The New Jerusalem and the Saved Nations. By an Oxford
Graduate. (Elliot Stock.)—This volume is an exposition of the con- cluding chapters of the Apocalypse, and gives a description of the reign of Christ and his saints upon earth over the saved nations, who• are to be distinguished from the " saints." This reign is to be intro- duced by the annihilation of the wicked and all that is evil in the, universe, a doctrine on which the writer strongly insists, but about which we shall only say that it certainly is not more opposed to the general teaching of Scripture than is the doctrine of "everlasting torment."
Such speculations—which we notice to be becoming much more common—we consider to be superfluous. All that we can ever know on the subject is that the righteous and merciful God will surely do what is right and best with every one of His creatures; but what that right and best is we certainly are not meant to decide, either in the case of individuals or in that of classes of men. It seems to us somewhat hard that now Rome has ceased to be "Papal," there should yet seem to be " every probability indeed that as the fall of the Jewish polity was completed by the destruction of Jerusalem, so will that of the Papal system be signalised by the destruction of Rome." We imagine that Victor Emanuel's occupation must be a very vexatious interference to such interpreters of prophecy,—as distasteful almost as to Pio IX. him- self. Thore is sometimes acuteness, or even originality, in the exegesis of this writer, as, for example, in his interpretation of the parable of " The treasure hid in the field."
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