with them.

It is here that the danger lies. These fictions, these conjectures, these unproved averments are dogmatically put forth for our credence; and if we do not receive them, or if we ask for proof, we are pitied as babes in the study, who have yet to learn the first principles of the prophetic oracles. Yet, at the risk of becoming objects of such pity, we are resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to reject and resist to the utmost all such unproved statements. We shall make no compromise Where proof is offered, we shall gladly consider any interpretation or idea, though new. Where proof is not presented, we must refuse to listen to it. We feel that we are bound, out of regard to the honour of the Scriptures, out of regard to the well-being of the Church of Christ, to give no countenance to the unproved assertions that are afloat amongst some expositors of the word. We wish this to be fully and unambiguously understood at the very outset by all our readers and contributors. We feel sorely indignant at the way in which Scripture has been tampered with, in order to prop up the crudities of a reckless fancy; and no less so at the way in which these crudities have been palmed upon the Church as verities, with hardly an attempt to demonstrate them from Scripture.

But dismissing this point, we return to the truth with which we set out, viz., our connexion with the future.

We have seen how close that connexion is and must be in any condition in which a saint can be placed. But the link seems to gather strength as the ages pass away and the last time draws on. The future, with all in it of dark and bright, seems more truly our dwelling-place, in these days when the whole earth is vibrating under the stunning weight of blows that are breaking her to pieces in every part. For, manifestly we have entered on a new era of dissolution and disintegration. In what is the present process to terminate? is a question which no man can now help putting, but which few seem prepared to answer with certainty or decision.

The world is in motion everywhere: yet it is the motion of fever, not the healthy action of the frame. It is the tossing to and fro of the sick bed, when the pulse has risen and delirium is working in the brain and giving wildness to the eye.

Poison is acting fiercely upon the system and deranging all its regularities. Or,-to use another figure,-the leaven is now thoroughly doing its work; it is shooting through the mass, and the whole is now leavened,-leavened for evil, not for good. These earthquakes, shivering thrones, are but at their

first heave or throe. These tempests, sweeping over kingdoms and calling up the rude billows that are levelling all high things upon the earth, have but blown their first blast. Yet see the ruins which are blocking up the streets and highways of earth; see the wrecks with which its shores are already strewn. Things most marvellous have already come to pass among the nations; things more marvellous are on their way. What has already been beheld is but as the ripple in comparison with the breaker, as the rattling of debris in comparison with the rushing fury of the rock or the avalanche.

Who shall be the interpreter of these events? For God sends no judgments without sending some messenger to declare their meaning? The Church of Christ on earth should be the interpreter of his ways. It is her office to warn the world, to take up the divine dealings one by one and tell the world what God means by them. If the Church does not seek to be the interpreter of the divine proceedings, she comes short of her calling and forgets her office. She is bound to mark the decomposing process that is going on, in order that she may tell its nature and foretel its issues. She is bound to watch the motions of that current or whirlpool which has now laid hold of the kingdoms of the earth, and to make known their true character, their origin, and their ultimate direction, whether to prosperity or to ruin, whether to stability or destruction, whether to shame or to glory.

The world's philosophers, are, in our day, every one of them becoming interpreters of the future. We cannot turn the pages of any of them, Continental or British, but we find them casting an intensely eager glance into the future. At every new event we see them turning their eye forward, attempting to pierce the mist that overhangs them.

As interpreters of the future, or as commentators on passing events in their bearing on that future, they cannot but fail. They have no data to reason upon; neither is their reason strong or keen enough to handle such data were they given. Hence their opinions on such topics are but visions, guesses, gropings. One of them could say, "in that ferment of religious discussions which now invade the world, a new future, a new order of things is stirring; and it is the duty of all well-disposed men to work to prepare its advent." * Another could thus write to a friend, "I begin

* Quinet's Ultramontanism. Lecture IX.

to believe that the future destiny of the human soul lies prophesied in the dark oracle of the material creation; each coming spring which attracts the budding plant from the earth's bosom gives me insight into the sad enigina of death, and confutes my anxious fear of an eternal sleep.'

Thus they give utterance to their own vague guesses, scorning to be taught by prophetic revelation; yet, unable to cast aside presentiments and longings. They give forth a few conjectures at random; they feel thrown forward into the future by inextinguishable instinct, as well as by the irresistible pressure of events, yet of that future they can only speak with a stammering tongue.

But they neither are nor can be the interpreters of the future. This is the Church's calling, both for her own sake and for the world's. She has not been left without the means of fulfilling this calling. She has a full prophetic page, and she has the promise of the unerring teaching of the Spirit of truth, who is sent, not only to bring all things to our remembrance, but to "show us things to come." It is thus that she is fitted to be the interpreter of the future; not by being left to guess blindly and uncertainly; but by being enabled to understand the revealed purposes of Him in whose hands that future lies. It is not given her to know all things: it is not even given her to know many things; but the great landmarks, the great outlines of the future, she is given to see, and that with no dim nor unsteady eye. Her knowledge in this respect and to this degree is as truly a certainty as is her knowledge of the past.

It is curious to observe the direction which the speculations and hopes of the "wise of this world" are now taking. They are going forth in search of what they call "the true and the beautiful." Keenly alive to the conviction that there is around them so much of what is both untrue and unlovely; feeling assured that this is not a state of things which can endure; they fondly anticipate a time when all that is untrue shall perish, and all that is unlovely shall vanish away. They know not indeed what they mean in such prophetic utterances. The true and the beautiful are but gay dreams to them. Yet they long for their manifestation, unconsciously uniting their voices to the groan of universal creation, that is all around them longing for deliverance. Thus one of them gives expression to his feeling, "An intellectual conflict about truth, and indeed about divine truth, is the struggle of our age; this fact is already seen

• Schiller's Philosophical Letters.

and admitted by a few, but ere long it will be still more generally acknowledged." * And thus another of them utters his fears and his hopes, "Here on earth we are as soldiers, fighting in a foreign land, that understand not the plan of the campaign and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done, let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. Behind us, behind each one of us, lie six thousand years of human effort, human conquest; before us is the boundless time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of eternity shine for us celestial guiding stars." + Thus they breathe forth their uncertain desires and hopes, as men in whose souls there dwells some bright idea of the true and the beautiful, and who feel that they cannot be satisfied till that idea becomes a reality on earth.

This idea of theirs is not without its development. The germ of truth is in it, just as there was in the heathen anticipations that preceded the former Advent, and opened even the lips of poets to sing of coming peace. Yet, after all, it is but the germ,- -no more. It is the vague expression of a vague longing; not the well-based hope, which, resting on a Divine promise, knows that it shall not be put to shame.

Nevertheless, the foundation of the Lord standeth sure. The day of" the true and the beautiful" is coming; and beyond the skirts of that heavy darkness that is now falling down upon the world, we can descry the gleams of its uprising. Yet, the truth and the beauty then to be disclosed are strangely different from what the wise of this world are looking for. It shall be far deeper truth and far brighter beauty than this world has yet known ;-more holy, more blessed, more imperishable;-such as eye hath not seen, such as ear hath not heard, such as man's heart hath never yet conceived.

For that day we wait, amid clouds and gloom and storm. None of these shall hinder its dawning, or mar its glory, when it dawns. Nay, we know not but that these are the sure signs of its appearing, the forerunners of its light and joy and peace. These terrific convulsions are but indications of that crisis, which shall throw off the world's long-lasting fever, bring back its primal health, and leave the past all behind it as a troubled dream.

Schlegel's Philosophy of Life. Lecture VII.

+ Carlyle's Miscellaneous Writings, vol. iii., pp. 91, 92.

To that day we look forward, as men wearying for their inheritance. As saints, that is, separated men, we glory in the expectation. For this we have been separated, and to this we have been called. The world and we have parted for ever. A carnal or earthly portion we have abjured. But a portion becoming our name, in accordance with our character, we do look for. And as is our inheritance, so also do we ourselves seek meanwhile to be,-holy and spiritual, partakers of the Divine nature, even as we know that we shall ere long be partakers of a Divine inheritance.

ART. II.-GOD'S THEORY OF THE WORLD.

MEN's thoughts respecting the future, have, of late years, been undergoing a somewhat decided, though perhaps hasty change. There are fewer boastful predictions uttered, of tranquil days, social elevation, unbroken progress, unchecked development in the history of the race.

These day-dreams dazzled for a time; they attracted not a few; they misled multitudes; they gave tone not merely to the speculations of the thinker, but to the policy of the statesman. But they are disappearing. Facts have not come in to verify them; or rather all that have come in have totally belied them; till, one by one, they have evaporated, or transmuted themselves into thick and palpable forebodings of evil. Fretted with misgivings and weary with disappointed hope, perhaps too, somewhat ashamed at being found false prophets, some are giving way to despondency, while others seem as if they knew not which way

to turn.

Some twenty years ago, men were exulting and making merry like schoolboys on the morning of a holiday; for the world's great holiday seemed dawning at last now their mirth is hushed and their hearts are failing them for fear. It was the fashion then to predict things great and bright as the immediate issue of events then emerging, and to point triumphantly to the fair succession of levels, up which the nations were steadily ascending. The march of education, of intellect, of freedom, of reform, of science, of peace, was to be rapid and unimpeded. The impulse of selfadvancement, self-elevation, then communicated to the race,