Its commencement is the end of conversion. The fruits of Christ's death are all gathered in 1843, so far as the number of participants is concerned. The number is never after to be increased nor diminished. It is sealed and registered for ever. During his thousand years there is not one child born, one sermon preached, nor one soul converted; the living saints are all changed, and the dead are all raised when the Lord comes; and his coming is the first day of Mr. Miller's Millennium. This does not, however, in the least affect its truth. It may be that the church has been dreaming of converting a world of Jews and Gentiles never to be converted; that Paganism, Mahometanism, Papalism, Atheism, and Bibleism are all predestined to live till the Lord comes, and they all shall die in the same day.

Again, it will be argued against his Millennium that it seems to have no object in view, except the mere occupancy of this' earth for a thousand years as a mere gratification to the saints before the wicked shall be raised. It is giving them a long life on this planet by way of compensation for the bad treatment they received on it from those wicked men who are in their graves, while the saints are reigning here in great glory with their King. Still all this deducts nothing from either its possibility or its truth. This may be the Lord's wila and if so, we acquiesce in it.

Mr. Begg's theory promises more; but it has some inconveniencies also. The Lord is in Jerusalem, and his saints are dwelling in inmortal bodies, while flesh and blood in sinful and mortal men are tabernacling among them. After his first resurrection they are marrying and giving in marriage; children are born, and sinners die; while the glorified Messiah and the saints in spiritual bodies are triumphing in Jerusalem. The saints are eating spiritual food in Jerusalem, while they are ploughing and sowing, reaping and threshing, grinding and eating earthly food in the country round about! A thousand such incongruities arise in my mind while speculating upon the specula tions of these pious and benevolent men.

Again, the more popular theories are vague. indefinite, and in some points imaginative also; and, upon the whole, unsatisfactory. Still the subject is not to be abandoned in despair; and as "the promises still seem to travail with a glorious day of grace," and that the saints are to take and possess the kingdoms under the whole heavens, it is doubtless worthy of a more profound consideration and a more extended research than we have yet been able to bestow upon it. We shall resume the question of the coming of the Lord.

WHEN WILL THE LORD COME?

This is not, indeed, a speculative and uninteresting subject. It is highly practical. To be convinced of it we have only to observe the

conduct of those who are now looking for the immediate personal return of the Lord before the extension of his kingdom, and compare it with that of those who expect it after the Millennium. The former have almost, and they ought to have altogether, abandoned all effort and prayer for the conversion of the Jew and the Greek, for the breaking down of Mahometanism, Papalism, Paganism, and Atheism. In 1843 the day of judgment commences, and conversion ceases; and why should they who believe this engage in sending the gospel to foreign lands, or in translating the scriptures into foreign languages, or in any great enterprize that looks beyond a period so nigh-just at the door. It cannot be but that our views of the coming of the Lord must affect our action on such subjects as these. The expectants of the immediate personal return are, indeed, laboring to awaken their families and friends and neighbors to a preparation for that awfully grand and glorious event, and so far are acting both rationally and benevolently. But farther than this their theory will not suffer them to go.* On the other hand, they who expect the Jew and the Greek to be converted, and all nations to be blessed by the Messiah before the end of the world-who are looking for a new moral order of things to continue for a thousand or more years, are full of ways and means for the diffusion of knowledge, for the intellectual and moral improvement of society, for the introduction of a new and better era in all that pertains to the political and moral condition of the world. They are seeking by new modes of instruction, mental and moral, to mould human nature after a more perfect model, and thus to prepare the way for a more perfect display of the transforming efficacy of the gospel on the whole constitution of man. It is therefore a practical question.

A personal and literal coming of the Lord was both the promise and the completion of the Old Testament dispensation; and as evidently it is the chief promise, the glorious hope, and the grand cosummation of the New Testament and its dispensation. Christians, then, who love their absent Friend, and in whose presence there is fulness of joy, cannot but reflect with intense interest upon the prophecies concerning his glorious and triumphant return. Theirs is the blessing promised to them that read and understand the visions of the future as sketched by the last and the most beloved of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

All parties concur that the Lord will come in some sense, either

I know it is difficult for those who believe the theory to act in a manner consistent with it. Even Mr Miller himself, of whose moral excellence I have a good report from various sources, has secured the copy-right of his book for some ten years after the end of the world, as if such a right could secure it against the general conflagration!

personally or in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the displays of vindictive majesty before this happy period arrives. Those emphatically called "Millennarians," contend that the Lord will come in person before there is any radical and extensive improvement of society; and as we all believe and hope for the personal coming of the Lord some time before or after the Millennium, we now institute the inquiry, When will the Lord come? Our method of prosecuting this inquiry shall be as follows:

1st. What events are to be immediately attendant on the Lord's coming.

2d. Inquire what events are clearly and unequivocally to occur before he comes.

3d. What events are immediately to succeed his coming.

These points scripturally ascertained, and if we are not able to state the day or the hour, we may be able to say whether that event is immediately to be expected, or whether it is to be the antecedent or the consequent of a millennial dispensation.

Let us, then, prayerfully and diligently, and with all mental impartiality, set ourselves to the examination of this great subject. If the Lord is to come personally in 1843 or 1847, we ought to know it as well as others, and from the same documents, and we ought to arrange our business and make our calculations accordingly. May the Lord give us understanding in all things necessary to our holiness and happiness! A. C.

ATONEMENT-No. IV.

Brother Campbell-I WILL preface the following remarks with an extract from my "Address," 2d edition, 1821.

"In God's dealing thus with Israel, he is to be viewed as their temporal king, or political head. 1 Sam. viii. 6, 7, and xii. 17, 19. In this relation, although he granted no pardon to presumptuous sinners according to law; yet as a spiritual Saviour and Redeemer, he did show mercy, and grant pardon to those offenders who repented, believed in, and plead his gracious promise or covenant. In other words, they were justified by faith in the gospel preached to Abraham four hundred and thirty years before the law, and which was continued to be preached to the Israelites, and by which, without the deeds of the law, all the children of Abraham, whether Jew or Gentile, have been in every age justified. Lev. xxvi. 42. Deut. xxx. 31. Num. xiv. 19, 20. Gal. iii. 8. Heb. iv. 1." page 38.

I am glad to find that we agree in the leading principle of legal

sacrifices, that their virtue only extended to temporal blessings, and to the averting of temporal curses-that they could not purify the conscience nor justify the sinner in the sight of God, so as to free him from the future judgment of God, and from future punishment in another world, and to give him a place among the sanctified in heaven. For this doctrine I have been an advocate for many years. Though we agree in this, yet we differ in two points. You contend that the benefit of sacrifice was granted to transgressors of every class, but one "This is the man who presumptuously despised Moses and renounced his dispensation." I contend that there are many unpardonable transgressors of the law, to whom the benefit of sacrifice was not granted, nor pardon obtained by them. They must die without mercy. These characters are the idolators, the blasphemers, the Sabbathbreakers, the disobedient children to parents, the murderers, adulterers, and many similar characters named in the law-all of these are worthy of death, and must surely be put to death. Let us have the general law, Deut. xvii. 6. "At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses shall he that is worthy of death be put to death." What can be more explicit than Numbers xxxv. 31. "Moreover, ye shall take no satisfaction (kaphar, atonement) for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death." So of the other characters mentioned above. See and read attentively the following texts:-Gen. ix. 6. Deut. xvii. 2, 13; vi. 13; xii. 18. Exod. xxi. 14, 17. Lev. xxiv. 16; Exod. xxxi. 15. xxxv. 2. Lev. xx. 10, 11. Deut ix. 16. Exod. xxii. 20. Num. xv. 30, &c. Are any of these characters directed in the law to take a lamb, or any other victim, and offer it for their sins in order to forgiveness? Not a hint do we find in the law.

Yes, my

You admit that "one of us may be mistaken in this case." brother, one of us is certainly mistaken, unless you in the class of presumptuous despisers of Moses, include idolators, blasphemers, murderers, and all those characters mentioned above. But you confine the presumptuous despisers of Moses to those "who renounce his dispensation." Such are apostates from his laws and government.These we acknowledge are presumptuous despisers of Moses; but are not idolators, murderers, and all those classes named above, also presumptuous despisers of Moses? To the law we appeal-Num. xv. 30. "But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously the same reproacheth the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from among his people, because he hath despised the word of the Lord and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall be utterly cut off." 2 Sam. xii. 9, 10, the Lord says, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite, and hast

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taken his wife to be thy wife. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife." Here we are plainly taught that the Lord and Moses are despised, presumptuously despised, when their commandments are presumptuously broken to do evil

Moses in the chapter just quoted, Num. xv., very plainly arranges sins into two classes-sins of errors or ignorance, and presumptuous sins, ver. 22. "If ye have erred, and not observed all these commandments, then it shall be, if aught be committed by ignorance, without the knowledge of the congregation, that all the congregation shall offer a young bullock-and the priest shall make an atonement for all the congregation-and it shall be forgiven; for it is ignorance."— Verse 27. "And if any soul sin through ignorance, then he shall bring a sin-offering, and the priest shall make an atonement for that soul that sinneth ignorantly, and it shall be forgiven him." Verse 30. "But that soul that doeth aught presumptuously shall be cut off." Is this soul directed as those are who erred or sinned ignorantly, to bring a sin-offering and obtain pardon? No: they must be cut off-utterly cut off. The reason why those who erred and sinned ignorantly had the privilege of sacrifice and pardon, is plainly stated-because it was ignorance; evidently showing that none but such transgressors had this privilege granted them. Verse 31. But who are those that sin presumptuously? Those that despise the word of the Lord, and hath willingly broken his commandments. Compare Deut. i. 43. Exod. xxii. 14. Deut. xvii. 12, 13.

One, or both of us, may have been mistaken, because of inattention to the proper import of errors, sins of ignorance, presumptuous or wilfu] sins. Moses has explained errors, sins of ignorance; to be the same thing, and contrasts or sets them in opposition to presumptuous or wilful sins. Num. xv, 22-29. Now a sin of ignorance is, according to the Septuagint translation, a sin committed unwillingly or reluctantly. As far as I have examined, they invariably use the word okousioos when expressing what we call a sin of ignorance. Now the learned well know that this word signifies unwillingly, not with full consent of the mind. See Lev. iv. 2.; v. 15.; Num. xv. 22-29. In this sense Paul uses the same word without the privative a, Heb. x. 26. "For if we sin wilfully [ekousions, willingly,] after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." The same word is used also, Phile. 14. and 1 Pet. v. 2. In these verses the word is translated willingly. It is no where else found in the New Testament. Presumptuous or wilful sin is that which is committed knowingly and willingly, with the full consent of the mind.