the Jews believed that their Messiah, when he took possession of his throne on earth, should reign a thousand years in happiness and glory. Through all those days of suffering and blood in which the foundations of the religion were laid, it was the relief of the afflicted Christians to anticipate the time when every knee should bow to him whose right it was to reign, and his persecuted followers should be lifted from the dust. Many a time in the Christian history has this vision been indulged. Often has the time been fixed, but the hour has arrived and brought no change with it; casting only a momentary chill, however, upon the hopeful propensities of mankind, since in every succeeding age the same hope rises, only to set in disappointment and sorrow again.

This taste and tendency on the part of imaginative believers offers a great temptation to those persons, who find their account in flattering human delusion, and who do it without remorse of conscience, since in deceiving others they generally succeed to some extent in imposing upon themselves. Hosts of minor prophets have risen up, sufficiently worldly in their views, but each proclaiming that the end of the world was at hand. They have generally been men utterly incapable of taking just and enlightened views of any subject. Thinking that they perceived some intimations of the kind in Scripture, they have seized upon them as grand discoveries. The imagination always sees its way clear, when the reason is not consulted; and as they have published their results with some sincerity and abundant self-applause, they have always found enough who were sufficiently ignorant of the Scriptures to believe them. Sometimes a harmless comet, moving quietly on its far-off way, was to break from God's control and dash our earth to pieces; or some other of the less familiar changes of nature filled men with dismay; but when the appointed hour arrived, the world moved on in calm indifference through its heavenly circle, and there was not an end even to the follies and delusions in it, for it was but a little while before the same wild fancies were renewed, and after deceiving many to their injury, went heavily down into contempt and darkness again.

There must be a reason why this process can thus be perpetually repeated; otherwise men would gather some

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information from the past. And as we have had the opportunity of tracing the course of one of these hallucinations, we may perhaps be able to say how and why it is, that so many after escaping from one delusion of this kind. are so ready to fall into another. The explanation seems to be found in a certain state of mind, in which the opinion originates. The opinion is not the cause, but the effect; and as, when a person sees things yellow, we send not for a surgeon to operate on his eyes, but for a physician to heal the disorder of his system, these humiliating errors are to be resisted, not by Scriptural interpretation, nor by an exposure of their unsoundness, but by the slower process of correcting the state of mind out of which they grow. It is not so disheartening a labor as many suppose; at least it is not so discouraging, as to find common sense views utterly powerless, as they are in these cases. Since nothing is accomplished by direct appeal and instruction, all the encouragement there can be, must be found in that alterative process, which sooner or later will reconcile reason and religion in the public mind, and make the divided, one.

That such things are owing to a habit of mind rather than to any mistake of divine instruction, may be seen in the early Christians themselves. It is easy to see in their Epistles the traces of an impression that the end of the world was at hand. They were employed in bearing new and distasteful truths to mankind. New truths are never welcome; the public mind is so reluctant to admit them, that it always seems to those who preach them, as if they were laboring in vain. It is like a river breaking out from the mountains and running confidently to the deep; the great sea rises in displeasure, roars and resists, dashing in thunder against it, but at last when the elements have arranged themselves and found their places, submits and takes it in. So every new truth is angrily resisted at first, though at last it finds its best friends in those who were formerly its most vehement opposers. Meantime those to whom the new truth is entrusted, not having the gift of prophecy to see from the beginning to the end, not knowing the calm that will shortly follow, are dismayed and despondent; and they are in that state of mind which easily generates the feeling, that the end of all things is

come.

Still, if it were only sanguine reformers who fall into this gloomy imagination, it could not prevail as extensively as it does; for though the worldly reformers, who ride upon the ascending wheel, are many, those who are truly interested in the enterprise are comparatively few. This discouragement is quite as common in those who are fighting no battle: for, indeed, the soldier when in the battle feels no apprehension; it is only when he rests on his arms, that he gives way to anxiety. People in every condition of life are liable to this despondency: the prosperous, because their energies are not called into living action; the unprosperous, because they give over their exertions and turning while in this state of mind to the subject of religion, they very easily mistake the coinage of their brain for the revealed truths of the Gospel. It is in such material, that the contagion of these melancholy views has always found it easy to spread, from the birthday of Christianity to the present hour. There is nothing new under the sun. The child asks what is become of the old moon. Why, that golden semicircle which he sees in the west over his left shoulder, is the same which lately hung cold and pale on the forehead of the morning sky. And many of these religious tendencies which seem to us new and strange, are as old as our Saviour's day. So, to our edification, we may see that some of the sects which are most bitter against the church of Rome, are at the same time parading rags of her scarlet dress among their choicest decorations; for the same state of mind reproduces, time after time and generation after generation, the doctrine, opinion, spirit and pretension which seemed to have forever passed away.

It is easy to find anywhere and everywhere that state of mind, out of which Millerism springs; for though the present age has the honor of giving birth to this great expounder of the Scriptures, the state of mind to which this name is given abounds in all generations. We see in the sacred history such a person as the brave and resolute Elijah, becoming despondent even to weariness of life, and feeling as if all things were sinking in ruins, the very last man whom one would think of as yielding to despair, or wishing to retire from his labor before his work was done. On another page we find Solomon set forth in all his glory, admired and envied by the world, and at the same

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time faint and sick in heart. All is uninteresting; all is vanity; all goes wrong; the oppressor tramples down the weak; the wise have no advantage from their wisdom; the same end awaits all; there is no encouragement to effort; the view of life suggests nothing but sorrow and despair all which grew out of his prosperity, as it was called. There was no such heart-sinking in Job battling with all manner of trials. And it is worthy of remark, that Elijah never had any such feeling save in the only time of his life when he fled from danger; he was the bravest of the brave, when he faced the peril and kept the post where he was stationed by his God.

But, leaving these more general illustrations of this tendency of human nature, and coming to that phenomenon of the kind which attracted attention among us by the height of fanaticism to which it rose and the extent to which it spread, Millerism deserves notice as a manifestation on a large scale of this same disease of feeling. As a religious opinion simply, it could not have lived an hour. Nothing could be more senseless than its Scriptural interpretations, nor could they have influenced any mind which was not standing ready to receive them. The idea that the end of the world was at hand, never came from the Scriptures. A certain state of mind which prevailed, carried the idea to the Scriptures and sought confirmation for it there. As the Calvinistic or Methodist or any other religious tendency takes its doctrine with it to the Bible, and thinks that it found it there, did these people of the midnight cry, "What of the night?" Well for them, if they had remembered the calm reply, "The day cometh, and also the night." The wheels of the universe are moving on in their silent order, apparently no nearer the end of their course than when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

That such was the origin of the doctrine, may be seen by observing its believers. Those who embraced it were generally persons of unsettled minds and feelings; disappointed reformers, who had found themselves unable to regenerate the world at once; religionists, who had broken loose from the systems in which they were trained, and never been rooted and grounded in any other; men of melancholy temper, who saw everything through the smoked

glass of their own spiritual vision; timid and credulous persons, who were easily frightened, or flattered, into something which they honored with the name of an opinion; misanthropic observers of life, to whom all was unprofitable and barren, because the dreariness of their own spirits was thrown over all around. Worthies of this description, of whom there are always enough and to spare, are ready to swell the ranks of the Cassandra party. All the small streams of dissatisfaction, jealousy and gloom gather into one black channel. The disease, of which there were always cases here and there, becomes an epidemic, and the Millerism grows into madness, because it seems to give holy sanction to feelings which otherwise those whom they visit would have been ashamed of, and have endeavored to suppress. It is impossible to deal with these things in their wild excesses; once in a flame, they must burn themselves out. But it may be well to consider the elements of such prevailing delusions. They are only coarse exaggerations of a common state of mind, which, even though it should not lead, as it often does, to fanaticism or the madhouse, may nevertheless destroy all healthy views of existence, and put an end to all deep faith in God.

Looking then at what more nearly concerns ourselves at states of mind of the same description, which if indulged may easily lead to insanity, but which are in general restrained and displaced by the efforts, the blessed efforts, which daily cares require, the first which meets us is the Millerism of domestic life. The household is a piece of machinery of delicate construction, requiring cheerful good sense, patient forbearance, and kind attention, to keep it in successful action. If these are wanting, if they are even suspended, what shrieking of wheels and hinges! how painfully and heavily it moves! A benevolent and hopeful spirit is the balance, which keeps all in order. Alas! for the welfare and improvement of the family, where this bright element is wanting. There are trials in domestic life, besetting us in various unsightly forms of vexation, trouble and care. "They come as a cloud, and as doves to their windows." Whoever sees them darkening the sun, is dismayed at their formidable number; but if he contemplates them singly, he sees that each is but a harmless thing, and often they bring the olive leaf with them.