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wholly passes them by. Some of his interpretations are quite ludicrous; for instance (p. 301) "I will give him a white stone -i. e. a sort of carte blanche, entitling him to ask for, and receive, whatever he may want!!!" Babylon is put for heathen Rome (p.315) under the first, second, and third trumpets: the fourth is referred to the same period (p. 316): the power under the fifth is determined to be the Roman (p. 319): but under the sixth, the four angels loosed from the river Euphrates are identified with the four winds of Dan. vii. 2, at the beginning of the four monarchies, and, "this is again," be says, "the Roman power beyond all doubt" (p. 320); and he calls their time of an hour and a day and a month and a year, so very definitely given, "an indefinite time." The harvest and vintage are (p. 331) represented as if the latter was only a repetition of the former: "By this repetition, certainty or intensity seems to be implied." Rev. xvii. and xviii. are wholly applied to heathen Rome (p. 333, 338). "The period termed a thousand years, must commence some time during the ministry of our Lord; for now was Satan bound, or limited in power one day, is with the Lord as a thousand

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years, &c. i. e. it may signify any considerable period of time."...." Its conclusion shall come, however, as a thief in the night, just as our Lord had predicted (Matt. xxiv. 43, xxv. 1-7), and before this generation shall have passed away. This period, therefore, during which Satan is said to be bound, i. e. in which miraculous powers were exercised by the church, may very properly be termed a thousand years, in the highly figurative language of this book!!!" Really this nonsense is past all endurance. thousand years is the time specified, but this time will not square with the Professor's exposition; but as, says he, one day (a very short period) is as a thousand years," argal" a thousand years" may signify any considerable period!" "Its conclusion, however, shall come as a thief in the night, before this generation" (a very inconsiderable period) "shall have passed away,". "which period may very properly be termed a thousand years!!!" Does Professor Lee really mean to say, that "highly figurative" is highly nonsensical?

These are only a few of the numberless absurdities contained in this short exposition of the Book of the Revelation. None of the readers of the Morning Watch can require our assistance in refuting such errors. Our object has been to shew that this exposition is entitled to no authority whatever; that however able as an Oriental scholar Professor Lee may be, in the interpretation of prophecy he is a mere child; he has yet the first elements, the mere alphabet, to acquire. He says, at p. 353, "If this then be the view, both of the Prophets and St. John, the word of God affords us no intimation whatever that such a Millennium will ever arrive, in which the New Jerusalem, or

Christian church, shall contain all God's rational and accountable creatures; but rather that some will always remain enemies to Christ, and that still a missionary labour will remain for the exercise of the church, by which many will, from time to time, be added to the congregations of the blessed." Here we have to complain, as usual, that the opponents of the doctrines we advocate do most certainly misunderstand us, in general, far more grievously than they misinterpret Scripture. We protest against any such Millennium as the above: the Christian church never shall contain all God's rational and accountable creatures; a missionary labour will remain. But certain, notwithstanding, it is, that the highest form of creature manifestation—that in the glorified Christ, and his glorified people—has limitation in time to the day of grace, as in number to the elect: That the day of grace shall end; that the number of the elect shall be accomplished; that the kingdom of God shall come; that the bride shall be made ready; that the top-stone of the temple shall be brought forth; that the saints shall reign as kings and priests:and if kings, they have subjects; if priests, they have offerings to present and blessings to bestow; they have a missionary labour, though not in Professor Lee's sense-not to add fresh members to the body of Christ, but to dispense blessings from him; not to introduce other inmates into the heavenly Jerusalem, but that the nations of them that are saved may walk in the light thereof. Heaven is no republic; and when it shall become revealed in the Millennial kingdom of Christ, not only will there be gradations of dignity, from Christ the Head, and those members which receive a more abundant honour, down to those who are least in the kingdom of heaven; but gradations will obtain also among all the rational and accountable creatures under their

rule.

We part with Professor Lee in the hope that he will re-examine his very crude opinions; which if he do in the spirit which dictated the preface with which we began our remarks, God will undoubtedly lead him by his Spirit into all truth, and we shall have the satisfaction of seeing him advocate doctrines which he now misunderstands and opposes: doctrines which increase in their importance every day, as every day brings us nearer to the time when they must be acted upon, the time to meet the Bridegroom; when those who are unprovided with the requisites for entering, on the first summons, will hasten to obtain oil-will obtain it, too, but will find, alas! that the door has been shut!

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THE RECORD NEWSPAPER AND CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. SINCE the commencement of our Journal we have often been made to experience how difficult it is for men to come to a perfect agreement on any one point; how nearly impossible to do so upon all. We speak not only of those persons who are carried away in opposite directions by passion and party spirit, but even of dispassionate and sincere inquirers, who, with their best endeavours, can scarcely attain concord without compromise, and find continual occasion for the exercise of mutual forbearance and charity. In writing thus we are not preparing the way for asking favour to ourselves, or deprecating just hostility: to our own Master we stand or fall: whatever of God's truth we have uttered, He will prosper; and if we have uttered error, we pray Him to give his servants power to detect and expose it, and us the grace to repent of it. But as we prefer truth before any

personal consideration, we desire now to call upon our readers to support and encourage that which is praiseworthy in a contemporary Journal (the Record), although we have against it the strong ground of complaint arising from its very unfair, unprovoked attacks upon us and our friends. We know no more of the Record than any of its ordinary readers; not even the name of its Editor; not those of the Committee which conducts it, except of one member, and that only by common report. We have expressed ourselves strongly upon the gross injustice and falsehood (whether unintentional or wilful we do not now say) which it has published respecting Mr. Irving, and the doctrines he holds; and we may, perhaps, be again under the necessity of reverting to this subject. We do, however, willingly admit that the articles of which we complain are exceptions to the general, especially to the recent, tone of the Paper; and should be glad to learn that their admission into its columns was regretted by its present conductors. These, and other minor points of difference, we now pass by, and joyfully turn to those topics on which we have nothing to express but approbation.

A series of articles has appeared in the Record, wherein political events have been viewed with the eye of a Christian and since it is the only Journal which has so treated them, it would on that account alone be entitled to our favourable regard. But when we further consider, that its clear-sightedness and faithfulness on these points has exposed it to the active hostility of other religious periodicals, which have united to decry and write down the Record, we think it no more than just to bear our testimony to that which is praiseworthy in its columns.

The blasphemy of the doctrine, that "not God, but the people, are the source of legitimate power," having been recognised, the

Record was enabled to perceive that the setting of God aside, and exalting man, was the most important characteristic of the revolution which burst forth in Paris in July 1830; and thus the nature of that event, and of the transactions that have arisen out of it, has been clearly set before its readers. The infidel principle of the London University, in setting up a system of education from which religion was professedly excluded, has been incessantly exposed. The Neological tendency of the most popular writings of the day, has been detected. The systematic breach of the Sabbath by the Cabinet Ministers, has been recorded and censured. The determination of the Dissenters and schismatics to pull down the Church established in this land, and their denial of the duty of the King to provide for the religious instruction of his subjects, have been stripped of the so− phistry in which they were enveloped, and represented in their true colours. The proposition to add Jews to the other members of Antichrist, already admitted to legislate for and rule over the members of Christ, has been reprobated. The labours of Mr. Gordon to stimulate the lukewarmness of a semi-Popish Committee of the Reformation Society, have been applauded. The refusal of the heads of the Bible Society to ask for God's blessing upon its exertions, and the preference for Socinians rather than for the servants of God, when one of the parties was to be offended, have been attacked. The baseness of the Dissenters of the Three Denominations, in allowing their addresses to be drawn up and themselves represented by a Socinian, has been denounced. Above all, the refusal of the King, Bishops, and Senate to call upon the nation to acknowledge the hand of God in the threatened visitation of pestilence, and to humble themselves by fasting and humiliation before Him, has been held up as an awful proof of universal apostasy. And several other topics might be mentioned which have been viewed with similar correctness, did our space permit.

These bold attacks on so many of the strongholds of Liberalism have drawn upon the Record the combined wrath of the Earlstreet Committee, with its coadjutors, the radical Dissenters, and the time-serving Evangelicals. The first of these bodies has patronized a rival newspaper, with the avowed determination of compelling the Record to discontinue its exertions; the second has greatly increased the circulation of the World newspaper, which is a compound of infidelity and radicalism, written in the slang of a religious phraseology; and the third has produced in the Christian Observer a torrent of personal abuse against Mr. Gordon, and a disclaimer of the Record as the legitimate organ of the Evangelical party.

The Evangelical Clergymen, who have been for many years the principal writers in the Christian Observer, have become so

deeply imbued with Liberalism, which is but a modified Infidelity, that they have leaned much more to the infidel than to the high-church party in the country. Their hopes were raised. to the highest pitch by the accession of Lords Brougham, Lansdowne, and Holland to the offices whence emoluments descend. They were willing to keep the peculiarities-which means, in other words, the essentials-of Christianity out of sight: a course truly designated as most prudent, if prudence means the course most likely to procure Prebendaries, Archdeaconries, and Chancellorships. The Christian Observer has ever been the most active defender of that creature of Lord Brougham, the London University, and patron of a system of education from which God was professedly and explicitly rejected. It was the advocate for raising the Popish apostasy to posts of honour and authority amongst the rulers of this Protestant land. It now attempts to delude its readers into the belief, that by the Reform Bill, which gives increased power to the rabble, religion will be promoted. In the mean time, as the hour of judgment upon this church and nation drew nigh, God was pleased to raise up a witness for Himself, endued with sufficient courage for the task, and to send Mr. Gordon into the House of Commons. Instead of encouraging and supporting this valiant warrior, in his arduous encounters of Popery and Atheism in their most secure and insidious fastnesses, the Christian Observer denounced Mr. Gordon ex cathedra; abjured all connection with him; maligned him as a hot-brained and senseless enthusiast; and conjured its patrons not to suppose that he and the Record were the true representatives of the Evangelical party. It has attacked Mr. Gordon for repeatedly dividing the House of Commons, when the O'Connells, Humes, and Charles Grants made a deliberate set at him, although it is the ONLY means that a minority possess of curbing the tyrannical insolence of a majority; to which means all minorities, in all times, have been obliged to have recourse; to which Mr. Gordon most properly has resorted; and which alone ensured him a fair hearing for his sentiments. It has sneered at Mr. Gordon for complaining that the daily press does not report his speeches, although it must perceive the peril which the country runs at this time from the power of the press in that very point; and that the press has either totally suppressed or dishonestly mutilated the ablest speeches against this revolutionary measure (amongst the very best of which was that of Mr. Gordon himself), while it has striven to report every syllable of those speeches in favour of it.

These things we state not invidiously or unnecessarily, but for the sake of religion and order, now in more imminent peril from false friends than from avowed enemies. It behoves every friend of truth to come forward now, and to sink petty and personal

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