Omnipotence is over them. They may pass through a sharp night, but it will be a short one. Oh, what a solemn position do we occupy if my conclusions be right! The shadows of 1854 fall back into one eternity and forward into another. We stand on an isthmus washed by the waves of time and wasted by the waters of eternity. The terrible silence of the age is the suspensive pause, when nations hold their breath before the shock comes. The sure and glorious termination alone reconciles us to its pressure. Into a holy, and happy, and blessed land the surf of the troubled present rolls; and our weary hearts will leap to that land as a babe leaps to its mother's bosom.

Are we among the saints of God? It is time to lay aside our ecclesiastical and sectarian quarrels. The very ground on which we stand will soon be calcined by the last fire, and the miserable Shibboleths which distract Christendom disappear in smoke. All society is rending into two great divisions. By and by there will be no Jesuits, no Ultramontanes, no Franciscans, no Tractarians, but out-and-out Papists. By and by there will be no Churchmen, no Dissenters, but out-and-out Christians. All society is splitting into two great antagonistic masses: every man is taking his place; and those whom we call, in courtesy, Tracta

rians who profess to hold the via media, neither going with us nor with the opposite side-will find themselves like men between two advancing armies, overwhelmed by the fire of both. I say, society is splitting into two great masses. To which do we belong? To Christ—that is, the Church of the living God; or to Antichrist—that is, the great Apostasy? Oh, let us not quarrel about lesser things! There is love enough on Calvary to lift the earth to heaven; there is light enough at Pentecost to irradiate the wide world; there is warmth enough on the hearthstone of our Father's house to make every heart glow with ecstasy and thankfulness! Let us rather quench than kindle the fires of passion. Let us pray that the temperature of our Christian life may be so raised, that we shall neither see nor feel the petty scintillations of angry quarrels.

"Between us all let oceans roll;

Yet still, from either beach
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech-
'We are one!'"

It is very remarkable that all the great times and dates of prophecy meet and mingle about the year 1864. I do not say that that year will be the close of this world. I do not prophesy; I do not foretell the future;

I only forth tell what God has said; but I do feel, that if 1864 be not the close of the age that now is, and the commencement of a better one, it will be a time unprecedented since the beginning-portentous, startling, and terrible to the enemies of God; but glorious, holy, and full of joyous scenes to the people of God.

Clinton proves that the seventh millenary of the world begins in 1863. The Jews of ancient and modern times all look to the beginning of the seven thousand years for their Sabbatismos, or millennial rest. Is the end so near?

"The groans of nature in this nether world,
Which heaven has heard for ages, have an end,
Foretold by prophets, and by poets sung;
The time of rest, the promised sabbath comes.
Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh
Fulfill'd their tardy and disastrous course
Over a sinful world; and what remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things
Is merely as the working of a sea
Before a calm that rocks itself to rest."

Thus, all fingers point to this rapidly approaching crisis. All things indicate that the moment that we occupy is charged with intense and inexhaustible issues. Never was man so responsible! Never, in the prospect of what is coming on the earth, was man's position so solemn ! But evil shall not gain the day. Truth and love will emerge from every conflict,

beautiful, and clothed with victory. The days of Infidelity and Popery are numbered. The waters of evil must soon ebb from the earth they have soiled. The approaching genesis will surpass in beauty and in glory the old. The Church of Christ will lay aside her soiled garments, her ashen raiment, and put on her bridal dress, her coronation robes; and the nations will look up to her in admiration, earnest as the waves of the ocean rise up to the bright full moon enthroned above them. The sunrise of approaching day will strike the earth, and awaken its long silent hymns, and clothe creation's barest branches with amaranthine blossoms. Poor Nature, that has so long moaned like a stricken creature to its God from its solitary lair, shall cease her groans and travail and expectancy; for God will wipe away her tears, and on her fair and beautiful and holy brow, crowned and kingdomed, other orbs in the sky, her handmaidens, will gaze in ecstasy and thankfulness and praise. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain. And there shall be no night there. For these sayings are faithful and true."

II.

THE MOSLEM, AND HIS END.

IN introducing to the reader the Moslem and his fate, I do not pretend to prophesy, but simply to set forth what seems, on grounds of the very highest probability, to be the meaning of prophecy inspired by God, and written for our instruction. I do not attempt to foretell; all I presume is, to forth tell what is already predicted in the sacred volume. a humble interpreter of what God has written, not a prophet of what God will do. I speak to reasonable men; I ask attention, not submission.

I am

The application of Scripture to the events of the day demands the utmost carefulness. We must take care to avoid that presumption, which decides the fulfilment of prophecy in things in no just respect the echoes of ancient predictions; and equally also that incredulity, or rather scepticism, which regards the word of God as in no degree applicable to the affairs of