Matt. v. 5. For the apostle Paul tells us, 1 Cor. x. 11, "Now all these things happened unto them for examples, (or types,) and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the end of the world is come." It is very evident that the apostle, in this passage, is speaking of the travel of the children of Israel through the wilderness, and their entrance into the promised land, or their coming out of the wilderness, as a type or resemblance of the Christian church in these last days.

Therefore, we are allowed by the inspired apostles to use their journey and acts, to illustrate and show the present state of the church, if we can gain any instruction thereby.

The Jews had a promise that they should inherit the land of Canaan; the Christian, that he shall inherit the earth-"For the meek shall inherit the earth;" and "The kingdom, and greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High." The Jews used carnal weapons in their wars with the inhabitants; the church are commanded to use spiritual ones, to the pulling down of the strong-holds, &c. They were led by their temporal Joshua; the church, by her spiritual leader. The Jews conquered by sending out their chosen and expert men with the sword; the church has sent forth her chosen missionaries, expert men with the sword of the Spirit, which is the "word of God."

The Jews had great success in conquering their enemies when they first came out of the wilderness; even so the church has had her unexpected success in her missionary efforts. The Jews, within twenty years, became a proud, haughty, and an idolatrous people, ascribing all their success to their own power; and mingling themselves with the nations around them, they began to bow down to their gods, and worship Baalim, and Ashtaroth; just so, and in about the same time, since the cause of missions began to succeed, has the church

become proud and haughty, publishing her donations upon the house-top, mixing her moral questions with the political partizans of the day, and courting the applause of men more than obeying the voice of God: she is preparing for a sudden overthrow, a signal defeat.

The church is evidently worshipping her god Baalim; her teachers are seeking to be called by great names, such as A. B., A. M., B. D., D. D., or Řev., &c; to lord it over each other, and to be called master. See the meaning of the word Baalim, idols, masters, false gods. It is equally as evident, that she is bowing herself to the god Ashtaroth, flocks, the sheep, riches.

Where, in the history of the church, can we find a time that the people called Christians were, apparently, engaged after the riches of this world as now? Then, the agreement, in almost every thing, between the Jews, when they came out of the wilderness, and the church at the present day, holds good, and proves clearly to me that the church is now out of the wilderness. If it is not so, When, I ask, since the apostles' days, has the church been out of the wilderness? Instead, then, of being in the wilderness only 1260 years, she evidently has been 1800 years in the wilderness; and this prophecy has failed, or has no meaning.

What greater privileges did the church ever enjoy than now? Were their privileges among the nations of the earth greater, even in the days of the Roman emperors, under the nursing care of Constantine and his sons? I answer, No. Then, surely, the church is now cut of the wilderness, and has been nearly or quite forty years. If so, then the 1260 years of the reign of antiChrist to give the court of the Gentiles to be trodden under foot have ended.

Then, the two witnesses, prophesying, clothed in sackcloth, 1260 years have ended. Then, also, has the civil power of the anti-Christian beast, to rule over the kings of the earth forty-two months, been taken from the beast.

Then, also, has the "time, times and a half," mentioned in Daniel vii. 25, and xii. 7, had its fulfilment,

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"to the end of these wonders." And now, the antiChristian beast will no longer be able to deceive the nations with her false miracles, or make the kings of the earth acknowledge her power as supreme. They have eaten her flesh; they have made her drink her own blood; her great men have departed from her; they are casting dust on their heads, crying, “ Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come." "And when she shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished," Dan. xii. 7. This beast has but one more work to perform-"to scatter the power of the holy people; to divide, that she may conquer. It is the last gasp of the expiring monster; it is the dying struggle of the man of sin. And, for a little moment, they will succeed. For the church must be humbled; she has departed from her Lord, she has grown proud of her worldly connections, she has become haughty, and lording it over the heritage of the Lord. She must be divided. She is already. She must be scattered, shaken like grain in the winnowing-fan, that that which cannot be shaken may remain. She will be delivered when her Lord returns to the wedding, and sends forth his angels to gather his elect from the four winds of heaven, where they have been scattered in the dark and cloudy day. Then will he destroy the man of sin by the brightness of his coming. Then, too, will the little horn cease making war with the saints, and no longer prevail against them. The Ancient of days will come, and judgment will be given to the saints of the Most High; and the time will have come when the saints, in union with their spiritual Joshua, will enter into that eternal Sabbath of rest which remains for the people of God.

Nothing can be more clear, or self-evident, than that the church is combating the great natural and moral evils, which men in this state of sin are prone to commit. What shall we make of all these societies which the church have instituted since she came out of the wilderness, but so many attacks upon the enemies of the land?

The Bible society, instituted since 1798 This has proved a powerful weapon to expel the mora! darkness

from the mind of the unenlightened, to open the prison of the votaries of superstition, and to knock off the shackles of bigotry. We have seen, in our day, Deism humbled from a haughty tyrant to a cringing sycophant. We have seen Romanism, from a monarch ruling over the souls and bodies of men with an absolute sway, become a slave, a follower in the wake of Protestants, in publishing and circulating the Scriptures. The Deists, a few years since, had the control of nine tenths of all Europe; now, not a petty kingdom under their control: the Roman church, for centuries past the mistress of most of the kings of Europe, now a poor dependant on the breath of kings.

Our missionary societies have carried the banners of the cross where hope never smiled before, nor faith ever lighted the cheerless sky of the heathen's land. And we have seen nations hearing the word of God, and islands converted to the faith of the gospel of Christ.

Temperance societies. We have seen the attack upon intemperance, the Anakim of our world, and we have heard the shout of triumph from every quarter of the globe. Rapid, indeed, was the march to victory! Again, our moral reform societies, our Sabbath schools, Bible classes, &c. &c., are all so many attacks on moral evil, which have produced, in many cases, wonderful effects; so much so, that it has astonished even the projectors themselves.

These aggravated sins are falling before the all-conquering weapon of God's word, like the walls of Jericho before the blasts of the trumpets; and it will go on conquering and to conquer, until tyranny, oppression, and slavery, in every form, shall be destroyed. Perhaps nothing, at the present time, impedes the progress of these things so much as the popular spirit, the pride, and arrogance of the church herself. She is, more or less, courting the applause of the world. She is mingling her holy religion with the opinions and principles of men.

She

is proud and self-sufficient, doting upon her own works, and forgetting her dependence on God. If this should be the true state of the church, God may suffer tyrants to remain as a scourge to the church, “as a rod for the fool's back."

by the example set us by the Jews, that pride and selfsufficiency are always before a fall!

I know the objector will say, How can it be true, that the church is spreading her banners over a large portion of the world, sending her missionaries and the Bible into every nook and corner of the habitable globe, conquering and to conquer; and, at the same time, growing more and more impure herself, becoming haughty, selfrighteous, and ungrateful, corrupt and lukewarm in her faith and practice, idolatrous in her worship, and cold and indifferent to her first love? This, say they, is paradoxical.

I answer, Paradoxical as it may seem, it is no less true. Have I not shown that the Jews were thus paradoxical, when they entered the promised land? Do not the description Solomon hath given us of the church in his Songs, the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians and Galatians, and the history of the church in the days of Constantine, all go to show, that when the church has been most prospered in her worldly standing with the nations, with whom she may come in contact, she has the more deeply corrupted herself?

This does not argue that she ought not to spread her banners, send her missionaries, translate and circulate Bibles, educate the rising generation, establish her moral societies, and do all, and every work, which God in his word has commanded; but it argues that the church is imperfect, and that, in times of prosperity, she ought to consider,

1st. Her proneness to idolatry, her liability to selfrighteousness, her excessive love for the world, the temptations on every hand.

2dly. She ought to consider that adversity is set over against prosperity, that her faith may be tried, her motives sifted, the body purified, and the sanctuary cleansed.

3d. She ought to consider that the designs of God