* The reader is requested to consider the reasoning in the last paragraph. The prophecy in the second chapter of Daniel, is commonly supposed to relate to the four Great Empires, the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian and Roman. This last, it is (according to this interpretation,) foretold, should be divided into many kingdoms, and that 'in the latter days of these kingdoms,' (which are now subsisting) God would set up a kingdom which would never be destroyed,--that of the Messiah. Of course, according to this interpretation, the kingdom of the Messiah was not to be not only sustain after the destruction of the Roman Empire, but not till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of its ruins; whereas, Jesus was born in the time of Augustus, i. e., precisely when the Roman Empire itself was in the highest of its splendour and vigour. This is a remarkable, and very striking, repugnance, to the claims of the New Testament, and, if substantiated, must overset them entirely.--E. * The sum of our argument may be expressed thus. God is represented in the prophecies of the Old Testament as designing to send into the world an eminent deliverer, descended from David, the peace and prosperity of whose reign should far exceed all that went before him, in whom all the glorious things foretold by the prophets should receive their entire completion; and who should be distinguished by the character of the Messiah or Christ. This is an article of faith common to Christians and Jews. But that Jesus of Nazareth should be esteemed this Messiah, and that Christians can support that opinion, by alledging the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures as belonging to, and fulfilled in, him, is what we can by no means allow, and that especially on account of these inconsistencies. 1. Because, these prophecies, acknowledged on both sides to point out the Messiah, could not otherwise answer the end of inspiring them than by an accomplishment so plain and sensible as might sufficiently distinguish the person meant by them to be that Messiah. But no such accomplishment, we contend, can possibly be discerned in Jesus, and, consequently, he cannot be the person meant by them. 2. Because, several predictions which Christians apply to Jesus, are wrested to a meaning which quite destroys the historical sense of scripture, and breaks the connexion of the passages from whence they are taken. Thus many shreds and loose sentences are culled out for this purpose, which do not appear to have any relation to Jesus, or to the Messiah either; but to have received their proper and intended completion in some other person, whom the prophet, as is manifest, had then only in view.