is the merest conjecture. The conjecture rests upon the arbitrary agglutination and identification of widely separated texts. The only mention made of Armageddon in the Book of Revelation represents it, in the highly metaphorical and allegorical language of Scripture, as a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon, where the kings of the earth and of the whole world are to be gathered together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.'

All i vague and floating here. The ground is a quicksand under our feet. Types and symbols rarely admit of precise application. They furnish no data for chronology. Human ingenuity is at fault in the attemp to translate rhetorical figures and designed ambiguities into distinct facts awaiting their accomplishment.' In the present instance, there is a further augmentation of uncertainty. The significance of the term, Armageddon, is wholly unsettled. The allusion intended by it is dubious. If, as is most probable, its metaphorical import is derived from the scene of great and disastrous slaughter, where Josiah and his army were overthrown by Pharaoh Necho (A. C. 609), and where most of the great battles of the Holy Land have been fought, it refers to the Valley of Megiddo and the Plain of Jezreel. The Plain of Esdraelon, or Jezreel, affords the only champaign country in Palestine suitable for the evolutions of large armies, and was therefore peculiarly fitted to indicate, figuratively, to the fancy of a Jew the field of any tremendous engagement. Near the city of Megiddo, and the mountains of Megiddo, or Armageddon, Josiah, King of Judah, was routed with immense slaughter, and with the loss of his own life. The memory of that mournful day was preserved in a proverbial expression: As the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddo.' Hence Armageddon became a perfectly appropriate term to symbolize overwhelming defeat, terrific carnage, and extravagance of woe. Hence, too, it would convey in the Apocalyptic narrative a singularly vivid impres

1 'Nobis quidem oleum et operam perdere videntur, qui hujus modi oracula ad certos eventus referre student, aut poetica ornamenta ad factorum fidem explorant.' Rosenmüller. Schol. Ezek. xxviii. 26.

sion of the utter ruin finally to overtake the impenitent and the enemies of God. But no term could be less adapted to indicate any definite place, or any precise event.

No valid objection could be taken to the adoption of the term Armageddon, if it were only used as a startling designation. The taste and discretion of its employment might be questioned, but these offences could be overlooked. But, in the hands of Mr. Baxter and his confrères, these is a bold assumption, a confident petitio principii, involved in, the application of the name. It is implied, and, we may say, insinuated, that there will be a actual carnal battle at Armageddon. Other assumptions, fallacies, or inferences, are accepted with little examination or hesitation, after the facility of belief has been secured. It is not to be expected that those will long strain at a gnat who have just swallowed the camel without a gulp, and who have been as unconscious of that large deglutition as was Gargantria of the six pilgrims of St. Sebastian's, whom he chewed in a lettuce-leaf, and afterward picked out of a hollow tooth. It is to be remembered, moreover, that one of these pilgrims recalled six passages of the Psalms, that foretold the misfortune of himself and his companions.

The characteristic conclusion is thus begged from the commencement, and the same disregard of the logical validity of the premises is exhibited throughout. The imagination of the Millenium, and of the prevenient occurrences, rests principally upon the Book of Revelation, dark and enigmatical as is the language of that book. But the premonitory signs of the last agony are confirmed, or multiplied, by the equally obscure expressions of Daniel and other prophets.

There are no two books in the Bible whose authenticity has been more questioned, and whose meaning is more unintelligible, than the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of St. John. . The utter ambiguity of their import renders them wholly unsuitable as a basis for any vaticinations in regard to the concealed plans of Providence. They are evidently allegorical, and highly metaphorical. The exuberance of Oriental fancy colors their language, and presides over nearly all their utterWe have no guide but themselves, and analogous

ances.

modes of expression elsewhere, to determine the signification of either the allegories or the metaphors. Are we anthorized to receive metaphor for plain fact, and allegory for authentic description? How shall we ascertain the true interpretation of a prophecy where multifarious interpretations are possible, and have been proposed? By what criterion shall we recognize the correct one? Is there any criterion previous to the accomplishment of the prediction? Is not any selection among various expositions arbitrary and unwarrantable? If a prophecy admits of two plausible expositions (e. e., before it is fulfilled), neither can be accepted. We are ignorant of its meaning, because we have no conclusive means of regulating our choice. Who shall decide?'

What the Millennium will be we know not. When it will occur, and what will be its manifestations, we cannot tell, until it has occurred; perhaps not till it has been completed. The same kind of inspiration is required for the interpretation of prophecy as was needed for its utterance. The illumination of Daniel was as necessary for the explanation of the handwriting on the wall as for his predictions in regard to the Macedonian and Roman Empires. After the accomplishment of the prophecy, it may or may not be understood. The Jews still deny the advent of the Messiah. We cannot tell with certainty whether the predictions of the Apocalypse, of Daniel, and of other prophets, have or have not been accomplished already. We may be living in the midst of the Millennium without knowi it. The battle of Armageddon may have been fought by Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, by Charles Martel at Tours, or by John Sobieski under the walls of Vienna. We do not hold any such tenets. We have no convictions on these impalpable subjects. Such dogmas would be diametrically opposed to our whole thesis.

It is especially hazardous to undertake to disclose the future by the aid of the mysterious oracles of the Apocalypse. The text is mutilated and extremely dubious. We cannot be assured of even the words and phrases with which we determine the day of doom. Can we venture on such a slippery 1 Procopius. De Bello Gothico. Lib. I, c. xxiv.; Lib. IV, c. xxi.

and insecure basis to predict the ultimate designs of the Creator in regard to the execution of his purposes? In the perplexities to which we are reduced, the only escape for us is in the humble recognition that our eyes are not yet unsealed to the comprehension of these mysteries. This humility is strenuously enforced by a consideration of the centuries of recurrent error and repeated falsification, which have illustrated the experiments at a solution.

In the days of the Apostles and the Evangelists, the end of the world was anticipated within the term of their natural lives.

Ultima Cuci venit jam carminis œtas.

This expectation seemed to be authorized, not merely by the Pagan Sybils, but apparently by the language of Christ himself. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass away till all these things be done.' He had, indeed, said unto them: Ye know not what hour your Lord doth come; and, Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.' But the whole tenor of his discourses seemed to point to an early consummation of all prophecy. His language and his meaning may have been misapprehended, as we are assured was the case in regard to the hypothetical prolongation of the life of St. John until the second Advent. If the words of the Savior could be misconceived and misapplied by his followers while he was yet present with them, can we trust the expositions of Mr. Baxter, Mr. Bickersteth, Mr. Beale, or Mr. Baldwin? Quid pertransivit, scio; quid autem futurum est, ignoro. The past we may know, the future we cannot know. However the error may have arisen, the conviction that the world would be destroyed during the current generation was almost universal among the early Christians, even while they had the advantage of Apostolic instruction. It is reprehended by St. Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians; and Dr. Macknight, in his preface to this Epistle, has shown that the great delusion respecting the speedy dissolution of the world was entertained by none of the writers of the New Testament. If, indeed, they had fallen into such an error, how could we

believe in their inspiration, or place reliance in the truthful ness of their prophecies?

St. John at length slept with the other Apostles, Evangelists, and martyrs, but the expectation remained. Its accomplishment had been postponed, but was daily and howly looked for. Such was the belief when the legions of Titus thundered at the walls of Jerusalem; such was the general conviction when Apollonius of Tyana announced himself as a god, and proclamed at Ephesus the assassination of the tyrant Domitian at Rome; such was the faith of the early post-Apostolic ages. They were all beguiled. The cedulity was so diffused that it is noticed by Pliny in his celerated letter to the Emperor Trajan on the treatment of the Christians. Were all the primitive fathers and saints thus deluded, and shall we credit Mr. Baxter et hoc genus omne? Can we ascribe to him an infallible illumination which was so conspicuously denied to them?

Any one who has acquired the slightest tincture of the Patristic, Ecclesiastical, Apochryphal, and Oracular literature of the first Christian centuries, must have been impressed with the general doctrine of the imminent completion of all prophecy. The enunciation of the belief is continual, either in explicit statement or in dark vaticinations. We pass over Cerinthus, Papias, Irenæus, the Montanists under the Antonines, and other avowed Chiliasts. The opinion languished in Greece, and died out by the fourth century, as we ascertain from Epiphaning; but in Tertullian, in the spurious Sybilline Oracles, and in Lactantius, we find, not merely the proclamation of this solemn faith in the near approach of the final consummation, but a style of conception and expression curiously analogous to the characteristics of the Book of Revelation. A still more startling parallelism, in language, type, and spirit, is supplied by the Fourth Book of Esdras, which evidently belongs to this period. This, and the Sybilline Oracles in their existing form, are apparently Jewish and Christian forgeries of the second and third centuries. The ten ages of the Sybil were completed, or nearly so, when Nero ascribed the burning of Rome to the Christians, and commenced those per