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Mr. Gipps, Professor Lee, and other expositors of their class, totally repudiate such an expectation. That a term of 1000 years is once mentioned in the Apocalypse they admit; but, arguing that this specific prediction has long since been fulfilled, they conclude that the church has nothing further to look forward to, but a continuance in her present state of dubious warfare, until the Lord descends to the final judgment. Now the leading texts adduced on the affirmative side of this question are as follows:

"In the days of these kings (the ten kingdoms typified by the ten toes of the great image) shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces, and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." Dan. ii.

44.

“I beheld, and the (little) horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom." Dan. vii. 21, 22.

"And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High." Dan. vii. 27.

"Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom." Isa. ix. 7.

"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." Luke i. 32, 33.

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The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Habakkuk ii. 14.

And men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen." Zeph. ii. 11.

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And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled. -And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." Rev. xx, 2-4.

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Now it is in opposition to the combined force of all these passages that the anti-millenarians contend that there is no future reign of the

saints, or even any future period of purity and blessedness, predicted in Scripture. But, then, in combatting these passages, they commonly meet them, as Mr. Gipps has done, singly. They do not sufficiently. consider how they support and fortify each other. And yet, even taken singly, they are not easily disposed of. Mr. G. does but modestly suggest that his interpretation of Revelation xx,-which entirely gets rid of both Millennium and First Resurrection,-may be the correct way of viewing it. But if all that can be said is, that a certain isolated passage may have a merely figurative meaning, what becomes of this barely possible interpretation, when it is seen that the literal interpretation is forced upon us by the plain bearing of a dozen parallel passages? To reign with Christ, for instance, in Revel. xx. 4, may be supposed to mean nothing more than the phrase "royal priesthood," employed by St. Peter in his first epistle, ii. 9. and the intent of both may be merely figurative and poetical. Such a supposition may pass, if we examine the passage quoted from St. John without looking for its parallels. But when we make Scripture its own interpreter, we find in Daniel two distinct predictions of a kingdom of the saints which is to be established on the same platform as the preceding four Gentile kingdoms, and which is to rise upon the overthrow of the fourth. We also find Isaiah predicting the establishment of Messiah upon the throne of David; we find the angel quoting and confirming this prediction to Mary at the annunciation; and we find Christ himself alluding to the same throne and the same government. Further, we find that it is a matter of joyful anticipation with the glorified church, in Revel. v. 10, that they are "made kings and priests, and shall reign on the earth." And the whole of these specific and clear declarations are further

strengthened by a multitude of passages which expressly predict a period when "the Lord shall be king over all the earth;" when "the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ;" and when" the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and all nations shall flow unto it." And yet it is in the face of this combined testimony that we are invited to believe, that the church will continue in her present low and despised state to the end of the world; that no purer or happier state is promised her, on this earth; and that the only events to be looked forward to, are, the final judgment, and the consummation of all things! But we must proceed to inquire,

II. Is there any distinct account given of the nature of this millennial kingdom?

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And the children of Israel shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein yonr fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children,—and my servant David shall be their prince for ever." Ezek. xxxvii. 25.

"The Lord of Hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.” Isaiah xxiv. 23.

"And the Lord shall reign over them in mount Zion, from henceforth, even for ever," Micah iv. 7.

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say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Isaiah ii. 3.

"And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people; all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed." Isaiah lxi. 9.

"And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." Zech. xiv. 16.

These passages appear to the Literalists to predict the return of the Jews to their own land, and the establishment of a glorious Theocracy among them. Upon this subject we shall say nothing. But we cannot help remarking that the force of all these texts, when added to those quoted under our first head, seems, at all events, to remove to an immense distance the notion of the Spiritualists, that the church has nothing great or glorious to expect until the coming of the final judgment. But we pass on to the next point in dispute; which is,

III. Is there any ground to expect the personal appearance and residence of the Saviour himself on the earth, during this expected period of holiness and bliss?

The Literalists, in asserting the affirmative of this proposition, bring forward many of the passages which are already quoted under our first head; such as "of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, &c.

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1. It is written in Daniel vii. 13, 14, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him.".

Now to fix the true chronological date of this coming of the Son of man with the clouds of heaven, the parallel passage of the Apocalypse must be consulted. In Daniel, this appearance takes place when the fourth beast is judged, and slain, and given to the burning flame. In the Apocalypse we find the same event, beyond the possibility of doubt. That the tenhorned beast of St. John's 13th chapter is the same with the fourth beast of Daniel, is a point agreed upon by all commentators. Now in the 19th chapter of the Revelation, at verses 20, 21, we find that "the beast was taken, and cast into a lake of fire," which is obviously the same event as the judgment of the fourth beast in Daniel's seventh chapter. And all this occurs, in the Apocalypse, immediately before the millennium, the binding of Satan, and the reigning of the saints with Christ on the earth.

But is it yet made clear that this coming of the Son of man will be, to human eyes, a visible personal appearance? To establish this, the Literalists next adduce,

2. From 2 Thessalonians ii. 8. "And then shall that wicked (the man of sin) be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and destroy with the brightness of his coming." As this text speaks of a coming of the Son

of man, and a coming to destroy

the

рарасу, the man of sin, which is bound up with the fourth or ten-horned beast, it is clearly an allusion to the same event spoken of in the passages just quoted from Daniel and St. John. The phrase used in this text Mr. Cuninghame maintains to be in the original so strong and emphatic, being formed of the union of two Greek nouns signifying Appearing, and Coming or Presence-as to negative altogether the idea of a merely spiritual coming, or an effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the church.

3. But Mr. Cuninghame further claims strong confirmation for his opinion from Luke xxi. 27. in which passage our Lord himself says, "Then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory." What period is referred to by the word then in this verse? This is answered by the context, Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled;—and THEN shall they see," &c. Now the times of the Gentiles end, it is confessed on all hands, with Daniel's fourth kingdom, at the destruction of which, it is said by that prophet, that " the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven." So that here we have another exactly parallel passage, each strengthening the other, and both agreeing with St, Paul's prediction of the end of the Man of Sin, "whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." A three-fold cord is not quickly broken.

4. Lastly, Mr. Cuninghame claims the benefit and advantage of all the various texts scattered through the Old and New Testaments, which speak of a coming with clouds, and a glorious appearing, but without any chronological marks or designations, as to the exact era predicted. Mr. C.'s argument seems to be this. You, the Spiritualists, have been accus

tomed to assume a meaning in all these texts, which you have yet to prove. You take for granted that they all refer to a coming to final judgment, to burn up the world, to waft the saints to heaven, and thus to consummate all things. But all this is a mere fiction of your own creation. You have taken these texts, which in themselves have no chronological or distinctive marks, and have connected them with an event which you yourselves have constructed, not out of the prophecies, but by neglecting the prophecies. Whereas we, finding many clear and chronological predictions in various parts of Scripture, of a certain event distinctly described, have much more right to assemble all these other general declarations around those which are specific, and to assume that they have all one common meaning. To use the words of Mr. Mede, 66 I shall never believe," says that learned commentator, “but that all those places of "the Son of Man's coming and ap

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sure calculated, to abate the confidence of dogmatism, and to lead to mutual tolerance and continued serious examination of the question.

1. Do the advocates of the literal scheme sufficiently take into their consideration, the whole bearing of the seventh of Daniel on the question of the personal appearance of Christ in the millennial kingdom? The point to which we particularly refer is this:

The prophet is favoured with a remarkable vision; and afterwards with an angelic interpretation. In the vision he sees four great beasts arise upon the earth. After the fourth beast has filled up his appointed term, the prophet sees the thrones cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, and the judgment was set, and the fourth beast slain. He then sees the Son of man come with the clouds of heaven, and receive a kingdom.

Now all this has been, or will be, exactly fulfilled;-but has it been or will it be literally or apparently fulfilled, visibly and to the very letter? The eye of the prophet, in a vision, sees four great beasts,— has the eye of man, in an ordinary manner, ever beheld these creatures? The eye of the prophet sees in a vision the Ancient of days sit in judgment upon these beasts,-will

the eye of man, in the present premillennial state, ever behold this awful sight? And in like manner, the eye of the prophet beholds, in a vision, the Son of man coming with a cloud, and receiving a kingdom. If all the rest of the vision is fulfilled in spirit, but not according to the literal sense of the words, will this last clause alone form an exception ?

But this question is answered by the angelic interpreter. He thus explains the whole vision.

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The four beasts are four kingdoms. The judgment shall sit upon the fourth beast, to take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end. The kingdom and

dominion shall be given to the saints of the Most High."

Have we not then, plain scrip→ tural ground for supposing that the giving dominion, and glory, and a kingdom unto the Son of man, in this chapter, may mean, what the angelic interpreter says it does mean, the giving the kingdom and dominion to the people of the saints of the Most High?

2. But now, turning to the advocates for a spiritual interpretation, to the exclusion of every fragment of a literal meaning, we would ask them, on the other hand, whether in shewing such a dislike to every thing supernatural, or out of the ordinary course of events, they sufficiently bear in mind the whole history of God's dealings with his people. They shrink with evident dislike from the notion of a personal reign of the Saviour upon earth; they ridicule or more gravely protest against even the idea of a Theocracy upon earth; and the notion to which they seem most fondly to cling, is, that no material change will take place in God's present mode of dealing with mankind, but that the world and the church will both go on in their present course, neither gaining any very considerable advantage over the other, until the final judgment arrives, the earth and all that is upon it is burnt up, and the consummation of all things closes the scene. To such as these, discussion on unfulfilled prophecy must indeed seem worse than useless, since in their view there is no such thing as an unfulfilled prophecy in the Bible.

But what we would wish more particularly to ask these objectors, is, Why should they shrink so much from the idea of God's doing again upon earth what he has already done? They are accustomed to look upon the gospel dispensation as one of greater privileges and richer endowments than the dispensation of the Old Testament. Why then should they so much

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