interpretation of this identity.  The Doctor’s censure of English expositors in one of his notes will too often justly apply to other divines in expounding prophecy:—­“They have greatly diminished the value of their publications, by permitting themselves to indulge so much of the spirit of political partiality.”  Doctor M’Leod and Mr. Faber I consider among the best expositors of the prophecies on which they severally wrote; and therefore their valuable works have been principally contemplated in these animadversions.  On material points they have shed much light where those who preceded them left the reader in darkness, or involved him in perplexing labyrinths.  Faber preceded M’Leod, and the latter availed himself of all the aid furnished by the former; yet till the “mystery of God shall be finished,” his people will be receiving accessions of light from the “sure word of prophecy.”

SOUNDING OP THE SEVENTH TRUMPET.

At the time when those learned divines wrote, the political agitations in Europe and America, as already noticed, gave a peculiar tincture to their opinions and expositions of the Apocalyptic symbols.  This state of feeling on the part of these distinguished men, and on opposite sides of the Atlantic, is very strikingly illustrated in their conflicting interpretations of the “third woe,”—­the seventh trumpet.  Amidst the conflict of arms and the booming of cannon, in both hemispheres, those writers thought the first blast of the seventh trumpet and third woe could be distinctly heard.  They differed widely, however, in their interpretations of its import and effects.  To Mr. Faber, Napoleon, who was the most conspicuous figure in the passing drama, appeared as a terrific Vandal at the head of his legions, threatening to uproot and lay waste the fair fabric of European civilization.  To the Doctor, on the other hand, Napoleon seemed the possible minister of Providence, destined to prepare the way of the Lord, and to introduce a better, a scriptural civilization.  As time has sufficiently demonstrated the fallacy of their respective expositions of the seventh trumpet, it is needless to quote or review their speculations.

The principal defect pervading the “Lectures,” and one which most readers will be disposed to view in an opposite light, appears to be, a charity too broad, a catholicity too expansive, to be easily reconciled with a consistent position among the mystic witnesses.  Their author, however, deriving much information from the learned labours of English prelates on prophecy, could not “find in his heart” to exclude them from a place in the honourable roll of the witnesses.  I am unable to recognize any of those who are in organic fellowship with the “eldest daughter of Popery,” as entitled to rank among those who are symbolized as “clothed in sackcloth.”  The two positions and fellowships appear to be obviously incompatible and palpably irreconcilable.  It is true that there have been and still are in the English establishment divines who are strictly evangelical; but the reigning Mediator views and treats individuals, as he views and treats the moral person with which individuals freely choose to associate; and we ought to “have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. ii. 16.)