1 Cor. 14: 19. Who can help most heartily uniting with him! Yet if the prophets have spoken in a way which after all they themselves did not understand, nor their angel-interpreters explain, and which the men of their age and nation could not understand nor any after-ages interpret, then is Paul greatly at variance with them. In such a case, they uttered what was just as dark as a foreign language; and what has, without the possibility of edification, continued to occupy the pages of the Bible, and served to cast darkness rather than light apon its readers. Is this the manner in which God deals with the men, to whom he designs to make known his counsels respecting future events that are deeply interesting to his church? Paul directs him who speaks in an unknown tongue, to pray that he may interpret; 1 Cor 14: 13. If then what he said in that unknown tongue (unknown to the body of the Corinthian church), was capable of being interpreted, it was of course capable of being understood by him who had a knowledge of the particular language in which it was uttered. In like manner, what the prophets of old uttered, either in Hebrew or Greek, was intelligible to a man of cultivated understanding, whose vernacular language was Hebrew or Greek. Otherwise the book of God contains many a passage which has been useless ever since it was written, and will yet continue to be so. Respecting all such positions we may surely say, with Paul: "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?" Believe in the unintelligible nature of prophecy whoever may, I cannot refrain from the belief, that when God reveals any thing to men, he speaks intelligibly; and that he has not filled the book of light and consolation with dark, and double-meaning, and dubious sayings, like those of the shrine at Delphos and other heathen temples. Many a saying may be dark to our age and nation, because it is clothed in words that are foreign, and because the manners and customs and peculiar modes of thinking and speaking among the ancients are not familiar to us. But subjective darkness or obscurity, i. e. darkness or ignorance in us, is one thing; objective darkness, i. e. obscurity in prophecy itself as originally uttered, is a very different one. Let us not, through mistaken views of our own knowledge, or prejudice, or hasty reasoning, put to the account of the prophets the darkness that is within ourselves.

I have said thus much on this subject, because I wished to vindicate the Apocalypse and other prophetic writings, from charges which are often made against them of impenetrable

mystery and obscurity. Mystery, in the sense of containing that which was before hidden from ages and generations," I freely acknowledge that they contain; for their very object is to reveal such mysteries. But as to obscurity; that is principally in us. The men who wrote prophecy (I repeat it once more) designed it to be read and understood; and if they did, they wrote of course in an intelligible manner.

I do not aver, that the most ignorant of the multitude, in the days of John, could comprehend his meaning throughout the apocalyptic visions. But this is like that which happens at the present time. It is not every individual who can comprehend a good sermon; I mean, as to every word in all its parts; much less can he fully comprehend a thorough and deep discussion of a difficult point in theology. But intelligent and enlightened men can comprehend such discourses and discussions. And thus it was in the days of the prophets. The wise could understand, although the wicked did not. Prophecy is most of it clothed in the garb of poetry. Even the books of Daniel, Zechariah, and the Apocalypse, although not composed in the rhythmn of poetry, or according to its usual laws of parallelism, still breathe every where the spirit of poetry, and exhibit the disjecta membra poetae. Some education, some mental illumination, we may well concede, is needed in order to read and understand books, which are poetic in their diction, and whose style is elevated, impassioned, abounding in metaphor, brevity, energy, and imagery. What abounds in symbol, too, needs some illumination of the understanding, and some chastening of the reasoning powers, in order to be comprehended so that mistakes may be avoided. But these difficulties are not peculiar to the Hebrew poets and prophets. They are common to poetry of an elevated order, at all times and among all nations.

The particular drift of all these remarks remains yet to be pointed out. If the principles laid down are correct, it would seem to be a plain conclusion, that prophecy, and therefore the Apocalypse, was originally intelligible; with such modifications and restrictions as have just been intimated. Conceding this now to be a fact, can it be probable that the designation of times specified in the Revelation, was as dark and mysterious to John and his cotemporaries, as some interpreters of modern times have supposed it to be? I cannot persuade myself that such was the fact. What object could be answered by John, in the annunciation

of times in respect to certain events, when such annunciation was unintelligible and altogether inexplicable as to any good sense? To suppose that such was the case, would be to suppose that John trifled with the churches, to whom his book was addressed, and affected the mysterious and profound air of the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants; a supposition which nothing but absolute necessity should compel us to make.

But if the notations of time in the Apocalypse were intelligible to John and his cotemporaries, are they also to us? The former may have been true, as is the case in regard to most or all of the Scriptures; but there may still be many texts of whose true meaning we are, and must for the present be, ignorant, because we do not possess those ineans of coming at the right understanding of them which were once enjoyed.

We have already seen, how the great body of English and American interpreters have answered the question, Whether the designations of time in the Apocalypse are intelligible to us? They have generally agreed, that one day in the Apocalypse stands for a year. Yet even in this, they have not all been consistent with themselves. The 1000 years of latter glory; the ten days during which the church at Smyrna was to be afflicted (Rev. 2: 10); the silence of half an hour in heaven (8: 1); the five months during which the locusts that came from the great abyss, are commissioned to devour (9: 5, 10); the hour and day and month and year, in which the destroying angels by the great river Euphrates are to do their work (9: 15); are all variously construed by different persons, who still unite in the supposition, that three years and a half, a time and times and half a time, and 1260 days, (periods severally mentioned in the Apocalypse, but designating the same length of time), are to be interpreted as meaning 1260 years, i. e. so that each day designates one year. The propriety and consistency of thus departing from their own principle, and at one time construing numbers respecting time literally in the Apocalypse, at another in an unlimited or indefinite way, and at a third in the peculiar manner just mentioned, deserve to be examined and fairly discussed.

That John has a manner which is his own, in his book of Revelation, need not be denied. There is no necessary obscurity in this; and we may safely admit, that in some respects this manner may be different from that of other prophetic writers. He may have conformed to idioms that had arisen in

the later Hebrew, after the closing of the Old Testament canon; but idioms still which were common to his own age and country, and therefore intelligible to himself and to those whom he addressed.

The principal argument of those, who construe the 1260 days in the Apocalypse as meaning 1260 years, is drawn, as they aver, from analogy, i. e. from the usus loquendi of the Hebrew prophets. Now as an appeal to the usus loquendi is in general a legitimate and proper method of settling controversy in respect to the meaning of language, our first business will of course be, to examine whether it is (as alleged by Faber and many others) in conformity with prophetic usage thus to employ days as the representatives of years.

I must ask the patient attention of the reader to a somewhat protracted development of this point; for much that is essential to our result, depends upon it.

In Gen. 6: 3, God announces to Noah that, although he is about to destroy man from off the face of the earth by the flood, yet his days shall be 120 years. Here we cannot doubt that the literal meaning of the numbers must be intended; for otherwise we make a period of 32,260 years before the coming of the flood.

In Gen. 7: 4, God declares, that after seven days he will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;' which cannot mean, that after seven years it shall begin to rain, and continue to do so for 14,400 years.

In Gen. 15: 13, it is predicted that the posterity of Abraham shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and that they shall there be afflicted 400 years; which surely cannot mean 144, 000 years.

In Gen. XLI. Joseph predicts, that seven years of plenty and seven of famine were to come upon the land of Egypt; which beyond all doubt is to be literally understood; inasmuch as 2,520 years of each is fairly out of the question.

In Num. 14: 33, it is predicted, that Israel shall wander in the wilderness forty years; which we know was literally ful

filled.

In like manner, in Ezek. 29: 11, 12, it is threatened that the Egyptians shall be wasted for forty years, at the end of which they shall be gathered again, 29: 13. Yet commentators in general have not ventured here to make this designation of time to stand each day for a year; and some of the more cautious do

So Jonah (3: 4) proclaimed to Nineveh, that in forty days it should be overthrown; but neither he nor the people of that city supposed this to mean forty years.

When Isaiah says (7: 8), that "within threescore and five years Ephraim shall be broken," we do not hesitate to construe his prediction as literal. So again when he says that "the glory of Moab shall be contemned, within three years" (16: 14), we doubt not of the literal interpretation of his words.

Jeremiah predicts (25: 11), that the Jews 'shall go into the land of Babylon as exiles, during seventy years; yet who ever thought of making these into 25,200 years, as we must do if a day is to stand for a year?

Instances of this nature might be increased; but it is unnecessary. It will not be pretended that there is any example of designating times like those contended for in the Apocalypse, except in the book of Daniel, and once in Ezekiel. In respect to the Old Testament, it is only in Daniel that we meet with the mysterious and variously interpreted period of a time and times and half a time, which is equal to the 42 months, or the 1260 days, that are mentioned so often in the Apocalypse. Whether the instance in Ezek. 4: 4-6, already alluded to, where one day is expressly said to be put for a year, can be fairly supposed to afford any rule for the interpretation of prophetic numbers which designate time in the Apocalypse, remains for a subject of inquiry in the sequel.

Let us now turn our attention to the book of Daniel; for this we shall all acknowledge to be the great exemplar of John in the Apocalypse, as to diction and matter, as well as imagery. The time and times and half a time, in this ancient prophet (7: 25. 12: 7), is repeated in Rev. 12: 14; while in Rev. 11: 2 and 13: 5, we find its equivalent, viz., 42 months; and in Rev. 11: 3 and 12: 6, we meet with another equivalent, viz., 1260 days. Daniel, then, has brought to view this celebrated period twice, in the same or synonymous language; while the writer of the Apocalypse has mentioned it once in the same terms, and four times in equivalent ones.

Is the period named to be literally interpreted in the book of Daniel; or is it to be considered in the light of a definite number as used for an indefinite one; or must we consider each day as designating a year?

I am aware that different answers may and will be given to this inquiry, according to the different schemes of interpretation VOL. V. No. 17.

6