church;" who pillaged Rome, and made the Pope his vassal; who went to the East, and professed himself a believer in Mohammed; and who became Emperor of the West, and decked his throne with the splendid trappings of Popery, and kept a court like the proudest of the Cæsars. All this, and much more, shall be realized in the last Antichrist and his followers, to accomplish the full import of the number of the beast: XPLOTOV EVOL σαυρουσι, the Aliens shall crucify Christ; χξς.

The

We have now to consider the chronological bearing of the number 666, which we shall find to be no less important than the symbolical import of its correspondent words. The number of the beast is the number of a man; but the period of the personal Antichrist, the number of that man, is 1260 days, or three years and an half. The Papal Antichrist is not a man, and its period is numbered in the 1260 years, during which the saints are given into the power of Rome, as the little horn. number, therefore, applies to the first beast of Rev. xiii. and it applies to Pagan Rome, as the number of a man. The founder of the Roman Empire was Julius Cæsar, who gave the name of Julian to the period by which we still reckon, and who gave the name of Cæsar to the succeeding emperors. The number of the beast points to this man, with whom began that form of headship which subsisted in the fourth monarchy when the Apocalypse was revealed to St. John, and with whom began the Julian period of time. The Julian reckoning began in the month of July, in the year before Christ 44; to which if we add 666, the numerals of the beast, it brings us down to A. D. 622 : in which year, and in the month July, the Hegira period began; taking its rise from another man, who, uniting in his own person the characters of false prophet, priest, and king, has ruled the East with a still more despotic sway than the Caesars and the Popes have exercised in the West. This links together the kings of the Eastern and Western empires, to prepare us for a reunion of Byzantium with Rome, of the Caliphs with the Cæsars, in the person of the last Antichrist. But the apostasies of the East and the West shall also be united under him, which is also indicated by the number of the beast. The Mohammedan apostasy recognises no law but force; but the Papal apostasy constantly appeals to a right derived from Scripture, or decrees, or bulls, or constitutions, a legal right, in short, signed, sealed, and delivered. This was also the case in Pagan Rome, as we need not prove, it being so notorious in the laws of Tarquin and the Twelve Tables, the patres conscripti, and constitutions of the Empire. But the first legal title to a foot of land in the East, acquired by the Roman people, was given them by the will of Attalus, king of Pergamus, who, dying in the year 133 before Christ, left his dominions to the Roman people. The Romans had made their power to be

felt throughout the East, they had dictated peace to the Syrian and Ptolomean kings, and had struck the remnant of the Macedonian empire to the dust; but they retained no portion of their conquests, and began not to rule in the East, or to appropriate to themselves any part of the Asiatic soil, till the year B. C. 133. From this period, numbering 666, carries us down to the year 533, when the edicts of Justinian delivered over the saints into the power of the little horn, and that legal act was ratified by which the Pope held the church in bondage for 1260 years. For the Papal period, Justinian's code formed the church law of Christendom: at its expiry, in 1793, the canon law was broken up in various ways-abrogated in some countries, superseded by the Napoleon Code or national charters in others; and, after the church period of probation and provocation of forty years, we stand on the eve of the manifestation of an Emperor who shall claim the empire of the West by legal title, and take the empire of the East by force; who shall unite to the lofty port and bearing and refinement and literature of Cæsar, the ruthless intolerant zeal of Mohammed; who shall be able to say, with Julius, "Veni, vidi, vici," and, like Mohammed, carry the sword in one hand, the Koran in the other. And just as the legal title to dominion in the East preceded of necessity the universal exercise of it under the Cæsars, so will the manifestation of Antichrist in the West under the guise of legal authority precede the assumption of universal dominion over the East as well as over the West: in the East he shall at length become supreme; and there he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. In the Western empire, as we have often declared, he may soon be expected, because the Papal period expired in 1793, and the forty years further probation of the church is now running out. But his dominion in the East may not attain its height till 1845; because the 1260 years, if calculated by lunar time instead of solar, would amount to about 1223 of our years; which, reckoned from the Hegira in 622, carries us down to 1845, for the period when Mohammed shall be supplanted by Antichrist in the East, only two years before the time when the sanctuary shall be cleansed, at the expiry of the long period, 2300, of Dan. viii.

If our readers go along with us in what we have writtenwhich, from the minute accuracy of the dates and the marvellous coincidence of the characteristics, will, we trust, be the case with a great majority of them-they may now be prepared for the practical conclusion we wish to draw from the whole. We warn them of the snares already spread around them, and of the specious forms of delusion by which Satan is attempting even now to enlist them, that they may take rank under that man of sin, in whom Satan will concentrate and display all his power and glory, to make his last attack against the King of kings and

Lord of lords, leading forth the armies of heaven to take possession of the world which he died to redeem. These seductions are now being presented to every region of the sense and the intellect of man: reason will not suffice to detect them, nor human power to resist them, and our only security lies in the light and power of the indwelling Spirit of God. Babylon is around us, Egypt is in the midst of us; we are dwelling in Tyre; but God is about to cast Babylon like a millstone into the sea, and to mingle a perverse spirit in the midst of Egypt, and to make Tyrus like the top of a rock, and the islands to shake at the sound of its fall. Every idol shall be utterly abolished very speedily. Some of us are worshipping gold and silver; these shall make to themselves wings, and flee away: some of us, science and intellect, which shall be turned to folly: some of us, commerce and politics, which shall be brought to nought. And for those who will not abandon their idols, and trust in God alone, a retribution in kind is preparing: they shall have wealth, science, and commerce, united in one blaze of glory under one head, and yet proving the direst curse which the world has ever known, and a time of trouble such as has not been upon earth unto that same time, no, nor ever shall be. They shall behold in the last Antichrist the splendours of the court of Nebuchadnezzar and his hundred and twenty princes of provinces, the learning and science of Egypt, and the fulness of wisdom and perfection of beauty like Tyrus and he shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper, till the indignation be accomplished; for that that is determined shall be done. This "man of sin, who" thus "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God," is "the son of perdition ;" and for him, whose "coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, Tophet is ordained of old;" he is the king for whom it is prepared, and into it he and his followers shall be cast alive. Then " the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of ?"

UNACCOMPLISHED PROPHECIES NOW FULFILLING.

No. I.

SINCE God is always One in His essence, He is necessarily so likewise in His conduct; and since this unity of conduct must be equally displayed towards individuals as towards communities, or aggregates of individuals, by whatever name those communities may be known, whether families, nations, or churches; the declarations of God's word against sin must always bear more or less a similarity of aspect. But sin produces ultimately its own punishment, and there is therefore a specialty in the kinds of punishment, of which men are forewarned in the denunciations threatened against it. God denounces sin not as an arbitrary Sovereign, but as a tender Father: He foretels the doom which it induces, in order to warn his children of the necessary consequences of pursuing it. He acts towards men in the punishment of sin according to fixed and determinate laws, through which He is in covenanted relationship with them, and out of the bounds of which He is not revealed, and consequently not known. The hatred of God, and the love of all created things, manifest themselves in various forms in different individuals of the human race: men mistake the names of these forms for differences in the thing itself; and hence it is often difficult to persuade them that they are idolaters, unless we can point to a tangible image of gold or of silver in their houses. For the same reason others conclude that the histories of God's dealings with the Jews have no connexion with his dealings towards modern nations; and even of those who are more enlightened in His ways than to be deluded with so vain a pretext, there are many who cannot see any direct reference in the woes threatened against Judah, Babylon, &c. to the present circumstances of Great Britain.

In the first chapter of Isaiah, the Prophet is directed to address that part, of the only nation then in covenant with God, which was the most pure, which had not apostatized from his faith, and which continued most exact in the observances of religion. The Prophet calls upon all creation to attend to the Lord's declaration, as if he would thereby shew to the whole universe the righteousness of God's dealings with the people. The chief points of his remonstrance are, that God had brought up children who had rebelled against him; that he invites them to return with most beseeching language; that so great was their offences that they were in his sight as is in ours a human body which is covered with running and putrid sores from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot,-the most disgusting and loathsome spectacle which mortal eyes can witness; that