tian powers or systems; nor is the sanctuary itself yet cleansed. We may not look for the dawn of the latter-day glory until there are some more significant indications of these great changes. There will be, as we have seen, days of great dark ness and suffering and bloody persecution in reserve for the church of God, before Satan shall be bound; yet in a little time "he that shall come will come, and will not tarry." Christ will prove himself the triumphant conqueror. He will "bruise the head of the serpent," and crush his power. It is not the majority of our race over whom the devil will triumph, and whom he will drag down to perdition, but a meagre minority. As a section of the divine empire, this world belongs to Christ; in defiance of the past and present dominion of the adversary, he will reign over it. He will take his own time to make the conquest; nor is there any reason to doubt that his millennial reign will include prolonged ages of his power. The Scriptures speak of a thousand years, during which Satan shall be chained; but they do not intimate whether these thousand years include only the meridian glory of that age of mercy, or whether they include its gradual dawn and close. They simply instruct us that his power shall be crippled for a thousand years. Whether this period be literally a thousand years, or whether a round number of years is thus designed to indicate an indefinite and long period; or whether, counting a day for a year, which is revealed as the prophetic counting, it comprises three hundred and sixty thousand years; are questions on which great and good men have entertained different views. The most welcome conclusion certainly is the last; but we can only say that in a book so symbolical and figurative as the Apocalypse, it is not probable that the "thousand years" are to be understood literally. We can affirm with certainty that there will be a sufficiently long period, during which Christianity will have a free and unobstructed course in the world; and men and nations, unembarrassed by the deceptions of the adversary, and uncontrolled by his power, will flock to the universally-erected standard of the The work to be accomplished is no small work, and the happy period allotted to it is no short and transient age. It is no vain hope that generations shall yet exist, which, in long and unbroken series, shall see the Son of Man thus come in his glory. And when these have travelled on and travelled far, subsequent generations, in a more distant and brighter stage of this the world's spiritual progress, shall behold still brightter glories, till their progress verges toward the hemisphere where the sun never goes down. Their cross. days shall be as the days of heaven upon the earth. It is the great glory of God's eternal Son, illuminating all, encompassing all, the atmosphere in which all live and move and have their being. CHAPTER XVII. PRACTICAL DEDUCTIONS FROM THE DOCTRINE OF THE MILLENNIUM. We have reserved a separate chapter from some practical deductions of the Scriptural doctrine of the Millennium, because we could not, without embarrassment, crowd our thoughts within a narrower compass. The first remark which suggests itself in reviewing this cheering subject relates to the importance of having our minds deeply imbued with the fact that brighter days are yet to dawn upon this lost world. There is no fact more delightful, in relation to the future history of man, than that the Redeemer is to reign in millennial glory on the earth. This is humanity's hope. Come what will beside, this one thing we know, the Millennium will come. Be the darkness ever so great that precedes it, and the convulsions ever so many and severe, and the conflicts ever so agitating; the pure light of heaven will yet dawn without a cloud, revolutions and war shall be no more, and there shall be "abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.” Human wickedness may be greatly prevalent, and wicked men and nations possess great power; but not more certainly is there a God in heaven, than "the righteous shall inherit the earth," and that "for yet a little while and the wicked shall not be, yea thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be." The government of God needs this great revealed fact in order to dissipate the clouds and darkness that surround his throne. We are not without evidence in the dispensations of his providence that he now superintends the affairs of men; but the day is coming when his hand will be more conspicuous, and his gracious designs be more fully comprehended. When the Apostle John in the Apocalypse beheld the woman that "sat upon the scarlet colored Beast" upon whose forehead "a name was written MYSTERY, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth," and saw her "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus;" he makes this emphatic observation: "And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration!" Good men in every age have stood surprised and in amazement at scenes and events so full of suc cessful wickedness that they have been tempted to feel, that "the Lord seeth not, the Lord hath forsaken the earth." It is true that Eternity will |