man as a missionary to China, to Mohammedan countries, to Catholic Europe, to South America? And yet these are some of the strong hold s of idolatry. These are some of the principal posts of the enemy that must be taken in our missionary conquest of the world. Who is to translate the Bible into all the languages and dialects of this babbling world? Certainly not ignorant men. Who are to carry science, and arts, and all the institutions of civilization, as well as those of Christianity, into all the dark realm of heathenism? Certainly not illiterate men. It must be evident, to every candid reflecting mind, that in carrying out the great missionary enterprise we need an army of well educated missionary men and women; individuals who have enjoyed the advantages of the best literary institutions, and some of them, at least, learned in the most ancient classics.

Education is therefore identified with all the great interests of mankind, and with all those great institutions of benevolence and religion which are operating to advance those interests. It is one of the wheels of the car of improvement, and one without which it cannot speed its way. We must therefore have learning, yes, human learning, in every department of Christian enterprise, as well as the enterprises of philanthropy. Every thing religious, as well as every thing else improving, demands it. But we cannot have the stream without the fountain we cannot have the light without the luminary: there. fore if we have learning, we must have literary institutions. If we provide for the education of all youths in the common branches of an ordinary English education, we must furnish common schools sufficiently cheap and convenient to enable all to attend them. If we give the advantages of a classical education to those who desire and need them, we must have institutions of a higher order; we must have colleges. But many are ready to ask why is it necessary to have these endowed and superior institutions? Why are not our common schools and academies sufficient for all the purposes of English and classical learning? The ignorance and shortsightedness which make this inquiry might as well ask what is the use of the great ocean? Why is it not all arable land? Why are not the clouds, and the springs, and the lakes, and the brooks, and the rivers, sufficient to water the earth? Well, now, suppose we admit that these would be sufficient to water the earth, and afford comfort to man and beast; suppose we admit them to be sufficient for all necessary purposes; what then? If these inquirers would push their investigations but one advance farther, they would learn that we could not have these very useful clouds, and springs, and lakes, and rivers, without the ocean. The ocean supplies them all. It is just so in literary matters. We cannot have the

common school and academy, and text book, without colleges. We must have oceans in the literary world, if we would have it refreshed and fertilized by living fountains and flowing streams. Colleges are needed to afford the advantages of a classical and rare erudition to those who desire and need them; to give character to the literature of our church and country; to furnish the church of Christ with linguists competent to detect impositions in the translations of the Bible; to maintain the purity of the word of God, furnish translations for the different pagan nations in whose languages it is yet to be promul gated, and men qualified, by the variety and extent of their attainVOL. XI.-Oct. 1840.

35

ments, to maintain the truth of God; that society may be furnished with men qualified to direct, in every department of enterprise and improvement. They cannot be dispensed with in our literary arrangements and provisions. We must have colleges of the highest order, and we must have them in sufficient numbers to accommodate the young men who are thirsting to quaff their inspiring and empowering waters. By patronizing these higher institutions, we are providing teachers for the lesser schools. Let the colleges multiply educated young men, and the schools will find a more abundant supply of properly qualified instructors. Increase the number, and improve the character of the lesser institutions, and they will furnish students for the colleges. They are mutually dependent upon each other. A system of education requires them both. No system can be efficient without both. Both are needed, and both demand attention and support. And if the Methodist Church would educate her own children, she must have both. She will be recreant to all her high responsi. bilities and destinies, if she does not provide both. Fearful will be her reckoning if, with her means and opportunities, she fails to furnish her children with abundant advantages for obtaining common and liberal education, under moral and religious influences.

Verily it cannot be necessary for me to give my address a hortatory conclusion. If education possess such a versatile and mighty power as we have assigned to it, and if this power must and will be exercised, if not by the good, by the bad; if not for good, for evil; all must see how powerful is the appeal of the subject itself to the Christian church to put forth her utmost energies to secure this influence in the cause of virtue and religion. If, as we think we have shown, education is essentially connected with civilization, the development of human character, and the happiness of mankind, how pathetic, as well as strong, are the considerations by which it claims our lively interest, and our liberal patronage. If education is identified with all the great benevolent and Christian institutions and enterprises of the church, and of the world; if the efficiency and success of these institutions and enterprises are to be more or less affected by the kind and degree of influence which education affords them; then, all that is sacred and soul-saving in the ministry of reconciliation, all that is sublime and Christian in the missionary enterprise, and all that is divine and important in the Bible cause, imperiously demand of the church great fidelity and carefulness in providing it for all her children, and extending it to all within the reach of her influence. I commend the subject, with all its immensity of interests and claims, to the favor and liberality of the audience. May Heaven give you to feel your responsibilities, and enable you to do your duty in this cause. Relative to our beloved Zion, may it never be affirmed by God, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge!"

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

THE CASE OF THE JEWS, CONSIDERED WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THEIR SUPPOSED LITERAL GATHERING.

NO. III.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM SCOTT, OF THE CANADA CONFERENCE.

[Concluded from Vol. XI., page 202.]

IN the commencement of this discussion it was suggested that it might not be amiss to compare the writings of various commentators and critics, to see how far their assumptions in favor of the future literal gathering of the Jews were consistent with their own modes of interpretation and criticism. It has been more than hinted, that great inconsistency prevails among them, and glaring discrepancies of interpretation. But the writer would here lay himself under restraint; for though his own taste might be gratified by a full prosecution of this part of the investigation, and though it might throw much light upon the general question, and afford some instruction, yet it would certainly occupy too much space, and subject us to the charge of tediousness. All that is necessary to justify our remarks can however be compressed within a very few pages.

The Investigator, or Monthly Expositor and Register of Prophecy, was a periodical published in London between August, 1831, and September, 1835. The work is now published in four volumes octavo. The views of interpretation adopted by the editor and his principal contributors, lead to the conclusion that the Jews must be literally restored to their own land. This subject professedly undergoes a thorough examination; but there is an utter want of uniformity among the various writers who occupy that ground, as will be easily imagined when we inform the reader that the palm-bearing multitude seen by St. John in the Apocalyptic vision are described as "literal Christians, but symbolical Jews." We do not here call in question the propriety of the description, but if there may be "symbolical Jews," there may be a "symbolical" restoration: an idea which subverts the found. ation of that mode of interpretation adopted by the literal restora. tionists. In the first volume of "the Investigator" the literal gathering is strenuously maintained, and our blessed Saviour is made to support the writer's assumptions. He says, "The prophecies of Jesus relative to the present dispersion of the Jews deserve special attention. Jerusalem was besieged and taken, the temple utterly destroyed, and the Jews scattered into all nations. These things were literally fulfilled; what, then, can we expect, but a literal restoration?" It is only reasonable to "expect" that the author of such an expectation should have fortified his views by a direct quotation from the discourse of our Lord promising a return from captivity as distinctly as the dispersion is threatened. This would have placed the matter beyond all doubt, and rendered nugatory all our reasonings on this subject. One plain sentence from the lips of the Redeemer would have sufficed to set at rest the mind of every candid Christian inquirer. Or one plain, legitimate, and unequivocal inference from any of his holy say.

ings, especially if such declaration or inference stood in connection with the Saviour's awful denunciations against Jerusalem and the Jews. But this is not the case, and therefore the writer above quoted, not hav. ing any correct knowledge of chronology, or of the history of the Jews, travels backward from the threatenings of Christ contained in the twenty-first chapter of St. Luke to the promises of a restoration contained in Jeremiah xxx, 3; places these in juxtaposition, and leaves the unlearned and ignorant to conclude that each prophet refers to the selfsame subject and period. Every child may know that our Lord refers to the dispersion under Titus Vespasian, and does not promise any such restoration as is promised by Jeremiah. Jeremiah, xxx, 3, reads, "Lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord, and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it." To what captivity does the prophet refer? To that threatened by Christ under Titus? The prophet shall speak for him. self, and his consistency will be more apparent than that of his interpreter, on whose sentiments we are animadverting. In the twenty. ninth chapter we learn what captivity is meant in the thirtieth. The tenth verse is as follows: "Thus saith the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you in causing you to return to this place." How strangely some men will write in support of a favorite theory! By such a mode of interpretation any position, however absurd, might be satisfactorily established. And yet this is the general course pursued by the principal writers in the Investiga. tor, including the learned editor himself; and it is sufficiently evident, that the literal return of the Jews can be established by no other mode of argumentation, and is therefore unreasonable and unscriptural.

The Rev. George Stanley Faber, B. D., published an elaborate work on the prophecies in the early part of the present century. The following is the very formidable title-page: "A general and connected view of the prophecies relative to the conversion, restoration, union, and future glory of the houses of Judah and Israel; the progress, and final overthrow, of the antichristian confederacy in the land of Palestine, and the ultimate general diffusion of Christianity." This work is in two octavo volumes, contains a great deal of instruction, and is characterized by humility and pious submission to the word of God. Here is none of that ostentation and pride so frequently manifested by professed interpreters of prophecy, especially millenarians and literalists. It is scarcely possible, however, to call Mr. Faber a literalist, for he is constantly speaking of the spiritual Israel, the conversion of the ten tribes, mystical Babylon, and so forth. He, however, strenuously maintains the literal restoration of the Jews, and calculates the period when it shall take place. With but little variation, all the prophetic passages usually quoted in defense of that ground are adduced and illustrated. But there is in this author a great want of precision and consistency, and it would, from him, be exceedingly difficult to gather the meaning of any prophecy. Our views and opinions on the case of the Jews are fully borne out; and this will be evident from the following remarks. Mr. Faber quotes Isaiah xlix, 5-26, and then says, "In the beginning of this prophecy, Christ, having complained that he hath labored in vain in the conversion of Israel, declareth, neverthe

less, that it is his office to bring Jacob back again to the Lord, and that Israel shall surely be gathered UNTO HIM; nor yet Israel alone; but all the far distant tribes of the Gentiles:" vol. i, page 282. No comment is necessary on this passage. The same author, in illustration of the fifth chapter of Micah, maintains that it "foretells the general resto. ration of Israel ;" and yet he says that the prophet, "addressing himself to the mystic daughter of Zion, calls upon her to be in travail, and to bring forth the mighty multitude of her sons. It must therefore have been a spiritual restoration to which the prophet Micah referred when he says, "Then the remnant of his brethren shall return," not to Palestine, but "unto the children of Israel;" that is, all who embrace the promised Saviour, who shall "be ruler in Israel," these shall be num. bered among the people of God. And wherever they are located who thus submit themselves to the authority of Christ, they shall be happy -contented-satisfied. "They shall abide." And they will have good reason for their tranquility of mind: "For now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth." Moreover in the same chapter the prophet says, "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarri. eth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest," &c. These predictions, if they refer to literal Israel at all, cannot be applied to the literal gathering, but evidently announce the active part the Jews may take in the con. version of the Gentiles after their own conversion. This Mr. Faber admits, but says it will be "after their restoration." So they are to go to Palestine, embrace Christianity there, and then be sent abroad as missionaries. Now though this may come to pass to a limited extent, it is more reasonable to suppose that these and similar prophecies will receive their fulfilment in the conversion of the Jews in the countries where they dwell, and that then their holy example and ministry will tread down the antichristian power and confederacy, however named or distinguished. This view of the subject is sustained by the report of the deputation of the Church of Scotland to the Jews scattered throughout Asia and Europe. Though in almost every place they visited they might not preach to the Gentiles, they, and all Christian missionaries, are at liberty to preach to the Jews; so that everywhere they found encouraging openings to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Let these open doors be entered, then shall "the remnant of Jacob be in the midst of many people as dew from the Lord.” Mr. Faber, by setting out with the literal restoration, found himself oppressed on every side by difficulties and apparent discrepancies among the prophets. These would have been avoided and reconciled by a careful attention to history and chronology, and the rejection of his favorite theory. It would be almost impossible for any subject to be more deeply enveloped in difficulties than the one before us, if the literal interpretation be maintained. Our author, in the conclusion of his work, says, "Some prophecies teach us that the children of Israel will be restored in a converted state; others, that they will be restored in an unconverted state: some, that they will be restored contemporaneously with the last expedition of antichrist; others, that they will be restored after his overthrow, and in consequence of the tidings of it