of. Then the nature of that spiritual power may be tested and examined. If there be any such power, and it be not merely a fancy and a delusion, it must arise either from the spirit of man which is in him, or from the father of lies, or from the Spirit of the Lord; the tests for the solution of the question are furnished in the word of God. If it be of man, it will come to nought: if it be of the devil, its works and fruits must be evil: if from the Holy Ghost, we may not say anything against it. Of this, however, we cannot trace the slightest evidence.

It is not in Gordon Square alone that their worship is established; buildings have lately been erected or enlarged at Islington, Chelsea, Paddington, and other places in and about London; and in many places in the country we understand that the services are carried on, as at Bath, Bridgnorth, Liverpool, Nottingham, Brighton, and in many other towns. Nor is the faith confined to England. In Scotland there are places of worship, as at Edinburgh and in Dundee; in Ireland we believe they have footing in some chief towns. Some months ago the correspondent in the "Times" alluded to a preacher of the community as preaching at Florence; and we have ourselves met believers" from Canada and the States. As to what may be the final issue of their religious views, we will not speculate; those who adopt them believe that they are being made ready peculiarly for the day of the Lord's appearing, and that in that day it will be known that the system has sprung from His will and power. Meanwhile may the prayer be constantly upon our lips, "That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth all such as have erred, and are deceived; we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.".

ON SOME PAPERS READ BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

As an old subscriber and a constant reader of your valuable periodical, I gladly and thankfully express my thanks for its consistent and unflinching advocacy of gospel truth. I can turn to its pages from its earliest publication, and I invariably find the same sentiments of christian doctrine uniformly maintained and enforced. I need hardly say that I consider these views as thoroughly seriptural, and in entire harmony with the teaching of our Protestant church. The fact of the Christian Observer having never given an uncertain sound stamps it with a great additional value. How many and how varied have been the forms of religious error since its first Number was issued. It had then to deplore the spiritual deadness which charac

terized the church evangelical. Truth shone out here and there as a bright light amidst all but universal spiritual darkness. The ministers of religion who boldly avowed and preached the truth as it is in Jesus, were comparatively few in number, although remarkably fitted by mental and spiritual endowments for the important work assigned them. In this Periodical they had ever a valuable, consistent, and yet independent advocate. Thank God, this state of the church has in a great degree passed away. Since this era, the Christian Observer has, in the discharge of its important responsibilities as an acknowledged organ of evangelical truth, been called upon to guard its readers against the open as well as insidious attacks made upon it. The sad deficiency of copies of the Holy Scriptures for the supply of the spiritual wants of the people, when providentially ascertained, resulted in the formation of that invaluable institution, the British and Foreign Bible Society. It received from the Christian Observer a warm and generous support. The attacks made upon it were met with great ability in the pages of this Periodical, whilst the danger apprehended by some as to the harm arising from the indiscriminate circulation of the Bible without note or comment was proved to be perfectly futile. Since then, the christian public has pronounced its verdict in the immense number of its supporters and the large amount of its funds. The same uniform support was given to the Church Missionary Society, and its just claims on the Church of England supported and advocated in its pages. These, and all other kindred institutions, as they sprang into existence, were hailed as instruments for good. Thus the Christian Observer has not been less the advocate of evangelical truth than it has been one of its most faithful and vigilant guardians, pointing out, as occasion rendered necessary, what was most calculated to promote it, but also carefully and judiciously warning its readers against attacks made upon it, however insidious and disguised. I stay not now to notice more in detail, as years rolled on, any minor errors or vagaries of public opinion which for a short time floated on the surface and then disappeared. It will not do to pass by the cautious and insidious development of the Oxford Tracts; how stealthily they prepared their readers for the reception and adoption of Romanizing opinions. Your readers were faithfully warned against their dangerous teaching, which resulted in not a few of the clergy forsaking the church of their fathers and fraternizing with the unscriptural church of Rome. Soon after this period, the public were astounded with the impudent assumption of the papacy, known by the term of the Papal Aggression. This piece of impertinence met with merited condemnation in the pages of the Christian Observer. Thank God, that which was intended as a deadly blow to our Protestant faith, and an insult to our beloved Sovereign, was overruled for good. The eyes of the public were opened to the real character and dangerous claims of the church of Rome; there was an awakening amongst all classes, and a more devoted attachment to our Protestant faith. The errors in doctrine, and the attempts made to revive obsolete ceremonials, inculcated in the Oxford tracts, have been followed by wide-spread opinions of a still more dangerous tendency, known by the name of Broad Church. The very name is significant of danger; and when these views are fully

carried out, they sap the very foundation of a Christian's hope, denying the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and ignoring or frittering away the great and all important truths of the Bible-the fall of man--the necessity of an atonement-the saving and converting influences of the Holy Spirit. These, and other all important truths, as revealed in God's word, are treated with a contempt and superciliousness which cannot be too strongly condemned, and which reached their climax and full embodiment in the heretical teaching of "Essays and Reviews." The review of this volume in the Christian Observer was marked with more than usual ability, and did most essential service to the cause of biblical truth. I wish now to draw your attention, Mr. Editor, to what I consider a subject of grave importance, and one which comes decidedly within the scope of your publication. I allude to "The British Association for the Advancement of Science." A year ago, at Oxford, opinions were broached in some of its sections diametrically opposed to the distinct statements of Holy Scripture. I allude more especially to the theories so pertinaciously reiterated as to the origin of man-a question which I think of the utmost moment, upon which the Bible is remarkably explicit. The views I refer to completely ignore the Mosaic account; they are every year more and more audaciously avowed, to the great pain and concern of many of the members of this valuable Association. Year after year this party assumes a bolder front, and, if allowed the latitude which it now assumes, will inevitably result in a secession of members. My object is answered, if I succeed in drawing your attention to the subject. I object not to any scientific research, where the word of God is not impugned and the plain declarations of Scripture set aside. It is most undesirable to make the meetings of the Association an arena for theological discussion; at the same time, I think it incumbent on its promoters studiously to avoid giving any currency to opinions and theories diametrically opposed to the authority of God's Word.

A LIFE MEMBER OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR, The communication of an Irish Dignitary in your last Number (October) can scarcely fail to be highly interesting to many of your readers, who may not perhaps hold precisely the same views as he appears to do on some controverted points. Many of his remarks are both weighty and candidly conveyed; and the subject of unfulfilled prophecy cannot be too soberly or too cautiously handled.

The conflicting and irreconcileable conclusions drawn by contending writers from arguments on each side plausibly and ably wrought out,

but sometimes more elaborately speculative than convincingly solid, cannot but be, in many instances, severely perplexing to anxious but sober and persevering inquirers respecting unfulfilled prophecies, whether of the Old or the New Testament. This remark is applicable occasionally even to the late Mr. Faber, whom the Irish dignitary emphatically, and, as many will think, most justly, designates "the prince of modern commentators;" still more so perhaps to Mr. Elliott, whose very learned and extensive researches, while they surprise by their extra elaborate ingenuity, too often leave the diligent and calmly contemplative inquirer mournfully disappointed.

When, again, the mind reverts to the conflicting conclusions of such distinguished controversialists as bishop Horsley, Messrs. Faber, Elliott, and Birks, not to mention a host of less eminent speculators, in their several attempts to elucidate the very same portions of prophecy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, painful and really distressing sensations are often excited as to the benefit or personal edification to which these conflicting theories, studied and compared, may be conducive. They may well indeed suggest the thought of a vain endeavour to obtain and present an insight into matters which are not clearly revealed, and which may be among "the secret things which belong unto the Lord our God."

Let not these last remarks be misunderstood. The devout contemplation even of manifestly unfulfilled prophecy, cannot but be accompanied with much that is salutary and conducive to growth in grace; producing, as it is surely well fitted to do, deep humility, patiently waiting expectation, reverential and godly fear, together with an ardent longing for the glorious manifestation, in whatever way that manifestation may be realized, of our adorable Redeemer, when "unto them that look for him he shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation." Yet, on this very important subject, if, in accordance with the example of St. Paul, a quotation may be admitted from a heathen writer,

Sunt certi denique fines,

Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum." Barton-upon-Humber;

Oct. 9, 1861.

JAMES KNIGHT.

2 KINGS XVIII. 25.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR,I have long thought that the literal interpretation of the predictions concerning the restoration of Ephraim to his territory in Palestine, may not unfairly be considered as receiving a certain degree of confirmation from the special Divine interposition recorded in 2 Kings* xviii. 25: “And it was so at the beginning of their dwelling

*There would seem to be a striking connexion between this passage and what is recorded by Isaiah of the Assyrian invasion, and desolation of Moab. He

predicted (cir. B c. 726), that, " Within three years, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned." (Is. xvi. 14.) And elsewhere he says: "The cry is gone round

there (the heathen colonists planted in Samaria by the king of Assyria), that they feared not the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them." May we not reverently think that the Lord thus seemed to signify to Hezekiah, and the pious Jews of that day, and to His church in all her generations, that, although He had righteously exiled idolatrous Ephraim into a far distant region, He still regarded Samaria as a part of His own covenant land, and would have even the heathen colonists of the mighty Assyrian conqueror acknowledge, from their personal experience of His awful power, the God of Israel to be still the Sovereign Lord of the territory which had been held by Ephraim. And does not such a miraculous interposition in some measure assist us in submissively and intelligently receiving the Divine assurance, proclaimed more than a century afterwards through Jeremiah, "My bowels are troubled for Ephraim; I will surely have mercy on Ephraim ?" (Jer. xxxi. 20.) For why still treat the land as in some measure covenant land, if Ephraim is to be an outcast for ever?

Nay, from that time forward, the God of Israel apparently never utterly gave up Samaria to the heathen, so far as the public recognition of His sovereignty over the territory was concerned, until the days in which Vespasian and Titus desolated the Holy Land; when, be it remembered, He also, apparently, as utterly abandoned even Judea and Jerusalem to the Roman Gentiles. The devout and patient study of the Hebrew Scriptures may lead us to believe that He who, in the days of Titus, seemed to have finally annulled his territorial covenant alike with Judea and Samaria, will yet make it manifest that there was then no final breaking up of that territorial covenant, and that it has only been in long abeyance. "Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; AND I WILL REMEMBER THE LAND.” (Levit. xxvi. 42.)

In my letter on the Future Destiny of Israel (C. O. July, p. 525), I quoted Neh. ix. 36, 37: "Behold, we are servants this day, and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof, and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it; and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins; also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." This may be further illustrated both from Nehemiah and Ezra. In the fifth chapter of the former, in which the people, with "a great cry," complain of their debts which had compelled them to mortgage their lands, and sell their children into bondage, while " some said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth," others said, "We have borrowed money for the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards." (Neh. v. 4.) And

about the borders of Moab.

For the

waters of Dimon shall be full of blood; for I will bring more upon Dimon, lions upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land." (xv. 8.9.) The population of Moab seems to have been so materially diminished, that lions

found their way from the neighbouring eastern territory into the land. They would thus be ready, when the Divine purpose should require them, to enter Samaria, as a temporary scourge to the heathen colonists in the territory of Ephraim.