We suppose therefore the reply of the saint relative to the termination of the vision, whom Tremellius with apparent reason considers to be the Lord Jesus Christ himself, to indicate that the sanctuary of Jerusalem, the chief seat of the Eastern Church, will be cleansed from Mahometan pollution, and acceptable worship be there restored, A.D. 1847. The event will thus divide the 45 years of Daniel's last prophecy into two portions of 25 and 20 years each. The former of these periods commencing with the year 1823 and ending with the year 1847 will include the great popular revolution and the other events of the seventh and last vial of wrath, the coming of our Lord in judgement upon the apostate Gentile Monarchies, and the restoration of the Jews, which is said to take place during a time of unprecedented trouble; out of which the church of Christ have reason to expect a deliverance as marked and extraordinary as the deliverance of Lot out of Sodom, or that of the church at the destruction of Jerusalem.

The latter period of 20 years after the sanctuary has been cleansed, will be that of the conversion of the world through the preaching of the restored Jews preparatory to the introduction of the universal blessings of the Millennium.

Remarks upon the Interpretations given by former Commentators of the Vision of the Ram and He-goat.

The little horn which is the principal object of this prophecy was supposed, by the older commentators to represent Antiochus Epiphanes, and by Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton to represent the Roman power as affecting the Eastern Empire, in which interpretation they have been followed by Mr. Cuninghame. But Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Kett, and more decidedly still, Mr. Faber have justly considered it as intended to describe the Mahometan anti-christian power of the East, as the little horn of Daniel's fourth beast represents the papal anti-christian power of the West.

It is to be regretted, however, that Mr. Faber has been induced to carry the analogy between the Western and Eastern apostasies to the extent of a supposed contemporary rise and similar period of 1260 years, which could not be consistently maintained, even could so late a date as the year 606 be considered as the period of the rise of the papacy, for the date of the earliest revelation made to Mahomet according to Mahometan writers, was the year 612, and the only satisfactory commencement

of its precise period in any prophetic interpretation, would doubtless be that from which they themselves date, or the Hegira, A.D. 622. The coincidence, therefore, fails no less in its commencement than it does in its termination, which as it respects the papal period had been shewn by the older commentators to be on the sounding of the seventh trumpet, that is, according to Mr. Faber's own system, in the year 1792, but which this idea obliges him to postpone 74 years later.

What must lead us to feel less confidence both in Mr. Faber's and Mr. Cuninghame's interpretations of this vision is, that their dif ference of opinion, as to the time of its commencement, appears not to have originated from a consideration of the vision itself, but from their previous decisions as to the time of the termination of the 1260 years, which they both suppose synchronizes with the termination of the period of the 2300 (or 2400) years.

The year A. C. 553, in which the vision was seen, which is the only accurately defined date in the whole prophecy, not being taken as that of its commencement either by Mr. Faber or Mr. Cuninghame, and the victories of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, being thus excluded, there remain no means of assigning to it any precise date. Mr. Faber however

conceives that it must commence from some point of time within a period of twenty-eight years, beginning with the year A. C. 536, and very explicitly thus states the principle which alone has decided his choice to the precise year A. C. 535. "These 1260 days", he observes, "as we have already seen, synchronize "with the last 1260 days of the 2200, 2300, or "2400 days; such being the case, we have only to compute backwards 2200, 2300, and "2400 years, from the year of our Lord 1866, " and according to the epochs to which they I respectively lead us, we shall be able to "decide with some degree of probability, both 6. which of these three numbers is the true reading, and likewise at what era we are to "date the commencement of the vision of the "Ram and He-goat."

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By this mode of trial he is led to reject the readings 2200, and 2300 years; because these periods if made to end with his supposed termination of the 1260 years, in the year 1866, would commence respectively in the year A.C. 335 and A. C. 435 which must be considered as "far too late for the proper date of the "vision." He consequently adopts the period of 2400 as the true reading, which would commence A. C. 535, being according to Prideaux the second year after Cyrus had succeeded to

the empire, on the death of his uncle Cyaxares; at which time the Empire was in a state of peace.

Mr. Cuninghame supposes that the commencement of this vision must be somewhere within a space of sixteen years from A. C. 513, to A. C. 497 and by a similar process, as we must suppose, of backward reckoning from the year 1792, when in his system the 1260 years terminate, is led to fix on the precise year A. C. 508, as its proper date, at which time the Persians were engaged in war.

These dates, viz. A. C. 535, and A. C. 508, becoming therefore the subjects of controversy between Mr. Faber and Mr. Cuninghame, the decision of the question as to the correctness of their respective systems, has been made to turn upon the point whether the Ram, when first seen by Daniel, was in a quiescent state, as Mr. Faber supposes, in the year AC. 535, or in the act of pushing Westward, Northward, and Southward, as Mr. Cuninghame supposes, in the year A. C. 508. There is so little ground however in the prophecy for forming any strong opinion on this subject, that having been for several years discussed in the pages of a valuable periodical publication, no advances

• Cuninghame's Dissert. p. 277.