that God appeals to us in the form of the understanding, which is less likely to awaken that spiritual pride which is so deeply seated in the human heart; because this form of appeal calls upon man himself to exercise a similar faculty of discernment in the ways of God.

It is impossible for the mind of man to be actively engaged in the expectation of any future event without giving it some form in the imagination: if his heart is not engaged in it, it will be indefinite enough; but we may be assured, if a future thing does not present itself to the mind in an intelligible shape, both as to time and place, though it may loosely exist as an idea, it can form no object of faith or hope.

It is vain to urge that our faith ought to exercise itself upon the object of promise, and not upon the time or manner of fulfilment, inasmuch as it is obvious the faith of the Church ought to be fixed upon any prophecy in perfect accordance with God's mind, as revealed by Him in His written word; and since such a hope will certainly take some form and shape in the absence of the true light, it is sure to rest upon something of our own creation, and perhaps wishes, and which is evident from the fact that every man who contemplates at all the future purposes of God, either in the Church or the world, though he may hesitate to acknowledge it, is more or less

filled with His own conceptions of their realization -so much so, indeed, that it will generally be found that where objections exist to give an intelligible form and shape to unfulfilled prophecy, they may easily be attributed to the fact that the expositions thus rejected are not in accordance with preconceived notions. Now, it is far safer to ground such expectations upon the word of God than to trust to our own imaginations; for there exists less danger in prescribing to God the way and manner of the accomplishment of His purpose, by a close and prayerful study of the Scriptures, than any other; and less liability to adopt conclusions calculated to weaken the faith of the Church, which, by raising expectations upon points which derive no warrant from the word of God, prepare the way only for disappointment. Men will anticipate, but the only safety in anticipating, is in accordance with revelation, and not independent of, far less contrary to, its acknowledged record.

There is another class of objections which it is reasonable to suppose may arise against such an enquiry as the present work contains. It may be urged that an attempt to delineate, beforehand, the manner in which the prophecies will be fulfilled is presumptuously prescribing to God the means by which He will accomplish His own purposes to which it may be replied, that this re

mark will apply with equal force to any investigation of the unfulfilled prophecies, and would, if pressed, restrict the intelligence of the Church only to the past: for who will dare venture to say where such revelation of the future purposes of God ends, and where the terra incognita begins? The peculiar temptations of an interpreter of prophecy unquestionably exist in the region of his imagination, where he is in constant danger of mistaking the flights of his own fancies and conceptions for the illumination of the Spirit of God, and, if he be a man of a warm and sanguine temperament, he is peculiarly liable to such a snare; but, though the true path may be surrounded with danger and infested with thorns, yet this is no reason why he should not seek its discovery, though it may be a sufficiently cogent one why his researches should be prosecuted with the greatest caution and circumspection. An interpreter should guard against the encroachments of such a spirit by a truly humble dependence upon divine guidance, a resolute adherence to the written word of God, and a firm determination not to which is not sanctioned by the whole of Scripture, and by the analogy of God's dealings with man; but he makes a bad use of his knowledge of the existence of such a danger if he allows to deter him from the enquiry altogether. It is not

put forth any interpretation

for the author to determine whether he has invariably exhibited the truth and soundness of this principle in his writings; but of its force and wisdom, as applicable to all interpreters of prophecy, there can be little doubt.

There is another snare to which an interpreter of unfulfilled prophecy is exposed, and which is pregnant with much evil. It is a too common practice for writers to put forth crude notions, announcing them as conjectures, for the meditation of their readers, apparently with a vague hope that some more ingenious man will adopt the idea and make something of it. Such a practice cannot be too severely deprecated. The solemn nature of such a subject ought to protect it from loose speculation and unsupported conjecture. No man is justified in advancing undigested crudities upon unfulfilled prophecies, which inevitably must have the effect of encumbering a subject, of itself already sufficiently complicated, with increased difficulties. It is true, it is quite impossible to protect man's interpretation from every encroachment of human frailty or imperfection; but the evil would be considerably diminished if interpreters took no advanced steps in the exposition of prophecy without a firm and deep-rooted conviction of their truth, and as perfect an assurance, as the nature of the subject will admit, of such interpretations being con

sistent with and capable of justification by appeal to the whole inspired volume. And here it will be surely said " Physician, heal thyself"-to which the author has only this reply—that he has endeavoured to regulate his interpretations by this wholesome rule; nor is he conscious, though he has trodden on much new ground, of having violated it in a single instance: he has offered nothing new which has not been the firmly rooted convictions of many years, and which he believes is not directly drawn from Scripture; and, if such interpretations are expressed in conjectural language, it is not because he felt any hesitation of their truth, but because no man has any right to dogmatize upon such a solemn and momentous subject. It is, however, a fact, which may with propriety here be mentioned, that the substance of the interpretations, now offered to the public, he has discovered since the publication of the first number, embodied in memoranda written nearly twenty years ago. On the occasion of the death of the Duke of Reichsdadt, who was expected by some interpreters of prophecy to be the individual who should fill up the second and last form of the infidel beast, as the eighth head, he said to a friend-"Napoleon will rise from the dead, and perfect the prophecy;" and the author fearlessly challenges every interpreter of prophecy who has ever written, and who has contended