Israel. The Prophet Jeremiah gives the following account of Israel's tribulation and subsequent deliverance:-"We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him. But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them. Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee. Though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished." (Chap. xxx.) An isolated or "private interpretation" of this prophecy would, according to the different preconceptions of men, lead to very different conclusions. Each would be led by the bias of prejudice or the force of habit, or the liveliness of imagination, to associate in his mind with the restoration of Israel, a variety of other events as likely to be contemporaneous. But let us believe meanwhile no more than the prediction warrants, and let us go, with our craving for farther information, to other predictions relating to the close of Israel's trouble. Let us pass from Jeremiah to Daniel, and we shall find something of additional truth. "At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince, which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some [Heb. they] to everlasting life, and some [i. e., the rest] to shame and everlasting contempt." (Chap. xii.) Here it is plainly foretold that the time of Israel's deliverance from trouble is coincident with that of the resurrection of the saints to everlasting life. it is an acknowledged point that the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the saints will be contemporaneous events.

It therefore follows that the deliverance of Israel will coincide, in point of time, with the coming of the Lord. This latter coincidence is expressly affirmed by our Lord in Matthew xxiv. In the prediction there recorded, the Lord connects the close of Israel's trouble with His advent in glory. That He speaks of the same tribulation as Jeremiah and Daniel cannot be denied, for if it were a different tribulation, then clearly the asseverations, which are made in the three several predictions, would be not merely hyperbolical, but positively incompatible. The Lord describes the tribulation thus:-"There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” The words of Daniel regarding it are as follows-" There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time." Exactly correspondent is the description given by Jeremiah :-" Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the day of Jacob's trouble." The tribulation begins with the destruction of Jerusalem, and continues throughout the whole period during which Israel is dispersed, and Jerusalem trodden under foot of the Gentiles :-but it is the last crisis, the closing agony, of the tribulation, to which our Lord, as well as the prophets, Jeremiah and Daniel, particularly refers. What then is the Lord's prediction relative to the close of the tribulation, and consequently to the enlargement of Israel? 66 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken;-and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Prosecuting, then, a comparative interpretation of prophecy, we again find that the coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the saints, and the deliverance of Israel, are to be contemporaneous occurrences. If we enlarge the field of induction, we shall find the Lord's advent and Israel's restoration uniformly connected with one another. About to leave the temple for the last time, the Lord closed his awful denunciation of Jerusalem in these words: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." To the same effect it is predicted in Hosea: "I will go and return to my place [i. e., at the right hand of the Father,] till they

acknowledge their offence and seek my face: in their affliction they shall seek me early. Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up; after two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning, [he is 'the bright and the morning star,'] and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.” Again, in Zechariah: "It shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem, and I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced, [according to the prediction, Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him;'] and they shall mourn for him as one that mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born." In reference to the same events it is written, chap. xiv., "I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle. Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. * * And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee." In the Epistle to the Romans, chap. ix., the restoration of Israel is in like manner connected with the resurrection of the elect Church, and coming of the Lord: "If the casting away of them [i. e., the Jews] be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?"-" Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins."

*

Is it not evident, from a comparative view of these prophecies, that all the saints, who are called to reign with Christ, as His Bride, must be gathered in and raised from the dead to glory, before Israel be nationally saved, and universal blessing be diffused over the earth? Did we not apply, in the interpretation of prophetic Scripture, the rule, which the Holy Ghost has expressly laid down for our guidance, we should be comparatively ignorant of the great mystery of godliness, which is in progress of development.

Though analogous to what we already know of God's method of procedure, it would perhaps never have occurred to our minds, that even as Christ, the Head, is now in glory, while the members of His body are in a state of humiliation, so Christ, and the Elect Church, the Bride, the Lamb's wife, shall hereafter be with Him in a state of glory, while Israel, nationally restored, and such of the Gentiles as shall be saved to re-people the new earth, shall be in an unglorified state, though enriched with the manifold blessings, which, through the reign of Christ and His risen saints, shall be dispensed in "the world to come."

The illustrations, now given, of the principle that "no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation," will suffice to show what an important influence that principle has in determining the result of inquiry into the predicted Future. In offering these illustrations, we have endeavoured to bear constantly in mind the other great principle, which requires an interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy as literal as that which God has given to fulfilled prophecy in the volume of his providence.

The difficulties which seem to encompass the study of all prophecy relating to the future, have only to be encountered in the proper way, and they will either disappear, or be found to be vastly less formidable than they seemed at the outset. Many of them are factitious, originating in the idea that prophecy is written in a style so obscure and mystical, as to elude the efforts which anything but the most subtle ingenuity makes to explain it. These disappear the instant that God's literal translation of prophecy into history has taught us on what principle to interpret the predictions which have not as yet been realized. Many other difficulties arise from the substitution of theory for patient and docile investigation, or of gratuitous conjecture for a diligent comparison of one part of the roll of prophecy with another. will vanish, if only, in accordance with the second principle of inquiry, which has passed under our consideration, the information which one prediction fails to afford, be sought, not from imagination, but from parallel portions of the prophetic word.

These

"No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation." The principle here inculcated is, in relation to prophetic study, nothing else than what, in relation to other departments of knowledge, is known as the characteristic principle of the Baconian philosophy. It demands an induction of facts, or extended basis of observation, in order

that the truth may be satisfactorily established. Seeing that there is a wondrously close analogy between the Word of God and the work of God, why should not the same method of investigation be adopted in reference to the former, which has been employed so successfully in reference to the latter? If the student come to the investigation of nature with a preconceived hypothesis, he will endeavour to accommodate facts to his hypothesis, not his hypothesis to facts; and consequently, he will remain in the end well-nigh as ignorant of the true laws of nature as he was at the beginning. So, too, in the study of prophecy, if the belief of the inquirer be not based on a comparative view of collateral predictions, but brought along with him at the outset, he will occupy his time, not in humbly learning the truth of God, but in endeavouring by elaborate argumentation to adapt, in turn, every prediction to his antecedent belief. To examine prophecy in the light of views previously and prematurely formed, is a very different thing from examining one prophecy in the light of another. Let the latter kind of examination be instituted according to the will of God,— let it be conducted with becoming self-distrust, and due subjection of mind to the authority of Scripture, discovery of truth will be the result; truth which will, perhaps, startle by its strangeness and its air of unlikelihood, but which in due time will be substantiated by being embodied among the facts of history.

the

OBJECTIONS AND DIFFICULTIES.

It is our purpose, if the Lord will, to devote a series of papers to the consideration of the various objections which have been urged against the pre-millennial advent and reign of Christ, and to the solution of the difficulties which are thrown in the way of inquirers. The first question, doubtless, is, "What is written?" But still it is right that we should do what in us lies to clear away all stumbling-blocks, especially as Satan often makes a mighty handle of these, not only in holding back inquirers, but in confusing the minds of those who have received the truth. We begin with,—

THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST.

The intercession of the Redeemer for his people is a truth very dear to every believer. It is his present work. His atonement is past-it is completed, but he ever liveth to