time, St. Paul assures us, was already come in his own days. Finally, St. Paul and Barnabas, by their use of the passage, shew that it contains