prays, Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy 'statutes, and I shall keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy 'law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole ' heart. Make me to go in the path of thy com'mandments, for therein do I delight.' another Psalm, the xxv., David prays, 'Show

In

me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths.

' Lead me in thy truth, and teach me; for thou 'art the God of my salvation; on thee do I ' wait all the day.'

It appears from these passages, that the psalmist was deeply and habitually impressed with a sense of his own blindness, and need of the divine teaching, in order to understand the law of God. O that there were, in the minds of the modern Jews, the same sense of their great and absolute need of illumination from the God of their fathers, - the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, in order to their understanding the prophecies relative to the Messiah ! Having made these general observations, I shall now endeavour to show, that though,

perhaps, there be not any one passage of the Hebrew Scriptures, which clearly shows a twofold coming of one and the same person as the Messiah; yet, by comparing different passages of the Scriptures one with another, we must arrive at the conclusion, that there are two advents of the Messiah revealed in the Old Testament.

Of all the prophets of the Old Testament dispensation, Daniel seems to have been the only one to whom the events which form the subject of his prophecies were revealed in chronological order. If, therefore, the time of the advent of the Messiah be revealed at all, we may expect to find it in the book of Daniel. The first passage of this prophet which I shall consider, in reference to this point, is that part of the second chapter wherein Daniel explains the prophetical dream of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

Two distinct symbols were presented in sleep to the mind of the Babylonian monarch. First, ' a great image,' described in ver. 31-33.; and,

secondly, ver. 34, 35., 'a stone cut out without 'hands, which smote the image upon his feet ' of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the ' silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together; ' and became like the chaff of the summer 'thrashing floor; and the wind carried them

6

away; and no place was found for them: and ' the stone that smote the image became a great 'mountain, and filled the whole earth.'

The great image is declared by the prophet to be a symbol of the four kings, or kingdoms, which were to arise in the world, viz. the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman empires; the last of which was to subsist in two different conditions. First, as one undivided empire strong as iron; and, secondly, as divided into ten kingdoms, having part of its pristine strength mingled with much weakness; ' iron mixed with miry clay.' (ver. 41.) And it was not possible that a more exact picture could have been given of the state of the Roman empire, since its division into ten kingdoms by the invasions of the Goths and Vandals. Thus far, I presume, both Jews and Christians are agreed in the interpretation of this prophecy.

The stone which smote the image on its feet, and afterwards became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth, is declared by the prophet to symbolize a kingdom to be set up by God. (ver. 44.) 'And in the days of these 'kings, shall the God of Heaven set up a king'dom, which shall never be destroyed: and ' the kingdom shall not be left to other people; but it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms, ' and it shall stand for ever.'

I suppose that the Jews agree with us in understanding this kingdom of the God of Heaven to mean the kingdom of the Messiah. In none of the books of the Old Testament do we read of any other kingdom, than that of the Messiah, to be established by God; and, therefore, it is quite incontrovertible that the kingdom of the Messiah is spoken of in this passage of Daniel.

I presume further, that the Jews will admit that the kingdom of the Messiah begins to be set up at his first coming; or, at least, at the period when he first begins to exercise the authority with which he is invested; or, in other words, that the kingdom of the Messiah cannot be set up before his own appearance in the world.

Having premised these observations, I now shall deduce, from the above prophecy, the following propositions, which seem to me to be established by it.

First, The kingdom of the Messiah was to be set up in the world, and, consequently, the advent of the Messiah was to take place, not as the modern Jews and David Levi suppose, at the time of the destruction of the last of the Gentile monarchies, i. e. the Roman, but during the existence of the four monarchies; for we read in the forty-fourth verse, that' in 'the days of these kings, (or kingdoms,) the 'God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom.'

Secondly, The kingdom of the Messiah was to exist in the world in two different states or con