THE present work having been for some years out of print, and a new interest having in the mean time sprung up in prophetical studies, the author has yielded to the suggestions made to him from different quarters, to prepare a second edition for the press. In doing this he has found occasion for no other than very slight alterations, additions, or omissions. Seeing no reason on mature reflection, to distrust the soundness of the main conclusion, but on the contrary finding his confidence in it continually growing stronger, he gives this edition of the work to the public revised, but substantially unchanged. If the general result of his reasonings should not meet with a consenting response from the bosom of the Christian community, the author still allows himself to believe, that important principles of interpretation incidentally developed in the course of the argument, will go far to compensate the failure of conviction on the leading point.