"It is mere equivocation to call Palestine the Lord's heritage and the LONDON: HOLDSWORTH AND BALL, 18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. INTRODUCTION. THE following Letters were commenced without any view to publication; but before they were all written, the idea of submitting the writer's opinions to the public was suggested and urged by the Reverend Gentleman to whom they were addressed. The Author confesses that he felt but little reluctance in yielding to his friend's suggestion, both because of the deference due to the judgment of his adviser, and because he conceived the opinions controverted to be injurious in their tendency, and to require some corrective. If the Writer's views are just, his Letters may answer their end, if not directly, at least by stimulating some abler pen on the same side. If they are not just, some one, it is hoped, will take the pains to prove their fallacy, that thus, at any rate, the cause of truth may go un-. injured, and its positions be the rather strengthened and confirmed. To adopt the hint of his valued friend and correspondent, and almost the words he has suggested, the Writer assures his readers, that "Truth is his object-that he is most willing to pay due deference to the opinions of wise, learned, and pious men, on this as well as on other subjects; that he wrote these Letters entirely irrespective of anything that had been written in support of either side of the question; and that he did not consult the sentiments of men first, and then the Bible, respecting the subject, but, knowing merely that the question did exist, made the Bible, and that alone, his text book." He is aware that the doctrine of Israel's literal restoration to Palestine is a popular one-that it has been favoured by some of the wisest, most learned, and best men in the Church of Christ, and that it is still maintained by the majority of Christians. But, however popular prepossession may be shocked at witnessing this favourite doctrine cited at the bar of Reason and of Scripture, it should be remembered, that other opinions, long maintained by erudition, and still more widely prevalent, have been cited there before, and long since convicted of gross imposture. Nothing was ever more offensive to popular prejudice than the first annunciations of Christianity, when the declarations of Christ attached the stamp of falsehood to the secular interpretations of the Scrip- \ tures given by the carnal Jews. The Crusades, now so justly regarded as fanatical, and which, perhaps, may not inaptly illustrate the practical tendency of this doctrine, were sanctioned by all the erudition and popular favour of centuries. The first breath of Protestantism was deprecated as the menace of a moral plague, and its tenets regarded as monstrous innovations on unquestionable truth. The history of science teems with illustrations of the fact, that error may long remain garrisoned within the fortress of popular opinion, and be fortified by the bulwarks of learning. The unavailable philosophy of Aristotle might have amused, impeded, and school-ridden the world until now, had not Bacon arraigned it at the tribunal of scrutiny and common sense; yet the Novum Organum, now so justly appreciated as the |