case, that the seventh vial will be poured out after the end of the 1260 years, it will be but about forty years before the battle of the great day will commence, and in a few years will be finished the awful catastrophe of the vintage of the earth-so that at any rate the time of Zion's deliverance is near at hand. And shall we not rejoice in it, although we do not live on earth to realize it? Abraham rejoiced in view of this day, thousands of years ago, and surely Christians now manifest an unwarrantable degree of selfishness and destitution of interest for the good of How anxothers, not to be interested in this scene. ious many worldlings are to heap up perishable riches for their children and grand-children, but how much greater consolation it should be to Christians of the present age, that their children or children's children, at farthest, may witness, live in and be partakers of that blessed day, when the righteousness of Jeconverted Jews; that the thirty years will close with the com. plete overthrow of anti-christ in the valley of Megiddo, an event than which one cannot conceive one better calculated to mark a signal chronological epoch, and that the 45 years will be employed in the wanderings of those who escaped from the rout of the anti-christian army, and who will carry every where the tidings of God's supernatural interference, and in the sub.sequent conversion and restoration of the whole house of Israel. I wish this to be understood only as a conjecture; for it would be folly to speak positively before the event. "When the 45 years shall have expired, when the whole family of Jacob shall have been converted and restored, and when the stick of Judah shall have united itself forever with the stick of Joseph; then will commence the season of millennial blessedness." I have transcribed these remarks here, that the reader might have a full view at once of the commentator's ideas respecting the time of the commencement of the Millennium; but the reader will observe at the same time, that he wishes not to be understood to speak positively; so also I would beg to be understood. The candid enquire: after truth can compare what is written with the divine oracles, and if he finds any thing incompatible with this infallible test, it is to be hoped that it will be pardoned as an unintentional mistake, and not a wilful or careless misrepresentation. rusalem shall break forth as the morning, and her sal- earth yield her increase; and God even our own God ners. Zion "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God, * See pages 103 and 104. |