"Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them:"-but still they are "for signs and for seasons:" for further purposes we may, perhaps, begin to suspect than merely to measure lunations, and days, and years. "For the avenging of Israel," we read on one occasion, "They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Our Lord has spoken of the approach of the great day: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars." In all amazement, and casting in our minds what manner of sayings these may be, let us join in the holy song, "Praise him, sun and moon : Praise him all ye stars of light! Praise him ye heaven of heavens: and ye waters that be above the heavens. Fire, and hail; snow and vapours: stormy wind fulfilling his word!" In addition to the circumstance, that these periods, dated as above, both terminate in A. D. 1844; it is certainly worthy of remark, that in one way of applying the period mentioned in Revelation ix. 15, "which were prepared for an hour," or correctly translated, "for the hour, and day, and month, and year:" that is to say, considering this as a period which is to be dated from the establishment of Mahomedan Turks at Constantinople, the number of days counted on the common scale, do also terminate in the year A. D. 1844. And as, for some purpose no doubt, the fractional parts of the year are given us in this place, if you date from A. D. 1453, May the 20th, the day on which Constantinople was taken by the Turks, the period will terminate on the thirteenth day of June, 1844. And, it is again remarkable, that the Mahomedans in various parts of the world, have their expectations fixed on the same year, A. D. 1844, which strangely happens to be the twelve hundred and sixtieth of this era, dated from their own epoch of their religion, and according to their own method of calculation, though it would not complete a true cycle of twelve hundred and sixty years. "The Mussulmauns," it is observed in a late publication "all believe that Mhidhie-the standing proof that we are looking for as he is called -will visit the earth at a future period; they are said to possess prophecies that lead them to expect the twelve hundred and sixtieth year of the Hegirah as the time for his coming." * "Like the true Christians, they are looking forward to that period, when Jesus Christ shall revisit the earth, and when all men shall be of one faith." ↑ Whether we shall or shall not be led by our best inductions from the prophecies of the Scriptures, to conclude that the year A. D. 1844, be the actual period of the coming of our Lord in glory-as the Mahomedans suppose to make us all of "Observations by Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Vol. I. p. 135. † Vol. II. p. 425. their religion.-For they say that, though Mahomed is the greater prophet, and his religion the only true one; yet that Mahomed is not risen from the dead, but that Jesus is, and that in his person this visitation is to take place. This coincidence in the expectation of so large a body of mankind, with the general prospects of the people who wait for redemption in the Church of Christ, is certainly not to be disregarded. Something very similar was the case, from whatever cause, in respect of the whole civilized world, at or near the epoch of the first advent. * And how exactly have we, in regard of the Mahomedan expectation, the case of the woman of Samaria! "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come he will tell us all things." "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship!" It is, indeed, a matter of the most awful inquiry, on the assumption that this hypothesis which directs our attention to A. D. 1844, is truewhat expectation can be formed from the holy Scriptures respecting the events of that epoch. It is said in Daniel, chapter viii. 14, in connection with the expiration of the two thousand three hundred days-" then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." The original is "justified," in the sense I should suppose of vindicated in the claim of asserted rights or granted privilege. This seems to apply to the site of the holy temple of Jerusalem: this cleansing or justifying of the sanctuary may, therefore, predict in unfulfilled prophecy, the circumstances attending the possession of Jerusalem, by that first restoration of Judah, and colonization of Palestine, of which I have spoken in the body of this work: it is not incongruous to suppose, that this may be found to have terminated the rule of the kingdoms of the heathen over the desolated land of promise,the fulfilling of "the times of the Gentiles," "to tread under foot the holy city of Jerusalem." This colony, we have seen, must abide an attack from the fourth empire with the congregated kings of the earth; but that invasion is not completely successful; it is at the very crisis of the enemy's besieging Jerusalem that, as we have seen, the Redeemer comes to Zion, and the Lord of hosts is manifested in judgment. The date, therefore, of their being "brought back from the sword" which had scattered them, and the possession, by a part of them, of their long-lost country, of which they never actually lose the seizin again, though in the last time of trouble, they are "again minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow;"- this date might well be conjectured to mark that epocha, which, with respect to their land and * See "Bishop Horsley's Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed among the Heathen." city, terminates the reign of "the throne of the kingdoms of the heathen." " But some may be of opinion, that this "cleansing of the sanctuary," should rather be referred to this last vindication of the holy city from the grasp of the last oppressor, and the actual possession of the mountain of the Lord's house, by the entrance of the divine presence, as described in the prophet Ezekiel. This would, indeed, more coincide with the tradition abroad in the Mahomedan world respecting the return of the Messiah to this earth. I think it clear from prophecy, that that first restoration of the Jews to their own land and city, must previously have taken place, and there must have been time for them to have gotten cattle and goods."* The last invader expects to "take a great spoil""to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods." Can all this be accomplished in the space of nine short years from this preWe should pronounce it highly improbable in the usual course of things! But, perhaps, we may be compelled to own, that in the situation of any banished people, with which we are acquainted in the whole compass of history, that improbability would have been extremely greater, than in the present situation and circumstances of the Jews in Europe! See a quotation from the Quarterly Review in the Introduction to this present work. Let us not then be too secure. Surely there is a voice," or "sound of the day of the Lord;" it may at this present moment "be hasting greatly!" "Oh, who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap!" sent time? Taking, therefore, this intimation in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, and fixing from it in B. C. 677, the epoch of the Times of the Gentiles -counting them "seven times" in number, or twice three times and an half, on the scale of years for days, two thousand five hundred and twenty years, expiring in the year 1844, they comprise, we find, two great cycles of twelve hundred and sixty years. If you divide this period into its respective cycles, in the year of the Christian era 584, the division certainly points to something very important in the changes of human affairs, and in the history of the great fourth or Roman empire: if we can discover from the chronologists no particular event of sufficient importance dated on this very year, 584; yet, every one must feel, that in the order of that Providence, which changes the times and seasons, a crisis of great importance in the world's history is being produced about this time. Hear the historian Gibbon : "Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and * Ezekiel xxxviit under the despotism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive losses of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither in the ground; the ministers of command, and messengers of victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way, the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit without an anxious thought, the garden of the surrounding country, will faintly picture to their fancy the distress of the Romans. They shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand; beheld, from their walls, the flames of their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery, beyond the sea and the mountains. Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle which again restored her to honor and dominion." This, to a reader of scripture prophecy, must always have appeared extraordinary language; and it is curious to read the infidel historian's account of this revival of the vital principle in "the beast which was, and is not, and yet is." He proceeds, "A vague tradition was embraced, that two Jewish teachers, a tentmaker and a fisherman, had formerly been executed in the circus of Nero; and, at the end of five hundred years, their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the east and west resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the saints; and those, who, from the purest motives, presumed to disturb the repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted by visions, or punished with sudden death."* Rome evidently about this time becomes an object of an idolatrous attachment to the nations of the earth; in prophetic language, "all the world wondered after the beast." Confining our view to the "fate of the great city that ruleth over the kings of the earth," "seated on her seven hills," may not the date we have been guided to, have given the beginning of her particular cycle * See Second Advent, Vol. II. p. 400. of twelve hundred and sixty years, from 584 to 1844? and may not this termination thereof be referred to that judgment symbolized in Rev. xiv. 8. "And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication?" This is evidently a distinct judgment from that symbolized in the three following verses, which falls upon "them that worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark on their forehead or in their hand." The immediate instruments of the two judgments are different; of the former, John is told, Rev. xvii. 16, "and the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire;" but of the latter-Babylon the great, in its extended sense, as including the apostate empire-the executor of the judgment is shown to be, HE that cometh as the WORD OF GOD, on the "white horse," " who treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God." Rev. xix. What distance these two judgments are apart, we cannot say, but may conjecture, from the opening of the last mentioned chapter, that they are in immediate, or in no very remote, sequence. We find among the victims of this eternal judgment, not indeed, the woman that sitteth upon the beast, nor the image of the beast, -as explained above, the idolatrous city and the sacerdotal monarch of the Latin earth; but we still find with the beast, in the character of the false prophet, him that made the image of the beast and gave it vitality; for the false prophet that goes down alive with the beast into the pit of destruction, is identified in xix. 20, with the second two-horned beast that procured worship for the first beast, and made "for him" or "of him an image;" which second lamb-like beast, has been interpreted of the ecclesiastical state, now in a state of apostacy from the truth of the gospel, in their transactions with the Barbarian powers, and in their erecting the metropolis of the Latin Church into a spiritual monarchy. It was in the reign of Justinian, as we have intimated, that the imperial authority of the Roman Cæsars was restored to Rome-"the wound by the sword,” “ as it were unto death," which the beast had received on one of its heads, "was healed." In the struggle, on this occasion, and in the oppression that followed, the city of Rome was brought to that last debasement of desolation, the account of which has been transcribed from the historian. The reign of Justinian, in general history, certainly forms a new era in the destinies of the Roman world; especially on account of his legislative enactments and his new modelling the constitution of the empire, which afterwards supplied a precedent and a pat |