But conceiving the prophecies which announce the coming of the Messiah to have been accomplished in the person of Christ, the Christian supposes this kingdom to be already established, and that Christ does actually reign in the heart of every true believer. That the numbers of such are comparatively small, and by no means to be estimated by the number of those who bear the name of Christian, is a lamentable truth; but it is a truth, which he was fully prepared to look for by the same unerring word of prophecy; which clearly announced, that a long period of darkness and apostacy would intervene between the appearance of the Messiah on earth, and the universal establishment of his kingdom.
It is true that the Christian finds the clearest annunciation of this long period of antichristian darkness, in books which are of no authority in the estimation of the Jew, in those of the New Testament, to wit; but if it can be shewn, as we conceive it can, that the same events are also clearly foretold by the Prophets of the Old Testament, the subject will then prefer an equal claim to the attention of both; to that of the Jew, as calling upon him, impartially to consider the evidence, which seems to prove that his Messiah has already appeared on earth; and to that of the Christian, as calling upon him carefully to examine how far the religion he professes may, both in doctrine and practice, still be tinctured with the corruptions of antichristianity.
This, then, is the point at issue; whether or not, we have in these six chapters of Zechariah, one of those Divine revelations, which displays a prophetic view of the coming of the Messiah; of his being rejected by most of his own nation, but received by the Gentiles; of the consequent abolition of Paganism, (then, except with the Jews, the universal religion of the world), and the substitution of Christianity in its stead; but which at the same time foretels the corruption of this religion by us the Gentiles; and the long reign of antichristian darkness which has since prevailed in the room of it; with all the most notable events attending these extraordinary revolutions in the human mind; events still fulfilling before our eyes, and open to the observation of all who think the subject worthy of their attention. Whether all this be clearly intimated in the chapters before us, and can be made out without violating grammatical construction in the translation of the Hebrew, or legitimate consistency in the interpretation of prophetic language, is the question we propose to consider. Frequent perusal and careful examination have satisfied the mind of the writer, that the subject of them is no other than an epitome of the prophetic history which was afterwards amplified in the Revelations of St. John; where we find, as occurs in other instances in which the predictions are repeated, that the events are unfolded with greater precision and minuteness as the period of their accomplishment draws nigh.