We know that eTeiтa corresponds to a period of more than eighteen hundred years, and eita may correspond to a period of similar length. It is certain from what has been said that it answers to some considerable space intervening between the resurrection of the just at the coming, and that of the wicked at the end.

And this is further evident from the consideration noticed in the former article, that if some considerable time shall not intervene between the coming and the end, then our Lord can have no peculiar kingdom at all. That He shall yet have a kingdom different from the present, that He shall be King de jure, which He is now, and also King de facto, which He is not, except to a comparatively small extent, as a glance at the state of the world is sufficient to shew, is admitted by all. He does not enter upon that kingdom till His coming, as is plain from 2 Tim. iv. 1, “Who shall judge the quick and dead at His appearing and His kingdom." Paul evidently expected the kingdom to begin with His appearing, but not till then, otherwise it is impossible to assign any reason why he should have connected them together. He could not have done so, had he believed it would be set up at any time before the coming. In that case he would have said "at His appearing" simply. 1 Thess. v. 2, 3; 2 Thess. i. 5-10, ii. 8, and other passages already quoted, shew that it is only then that He enters upon the full exercise of His royal authority and power. Now, if the coming and the end coincide, there will be no space left for that phase of the kingdom which all expect. That is described in such passages as Phil. ii. 10, "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things. in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father;" and Heb. ii. 7, 8, "Thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him." These have not yet been fulfilled, for Paul says expressly, "But now we see not yet all things put under him ;" and they cannot be fulfilled till the deliverance of the creature from the bondage of corruption: for it is plain that, till that time, the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spiritual wickednesses in high places, who shall then become karaɣovio, will not bow the knee to Him; and this deliverance, as we saw from Rom. viii. 18-23, does not take place till the advent. This is, for the present, sufficient to shew that the kingdom shall not be established before the coming. More proof of,

this will arise afterwards under other heads. But if not established before the coming, neither shall it endure beyond the end; for at the end, when all His enemies shall have been put under His feet (1 Cor. xv. 25), and death, the last of them, shall have been destroyed, He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father. This is, no doubt, a difficult passage, but it is sufficiently clear for our present purpose. It is evident that He delivers up His own kingdom, and not that of His enemies, for He makes it His own, destroys His enemies out of it, before He delivers it up; so that what He delivers is not theirs, but His; and to interpret it of their kingdom is to miss a most important part of the sense of the passage. Delivering up the kingdom means not merely rendering back in a state of perfection the material of the kingdom, that over which His kingly power shall be exercised, in which sense it may be called the enemies' kingdom, because it was theirs; but it means surrendering back, in some sense, the kingly power itself, as appears from the words, "For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet;"* and from the statement, "Then shall the Son also himself be subject to him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." The Son, as Mediator, is now subject to the Father, and the future subjection must differ from the present. It does not seem to be taught here that He shall cease to be Mediator, for He shall always be the band that binds the redeemed to God, the foundation and efficient of their establishment in glory, the head, indeed, of the whole creation, whether ransomed or unfallen. But the passage refers only to His kingly office, and the manner of its exercise. That His kingdom, His royal power, shall be everlasting, is put beyond all doubt by many places of Scripture, which cannot be explained away on the principle of an economical perpetuity; so that at the end He can cease to be king, only in respect to the manner of the kingdom. His subjection to the Father will appear to be greater after than before the end. The difference, in all probability, will consist in an apparent limitation of His kingly power. When He comes to judge the quick and dead, attended by the hosts of heaven, consuming the man of sin with the breath of His mouth, and destroying him with the brightness of His presence, punishing His enemies with everlasting destruction, binding Satan, crowning His people, and creating new heavens and earth for them to dwell in, and clothed with such terrible majesty that at the

* The meaning of axpis depends, of course, upon the nature of the subject, for of itself it may mean either up to a certain point but not beyond it, which is the sense here, or up to and beyond a certain point.

close the earth and the heaven flee from the glance of His countenance-we know that in all this He is the servant of the Father, and that His power is delegated; but then this is not apparent. His subjection, the delegation of His power, have become, as it were, imperceptible, lost to the view in the greatness of His exaltation, when He appears surrounded with the glory, and invested visibly and palpably with the authority and power of the supreme God over all things, as the absolute and uncontrolled Lord and Master of the universe, while the Father has, as it were, withdrawn Himself from view. This is not the manner in which He appears at present, for we see not yet all things put under Him; but that He shall thus appear at His coming and kingdom is agreed by all. Now, it is this manner of reigning that ceases when He delivers up the kingdom to the Father, and is subject to Him in such a way as that the glory, power, and supremacy of the Father may no longer be, as it were, hidden and obscured by the glory of the Son, but may shine forth clearly and conspicuously as the first and the chief. And this agrees with what Calvin says, Instit., lib. i., cap. 13, § 26: "Expedit me ascendere ad Patrem, quia Pater major me est. . . . In superiore gradu Patrem locat, quatenus differt conspicua splendoris perfectio, quæ in cœlo apparet, ab ea gloriæ mensura, quæ conspecta fuit in ipso carne vestito. Eadem ratione alibi Paulus, (1 Cor. xv. 24.) Christum dicit redditurum Deo et Patri regnum," &c.; and more fully in Lib. ii., cap. 14, § 3. Christ, therefore, delivers up His peculiar kingdom at the end. If the coming and the end are coincident, He can have no peculiar kingdom at all, which is absurd, contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture, and the confident expectation of almost all Protestants. There is, consequently, a very considerable interval between the coming and the end; and it is at the end that the wicked are raised-their resurrection, in fact, is the end; and the proposition at the head of this section is true. We see that Paul is in perfect harmony with John. Paul teaches that the wicked shall not be raised for a considerable time after the resurrection of the righteous at the coming; John tells us specifically that the interval shall be one thousand years. From the foregoing another proposition may be drawn, viz., that Christ's kingdom begins with the first resurrection, and ends with the second.*

(To be continued.)

* For the argument from dvaσT. Èk vekρwv, and from 1 Cor. xv. 23, see Wood's "Last Things," where this whole subject is discussed at length, and finally settled. Also "Goodwin on the Ephesians,” Nichol's series.

Motes on Scripture.

NUM. xiv. 11.

"And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?"

What are we to understand by these words? Is the infidel Gibbon justified in his sneer that the generation which saw the mighty works in Egypt and the wilderness, were the only generation of the chosen people which never believed in their reality? He is not justified. The text does not say, "believe the signs; " it says, "believe me." The difference between these two is very great. Had we asked any of the congregation of Israel at this memorable and melancholy season, Do you acknowledge the reality of those mighty works in Egypt and the wilderness? they would have answered with one voice, We do. Can I forget, one would have said, Egypt's cry of anguish on the night when her first-born were smitten? It will never leave my memory. Can I forget, another would have asked, that I walked with my fellows through the slimy bottom of the deep, when the waters were a wall to us on the right hand and on the left? It was only yesterday, a third would have exclaimed, that I and my children and my cattle drank of the smitten rock. It was this morning only, a fourth would have added, that I saw the manna descend around our tents, and gathered it for me and mine. Had we asked them further, Do you believe that these wondrous things were the doings of Almighty God, the stretching forth of His hand, the making bare His glorious arm? they would have answered again, We do. Men were simpler in those days; they acknowledged miraculous agency. Where, then, was the unbelief of which God complains in the words before us? Another question will bring it out. We say to them again, Then of course you believe that the God of your fathers loves you, and that His one earnest desire is to bless and make you happy? They answer with one voice, We do not. The mighty works we do not question, nor the Divine power which wrought them. But the past has never convinced us that He to whom that power belongs really loves and cares for us. We have never trusted Him hitherto, nor will we trust Him now.

Israel "believed

It is of this that the words before us complain. not God." Hence they never loved Him; and not loving Him, they never obeyed His voice. And continuing rebellious to the end, they left their bones in the sandy desert.

THIS, THEN, IS UNBELIEF. it around us every day. When men trample on the commandments of God, we know of a surety that they do not love Him; and if men do not love, it is because they do not believe. They answer indignantly, We do believe; we have never questioned that the mercies which we every day receive-sleep, and food, and raiment—are the gifts of a gracious Creator; He has bestowed them in the past, and we

And it is no record of the past,—we see

look to Him to bestow them still. All this may be; but God's love to us personally is written on these daily mercies as legibly and distinctly as ever it was written of old on the wonders of Egypt and the wilderness, and if we have not read and learned the lesson which our mercies teach, we may acknowledge every one of them and be unbelievers in God still.

The same class of persons profess faith in Christian verities.

There is no article of the creed, they tell us, which we have ever questioned. It may be so, but what have these articles revealed? Have they convinced us of the personal love of the Almighty Father of heaven,— that He is a Father to us? Have they revealed the Son as our Sav

iour, the taker away of our sins? Can we confide in that Saviour's

Can we trust that Father's love? everlasting mercy? If not, we are unbelievers, as Israel were of old. We acknowledge the facts as they did; like them, also, we are blind to the lesson of the facts.

The belief of facts is quite secondary; what God desires is, that we believe in Him. His presence is the joy of eternity, and constitutes The preparation for this joy, therefore, the earnest of this life, is acquainting ourselves WITH HIM now.

everlasting life.

ST JOHN X. 14, 15.

"I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep."

As these verses stand in our authorised translation, their connecting link is wanting, and their meaning is in consequence obscured. They ought to be rendered, "I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep." Here indeed is fulness of meaning and consolation too. The Shepherd knows His sheep as the Father knew Him: the sheep know their Shepherd as that Shepherd knew the Father. What does the Shepherd know of the sheep? He knows their weakness and need of strength; their temptations and need of succour; their sorrows and need of consolation; their perplexities and need of guidance. Thus the Father knew Him. For the sake of the flock He was to feed, and guide, and save, He himself became a lamb. The Father was His Shepherd. He knew Him in the hour of weakness, in the season of temptation, in the dark night of sorrow, in the time of difficulty, perplexity, and danger. The very depths of the tried and sorrowing heart were before Him; He poured into it the balm of Divine consolation, and ministered heavenly succour according to its need. And even so the Lamb of God, exalted now as the Great Shepherd, knows His sheep. The one knowledge is the measure of the other. As perfectly and entirely as the Father knew Jesus, so perfectly, so entirely Jesus knows us His people. He declares this plainly in the text before us. Let us take the full comfort of His words.

The second declaration is but the echo of the first. The sheep know