Knowing that as we lay the foundation in the world, so must we and so shall we build in eternity; knowing that as we sow here so shall we reap there; it should be our earnest prayer and daily effort to lay the foundation of our future state in humility, meekness, faith, and righteousness, so that, when the tabernacle of this body is dissolved, we may have an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. EDITOR.

SLIGHT REMINISCENCES OF THE LATE REV. EDWARD MADELEY.

A GOOD man is dead. No state or civic ceremonial marked his funeral obsequies, but many a heart throughout the land has shed its silent tear for the departed. He may have left no name that will become a household word in future generations, like that acquired by gigantic intellect or matchless success; yet a life well spent in the service of God, an unquenchable desire to minister to his fellow-men by spreading abroad those doctrines of life most calculated to ensure man's welfare, and a simple piety and grace that shed their charm over his daily life, are well fitted to merit the loving recollection of those who have ever known him as one in whom they were the expressive qualities of his existence here. There are many who have had deeper and closer communion with the late Rev. E. Madeley than ever I had, many who knew him in his palmy days, when life was in its golden summer, and who felt the power of his eloquence to move them to a consciousness of the infinite reality of their life here, as a preparation for the life hereafter. I can claim no such advantages. It is only the faint shadow of a childlike recollection that can recall the delight of the Sunday scholars when we heard that he was coming once more amongst us; but our elder friends in those times regarded him as a personal friend in the pulpit, whose appearance was welcomed alike by the Church and strangers. Those days, when he was vigorous and successful, would be considered by some as the apex of his career, which dwindled by the approach of age into comparative quiet and retirement. For his fame, perhaps, he may have lived too long, but I am one of those who can say―

"And I am glad that he has lived thus long,
And glad that he is gone to his reward;
Nor deem that kindly nature did him wrong,
Softly to disengage the vital cord.

When his weak hand grew palsied, and his eye

Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to die."

About sixteen years ago I was removed by circumstances to Birmingham, and it was there I made his personal acquaintance. Leaving home I felt strange and solitary in that thriving town, and had symptoms of home-sickness. Calling on Mr. Madeley, I was received

with that fatherly welcome which so many have experienced, and was encouraged in my prospect of Birmingham life. Soon afterwards a Mutual Improvement Society was started in connection with the Sunday school, of which Mr. Madeley became the president. All my old fellow-members will join with me in saying that its success was in a great measure due to the able way in which he acted as the chairman of its meetings. With calm impartiality he listened to the crude though earnest efforts of its speakers and essayists, and was always ready to impart from the stores of his well-filled mind that knowledge and that direction they needed. The esteem in which he was held was testified, at the time of his resignation of the ministry of Summer Lane, by the presentation meeting which was held by the Mutual Improvement Society in the school-room, and at which many of the members of that society uttered the feelings of attachment that had grown during his presidency. I shall never forget the emotional tenderness of his speech, nor the gladness of his face, at the respectful appreciation of his services by his young friends.

With youthful impetuosity I once asked his advice in my literary efforts, principally in reference to the formation of style. He advised me not to imitate any, as every one had his own, peculiar to himself, but improve my own. For power and flow of language he recommended the reading of De Quincey.

He was adverse to the tendency of modern times--that of preparation for the worldly future. "Do not learn what you do not need," said he ; "when you want it you will soon be able to learn it." Prudence he regarded as a great virtue. I remember him once saying to me that prudence on man's part was the counterpart of Providence in God.

At one of the Sunday tea-meetings a paper was read on prayer, and many comments were afterwards made by those present. Mr. Madeley said that one view had been overlooked, namely, that prayer is a means of instruction, inasmuch as it not only disposed us for the reception of higher truth, but tended to keep before us those truths which we felt to be most necessary for our soul's welfare.

His preaching, when I heard him, was but the shadow of what it had been, dimmed by the loss of physical power, yet it was evident that the same earnestness was there which had made it so effective in the vigour of his middle age. When he was at Derby about three years ago, he was delighted at being able to assist in the opening services; and those of his old congregation in Birmingham must have had a similar impression at the opening of the church in Wretham Road. What associations cling around the life of a man who passes the threescore and ten years of the Psalmist !

These slight reminiscences will serve their purpose if they awaken kindred recollections. There are many who have heard the kindly word spoken, or felt the kindly deed done, whom the tidings of his death will quicken to a loving memory of the good old man--one of the fathers of the New Church. The times when he laboured most,

and most effectively, were the times of poverty and obloquy. Now, increasing wealth can secure increased ability, or at least trained ability; but no wealth, no learning, no ability can dispense with that quality so conspicuous in the lives of the early ministers of our Church-the grand apostolic quality of earnestness.

Whilst we feel that with Mr. Madeley

"There hath passed away a glory from the earth,"

we may also remember that " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, . . . yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." W. M. C.

IN MEMORIAM.

THE REVEREND EDWARD MADELEY.
OBIT Dec. 21, 1877.

"One soweth, and another reapeth."-JOHN iv. 37.
ANOTHER link in Friendship's golden chain-
Not snapt-ah! no-but strengthened and refined,
Enhanced in all its lustre, and entwined
With many a jewel rare! A shining train
Welcomes our Madeley from his mortal pain
And troubled years. And long his lettered mind,
His noble heart, his faithful hand, his kind
And earnest tongue, shall fond memorial gain;
And all his sorrow many a manly tear.

Tell how he strove the thistles to uproot,
And kept his grasp upon the toiling plough,
And watched the glistening fields of harvest near,
Rich with the earnest of the summer fruit ;-
And wreathe the laurel round his honoured brow!

JESMOND LODGE, Malton,

ROBERT ABBOTT.

Dec. 31, 1877.

THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD.
"I will come again."

BY THE LATE REV. J. HYDE.

SECTION II.-JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF FIRST ADVENT PROPHECIES. THE best guide to the right interpretation of prophecy must be found in an examination of those prophecies which we know to have been fulfilled by the Saviour at His first advent. No doubt can exist as to many such prophecies referring, in their highest, their Divine sense, to the First Advent; such are thence styled "Messianic Prophecies.'

In what way were these prophecies fulfilled? In reference to many such predictions we are not left at the hazard of doubt; the evangelists assert over and over again that certain incidents in the earthly life of the Saviour were the intended fulfilment of predictions which they cite. In dealing with these cited prophecies we are lifted above theory and secured from error. To these we shall presently refer.

Before examining these quotations of fulfilled prophecy, it may be profitably remembered that the most learned students of prophecy, at the time of the First Advent, were the Scribes, the Priests, and the better educated Pharisees. They were far more learned in this respect than the fishermen who first followed Jesus, and whom He chose for His apostles. Of Peter and John it is said that they were "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts iv. 13). If Jesus fulfilled prophecy according to the letter, why did the Scribes reject him? Perhaps the real explanation is to be found in the fact that the whole life and work of the Saviour contravened and did violence to the literal interpretation of prophecy, the only method in which the Scribes and priests believed.

In common with all devout Jews, they looked for a Messiah who should establish a literal and natural kingdom upon the earth; deliver His people (whom, of course, they understood to mean the descendants of Abraham exclusively) from the power of their enemies; reinstate Jerusalem in more than all its former glory; and then "reign on the throne of His father David for ever and ever." Because they were literalists in their interpretation of prophecy, and because Jesus almost exclusively fulfilled prophecy after a spiritual and non-literal manner, the Scribes and Pharisees regarded Him as an impostor, and rejected Him. The ground of their error was their literal interpretation of prophecy.

Even the disciples of Jesus looked for Him to literally fulfil the prophecies. Some of them were among those who "waited for the [literal] consolation of Israel" (Luke ii. 25). Literally interpreted, the song of Zacharias expresses only such external expectations. No small part of the anguish occasioned to the disciples by the submission and death of Christ consisted in the utter disappointment of all such external hopes: "We trusted that this should have been He which should have redeemed Israel" (Luke xxiv. 21). Their idea of "redemption" was only carnal and literal. The request of the "mother of Zebedee's children," that her two sons might sit, one at the right hand and the other on the left hand of the Saviour when He should come "in His kingdom," likewise expresses such an external conception of the Lord's kingdom. The most difficult doctrine for the people to understand was the purely spiritual nature of the Lord's kingdom: "The kingdom of heaven is within you." It was equally difficult with His promise to give them His flesh to eat, and His blood to drink. Similarly difficult was it to Pilate to understand the saying: "My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the

Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." We may assume that a portion of the disgust and precipitation of Judas Iscariot must have been caused by his seeing Jesus withdraw Himself from Jerusalem, when the people would by force have taken Him to make Him a King. The readiness of Peter to draw the sword and slay was only another proof that even he understood not the real mission of the Saviour; a fact previously shown in his inability to comprehend how it "must needs be" that Jesus should suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and be slain, and be raised the third day; on which occasion the Lord so sternly rebuked him (Matt. xvi. 21-23). How Christ should fight against spiritual foes, obtain spiritual victories, secure spiritual redemption, offer spiritual salvation, "save His people from their sins," establish a spiritual church as His kingdom in the earth, promise spiritual blessings to them that should believe, and shed forth on those who believed in Him the gift of the Holy Spirit, -all this inevitably shocked the literalist interpreters of prophecy, and confounded both their system of interpretation and themselves.

Something, however, may justly be said in defence of the Jews. They read the prophetic statement: "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren like unto thee (Moses), and will put my words in His mouth. . . . Whosoever will not hearken unto My words that He shall speak in My Name, I will require it of him" (Deut. xviii. 18, 19); and with eagerness they asked the Baptist "Art thou that Prophet?" (John i. 21). They knew that this was one of the Messianic prophecies, and such a natural deliverer as was Moses they anticipated in "the Christ." If they could not rise above the "letter" of prophecy, their descendants may very properly plead that, in our own time, students of the prophecies relating to the Second Advent interpret these predictions in exactly the same literal and carnal manner as the Jews of our Lord's time interpreted the prophecies referring to the First Advent. It is certainly possible that the repetition of the old Jewish error, as to interpretation, may lead to a renewal of the former disappointment as to the fulfilment of prophecy.

Again, the Jews read the magnificent prophecy :-"And He saw that thère was no man, and He wondered that there was no intercessor : therefore His arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it sustained Him. For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon His head; and He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke. According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompence to His enemies; to the islands He will repay recompence. So shall they fear the Name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun: when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob" (Isa. lix. 16-20). They read the further prophecy, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah this that is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the great