Missions and Millenarianism.
PRE-MILLENARIAN views, it is charged, tend to diminish zeal, and to destroy interest in the great work of foreign missions. Dr. Kellogg, of the Alleghany Theological Seminary, is almost the first theological professor in the country, so far as we know, who has taken a strong stand in favor of these views, and taught them clearly to his classes. Now comes this extraordinary statement, which we take from an exchange, in regard to his last graduating class:— "Twenty-three out of twenty-nine members of the senior class of the Alleghany Theological Seminary have offered themselves as missionaries,—some for fields in this country, and some to go among the heathen, in far-off lands." The fact, remarkable as it is, is matched by the report of Rev. Grattan Guinness, East London Institute for the Training of Ministers. In his printed list of sixty-one graduates already in the field, forty are found to be laboring in the foreign missionary work. Mr. Guinness is one of the ablest and most pronounced writers in favor of pre-millenarian views. Let theological professors who are making vigorous war on this school of interpretation, ponder well these facts. It is admitted by learned authorities, on both sides, that the millenarian was the prevailing doctrine of the first two and a half centuries of the Church—centuries which were distinguished, pre-eminently, for missionary activity. We believe that if it should come to prevail so in this century, the fruit will be the same.—Dr. A. J. Gordon, in the Watchword.