under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Then a voice is heard, which called and said to Gabriel, "Make this man to understand the vision. So he came near where I stood, and said, "Understand, O man; for at the time of the end shall be the vision." Now here, I think, it is as clearly defined as can be, that the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot, is the vision of the transgression of desolation. The period begins and ends with that. Now Mr. Pym, I learn from an allusion in another part of his book, understands this little horn, or the power which is the worker of these events, to be that which arose in Mahomet. see then good reason for his not examining the facts too nearly. My own opinion, as to the latitude in point of time of which this prophecy is capable, has been expressed above. But I cannot see how the period of the desolation of the temple and removing the daily sacrifice can possibly date from the rebuilding of that temple which stood in honour and beauty, and reeked with the daily smoke of sacrifice for five hundred years afterward. Mr. Pym has enjoyed the ambiguity of the word vision, which is here a vision within a vision; the very action of the angel who uses the term and applies it to a portion of the events, is itself a part of the great vision in which the whole revelation was conveyed to the people.

You

I have had, in what goes before, two objects in view; the first to show that Mr. Pym's grounds for so positive a decision of a most momentous question

of time, a most awful and sacred mystery, was a mistatement and fiction of his own; next, that the assertion itself is so at variance with all reasonable deduction, from the context of those passages which are our authority upon the subject, that we may almost pronounce it impossible.

Mr. Pym's judgment was evidently obscured by strong previous impressions, or he could never have thought the Scriptures he so dealt with were authority for the conclusions to which he framed them; nor else could he have failed to see the inaccuracies which he committed in his statements, connexions, and interpretations of them. But these private impressions are the most prolific source of all heresy and schism, when associated with a disposition to undervalue authority, and to prefer one's own rash and hasty judgment to the matured decisions of many ages and controversies, and the sober agreement of the great majority of learned and pious men. Add to this an inadvertence or unconsciousness as to the mischief done by unsettling the faith of the unlearned, and injuring their confidence in the established canons and guardians of sound doctrine; and then without any dishonest intention, but only with a little annoyance of temper, there remains no security against the most extravagant schemes being put forth by inaccurate reasoners on the authority of the word of God, and claiming as such implicit acceptance. And what can the unlearned do? They cannot sift such a piece of reasoning as this; especially under the pressure of such awful contemplations, and in the perplexity of an argument of such a complicated texture. They

cannot calmly view, nor clearly discern the several grounds of assertion, nor examine the separate authenticity, nor estimate the joint effect of so many constructive doctrines, to judge of their probability for themselves. They are disposed by that principle of faith, which is at the bottom of the understanding, to take the conclusion for granted; and an unusually cautious nature indeed must they have received, who in ignorance can resist such assertions as Mr. Pym's, that "this is a calculation which a child may comprehend; it rests upon no uncertainty of human speculations, or upon corrupted or doubtful chronology." Surely upon such a subject as this, upon which Mr. Pym has chosen to move the people,—and I mean particularly that portion who, while most likely to be taken by such a title of a book as "A Word of Warning in the Last Days," and most passive to such impressions as it is natural to receive upon seeing on a sudden the year 1847 determined and written down in the compressed form of large and startling figures, as the period before which, most certainly, the present state of nature must have ceased,—are, at the same time, least competent, from want of knowledge and practice, to unravel the errors of a subtle and intricately constructed argument; - perhaps it were right that novel theories in religion should first be propounded to such as are able to confute them if unsound. Those whose powers of judgment are weaker should receive as instruction only what has been approved and allowed. But surely no one man of infirm and fallible reason should, in this advance of time, deliver as the certain word of

God what all preceding ages have refused, claiming for it the same authority; and insinuating that a difference of opinion on his points is a difference of a moral or spiritual nature between himself and his opponents, and a device of the enemy of mankind (see pp. 1, 2, 4); or that only the opinions which he himself entertains are consistent with faith in the word of God, and with the honour of the blessed Saviour.

Again, it is surely not right to adopt a tone of such unhesitating assertion in defining the dimmest adumbrations of prophecy-nay, in drawing into open day the most secret counsels of the Almighty. "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power," said our Lord. And again-" Of that day and hour knoweth no man, not even the angels in heaven." Mr. Pym tells us (p. 30) that it is a common mode, with his own party I suppose, to obviate the effect of this passage by limiting its application to that one generation of men to whom the words were addressed. He says nothing with respect to the angels. In page 64, however, he professes-"We speak not of the day or hour of that event"-of that event, indeed! But read on, and you will find what is nearly to the effect of alledging, that although we cannot ascertain the hour and the day, there is nothing to debar us from a very near approach at least to the month and the year.

CHAPTER IV.

The remainder of the Argument for the Position, that the Lord shall come again before the year 1847, examined.

BUT suppose this position of the date.to be proved, which, I think, has been effectually refuted, we would then only have ascertained the time of a certain event foretold as the cleansing of the sanctuary. It would yet remain to be proved that this is an event which necessarily implies the previous appearance of the Lord. If we revert to the quotations which I made from Mr. Pym's book in my first statement of the question, we shall there find that he has supposed himself to have encompassed this point in two ways.

I. In the passage quoted from p. 41, he uses the following connexion as effectual to the purpose:"1847, the time when the sanctuary shall be cleansed, and the vision be accomplished—the last end of the indignation.

"And this last end shall be the consequence of the second coming of Christ, as we have already seen; therefore, before the end, i. e. a. D. 1847, Christ shall have come."

The reasoning of this passage may be stated in the following manner:-The last end of the indignation is coincident with the cleansing of the sanctuary, but follows the second coming of Christ; therefore, the former event also must be preceded by the second appearance of the Lord.