Review and Herald, Vol. 20, No. 23. (11/4/1862)

Review and Herald

Nov 4, 1862

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 4, 1862

Evidences of Christianity.

By Moses Hull

CHAPTER VI.

(Continued.)

The Jews. Take the prophecies concerning the Jews, read them and mark their fulfillment, though it should astonish you. Prophecies concerning the Jews are found in numerous places in the Old Testament; but those to which the reader is referred are found in Lev. xxvi, and Deut. xxviii, and xxix. The reader is requested to carefully read all three of the above-named chapters. We have only room for a few short extracts.

"And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. And upon them that are left alive of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies: and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall, when none pursueth." Lev. xxvi, 31-36.

Here are not less than six specifications, every one of which has been fulfilled.

1. "I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation." How literally this has been fulfilled, the infidel Volney shall tell. Ruins, book i: "Here, said I, here once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a powerful empire. Yes! these places, now so desert, were once animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd circulated in these streets now so solitary. Within these walls, where a mournful silence reigns, the noise of the arts and shouts of joy and festivity incessantly rebounded. These piles of marble were regular palaces; these prostrate pillars adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries surrounded public places. Here a numerous people assembled for the sacred duties of religion, or the anxious cares of their subsistence. Here industry, parent of enjoyment, collected the riches of all climates, and the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious thread of Serica; the soft tissues of Kachemire for the sumptuous tapestry of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the tin of Thule. And now a mournful skeleton is all that subsists of this powerful city! Naught remains of its vast domination, but a doubtful and empty remembrance! To the tumultuous throng which crowded under these porticoes has succeeded the solitude of death. The silence of the tomb is substituted for the bustle of public places. The opulence of a commercial city is changed into hideous poverty. The palaces of kings are become a den of wild beasts; flocks fold on the area of the temple, and unclean reptiles inhabit the sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? How have so many labors been annihilated? Thus perish the works of men, and thus do empires and nations disappear!"

2. "And I will bring your land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it." Now hear the infidel Volney again bear witness to the truth of the prophetic word: "Alas! I have passed over this desolate land! I have visited the palaces once the theatre of so much splendor, and I behold nothing but solitude and desolation. I sought the ancient inhabitants and their works, and could only find a faint trace, like that of the foot of a traveler over the sand. The temples are fallen, the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the cities destroyed, and the earth, stripped of inhabitants, seems a dreary burying-place. Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions? What causes have so altered the fortunes of these countries? Why are so many cities destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been reproduced and perpetuated? Thus absorbed in contemplation, a crowd of new reflections continually poured in upon my mind. Everything, continued I, confounds my reason, and fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty." Book i.

3. "And I will scatter you among the heathen." Where are the Jews to-day? or rather, where are they not? Moses said, "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth to the other." Deut. xxviii, 64. How true it is. The Jews are everywhere, and yet citizens nowhere. Not a nation in the world but that has them among them, and yet they have no national existence in the world.

4. The Lord again says, through Moses, "Your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste." How long? Let the prophet like unto Moses answer. "And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." Luke xxi, 24. Jerusalem is yet trodden down. Saracens, Tartars, Turks, and Gentiles from every nation of the earth, are fulfilling the prediction, and have been for almost eighteen hundred years. "Zion has been ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem has become heaps." Micah iii, 12. The Jews to-day despise in their hearts the name of the Roman soldier, Rufus, who ploughed up the very foundations of their city and temple.

While on this point, I cannot forbear to notice an effort that has been made to prove our Saviour's prediction false. He had said, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Julian, the apostate emperor, declared his determination to rebuild the city, and thus prove the prediction of Jesus false. He united the wealth of the Romans with the zeal of the Jews, and though a large army was sent to guard the workmen, picks and spades of silver were to be used in doing the work, and ladies were there ready to carry off the rubbish in aprons of silk, yet they were compelled to yield to a more formidable adversary than the Roman army had ever met. "Horrid balls of fire bursted out of the ground and compelled them to desist from building." See Horne's Introduction, vol. I, p. 130, where ample references are given.

5. "Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate." The land to-day enjoys her sabbaths. Although parts of it are said to possess all of its original fertility, yet it is "trodden under foot" by the wandering Arabs and other Gentiles.

6. "And upon them that are left alive of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts, in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall, when none pursueth." How true! Find the Jew where you will, and you will find him engaged in some lucrative business, yet something that can be easily removed from one point to another. As above remarked, they are citizens nowhere. They have been driven from place to place, and are in daily expectation of being driven, until "the sound of a shaking leaf," as it were, chases them.

In Deut. xxviii, the predictions concerning this people are no less decisive. In verse 37 Moses says, "And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word, among all nations, whither the Lord thy God shall lead thee." The Jew is an astonishment. Go into almost any clothing-store in our large cities, and you will see a phenomenon for which you never can account, except from the Scriptures.

There is the Jew preserving all the peculiarities possessed by his nation eighteen hundred years ago. How does it happen that for so long a period they have resisted all the customs of society, all the powers of persecution, and all other almost irresistible influences driving them toward amalgamation with the other nations of earth?

An able writer has said, "In the face of the power of the Chinese empire, in spite of the tortures of the Spanish inquisition, amid the chaos of African nationalities and the fusion of American democracy, in the plains of Australia, and in the streets of San Francisco, the religion, customs, and physiognomy, of the children of Israel are as distinct this day as they were

three thousand years ago, when Moses wrote them in the Pentateuch, and Shishak painted them on the tombs of Medinet Abou. How does the infidel account for it? It will not do to allege the favorite story about purity of blood and Caucasian race; for the question is, How does it happen that this people, and this people alone, have kept the blood pure, while all other races are so mingled that no other race can be found pure on earth? Besides, lest any should suppose such a cause sufficient for their preservation, another nation descended from the same father and the same mother—the children of Jacob's twin brother, have utterly perished, and there is not any remaining of the house of Esau."

"Human sagacity, with all the facts before its face, cannot give any rational account of the causes of this anomaly. It cannot tell to-day, why this people exists separate from, and scattered through, all nations, from Kamchatka to New Zealand; how, then, could it foretell, three thousand years ago, this singular exception to all the laws of national existence? While the sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shall exist as God's witness to God's word—an undeniable proof that the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Fables of Infidelity, pp. 149, 150.

But the Jew is not only an astonishment, but is actually a proverb and by-word among all nations. How often we hear of a person being as "rich as a Jew," "swearing like a Jew," "lying like a Jew," &c. It is so among all nations.

But Moses continues: "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustest, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land which the Lord thy God hath given thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: so that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." Verses 49-57.

In verses 64-65 he says, "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and falling of eyes, and sorrow of mind. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee: and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life."

Follow him on in this same unbroken discourse until you come to chap. xxix, 23-25, and there you will read, "And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overflow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and in his wrath: even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt."

Now let the reader examine the history of the Jews as given by Josephus, and other historians of a later date, and see how remarkably every word of the above has been fulfilled. Horne sums it up as follows:

"The twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy contains a series of most striking predictions relative to the Jews, which are fulfilling to this very day. Bp. Newton and Dr. Graves have shown its accomplishment at great length. To specify a very few particulars:

"Moses foretold that they should be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth—scattered among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other—find no ease or rest—be oppressed and crushed always—be left few in number among the heathen—pine away in their iniquity in their enemies' land—and become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word unto all nations."

"These predictions were literally fulfilled during the subjection of the Jews to the Chaldeans and Romans; and in later times, in all nations where they have been dispersed. Moses foretold that their enemies would besiege and take their cities; and this prophecy was fulfilled by Shishak, king of Egypt, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Epiphanes, Sosius, and Herod, and finally by Titus. Though dispersed throughout all nations, they have remained distinct from them all; and notwithstanding the various oppressions and persecutions to which they have in every age been exposed in different parts of the world, 'there is not a country on the face of the earth where the Jews are unknown. They are found alike in Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. They are citizens of the world, without a country. Neither mountains, nor rivers, nor deserts, nor oceans, which are the boundaries of other nations, have terminated their wanderings. They abound in Poland, in Holland, in Russia, and in Turkey. In Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and Britain, they are more thinly scattered. In Persia, China, and India, on the east and west of the Ganges. They are few in number among the heathen. They have trodden the snows of Siberia, and the sands of the burning desert; and the European traveler hears of their existence in the regions which he cannot reach, even in the very interior of Africa, south of Timbuctoo. From Moscow to Lisbon, from Japan to Britain, from Borneo to Archangel, from Hindoostan to Honduras, no inhabitant of any nation upon earth would be known in all the intervening regions but a Jew alone.'"—Horne's Introduction, p. 123.

"What a marvelous thing is this," says Bishop Newton, "that after so many wars, battles, and sieges; after so many rebellions, massacres, and persecutions; after so many years of captivity, slavery, and misery; they are not destroyed utterly, and though scattered among all people, yet subsist a distinct people by themselves! Where is anything like this to be found in all the histories, and in all the nations, under the sun?"

Again the same writer says, "What nation hath subsisted as a distinct people in their own country so long as these have done in their dispersion into all countries? And what a standing miracle is this, exhibited to the view and observation of the whole world! Here are instances of prophecies delivered above three thousand years ago, and yet, as we see, fulfilling in the world at this very time; and what stronger proof can we desire of the divine legation of Moses? How these instances may affect others, I know not; but as for myself, I must acknowledge they not only convince, but assure and astonish me beyond expression."

To specify and examine the fulfillment of every prediction in this chapter would be to write out the history of the Jews. A few examples must suffice:

1. "And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee."

"This prediction," says Benson, "was repeatedly fulfilled, especially when Vespasian and his son Titus begirt Jerusalem so closely that the besieged were reduced to a most grievous famine, which forced them, after they had eaten up their horses and other creatures, to eat even their own children, whom parents, who had used to live delicately, Moses here foretells, should themselves eat up privately, and let none share with them." Com. on Deut. xxviii, 58.

2. "The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward the children which she shall bear; for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." Take up Josephus' Wars of the Jews and read carefully. We have only space to give a single extract. Book vi, chap. 3.

"There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary; her father was Eleazer, of the village of Bethezub, which signifies the house of hyssop. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon; such, I mean, as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either out of the indignation she had raised against herself, or out of the commiseration of her case, would take away her life: and if she found any food, she perceived her labors were for others, and not for herself: and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with anything but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, 'O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves: This famine also will destroy us even before that slavery comes upon us; yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.' As soon as she

had said this she slew her son; and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her, that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight: when she said to them, 'This is mine own son; and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also.'"

The above is not an isolated case, as every reader of Josephus knows. As I compare page after page of such statements with the inspired prediction above quoted, I can but exclaim in the language of David, "Thy word is true from the beginning." Ps. cxix, 160.

But Moses proceeds: "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and falling of eyes, and sorrow of mind.

And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee: and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again; and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bond-men and bond-women, and no man shall buy you." Verses 65-68.

The Jews are now scattered among all nations, finding no ease or rest for the soles of their feet. They have a "trembling of heart, falling of eyes, and sorrow of mind." At the destruction of Jerusalem they were sold into Egypt until the market was overstocked. They were crucified until no more timber could be found of which to make crosses. See Josephus' Wars of the Jews, book vi.

Moses goes on to describe the state of the land: Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers. Deut. xxix, 24, 25.

Now take up Volney's Ruins, Book i, and read again, "Great God! from whence proceed such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed? Why is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated? A mysterious God exercises his incomprehensible judgment. He has doubtless pronounced a secret malediction against the earth. He has struck with a curse the present race of men in revenge of past generations."

(To be Continued.)

Time.

TIME to me this truth has taught, ('Tis a truth that's worth revealing,) More offend for want of thought, Than from any want of feeling.

If advice we would convey, There's a time we should convey it— If we've but a word to say, There's a time in which to say it.

Oft unknowingly the tongue Touches on a chord so aching, That a word or accent wrong, Pains the heart almost to breaking.

Many a tear of wounded pride, Many a fault of human blindness, Has been soothed or turned aside, By a quiet voice of kindness.

Many a beauteous flower decays, Though we tend it e'er so much; Something secret in it preys, Which no human aid can touch.

So in many a lovely breast, Lies some canker-grief concealed, That if touched is more oppressed, Left unto itself is healed.

Avenging of the Elect.

By Beck

(Continued.)

DISTINGUISHING TRAITS AND TENDENCIES OF THE NOW GENERALLY PREVALENT DOCTRINE OF THE SECOND COMING.

The principal characteristic of the new doctrine is this: It separates the second advent one thousand years from the termination of the series of events which are now transpiring, and with which, in the prophecies, it is most manifestly connected. It virtually, and even necessarily makes all the warnings and admonitions to be looking for, and preparing for the coming of Christ utterly inapplicable to the generations now living, and applicable specifically and only to that last generation of men who will be found upon the earth at the close of the thousand years of universal righteousness and peace.

With the now prevalent view, the very wickedness of the world, which shows that its cup of iniquity is rapidly filling up, and warns of coming judgment, is misinterpreted so as to mean exactly the opposite, and to show that the one thousand years that must first intervene have not yet even begun. Can this be denied? The entire influence of this extensive class of Bible truths which relate to the second coming of Christ, and which the common reader cannot fail to perceive, was consequently used by the inspired writers as a principal means of admonition and edification; this large class of truths which the prophets and apostles, and which our Lord himself deemed so essential to the faith and salvation of the Church, is now almost utterly lost in the principal branches of the great Christian family.

True, we do make some use of these great and thrilling revelations, for they are so frequent and so prominent withal in the Scriptures, that it would be unwise to ignore them, and impolitic to deny them. But do we generally make use of them as the primitive Christians, and as the primitive Protestants did? Do we quote them and apply them heartily and without misgivings? Do not men of penetration easily discover our hesitancy and our inconsistency, even if we maintain the modern Whitbyan doctrine on this subject? Are we not in danger, in fact, of being suspected of gross insincerity in our use of these portions of the Scriptures, while we interpret them according to the present method? And must not this undeniable state of things, in respect—not to merely speculative and minor doctrines—but in respect to the most awful and important revelations in the whole Bible—must not this fearful indefiniteness and manifest inconsistency greatly cripple our endeavors to influence unconverted and unbelieving men, by the use of, not this class of revelations only, but also of all other portions of the Bible?

Probably ninety-nine in every hundred who first read or first hear the Scriptures which relate to the second advent, receive a distinct conviction that those portions were so framed and worded as intentionally to convey the impression, that the coming of the Lord might happen in their day, and ought to be prepared for. Perhaps no one will be sufficiently unreasonable and reckless to deny the indisputable fact, that in all ages the impression produced upon the common mind by those portions of the Divine word were exactly the opposite of the impressions conveyed by the present prevailing view of the relation of the second advent to the millennium: the modern doctrine making the second advent to be post-millennial, and, consequently, not to be expected while wickedness and wretchedness continues in the world, and not until at least a thousand years of righteousness and peace have succeeded to the present unhappy condition of the race. Is there any use or reason in denying the manifest truth in respect to what the general impression has been, or in denying that it was the opposite of what the present millennial theory legitimately produces? Or can any one feel justified in affirming that the common conviction has not been produced by the letter and spirit of the Scriptures that relate to this subject?

Who indeed indited the holy Scriptures, and gave to them their specific adaptations, knowing all the time how the common mind would in all ages, when left to its own exercise, be improved with the spirit and word of the holy book? Was it not the Wisdom that cannot err in its intentions, and cannot be delighted with error of any kind? Can it be that the Holy One has so framed his words to us, that the intelligent creatures that he has made and so wisely governed, almost universally receive a false impression of truths that were designed to be eminently instrumental in moving us and in keeping us safe? Is it the truth, or is it error, that makes us free? Did God intend to have the Scriptures understood, or did he purposely adapt them to mislead us on matters of vital interest? Or must we take the odious position of the apostate Romish Church, that the Scriptures were not designed and adapted to the people in general, but for the few indoctrinated and taught by the infallible man from whom all law and all authorized interpretations are to proceed? If it should be objected to this, that, according to the very statements herein made, the Scriptures have, whether from original intention or not, uniformly misimpressed the common mind in respect to the immediateness of the coming of the Lord, the explanation is very easy: The Scriptures nowhere intimate that the great event will be separated from the present by a long period of time, and another widely different state of things. The alarming fact, that Christ will come to a wicked and unprepared world, is so revealed that the common mind does not misinterpret the practical intention of revealing the fact, and at the same time withholding the knowledge of the time. When the Master of the house gives his charge to the servants and takes his departure, informing them that he will certainly return, but not choosing to inform them when, and bidding them to watch and prepare for his coming, "lest coming suddenly he find them sleeping," those servants do not receive a false or injurious impression, who employ themselves diligently, and stand on the watch constantly, not knowing when their Lord will return, whether at evening, or at midnight, or in the morning. If they should even receive a false alarm, and find themselves for the time mistaken, it would not, or at least, it ought not to destroy the original and intended effect of the uncertainty of the Master's return. But if the impression should obtain that the Lord did not design to return, and certainly would not, until they had all died, and a long interval had intervened, and a new set of servants had been raised up to take their place, we can easily perceive how this impression might be the means of all being overtaken by surprise, just in proportion as the impression was believed and cherished.

If the Master had given them a charge to watch and be ready for his coming, because they knew not the time, and he might come and find them unprepared; and if his words were intended to produce a conviction of the truth in the case—that is, if no such interval would elapse, as must in the nature of the case certainly make the danger of unwatchfulness to belong, not to them, but to a company of servants that should succeed them—then in that case, we see distinctly how their misimpression might be fatal to them.

Perhaps enough has been said about the impression which the language of the Scriptures is adapted to make upon the general mind; but we cannot dismiss this point without observing, that when we have succeeded by ingeniously theorizing and allegorizing these universal first convictions away, and thereby taught the world that the primary impressions uniformly produced by the spirit and letter of the Scriptures upon the common mind, are not only not reliable, but even uniformly deceptive, and therefore not worthy of being cherished and followed;—when we have succeeded in accomplishing this, what else have we done? Firstly, we have corrupted the virgin purity of conviction that divine truth never fails to produce in all, unprejudiced and unsophisticated minds, when that truth is presented direct and simple, as God has given it to us. And we have thereby set the example, and encouraged the practice of dalliance with seductive speculations with other portions of divine truth, until perhaps all that is calculated to move the unconverted soul has utterly lost its intended influence. When the mind has once been seduced to part with its virgin purity of conviction in religious things, and abandons itself to the lawless wantonness of unrestrained indulgence in religious theorizing and fond speculations, we know not what wide departures from spiritual virtue we may have initiated by that first successful incitement to do violence to its instinctive sense of logical propriety. After this first violation of original purity of conviction the mind henceforth is not as it was before, and, without a miracle, can never be again.

Secondly. In doing this we have encouraged a disposition to distrust all that the Scriptures appear to teach by its simple letter, so far as the simple letter teaches what may not be pleasing to carnal taste, or may not be conformable with the reasonings and ever-changing speculations of men, and have proportionally encouraged the fatally-dangerous habit of hunting up and inventing ingenious methods of explaining away, and otherwise negativing all portions of divine truth that men may not wish to understand just as God has been pleased to reveal it. And who can calculate the final results of such a state of things, in embarrassing and defeating the legitimate influence of the simple truth as God has revealed it? What is Universalism but a second step in the same direction? What is rationalistic neology but the finishing step in the same career?

Furthermore, when we have succeeded in establishing the new methods of exegesis, and in counteracting the universal primary impression made upon all unsophisticated minds, we shall have accomplished one thing more—we shall have triumphantly proved, to the gratification of every blind papist, that the Scriptures were not designed and adapted to the common mind—that is, to the nineteen-twentieths of the people—but were intended for the few, the men of vast research and extensive information; we shall have demonstrated that the common mind is not to be intrusted with the pure Word of God, but needs to have its first, unbiased, convictions corrected by the more skillful theories and riper judgments of acute philosophers and professional divines. In other words, we shall have virtually abandoned the old Protestant ground, in reference to the adaptation and utility of the Holy Scriptures for the people in general, and in reality assumed the true Romish position, that the Word of God is not to be trusted with the people, unless accompanied and guarded by the profound annotations and multitudinous traditions of councils, bishops, and popes.

When we have succeeded in accomplishing all of this, and for the express purpose, too, of evading and correcting what seems to the common mind to be the evident intention and force of multitudes of passages which represent the second advent as premillennial, and of such a nature and of such relations to other events, that it may soon happen, and that all might be living in expectation of it; when we have done all this, to the injury of the minds that we would benefit, to the injury and crippling of our own influence, as candid and consistent persons; when we have in this way succeeded in convincing ourselves, and the Church, and the world, too, that Christ will not and cannot come, and therefore ought not to be expected, until a thousand years, at least, of general holiness and peace have passed away—need we do any thing more—can we do any thing more, to bring about the fulfilment of the startling predictions that Christ will come unexpectedly to a slumbering and sleeping Church, and to a guilty, unbelieving world? Is not this the true solution of the tremendous problem, how, with the doctrine believed, with the admonitions admitted, and the duty of constant watchfulness professedly complied with, yet, nevertheless, the coming of the Lord will be as a thief in the night, and as a snare, upon all them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth? Reader, reflect; for your soul's sake reflect on this momentous subject. —Beck.

(To be Continued.)

Continue reading: Thoughts on the Revelation