7 them and they shall be his peoples, and GOD himself shall be with them, and be their GoD. “And GoD shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and grief and lamentation and pain shall be no more, for the first [order of things] is gone away. 6 "And He that sat on the throne said, Lo, I am about to make all things new.' "From the mention of this new Jerusalem, destined to descend out of heaven,' upon earth,-- whither all flesh, or all mankind shall come to worship before GoD,'---it is plain, that our LORD, his prophets and apostles, understood, the kingdom of God,' or visible reign of CHRIST, to take place upon earth, at his approaching advent ;---that kingdom,' for whose coming,' or establishment, in earth as it is in heaven,' our blessed LORD taught and commanded us to pray :---which will come,' when the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in,'---when all peoples, and nations, and languages, on the face of the globe, shall • bury their idols,' and 'shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,' and turn unto the Lord their God with all their heart; and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea!'---when all mankind shall become one fold under one shepherd, JESUS CHRIST the righteous.'---O' come quickly,' as thou hast promised, LORD JESUS,' we beseech thee! May it please Thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom!---(burial service.) And indeed, if we may presume to judge from the awful and eventful signs of the times, or, the prognostics furnished by holy writ of the time of our LORD'S second advent, it seems not to be far distant: the present state of the world is strongly correspondent with the intimatious of the scripture of truth, as preceding his second advent, in a variety of circumstances, which cannot be conveniently discussed on this occasion, but which I have collected elsewhere.* to restore "One circumstance, however, is singular, and deserves to be noticed, that while the Jews, blinded by their prejudices, obstinately deny our LORD's first appearance in humiliation, as the Son of David, according to the flesh; but rightly contend for his second appearance in the clouds of heaven, again the kingdom to Israel,' too many Christian writers, blinded by controversy, run into the opposite extreme: they maintain, and justly, our LORD's first appearance, in humiliation, but they unscripturally postpone his second, in glory, till the end of the world, or final consummation of all things! * "SEE CRITIQUES ON OUR LORD'S PROPHECIES, MATT. 23. 24. 25. PUBLISHED, AND STILL PUBLISHING, IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE.' From From the note we have printed, it appears pretty clearly to whom our work has been so much beholden for such a series of sacred criticism, as has rarely been found in any periodical publication. The Doctor's opinion upon the subject of the Millennium is very evident. He makes a strong appeal (p. 12.) to his hearers; calling on them, "whilst God's judgements are in the world, to learn righteousness. He then, from the example of NINIVEH, exemplifies God's mercy to penitents, and severe punishment of those on whom his long-suffering has no effect; but who turn back to their iniquity, and become hardened in sin. We beg to call attention to the masterly way in which this topic is discussed, in pages 13, 14, 15. "We learn, (he subjoins) from profane history, the literal accomplishment of Jonah's prophecy; for, when it was besieged by the confederate armies of the Babylonians and Medes, who had revolted from the king of Assyria; in the third year of the siege, a mighty inundation of the river Tigris, swoln by unusual rains in the mountains of Ararat, overthrew, twenty furlongs of its massy wall, and admitted the besiegers by the breach, who sacked the city; when the impious king Sardanapalus, hearing that the river was become his enemy, (an ancient prophecy which he had despised) in despair, set fire to his palace, and destroyed himself, his wives, and children, and treasures, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy; about B. C. 605, or about 250 years after the prophecy was first delivered by Jonah." He then proceeds to detail those judgements which overtook JERUSALEM; a city, which gave no heed to THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH. "Again, when the sign of the prophet Jonah' was solemnly denounced, twice, to the wicked and apostate generation,' of his countrymen, the Jews, by a greater than Jonah,' by our LORD JESUS CHRIST in person, whose gracious invitations to repentance, by HIMSELF, by his prophets, and by his apostles, they despised and rejected, during that interval of merciful respite; precisely in the fortieth year after the denunciation was first uttered by our LORD, when that froward and perverse generation' remained incorrigible,--- HE sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burnt up their city,' by the rapid ministers of his vengeance, the Roman Legions, A, D. 70. "The following descriptions of the enormous wickedness of the Jews in that age, and of the destruction of Jerusalem, are furnished furnished by an eye witness, the illustrious Jewish historian Josephus; they are highly valuable and instructive in themselves, and strongly corroborate the authority of HOLY WRIT. "I cannot forbear,' says he, what the calamity prompts me to say: I think, that if the Romans had delayed to come upon these offenders, the city would have been either swallowed up by an earthquake, or overwhelmed with a deluge, or partaken of the thunderbolt of Sodom, for it bore a generation much more impious than they who suffered such [woes]; in whose phrenzy then, all the people perished together.' For somehow, that time became fruitful of all manner of wickedness among the Jews; insomuch that they left no work of mischief unpractised: nor, if a person wished to frame a crime, in imagination, could he invent any newer. So diseased were they all, both in private and in public, and so ambitiously did they strive to exceed each other in acts of impiety toward God, and of injustice towards their neighbours; the powerful, on one hand, ill treating the populace, and the multitude, on the other, eager to destroy the powerful; for the one wished to tyrannize, the others to commit violence, and to plunder the property of the wealthy." Josephus, Jewish War, pp. 1256, 1314. Hudson's Edit. The sacking of the lower city of Jerusalem by the Romans, is thus pathetically described by this noble historian: "While the TEMPLE was burning, the sack of that quarter began; and the slaughter of those whom the soldiers found, was immense. There was no pity shewn to age, no respect to dignity, but young and old the profane vulgar, and the sacred priesthood, were put to death alike; and the battle involved and invaded every sort, confounding the suppliants with the defendants; and the crackling of the wide-spreading flames, resounded along with the groans of the falling. And by reason of the height of the mount, and the greatness of the flaming pile, you would have thought that the whole city was on fire; and nothing can be conceived grander, nor more terrible, than that noise; for there was a shouting of the Roman ranks coming to close engagement, and a cry of the seditious, hemmed in by fire and sword: and the people who were left in the upper city, turned with dismay toward the enemy, and groaned at the catastrophe; while the cry of the multitude in the lower city conspired with those on the mount. And now, many of those that were famishing with hunger, and their lips already closed, when they saw the TEMPLE on fire, recovered full strength for wailings and moans: these, again, were echoed from the suburbs and the surrounding mountains, making the impression still deeper on the mind; while the havoc encreased the horror of the tumult. You would have thought that the Temple-Mount was burnt up from the very roots, it was so loaded with fire throughout. And yet yet the blood was still more abundant than the fire; and the slaughtered more than the slayers: for the ground was no where clear of the dead; and the soldiers, mounting on heaps of carcases, rushed on the fugitives flying in every direction." What an awful and heart-rending illustration is this, of the prediction of Moses, respecting the Roman captivity. Deut. 28. 49-68. "The LORD shall bring upon thee, a nation from afar, from the end of the earth; like as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall shew no respect to the old, nor pity to the young, &c. Where the miseries and horrors of the siege, thus foretold by Moses, above 1700 years before; and 900 years before the very existence of the Romans as a nation, (whose leading characteristics, of situation, language, rapidity of conquest, fierceness of countenance and unrelenting cruelty, are described, with a minuteness and precision that is altogether astonishing) are abundantly verified by the details of the great Jewish historian, from actual observation, written shortly after the catastrophe; and ever since the Roman captivity, A. D. 70, has the wretched remnant of the Jewish nation, still miraculously subsisting, been scattered, despised, and persecuted throughout the earth, according to the predictions of Moses. "The Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed; even great plagues and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance; the emphatic repetition, intimating very long continuance; such as they now unquestionably are, after the lapse of seventeen centuries, at this day!" What follows, in the next two pages, is in our author's best manner. He identifies the Gon, "who spake by the prophets," sometimes denouncing woes against Israel, and sometimes lamenting the destitute condition and the sufferings of his sanctuary and people, with THE GOD' INCARNATE, who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and wept over that devoted city. Dr. Hales then opens the second head of his discourse, and bravely and successfully combats the anti-providential assertions of the declamatory and assuming Volney. : "I have dwelt, (says he,) the longer on this momentous and awakening topic of national judgments fulfilled, and fulfilling, and endeavoured to trace more distinctly, and point out more minutely the whole tenor and course of the prophecies and proceedings of the RIGHTEOUS JUDGE OF ALL THE EARTH, respecting the Ninevites, and the Jews, by way of antidote against the active' poison and contagious influence of those dreary and desolating doctrines of Atheism in disguise, now so dreadfully dreadfully rife, and insidiously disseminated throughout the Con tinent of Europe, by the disorderly and perturbed spirit of a French missionary of irreligion and anarchy; asserting, that the great and polished nations of antiquity, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Tyrians, Sidonians, Jews, &c. flourished and rose to wealth and empire, while they were unbelievers and idolaters: but when they became believers and Christians, they gradually sunk into decay and ruin! Volney's Ruins, chap. 2. "The fool hath said, in his heurt, there is no God.'-And this foolish and mischievous assumption, which denies, in fact, though not in words, the providence of God, or his righteous government of the universe, is founded in falsehood." After stating the Dictum of Revelation on this subject," the grand moral lesson inculcated through the BIBLE, or the providential history of mankind,—viz. that "RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION, He adds, Prov. xiv. 34. "Nor is all this, merely the doctrine of the BIBLE; it is also supported by the wisest of the Heathen and Jewish historians and philosophers. "When Thales, the most illustrious of the Grecian sages, was asked, whether a man, acting unjustly, could escape the notice of God? No, replied he, not even in thought! "When Chilo, another of these celebrated sages, was asked "what was Jove doing!--Humbling the proud, said he, and exalting the humble.' "The pious reflection of the father of Grecian history, Herodotus, suggested by the destruction of Troy, is most instructive and apposite. "The Grecians, says he, would not believe the Trojans, when they spoke the truth, (namely, that Helen was not in their power to restore, she being at that time in Egypt) heaven permitting, as I conjecture, that they should be utterly destroyed: in order to convince mankind, that THE GODS HAVE GREAT PUNISHMENT IN RESERVE, FOR ATROCIOUS CRIMES.' Book 2. "And to what the great Roman philosopher, Cicero, ascribed the prosperity and conquests of the Roman republic, we learn from his oration, de Harruspicum responsis § 9. "Who is to be found so senseless, that either when he looks up to the heaven, does not observe that there are Gods, but can rather |