for any one in possession of such truth, to take every opportunity of inculcating it. I am therefore willing to take advantage of the occasion of your return to England to address to you, and through you to the public at large, a few observations illustrative of a truth which you have by your former and later researches assisted me to prove; namely, the probable importance of the coming epoch A.D. 1847, than which it is impossible that any subject can at this time be more universally interesting; and I shall endeavour to explain upon what grounds, two and thirty years ago, this its importance was first inferred by me. Again, what confirmations I have subsequently obtained of it, independently of that very satisfactory one which your researches have produced. And lastly, what is the character, as testified by prophecy, of this now rapidly approaching epoch: and as two and thirty years of the intermediate space have now already passed away since it was first given by me to the public, and little more than two years remain unexpired before it arrives, it will be very interesting to me under these circumstances to state the grounds of my past and present belief; and the public, or some portion of it, may be more willing now than formerly to examine these grounds, seeing that their judgment upon them, whether favourable or adverse to mine, will in so short a time be refuted or confirmed by the event."

The scheme has indeed been refuted; and one cannot help being surprised that Mr. Frere should take such an occasion to reprint what he wrote when he was looking forward to its confirmation by events in 1847. But we are truly glad that he has done so, for the way in which, as he states, he came to fix on that date, deserves the attention of sober and thoughtful Christians. The boldness with which he repudiated

the received text of Scripture, when he found that it crossed his scheme, and authoritatively pronounced that

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no interpretation of it could be given," is quite fearful; but it shall be stated in his own words, as he now republishes them. We have no desire to hurt the feelings of Mr. Frere, and, to say the truth, we have no great fear of doing so; but we really think that it is a duty to lay before our readers a specimen of the speculations in which a great many good men, and still more good women, spend their time and thoughts, and too often renounce their common sense, and prostitute their faith. However, the history of the opinion relating to the year 1847 is thus related :

"The length of the vision, as terminating with the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary or Temple of Jerusalem from the Mahometan superstition, is however in our text of Dan. viii. 14, declared to be a period of 2300 years, which considered as commencing A.D. 553, would bring its termination to the past year A.D. 1747, when no such event took place. The only report then that I could make upon the examination of this prophecy, (as an honest interpreter who had full confidence in his subject, and was assured that if he was faithful to it, whatever difficulties might for a time appear, he should in the end be borne out harmless,) was this, that with our present text, stating the length of the vision as 2300 years, no interpretation of it could be given; accordingly I gave my interpretation only hypothetically, on the supposition that it would be found in some ancient Hebrew manuscript that our text was defective, and that the reading of the Vatican copy of the Greek Septuagint,-viz., 2400 years,"

5 We do not here, or elsewhere, mean to charge Mr. Frere, or some other writers on the same subject, with dishonesty; but it is

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would be confirmed as the true reading; bringing the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary down to the future year 1847. This expectation was the ground of my request made to you previously to your first expedition to the East, that you would examine this text in the most ancient manuscripts you could meet with, and I need not say how satisfactory has been the result confirming it appears, by six most ancient Hebrew manuscripts, and by one in the Armenian tongue, the correctness of my anticipations relative to the future termination of this vision, A. D. 1847.

"I have now to mention a second evidence, tending to establish the year 1847 as the epoch of the cleansing of the Eastern Sanctuary from the Mahometan superstition, of an equally unsuspicious character with the foregoing, inasmuch as the confirmatory fact was not known to be a fact, when a reference was made to it, as an expected future confirmation.

"In explanation of which, I must observe that it was a favourite idea of a preceding celebrated commentator, forming indeed the basis of his general system, that Popery in the west, and Mahometanism in the east, were contemporary apostacies, beginning at the same date, A.D. 606: and reflecting upon this view, now many years ago, as being an

quite necessary to notice the free and easy, slip-along, way in which they introduce their interpretations, as if they were the very word of God. Of course Mr. Frere does not mean to say that the Septuagint has anything about years, but only days, which it gives as the translation of Daniel's evening-mornings. Yet who could guess this from his way of stating the matter? He had before, in this letter, thanked Dr. Wolff for informing him that "the reading of Daniel viii. 14, in the two oldest Hebrew manuscripts there extant, is not, as in our copies, 2300, but 2400 years." We may well believe that Dr. Wolff confined his statements (certainly he did those which Mr. Frere has given) to the number, and did not say anything about years, or days.

unauthorized, and too early a commencement for the latter power, I said within myself, if we wish to know the commencement of the Mahometan period, we must go to the Mahometans for it, and the only era which a commentator is authorized to assume is their era,-viz., the Hegira, A.D. 622 then reflecting farther that I had already ascertained from Dan. viii. that Mahometanism would terminate A.D. 1847; and having also previously ascertained, and shewn in my theory of sacred numbers, that all prophetical periods were squares, or cubes, or some other known arithmetical form or number, I said to the person who was with.me, 6 now if I take 622 from 1847 I shall find it is a square number.' I did so, and found that the Mahometan period, thus defined, was one of 1225 years; for 1847 less 622, makes 1225: and on trying to extract the square root of this number, I found it to be indeed as I had anticipated, an exact square, having 35, (the dividing of the sacred number 70,) for its root, for 35 times 35 make 1225. Now here was another credible and unsuspicious testimony to the year 1847; for I could no more see (having made no previous trial) that the difference between that number and 622 would be a square number, (except on the principle that it contained the Mahometan period, and therefore was most probably a square,) than being in England I could read the number 2400 as the text of Dan. viii. 14, in the scriptures at Bokhara.

"A third evidence of an equally unsuspicious character tending to establish the year 1847, was this; it occurred to me on the ground of the date of the Ram and the He-goat being significant, as the commencement of the Mahometan period of 2400 years, that the year in which the vision of the Great Image was seen, might be also significant, as the commencement of some other sacred prophetic period, or square number; and I found accordingly upon trial, that from B.C.

603, the date of this vision, containing the times of the four Gentile monarchies, to A.D. 1798, which I had many years before shewn was the date of the pouring out of the third Apocalyptic Vial of wrath upon the city of Rome, the metropolis of the last of these monarchies, was a square number; for B.C. 603 added to A. D. 1798, makes 2401; and 49 times 49, (or what is the same thing, for the period is a fourth power, 7 times 7 times 7 times 7,) also makes 2401, and I found farther, that another of these squares, a fiftieth 49, (or 7 times 7) added to the preceding period, thus ending A.D. 1798, brought me again down to my former ascertained period of the cleansing of the Sanctuary of Jerusalem, A.D. 1847.

"The important truth then flashed upon my mind that in the 49 times 49, or 2401 years, the period of the vision of the Great Image, commencing B.C. 603, and ending A.D. 1798, I had found the antitype to the 49 years during which and for no longer a period, it was permitted by the law to an individual of the seed of Abraham to alienate the inheritance of his fathers; after which it must necessarily return to him: and in like manner in the fiftieth 49, commencing A.D. 1798, with the fall of the papal government of Rome, (the Apocalyptic Babylon the antagonist of Jerusalem,) and ending A. D. 1847 with the rise of Jerusalem, and the restoration of the seed of Abraham to their own land; I had also found the antitype to the fiftieth, or Jubilean year, in which under the law, in the case of every individual Jew, that restoration was effected.

"And yet further, having before found by such a remarkable anticipation, as already explained, that the period from the Hegira A.D. 622, to A.D. 1847, was the square number 1225, for A.D. 622 taken from A.D. 1847, leaves 1225, I now found also that from the date of the vision of the Great Image, B.C. 603, the commencement of my newly found