patriarchs, prophets, and righteous men had been walking by faith, looking for, but not seeing, expecting, but not beholding, the GREAT DELIVERER. Yet still he came not; and Samuel, and David, and Nathan, and Gad, and Iddo, and all the righteous men of that generation had, like their forefathers, to pass from earth, resting by faith on a Saviour still unseen, though promised in the infancy of the world. The next reign began as a most auspicious era, for then the wise son of David was on the throne, and the promise made to Abraham of the goodly land of Canaan was completely realized by actual possession. The earthly part of the promise being accomplished, what now remained but the spiritual, in the presence of the Great Redeemer for now events had culminated to an apparent issue. All Israel's enemies were subdued, and the nation was at peace. Now the kingdom, mighty in its numbers, had risen to the very zenith of its power, prosperity, and splendour, and its renown had reached the ends of the earth. † Now, too, the magnificent temple was erected, and filled with the supernal glory of the Divine presence; and whiterobed priests therein daily sang prophetic anthems, as if to invite the Messiah to come and accept the homage of an expectant and exultant nation. All things seemed ready, and pious hearts were beating with high expectation. Yet Messiah came not, and that bright period passed away under a heavy cloud: for Solomon fell; an age of degeneracy set in; idol temples rose close by the house of God; the kingdom was rent asunder, and "the promise" of the Saviour was indefinitely postponed. Yet, amid alternate dispensations of wrath and mercy, prophets continued to proclaim Messiah's name, and foretell his wondrous work. Isaiah spoke of him at times in language resembling history as much as prophecy; yet he saw him not, though he probably died a martyr for his sake. Jeremiah proclaimed him "the Lord our righteousness; yet, instead of beholding him, he saw Jerusalem sacked and the temple burned to ashes, and the people partly slain with the sword, and partly led captive to Babylon. The land for seventy long years lay in desolation, blighted by Divine vengeance, as if Jehovah had forsaken his people, and forgotten his covenant. § Zechariah and Haggai lived to see a remnant return to Judea, and rebuild the temple of God; but that temple was shorn of the former splendour; for the ark of the covenant was not there, the golden pot of manna was not there, Aaron's rod that budded, and blossomed, and bore almonds, was not there; the tables of the law, written by the finger of God, were not there; above all, the glorious Shekinah returned not to the sanctuary, and Messiah came not in their day to his temple. Ages passed on, prophetic announcements now and then echoed the ancient promise, until the predictions of Malachi closed the Old Testament canon; but when the sacred bards and seers had all laid aside their harp and pen, and the last prophetic utterances had died out, and four thousand years had passed away, Messiah had not come; and pious men lived and died through those protracted ages, believing but not beholding, expecting and desiring, yet not seeing, the mighty Redeemer, * 2 Sam. viii. 3; 1 C ron. xviii. 1-3; 1 Kings iv. 21. +1 Kings x. Ezra vi. 14. How who had been promised from the foundation of the world. trying this strange delay to the faith of God's people. Hopes the most sacred and precious, and interests the most solemn and momentous, in relation to the soul and eternity, all suspended from age to age upon the interposition of a mysterious Being, promised, but never seen, symbolized and foretold, yet never beheld by human eye. Are any demands upon our faith equal to those which tried the faith and patience of the saints of former dispensations? Assuredly not. Yet "these all died in faith." Delay did not extinguish their hope; their faith expired not amid national calamities; they hoped and believed still: though history and philosophy, and appalling facts, seemed oft antago nistic to the promise, they still believed; for though the delay of thousands of years had divested them of all external grounds of confidence, there was still the promise of their God; and though all secular logic failed, the sublime philosophy of faith looked through all natural improbabilities to the great truths involved in the unchangeable perfections of the Divine nature. "They judged him faithful who had promised." Faith rested there; and resting there, elevated reason itself to higher conceptions of truth than philosophy could ever teach or imagine. * I am aware it may be alleged that though the faith of Old Testament saints was tried, yet it was sustained from age to age by new promises and brightening revelations. This is true, but it must be remembered that with new and augmenting prophecies, there were new mysteries and formidable difficulties. Paradoxes, anomalies, and apparent contradictions grew with the revelations, and severely tried the faith while they enlightened the vision. Thus Abraham had brighter discoveries of truth and richer promises of blessing, yet how blended with dark dispensations and physical impossibilities! Isaiah spoke at times of the Messiah and his work more clearly than any other prophet, yet how mixed with anomalies and apparent contradictions! He foretells that Messiah should be born of a virgin. Here was indeed a new revelation, but with it a new mystery, and one contradicted by all the laws of human physiology. He foretold that when Messiah came "he should have no form nor comeliness, no beauty that men should desire him;" yet the Psalmist had foretold that he should be "fairer than the sons of men, and that grace should be poured into his lips."+ How was this apparent discrepancy to be harmonized? Again, Isaiah predicts that Messiah should be "despised and rejected of men;" but if despised, how could he be the "desire of nations?" and if rejected by men, how could he be accepted as their Saviour? The same prophet foretold that Messiah should be put to death; but David had previously prophesied that Messiah should live and reign for ever with his people. § How were these paradoxes to be explained? and if not explained, what a trial to the faith of the ancient saints, and how difficult for them to form an intelligent and harmonious idea of Messiah's nature, character, and work! We know there was a principle of explanation to harmonize all these diversified representations; but how could they know it with Isa. vii. 14. Isa. liii. 3; Ps. xlv. 2. the imperfect light of that inferior dispensation? And if they knew it not, they must in this respect have walked by faith, believing in truths they understood not, and which, from their antagonistic elements, must have been to many, if not to all, profound enigmas and impenetrable mysteries. And they did believe, perhaps with occasional temptations to doubt, yet with an habitual and humble trust. Their faith embraced the revelation and struggled with its difficulties, assured that there was truth on the dark as well as on the bright side of the prophecy, for both came from God; and that God's word, like his own nature, must be unchangeably true, Thus revelation taxed and tried their faith, and faith constantly raised the mind upward, led it beyond the scope of the material and the visible, and kept in view those great principles of truth which enlarged the understanding and illumined the vision, which stimulated expectations of a future brighter and better than the present, and constantly drew the soul away from leaning on the external and the created, to rest habitually on God. And this was the moral discipline designed in that ancient dispensation. It was subservient to this end, and a further fulfilment of God's wise and holy purpose, that this constant trial of faith quickened the spirit of inquiry, and prompted to a studious searching of the sacred Scriptures by those ancient saints. And herein we understand that remarkable passage of St. Peter, wherein he tells us that the prophets inquired and searched diligently respecting the great salvation and its author, "Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow" (1 Peter i. 11). From this text, as well as others, we have a view of the mental condition and habits of those venerable men. It is evident they did not fully understand some of the most important predictions written by their own pen, much less the predictions of others; but though they understood not, they "searched," they "diligently inquired." There was light in the prophecies-at times gorgeous, but the hues were prismatic and indistinct. The light shone, but came from behind a cloud, which it could not penetrate, yet fringed with an attractive splendour, and drew them towards it to gaze with a deeper wonder, and to search with an intenser interest. Oft at eve did the holy seer retire to his silent chamber, and there, before his dimly-flickering lamp, unroll the sacred scroll, and bending his eager eye upon the well-worn page, compare promise with promise and prophecy with prophecy, blending his reverent studies with earnest prayer that the Holy Spirit, who had indited the mysterious truths, would open his mental vision to perceive their hidden meaning, and catch new glimpses of the coming glory. Such was the waiting and believing attitude of prophets and holy men in those distant ages of the past, and amid the disadvantages of an inferior dispensation. They saw truth in a glass darkly, while we behold it with open face; they walked by faith, where we have the disclosed vision. They waited, though the vision tarried. They saw centuries sweep past them; they beheld mighty empires rise, culminate, and fall; they witnessed their own nation pass through the cycle of youth, vigour, and decay; they saw one dispensation succeed another; and though, amid these revolutions, Messiah came not, they still believed in the promise, and rested there for salvation. Faith in the Divine fidelity stood in the place of knowledge, and stayed their souls on God, assured that the light of a better dispensation would dispel the obscurity of the present, and time, however distant, bring with it at last the fulfilment of all that God had said. It seems that the nearer approach of Messiah's day brought with it an intenser expectation of his coming. Such was the believing attitude of good old Simeon and the prophetess Anna; such the attitude of Zechariah and Elisabeth, of Mary the Virgin of Galilee, when new revelations came, more distinctly announcing the time of the Saviour's coming; and such was the believing attitude of many in Judea, who were waiting for the consolation of Israel" at the very moment when John the Baptist broke the silence of the desert by his powerful ministry, and startled the Jewish nation by proclaiming, "Behold, He is come: he is here in your midst"—"This is he." And standing, as the Baptist did, between the two dispensations, the old one fading in the distance, and the new one dawning with the light of Messiah's presence, he directs all eyes to Jesus, exclaiming, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." That was the moment when the faith of four thousand years was turned into vision. (To be continued in our next number.) FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. JERUSALEM: ITS PREDICTED OVERTHROW, AND THE AGREEMENT OF PROPHECY WITH THE ACTUAL FACTS OF HISTORY. 66 "Jerusalem! proud is thy story, The nations have heard thy renown; Here glitters that temple, in splendour and glory, Of Palestine's greatness the crown. The sound of the tabret and sack but was heard, The heathen the gleam of thy panoply feared, And named thee the mighty and great. Art thou guiltless? Ah, no! for the groans of the just And the blood of thy martyrs cry out from the dust." “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."-Matt. xxiii. 37, 38. THE fulfilment of prophecy has justly been designated "a species of perpetual miracle," attesting the Divine inspiration of those writings in which the prophecies are recorded. The evidence thus supplied is evidence addressed to the senses; evidence, therefore, level to the apprehensions of men, and which comes home directly to the understanding and to the heart. In these days of frequent travel and easy intercourse with other lands, when pictorial exhibitions of Oriental scenery abound on every hand, the most uneducated have ocular testimony of the truth of prophecy, and an opportunity for its com plete verification. If miracles are demanded in attestation of the Divine inspiration of the Bible, here is the proof required. The agreement between the exact announcements of prophecy, and their foreseen fulfilment, is unquestionably miraculous. No human wit or wisdom can possibly account for such minute and marvellous coincidences. "Of all the attributes of the God of the universe," observes Dr. Keith, "his prescience has bewildered and baffled the most, all the powers of human perception; and an evidence of the exercise of this perfection, in the revelation of what the Infinite Mind could make known, is the seal of God, which can never be counterfeited, affixed to the truth which it attests. Whether that evidence has been afforded is a matter of investigation; but if it has unquestionably been given, the effect of superhuman agency is apparent, and the truth of what it was given to prove does not admit of a doubt. If the prophecies of the Scriptures can be proved to be genuine; if they be of such a nature as no foresight of man could possibly have predicted; if the events foretold in them were described hundreds, or even thousands of years before those events became parts of the history of man, and if the history itself correspond with the prediction-then, the evidence which the prophecies impart is a sign and a wonder to every age. No clearer testimony or greater assurance of the truth can be given. "And if men believe not Moses and the prophets," when the evidences of Divine foreknowledge are thus so clearly placed before them, "neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." The fulfilment of prophecy, as attesting the truth of Divine revelation, opens up a very wide field for inquiry and investigation. Our design, however, will not be to compass the whole field, but to fix attention upon some of the more prominent of the prophecies, especially in relation to the Jews, and the once flourishing cities and dynasties of ancient times, and, by a reference to historical records, and the researches of modern travellers, show how literally, and in many instances how circumstantially, these prophecies have received, and are still receiving, their fulfilment. The predicted overthrow of Jerusalem, and its agreement with the actual facts of history, will first engage our attention. The Creator and Governor of man communicated in the Ten Commandments a comprehensive epitome of individual, domestic, social, and Divine law. "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," &c. (Exod. xx. 2-17). The delivery of the above commandments was attested in so extraordinary a manner as to convince the whole Jewish people of their Divinity; and their observance or neglect was followed by such marks of the favour or displeasure of their Divine Author, as to perpetually confirm their truth and authority. The revelation of God to man was undoubtedly only committed to the Jews in trust for the human race generally; but they did not consider it so. They misunderstood the promise to Abraham, that in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed, and that amongst them should arise a light for the Gentile |