they approach Scripture with such a bias, that one can scarcely expect a calm and thorough examination of the passages under discussion. But even though the bias were not so injurious, still the method of procedure is inadmissible. If the question be one purely of Scriptureinterpretation, then no previous ideas of our own, as to the nature of the doctrine, ought to be allowed to weigh with us. Our inquiry simply is, What has God written? It is unfair, it is illogical, nay, it is deeply sinful, to come to the consideration of so important a doctrine, with minds so pre-occupied with the conviction that it cannot be proved, that the weighing of evidence is altogether unnecessary. If the case is one of evidence, let us either fairly and scrupulously weigh that evidence, or else decline to enter on it. But let us not undertake to weigh it, when we have previously, and upon other grounds, settled the whole question.

It is most unsafe to make our ideas of the possible our standard in measuring Scripture. It is clear that, in such a case, we are dictating to God, and not submitting to be taught by him. I know not a more melancholy instance of this than Dr. Bush, of America, in his recent work upon the resurrection. He sets out in the same track which many anti-millenarians

have adopted, viz., that the doctrine in question is an impossibility. "The physiological fact (he writes) of the constant change which our bodies are undergoing, is irreconcileably at war with the tenet of the resurrection of our bodies."* Commencing by an attempt to prove that resurrection cannot be, he then goes on to show how those passages which speak of it are to be interpreted, so as not to teach it. The replies to his work which we have seen, at once assail him here as most illogical in the arrangement of his argument. They tell him that he is no judge of what is possible or impossible. They 'admit the difficulties implied in a resurrection (difficulties far greater that any which millenarianism contains), but they leave these in the hands of God. Is anything too hard for Him? They tell him, also, that the object of his book is to reconcile Scripture to a pre-conceived theory of his own. Such are precisely our answers to antimillenarian works, most of which set out with the same assumptions, and go over nearly the same ground as the American Professor. We say that such a method of reasoning is unsound and untenable; that man is no judge of the possible or the impossible; that difficulties are nothing to God; and that nothing can be more

• P. 390.

dangerous than to attempt to reconcile Scripture to a theory of our own. We see to what lengths this method of arguing has conducted Dr. Bush, and we ought to be upon our guard against applying that method to any revealed doctrine whatsoever.

There is another American Professor to whom I would refer in connexion with some of the above remarks; I mean Moses Stuart, of Andover. He has recently published a very elaborate Commentary on the Apocalypse. In the is compelled as a critic to admit that the first resurrection, spoken of in the twentieth chapter of that book, is a literal one, and that the words do not admit of being spiritualized. But to compensate for this singular admission, he gives us his opinion very freely upon the merits of millenarianism. He calls it "a gross conception ;" an "impossibility," having "no foundation but in the phantasy of the brain." He speaks of "the dreams of men;" "visionaries of ancient and modern times;" "phantasies of lively imaginations ;" "enthusiastic visions;" "idle, yea, worse than idle, fancydreams;" "dreams and phantasies of ancient and modern Millenarians, who make a worldly and sensual kingdom." ""* I do not cite these expres

* See Vol. II, pp. 361,362, 374, 479, 480. I have been struck with the resemblance to Jerome in these expressions. He is

sions to complain of them, far less to retort them. Nor do I refer to them as evidences of an unbecoming and uncandid spirit in the Andover Professor of this I leave others to judge. Nor do I feel aggrieved by the epithets bestowed upon millenarianism; they have not tended to persuade me that I am wrong, and I feel perfectly entitled to hold it as firmly as ever, notwithstanding these condemnatory names. I am not convinced by them that I am an enthusiast or a dreamer; nor will they weigh much with any calm and thoughtful mind. If I can only hold fast, and defend what God has written for the instruction

perpetually recurring to the Millenarians, and never fails to bestow some hard epithet upon them; at the same time he acknowledges that very many (plurima multitudo) even in his day held that doctrine,—so much so that he tells us that he foresees "the fury which he is likely to raise against himself" in opposing it (ut præsaga mente jam cernam quantorum in me rabies concitanda sit).—Jerome, Proem to the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.

The reference to this passage in Kitto's "Cyclopedia" is inaccurate, and the translation is second hand; but the article on millenarianism is good and fair. I may notice here, also, how of late Anti-millenarians have been too much led into that spirit of sharpness and self-confidence, which, about twenty years ago, they used (and with justice) to condemn in their opponents. Is it too much to expect that brethren should argue mildly and calmly, however firmly, in discussing with each other the things concerning the King?

of his Church, I shall not be offended at these reproaches-reproaches which both in Britain and America are but too common among the assailants of the derided system. The reason I have quoted Professor Stuart is, because his method of dealing with the subject is a specimen of the mode of reasoning which is too much indulged in by Anti-millenarians. They tell us our theory is visionary and impossible, and therefore it cannot be scriptural. Now, did it not occur to the learned Professor that this is precisely the false position which Unitarians adopt, and which he and his fellow Trinitarians condemn ? No one knows this better than he; and we might well be surprised at his adoption of principles in one case which he would condemn in another. I was struck, too, when I remembered the calm manliness with which he argued the question of the divinity of Christ against the Unitarians, and could not help wondering why he should speak more kindly to the deniers of his Lord than to his brethren in Christ. When he was arguing with the former, he stood upon the broad ground of Scripture, refusing to be moved away from this by their oftrepeated charges of impossibility and absurdity. When reasoning with the latter, he both loses sight of his former principles, and leaves behind him his former spirit. He does not meet us