Thomas. Might not those who now receive the Spirit be said to be inspired as well as they?

Olympas. They might, indeed; but not with the Spirit as the Spirit of a new revelation; but as furnishing them with the principles of divine life. God has promised the influences and consolations of his Spirit to those believers who ask him for this splendid gift. Christians need it as much as they need breath. A man can as readily live without breath as a Christian without God's Holy Spirit, animating and sustaining him with his continual aids and comforts. What a mercy it is then, that, as without the Spirit of Christ we can do nothing, this unspeakable gift is tendered to all his disciples who ask for it sincerely and in faith.—But here we must pause for the present.

A. C.

THE COMING OF THE LORD.-No. XII.

THE immediate personal return, or coming of the Lord, is a subject daily assuming more importance and exciting greater interest in the esteem of many professors. We promise our readers an impartial view of the evidence for and against the doctrine of the immediate personal return. In examining the recent developments on that subject as they appear in sundry publications, I find "the History and Doctrine of the Millennium, by Henry Dana Ward, being a Discourse in the Conference on the Second Advent near, at Boston, Mass., October 14, 1840," occupying much space in the consideration of the present Millennarians. A few extracts from it may serve as an introduction to the views of those who are daily inculcating the Second Advent at hand. We shall number these extracts for the sake of future reference:—

1. "The word millennium simply means a thousand years. In this sense, the world has seen five millenniums, and above eight-tenths of the sixth. Tradition, by an erroneous chronology, has long regarded the seventh as near, and has expected it to bear such a relation to the previous six millenniums, as the Sabbath of rest bears to the six days of labor in the week; but it is not to be followed by another six of labor: it is to be an eternal rest, in holy bliss, for the chosen people and faithful. The time is definitely a thousand years; but it has ever been, and now is, more generally received, in an indefinite sense, for a longer period; nobody can tell how long, but as probably three hundred and sixty thousand years, as one thousand.

"In this common sense I chiefly use the word millennium, to designate a period of heavenly bliss, commencing in the conclusion of this world, and running into eternity with unknown limits; a period of which all prophets have prophesied, and poets sung; the golden age

and restitution of all things, for which creation longs with outstretched neck in earnest expectation, and we ourselves groan within ourselves, constantly praying, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven so in the earth.' It is the resurrection of the dead, in angelic natures, to inherit the promised land in the new earth forever and ever."

The word millennium, with the school of Mr. Ward, means an "elernal rest, a period of bliss commencing in the conclusion of this world, and running into eternity with unknown limits." "It is the resurrection of the dead, in angelic natures, to inherit the promised land in the new earth for ever and ever."

Mr. Ward and his brethren regard the Millennium of the Apocalypse as a comet in the prophetic heavens. His words are

2. "THE MILLENNIUM OF THE APOCALYPSE.

(A Comet.)

"This is revealed in Rev. xx., and from the first notice of it by Justin Martyr, has been a stumbling-block to the curious, a sort of absurd quantity to the prophetic mathematicians; an enigma of mystery, glorious, like Melchisedec among kings, and divine like Elijah among prophets; but abstruse as the lineage of that king, and unapproachable as the chariot of fire which carried that prophet into heaven. I have no solution of it quite satisfactory to my own mind, but I have learned to regard it as a comet in the heavenly system, forming and performing a true and important part in the economy of revelation; comet-like, of an orbit so eccentric, and a revolution so diverse among the great doctrines of the heavenly kingdom that no man has yet been able to measure its pathway, to determine its specific gravity, or to calculate its period: and seen in one view, its train on a time sweeps with terrific grandeur over a quarter of the skies, filling all hearts with dismay and alarm; and seen at another time, it dashes in among the moons of a planet, as if it would brush them all away, but absolutely passes off, and leaves them unharmed, unmoved, unshaken, itself pursuing its inscrutable way among the starry host of heaven, without any deviation or perceptible change.

"Before Justin Martyr we have Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas, whose writings record their hope of the coming and kingdom of Christ, as preached in the Evangelists; and I submit to every devout mind, how little we ought to be affected by any new view of divine truth, which first appears in the church after the middle of the second century: it seems to be safer to expound the millennium by the kingdom of heeven, as the apostles and primitive Christians did, than to open a new doctrine out of Rev. xx., which some in the third and fourth centuries attempted to do."

be noted, is

This ts the to find room

This "comet Millennium," so little understood, it will the only Millennium of which the whole Bible speaks. Millennium discarded, as I conceive, by this new school, for an "eternal" Millennium. A third extract from Mr. Ward will suffice for the present. This has respect to the coming before the Millennium:

3. "Many sorts of error have at one time or other been connected with the doctrine of the Lord's coming; but never was the Lord himself left out of the doctrine, until the present age of the reformation; never wise men were found of old, or learned men, willing to believe and teach the coming of the Lord without the Lord's personally coming; men willing to believe and stout to maintain the hope of the Lord's being personally absent from his own epiphany; (what an absurdity!) men bold to proclaim the Lord's invisible "appearing" at hand; (which is a plain contradiction;) men who "love his appearing," which they are sure never to behold, for it is to be afar off or else invisible: invisible, not for the brightness of its glory, but for its hidden spirituality; but now in this age, Christendom goes headlong after a doctrine that would have shamed, I think, the common sense of idolatrous Greece and Rome-to wit: that the Lord's parousia, or visible manifestation of himself, is one in which himself does not appear! So preposterous an idea does not admit of a plain statement without exposing it to contempt; and yet, as the blessed God has given understanding to man, this invisible "epiphany," "parousia," "coming," and "appearing," is now the millenists' doctrine, and deceitful hope: a hope of device which would astonish the primitive ages and martyrs of the church, and fill them with wonder above the admiration they could exhibit in view of our factories, steamers, and trains of men and merchandize, spinning and weaving, and running against wind and tide, through hill and dale, twenty-five miles an hour, without fatigue.

"Truly, an age of inventions this, and one of the most important is least understood; one of eternal moment is every where coming into use, and few consider it; which is, a scripture way to look for our "Nobleman's return" without at all expecting to see himself, or any other: spiritual way of enjoying the riches, pomp, and universal dominion of this world, for a long time, in the blood of the first Adam, by proffering the entire glory to the second Adam, in the unseen world! "The intellectual absurdity and natural impossibility of this new theory would move our laughter, were it only a grave error of the head inoperative upon the heart; but it is connected with the tenderest life of the believer, withdrawing his affections from the Lord of glory. God is manifest in the flesh, a visible object of love and adoration; he left a lively assurance, when he ascended, that he will return with judgment to his enemies, and to be admired of all his holy and chosen people. The first love of the young church was manifest in daily looking for his parousia, and in breaking of bread in memory of his dying love, and in the hope of his speedy coming. The falling away has succeeded, until the church of the nineteenth century gives up for a thousand years his epiphany, and tires of the hope of his return, and dismisses from her heart "the love of his appearing."

"This fearful apostacy is one into which Protestants have fallen away beyond Rome herself; justifying the prophet's rebuke of treacherous Judah, whose wickedness exceeded that of backsliding Israel: "Yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters," which are called Samaria and Sodom. Let us not triumph, but rather put on sackcloth, and go softly all the residue of our appointed time, seeing that we have been carried away with

this dissembling, and that our brethren are blindfold still in the pernicious error."

After this severe castigation for our dullness and dimness of vision, compared with Mr. Ward and his co-operatives in preaching "the advent near,' 99 we must take heed how we speak in his presence on this mysterious subject. The mistake, upon the whole, is as much on Mr. W's side as on that of those whom he rebukes: for, be it observed, that we all believe in a literal personal and glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ before "the eternal rest" of which he speaks. But we never read in the Bible of an eternal thousand years reign of the saints, and therefore we are indebted to our New England friends for the illumination recently communicated to us concerning this eternal thousand years-distinct from the "comet" Millennium, concerning which our friend Ward acknowledges so much ignorance.

The controversy or the difference is not about a true personal glorious appearance and coming of the Lord, for which all Christians earnestly look; but whether we shall have a Millennium before that coming. Our present Millennarians say No. They deny a Millennium before, and we ask for the evidence of a Millennium after that event. With them there is no general conversion of the world, no triumph of Christianity before the Lord's coming; and with us, and them too, there is no conversion of the world after that coming.

The difficulty seems to be not about a personal glorious return of the Lord-not about the creation of a new earth and heaven; but whether we shall have a verification of the 20th of the Apocalypse in this world at all, or whether it be a prophecy including an eternal rest. Either myself or the Millennarians seem essentially to have mistaken the subject of the Millennium. Is not the Millennium one distinct promise? Is it not a new testament—an apocalyptic intimation? We have but one Millennium in the Divine Volume, and is not that but once spoken of by inspiration? We have no "comet" Millennium, solar, lunar, or sidereal. We have but one Millennium-one thousand years literal or figurative, which is to be temporal, and not eternal.

Time is spoken of as surviving the Millennium: "When the thousand years are expired," says John, clearly intimating that there are certain things to transpire afterwards; nay, is it not said that nations shall exist when the Millennium shall have forever passed? Are we not told that Satan shall survive it too, and venture upon new schemes of destruction when the Millennium is ended? It is said he "shall go out to deceive the nations that are found in the four quarters of the earth, the number of whose inhabitants are as the sand of the sea." After the Millennium he shall be loosed a "little season."

To call the resurrection of the just "the Millennium"-to denominate eternity "the Millennium"-to speak of it as the ultimate state of glory and bliss, appear to be introducing a new vocabulary-to be changing the sacred style, and filling the mind with confusion and darkness, rather than with light and order. Again, John's Millennium is not to be preceded by the coming of the Lord, but by the descent of an angel. An angel descends with a key in one hand, and a great chain in the other. Is this the Lord coming to judgment? Before the descent of this angel he is represented as having judged the great harlot, and as having received the alleluias of the universe for having avenged and destroyed this great confederacy of the allied enemies of Jesus. This descent of the angel and the events of this Millennium are not only afterwards to be, but are represented as a new scene in the drama of earth's existence.

This new Millennium, or this state of things, now called the Millennium, rests not at all upon the twentieth chapter of the Revelation, but upon some other foundation. On what does it rest? Is it not rather an imaginative sketch, a new vision, unsanctioned by New Testament prophecy? If the personal advent of the Lord or his glorious appearing is near at hand, may we not rather conclude that the Millennium is past, and that eternity is the scene that shall next open to the world?

Mr. Miller and many of the new brotherhood are quite definite and intelligible as to the immediate return of the Lord. It is an event just at the door. The world, they say, is 6000 years old, or wants at most but two years of its full time. In "Eighteen Forty-Three" the dead shall be raised, this present world pass away, the Lord will appear in glory, and a new order of things begin. This is all clear and intelligible. It would be important to make the premises as clear as the conclusion. I do hope they will labor this point, and give us full and ample evidence. The time is short. At present, so far as illuminated, I protest against their use of the word Millennium at all. It is certainly unauthorized.

A. C.

THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATION.

No. II.

I CANNOT Conceive of a kingdom without a constitution, an organization, a joint and common interest, and a constant co operation in reference to its self-preservation and comfortable existence, If Christ have a kingdom on this earth, it must be a community organized,