Spread of the Advent Faith.
WITHIN the last twenty years, the subject of the Advent has had a greater share of attention than formerly. I am told that about seven hundred clergymen of the established church in the United Kingdom zealously teach it in their public ministry. Among dissenters we have the names of Rev. Robert Hall, William Thorpe, Joseph Tyso, John Cox, William Anderson, and many others who have held and taught it. In America it is said that about three hundred ministers of the Gospel are employed in calling attention to this blessed hope of the church. While on the European continent, in different places, the cry is rising, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” You will now see that, independently of Scriptural testimony we can trace these views among the more pious and intelligent of the church of God, from seven hundred years before Christ to the present moment. They are, therefore, no novelties. And if we turn to the testimony of the Holy Scripture on these subjects, we find no means of evading their truth, except by perverting or rejecting the plain, literal meaning of the words in which these testimonies are given. It is generally found by those who commence the study of prophecy, that they have not so much to learn, as to unlearn. Misled by interpreters, who depart from the literal and plain meaning of the sacred writers, they spiritualize and allegorize their words until a second revelation is made necessary, to enable them to understand and fix the meaning of the first. By this unhappy means the prophetic Scriptures are made of none effect, and half the Bible becomes, comparatively, useless to the Christian Church. But when the student reads the predictions of the second advent, and believes that they will be as literally and as minutely fulfilled as those have been which foretold the birth, miracles, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, he views the Bible as a new book. Those parts which appeared dark and unintelligible before, now appear clear, and are easily understood to a great extent.—Advent Tracts Vol. I.