Magistrate? Let any one of them be assumed, and then we shall begin with Matthew's account of the Saviour's temptation, and apply it to the end. Say, for example, it is the evil principle personified which led Jesus up to the mountain top, or to the pinnacle of the Temple; and then what comes of Him "who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin, and higher than the heavens!" His purity is departed. But they will say, it is in Matthew a personification of the High Priest or the Roman Magistrate This helps not the case: for, passing by the temptation that is now worse than before, look at the case of Judas into whom we are told Satan (that is, the High Priest or the Roman Magistrate) entered!!! Lest any one should say we are only feigning objections, we shall pursue this chimera no longer. Satan, then, is as real a person as Jesus of Nazareth, the angel Gabriel, or the man Adam: for whatever denotes personality in reference to any real character, is found applied to Satan, not in the language of poetry, but in the most unadorned and unfigurative language of prose. I cannot, however, but admire this insidious and malign plot on the part of Satan to efface from the human understanding the apprehension of his real existence, and to erase from the heart the fear and dread of him, by converting himself into a personification of an abstract principle-a mere rhetorical figure. This admirably corresponds with his address to the woman in Eden, and to the Saviour in the wilderness.

Hlaving, alas! too many proofs, too many thousand monuments of the reality of this "evil one," we shall now attend to the names by which he is depicted in the Bible; from which we may yet learn something of his history. These are-Satan, Devil, Tempter, Liar, Deceiver, Father of Lies, the Wicked One, Accuser of the Brethren, Murderer, Dragon, Serpent, the Old Serpent, a Sinner from the beginning, Ruler of Darkness, Beelzebub, Prince of the Demons, Belial, Prince of the World, God of the World, Prince of the Power of the Air, the Spirit of Disobedience, Potentate of Death, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Abaddon, Apollyon, the Destroyer.

In some of these names and titles others are included. Thus, Satan, his most ancient and common name, is translated adversary, accuser, enemy; and Devil is translated calumniator, slanderer, blasphemer. Besides these terrific and appalling names, he is compared to the most gigantic terrors-to leviathan, the fiercest dragons, a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, full of wiles, plots, and machinations, commanding in mense resources, and filled with implacable and eternal hatred to God and man.

Such are the scriptural designations of this arch apostate, this mighty spirit, originator and president of the empire of rebellion and death; transformed from a seraph to a fiend, fallen from the

brightest constellation of the morning stars to the blackness of eternal darkness. We shall only add, that when any appellation is given to him which has ever been participated by any other being, to contradistinguish him he uniformly wears the emphatic and definite prefix the:-ho Satanas, the Adversary; ho Diabolos, the Slanderer; ho Poneros, the Wicked One, &c.

From a careful analysis of these names and titles, together with various attending circumstances, superadded to the few hints and allusions referring to this personage found in sacred scripture, we may be enabled to make out such a history of him as will prepare us for a better understanding of his present kingdom now existing in these United States. A. C.

Prophetic Department.

THE PROPHECIES—NO. VIII.

WHEN We shall have noted the captivity of Israel according to the flesh, we shall have finished the first part of our scheme; and shall then hasten through the second to the third, for which the materials to be found in the first and second are arranged.

In our last we saw Israel under the captaincy of Joshua, invested with the possession of the land of promise. This portion of Jewish history we contemplate in the double light of history and prophecy. Because, indeed, the whole history of the redemption of the ransomed people from Egyptian slavery is, in type, a particular prophecy of a better deliverance from a worse despotism. So now we are to consider the captivity of Judah by the hand of the Chaldean and his deliverance therefrom as prophetic history.

Had Jacob kept himself pure from the idolatries of the people whose land he possessed, his possession of it had remained to this day. But, alas for the instability of all human affairs! a world of sin can never be converted into a heaven of rest. He formed alliances and instituted familiarities with the idolatrous residents of the conquered countries. Thus, instead of sanctifying himself by obeying all the commandments of the Lord for the extirpation of that accursed people, he polluted himself by their idolatries, until the God of Abraham was obliged to carry him out of that country and put him under the hand of discipline of a seventy years' servility to the Chaldean excellency.

This captivity was long foretold. Balaam himself, as we have seen, under the impulse of the Omniscient Spirit, predicted it;

Moses also had intimated it: but it was reserved for the aged and venerable Abijah to declare it fully and without a figure, and that too to the first Queen of the kingdom of Israel. The oracle needs no interpretation: "The Lord shall smite Israel as a reed is shaken in the water; and he shall root up Israel out of this good land which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river; because they have made their groves provoking the Lord to anger: and he shail give Israel up.' *This indeed is but a slight enlargement of the oracle of Moses: "The Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you; so shall he rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to naught: and you shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it, and the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth to the other." Joshua the Prophet in his valedictory also foretold it: "When you have transgressed the covenant of the Lord your God which he commanded you, and have gone and served other gods and bowed yourselves to them, then shall the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land which he hath given to you."

The manner in which this was verified and fulfilled the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah amply details. Nearly four hundred years after the exodus the tribes of Jacob desired a king. God gave them a Benjamite-Saul the son of Kish. His reign commenced in the year 397 after the exodus, or ten hundred and ninety-five years before Christ, and continued forty years. He violated the Constitution and his family was rejected. David the son of Jesse, the son of Judah, succeeded him and reigned forty years. Solomon his son also reigned forty years. Thus the twelve tribes continued one nation during the reign of three kings, a period of one hundred and twenty years. The Divine Constitution of Israel was, however, shamefully violated by Solomon through the influence of his Pagan wives, and the Lord rent from him the kingdom, with the exception of Judah and Benjamin, which for the sake of his beloved father, he continued in his family. Thus the twelve tribes of Jacob became two kingdoms and two lines of kings, called the kings of Judah, and the kings of Israel, ruled over them until they both so often and so grievously violated the Constitution, that the Lord permitted the Assyrian emperors to "pluck them up" out of the covenanted land. Of nineteen kings, of nine different families, that reigned over the kingdom of Israel during the period of two hundred and fifty-four years, there was not one good one. Five of these kings were conspirators and murderers; but only in one instance did the sceptre pass into the hands of the son of a conspirator. The

Kings xiv. 15, 16. † Deut. xxviii. 63, 64. ↑ Josh. xxiii. 16.

kingdom of Israel being cut off from the Temple and the legiti mate priesthood, in consequence of the schism in the political government, their first king Jeroboam the son of Nebat, having set up at Bethel and Dan two altars and two calves, apostatized much sooner than the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

The kingdom of Judah continued during a succession of twenty kings of the family of Rehoboam its first king, the son of Solomon by an Ammonitess princess of the name of Naamah. Of these twenty kings nine were comparatively good and eleven bad. But the nine good kings lived much longer than the eleven wicked kings, insomuch that the kingdom of Judah during its separate national existence, a period of three hundred and eightyseven years, was only one hundred and fifteen years under wicked kings, and two hundred and seventy-two years under good kings. If we add to these the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon over the twelve tribes, the whole time of the kings before the Babylonish Captivity was five hundred and seven years; of which number there were eleven good and twelve bad kings. This makes the disproportion in favor of the good kings one less in number, and gives them the same ratio in point of time-the good kings reigning more than twice as long as the wicked kings. To the influence of these good kings, some of whom were eminent reformers, it is doubtless owing that the kingdom of Judah survived the kingdom of Israel one hundred and thirty-three years. But both the kingdoms fell according to the prophecies. The causes of the fall of the kingdom of Israel is given by an unerring pen in the words following:-"For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: for they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. Notwithstanding, they would not

hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only." 2 Kings xvii. 7-18.

Judah's captivity and overthrow, with the causes, thereof, are as circumstantially stated on various occasions. The following account of their fall and captivity is from the author of the Chronicles of Israel:-"Moreover, all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much, after all the abominations of the heathen, and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age; he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princess, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbath: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years." 2 Chron, xxxvi. 14-21.

This captivity began six hundred and six years before Christ, but was not perfected till the year 588 before Christ. For while the captivity of Israel was in process thirty-eight years, that of Judah was completed in eighteen years.