miracles can prove no more now than they did at the beginning of the dispensation, which is, that Jesus was sent from God, and that He is risen from the dead-facts that no one doubts; whilst every form of evil spiritual power shall be manifested, and deceive all who are not walking in the ways of God's appointment. The Jews shall be converted by a miraculous display of the majesty of Him whom they crucified, because it will be the commencement of a new dispensation to them; and their conversion is national, and material, and not spiritual; that is, as has been before explained, not by the dissemination of principles, but by natural visible appeals to their senses.

Whatever may be signified by Edom, Moab, and Ammon, as types of systems existing in Christendom, it is clear that they remain to the end, and are never changed. It is probable that they express the three great divisions of the Western Church into Roman, Anglican, and Presbyterian National Churches; the sin of one being, that she has placed the royal crown of Christ on the head of a Priest, anticipating the true Melchizedek; the sin of the second being, that in her protest against that error she has run into one as great, by placing the mitre of Christ on the head of a layman; and the sin of the other being, that in her protest against both these forms of evil, she has discarded both crown and mitre, and placed the government of the Church in the hands of the people; each and all being alike a defilement of the Christian Church, and opposed to God's purpose, mind, and will; but they are not changed, as appears from Deut. ii., and also from Psalm lxxxiii.; they are seen combining with infidels of all kinds in resisting God's ordained method of guiding and delivering His Church. The battles typified by Sennacherib and Midian, &c., are only accomplished at Armageddon. The first, as seen in Isaiah vii.-xiv., represents the infidel in league with the apostate Christians to oppose God's method of government, then used to punish the apostates who helped him, and finally destroyed himself as soon as he has executed his mission of punishment upon them. Thus the infidel power was made to scourge the visible Church at the French Revolution, and is now about to make a similar onslaught on all Established Churches, but shall himself be destroyed after the translation of the saints. The form of his destruction is represented by the slaughter of Midian, where every man fell by the sword of his brother; which work is already begun in Spain, and is proceeding in Ireland; and so civil war shall spread all over Europe, as predicted by the late Mr. Canning.

The practical inference from these last types is, that whatever

restoration there might be in answer to the cry of the oppressed in Babylon, that restoration will be partial and small, held to be of no account, despised and rejected of men. Yet larger in reality than in appearance, because they who desire these things in heart, but who are restrained by other conflicting duties, shall not lose their reward, but are of the number of those who are prepared to meet their Lord, and shall be caught up to meet Him at His coming, and so escape the things that are coming upon the earth. Many who have been in ignorance of the truth concerning the real nature of the coming of the Lord, and who have been talking of a spiritual coming, by way of contrast, and in opposition to the real coming, cannot perceive that He is already come in Spirit. The dissemination of principles which all bear upon it has been going on in this country for nearly fifty years: the study of prophecy-the knowledge of the return of the Godman to this earth-the truth of His human, as well as of His divine, nature the continual manifestation of the presence of the Holy Ghost in His Church-the dignity of priesthood and sacramentsa striving to return to the practices of primitive antiquity-all indicate the working of the Spirit of God in a way which is unexampled for many ages. The first great event which shall take place for the assurance of the faithful, shall be the reappearance again of those who in all ages have fallen asleep in Him, whereby the courage of the faithful shall be fortified to bear that witness unto death which must be borne; for the last actings of the Church in humiliation shall surely be attended with as much loss of the blood of her children as were the first, and the crown of martyrdom shall yet adorn the brows of many who close, as well as of many who commenced, the Christian dispensation.

The Gospel of the kingdom will assuredly make the heart of every true Christian leap for joy, when he reflects on the misery accumulating around, which no political sagacity, honesty, nor talent can alleviate; when he remembers that his existence really only begins in the age to come, for which this is but a preparation full of sadness and delusion; and when he realizes that the best which things and conditions can offer here is but the shadow of that substance which he can never taste but in the world to come, in the kingdom of Christ, in the new heaven and the new earth, in a new government, with a new King, and with new subjects.