The last shall tower above the rest in suddenness of uprising, in potency of evil, in hatred of Christ, and in oppression of the saints: but not the less does he belong to that ancient stock of Belial, the princes of the seed-royal of hell. He is but a riper and more essential form of evil. "The child is father of the man." Owning and perhaps professing every form of religion, he shall yet be devoid of all. Building altars to every god, he "shall magnify himself above all gods." Acknowledging all creeds, he shall believe none. Covering the spectral nakedness of Atheism with the many-coloured vestments of every various priesthood, he shall stand up in the time of the end, the impersonation of all evil from the beginning, Satan's maturest form of wickedness, and truest image of himself, in moulding whom he has put forth all his skill, if so be that he might persuade the whole earth together to recognise as their king one who would rule more entirely as his vicegerent and representative than any heretofore, and through whom he might receive, what he has all along been laying claim to and striving to compass,-the homage and obedience of the world, in defiance of Jehovah and his Anointed Son!

CHAPTER X.

DISTRIBUTION OF TIMES AND EVENTS.

IN connexion with the chronology of prophecy a question occurs with reference to the length of the periods, and the distribution of events over them. As the first coming was the termination of a long series of predictions, so, as we have seen, is the second. It is in the midst of this latter series that we are placed, and it becomes a question of much importance, How are these predictions to be distributed over the intervening space? Are they to be spread out continuously over the whole interval, or reserved, in one dense mass, for its close?

In apostolic days, when faith was simple and love was fresh, men could brook no delay. They could hardly admit of any time intervening between them and the object of their hope. In the fervency of their new affection, they would have the coming of the Lord to be immediate, without any interposing period or event. An apostle had to restrain them, by showing them that that day should not come, unless there came a falling away first, and

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that Man of Sin be revealed, the son of perdition." As time went on, men began to see that God had intended a greater interval than they had imagined, and that many things were designed to take place which they had overlooked. There was no attempt indefinitely to postpone the Advent, nor was there any idea entertained of placing a whole millennium, and that a millennium of glory, between them and that day; still there was the belief that the intervening space was longer than at first they had conceived or were willing to allow.

Seeing this, they naturally began to reason that if God had purposed that his Church should tarry so long for the day of Christ's appearing, he would not have left them without the "

sure word of prophecy" as a light to them, shining in a dark place; and that therefore they must carry it along with them at every step, and spread it out over the whole period of the Church's tribulation, and the Bridegroom's delay. This we believe to have been the feeling in early times; and this we believe to be also the feeling in our own day. It is this, we doubt not, which, along with other reasons, has led the majority of interpreters to distribute over large periods the events and characters described in the prophetic word, and to spread out the "times over ages and centuries.

In order to assist us in settling this point, we

naturally inquire, What was God's method of procedure in former dispensations? How were the foretold events arranged? How were the prophetic times laid out in other ages of the Church? This seems to me a matter of some importance, and an element of some weight in helping us to settle the question-a question doubtless attended with considerable difficulties, and not to be rashly and dogmatically pronounced upon, or hastily dismissed.

In former dispensations we find that the prophecies were not confined to the point immediately before the crisis, but stretched over a much larger field, generally taking up the most striking and pregnant events along the whole line. The times are not limited to a few years before the catastrophe, but range over a long period of years, sometimes of centuries. The Jewish Church was to be for a long period under Egyptian bondage, and prophecy foretold the whole of that time,-her four hundred and thirty years of oppression and sorrow. Her captivity in Babylon was to be for many years, and prophecy gave notice of the whole period of her exile, her seventy years of loneliness and absence from the beloved Jerusalem. The time intervening between her return from captivity and the coming of Messiah was to be a long one, and prophecy made known the whole of that interval,

the seventy weeks that were "determined to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy."

Judging from such analogies, we should be led to expect that the interval between the first and second comings of the Lord should in like manner be filled up with the events and times of prophecy. I cannot help laying much stress on these analogies of the past; they appear to me to afford a strong presumption, to say no more, in favour of the more protracted scheme of interpretation. It cannot but appear strange and inconsistent that the prophetic page, which, in all other ages of the world had been at length written over with the Church's history, should all at once, for eighteen hundred years, become utterly blank, and that, during a dispensation the most momentous which has yet evolved. These considerations, though perhaps not direct proofs, do yet almost amount to something of that kind; they certainly lead us to enter on New Testament prophecies with the expectation of finding them, like preceding ones, spread out over a considerable period, not crushed together in a point, and expending themselves exclusively upon the last few years of the Church's history before or at the Advent.

Besides, does it not appear as if the Apocalypse