For the restoration and rebuilding of the city having been foretold in v. 25, its destruction is also foretold in v. 26. The agents are "the people of the prince that shall come." As the destruction of Jerusalem was by the Romans, "the prince that shall come must also be a Roman.

con

Moreover, "the prince is the nominative to the verbs 66 firm," &c., in v. 27, expressed by the pronoun "he-" "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week."

Could any have referred this to the Messiah, if they had noticed that this 66 covenant " is mentioned again in other passages as having been made and broken by "the prince of the covenant" Dan. xi. 22, (who is the same as "the vile person" xi. 21, and "the little horn," viii. 9, 23-25)? By him the covenant is made and afterwards broken, xi. 28, 30, 32. This cannot be the Messiah, nor is it the Messiah who causes "the sacrifice and oblation to cease "in the midst of the last week (which is still future), as is clear from viii. 11-13, xi. 31, and xii. 11, where it is also connected with the setting up of the "abomination of desolation." Let those who doubt read carefully and accurately the passages referred to in this paragraph.

The 26th verse describes the present dispensation from the crucifixion of Christ to the rise of the Anti-Christ, while the 27th verse describes the last week (or 7 years of Anti-Christ's actings), divided as it is into two parts of 1260 days, and 34 years or 42 months.* E. W. BULLINGER, D.D.

DANTE IN THE PULPIT.

A CLASS of theological ideas is gathered from sermons, songs, and prayers; from hymn-books, newspaper articles, and works of pious fiction of the dramatic order, like Milton's "Paradise Lost ;" or, if urgent motive to repentance is wanted, from Dante's Inferno. We have heard of the fame of Homer, the Grecian bard; yet the influence of Dante has been nearly as great. The Inferno has penetrated the world. If images of horror are sought after, it is to

* The following diagram illustrates the whole 70 weeks:

Seventy weeks are determined upon Thy people and upon Thy holy city," &c.

his works that all subsequent ages have turned. We are told that when the historians of the French Revolution wished to convey an idea of the utmost agonies they were called on to pourtray, they contented themselves with saying it equalled all that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the terrible. Modern novelists, as well as modern ministers, have found in his prolific mind the storehouse from which they have drawn their noblest imagery, the chord by which to strike the profoundest feelings of the human heart. Revivalists, so-called, have obtained their outfit of horrid imagery here, and Inferno, with its unequalled and exhaustless stores, has been laid under tribute. Long since, eighty editions of his poems. had been published in Europe, and yet the demand increases. Scholars claim that Milton himself was largely indebted to Dante's poems for many of his most powerful images. Byron is said to have inherited, at first or second hand, his poetic mantle, and borrowed from the same source his most moving conceptions; while Schiller wove them artfully in a noble historic mirror, and they inspired the dreams of Goethe.

I have read his great poem, "Divina Commedia," with admiration of the ability of its author. It consists of dialogues, descriptions, and didactic precepts. It is a vision of the realms of everlasting punishment, of expiation or purgatory, and of bliss, in the invisible world; visions not found in the Bible. I wish to quote some of his imagery of the infernal regions, as a sample of much more that the clergy have read and appropriated, who preach the Gospel (?) of eternal torture, after the style, not of the Bible but Dante. By way of introduction I may say that Dante was born at Florence, Italy, 1265; a dark period, surely, His teacher was Brunetto Latini, and Dante profited by his instructions. His talents and his feelings were precocious, for he fell in love with Beatrice, whom he afterwards immortalized in verse, at the tender age of ten years. He did not marry his first love, but at the age of twenty-six he wedded another, with whom he lived unhappily for a time and then parted. He was an ardent Catholic, and wrote several poetical works; but the one I have named gave him the greatest fame. It consists of three parts-hell, purgatory, and heaven. Of it, a writer justly says: "In this astonishing production, Dante does indeed 'on horror's head horrors accumulate.' For boundless and wild imagination, for gloomy grandeur, for terrific energy, it has no superior; while, on the other hand, it often charms by exquisite sweetness, simplicity, and grace." The best English translation is Cary's. Dante died at Ravenna, Sept. 14, 1321. Let me now quote a collection of awful images in a few lines. Of hell he says:

"Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans,
Resounded through the air pierced by no star,
That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues,
Horrible languages, outcries of woe,

Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,

With hands together smote that swell'd the sounds,
Made up a tumult, that forever whirls

Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd
Like to the saud that in the whirlwind flies.

I then Master! What doth aggrieve them thus,
That they lament so loud? He straight replied:
That I will tell thee briefly. Those of death
No hope may entertain."-Inferno, c. 3.

Modern sacred poetry has it thus:

"To linger in eternal pain,

And death forever fly."

We know the sentiment concerning death to be unscriptural, therefore unsound, hence we reject it. In the above Dante is portrayed to the life. What a collection of awful images in a few lines! Poor creatures! God is not good enough to allow them even the "hope of death!" Next mark the lines of Inferno, when the gates of hell were approached, and the inscription over them appeared.

Behold the dismal word-painting:

"Through me you pass into the city of woe;
Through me you pass into eternal pain;
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved;
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supernal wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me, things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here."-c. 3.

What a strange use of language here; "power,' ""wisdom," and "love!"—all concerned in building a place of useless torture of the most unspeakably awful kind! Dante, being exalted politically, and the opposite party getting the victory, he was degraded and sentenced to death by burning; but escaping, wandered a fugitive. This explains the melancholy tone which pervades his writings. In them he seemed to take vengeance on the generation which had persecuted and exiled him, by picturing before them such a hell as he thought they richly deserved. In the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, a wild and solitary retreat in the territory of Gubbio, and in a tower belonging to the Conte Falcucci, in the same district, his immortal work was written. Hear him describe the third circle in hell, on whom burning sand falls perpetually :

"Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,

All weeping piteously to different laws
Subjected; for on earth some lay supine,
Some crouching close were seated, others paced
Incessantly around; the latter tribe

G G

More numerous, those fewer who beneath
The torment lay, but louder in their grief.
O'er all the sand fell, slowly wafting down,
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed.
As, in the torrid Indian clime, the son
Of Ammon saw, upon his warrior band
Descending, solid flames, that to the ground
Came down."-c. 14.

The first appearance of Molebolge, the worst place of punishment in hell, is thus described:

"There is a place within the depths of hell
Called Malebolge, all of rock dark stained
With hue ferruginous, e'en as the steep

That round it circling winds. Right in the midst
Of that abominable region yawns

A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame
Due time shall tell. The circle that remains,
Throughout its round, between the gulf and base
Of the high, craggy banks, successive forms

Ten bastions, in its hollow bottom raised."-c. 18.

This is the outward appearance of the worst domain of hell; here the worst punishment may be expected. It had many frightful abysses. Next follows his description of the first :

"To the summit reaching, stood

To view another gap, within the round
Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs.
Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place.
In the Venetians' arsenal as boils

Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime;

So, not by force of fire but art divine,
Boil'd here a glutinous mass, that round
Lined all the shore beneath. I that beheld,
But therein not distinguish'd, save the bubbles
Raised by the boiling, and one mighty swell
Heave, and by turns subsiding, fall.

Behind me I beheld a devil black,

That running up, advanced along the rock.
Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake.
In act how bitter did he seem. With wings
Buoyant outstretch'd, and feet of nimblest tread,
His shoulder, proudly eminent and sharp,
Was with a sinner charged; by either haunch
He held him, the foot's sinew griping fast.

Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turned
Nor ever after thief a mastiff loosed

Sped with like eager haste. The other sank,
And forthwith writhing to the surface rose.

But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge,
Cried-Here the hallow'd visage saves not; here
Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave;
Wherefore, if thou desire, we rend thee not.
Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch. This said,
They grappled him with more than hundred hooks,
And shouted-Cover'd thou must sport thee here;
So if thou canst, in secret must thou filch."

-Cary's Dante, c. 21.

At such images of horror in endless variety we sicken; and since they are not found in the Book of books, the Bible, but only in Dante's Inferno and in the writings of his copyists, and those who have adopted Pagan, Mohammedan, or Roman Catholic views of hell, we may neither believe nor advocate such views. Clear light is shining upon the subject of man's nature and destiny, for which we ought to be thankful. Eminent and devout men are beginning to see that such nightmare views are not taught in the Bible, but only in an imaginary Inferno of the dark ages; and are the product of dense darkness and not of the light. Reading, as I have done, the pages of Dante's "Divina Commedia," you will understand where certain orthodox preachers get their ideas and definite knowledge of the infernal regions, where sinners of every grade and class are compelled to go, when they die, through the gateways of volcanoes! But enough of this!

C. P. D.

WORDS OF WITNESSES.

HE THRONE.-There is no personal likeness or resemblance of

a

stone-the Alpha and the Omega, the Aleph and Taut of the Hebrew alphabet. And thus it is manifest that the object of the vision, as far as the occupant of the throne is concerned, is to fasten the attention of the Seer, and of the reader, upon the fact, that He is the God of Israel -the whole symbolism being borrowed from circumstances connected with the Jewish Tabernacle. The throne indeed is encircled with a rainbow, to show that the God of Israel is also the God of nature and the God of Providence; the throne of Him who made the unconditional covenant with Noah and all the creatures. The emerald colour, which is a combination of yellow and blue, represents His condescension, (for the emerald is the colour of the grass, earth's carpet,) and His moral glory and excellency, as we have shown more largely, when treating of the colours of the Tabernacle. The twenty-four thrones occupied by the Elders are seen to be on a par with the throne of God, and this is perfectly intelligible when we remember that they symbolize the perfect knowledge and wisdom of Christ.

The lightnings, thunders, and voices proceeding from the throne, and the seven lamps burning before the throne, indicate the Divine rule