while the name of Lamech points to the faithful spirit in which he expressed himself on the birth of Noah, the name of Methuselah indicates nothing but condemnation; and no occasion is recorded on which he ever exhibited faith towards God. Moreover, although Lamech was the son of Methuselah, yet the latter survived the former four or five years, and died in the very year, perhaps, of the judgment of the Flood. He lived longer than any man: and, as the Flood occurred along with the death of him whose name means' sent unto death,' we are warranted to regard the extraordinary prolongation of his existence as the expression of God's long-suffering with the wicked, in his sincere unwillingness that any should perish. Lamech, therefore, represents the church of Laodicea. To that church, lukewarm and self-satisfied in the very midst of judicial desolations, Christ, whose love many waters cannot quench, saith, "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten" (Rev. iii. 19). At the time when man shall be feeling all that can be felt in the age that is, of the curse upon sin; when Antichrist shall be running his career headlong to that living hell by the lurid splendour of which he is to shine; and when the habitable globe shall be rocking under the arm of the Lord, and the sore inflictions of the avenging Lamb with his changed saints; the Lamech to come shall experimentally feel the toil and travail of an accursed earth (Gen. v. 29), and shall hail the birth of Noah and the prospect of an ark, as the true comfort of the Lord. If Enoch, then, be the Philadelphian church; and Methuselah and Lamech were almost contemporaries, between his translation, in the 113th year of Lamech, and the Flood, five hundred and sixty-nine years thereafter; it is plain, that, if Lamech represent the Laodicean church, who have failed of translation through unbelief, Methuselah must represent the whole apparel of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, combined against the Lamb. And the mystery of the circumstance that Methuselah was the father of Lamech appears to be this: that as it shall be by leaning to the principles of Antichrist that Laodicea shall come short of translation; so those very judgments of the Lord upon Antichrist, which shall but cause the unrepentant to blaspheme our God the more, shall, through sore, aye, unutterable travail, wrench the faithful in Laodicea from the things that are, and the witcheries of Satan, and be the occasions of their receiving a perfect heart towards their Lord, then knocking at the door.

Such, I believe, is one important use of the antediluvian history. I feel convinced that we see a very short way indeed into it; but I think that this view of the relation between the heavens and earth destroyed by water, and those now reserved unto fire, will be profitable to keep us from the willing ignorance of those scoffers who worship a fashion that passeth away. And we

much need to be delivered from the commandments of man into that faith of Enoch whereby we may walk with God; obtain the power of the world to come, for whatever work is necessary to be done; and be translated so that we shall not see death, so that our enemies and false friends shall seek us but shall not find us, and be unable to come where we go (John vii.34). I might add to these instances the events accompanying the entrance of the Jews into the promised land; the perishing of all who left Egypt, but Caleb and Joshua, and the children begotten since the exodus; the giants who opposed the people, in the spirit of the giants before the Flood and of the ungodly blasphemers of Jude 12; and the driving out of seven nations before the Israelites (Acts xiii. 19): but what I have already stated may suffice.

"Behold," saith the Lord, "I come quickly: hold fast (кparε) what thou hast, that no one may take thy (sepavov) crown" (Rev. iii. 11).—This is the promise for the sake of which we must have our loins girt in all sobriety, with faith as our shield, and the hope of salvation as our helmet. This promise, already expounded, is addressed, not to a promiscuous multitude, but to an angel for a church, and to a church in him. Let us, therefore, abide by the church; honouring Christ even in hypocrites, as Christ honoured Moses in them (Matt. xxiii. 2); esteeming men, not merely for the work which they do, but for the work to which they are called (1 Thess. v. 12); testifying as Christ hath commanded us (Luke v. 14); and remembering, that, while they are blessed whom men shall separate (Luke vi. 22), they who separate themselves have not the Spirit (Jude 19). We are, through the angel, commanded to hold fast what we have, with that indissoluble grasp wherewith Christ holds fast in his right hand the seven stars, wherewith the dragon is held fast during the thousand years (Rev. ii. 1; xx. 2). And what are we to hold fast? Nothing less than the promise in the previous verse. For it is by the faith that all things seen shall be shaken that we shall be delivered from their tremendous power. "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God " (Ps. lv. 19). "This is the victory, even our faith." We have overcome; for greater is He that is in us." And we are to keep our victory by the faith which brought it. Thou art a king and priest: keep thy crown, keep thy crown. Thou art not a slave, not a doubter; but a free-man by the truth, and a crowned conqueror by faith. The things of the world can never overcome the world: see that thou escape and overcome by the substance of thine expected crown (Heb. xi. 1). Watch not against men only, against thine own heart merely; but against all but God. Watch even against the saints; for the tempter will try you by them, if he can in no other way ensnare you. Especially watch and war against the supernatural powers of evil, the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly

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places. Bid thou defiance to all that is not of God; having the love of God shed abroad in thy heart, through the blood of the Lamb sprinkled on thy conscience. So no creature shall take thy crown (1 Cor. ix. 25), thy crown of victory (Tov sɛpavov σov): so shalt thou inherit the diaonuara of the world, when snatched from the brows of the devil (Rev. xii. 3; xiii. 1; xix. 12). Thou mayest be translated on the morrow: behold, He cometh as a thief (Rev. xvi. 15).

"He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall no more go out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God; and my new name" (Rev. iii. 12).-This promise contains in it glorious mysteries, which at present I have not attained to the faith of, save in a very small measure indeed. Should the Lord graciously inform me further regarding them, I shall not hesitate to give to the church what he may teach me: mean time I must be content to conclude this epistle with one or two short observations. And in the first place, it is most instructive to observe how Christ, in speaking from the complete glory in which he now personally subsists, and concerning the glories of his own throne, continually speaks of HIS GOD: whereby we are informed, that he obtained all things by making Jehovah his God, and to the glory of Jehovah as his God; as a God worthy to be trusted as God by the Eternal Son in a creature subsistence, and therefore by all creatures; and that to all eternity he will, as a Priest, render unto God as his God the glory of his kingdom, so as to prevent the creatures from regarding his manhood as having any but an imparted dignity, or from removing their worship from the Invisible Godhead of Father, Son, and Spirit revealed in the face of the man Jesus. In the next place, when Christ promises to make the victor a pillar in his God's temple, he evidently refers, not to the pillars Jachin and Boaz at the porch of the temple of Solomon (1 Kings vii. 21; 2 Chron. iii, 17), but to the seven pillars which Wisdom hath hewn out and set in her house (Prov. ix. 1). These seven pillars plainly mean the complete church, the elect of God; the living stones standing on the foundation, which uphold the eternal fabric of God, to the praise of his manifold wisdom and the glory of his grace. We are the temple of God (1 Cor. iii. 16), the pillar of the truth (1 Tim. iii. 15). The builder of the house is Christ, the Wisdom of God; the house is the kingdom ordained before the foundation of the world. And this is the Gospel, the glad tidings, the invitation of the kingdom: "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars, she hath killed her beasts, she hath mingled her wine, she hath also furnished her table, she hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither; as

for him that wanteth understanding she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled" (Prov. ix. 1-5). Here are the marriage supper of the Lamb and his invitation to it (Matt. xxii. 2), the feast of fat things, the new wine of the kingdom, the eating and drinking at the Lord's table (Luke xxii. 30), the bread and wine to be yet brought forth by our Melchizedec, the virgin character of the messengers, the universal application of the message, followed by the mockery of the whole in the message of the strange woman. From all which, we learn that the Gospel is not the Gospel if it be not the Gospel of the kingdom; for God commandeth all men every where to repent because he hath appointed a day of judgment by the Man Jesus; and it is by the power of the world to come that we are to shew forth grace and patience in the present: in that world to come our office is to be the seven pillars. Christ is now the temple of God; we are his fulness; and when he shall be manifested filling all in all, we shall be like him, in that city wherein John saw no temple but the Lord God Almighty, even the Lamb (Rev. xxi. 22). But we are also to go no more out: we now go in and out before the Lord, dwelling in God within the veil, and witnessing in the world without. There is a time coming too, and that speedily, when the changed saints shall enter into the temple of God, at Christ's coming in the clouds; when that temple shall be opened, and they shall issue forth as the seven angels, messengers or ministers of wrath, of the Lord's vengeance, the vengeance of his temple (Jer. li. 11; 1.28). But whensoever their execution of the Lord's vengeance shall have come to an end, they shall find places, as seven pillars, for ever in that temple whence as seven angels they issued: they shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (Ps. xxii. 6). The remainder of this verse is expressed in language which has already, in the course of my remarks on these wonderful epistles, been adverted to; and I do not feel that I have much, if any, more light as to its contents. I believe that the peculiar name of God, more particularly as the God and Father of Jesus Christ, is Jehovah, or Jehovah-Sabaoth (Psa. lxxxiii. 18; Zech. xiv.9); and that the mystical Christ, the perfect man, will subsist for ever in this continual declaration, "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth" (Rev. xix. 6; John xii. 13). The one hundred and forty and four thousand have on their foreheads the name of the Father of the Lamb (Rev. viii. 3; xiv. 1); and this is the subsequent distinction of the citizens in the new Jerusalem (Rev. xx. 4). I believe that this name of the Father is the fountain of the other names in the text: for whatsoever is spiritual and holy is "born, not of bloods" (aparov) which cannot put away sin; "nor of the will of the flesh," which never can spiritualize itself; "nor of the will of a man" (avèpoc), who only gene

rates flesh his like, BUT OF GOD" (John i. 13). So that Jerusalem receives a published name corresponding to the Father's only when she comes down new from the Father; and Jesus, although as man he is now glorified with the Father's self at the Father's right hand, has not yet come forth in his Father's glory, and therefore has not yet publicly borne that new name which he received when begotten of God from the dead, "without father or mother, without beginning of days or end of life." There is a vast profound beyond the thousand years, to which many Scriptures, generally applied to them, truly apply. It is when God maketh all things new (Rev. xxi. 5) that the new name of Jerusalem (Psa. Ixxxvii. 3; Jer. xxxiii. 6; Ezek. xlviii. 35; Dan. ix. 18; Gal. iv. 26; Heb. xiii. 14) and the new name of Jesus shall be fully disclosed in God; for that dispensation is one to which the Millennial age, when the city shall be in the air, shall be only as the morning; and no marvel that we now walk in darkness regarding it. In the faith of that time, when we shall know even as we are known, it becomes us now to walk with God. But I cannot avoid remarking, before I bring these observations to a close, that the three names of the Father, of Jerusalem, and of Jesus, have a striking reference to the triple cord of the man of sin,-the mark of the beast, his name, and the number of his name. I expect to see in the actings of the beast a complete mockery of the depths of God, and especially of that promise, "Behold, I make all things new;" and therefore I submit the matter to the judgment of the Spirit in the church of Christ, keeping more particularly in view the contrast of the mark of the beast on the forehead, with the name of the living God; and of the number of the beast's name, that is, his parts (Job xli. 12), with the numbers of Jesus Christ. Having given this hint, I close my remarks on the church of Philadelphia.

(To be continued.)

FIDUS.

ON THE RESTORATION AND CONVERSION OF THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL.

(Continued from vol. iii. p. 328.)

3. It may be inquired, with all humility, Whether the purposes and designs of God still unaccomplished, as revealed in his word, would not be frustrated if the conversion of Israel to the faith of Christ should precede their restoration? The design of all the Divine procedure with the human race, especially in the scenes and events of the last days, is again and again declared to be, "That they may know that I am Jehovah.' Israel is to