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land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river Euphrates." In chap xvii., "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession." This remains to be fulfilled. The words of Jesus are, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

Its being trodden down is its desolation and the dispersion of its people. This is to continue till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, at the end of which times it will cease to be trodden down, its beauty will be restored, and its people resettled in it.

The last chapter of Daniel predicts that Michael, as some think an angel, as others, a representative person, intended to denote a divine interposition, while not a few think it is the Son of God, the Saviour, will interpose. We can arrive at an approximate knowledge by comparing Scripture with Scripture, and text with text. "At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; " and at the time when this interposition occurs "there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation”—trouble, social, personal, domestic-the trouble of the heart, the heaviest trouble of all-the trouble of the mind -a time of trouble described in the thirty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, and in the twenty-first chapter of St Luke's Gospel, when men's hearts shall fail them, for fear of the things that are coming upon the earth -"a time of trouble such as never was since there

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was a nation." But one glorious event lights it up, "At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." These are the still outcast Jews whose sufferings it is needless to prove and impossible to count.

When M. About visited the Jews in the Ghetto, at Rome, he informed them he had come to guage their sorrows, and to tell the story of them to the world. They implored him with one consent not to do so; they said, "Our sorrow is all but intolerable now, but were it known to the authorities here that we had complained, our burden would be heavier, and our lot bitterer still." In other countries, the Jew in popular estimate is looked down upon, viewed as a sort of alien and degraded race; as if they visibly lay under the shadow of a long-inherited crime, and “his blood," as they themselves imprecated, were upon them and their children even until now. But this is not to be their everlasting lot. God assures us the Jews shall be restored, and reinstated in their long-lost rights, at the advent of the fulness of the Gentiles. It is at this period-whether near or remote it is not necessary now to attempt to determine of great trouble that this interposing messenger shall appear, and that Daniel's people shall be delivered, and, according to other predictions in the word of God, shall rush in streams from a thousand different points in the circumference of the world, homeward to their fatherland. It is a glorious thought that the land which echoed with such awful

imprecations upwards of 1800 years ago shall behold a people looking to Him whom they pierced, and mourning and lamenting the blindness of their forefathers; so that where they once said, "Away with him! away with him! Crucify him! crucify him!" they shall shout, "Hosannah !-Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

FAITH ON THE EARTH.

"WHEN the Son of man cometh shall he find faith on the earth ?"

men.

Faith is not blind reliance on man or unquestioning submission to all that is taught by the wisest of It is confidence in Him who is revealed in Scripture; it is the acceptance of every truth, palatable or painful, contained in that Scripture; the great cardinal doctrines on which it lives are the death of Christ, our perfect atonement and sacrifice, the just One in the room of the unjust, whose blood "cleanseth from all sin" all of every name and denomination who believe in His name; justification by Christ's righteousness imputed to us and received by faith alone as our only title to acceptance and admission into the kingdoms of grace and glory; our sins laid on Christ, though never in Him, and His righteousness laid on us, but not in us; Jesus, innocent when He died, and we miserable sinners when justified. This is the article of a standing or falling Church. Yet this central truth is denied in some pulpits and dimmed in others, and feebly explained or

lightly passed over in many. In our confessions and articles and creeds the doctrine is laid down clear, sharp, and definite; but in the preaching of many it is wasted down into metaphor, or evaporated into generalities, or ignored as practically useless. The pulpit has broken away from the ancient fastenings. The trumpet gives an uncertain sound, and evasion, vacillation, and metaphysical refinements amuse and interest, but do not rouse and save mankind.

In a work entitled "The Religious Tendencies of the Age" it is too truly written-" The edge of our religious belief has been dulled, the objective truths of religion are comparatively ignored, the sterner features of Christianity are veiled and passed over. If we examine the religious tone of our popular authors, or if we observe the general feeling of society, we shall find that an eclectic system, consisting of the more attractive doctrines of Christianity combined with the latitudinarian philosophies, is everywhere the predominant belief."

Another writer with equal truth remarks, "There is about the same evidence that the theological world is about to break up in confusion as there is of political revolutions. Old and established points of doctrine are surrounded by doubters and opposers, and but few defenders. Reason is substituted for revelation, and infidelity for faith. Sceptics are multiplying all about us, and growing bolder every day, while professed Christians are sleeping and slumbering in the midst of these great perils. A great change is at hand."

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