Is the Christian Dispensation itself most advanced or most obstructed by your religious persuasions and exercises? Do your doctrines lead to truth or to error? Does your practice give plausibility, to a system, and specious appearance to institutions, which are all based upon Mammonian principles? O that the Saints of the age would leave their work of conversion for a while, and would dedicate themselves to the extirpation of Mammon, and the mischiefs which the Evil One in this disguise has entailed upon us. Man wants-man stands permanently in need—of the actual promises— the real benefits of the Redeemer's Dispensation. He cannot have them while he holds to Mammon and his gifts-he can have them only by obeying the laws of the Redeemer's Dispensation in spirit and in truth.

It would be useless to pursue this painful subject further. We find universally prevailing in the professing world, that anti-christian estimate and love of wealth, with all its concomitants, which is the most inveterate disease to which the human intellect is obnoxious-a monomania apparently incurable. And when we refer to its aggregate influence, so far as the diffusion and victory of the Christian Dispensation are concerned, we hesitate not once more to assert, that the barrier which our soi-disant Saints and worldly-minded Divines raise against the advancement of that Dispensation upon the earth, is ten thousand times more formidable than that which is constituted by actual sin and open rebellion. It is in fact THE barrier; it is in truth THE impassable obstruction; and it must be burst asunder,

it must be annihilated, it must be "ground to powder," before the final triumph of truth and righteousness can be achieved.

Once more we appeal to the reader, if all these palpable facts and incontrovertible statements do not again bring us, with a force of conviction it is impossible to resist, to our conclusion

MAMMON-ANTICHRIST.

Fain would we rub down the sharp edge of these asperities, as they bear upon any of our reverend friends and neighbours; but we cannot do so, except at the expense of both truth and usefulness. Yes: how stands the fact? Are the parties to whom we allude obnoxious to the charge of Mammonism, though they know it not! Do they, on this particular subject, teach for doctrine the subtleties of Mammonism? They must vindicate themselves; our charge is made in plain and intelligible terms, and they, as disputants, have many advantages over their accusers.

SECTION VI.

THE APOSTOLICAL REVELATION.

OUR hypothesis-MAMMON, ANTICHRIST-is not only redolent, as we have seen, with the most important possible practical influences and results, but it throws a brilliant light upon the Signs of the Times as existing phenomena, and so becomes the herald of approaching events.

Is it a truth, that all our national institutions are based on wealth, cemented by wealth?

Is it a truth that the god, or genius, of this wealth is all antagonism with the spirit and genius of the Christian Dispensation?

Is it a truth that the Christian Dispensation is, under the fiat of Almighty God, a crescent, growing progressive Dispensation, so that the kingdom of our Messiah is ultimately to be universal on the earth?

We submit, if these several positions be scriptural truths, who can deny that they tell of those things which are coming on the earth? who does not see that just as

the Christian Dispensation makes its advances in the world, so must all those systems or institutions which have Mammon for their deity shake, tremble, fall. The Dispensation of Christianity came forth from Almighty God invested with a fiat, a nature, and a purpose, that must surmount all obstructions. It was ordained, that at first it should be the least of all the seeds that are sown in the earth; and then, that of the increase of its growth there should be no end until the invisible seed has become so large a tree, that all the fowls of heaven shall make their nests in its boughs, and under its branches shall all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under its shadow all nations shall dwell.

It may well be said, with respect to the Christian Dispensation, "Lord! how marvellous are thy ways! who shall find them out?" There are, however, a few prominent facts in the history of this Dispensation upon which every sincere and good common-sense believer may safely repose. It was announced of old, by inspired prophets, three hundred years before the coming of the Messiah, that when he did come, the kings of the earth would conspire, and that the rulers would take counsel together against his Dispensation. It is recorded on the pages of authentic history, that when the promised Messiah had arrived, the high priests and elders of the people did confederate and take counsel together, and did persuade the multitude to put this holy person to an open and ignominious death. Thus the prophecy was fulfilled. It is again declared by the mouth of inspired prophets, that the time is coming when all kings shall be as fos

tering fathers, and their queens as nursing mothers to the church. This prophecy also, we may perceive, is in the course of fulfilment.

To mark the SIGNS OF THE TIMES in which we live as they bear upon this prophecy, is an employment which, though worthy of the most distinguished talent, is yet not out of the reach of the most humble intellect. The consideration that the time is yet to come when the Christian Dispensation shall no more require the aid of inspired men or apostles, of priests or preachers—that is to say, when men "shall no more say, Know ye the Lord," but when all shall be professors of the faith of the Redeemer-this is level to any capacity. The question is, whether the Christian Dispensation has not almost, indeed already, reached this time; whether, if even this generation do not touch upon this epoch, this crisis; in other words, whether the end and object which the Redeemer had in view, when he directed his Apostles to go forth and preach the Gospel to every creature, has not already gained its ultimatum; and, consequently, whether the era be not at hand for the full development and final triumph of his kingdom upon the earth.

In the twenty-fourth chapter of St Matthew's Gospel, we find this momentous question thus plainly proposed. We read that as the Redeemer sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him, saying, “Tell us when shall these things be? and what shall be