to look upon the inscription as a bull, and nothing more, whereas his shrewder companion, rightly conceiving there was a mystery in the words, delved for the Licentiate's soul, and turned up a well-filled purse. What else is this heaven of Bishop Newton and his Protestant witnesses? But we should be wrong to throw the entire responsibility of this interpretation upon Bishop Newton, for it belongs to an entire school. And surely under all the circumstances nothing need astonish us from such a quarter, especially when we bear in mind that the men who formed, and the men who adopted such opinions, if opinions they can be called, were men of integrity, learning, and even genius. As it is, few Protestants can venture to contradict these theories without an apologetic and propitiatory tribute to Protestant feeling, in the shape of some as ungracious sneer at the Roman Church as can well be compounded, lest any one should suspect the staunchness of their Protestantism. But this we can afford to forgive in consideration of the good service that must be done to the cause of common charity as well as common sense by the destruction of such wicked absurdities.

All the while we have not noticed Mr. Desprez's theory. He maintains, and with equal ingenuity and learning, that the Apocalypse was written in the reign of Nero, and had reference to the destruction of Jerusalem. To establish this he does not rely on the support afforded him by the Syriac version, which declares the Apocalypse to have been written at Rome, whither John was banished by Nero the Cæsar, nor yet upon the passage of Tertullian, which seems to make the banishment of John synchronise with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul at Rome. Nor does he consider that Eusebius, who borrows from St. Irenæus, or the other supporters of the Domitianic date, can be refuted by evidence external to the Apocalypse itself. His idea is, that the Apocalypse supplies internal evidence of the date of its composition, and of its being pointed at the destruction of Jerusalem. The Apocalypse, he says, speaks of Jerusalem as still existing, and, moreover, all the woes denounced against the worshippers of the beast, and the inhabitants of the region subject to the rule of Antichrist must fall, if we are to be governed by the ordinary acceptation and uniform employment of the Scripture phrase, upon the Jewish people,

while the great Babylon herself can be no other than the deicide city of Jerusalem. Considerable uniformity must always prevail in the treatment of these subjects, so that we shall not enter into all the analogies existing, or made out to exist, between the destruction of Jerusalem and the prophetic woes. The main line of argument, however, if we rightly apprehend it, may be traced in a very few words. The Apocalyptic prophecies have reference to a single nation and a single city, and that being once conceded or proved, the Jewish people is plainly pointed at in the inspired text, and the great Babylon may easily be identified with Jerusalem. As might be supposed, the horrors detailed by Josephus, in his history of the siege, are sufficiently various and intensified to correspond with any prediction in the Apocalypse or elsewhere; but independently of these analogies, be they fanciful or be they real, Mr. Desprez seeks to support his view by verbal criticism, and, as it strikes us, with great fairness and considerable plausibility. As one instance we might refer to his reading of the word an in contradistinction to the οἰκουμένη Οι τα Ovn of Scripture. Ty as understood by Mr. Desprez, when used with any qualifying or limiting terms, has reference to some particular land, and when used in opposition to the 0 is always restricted to the Jewish people. In the Apocalypse these qualifications, and the opposition mentioned, are constantly recurring, so that Mr. Desprez considers himself warranted in referring the expressions when so used, and that is almost invariably, to Judea. We, for our part, should be very glad to examine Mr. Desprez's theories somewhat in detail, not that we have the slightest leaning to his system, but; because it is modestly and moderately, as well as ably urged. We must, however, take leave of it for the present, with a willing expression of our gratification at the style in which the author has treated the reveries of Dr. Cumming, who has been forced into such sudden and unwholesome growth by the double agency of the Queen's visit, if we are not mistaken, to his tabernacle in Scotland, and the papal aggression frenzy in England.

Of Dr. Newman's lectures on the Turks, we have only to say we have read them with unmixed satisfaction. He makes no attempt to connect them with prophecy. What he writes is pure history, so simple, so genuine, and so faithworthy, that although it traces the origin of the Turks

into the night of fable, it never loses itself or parts company with you. But to return for a moment to Mr. Phillipps, in the establishment of his theory, he undertakes amongst other things to show that the name of Mahomet, whether spelled as in Arabic, or in the Byzantine Greek of the time, is made up of the mystic 666, which has been such a standing puzzle for the commentators. For one of these explanations, according to which MYHAMMEA B'N ABAAAAAH represents the number of Antichrist, it appears Mr. Phillipps is indebted to M. l'Abbé Vandrival, but with every deference to so respectable an authority, it seems very doubtful whether the digits signified by the letters of any name, and taken without reference to their order, could be understood to indicate the supposed number, and supposing they could, it is pure assumption that the number must be brought out in such a way. Again, a style of computation which would fit so many names cannot be intrinsically valuable, even if the inquiry were worth much in itself. Might not the least embarrassing supposition be the literal adoption by the Antichrist of some cabalistic number, from an imputed virtue or efficacy, such as it is thought was attributed to numbers by Pythagoras? or perhaps a less embarrassing course still, would be to leave the question to Bishop Newton, Mr. Meade, or Dr. Cumming, and allow them to make much of it.

There is another conjecture of Mr. Phillipps, which we cannot but regard as still more fanciful and still more untenable. Every one is familiar with the text of the prophecy which says that the Antichrist, if it be to him Daniel refers, shall worship the God Maozim, "And who is so blind," says Mr. Phillipps, " as not to see further in this remarkable word, whether the Maozim' of the Septuagint, or the Mahuzzim' of the Hebrew, a still more remarkable and wonderful coincidence between it and the name of the false prophet? Write it Mahomet, Mohammed, or Mahommed, it cannot fail to remind us of Maozim and Mahuzzem. And if we would pursue such coincidences a little further, we may find an equally striking one between the Maozim and Mahuzzim of the prophet, and the Muezzim of the Mahometan Mosques.' We must confess that conjectures like these appear to us to have nothing but their fanciful ingenuity to recommend them; and without adopting or rejecting what Mr. Phillipps,

has put forward on the whole subject, without presuming to make light of his undeniable learning, great talents, and estimable character, we submit whether such a proof as this can possibly advance his position, or whether it is more reasonable to identify the God Mahuzzim with the Muezzim or Crier of the mosque, than it would be to confound the object of worship in our churches with the church beadle.

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But it will be asked, what then? Are the prophecies to exist only for the enemy? Is the Church to abandon the guardianship of that sublime portion of her inheritance to the stranger, and when she is charged with being herself the great apostacy, is her defence, in the mouth of her children, to be limited to a dry denial? Surely not. In the absence of authoritative decision upon her part, the opinions of the Fathers and Doctors, from Irenæus to Bossuet, are entitled to that respect which Catholics alone know how to yield to them. On the question of the apostacy precisely, their opinions were widely different. The Greek Fathers, who, in common with the Latin, considered the Antichrist a person, and not an empire or a system, regarded the apostacy as identical with Antichrist. Αὐτὸν καλει τον τὸν ̓Αντίχριστον ἀποστασίαν. In speaking of the Apostasy," says St. John Chrysostom, "he alludes to the indvidual Antichrist. (Hom. iii. 12. Thess. Tom. xi. p. 525.) Theodoret uses nearly the same words 'Aoστασίαν αὐτὸν εκάλεσε τὸν αντίχριστον. Theophylactus again says, "The coming of Christ will not take place unless the apostacy shall have happened, which apostacy is the Antichrist, οὐ γενήσεται φησιν ἡ παρουσία του Χριστου εὰν μὴ ἔλθη ἡ αποστασία, τουτ' εστιν ὁ ̓Αντίχριστος, Tertullian and St. Jerome, on the other hand, refer it to the disruption of the Roman empire, and so on from question to question, the opinion of those venerable men only one degree removed from inspiration, and interesting, if for no other reason, than that they are the opinions of such men, are open to the student of prophecy. But to venture beyond such study, and set up our rival theories, is a thing hardly to be recommended. It may not be meet for us to know whether the prophecies have been accomplished, or remain unfulfilled. Their great obscurity, and the silence of the Church, are two arguments that it was never intended they should be easily interpreted. The Saviour, while giving us to understand there should be a second coming,

had no desire to embarrass us with wordy controversies and vain speculations upon the millenium. We might rather suppose it His intent to put us upon our guard by the knowledge of an impending judgment, such as that revealed in the Apocalypse, without giving us to know the hour of His visitation, or affording us means of discovering it. Were it otherwise, such knowledge as we might gain would almost seem to defeat His own purpose, and render useless the warning that the Son of Man would come like a thief in the night, though it is not pretended the warning had reference to the reign of Antichrist. Still we submit, in all humility, that even though the prophecies should have had their fulfilment, it may not be within the designs of Providence that our uncertainty should be removed; but so far, at least as we are able to calcula te the result of human industry in the exposition of prophecy, we think we may say with St. Augustine, "Ego prorsus quid dixeret fateor me ignorare."

ART. VII.-Sisters of Charity Catholic and Protestant, Abroad and at Home. By Mrs. JAMESON. London: Longman, 1855.

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HERE are few subjects more worthy of the deep consideration of the philanthropist as well as of the statesman, than that to which Mrs. Jameson has called our attention in this little work. The census of 1851 shows the excess of the female above the male population in Great Britain alone to be more than half a million. Consequently, if all the males were to take wives, (which is very far from being the case,) there would still remain 500.000 females who cannot be provided with husbands. The destructive and desolating war in which Europe is at present engaged, must still more increase the disproportion. Some persons have sought a remedy for this state of things in emigration, but the device is at once degrading and ineffectual. Delicacy and genuine shrinking modesty are the