When an opinion, or, we should rather say, a persuasion of this imposing kind is entertained by a mind of more mobility than strength, and when it has acquired form, and consistency, and definiteness, by being long and incessantly the object of contemplation, it may easily gain exclusive possession of the mind: and a state of exclusive occupation of the thoughts by a single subject, if it be not real madness, differs little from it; for a man can hardly be called sane who is mastered by one set of ideas, and who has lost the will or the power to break up the continuity of his musings. Whether or not this explanation be just, it is matter of fact that no species of enthusiasm has carried its victims nearer to the brink of insanity than that which originates in the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy. It need not be asked whether there is not some capital error on the side of many who have given themselves to this study; for the indications of pitiable delusion have been of a kind not at all ambiguous. There must be present some lurking mischief when the study of any part of Holy Scripture issues in extravagance of conduct, and in an offensive turgidness of language, and produces—not quietness and peace, but a wild and quaking looking-for of impending wonders. There must be a fault of principle, if the demeanor of Christians be such that those who occupy the place of the unlearned are excused when they say "Ye are mad." That some peculiar danger haunts this region of Biblical inquiry is established by a double proof; for not only have men of exorbitant imaginations and feeble judgment rushed towards it instinctively, and with the eagerness of infatuation; but sometimes the soundest understandings have lost, in these inquiries, their wonted discretion. At several periods of church history, and again in our own times, multitudes have drunk to intoxication of the phial of prophetic interpretation; and, amid imagined peals of the mystic thunder, have become deaf to the voice both of common sense and of duty. The piety of such persons—if piety it may be called—has made them hunger and thirst, nor for "the bread and water of life," but for the news of the political world. In such instances it may be confidently affirmed, previously to a hearing of the argument, that, even if the interpretation were true, it has become entangled with some knotted thread of error.