over the remains of Newton should be removed from under the roof of that sacred sanctuary, Westminster Abbey. For to announce, as it does, that "Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid in night" during thousands of years, waiting, as it were, until that identical astronomer should be born, when LIGHT should for the first time dawn upon the world,-is shamefully to cast the CREATOR of heaven and earth, together with his MESSIAH, into a dungeon of darkness—to stigmatize them as Ignoramuses and Imbeciles! It should be remembered that " God said, Let there be light and there was light;" in instantaneous obedience to the fiat. POPE's muse must have been lost in a mist, when she thought any other So much for speculative science, with its sun images, ruling Baals, and systems of which they are the support.

necessary.

If we consult the SAVIOUR as the divine and infallible oracle, we may, I think, obtain some insight into the intent of these sun images-scientific desolators,-and it will be found that he perfectly understood what such objects were

meant to convey to the minds of their original framers. In the 24th chapter of St. Matthew "Christ foretelleth the destruction of the temple,” together with various other things, such as the decline of faith, the abounding of iniquity, and the cause of desolation, all which are to take place in the latter days. With regard to the first two, their prevalence at this very time fully indicates that those days have already arrived. Verses 12, 13, 14, and 15, in this chapter, treat of things apparently now in progress. Verse 12 touches on the decline of faith: "and because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold," -which may fairly, I think, be interpreted somewhat thus:-That, by the abundant manoeuvring and specious reasonings of the learned, -by their propping up one species of science and another, all having for their basis a contempt of God's Word,-Faith sickens, becomes faint, waxeth cold, and ready to expire! Verse 13: "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved," alludes, we conclude, to the maintaining of faith, in spite of the deceitful

logic of the beggarly elements of the world, and promises that by so doing salvation is to be attained. Verse 14: "And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end

come, seems to be a most important announcement of our SAVIOUR. The whole world is thereby challenged to be attentive!

The next two verses contain the injunction. "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judea

4 The expression "and then shall the end come" is thus explained in Daniel ix. 24:-" Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness," &c. This will be preparatory to the ushering in of the Messiah's righteous kingdom, at the restoration of the Israelites to their native land, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, -at which time no branch of science of which the principles and doctrine are out of the pale of truth and integrity will be permitted to exist. Were such allowed to remain, the transgression" would not be finished, nor "an end of sins' be made.

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flee into the mountains" as a refuge, I presume, from the impending wrath. A little further on, in the same chapter, and connected with the same transgression, or, rather, announcing the calamities which should take place in consequence of that peculiar transgression-the abomination of desolation,-we read: "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elects' sake those days shall be shortened."

This, then, is the awful denunciation pronounced against that something of an idolatrous nature that "abomination of desolation" which is so pointedly spoken of in verse 15, which I again quote, on account of its reference to a passage in Daniel, which throws the desired light upon the nature of that desolating transgression : "When therefore ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand.)" In accordance

with this indication, a reference to Daniel ix. 27 leads to the wished-for disclosure. It will be

sufficient for my purpose to quote part of that verse" and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate." In the margin I find," or, and upon the battlements shall be the idols of the desolator:"thus showing what were the causes of Jerusalem's desolation!

We have now to inquire of what nature and description were those idols styled by our SAVIOUR "the abomination of desolation," which He notes in his " Gospel of the kingdom" as being of so heinous a nature, and so decidedly to be shunned. I will give a description of one or two, agreeably to the original tongue, and likewise an engraving which will suffice to show the sort of objects which adorned, or rather defiled, the battlements of the once holy Jerusalem. It is to be observed that their sun images were of various forms, yet all of them indicating systems of revolvency. In fact, they were the originators of all orrery machinery and systems of the sun.