THE QUARTERLY

JOURNAL OF PROPHECY.

OCTOBER, 1848.

ART. I.-OUR CONNEXION WITH THE FUTURE.

It says,

THE world has awakened to the discovery that the future is its province as well as the present. It blunders grievously in its efforts to measure out and describe that province, but it hesitates not to lay claim to it as its rightful heritage. "that over which my being is to be spread belongs to me, and I must know it; that I have not yet traversed it, is no proof against its being my orbit, the course and curve of which is matter of profoundest concern to me;-my future is as truly mine as my past, and as full of interest."

Is the Church of Christ prohibited from reasoning thus? Is the future not hers? Is "the world to come not her inheritance? Has she been left in the dark as to that future, that inheritance? Far from it. The things to come are hers; and the things to come have been revealed. Her hopes are no dreams; her expectations no conjecture. She has certainty to build on, certainty in which there can be no disappointment nor failure.

Indeed, the future is peculiarly hers. It belongs to her in a way such as it belongs to no one else. The links that fasten her to it are stronger and more numerous than those which connect her with the present. The things seen and temporal are not hers; but hers are the things that are unseen and eternal. She has left Egypt, and has become a wanderer in the hope of a promised kingdom. Her interest in the things present is a subordinate one, the interest of the traveller, the pilgrim. Her interest in things to come is paramount; for there her hopes have their anchorage.

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That coming kingdom is all to her. Her heart is there; her joys are there; her treasures are there. It is her home, -her home for eternity. Till she reach it she feels as an exile, an outcast. Is it possible, then, that the little while of exile can occupy more of her thoughts than the everlasting kingdom of which she is the heir?

It

It is no fanaticism to live both in and for the future. is faith, for "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Unbelief would dwell in the present, faith leads us into the future. It displaces the visible, and brings forward the invisible. It lays hold of every thing that will open up more of the future. It prizes the prophetic word, as being its guide through that region to which it so specially lays claim as its proper portion and heritage. It treasures up every fragment of information given respecting days or ages to come, casting aside nothing, but pondering all; not shrinking from details or dates, in so far as these have been recorded by the Spirit of truth.

The moment that, in "believing the love which God hath to us," I became a member of the heavenly family, and an heir of the kingdom; that moment the future became especially mine. I was made to understand that the new state of being and of blessing into which I was thus introduced, was one whose centre was the future, not the present. Round that new centre I was henceforth to revolve. From that centre I was to survey and measure and judge of every thing. My relationship to the present was loosened-my relationship to the future drawn inconceivably closer. All that I possessed or hoped for was transferred to that future. I had been crucified with Christ; I had died with him; I had been buried with him; I was raised with him to sit in "heavenly places;" I had "come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the first-born." Placed in such a position, what a value must I set upon the prophetic word which reveals that future with which I have thus become so mysteriously linked! It is the grace of a forgiving God that has brought rest to my soul, so that I know, of a certainty, that I shall never come into condemnation; but that very grace has led - me "without the camp," and made me a stranger upon the earth. Yet in so doing it has put into my hands a lamp by which my stranger-steps shall be guided onward, and my pilgrim-eye gladdened, from day to day, with the vision of the glory to which I can now lay so assured and

so blessed a claim. To this I do well to take heed, "until the day dawn, and the day-star arise."

The prophetic word has been abused, and its study has proved the source of many a sad extravagance, says an objector. Be it so. Our duty, then, is, to be careful not to abuse it again, and to beware of allowing the study of it to generate such evils.

Besides, has it never occurred to such an objector, that all Scripture has been thus abused? Is it a new thing under the sun that truth should be corrupted? Nay, that the best truth should be the worst dealt with, and made the parent of the most outrageous error? Shall we therefore put aside all truth in mournful hopelessness as unattainable by man on earth? Shall we, for instance, risk our eternity by turning away from the Gospel,-from forgiveness through the sinbearer, because thousands have corrupted it, and thousands more denied it?

Nay, but farther, how can we reach truth in this fallen world, save through error? Error is natural to us,-truth is not. Error is the dark region in which we are born, and out of which we must pass, not without struggles and stumbles, into the bright plains of truth. Hence, we ought to count upon deviations, and even extremes; nor need we wonder even at extravagances. How few arrive at truth, save through extremes! They seem first to exhaust error, before they arrive at truth. Let us, then, be thankful for past extremes-may we not say for extravagances? Their having occurred is a strong reason for expecting them not to return. They are fingerposts-warning lights; they show us the deflections that have taken place in other days; they have served their end; they have helped to humble man-they have helped to Our ground is now surer; our way less intricate; our steps are firmer. We must now be considerably nearer truth, if we have not wholly reached it. We see, at least, more clearly the direction in which it lies.

exhaust error.

Should not such be our feeling in regard to the extravagances which are laid so heavily and often so complacently at the door of the readers of the prophetic word? There is no need of raising error, simply for the purpose of exhausting it. Nor is there any need to palliate the sinfulness of them who raise it. But when, in the wisdom of God, it has been allowed to rise, shall we not be thankful for the greater approximation to truth thus placed within our reach? It is something to learn where truth is not: even if they who give the information cannot tell us where it is.

We cannot help feeling that such is the position which we occupy in this Journal. The last twenty years have given birth to many a folly. To right and left the human mind has been diverging in its impatience for the discovery of truth, which seemed to it so near and so accessible. These deflections lie all before our view; the traces of them are not yet effaced. They have written their own record,-a record which any one may read who has access to what we may call the prophetical literature of that period. It is a record fitted to solemnize as well as to guide the inquirer. The wrecks of noble minds are there, over whom we could yet weep in the bitterness of our inmost souls.

The position in which we are placed, though a solemn one, has in it much of safety. The fragments of exploded error may seem but a crumbling foundation to stand upon, yet in truth they furnish most solid footing. We are much safer, than if standing upon level unbroken ground, on which no relic of an ancient error could be seen. And, we confess, it is this very position, which some would count perilous, that gives us confidence. The coast along which we are to steer has been in some measure sounded, and though this has been at the expense of some goodly vessels, still we feel that these stranded wrecks, or these beacons reared upon the sunken rock, are incalculably useful, and render our course less hazardous and difficult than it must otherwise have been. It still has its dangers; but these are at least fewer than they

were.

Yet though now that these errors are but matters of history, we can look calmly upon them, we are not wholly free from fear. There is still among a certain class of minds such, a lawless love of speculation, such a recklessness of exposition, that we cannot deem the danger entirely past. There is, too, such a love of novelty in interpretation, such delight in innovation, that the evil must not be looked upon as a mere visionary alarm. "Prove all things," is a rule which some minds seem born to forget. A mere likelihood, however faint, a mere presumption, without one particle of direct and positive evidence, is often made sufficient to overthrow what is old, and to introduce what is new.

A friend was once maintaining with us that singular interpretation of the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, viz., that Enoch and Elijah are the two witnesses who are to prophesy in sackcloth, who are to be overcome and slain, whose dead bodies are to "lie in the street of the great city," "three days and a half." We asked him for one

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solitary proof, or shred of a proof that such was the case. had none to give, yet held fast the unproved, unscriptural opinion. We asked him, if he conceived that the glorified bodies of these saints who were translated, "that they should not see death," should yet be pierced and wounded, and they themselves put to death upon the earth after having been enjoying blessedness there three or four thousand years? His reply was, that he was not sure that Elijah had ascended or was glorified. Amazed, Amazed, we asked for proof of such a statement. He opened his Septuagint, and showed us 2 Kings ii. 1, 11, where the words, "Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven," are translated as eis Tòv oúpavov, "as into heaven," telling us at the same time that he had far greater confidence in the Septuagint than in the Hebrew!

A work, not long since published, asserts that Napoleon is the eighth head and one of the seven. But finding part of the problem unsolved in Napoleon's past character and history, it maintains that he must rise from the dead, and in this resurrection-state fulfil the rest of his career. Where, however, is the proof of this? What passage of Scripture declares it? What hint of such a thing do the prophets give?

Another work, from a very different quarter, expounds, the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the Apocalypse, as to be fulfilled in literal Babylon, not Rome, or any presently existing city. Literal Babylon,-the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, is to be rebuilt in these last days,-rebuilt on the plain of Shinar,-rebuilt with greater splendour and compass and populousness, than in the days of old! We ask for proof, but there is none. We ask how a city built upon seven hills can be the same as a city in a plain? But we get no answer. Yet the fiction is clung to as part of revealed truth.*

One error generates another. We find in some writers of the above class, some curious speculations as to the character of Antichrist. He, according to them, must be purely and thoroughly infidel, the Scripture speaks of the evil of the last days of which he is the head and representative, as consisting specially in this, that it adheres to the form of godliness. He, according to them, must be entirely a secular personage, though Scripture presents him so often to us clothed in ecclesiastical raiment. He, according to them, must be some isolated individual of the last days standing up solitary among his fellow-men, disconnected with the wickedness of former days, though Scripture paints him as a growth from the roots of other ages,-one in kindred, in blood, in character, in actings with the Antichristian developments of successive generations,-for he "wears out the saints," and in him is found the blood of all the saints from the beginning. Adopting these views, they have been led to palliate or apologize for the enormities of Popery, to deny the resemblance between Popery and Antichrist, and to heap calumnies on Protestantism, as if it were as thoroughly Antichristian as Popery itself.