à priori, for this remarkable feature of the prediction, a fresh character of unity and completeness will be stamped upon all the previous intrepretations.

Such a reason, I believe, may be found in the prophecy of the seventy weeks, combined with the events of sacred history and the general design of the inspired predictions. From the reign of Cyrus down to the time of Malachi (B.C. 400), the Jews, besides many other tokens of divine favour, had still the direct gift of prophecy continued among them. Their faith would, therefore, have less need of external confirmation. The outward restitution of their polity was completed by Nehemiah, and the promise of Messiah's speedy advent was renewed by the latest of the prophets (Mal. iii. 1). For one generation, these united influences of memory and hope might be reasonably supposed to continue powerful and efficacious. But hope deferred maketh the heart sick. The latter half of the fourth century before Christ would find them in a state of mind that would eminently call for fresh consolation, and renewed encouragement of their hope in the promise of God. Accordingly, with Alexander's victories, the word of prophecy renews its light with an unwonted and peculiar clearness.

Again, the earliest date which the Jews could naturally assign to the seventy weeks would be the decree of Cyrus, B.C. 536. The shortest interval which they could infer from the prophecy, as having to elapse before the coming of Messiah to be Prince, would be sixtytwo weeks, or four hundred and thirty-four years. The earliest date, therefore, which they could assign for his appearance, deduced from the vision, would be B.c. 102. To this we may add thirty years for the interval between Messiah's birth and his public appearance, and thirty more to include the generation of instant and immediate hope; and we find that B.c. 160 is the earliest time at which, from the prophecy, the nation of Israel might be brought into the attitude of definite and eager expectation.

Between these two dates, however, there is left an interval of nearly two hundred years, in which the vivid memory of past deliverance would have grown feeble, and the echo of the voice of prophecy, in the last of the sacred company of prophets, would have died away; while no definite hope of Messiah's speedy appearance could have dawned upon the nation. In this interval their faith and hope would be specially exposed to weariness and decay.

Now this period (B.c. 330-160) is the precise interval on which the visions of Daniel concentrate all the fulness of their prophetic light. They dwell on its events with a minuteness of consecutive detail which occurs in no other part of the sacred visions. The reason of this distinction seems now to be satisfactorily explained. The objection of the infidel becomes a fresh proof of the divine goodness and wisdom. He, whose name is the Wonderful Counsellor, knew the time when the faith of his people would be specially tried, by the waning out of the old dispensation before the dawning of the new, and, therefore, provided them with a special support in the unwonted clearness of the word of prophecy. The watchers for the morning were thus encouraged to persevere, by the peculiar and

manifest tokens of God's continued care over his people, and through the last hours of the weary night were kept still waiting for the consolation of Israel.

VI. There is a further maxim, which is fully established by the previous interpretations-the spiritual importance of the ordinary events of God's providence. It seems to be imagined by some recent authors, that no events, but such as are miraculous, are worthy of a place in the sacred predictions. All the wars and conquests which have occurred since the fall of Jerusalem are only, it is said, the quarrels and usurpations of wicked men, to gratify their lust of dominion, and, therefore, are unworthy of all prophetic notice. But this reasoning is scattered to the winds by a simple observation of these inspired predictions. The conflict of good and evil in the world does not exist in the days of miracles only. The importance to the Church of a knowledge of God's providence is the same at all times; or, if there be a difference, the need of such instruction is the greatest when only second causes are visible to a worldly eye. The danger of forgetting the ceaseless presence of divine power is then far the most imminent. The testimony to God's prescience is more complete in events which bear no outward marks but of mere human agency, than in the prediction of miraculous changes.

The period between the return from Babylon and the coming of our Lord was the interval in which all miraculous tokens of God's presence among the Jews were almost entirely withdrawn. No Urim and Thummim gave answer in the temple; no glory was seen in the most holy place; no inspired prophets, for the main part of that time, gave direct messages from God: and yet this was the period on which the inspired prophecies give the most full and continuous details. There was thus, in some measure, a spiritual compensation; and as signs and wonders were withdrawn, the prophetic details, and the witness of God's providence, became more complete. At the approach of a more spiritual dispensation, the Church was raised from that evidence of miracles which rested mainly on the divine power, to that which illustrated the higher attribute of prescient wisdom.

Now this fact is of no small importance. It leads us very plainly to expect that the eighteen centuries under the Gospel, when the outward evidence of miracles should be withdrawn, would be marked by a peculiar fulness of prophetic revelation. If there be any weight in scriptural analogy, the visions of Daniel yield a decisive proof that the Apocalypse is a connected and continuous record of events to occur during the long suspension of the visible theocracy, and while the course of Providence has been moving on in secret, without the direct manifestation of signs and wonders.

The strangeness, again, of the emblems employed in these visions of Daniel, when compared with their demonstrable reference, involves a further lesson of the same kind. We see plainly that the divine purpose for which these symbols are used is not to distract the imagination with some unexampled and grotesque prodigies, but to reveal those moral aspects of the common and ordinary events of Providence which are unseen by the worldly eye, and very slowly

apprehended even by the thoughtful Christian. The higher we rise in the clear perception of the divine law, and the true standard of all right action in the word of God, the more defective and even monstrous will those forms of policy and ambition appear, which make up the constant outline of this world's past history. Now this is a practical lesson of far greater worth than any vague expectation, however startling, of material wonders. The perverse appetite for such outward signs, with regard to the moral truths which address the conscience and heart, was, in the days of our Saviour, one of the worst symptoms of Jewish delusion and unbelief. A spirit of the same kind is not less fatal to the right apprehension of these divine prophecies. Like the grotesque and foolish representations of Satan, which were common in the dark ages of the Church, interpretations of this marvel-making character serve only to obscure from us the deep and solemn reality of that stupendous conflict of good and evil which is ever in full activity in this fallen world. The kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light are not confined to short and unknown seasons of crisis and prodigy. The battle is unceasing, and momentous in its issues, even when the outward course of Providence seems most quiet and unbroken. Immortal souls are not less precious in one generation than another; and every part of the Divine counsels, seen in its true light, reveals to the spiritual eye strange and monstrous forms of evil, and a wondrous and supernatural exercise of Divine love and Omniscient wisdom.

Thus, in whatever light we consider these visions, fresh proofs arise of the hollow and unsubstantial nature of the Futurist theories. At the same time, increasing evidence appears of the harmonious connexion of these sacred prophecies, when we abide by the old landmarks of interpretation, which the Church of Christ has received and maintained from the apostolic age.

Reviews.

The Life and Times of John Reuchlin, or Capnion, the Father of the German Reformation. By Francis Barham, Esq. London: Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria-lane.

THE Reformation was one of those stirring events that happen once in a thousand years, the effects of which gradually proceed from the centre to the furthest circumference, and which requires ages for their transmission ere they can be felt or seen. Physical good and physical evils are alike the results of the mind of man, and the one will preponderate over the other in proportion to the purity and elevation of thought.

While the lives and works of the English Reformers are known to us, few of the illustrious names that flourished at that period on the continent are more than known; these, indeed, were the men that wrought so wonderful a change in the economy of the moral world, that overturned the broad-based fabrics that the Popedom had erected

L L

upon the ignorance of men, and again gave to us the pure waters of Christ's simple religion. Their biographies place us in the very scene where the struggle went on; in the centre, from which rays of fresh thoughts, awakening new ideas, were darting and undulating among all masses of men; and in the work before us we are glad to hail another volume of a series, that promise to enlighten the general student, to a very great degree, in these untrodden fields of history.

The struggles of the united brethren during the century preceding the Reformation had not been of none effect; they had awakened many doubts in the minds of men, which the fear of persecution prevented from being openly avowed; and while the Dominicans were persecuting the Albigenses of Languedoc, there was no lethargy displayed on the part of the Church towards the Hussites and Taborites, together with the Vaudois and others, who were compelled to live in caves and holes, wherever they could find shelter. In the fifteenth century these events became as the gathering of a mighty tempest, darkening and glooming, until at last the storm descended-the thunderbolts being directed by the hands of Luther, with a violence that dashed prostrate to the dust the hopes of Rome, of universal dominion over the soul of man. It was at a time that may be termed the Augustan age of the Italian republics-the era of the Medici, when the Latin language (before that, a barbarous jargon mingled with the patois of every state) and Pagan literature were asserting their supremacy. Latin and Greek again became the languages of learning, and men valued the lore of the antique world; the convulsions of the Crusades were then almost forgotten, except some observant eye might trace their effect in the manners of the people; and the struggles of factions of rival republics ceased for a while, and gave men a little breathing time from the horrors of civil wars that for ages had devastated Europe, south of the Alps. The Turk was in possession of Constantinople, and held it with an iron grasp; so that the princes whom Maximilian and the Popes had almost persuaded to redress their wrongs by appeals to justice, and thereby make cause against the common enemy, were, for the moment, seen to arm; but the factions, petty jealousy, and apathy, which had lost the Eastern empire to the Papal power, now permitted Mahomet II. to hold possession of what they could not retake.

The benefits, however, derived from this were incalculable, for the fugitives brought with them the whole literature of ancient Greece, and also of Rome; for Constantine had encouraged, by his power and munificence, men of learning to take asylum in his city, and the whole literary treasures of a by-gone people were now spread abroad over Italy, fostered and protected by the Medici, the Visconti, and the most powerful princes of the republics. There were, however, many difficulties to be overcome before these works could be made available. We have said that the Latin of the period had become extremely barbarous and uncouth, for on both sides of the Alps the decline of the Roman power produced a corresponding decline in the language which had been forced upon them, and which they were but too glad to rid themselves of, conceiving that it was virtually as great a moral bondage as the physical bondage that Rome, in her day of strength, had laid upon

them. Therefore we must trace the lives of these men in the cell and the cloister, and behold them poring over dusty vellums and wormeaten tomes, with a perseverance and an assiduity that would put to shame the students of the present day-men with a single-hearted earnestness, wearing out the light of life as the lamp waned night after night, still pursuing their labour of love; and for this vast intellectual toil, they were repaid with rare and profound learning. Thus did these men draw from old crypts and monkish cells the theology, or rather theosophy, the philosophy, the institutes, physics, and poetry of men, who made the last ages of the pagan world so grand, so influential, and so sacred.

The first in rank and fame of the great men of this period was John Reuchlin (or Capnion), born at Pforzheim, in Baden, 1454, whose immense capacity for learning, and vast intellectual powers, place him as the first philologist and philosopher of the age. It is, however, probable, from his quiet unobtrusive nature, that little of him would be known were it not for the controversy with an apostate Jew and the Dominicans, who had obtained an authority from Maximilian to destroy all Hebrew books except the Scriptures. Reuchlin's opinion as a Hebrew scholar was asked on this subject, and he strenuously opposed. For the Talmud he appeared to have an extraordinary attachment, as, like Aleuin and most of the initiated who blended the high magical philosophy with religion, he had an entheastic belief in the harmony of numbers, and the influence and mystery concealed beneath wordsthe Cabalistic philosophy, as it was termed. This may be forgiven him, as it was the ruling passion of all scholars of that day. He was contemporary with Savonarola, Melancthon, and Luther (a near relative), to whom the writings of Reuchlin appear to have been of the greatest use, especially a Hebrew grammar and dictionary that he compiled, and which Luther used in his translation of the Bible. But although his works tended towards the Reformation, he aimed rather at redressing abuses in the Church, than an entire reform, which he looked upon in the light of a revolution; and indeed expressed to Luther and to Melancthon his displeasure at the violence with which they proceeded in their work.

The esoteric and the exoteric comprehended the essence of the theology of the Reformers. Reuchlin, although a Roman Catholic (having been for twenty years proctor for the Dominicans), yet beheld true religion existing in the soul of man, as independent of outward forms and ceremonies; but he clouded it by the pedantic scholasticism of the time, and made it abstruse-in fact, a mystic science, to be understood only by those who had discovered the combined letters or words that had a holy spell or influence. This Rosicrucian atmosphere is vividly impressed upon the theologic literature of the middle ages, and we find that even in the time of Alcuin (seventh century) the writers of that period, as well as he himself, were deeply tainted with this leaven, which their successors imbibed. Thus there were discussions between the professors of the numerous colleges, and the Sorbonists of Paris, which they yet acknowledged to be, as it were, the mother college; some making Platonism the foundation of a pure religion; others, taking