present possess. Babylon also was overthrown by Cyrus according to the terms of the predictions, but was he not employed by his armies and in his political objects to effect this result? Suppose, that knowing the prediction which had selected him by name, two hundred and forty years before his birth, as the avenger of the nation, and restorer of the Jews, he had refused to march against Babylon? Could that refusal have interfered with the design of God in its destruction? No. For God would then have employed some other nation or monarch, or have dethroned and raised up some more faithful conqueror in his Persian throne. The objects of Prophecy, unlike the miracles of direct interposition in the wilderness, or during the human. life of Christ, are effected by the consummate skill of that Great Mechanist who has formed and directs the intricate machinery of human affairs, and of man in the humblest of his domestic families, up to that vast collection of combinations, which results in the existence of any one powerful nation. The arms, the moral influence, the extensive power of such a people are secretly wielded by God for the perfection of his own ends. If they resist him they are broken. If they place themselves readily in connection with his revealed designs, and endeavour to perfect them, they are consecrated to his service and preserved. His predictions must receive their elucidation in accomplishment; and by the human agencies of political arrangements, warlike armaments, conflicting forces, and worldly wisdom, he overrules all things according to the counsel of his own will, and rejects or accepts the services of nations.

We can therefore assist in the second restoration of

the Jews, as Ezra, as Nehemiah, as Cyrus, as Artaxerxes, as queen Esther have done before. We ought, if we doubt these important subjects, to enter into a rational examination of the whole of Scripture. Let us only satisfy our minds that the promises to the Jew are literal announcements of a future kingdom, as well as declarations of his reception of Christ the Messiah, probably in that kingdom, and not in their dispersion, and we shall then be more willing to aid him in the recovery of his fatherland. Then our anxieties will watch for opportunities of convincing him, that our sympathies, our affections, our religious creed, our future hopes, our own Saviour, are one and the same with his hopes, his creed in worshipping one God, and his expectations of being crowned in a new kingdom by the long-promised and incarnate Messiah. Then too the smallest aid in a family, and the isolated prayer of one Christian, will become united as a single ray of light unto others equally bright and divine in their origin, and all will be formed into one resplendent stream of glorious power, which God can employ in dispelling the darkness and sorrows of that beloved nation and their miraculous land.

Having advanced so far in the inquiry into the future condition of the Jewish people, as to feel, I trust, satisfied, that there exists a great body of predictions which assert a restoration of that nation to God's favour and a kingdom in these days; I have now only to divide it into distinct heads, in order more clearly to observe the general tendency of the whole, and the individual object of each prediction. I lay my hand upon this Charter of the Jewish liberties and possess

F

Ch. xiii. 18.

Ch. i. 3.

ions with deep reverence and much trepidation. If they were less clear or numerous, it would be perhaps presumptuous to seek to pluck the fruit which this mystic tree of knowledge presents. But here there is no temptation to do evil. The Revealer of the secret intentions of the throne in heaven, has inspired his prophetic servants with this information, for the comfort of the Christian, and the increase of his faith, which the evidence of prophecy yields to the truth of the Bible in these latter days. We are invited, nay commanded, and a blessing is attached to those who examine the prophetic parts of unfulfilled Scripture.

pro

The things which were passing in the world, the phets described; and those things which were to be after Rev. i. 19. their own days, they were also instructed to reveal. Those who have understanding are directed to count even the mystic numbers, which denote the name of the great corrupting power of Christianity. And this is one of the most difficult points in Prophecy to examine. Those who read, and hear, and keep the words of prophecy, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, are blessed by St. John and by Christ. The restoration of the Jews, and the return of Ephraim, are asserted in connection Hosea xiv. with a promise "that he who is wise shall understand these things; prudent, and he shall know them.” In reading the deepest parts of unfulfilled prophecy, our Lord commands us to understand, that we may know, as in the case of the Jewish Christians, the approaching time, though none can dare to define the day or year. Those "who are wise," it is said, shall understand some of these predictions. And the impression left upon the mind of the sober, judicious

9.

Matt. xxiv. 15.

Dan. xii. 10.

Christian after perusing them is, that although the times and seasons are wisely concealed, yet much is revealed, and many individualizing particulars are mentioned, which aid, without laying our inquiries open to the charge of enthusiasm, in coming to some well-defined conclusions upon the subject of Jewish restoration and conversion. Hope then lights her torch at the lamp of Prophecy, and Faith, receiving it from her hand, kindles a beacon-fire that shines in warning and encouragement very far into the darkness of our future

years.

The five periods during which the prophecies I have selected as undeniably unfulfilled were delivered, will present us with some general remarks under each of the following sub-divisions.

1. The preliminary movement in the mind and feelings of the Jews.

2. The political movement amongst other nations, which becomes a secondary cause in their restoration.

3. The nature of their return in war or peace.

4. The composition of the nation eventually from all nations, and in the exiles of the twelve Tribes.

5. The alteration in the natural face, and present barrenness, of the Holy Land.

6. The places, boundaries, and cities which they will inhabit, with the public buildings, and domestic habitations of the Jews.

7. The character of the newly restored people-commercial-pastoral-and agricultural.

8. Their religious condition-opinions-and change of creed.

9. Their political Institutions.

10. The gradually increasing power, and wealth, and influence of the kingdom.

11. A great battle in Judæa, and near Jerusalem, with the northern nations.

12. The universal empire of religious opinion, or the Millennium, which is called the reign of the Saints. In such a catalogue of particular events, selected from prophecies which are spread over a space of time amounting to sixteen hundred years, and in a volume whose mystical depth in many places is quite as remarkable as its transparent clearness in the essential truths of salvation, mistakes and erroneous conclusions in some of my remarks, are necessary and unavoidable. Necessary, that the obscurity of an unfulfilled prophecy may be wisely suspended, like a veil spread over the beauties of the lovely statue of truth, until the time of its accomplishment removes the mystic tissue and displays the speaking form; and unavoidable, because it is the fallible, limited, and labouring mind of a mere human creature which seeks to comprehend the proportions and apartments of a vast temple, whose limits are the world, whose builder is God, and whose materials are the intellectual changes in the thoughts and moral feelings of man for a thousand years. Ah how feeble is the strength of the most gigantic mind, when measured with the thoughts of Him whose goings forth are from eternity. Ignorance is only known and felt by knowing much. The loftiest position man can attain in acquiring knowledge, is that which enables him to see an unbroken horizon of vast extent, enlarging, and brightening, as he ascends, around him. Then it is that the creature becomes humbled with a