church; and since whenever His gifts have been manifested a time of tremendous persecution has accompanied that manifestation; so do we now believe that the body of Christ would be thrown, by the philosophical Infidels, the idolatrous Papists, and the liberal Evangelicals of 1831, to wild beasts, as it was by the Heathen in the first centuries; to the flames, as it was by the Dominicans and the Jesuits from 530 to 1790; and to the sword and to the deep, as it was by the scoffers of the French Revolution. The church has fallen down into the world, so that she is no longer to be distinguished from it, nor a light enlightening the house. The Holy Ghost in her is smothered: it is sin, and sin alone, in each member, that prevents His being manifested: the old man, instead of being dead, is alive and vigorous, and the new man is feeble and subdued. To those who know any thing of what it is to enter into the mind of God, who can at all appreciate the love of the heart of God as set forth in the work of Jesus, we recommend meditation on the sympathies of the body of Christ, not so much with reference to the members as to the Head. If our body is sick, our head participates in the pain; and Jesus Himself mourns at the low condition, sickness, and paralysis of His body. Oh, is it nothing to you who have tasted of His love, to feel that He weeps! to feel that your miserable state is the cause of His grief! Oh, ye know not how He is longing to bless you; what showers of blessings He is desirous to pour down upon you, would you but trust Him. There is a noise of abundance of rain; open your mouths wide, and He will fill them: cast yourselves upon Him: be content to be counted fools, madmen, and deceivers; be content with any thing, so that ye may set forth Him in His power and holiness before the world. No term can adequately describe the state in which the church is, its powerlessness and its coldness, but that of death.

The body of Christ ought to have continued to do upon the earth all that the Head did during the three years of his sojourn in humiliation; and as the last week of the life of Christ was the most painful of all, so will the closing days of the militant state of his body far exceed in suffering all that have preceded it. It was the last week alone which separated Judas from the rest of the disciples. Out of the select twelve, one was to demonstrate himself a traitor. His treachery was shewn, not in applying opprobrious terms, nor in refusing to his Master the honour that. was his due: the very consummation of his guilt was accompanied with a delusive kiss, and the affected allegiance--of "Hail, Master!" As great treachery of a similar kind has been developed within these few years: the abettors of it say they cannot think so meanly of their Lord as to suppose that he will ever return to this earth, which has been so long under the curse of God; that it is carnal, and lowering to His dignity, and derogatory to His honour, to suppose that He will: thus they profess more reverence for Him than others, while they discredit His

plainest assertions. Now they have struck another note of the same chord, and say they cannot think so meanly of their Lord as to suppose that His flesh was made of the same sinful dust that ours is: no! their Lord had a body prepared for him quite unlike any thing, except in form, that ever was seen in the earth: their Lord was in the likeness of man indeed, as a statue is the likeness of a man, but containing no more the properties of mortal flesh than does the Parian marble. We must be on our guard against Judases in every quarter: it is time that we cast off all reliance upon every arm but that of Christ alone; trust to no teaching but that of the Holy Ghost; be prepared for every contumely, for every suffering, without a particle of mitigation here, and tolerable only from the certainty of our shortly being taken up to meet the Lord in the air, and so to be for ever with the Lord.

No one, who believes that the church ought always to have exhibited the power which belongs to its risen Head the Godman Jesus Christ, can doubt the imminent risk she now runs, if the present manifestation be the work of the Holy Ghost, of having the Spirit quenched. Her doctors, with almost one voice, ignorant of the doctrine of Scripture, ignorant of the facts of the case, and ignorant of the only criteria by which to judge, have united to deny that the power of Christ in the Person of the Holy Ghost ought to be in the church at all-whereby they give the lie direct to the plainest and last assertions of our Lord while on earth-and have proceeded to load with the foulest vituperation and malignant aspersions all the individuals who are manifesting these supernatural gifts; asserting, but not mourning over, nor endeavouring to give relief, that it is a Satanic possession that is working in them. A very small number among them do, indeed, believe their Lord's words, and acknowledge that it is their sin and secularity and absorption by worldly principles which alone have prevented His power from always appearing; but even these are so ignorant of the voice of their Lord that the utmost they can do is to stand in doubt whether it be His, or the voice of Satan: asleep in the temple, indeed, these Samuels cannot tell who calls to them; so that, if God be speaking, He is speaking as uselessly to them as to the rest-though, doubtless, when they do know, far different will be the result. There is so little faith in God himself, that they wait for some Eli to confirm Him: they cannot take God at His word, and be content to try the Spirit by the tests which God has given in His word, and they wait for some other test, something that shall commend itself to their reason. But such test never shall they have. It is to put reason to shame that God has now appeared; and proud reason must lay its mouth in the dust, or it can never hear, it has a moral incapacity for hearing, God. We admit, indeed, that it is more important that men should be sound in the doctrine than assent to any particular

manifestation; but we know from experience, that until the mind is satisfied on that, there is no unwavering prayer that we may have the gifts ourselves. Without the gifts-that is, the power of the Holy Ghost; without the power of God speaking in, to, by, and through us-we know not our sin, we are unfit to be His witnesses, we are incapable of setting forth the Gospel of the kingdom in the demonstration of the Spirit, however skilled we may be in man's wisdom and excellency of speech. Some, indeed, fear to possess the power of the Holy Ghost, because they perceive the holiness which it must induce: to all such we would say, "If you dread any thing that can make you as holy as Christ is holy, you are unfit for heaven, and into it you can never enter." The problem which such men are trying to solve is, “How dissimilar can I be to Christ, and yet be saved?"

We cannot conclude without again pressing upon our readers the importance of attending to the plain instructions and letter of the written Word, as the sole guide in all pretended manifestations; by which alone they can be determined to be of God, or of Satan. The author of " the Delusions" quoted above, was himself ensnared in the horrid abominations of the fanatics known under the name of the French Prophets. "The Warnings,' also, to which we have referred, were given by some who were dupes of that imposture. It would be too much to say that there was no work of God going on amongst any of those who are indiscriminately included in the just detestation which their impieties and pollutions excited; but we have no account of any of the pastors of the Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist churches, amongst which the greater part of their disciples were found, "trying the spirits" by the tests given in Scripture for that purpose. The more probable case is, that there was a work of God going on at the beginning; and that Satan forthwith began a work also; by which he contrived to get the two confounded together, and mistaken for one and the same; and in this manner, also, will he assuredly act now. Since those who profess spiritual gifts are responsible for their use, as much as men are responsible for the use of any other gift; so they who pervert spiritual gifts to an unholy purpose, will be drowned in double perdition: wherefore, let those who earnestly desire them, be still more earnest to be enabled to use them aright. One great danger to the church now arises from the habit, which the Evangelical preachers have taught men, of handling deceitfully the word of God, under the system which they call spiritualizing; by which they have imbibed a moral incapacity of believing such a plain thing as that land means land, and not sky; and, on the present question, that the words, "These signs shall follow them that believe," and, " Lo, I am with you all the days, even to the completion of the dispensation," do not mean that the signs were to cease at the beginning of the dispensation.

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REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES.

MR. CULLIMORE ON SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY.

PART II.

Of Criteria for determining in which Version of the Holy Scriptures the original Hebrew Computation of Time is contained.

In my former papers under this head*, I endeavoured, by means of the Newtonian astronomical argument, to develop principles for the solution of an important question, the soundness of which, like that of the Newtonian hypothesis of gravitation, seemed to depend upon the accuracy of their results. Accordingly, these results came out historically true in every instance, by producing the recorded epochs of the respective versions and systems, being in all cases favourable to the authorised Hebrew account of time; and, making full allowance for possible error on the part of the writer, whether from undue multiplication of instances or his method of calculation, enough remained, in the cases of the Septuagint and modern Jewish epochs alone, to prove the adequacy of the principles advanced to the end proposed, according to all the admitted laws of argument.

My attempt being intended as a contribution, however humble, to the means of searching out the truth, rather than with a view to the establishment of a new and favourite theory, I remarked in an early part of the treatise, that, conclusive as these results appear," they ought not to be insisted on, unless it can be proved from internal Scriptural evidence that the present Hebrew numbers are the original, and unless every alleged objection, whether on historical or physical grounds, can be answered." To meet these self-imposed conditions I had collected a mass of criteria of various descriptions, to be brought forward as opportunity might offer, with the view to a full vindication of the Hebrew chronological integrity, or rather to enable the reader to judge between the sacred Hebrew and the elongated systems of time, by a variety of independent and coinciding

tests.

The publication of these materials having been suspended, chiefly through want of health; and a learned writer, Mr. Cuninghamet, having in the mean time not only attacked the soundness of the principles and results contained in my former papers, but converted these results in favour of the integrity of the Hebrew Chronology into a charge against the church of Vol. III. p. 416.

* Vol. II. p. 898; Vol. III. p. 161.

God ("of having wilfully corrupted and wickedly altered the oracles of God; or, to say the very least, of having most criminally and negligently permitted that alteration by some of her sons, and having afterwards connived at and participated in it by the reception and universal use of the version-i.e. that of the Seventy-so corrupted"); I propose now to incorporate so much of the additional matter as may enable the reader to decide between Mr. Cuninghame and myself, and whether the interests of God's church are best upheld by the adoption of the inconsistent and utterly uncertain Septuagint account of time, or by adherence to the original and uniform Hebrew numbers.

I do not pretend to be a match for so able and practised a controversialist as Mr. Cuninghame, in arguing the question; and therefore solicit the reader's attention to the facts stated rather than the manner in which they are put, as well as to the relative consistency of both parties.

In limine, I would remark, that Mr. Cuninghame can doubtless explain his reason for suppressing (perhaps I should rather say, for overlooking) the self-imposed clause above quoted, which every impartial reader will allow should at least have exonerated the writer from the grave charge brought against him, even though his principles of inquiry were proved unsound. My learned antagonist can likewise no doubt explain why he has singled out the unlucky writer of a single treatise to bear the onus of a charge which, if valid, is in force against Scaliger, Petavius, Ussher, Marsham, the compilers of our authorized Biblical chronology, and every other great man in whose path the writer has trodden as a defender of the Hebrew chronological integrity; the suppression of whose names would lead the unlearned reader to infer that the author of the impugned treatise alone had committed the sin of vindicating the sacred Hebrew numbers, and of exposing the corruptions of the Greek.

The internal criteria being by far the most important, I will commence with that department of the subject; hoping to develop facts that may try the temper of Mr. Cuninghame's celestial weapons, and prove that the Hebrew chronological integrity is far from depending on reasonings derived from human science, or from any extrinsic source.

Mr. Cuninghame having confined his chronological strictures to post-diluvian times, I have assigned the like limits to the accompanying Patriarchal Table; extending it, however, to the descent of the house of Israel into Egypt, as required by the mode in which I have found it necessary to state the deaths of the patriarchs.

The first column of numbers exhibits the times according to the uniform and unvarying Hebrew text, the Chaldee paraphrast of Onkelos, the ancient Syriac version, the Hebrew copy of Eusebius, the