in the Apocalypse has exactly the same compass as in Ezekiel. It plainly, indeed, has not. Ezekiel contemplates the great conflict in a more general light, as what was certainly to be connected with the times of Messiah, and should come then to its last decisive issues. John, on the other hand, writing from the commencement of the Messiah's times, breaks up these into distinct portions (how far successive or contemporaneous, we pretend not to say), and giving the vision respecting Gog and his forces the same relative place that it had in the visions of Ezekiel, he describes under it the last struggles and victories of the cause of Christ. In each case alike the vision is appropriated to describe the final workings of the world's evil, and its results in connection with the kingdom of God: only the starting-point is placed farther in advance in the one case than in the other. Therefore, as found in Ezekiel, it can throw no light on the chronological arrangement of the Apocalypse.

CHAPTER XL.-XLVIII.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE VISION IN CHAP. XL.-XLVIII., WITH RESPECT TO THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH IT OUGHT TO BE INTERPRETED.

We have now, with God's help, reached the closing vision of Ezekiel's prophecies; but so far from seeing all difficulties behind us, we find ourselves in front of the darkest, and in several respects the most singular and characteristic vision of the whole book. For, all that is most peculiar, and much also that is most difficult in the manner of our prophet, concentrates itself here; and whatever need there may have been of the Spirit's aid to guide our steps through the earlier visions, the same need exists, in yet greater force, with respect to this concluding revelation. May the aid so required not be withheld. May the Spirit of Truth himself direct our inquiries, and shine for our instruction on his own handwriting. May no blinding prejudice, or narrow purpose of our own, prevent us from following the path of

enlightened research and honest interpretation; so that the views to be propounded, may, at least in all that is essential, bear the impress of soberness and truth.

Leaving out of view some minor shades of opinion, which are too unimportant to deserve any special notice, the views that have been entertained upon the vision generally, and, in particular, the description contained in it respecting the temple, may be ranged under four classes.

1. The first is what may be called the historico-literal; which takes all as a prosaic description of what had existed in the times immediately before the captivity, in connection with that temple, which is usually called Solomon's. Ezekiel just delineated, it is thought by those who hold this view, what he had himself seen at Jerusalem, that the remembrance of the former state of things might be preserved, and that the people on their return might restore it as nearly as they could. Such is the opinion sought by a huge apparatus of learning to be maintained by Villalpandus; and he is substantially followed by Grotius, Calmet, Secker, in part also by the elder Lowth, Adam Clarke,1 Böttcher, Thenius, etc. Those, however, who adopt this view, find it necessary against the natural order and connection, to separate between what is written respecting the construction of the temple, and the distribution of the land, as well as some other things, which are known to have been quite different in the times before the exile. And even in regard to the temple itself, and the things immediately connected with it, making due allowance for any changes that may have been introduced, there are many, and some of them most palpable contrarieties between what is known. to have existed in the times before the exile, and the scheme of things delineated by the prophet. These will fall to be noticed in the sequel.

1 It was, perhaps, unnecessary to mention the commentary of Dr Clarke in this connection, as all his notes, we are told in his memoirs, on Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were written in about six weeks. He gives a specimen of the extreme haste, with which he wrote, at the commencement of this 40th chapter, when he states, in respect to the view under consideration, that "every Biblical critic is of the same opinion;" and tells us, that the Jesuits, Prada, and Villalpand, have given three folio vols. on this temple," etc., though five minutes' inspection would have shown him, that of the three, one entire vol. had nothing whatever to do with the temple.

2. The straining required to maintain this view, and its utterly unsatisfactory nature, gave rise to another, which may be called the historico-ideal. According to it, the pattern exhibited to Ezekiel differed materially from anything that previously existed, and presented for the first time what should have been after the return from the captivity, though, from the remissness and corruption of the people, it never was properly realised. "The temple described by Ezekiel should have been built by the new colonists; the customs and usages which he orders should have been observed by them; the division of the country should have been followed by them. That the temple did not arise out of its ruins according to his model, and that his orders were in no manner obeyed, was the fault of Israel. How far were they behind the orders of their first lawgiver, Moses? What wonder, therefore, that they as little regarded their second lawgiver, Ezekiel ?" So wrote Eichhorn, and of the same mind were Dathe and Herder. But it is a view entirely at variance with the dimensions assigned to the temple, the mode of the distribution of the land, and the description of the river, all of which were connected with physical impossibilities to the new colonists. Some, therefore, who hold substantially the same general view, so far modify it as to admit, that there were things in the prophet's delineation, which could never have been intended to receive a literal accomplishment, yet conceive that the prophet did not the less design to present in it a perfect draught of what it was desirable and proper for the people to aim at. In so far as the actual state of things fell short of this, there was a failure -but only in the realisation, not in the idea; and it was simply this last, not the other, which was properly any concern of the prophet's. So various of the older rationalists (among others Doederlein), and in the present day, Hitzig. The view manifestly proceeds on an abandonment of the strictly prophetical character of the vision, and reduces its announcements to a sort of vague and well-meaning anticipation of some future good, such as a strong faith and lively hope might cherish, and thrown into any form the writer's own fancy might suggest. It cannot, therefore, be concurred in by any one who believes that the prophet spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, and uttered what, according to its genuine import, must be strictly fulfilled.

3. The Jewish-carnal view is the one we shall next advert to;

in its main character the opposite extreme of the last mentioned. It is the opinion of some Jewish writers, that the description of Ezekiel was actually followed by the children of the captivity as far as their circumstances would allow, and that Herod also, when he renovated and enlarged it, copied after the same pattern. (Lightfoot Desc. Templi, c. x.) But they further hold, that as this was necessarily done in a very imperfect manner, it waits to be properly accomplished by the Messiah, who, when he appears, shall cause the temple to be reared precisely as here described, and carry out all the other subordinate arrangements. A considerable party has of late years been springing up in the Christian church, especially in England, who entirely concur in these Jewish anticipations, with no further difference, than that, believing Jesus to be the Messiah, they expect the vision to receive a complete and literal fulfilment at the period of his second coming. The whole seed of Israel, they believe, shall then be restored to possess anew the land of Canaan, where they shall become, with Christ at their head, the centre of the light and glory of the world, the temple shall be rebuilt after the magnificent pattern shown to Ezekiel, the rites and ordinances of worship set up, and the land apportioned to the tribes of Israel, all as described in the closing chapters of this book.1 This opinion has also found its advocates on the continent; Hofmann, for example, and Hess, in his letters on the Apocalypse, who says:"So then it shall come to pass, that our Lord, who once was rejected and crucified by his own countrymen, shall by the same be publicly and formally acknowledged, and in the restored temple shall be honoured-and that as Israel of old was often made to do service to the nations for the rejection of his God and Messiah, so now the nations shall be subjected to him, when acknowledging his Messiah, and confiding in his God."

4. The last view is the Christian-spiritual, or typical one, according to which the whole representation was not intended to

1 See Fry on the Unfulfilled Prophecies, as one of many.

2 Weissagung und Erf. i. p. 359, where, however, it is only briefly indicated; Baumgarten also seems to incline to the same view in his Comm. on Pent.

3 Quoted by Delitzsch in his Biblisch-prophetische Theologie, p. 94, but without giving assent to it; and at p. 308, he seems to mark the opinion as a false extreme in a few remarks on some passages of Baumgarten's.

find either in Jewish or Christian times an express and formal realisation, but was a grand, complicated symbol of the good God had in reserve for his church, especially under the coming dispensation of the gospel. From the Fathers downwards, this has been the prevailing view in the Christian church. The greater part have held it to the exclusion of every other; in particular, among the Reformers, and their successors, Luther, Calvin, Capellus, Cocceius, Pfeiffer, followed by the majority of evangelical divines of our own country. But not a few also have combined it with one or more of the other opinions specified. Thus Diodati, joining it with the first, says, "Now the Lord showeth the prophet the frame of Solomon's temple, which had been destroyed by the Chaldeans, that the memory of its incomparable magnificence might be preserved in the church, for a figure and assistance of her spiritual temple in this world, but especially in the celestial glory." To the same effect, Lowth, in his commentary; and Lightfoot only differs, in so far as he rather couples the second view with the last, regards the vision as intended to "encourage the Jews with the prospect of having a temple again," though the temple and its ordinances were neither formed after Solomon's, nor designed to be actually set up, but prefigured "the enlargement, spiritual beauty, and glory of the church under the gospel." This is also the view adopted by Greenhill in his work on Ezekiel, who supposes, indeed, that the vision "represented the restitution of the Jewish church, their temple, city, and worship, after the captivity; yet not simply, but as they were types of the church under the gospel; for as we must not exclude these, so we must know this is not the principal thing intended; that which the vision doth chiefly hold out to us, is the building of the Christian temple, with the worship thereof, under Jewish expressions, which began to be accomplished in the apostles' days" (Acts xv. 16).

It is not to be denied that this last writer, as generally the writers of the class and period to which he belonged, failed in a correct appreciation of the nature of the vision, and of the distinctive principles which ought to be kept in view in its interpretation. Consequently, much of an arbitrary and fanciful kind entered into the explanations they gave of particular parts. The basis must first be laid of the proper line to be pursued, by distinguishing correctly the character of this species of composition,