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most atrocious barbarities. On his retaking Jerusalem, the troops of the maritime power will retreat to the shores of the Mediterranean, and be joined by many of the converted Jews. To this host Antichrist will direct his attention; he will advance the whole of his army to Megiddo near the forces of the maritime power, and prepare to engage them. At this anxious moment, a supernatural appearance, like that in the wilderness of the glory of the Lord, will be manifested over Jerusalem, accompanied by all the saints and an innumerable army of Heaven. This tremendous vision will halt on the mount of Olives, and by an earthquake cleave it asunder. It will then advance to the valley of Megiddo, and hover over the heads of the palsied troops of Antichrist. Jesus will then personally display himself to the assembled nations. The faithful will view him with wonder and Joy. His kindred after the flesh, who pierced him, will now behold him in his glory. He will come with clouds, and all the kindreds of the Latin earth will wail because of him. He will smite them with plagues, make them destroy each other, and summon the converted Jews to take vengeance by the destruction of their enemies.' Thus will Antichrist come to an end, and none shall help him. This will occupy a period of about 30 years. The ten tribes, however, which have been so long concealed from mortal knowledge,' will be found, and restored by land, in a converted state, to the country of their fathers; and then the awful apparition of the Shechinah will remain suspended over Jerusalem.

All this, with a vast variety of minute circumstances to fill up the Drama, may be clearly and indubitably discerned, according to Dr. Faber, in various prophecies of scripture.

These opinions are stated and variously illustrated in 83 pages. The entire remainder of the volumes is occupied in commenting on the various passages as they stand, in the order of the books of the scriptures; these are divided into 44 distinct chapters. The text and commentaries from the Old Testament employ five hundred and thirty pages; those from the New employ only seventeen. Should not this circumstance induce our author to suspect whether he may not have been misled by the highly figurative language of the Old Testament, as he finds so little on this subject in the New, and especially as even St. John in the Apocalypse takes no distinct notice of the restoration of the Jews?

He who enters on the task of writing commentaries on the Prophecies with a favourite system in his mind, is much more likely to pervert the sacred oracles to its assistance, than to derive his conclusions from a fair examination of their import. Dr. Faber, undoubtedly, is often betrayed into this error: for he not only forces a meaning on the passage which it will not

bear, but adopts sentiments into his commentary which are not to be found in the text. The following scriptures and com. mentaries will illustrate our assertion; and by referring from pages 145 to 155, it may be amply confirmed.

PROPHECY I. The dispersion of the Israelites-Their idolatry in their dispersion-Their future restoration.

Deuteronomy iv. 27. The Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the peoples, whither the Lord shall lead you. 28. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

29. But, if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30. When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, in the end of the days if thou wilt turn unto the Lord thy God and wilt be obedient unto his voice, 31. (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.

COMMENTARY.

At the time when this prophecy was delivered, the children of Israel were on the point of taking possession of the promised land; and, humanly speaking, nothing was less likely than that any such calamity, as Moses here predicts, should befall them. Yet, agreeably to his declaration, the ten tribes were first led away captive into Assyria, and have ever since been given up to the delusion of worshipping strange gods. Afterwards the two tribes were carried from their own country to Babylon. And at length the same two tribes were yet more effectually dispersed by the Romans; and are, at the present day, wanderers over the face of the whole earth. In the course of this their last captivity, they have been repeatedly compelled, as if that the prophecy might be completely fulfilled, to bow down before the idols of Popery, and to abjure their own religion*. 'Nevertheless, although they be apparently forsaken, God still hath his eye upon them. As they were of old brought back from Babylon; so will they, in due season, be converted from their long apostasy, and be gathered together out of all nations. Nor will Judah alone be restored: Israel likewise shall seek the Lord his God, and be obedient. unto his voice. Then shall the two rival kingdoms be for ever united together so as to form only one people: for God hath declared, that he will not utterly destroy them, nor ever forget the covenant which he sware unto their fathers.' pp. 86.—87.

Can there be any man living, uninfluenced by a previous hypothesis, who would say, from this text, that Moses predicted the captivity of the ten tribes first and Assyria as the scene of it? can there be any man who would infer from its terms that it is yet to have a future accomplishment, or that Judah and Israel shall be gathered together out of all nations and be so united as to form one people? To say these

* See Bp. Newton's Dissert, vii.

things can be proved from other Scriptures, is quite useless for why are these passages cited, but to prove these distinguishing and doubtful positions. It is very unfortunate that this should be the first text in the series offered to prove our author's favourite opinions, the commentaries on which, being so obviously deficient both in accuracy and argument, prepare the reader to suspect the justness of all the subsequent reasonings. By the method Dr. F. has pursued, he has repeated the same things so often, and with so little attention to opinions previously expressed by others on the passages, that it is impossible to read regularly to the close of the first volume, without strong sensations of fatigue. Had Dr. Faber classed all the principal passages under distinct heads, and taken more time to answer known objections, and to prove the sense he had ascribed to them to be their true import, we think he would have made his work both more interesting and more convincing.

The restoration of the ten tribes is a very prominent part of our author's work. He conceives that the Prophecies speak in many places distinctly of Israel and Judah. But to us nothing appears clearer, than that the terms Israel and Israelites are used by the Scriptures, when not speaking historically but prophetically, as applicable to the whole of the descendants of Jacob; excepting those places where the terms Israel and Judah are both used. He complains of Mr. Mede for not making this distinction; but the adherence to this very distinction has involved him, we suspect, in a variety of false conclusions. Dr. F. is aware of the vast difficulties attending this restoration, but he surmounts them all by saying,

• It may be probably asked, How can the ten tribes ever be discovered after the lapse of so many centuries, during which they have been completely lost and mingled among the nations of the east? To such a question it would be sufficient simply to answer, I know not. The restoration of the ten tribes is expressly foretold, and is therefore an article of faith. With the manner of their discovery I presume not to concern myself.'

That the ten tribes, as a separate body from the other two, will be discovered, converted, and restored, is an opinion too lightly assumed. It involves, indeed, so many difficulties, we may say almost natural impossibilities, that much clearer evidence is requisite to establish it, than has yet been presented from the Prophecies. More than two thousand five hundred years have elapsed since these tribes were carried into captivity; and we have no distinct account of them, in any records whatever, during all this time. What became of them afterwards, is rather a matter of conjecture than of history; but it is the prevailing opinion, that the greater part of those who

were carried away,-for some might be left in the conquered country-returned, and united with the Jews after their restoration from Babylon. Those who did not return appear to have been greatly dispersed; many of them probably were lost by intermarrying with the heathen nations among whom they were situated; and the descendants of the rest, though preserved distinct, perhaps, from the heathen nations by marrying only with the posterity of Jacob, are not now to be distinguished, we apprehend, among the general body of Jews, as descendants from the ten tribes. The terms, Jews, and Israel or Israelites, appear to be used through the whole of the New Testament as convertible; and are never employed, as far as we can perceive, to distinguish between the ten tribes and the other two. There is no doubt that a great number of the kingdom of Israel returned into Judea with Ezra and Nehemiah, and were mentioned by those two inspired writers; both of whom, in their account of this event, and of some others which happened soon after, include all the twelve tribes without exception. Indeed it appears clear, that from this period the distinction of the particular tribes began to be lost; till, in process of time, on account of the political ascendancy of Judah, they were all comprehended under the common name of Jews. We may add, that Josephus gives no intimation of the existence of these tribes as distinct from the others; and that the Apostle James addresses himself to the twelve tribes scattered abroad.' The Afgans in the East, and the people in America mentioned by Dr. Faber, may be admitted to have had an extraction resembling a Jewish one, without supposing them to compose the ten tribes; for the proof that the Afgans were originally Israelites is so slender, that, in our opinion, no great importance should be attached to it. If we were to consider these people as the only representatives of the ancient nation of Israel, the case would be hopeless indeed; for these people are Mahometans, and have been such for ages; and they have continually intermarried with others of the same religion for so great a length of time, that to separate and exhibit them as the descendants of the ten tribes, would require at least as great a miracle as the resurrection of the body, by which our author illustrates the subject. We would not be understood to assert that the dispersed Israelites became extinct as a separate race from the heathen nations, either by death or intermarriage; but only that their distinctness as tribes, and as a separate body, from the descendants of Judah, as well as all proof of such distinctness now subsisting, is irrecoverably lost.

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Very little indeed of the ancient prophecy, respecting the seed of Abraham, is represented by Dr. F. as having been

fulfilled by the advent of the Redeemer and the establishment' of his kingdom through the first promulgation of Christianity, -an event which surely cannot yield in importance to any thing future. This appears to us to be not only what is called the primary, but the only sense of many of the prophecies. We would ask Dr. F. what transaction can human conjecture devise as yet to come, more extraordinary in its nature, important in its effects, and glorious in its consequences, than the Eternal Word appearing in human flesh, making an atonement for sin, rising from the grave, ascending to heaven, pouring out the Spirit, appointing a gospel ministry, completing the canon of the Scriptures, and establishing a system of truth which is advancing by rapid steps to subdue and regenerate the world? Had our author, and his oracle Mr. Lowth, more seriously considered this view of the subject, we think they would not so frequently have directed our attention to a future temporal kingdom to be obtained and established by the sword. The unconverted Jews, according to this system, are first to dispossess the present inhabitants of Judea by force of arms; and the country, again, is to be forcibly wrested from them, by the converted Jews, conveyed and assisted by the maritime nation of faithful worshippers. But, as far as we can judge, the Scriptures never represent the kingdom of Christ as owing its promotion or establishment to any other weapon than the sword of the Spirit.'

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Another circumstance which inclines us to question the accuracy of Dr. Faber's system, is, the number of miracles. which it represents as necessary to the restoration of the Jews. We might ask, what greater necessity is there for fresh miracles, to convince them, than there is for the conversion of the numerous and prejudiced nations of the heathen? Why is it to be expected that a nation, which had a number of most stupendous miracles wrought before their eyes, yet without effect, should have others wrought to convince them of the divine mission of Jesus of Nazareth, while all other nations are commanded to receive the truth concerning him on the evidences already afforded, and this too on the testimony of none but persons of the unbelieving nation?-We admit that this kind of argument should be cautiously employed in commenting on the Scriptures; for the wisdom and sovereignty of God are not to be circumscribed by the conclusions of human reasoning: yet it certainly should not be overlooked by a commentator on the Prophecies, who is in perpetual danger of being misled by the highly figurative language of the Old Testament,-especially too as our Lord declared that no other sign should be given to this people than that of his resurrection. The restoring a barren land into a

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