HAS THE MILLENNIUM COMMENCED?
By Uriah Smith
We have been hearing a great many years of the good time coming when swords should be converted into plowshares and men should learn war no more; and thousands of voices have declared with the most positive assurance that the world is all the time growing better. We find in late papers a very impressive commentary upon this kind of preaching. It is an advertisement of a seven-shot revolver, figured down so as to cost only $3, offered as a premium for subscribers by several papers, and recommended as the weapon for police, bankers, and for household use. The advertisement says, “Tramps, burglars and thieves infest all parts of the country. Every one should go armed.” Therefore this weapon has been devised on a new model, of “long range and deadly accuracy,” and brought out at such a price as to be within the reach of all, to meet the necessities of the present condition of society, and everybody is now cautioned to go armed. That is to say, in brief, that the world has improved so fast, and men have grown so much better, and we are so near the millennium, that everybody should now carry about his person a deadly weapon to defend himself against the tramps, burglars, and thieves with which the country swarms! We think the inspired writers were a trifle more accurate than these peace and safety criers, when they stated that the last days should be like the days of Noah, when “the earth was filled with violence,” that iniquity would abound and the love of many wax cold, and that evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse even till the coming of Christ, who at his appearing would scarcely find faith upon the earth. How much more is needed to complete the prophetic picture? U. S.