Review and Herald, Vol. 20, No. 24. (11/11/1862)

Review and Herald

Nov 11, 1862

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1862

Evidences of Christianity.

By Moses Hull

BY MOSES HULL.

CHAPTER VI.

(Continued.)

Egypt.—The Jews are not the only ones of whom the prophets have spoken. They have no less definitely described the future of Egypt: "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." Eze. xxix, 15. Again, the same prophet says, "Thus saith the Lord God: I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon. He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land; and they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked; and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God: I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt; and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt." Chap. xxx, 10-18.

Egypt was one of the most ancient, and, at the time Ezekiel uttered this prophecy, one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world. "It contained eighteen hundred cities, and seventeen millions of inhabitants." The revolutions and state of this kingdom are described in the Bible. See Isa. xix; Jer. xliii, 8-13; xlvi; Eze. xxix-xxxii.

It is now more than twenty-four centuries since the prophecies concerning this nation were delivered. And now we are led to ask, What likelihood or appearance was there that Egypt, the most defensible country in the world, bounded on one side by the Red Sea, and on another by the trackless desert, able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to drown an invading army by the inundation of the Nile,—what likelihood that such a country should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, fall into the hands of strangers, and that forever, become the basest of kingdoms, and renounce idolatry? Yet such is, and has been for three hundred years, the state of Egypt.

"Invaded and subdued by Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, according to the word of the Lord, both by Jeremiah, xlvi, 13, and by Ezekiel, xxx, 10, subjected afterward by the Persians under Cambyses, and to the Macedonians by Alexander the Great, Isa. xix, 1-13, Egypt was, after his death, governed for nearly three centuries by the Ptolemies, the descendants of one of his generals, at which time it was an opulent kingdom, till, about thirty years before the Christian era, it came under the Roman yoke: and Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, have since successively ruled over it. Its history shows the completion of the prophecies concerning it."—Keith on Prophecy, p. 116.

Now let the infidel Volney once more bear testimony to the truth: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks and Arabs, the Georgians, and, at length, the race of Tartars, distinguished by the name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves, and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and elected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary. They are replaced by slaves brought from their original country. The system of oppression is methodical. Everything the traveler sees or hears reminds him he is in the country of slavery and tyranny. In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor land-holders. Ignorance, diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and physical knowledge," &c. Travels, vol. i, pp. 74, 103, 110, 190, &c.

Gibbon, another infidel, says, "A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borghite dynasties were themselves prompted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four-and-twenty beys or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."—Dec. and Fall, vol. vi, pp. 109, 110.

Says Mr. Patterson: "Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by the Turks, and the present (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry water courses will be crossed in the Delta; and water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were blockaded by Greek and Roman navies."—Fables of Infidelity, p. 141.

Again, after quoting Eze. xxix, 15, he says: "Every traveler will attest the truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor for any who will pay them five cents a day, and eager to hide the treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. I have seen British horses refuse to eat the meat ground from the mixture of wheat, barley, oats, lentils, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and collections of filth which form the produce of their fields. For poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial."—Id., p. 142.

Unbeliever, have you not been surprised as you have compared the prophecies concerning Egypt with the last twenty-four centuries of its history? Or have you taken the pains to compare them? If not, are you not justly censurable for your unbelief?

Is it not strange that among all the nations of the earth, one only answers to the prediction of the prophet? and that the very one that the prophet calls by name in his prophecy?

Babylon.—The prophets are no less definite in giving the future history of particular cities, than in that of the nations concerning which we have been inquiring. Especially is the reader's attention called to the prophecies concerning the ancient city of Babylon. But before quoting these prophecies it may be necessary to give a brief description of "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." If the reader wishes an extended notice of this city, he will find it in Rollin's Ancient History, vol. ii, pp. 48-52.

Goodrich says, "Among the most wonderful things handed down to us by history, is the account of the ancient city of Babylon, which is so often mentioned in the Bible, and remains of which astonish the traveler at the present day. The most particular description we have of it is furnished by the Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited it about four hundred and fifty years before Christ.

"He says that it was situated in a great plain, the river Euphrates running through it from north to south. Its form was square; each side measured fifteen miles, and the whole circuit sixty miles. It was surrounded with walls three hundred and fifty feet high and eighty-seven feet thick. On these walls were two hundred and fifty towers. The entrance to the city was by one hundred gates of brass. Without the wall there was a deep ditch around the city filled with water.

"Upon the tops of the walls there were buildings on each side containing one room each. Between these there was space to drive a chariot with horses. The walls were built of brick, cemented together with bitumen. At every thirty layers of bricks there was a layer

of reeds to give the fabric strength. . . . . The streets in the city were strait, the houses being four or five stories high. The temple of Belus was of amazing magnitude, being nearly as large as the great pyramid of Gizeh. It was a regular square, each side measuring six hundred feet. It consisted of eight towers, one above another, and was of immense hight. Besides this, there was a magnificent palace, and connected with it were hanging gardens of great extent."—Curiosities of Nature and Art, pp. 231, 232.

Alexander Keith says, "The walls of Babylon, before their hight was reduced to seventy-five feet by Darius Hystaspes, were above three hundred feet high; they were eighty-seven feet broad, and forty-eight miles in compass. The temple of Belus, six hundred feet in hight; the artificial hanging gardens, which, piled in successive terraces, towered as high as the walls; the embankment which restrained the Euphrates; the hundred brazen gates; the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar, surrounded by three walls forty-eight miles in compass; and the adjoining artificial lake, the circumference of which was far more than a hundred miles, and the depth, by the lowest account, thirty-five feet; all displayed many of the mightiest works of mortals concentrated in a single spot. This great Babylon was the glory of kingdoms, and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, the golden city, the lady of kingdoms, and the praise of the whole earth. The Scriptures, which thus describe it, mark minutely every stage of its fall, till it should become what now it is—a complete desolation. And every feature of its present aspect is delineated in the prophecies with all the precision with which they could not be drawn by the traveler who looks on fallen Babylon itself."—p. 101.

Isaiah thus predicts the doom of this great city: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there: neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." Isa. xiii, 19-22.

Also Isa. xiv, 22, 23: "For I will rise up against them saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts."

Much might be said about the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus and the fulfillment of prophecy in that event. Cyrus was called by name before his birth, and it was prophesied that the loins of kings should be loosed before him, "to open the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut." Isa. xlv, 1. All of this was literally fulfilled on the night of Belshazzar's great feast, when the mighty men of Babylon forbore to fight. They remained in their holds, their might failed them, and they became as women. Jer. li, 30; Dan. v. But we choose to confine our remarks to the present state of Babylon.

1. All must acknowledge that the prophecies in Isa. xiii and xiv, lie entirely beyond the range of human sagacity. This prediction was uttered before Babylon arrived at the hight of its glory.

Nebuchadnezzar had not yet said, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" The walls were thought to be impregnable, and twenty years' provisions were stored up within their enclosure, so that in case of a siege they could not be starved out. Certainly Isaiah must have been considered insane when he uttered such predictions. "Babylon," said he, "shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." Not destroyed so suddenly, but as effectually.

After the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus, Alexander attempted to restore it to its former glory, and make it the metropolis of a universal empire. He set ten thousand men to work at it, but he died, and the undertaking was abandoned, thus fulfilling another prediction: "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." Jer. li, 9. The glory of Babylon kept diminishing. At the commencement of the Christian era, Babylon was only partially inhabited. Peter dated his first epistle from that place. But the fiat had gone forth—"It shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah." So it kept going down until in the fourth century its walls formed an enclosure for wild beasts, and "the golden city" was converted into a hunting-ground. The name of Babylon was cut off from the history of the world. A long interval succeeded without any history concerning it, or ever its site being known. So literally has the language, "It shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah," been fulfilled.

2. The prophet goes on to state that it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there.

Every one who has visited the spot attests the fulfillment of this wonderful prediction. Mignon declares Babylon to be "a tenantless and desolate metropolis." Another writer says, "The name and remnant are cut off from Babylon. There the Arabian pitches not his tents; there the shepherds make not their folds; but wild beasts of the desert lie there, and their houses are full of doleful creatures, &c. It is a possession for the bittern, and a dwelling-place for dragons, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert, a burnt mountain, empty, wholly desolate, pools of water, heaps, and utterly destroyed, a land where no man dwelled, every one that goeth by it is astonished," &c.—Keith, pp. 104-5. See also Isa. xiii, 19-22, xiv, 22, 23; Jer. l, 13-23, 29; li, 13-26, &c.

The dread of evil spirits prevents the Arab from pitching his tent there. Mignon declares that though he was fully armed and attended by six Arabs he could not induce them by any reward to spend the night among the ruins of Babylon, from their apprehension of evil spirits, so completely is the prophecy fulfilled.—"The Arabian shall not pitch tent there."

Sir Robert Ker Porter saw two majestic lions in the ruins of the palace, and Mr. Fraser says "There were dens of wild beasts in various places; and Mr. Rich perceived in some a strong smell like that of a lion. Bones of sheep and other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and owls."—See Fables of Infidelity, pp. 144, 145.

3. In the above testimonies we have seen fulfilled the next two verses, which read, "But the wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and the dragons in their pleasant palaces, and the time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged."

4. But the same prophet has declared that it should be made "a possession for the bittern," a water fowl, and that "it shall be pools of water;" while another prophet has said, It shall become heaps, and "a dwelling-place for dragons." Jer. li, 25-28; and in another place, "That it shall become a burnt mountain." Verse 25.

How can such contradictions be true? says the infidel. But they are all true. While the lion in one part of Babylon is howling his testimony to the truth of God's word, "the bittern" is a pool in another part, and the "doleful creatures" in another, and the heaps and burnt mountains in still others, are warning the traveler over its ruins to "take heed" to the "sure word of prophecy."

Mignon says, "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates, a great part of this place is little better than a swamp; at another season it was 'a dry waste and burning plain.' Even at the same period, 'one part on the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert.'"—Fables, p. 145.

Mr. Fraser says, "There is one fact in connection with the most remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod) which we cannot dismiss without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work, scattered on the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of the masses. Yet, how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could have been applied at such hight from the ground is unaccountable. They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and must have fallen from some much more lofty position; for the structure which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally cannot have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation, would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on. Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful action of electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed, fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the courses of brick are still visible, identifying them with the standing pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat that it is almost impossible to break off the smallest piece; and though porous in texture, and full of air-holes and cavities like other bricks, they require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same machinery as is used in dressing the hardest pebbles."—Fables, pp. 145, 146.

Mr. Alexander quotes Mignon as saying, "The whole view was particularly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates, wandering in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch, through the silent ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a noble river, under all the disadvantages of its desert tracked course. Its banks were hoary with reeds, and the gray osier willows were yet there, on which the captives of Israel hung up their harps, and, while Jerusalem was not, refused to be comforted. But how is the rest of the scene changed since then? At that time those broken hills were palaces—those long undulating mounds, streets. This vast solitude, filled with the busy subjects of the proud daughter of the east. Now wasted with misery, her habitations are not to be found, and for herself, a worm is spread over her."—Evidences, p. 152.

Alexander Keith closes his chapter upon this subject in the following language:

"Who hath declared this from ancient times? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord, and there is no God besides me? Has not the day of the Lord come against Babylon as a destruction from the Almighty? And when we see the proudest works of man thus brought to the dust, where is the human strength, or wisdom, or beauty, or greatness, in which any ought to glory; and whose name alone is it that ought ever to be feared, and that shall be exalted forever, but that of the Lord who hath performed his every purpose against Babylon? And seeing that the glory of kingdoms is thus fallen, what earthly possession or privilege deserves to be prized like the citizenship of that kingdom which alone can never be moved? and how worthless in comparison shall they all at last prove, even as the dust of fallen Babylon! And what other stay need the true Christian seek, or what human fear need he dread, while he puts his trust in that God according to whose word the broad walls of Babylon have been utterly broken! And if the life on their lips, and the breath in their nostrils, and the graves of their brethren and forefathers, cannot teach the worldly, the careless, and the nominal Christian, that pride was not made for man, let them go and look for the walls of Babylon, and stand on the blasted ruins of the temple of Belus. There they may learn, visibly illustrated, the truth of that word of God—'All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof.' O that all such would remember that 'He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"—pp. 108, 109.

(Concluded next week.)

Patience.

By V. O. Edson

WHILE we sojourn here below, Wandering through this vale of tears, Trials we expect to know, Crosses, conflicts, griefs, and fears.

While life's ills we have to bear, How much patience do we need; Constant watchfulness and prayer, Lest we into darkness lead.

Ah! how many fretful words, From our lips impatient fall; These in heaven the Lord records; We must answer for them all.

O, for patience to endure, Calmly all the ills we meet; Patience will to us ensure Peace of mind, how passing sweet.

Patience, 'tis a lovely grace, Blest the one who it obtains. Shall I ever find that place? Shall I perfect patience gain?

Sure must patience dwell within, Meek submission fill my heart, If I would be free from sin, And with Jesus have a part.

Tribulation patience brings; Patience works experience too; Hope bids faith to stretch her wings, Brings the promise to our view.

Those who patiently endure To the end, a crown is given; From life's ills they'll be secure, When they reach their home in heaven. V. O. EDSON.

Hubbardsville, N. Y.

Avenging of the Elect.

(Continued.)

THE FATAL MISTAKE OF THE ANCIENT JEWS: OR HOW ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETING THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES OCCASIONED THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST ADVENT OF CHRIST.

Your attention has already been directed to the evident revolution in the method of treating the prophecies that relate to the second advent, since the days of the primitive church, and since the times of the great Protestant reformers. You are now invited for a little while to contemplate another revolution in Biblical exegesis still more remarkable and surprising. It is in relation to the two advents of Christ. It shows that human nature is the same, whether developed through Jewish or through Gentile peculiarities. And the statement and solution of what we are about to relate will aid us in our investigation of the general subject under review.

The ancient Jewish divines had no difficulty in discovering from the prophecies that Messiah should come into the world about the time that our Lord Jesus was born. They had no difficulty in proving that he was to establish a visible kingdom in the world, and reign forever in his own person upon the throne of his father David. But they did not distinguish between the predictions of his first advent to be despised, rejected and slain, and those which relate to his second advent to judge, to triumph, and to reign.

And there is, it must be admitted, not a little ambiguity in the prophecies that relate to these two great events which did not fail to excite the attention and increase the embarrassment of the Hebrew Bible student. Some of the prophecies seem to relate solely to one advent, and others to the other. While some of them just as evidently cover the whole duration of time intervening between the two events, and in some degree associate the two extreme events together. Whether the various events embraced within the same field of prophecy were seen and understood in their true aspect and relations, depended materially upon the standpoint from which the whole succession was viewed.

Prophetic events were usually portrayed, as we may say, perspectively; not in the relative periods of their passing, but in the direct line of their approaching, each partly hidden by its nearest antecedent, and partially hiding in turn the next in the succession. As in looking along an extensive range of mountains, in the line of their greatest extent, we see the more prominent summits successively hiding and hidden in part, and in some cases blended and grouped together without our being able to discover the valleys and lesser eminences that intervene, as we might perhaps from some other position.

In the far-reaching line of the more comprehensive Messianic prophecies, the first and most conspicuous event was the child born, the Son given. Next in order was the government upon his shoulders. Next, the Divine and imperial titles upon his diadem. Next, the endless increase of his government and peace upon the throne of David. And thus, still extending into the future, the kingdom ordered and established with judgment and justice, and so, with perpetually increasing glory, passing into the forever and ever of eternal duration.

Such a splendid perspective prophecy as this, so full of hope and gladness to the Hebrew, and so encouraging to the whole human race, did not fail to become a universal favorite with all the believers of the ancient age, and the inspiring criterion by which to judge of the scope and intention of the other numberless detached and side prophecies, which were, so to speak, as the isolated hills and branching spurs of the more extensive and more connected general range.

But as the enraptured Hebrew soul looked admiringly along this line of glowing prophetic eminences, gazing over the sun-gilded palaces and gleaming towers of beloved Jerusalem, the eye became too fixed in its gaze upon the far-off glories that were so greatly longed for, to peer down into deep, dark Gethsemane, beneath the olives by night, to behold the wretched sufferer there, and recognize the mysterious Son of both God and man, baptized with tears and blood, and perceive that that was Prince Messiah.

And as the ardent Hebrew stood upon the brow of his own beloved Mount Olivet, with Acra, Bezetha, Moriah and Zion bathed in sunlight at his feet, his own magnificent temple—the Lord's house—rose up just between him and Calvary, and its gorgeous cloisters and golden turrets completely hid the bloody cross and the victim expiring there, and the gleaming pinnacles threw their rayless shadows upon the three-fold superscriptions over the victim's head: This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

When from another position prophecy afforded the Hebrew another view—a side view, if we may thus represent it—and he beheld a Man of Sorrow, growing up as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground, having neither form nor comeliness, nor beauty that he should be desired: when he was astonished at his visage, because it was so marked with grief, and his form more than the sons of men, and yet he looked like Prince Messiah: when he beheld him despised and rejected of men: when he beheld all the people averting and hiding their faces from him, who nevertheless, seemed to be the long expected One: when he saw him led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before his shearers: when he beheld his judgment wrested from him in his deep humiliation, and his life taken from the earth: when he beheld his soul laid upon the altar as an offering for sin, and the Lord bruising and chastening him to make an atonement for the sins of others, the most devout and studious of the Hebrew worshippers found himself strangely interested and strangely perplexed, and was constrained to cry out, How can I understand this, unless some man guide me? And he would inquire of the first traveler he met by the wayside—Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?

Even the prophets themselves appear to have been unable to comprehend their own Messianic predictions. They were incited to inquire and search diligently, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

And even the angels desired to look into these things, but could not fully comprehend them. And there they stood, age after age, with mute curiosity and profound surprise, gazing downward upon the mysterious mercy seat, and waiting for the veil to be rent asunder, that the light of a new dispensation might illuminate that Divine obscurity, and bring to view things that had been always hidden from the foundation of the world.

As the final result of the embarrassment of the Hebrew mind, the masters in Israel did what was particularly natural for them to do, after they had made void the law of God by their traditions: Finding the predictions of Messiah's coming to judge and to reign over the world so plain and unmistakable as to leave no doubt of their literality; and being at the same time seriously embarrassed by those passages that speak of his sufferings, rejection and death: the former being altogether pleasing to their long cherished hopes, and very flattering to their national pride, as the Scriptures were commonly explained; the latter implying unpardonable iniquity on the part of the people, and ultimate disgrace and desolation, and therefore deeply mortifying and discouraging to their ardently expectant hearts, they generally agreed, it would seem, to interpret those prophecies which refer to his coming to reign in glory among them as being literal, and to be fulfilled in his own person; and those which relate to his rejection and death, which seemed to be inconsistent with the others, they seemed to explain away, as being impersonal and figurative, and applicable only to other persons and other things.

The dreadful result is before us: it forms a part of the world's most lamentable history. He came to his own, and his own received him not. Though they believed in him, and were ardently desiring and looking for him, and probably had no doubt of the truthfulness and propriety of their methods of interpreting the Scriptures, yet as the painful and astounding history shows, when the Messiah came, and was, and appeared, and acted, and suffered and died, just as their own Scriptures had foretold, he found the world, and his own people especially, unprepared to receive him. And the whole resulted from erroneous methods of interpreting the Scriptures; making their own prejudices and preferences the standard of exegesis, and explaining one passage as literal, and another as figurative, one as personal, and another as impersonal, not by any just laws of Scripture exegesis, but as hope, desire, or selfish ambition naturally prompted. Their final destruction was explained by the Lord himself in this single word, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." And, as he said, concerning the law, that they had made it void through their traditions, so he might as truly have said in relation to the prophecies.

THE FATAL MISTAKE OF MODERN CHRISTIANS: OR HOW ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETING THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES WILL OCCASION THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE WORLD FOR THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST.

It has already been intimated that a great revolution in doctrine in respect to the second advent has been effected in the modern church, as compared with their first leaders and founders. And you will find that there is a startling similarity with the Jewish declension from the true faith, in consequence of a like departure from the true method of Scripture exegesis, and for similar reasons.

We, too, as well as the Jews, find some things hard to be understood in these Messianic prophecies. And as we know that those which relate to his coming to suffer and to save are strictly personal and literal, because they have been literally and personally fulfilled; and as we are considerably embarrassed with those that relate to his coming to judge and to reign; in these last days—we repeat it, in these last days—it has become very common for our theological masters to consider these predictions of the millennial coming and kingdom as impersonal and figurative in their primary intention, and only secondarily and remotely, if at all, applicable to the person of Christ. The former, relating to the first advent being manifestly literal, and easy of explanation, and the latter, relating to the second advent, being considered of doubtful import, and not easily explained, the constant effort of the expositor seems to be, to interpret these so as to be in harmony with those, on the supposition that both classes of the predictions referred to the same thing in the same dispensation in its primary and ultimate differences of condition.

And thus the second advent prophecies have lost their originally specific character, as literal predictions of real events, and are now, contrary to all the established axioms of general criticism, first of all subjected to the hypothesis of a figurative interpretation, as if we were authorized to conclude beforehand, that what they seem to teach should not be considered as their primary intention. And, for all practical influences, as it is shown by the facts in the case, this very large class of the prophecies are as a dead letter, both to the Church and the world. And a multitude of unauthorized explanations and applications of such prophecies are ingeniously substituted, in the efforts to make them practical, without allowing them to speak for themselves. A very common method is to substitute death, and getting ready to die, as if dying and a preparation for death were, in effect, just about the same as the coming of the Lord, and a preparation for that event.

To all of this a sufficient answer may be given in these words:

1. It is virtually an attempt to improve the revelation that God has given to us in the language of the Holy Scriptures; unmistakably indicating that if we had been consulted by the inspired writers, we could have advised them of better themes, and a better class of terms than they were led to adopt. For, certainly, if speaking of death and of a preparation to die, is more appropriate, and has a better influence than speaking of the coming of the Lord, and a preparation to meet him, then the holy prophets and apostles, and our Lord himself, were not inspired to speak in the best manner for securing the best results.

2. In the second place, to die, and to be prepared for death, is not peculiar to Christianity, as the doctrine of the coming of the Lord is; but is something that all people of all religions are familiar with, and the idea of it does not necessarily imply any direct revelation from God. To make such a substitution, then, is, in effect, ignoring or setting aside, as being of little or no practical use, that which infinite Wisdom has judged to be of sufficient importance as to be made a subject of innumerable and direct revelations. It is, in fact, overlooking and virtually setting aside that which is peculiar to the Christian religion, and by which it is broadly distinguished from all the other forms of religion in the world, and adopting instead, for practical purposes, that which is common to all. Is this to be denied? If it be admitted, what a state of things does it indicate?

3. Finally, to speak in the manner that is usual and necessary for those who make the substitution, is not speaking "as the oracles of God," but instead thereof, preferring the human method before the divine. And this, of itself, is an evidence of inconsistency in the doctrine or method that leads to such a practice and preference. And all this impropriety results from our liability to run to extremes in religion, as well as in every thing else: we have discovered the Scylla on which the Jews were wrecked, and we are veering constantly toward Charybdis.—Buck.

(Concluded next week.)

Continue reading: Thoughts on the Revelation