necessity in some distant and higher region; higher perhaps only in our own imaginations, and because removed from the scenery of earth. Should we not do well to consider heaven rather as a state of character and condition, than as a mere region of enjoyment? as a condition of mind, than as a local separation from the material structure of the present world? "In me ye shall have peace.' If then the feet of Emanuel shall yet rest on earth, shall we wish a loftier joy than there "to walk with him," and there to contemplate the manifestations of his grace in the renewal and felicity of a once disordered world?

The conviction has fastened strongly upon my mind, that the honour of our blessed Lord and Master is connected, in a peculiar manner, with this renovation of the earth. HERE he endured shame, and here Satan has reigned. But the CROWN belongs to CHRIST, and the KINGDOM shall be HIS. To this fact, surely, all the prophecies of the Old Testament direct our views; and every delineation of happiness which lies depicted upon the pages of the New Testament, borrows all its imagery and derives all its locality from the EARTH on which we dwell. Every blessing, indeed, originates with God, and is dependent upon a spiritual energy, but the scene on which it operates is this material world. These blessings concentrate their mighty influences to overthrow idolatry, superstition, misrule, sin, and death. They are connected with the KINGLY POWER Of CHRIst. They assure us of his conquest, and invite the EARTH to rejoice before her God. The city, "built of God," and anticipated by those "who have died in faith," "COMES DOWN from heaven," and expands its splendour upon the scenery of earth. The closing pages of Revelation, replace, indeed, our exiled feet in the same paradise from which Adam had been driven forth a wanderer and a criminal. I would venture, in fine, to ask with confidence, whether any other felicity than the unbroken dominion and blessed presence of Christ upon the EARTH, be recorded as a source of expectation amidst the prophetic pages of Scripture?

I renew my request to the Christian reader, to weigh these subjects with impartiality, and to conduct every examination in a spirit of humility and prayer.

It may, perhaps, facilitate the apprehension of the foregoing statements, to connect them with the two following considerations:

First, that the reign of Christ and the risen saints does by no means limit their abode to the surface of the earth, over which they will be commissioned to rule. The scene presented to the eye of the servant of Elisha may recur to the mind

in illustration of this idea. He beheld, in the regions of the air, "chariots of fire and horses of fire."

It may not be improbable, that these regions, purified from the rebel hosts which now occupy them under "the prince of the power of the air," will afford a local dwelling to the redeemed, and that from thence they may descend in fulfilment of the beneficent office assigned to them on the earth, either to mingle visibly or invisibly among those whose welfare and virtue they will rejoice to promote.

Secondly, that although this earth, during the millennial period, and yet more gloriously after the final judgment of the wicked, will be a scene of happiness and perfect order, it may not, however, be the only or the exclusive region of the felicity of redeemed man.

As the birth-place of the son of David, the scene of his agonies, conquest, and exaltation, we may suppose a special honour to be ever connected with it. Out of seeming weakness, the power of divine wisdom rises into its justest magnitude, and into its highest strength. This world, a diminutive portion of the vast creation, will have afforded to angels and to archangels, the loftiest displays of the attributes of God. THE CROSS OF CALVARY IS, PERHAPS, THE HIGHEST THRONE OF JEHOVAH'S GLORY.

This world, limited then as it is in its material dimensions, may yet be a structure peculiarly dear to beings more exalted than its own inhabitants. Shall such a scene, rescued from the assaults of evil, adorned with new beauty, the birth-place of the Redeemer, the radiant theatre of his beneficent forbearance, compassion, and grace, be blotted from existence, and draw forth, by its fall, a shout of malignant joy-if even malignant joy can be felt in the regions of despair?

Do the ever-living oracles thus announce its fatal hour of doom? Other accents, I confess, seem to rest upon my listening ear, when addressed by those voices of wisdom and of truth! They seem to tell me "there shall be no more curse:" "the Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice!”

But is it necessary to circumscribe the exercise of human power and bliss in its glorified condition to this earth, fair and beautiful as it will have then become? May not the glorified saints range with happy eagerness through unnumbered regions of tranquillity and joy? (John xiv. 2, 3; 2 Thess. iv. 17,) and amidst heavenly dominions and societies, of which they now can form no definite conceptions, receive continual accessions of knowledge and felicity, and expand their noblest faculties in the progressive sun-light of God's countenance for ever and

CHAPTER XIII.

The Signs of the Times.

HAVING briefly placed before the view of the reader the outline of those great events which appear to lie depicted on the map of prophecy-the subversion of the powers of evil, and the introduction of the peaceful reign of Christ—it becomes an inquiry of very direct and practical interest, whether we can ascertain, by any accredited marks, the place which the present time may occupy in this extended chart of the future? Borne forwards, as vessels upon the wide ocean of human life, can we calculate, with any thing like accuracy, the longitude of our own position, and ascertain the distance which may yet intervene between us and the land we desire to reach?

"The times and the seasons" are in the hands of God; and it becomes us to bow with reverence to the mysterious allotments of his providence. But if these allotments be more or less wrapped up in mystery, He, who in remoter ages thought fit to conceal them, as they approach the era of their accomplishment, can as easily reveal them. And if, on the one hand, it be possible, with rash and arrogant resolve, to predetermine the course of prophetic events, and thus to substitute human interpretation for divine admonition, it is as possible to remain in culpable ignorance of those signs and intimations which God has been pleased to make of his will and ways. Our Lord complained of the men of his day, that they could discover the "signs of the seasons," but were willingly blind to the more important "signs of the times."

In the elucidation of this part of our subject, I desire to speak with the utmost caution. I desire to take no one step beyond the barrier-line which God has drawn between ignorance and knowledge; and I would press upon my own heart, and upon that of the reader, that duties are ours, while events are God's; that whatever be the prospect before us, either of distance or of nearness to the great winding up of this checkered system, that we have at least a plain and unembarrassed path to pursue the fulfilment of the daily work assigned us, and the patient expectation that in his own time and way, our Lord and Master will at length appear.

With these feelings, I would offer a few considerations in reference to the chronology of the period in which we live;

or, which is the same thing, upon the date which the Scriptures assign to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. The reader will recollect the visions made to Daniel, and the four successive monarchies which they foretell. He will recollect, that both these visions agree in the same succession of four monarchies, and that the last monarchy, in the course of its duration, is to be broken into ten parts or independent sovereignties; and that "in the days of these kings will the God of heaven (Daniel ii.) set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed;" or, in similar terms, that at this time, "the saints of the Most High will take the kingdom." (Daniel vii.)

The second Advent of Christ will thus take place during the divided state of the Roman empire. Under this assurance, it would seem evident, that no fifth prolonged despotism, similar to those of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, will appear in the political history of man; but that the kingdom of Christ will be erected upon the ruins of the existing relics of the divided Roman empire.

2. But as these sovereignties may run on to an unlimited duration, the actual period of the Messiah's kingdom would still remain a matter of vague conjecture. We find, therefore, other marks which contract the range of our inquiry, within limits far more definite and precise.

The second vision revealed to Daniel (ch. vii.) foretells the existence of an eleventh power or horn, which springing up within the ten divided sovereignties, and assuming a spiritual despotism, will think "to change times and laws, and to wear out the saints of the Most High." This baleful despotism is to continue during a period called "a time and times and the dividing of time," (Dan. vii. 25,) at the end of which period, "the judgment will sit, and the kingdom be given to the people of the saints."

If we refer to the vision of the madness and dethronement of the Chaldean king, (Dan. iv. 16,) we shall find the duration of that insanity and dethronement to be called "seven times.” We can, I think, scarcely hesitate to call these "seven times," seven years; and hence to conclude that the "wearing out of the saints" by the spiritual power, will continue, during three years and a half, for "a time, times, and dividing of time." But we interpret these years to be prophetical years, that is, each year to contain 360 days of years; a day for a year; and thus these years, 360×3+180, are equal to 1260 days or prophetic years. We have authority to make this interpretation, in the usage of Scripture: thus, (Num. xiv. 33.) Your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness, after the number of

the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years. This interpretation is further strengthened, indeed I think placed beyond a reasonable doubt, by the reference made to the same events under expressions of time similar in duration, though different in name. Thus, in the book of Revelation, (ch. xi. 2,) the court of the mystic temple and the holy city is given to be trodden under foot of the Gentiles, forty and two months, 42x30=1260 days; and the witnesses of God are to prophesy "in sackcloth a thousand two hundred and threescore days." In a similar manner (Rev. xii. 14,) the persecuted woman, the mystic church, is driven into the wilderness, that she should be nourished "for a time, times, and half a time." Now, the events foretold under the expressions, "wearing out the saints of the Most High," "the witnesses clothed in sackcloth," "the holy city trodden under foot," and the "woman driven into the wilderness," are all connected together. They contain internal evidence which identifies them at once, to every student of prophecy, as the period during which the true church will be depressed in the world, or, like its divine Author, "be despised and rejected of men." No reasonable doubt, I imagine, can remain upon the mind as to the sameness of the period connected with these events, and expressed by the equivalent terms, "time, times, and dividing of time," "forty-two months," "1260 days." We have, therefore, this index or chronological sign to add to the former; that while the kingdom of Christ will subvert the kingdoms of the broken Roman empire, it will manifest this conquest at the end of a period of 1260 years of ecclesiastical persecution. If, then, we can ascertain the termination of this period of persecution, we shall ascertain the commencement of the kingdom of the Messiah. As my object in this "brief inquiry" is, however, to illustrate the great principle of retributive justice and glory to the Son of Man upon this EARTH, on which he was dishonoured, rather than to examine the details of prophetic intimations, I shall only refer the reader, in very general terms, to the history of the Church of Christ, in connexion with the persecutions of the papal despotism.

It is, then, a matter of history, that the Pope of Rome, in the year 533, received a grant from Justinian, who then swayed the imperial sceptre, which constituted him the first or universal bishop of the Christian church. (Vide Cunninghame on the Apocalypse, p. 199.)*

* I would suggest to the reader, that the period 533, here assigned to be the commencement of the 1260 years of spiritual despotism, need not imply that the