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its coming desolations; we believe and are sure that they will yet acknowledge Him, though now they are equally sure that we are in grievous error while so believing. We are quite certain that the Hebrew scriptures and the Hebrew liturgy both bear us out in our views on Vicarious Atonement, and that our brethren do not, as a passage in the article in question would almost seem to imply, address to the Lord, in solemn song, in their houses of prayer, the poetical flights of an unscriptural imagination, but the sublime truths that their fathers cherished, couched in language of suitable sublimity. We have not yet finished our delightful task of reading through the six large volumes of their sacred services, therefore will not now dwell on that point: but this we can promise them, that whatsoever remarks are made in the Christian Lady's Magazine on the subject so amicably discussed between us, shall be made alone by one who delights in the epithet so kindly conferred, of their 'Gentile Sister,'

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH.

ERCHOMENA,

OR THINGS TO COME.

IN a series of letters, under the above heading, I endeavoured to state in plain terms the convictions of my mind respecting some great truths; but I avoided or but slightly alluded to the important subject of Prophetic dates, being then desirous of establishing the fact of certain events being clearly revealed to us, without reference to the period of their occurrence. The subject of Prophetic dates having been now brought forward by other correspondents, I feel that to remain silent would imply a concurrence on my part, in a very prevalent notion, that these dates are obscure and not safe to meddle with, as likely to mislead. Now these dates were recorded by the Holy Spirit, and therefore for our instruction, and ought prayerfully and carefully to be studied and investigated by all to whom God has given leisure and opportunity so to do. We must indeed remember that man may err, has erred, and will err, in his endeavours to ascertain their true application, but this makes their truth neither less divine nor less true.

Many of the pious Jews who lived to see the days of the Son of man, may in this manner have been led, on examining into the dates recorded by Daniel, to reckon the seventy weeks from the Decree issued

by Cyrus, B.C. 536, and thus to expect the promised deliverance, B.C.46. This expectation may have moved many to watchfulness and prayer, who died before that year came, while those who survived it would be led to further examination, not to disbelief, and Simeon we are told received a direct revelation, not of the year of the Advent, but that he should live to see it.

Without further preface, I will proceed to set down a few notes on the fast expiring periods of the world's History-I have no system of my own, no new interpretation, but as opinions widely vary, I will venture to set forth what seems to me the most satisfactory solution of these points.

Let us first read the words spoken to Daniel by the angel Gabriel :- "SEVENTY WEEKS are determined upon thy people, and upon thy Holy City, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and Prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand.—From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince-SEVEN WEEKS AND THREESCORE AND Two WEEKS: The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times; and after Threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.* And the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the City and the SANCTUARY, and the end thereof shall

*And not for himself, or, as the margin reads it, and shall have nothing. Hebrew. No temporal kingdom at that time; but instead of this national expectation of the Jews, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom? We trusted that it had been he which should have delivered Israel; and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done;-instead of this, nothing, to the

be with a flood, and unto the end of the war it shall be cut off by desolaations, (Marg.) And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolator, (Marg.) Daniel ix. 24-27.

The Seventy Weeks or 490 years commenced B.C. 457, when Artaxerxes issued his great decree,"ARTAXERXES, King of kings, unto Ezra the Priest, a Scribe of the law of God," &c. (Ezra vii. 1.) ending in the year of the crucifixion, A.d. 33.

The Sixty-nine Weeks from the same commencement "to Messiah the Prince," bring us to a period shortly before His public ministry.

The subdivision of this great period of Seventy Weeks, into its lesser periods, is confessedly difficult; and if this be the case in fulfilled prophecy, how much more so in what is yet future. It seems to me however, that the prophet then goes on to describe the building of the wall under Nehemiah. The building was indeed finished in the year B.C. 445, but it was not until Nehemiah's final return from Babylon, in the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, B.C. 434, that he seems to have completed his work by the expulsion of Tobiah the Ammonite and his stuff, from the Temple of God. If we count the 62 weeks or 434 days, from this time, we are brought to the year of

eye of sight. If the marginal be the correct reading, (and it certainly is most in accordance with the usual mode of Hebrew expression,) how wonderfully it expresses that feeling of disappointment which at the first overwhelmed even the chosen twelve, until they understood that the Lord's kingdom was not at that time of this world.

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the nativity; but the text says, "After threescore and two weeks Messiah shall be cut off ; we are therefore led to the conclusion, that the "troublous times" extended beyond this year, probably to the year B.C. 408, or seven weeks after the issue of the decree. Difficulties will still remain in the minute subdivisions of time, but the grand fulfilment is most conspicuous, and not affected by our inability to follow out all the details.

Let us now refer to the viiith chapter, where the prophet had a vision in which the latter desolations of Jerusalem, by the Mohammedan little horn which sprang up out of one of the four residual kingdoms of Alexander's Empire, were revealed to him; that which should make Jerusalem desolate "even until the consummation." Dan. ix. 26. One saint then asked the other saint which had spoken to him, "How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation, to give both the SANCTUARY and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, unto TWO THOUSAND AND THREe hundred DAYS, then shall the SANCTUARY be cleansed," (viii. 13, 14,) and then "Behold I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation; for at the time appointed, the end shall be." The divine speaker, for such the latter seems to be, then proceeds to explain further the vision, and to describe more plainly this King of fierce countenance understanding dark sentences, who shall be broken without hand.

The two thousand three hundred years is then the great period at the end of which the sanctuary is to be cleansed, and as both prophecies relate distinctly to the SANCTUARY and its destinies, I do not hesitate to date the commencement in the same year as that of NOVEMBER, 1842.

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