Allusion has been already made to seeming inconsistencies in the Doctor's sentiments. There is truth in the adage,--"_tempora mutantur et nos mutamur cum illis_,"--"times change, and we change with them." And indeed changes are allowable in matters of a circumstantial nature which do not affect moral principle. Moral principle, however, is in its nature immutable. In the early period of the Doctor's public life he had nobly proved "Negro Slavery Unjustifiable." But this accursed system was from the first interwoven with the very framework of that "Republican America," which in his "Lectures" he takes occasion thus to eulogize! "We never formed a street of the mystical Babylon.... Let this be the asylum of the oppressed.... She (Republican America) has not, either by sea or land, encouraged oppression (?) or despoiled of his goods him that was at peace with us?"--I confess my inability to credit these statements, or to reconcile them with "the great moral principles" which the author justly tells his readers it was the object of the Author of the Apocalypse to illustrate before the world. I have thus noticed some of the most important particulars in which I dissent from the interpretations of the Doctor and others, that the reader may be guided by all accessible way-marks in searching after the mind of God in this mysterious but highly instructive part of his precious word. I can again cordially recommend to his attention the Lectures of Doctor M'Leod, as the best exposition of those parts of the Apocalypse of which he treats, that has come under my notice. In the Notes will be found minor points of dissent from the Doctor's views, and from multiplied aberrations of many others. I have studied great plainness of speech, abstaining from the introduction of many verbal criticisms on the original text, and from the use of terms and phrases not familiar to the unlearned reader. Let no sincere Christian be deterred by seeming difficulties from reading the Apocalypse, or be dissuaded from searching it, by the discrepancies of interpreters; for this is equally true of "the other Scriptures." (2 Pet. iii, 16.) THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK.