Review and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 14. (3/21/1871)

Review and Herald

Mar 21, 1871

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1871

The Millennium.

By Dr. Cumming

Let me answer another question which has perplexed Christians’ minds, pious and devout minds. Will this personal advent be ushered in by a series of mighty reformations, great and holy changes, a church pure, a world at peace; and on earth all concord, and covered with millennial glory? In other words, will the millennium bring Christ, or will Christ bring the millennium? I candidly admit there are devout and cultivated minds who think that a thousand years of perfect peace and happiness throughout the world, the result of the triumphs of art, of science, of sound policy, of gospel preaching, and of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God, will precede Christ’s advent. If this be true, we shall be able to tell the very day and hour when he will come; because, if we know when the thousand years begin, we shall know when the thousand years will end, and then we shall be able to say that that very day Jesus Christ will come. But the Scriptures does not seem to warrant any such expectation. As the day does not usher in the sun, but the sun, emerging from beneath the horizon, brings in all the brightness of meridian day; so Christ will bring in the millennium, not the millennium will usher in Christ. The view I take is not that we are to look for a millennium on earth, but that we are to look for the personal and glorious advent of the Son of God. That personal advent is not a thing buried deep down in uncounted ages, so far off that no living man in this generation may anticipate it. Such a conception of the day of Christ is most unscriptural. Faith in a personal Christ is salvation; hope in a personal Christ is a joy unutterable and full of glory. Our religion is not accepting dogmas, but resting upon Christ. Salvation is not belief in the atonement, but belief in Christ. “What must I do to be saved?” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” So hope is not the hope of the millennium, but the hope of Christ; it is not the hope of an improved condition of the world, but the hope of him who comes to revolutionize and to glorify it.

How much progress have we made in 1800 years? We mourn, and we are ashamed to own, that Christianity upon the bosom of our world is merely a bright patch on the bosom of an area of immeasurable barrenness and darkness. The gospel now is not for the conversion of the world, but for the calling of a people out of the world to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. How striking are the words of the Master: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world”—to be followed by its conversion? no; but, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” In this very prophecy is one of the most striking signs. As soon as it is clear that the gospel has been preached and the Bible translated into the tongue of every nation, kindred, people, and tribe, we may believe that the harvest of the earth draweth near. That there is to be no millennial blessedness before Christ comes seems plainly deducible from the Saviour’s own words. Weighty words worthy of the name are not man’s arguments, but what the Holy Ghost saith unto the churches.

Let us hear what the Saviour says: “He that shall endure unto the end”—the end of this world. Enduring means conflict, trouble, temptation, and trial—“shall be saved.” Again, “To him that overcometh will I give a crown of glory.” Then there are battles to be fought, and victories to be won. A distinctive mark of this dispensation is, “All that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” If you never suffer anything on account of your allegiance to Christ, that allegiance wants the most brilliant credentials of its depth, its force, and reality. Again, “In the world ye shall have tribulation;” and again, “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” The shining throng that appear on the margin of the sky, ascending from the depths of the world along the steps of glory, are thus described: They, at that very time, the end of the dispensation, have come “out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

But there is a second series of texts that still more confirm what I have said. Our Saviour says, “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” In other words, at his second advent the world will be in the same condition morally that it was in when the deluge ascended from the depths, and the windows of heaven opened, and a vast population were swept from its surface. What was its condition in the days of Noah? for in what it was in the days of Noah we have the prophetic picture of what it will be just upon the eve of His own personal and glorious advent. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” “All flesh had corrupted its way, and there was none righteous, no, not one.” The Saviour says, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith upon the earth?” It is doubtful if faith here means saving, Christian faith; it is more probably faith in his second glorious advent. If so, it would teach that there will be people who will be saying, “Oh! that cannot be; where is the promise?” In the second epistle of Peter we have a most perfect picture of what will be the condition of the world just upon the eve of our Lord’s advent. “There shall come”—and it seems to me as if such days have already begun—“There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying”—what? “Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation;” therefore they argue, all things will continue as they are forever. “Where,” then, “is the promise of his coming?” Now such are the marks of the condition of the world at the time that the Saviour comes; the first series indicating that suffering will continue to be the portion of the church and people of God; the second series indicating that the world will be full of the wickedness of the days of Noah. There are texts that prove that the visible church is to exist in an imperfect condition till Christ come; but in the millennial day the church will be perfect and beautiful, as a bride adorned for the bridegroom, and Christ, the bridegroom, present. Let us ascertain what is the picture of the church till that time. “The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one;” both grow together until the harvest; but what is the harvest? “The harvest is the end of the world;” not “world” in the sense that it is the end of this creation; in another discourse I will show you that this earth is never to be destroyed; the hills are everlasting, the earth is to endure forever. The words translated “the end of the world” literally mean, “the winding up together of the age, the dispensation, the economy.” Here is the mixed condition of the church, tares, and wheat, unto the end, unto the end of this dispensation. That is evidence there will be no millennial state before Christ comes.

The prophecy also teaches us a great lesson. We may not expect a pure church upon earth at present. Many people try to make one; they think if they collect all God’s elect together that they will have a pure church. In the first place, they can’t do it; and in the second place, those they believe to be elect prove not always to be so; and in the third place, it cannot be, and it won’t be, for the Master has said that the tares and wheat will grow together until the harvest, and they that try to pull out the tares, or rather they that try to separate the wheat, and to leave the tares, find that they have bound up in their sheaves as many tares as wheat, and that they have not created a perfect church, but only another denomination of tares and wheat, or imperfect men.

Another evidence that our Lord’s advent is to be first, and a millennium second, is the fact that there will be a great apostasy overspreading the whole of this dispensation, beginning at his first advent, and ending only at his second; that apostasy is described in the 2d chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonians. It plainly delineates the papal power and corporation, nor is it one of the least suggestive signs of the times, that that system is trembling on the verge of its destruction. In England it is trying to secure its last foothold, for it has concentrated its whole disposable force upon this country. Archbishop Manning, a very eloquent man, writes, “England is the fortress of heresy; if we can strike down Protestantism in England, it dies throughout the world. It is a warfare of detail. England once converted to the Roman Catholic faith will be the great missionary to illuminate the world.” I don’t believe in the truth of his prospects, or in the probability of his success; but certain it is that the progress the church of Rome has made in this country is greater than we can desire. The pope nevertheless is trembling on his throne; the emperor telling him that the French bayonets must soon in succession retire. Meanwhile the poor priest so despairs and desponds, that he has not even nerve and heart to try to raise a few miserable battalions out of his own people in order to defend his throne, and protect him from the fury—the shepherd from the fury of his own sheep. If ever the papacy was in jeopardy, almost fatal, it is now.

The second advent of Christ is to destroy this system—“Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.”

Whether this system, however, to which I have referred, be delineated in the 2d chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonians, I will not now discuss; it would take too long time. But this is enough for my present purpose; a great apostasy began in the days of the apostles, and it is to last until, consumed and wasted to a skeleton by providential causes, it is finally crushed by the personal appearance of Christ. The Greek word translated, “destroyed by the brightness of his coming,” is literally, “the epiphany,” “of his own personal presence.” Certain divines say that it does not mean a personal advent, but a spiritual. Let us take the same Greek word in other passages, and see what it means. “The coming of Titus,” that means Titus’ personal coming. “The coming of Stephen,” that means Stephen’s personal coming. We read in another epistle, “The glorious appearing of the Son of God, the Saviour.” So in Daniel we read that a power is to continue until the Judgment sit, and it is destroyed unto the end. Now whatever that system be, identify it with the papacy or not, it is a dark, overshadowing superstition, in which a chief shall exalt himself above all that is called God, changing laws and seasons, sitting in the temple of God as if he were God; whatever that power be, it is a power of darkness that is to stretch from the cross onward to the crown, and only to be destroyed, finally destroyed, by the Saviour’s personal appearing. That alone is decisive proof that no millennium of joy, and holiness, and happiness, precedes the Saviour’s advent.

These seem to my mind conclusive reasons that the millennium, or whatever you call it—a thousand years of blessedness, Paradise restored, are to succeed, and not precede, Christ’s second advent.

Do we set our hearts upon that glorious advent? Man needs hope. Read Campbell’s beautiful poem, “The Pleasures of Hope,” the most classic in the English tongue, and you will see that without hope, the mainspring of the noblest actions and the fountain of the purest pleasures are both swept away. What is your hope? Is it the blessed and the glorious hope? Common eyes do not see it, and unanointed hearts do not feel it. To common eyes the street-lamps outshine the distant stars; but by anointed eyes the lamps of the street will never be mistaken for the luminaries of the sky. This world’s eyes are set upon the dim, flickering, twinkling lights that they think are all; but a Christian’s heart rises above the world, and soars beyond the world, and looks for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ, our great God and Saviour. “A faithful minister,” says Mr. Newton, “declared that he was never conscious of making so little headway in proclaiming the truth as when death, and the certainty of death, were the great theme.” He was asked again, ‘Is there any one theme or topic in handling which you feel you make less impression on your hearers than any other?’ His answer was ‘It is very strange; I don’t exactly understand it; but I seem never to be so unsuccessful in my preaching and ministry as when I begin to preach upon the certainty and nearness of death.’” Why? Because it is not the Lord’s way of preaching. Show me in the New Testament death appealed to as a motive force for the highest and noblest personal devotedness. But if you were to find one instance of that, I will find you many of that I am now speaking of. For instance, do you need to be stirred to repentance? What is the gospel way? “God hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained;” the Lord Jesus Christ.

Does the Christian need to be stimulated to progress? What is the motive force? Is it death? No—“That when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.” Would you desire to reach to the highest possible reward, and thus to persevere in doing good, without fainting? The motive force is, “The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” Would you be dissuaded from being ashamed of the cross, or, in other words, stimulated to glory in the cross? What is the motive power? “Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of my words, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Would you increase patience in suffering? “Be patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” If you would wish to have the whole gospel in the most beautiful words, it is, “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men; teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;” now what next? “looking for”—death? no, because we must die; but—“looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” And so much is this the case that this hope of the second personal advent of our Lord is constantly set forth as the most distinguishing and exalted grace in the Christian character. For instance, the apostle says, “Ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ;” as if that were the crowning grace. “Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” Again says the apostle, “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” You will be astonished as you read the New Testament looking for the evidence of this, at discovering the space it covers on the sacred page. Richard Baxter, the eminent, learned, and pious Nonconformist of two centuries ago, was so struck with the force of these texts, that he said, “If I were but sure that the trumpet would sound, and the dead would rise, and the Lord would come, before the period of my life, it would be the joy-fullest time in the world to me.” How very beautiful, and how suggestive of what is joyous, and sanctifying, and blessed. Joanna Baillie, the poetess, gives a picture of a maiden whose betrothed had gone in the days of the Crusade to the Holy Land. He was given up by thousands for lost, but she never gave him up; and every day, as the sun set on the little island on which she lived, she lighted the watch-fire, and looked with anxiety across the Mediterranean Sea, if she could catch the gleam of a white sail upon the distant horizon. The true church never gives up the hope of His coming. The world believes he is dead, while it ignores what he adds, “I was dead, but I am alive forevermore.” The true church keeps the watch-fire burning in her heart; looks by faith and hope, across the wide waste of waters, and he will come the second time unto her salvation. Beautifully does Keble, the Christian poet, sing.

“Thus bad and good their several warnings give Of His approach, which few may see, and live. Faith’s ear with awful still delight Counts them like minute bells at night, Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn, While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne. “But what are Heaven’s alarms to hearts that cower In willful slumber deepening every hour; That draw their curtains closer round, The nearer swells the trumpet sound? Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink out and die, Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel thee nigh.” —Dr. Cumming.

The Smitten Christ.

I saw my Lord draw nigh, And he was weeping. “Why weepest thou?” I said— “Why weepest thou, O Lord?” He lifted up his head, I listened for his word, Silent he stood, his gaze upon me keeping.

I felt my spirit fail And faint before him; Such sadness in his eyes, Such sorrow in his face, Then spake he in this wise, With accents full of grace— I yearned to clasp his feet and to adore him.

“I have been smitten,” said He, sadly sighing, “Who smote thee, Lord?” I cried, With hot and hasty ire. A FRIEND, my Lord replied, Quenching my sudden fire With such a look as ended Peter’s lying.

“Thou art the smiter,” said Those eyes most holy; “No sufferer’s brutal hand, No reckless scoffer’s spite, No willful foeman’s brand Could thus my bosom smite.” I sank before him, broken, weeping, lowly.

Tenderly then he laid His hand upon me; “Arise, my child,” he said, “Arise, thou art forgiven; Weep not; be comforted; But let thy heart be riven No more by blows from thee; by blood I won thee.”

PROOF READING

If the readers of newspapers understood one half the difficulties in procuring accuracy, instead of wondering and scolding at mistakes, they would be surprised that there are not more. How few readers appreciate the services of the individual who examines the “proofs” of a paper before it is printed. He is one of the most important agents to the production of a correct literature, and one of whom no reader seems to think. His is the most thankless of all the employments among men. Let him bring out a paper without a fault for weeks and weeks in succession, and nobody thinks of him. But let him allow an error to go uncorrected—as we happened to do in a five-line church item a few weeks since—and immediately he is known to be censured, and his paper subjected to ill-natured criticisms. He has no thanks for his labored patience, but blame if he is not faultless. He is certain of one of two things—forgetfulness or censure.—Ex.

The Prayer of Habakkuk.

It is said of Dr. Franklin, that during his long residence in Paris, being invited to a party of the nobility, where most of the court and courtiers were present, he produced a great sensation by one of his bold movements, and gained great applause for his ingenuity.

According to the custom of that age and country, the nobles, after the usual ceremonies of the evening were over, sat down to a free and promiscuous conversation—Christianity was then the great topic. The church was always ridiculed, and the Bible was treated with unsparing severity. Growing warmer and warmer in their sarcastic remarks, one great lord commanded, for a moment, universal attention, by his asserting in a round voice, that the Bible was not only a piece of arrant deception, but totally devoid of literary merit. Although the entire company of Frenchmen nodded a hearty assent to the sentence, Franklin gave no signs of approval. Being at that time a court favorite, his companions could not bear even a tacit reproof from a man of his weight of influence. They all appealed to him for his opinion. Franklin, in one of his peculiar ways, replied, that he was hardly prepared to give them a suitable answer, as his mind had been running on the merits of a new book of rare excellence, which he had just happened to fall in with at one of the city bookstores; and as they had pleased to make allusion to the literary character of the Bible, perhaps it might interest them to compare with that old volume the merits of his new prize. If so, he would read them a short section. All were eager to have the doctor read a portion of his rare book. In very grave and sincere manner, he took an old book from his coat pocket, and with propriety of utterance read to them a poem.

The poem had its effect. The admiring listeners pronounced it the best they had ever heard read. “That is pretty,” said one. “That is sublimity,” said another. “It has not its superior in the world,” was the unanimous opinion. They all wished to know the name of the new work, and whether that was a specimen of its contents. “Certainly, gentlemen,” said the doctor, smiling at his triumph; “my book is full of such passages. It is no other than your good-for-nothing Bible; and I have read to you the prayer of the prophet Habakkuk.”

Let every reader learn wisdom from this incident, and learn to appreciate the unequaled sublimities of the Bible.

The Inspiration of the Prophets.

ST. PETER says: The prophets inquired and searched diligently, “searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” It is certain, therefore, the prophets had not perfect knowledge, from the gift of prophecy, of the full import of the great truths they uttered; but it is also certain they were not mere automatons, who conveyed the truth to us, as the pipes convey the water to our dwellings, without partaking of it themselves. They were holy men of God, divinely conscious of the extraordinary gift, with which they were peculiarly favored of Heaven, and by which they overleaped the darkness of centuries, and spoke of events in the future as though they were present; and the proof of their inspiration is seen in the exact, literal fulfillment of their words. This certainly could not have happened by mere accident or chance.

To suppose the ravings of hypocrites, fanatics, madmen, or fools, could fortuitously meet with a literal and exact fulfillment after the lapse of many centuries and on the grandest scale, and among various nations, and to be fulfilling before our eyes, after thousands of years, requires far greater credulity than to believe in the inspiration of the prophets. God has made us rational, as well as sentient and conscious, beings, and does not require us to believe without evidence sufficient to justify and command our belief. As in nature, so also in revelation, there are evidences, clear, distinct, and irrefragable, of wonderful intelligence and vast design. Prophecy is the matrix or die, and the truth is the fact which comes from it; for the one perfectly corresponds to the other. Any one looking at the mold or die, and then at the coin which came from it, could not be in doubt, or hesitate to say, with absolute certainty, This coin came from that die; and if he were to examine with microscopical accuracy, he would find confirmation of his belief. The faces of a fractured rock, with their depressions, facets, angles, and veins, perfectly correspond, in every minute particular, to each other, and that any other piece of broken rock should do so, is beyond the bounds of possibility or belief. And do not the facts of prophecy answer as truly to the utterances of prophecy as the coin does to the die, or one face of the fractured rock to the other? And have we not in prophecy certainly uttered in the early ages, and as certainly fulfilled literally after thousands of years, not merely in one, but in many, instances, and not in obscure and doubtful cases, but in certain vast and well-known facts, the most conclusive and satisfactory evidence the mind of man can desire or have, that holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost?

Truth, like the seeds of the earth, requires time for its maturity. The future to man is the present to God, who, in the grandeur of his eternity, sweeps the bounds of all time, and speaks of things that are not, as though they were. The truth of prophecy has been amply proved in the history of the past; and the researches of science present it with accumulated evidence in the present, and as science has been the handmaid of religion in the past, we cannot doubt she will prove the faithful auxiliary of revelation in the future.

The Jews are a living and everywhere present demonstration of the truth of prophecy. They have an imperishable name, but they have no nationality; and yet they are found among all nations. They are the masters of all languages, and the controllers of a large part of the circulating medium of the world. For more than eighteen hundred years they have been known, acknowledged, and persecuted, as the descendants of an ancient race, whose ancestors lived before the pyramids of Egypt, and who probably helped to build them, and who were then, as their descendants are now, diverse from other people. Other nations, far greater than they ever were, have been lost, merged, swallowed up in the vortex of nations; but the Jew has ever preserved his individuality and identity amid all revolutions and changes, and is as truly a Jew at this time as his ancestor was at the time of the dispersion; and this was distinctly foretold. Their Sacred Books they have guarded with the utmost fidelity, and these books contain prophecies which have been fulfilling through the whole course of time. The 26th chapter of Leviticus contains a daguerreotyped picture of their infidelities and sufferings, written more than three thousand years ago, and every line and word of it their history proves to be true.—Methodist Home Journal.

The Pope’s Imprisonment.

It is an old story, told from time immemorial by schoolmasters to their English-grammar classes, how that once on a time a Frenchman, who had the difficulty which most foreigners share with Southerners and Scotchmen in handling shall and will, fell into the Thames, and in peril of his life screamed out, “I will drown! No one shall help me!” The words exactly express the facts in the martyrdom of Pope Pius IX. With the government of Italy treating him to make himself entirely free of the whole kingdom, and with other nations bidding him welcome to their domains, he insists on continuing to be locked up in the Vatican palace (with the key inside of the door) and on being a persecuted prisoner. Whereat the world in general smiles; and our Irish fellow-citizens, and their guardian angels of the democratic and republican parties, groan with indignation.

Superficial observers suppose, doubtless, that the pope’s martyrdom is only the sulkiness of an invalid old man in a pet at the loss of his priest-ridden little kingdom. They cannot see (and for the life of us we cannot, either) why the supreme jurisdiction of a ten-acre lot on the Vatican hill does not just as much fulfill all the necessities that are pleaded in defense of the temporal power as the jurisdiction of a hundred square miles of Roman territory, inhabited by very unhappy, uneasy, and rebellious subjects. But it is hasty to infer from this that the pope’s martyrdom is nothing but a fit of the sulks. We are disposed to think, on the other hand, that it has a weighty religious and theological significance.

The most zealous of the theologians who have defended the doctrine of papal infallibility have agreed (so far as we are informed) in the exception that under fear or duress a pope may define error for truth. This is the only way in which it is possible for them to meet some of the gravest historical objections against the doctrine. And, consequently, this admission that the teachings of a pope under duress are fallible is the most cogent argument in favor of the temporal sovereignty, since (it is held) that is the only arrangement that can assure the faithful that the pope is not, in any given deliverance, under fear or constraint.

These facts suggest an explanation of the curious farce that is playing at Rome to-day. The Jesuits, who have got their creature invested with a divine attribute, begin at once to be afraid of their own work. As in Mrs. Shelley’s nightmare of a story, their Frankenstein, which they have built up with such infinite labor, no sooner begins to move and walk than they are ready to run away from him, full of awful forebodings as to what he will do next. When a man’s sayings are liable to be received as divine revelation by three hundred millions of people, it is such a serious matter what his words shall be! What security is there against his wrecking all the pet schemes of centuries by one unlucky word in an encyclical? No possible security but this, to get him to play prisoner, and then the infallible is made fallible again, for the pope is under duress.

Meanwhile, however, the church is in a most awkward and distressing dilemma. Archbishops Manning and Spalding had proved conclusively that it could not get along without the dogma of infallibility. Bishop Dupanloup and Archbishop Kenrick had proved with equal conclusiveness that it could not get along with it. The church might have chosen on which horn of this dilemma it would be impaled. As events have fallen out, it has got itself pierced through and through with both horns. First, by the enactment of the infallibility dogma it made itself responsible for all the ex cathedra follies, blunders, and heresies, of past popes, a position to which its antagonists have always sought to drive it, but from which heretofore it has always been able to wriggle away. And thus it has accepted all the disadvantages of infallibility. Secondly, by the locking up of the pope in the Vatican as a prisoner, the church completely forfeits all the alleged advantages of infallibility. Since the pope, being under duress, is fallible, there results what Dr. Weninger calls the “contradiction and absurdity” of “an infallible church with a fallible head.” The living, accessible tribunal to which all doubtful questions may be referred at once, is abolished almost as soon as it is fairly recognized as being absolutely essential to the faith of every believer; and the multitude of the faithful are remanded to the wretched Protestant necessity of following written documents, that are liable to be misinterpreted—only, instead of a handy little pocket Bible in their own language, like the Protestants, they are referred to a huge library of folios, which no man could go through in a lifetime, all in the Latin tongue, which neither they nor their fathers have been able to read.

Does not this state of things offer some good apology, in the view of charity, for the frantic appeals of our Irish fellow-citizens against a state of things which (as Archbishop Spalding says, in a late pastoral) holds the poor pope a prisoner and almost starving?—The Independent.

The Balloon.

By Sol.

I ONCE SAW THE ASCENT OF A BALLOON. It was bound to the earth by eight cords. As the process went on, of filling with gas, it seemed struggling to get free. At length one string was cut, and immediately the part at liberty was lifted from the earth; the second and third were loosened, till, the last being snapped asunder, it rose majestically toward heaven, showing thereby its high destination, and evincing the object for which it struggled to get free. There, there is a picture of the mind I fain would possess—a mind whose affections are in Heaven—a mind filled with the Spirit—and in proportion as it is filled, demonstrating its character by its ardent aspiring, and earnest longings after its heavenly inheritance; thus, as the cords are cut which bind the soul to earth, it will rise in heart and affection to the region where it fain would be.—Sol.

Eternal Life.

By T. B.

A THOUSAND years is a great while—we think a hundred years is long. How venerable things a century old look to us! What changes, little less than miracles, have touched and transformed the country's face within the last hundred years! How marvelously has life peopled our cities, and death our graveyards! What domes of sacred grandeur and temples of sacred worship have risen toward the skies! What splendid names have blazed and gone out! How have the useful arts astonished the world with their mighty growth, and inventive science climbed a higher throne! What records of bloodshed, and what triumphs of peace have been written!

A hundred years! Time long enough for three human generations to pass away, with their shifting costumes and habits of speech. A hundred years! monumental of every human experience in sense or spectacle or sound;

“Pearls of the bridal, and the festive dance, * * * * * Of peasant burial and monarchal march, Of war and famine, tears, blood, and death.”

But when we come to think of a thousand years, we stand before a mountain whose top is lost in the clouds. We catch the sound of the figures, and see their form; but the idea is still far away. We wait for some comparison to impress upon us the first notion of such a vast age. A sense of something tremendous comes over us when we gaze upon a fellow-man who has lived a century.

But what if we could look upon that one man of the race who survived almost a thousand years!—with a memory reaching back over a whole millennium, lacking little more than thirty years, hoary and awful with the seasons of ten centuries that had snowed upon his hair and whistled through his beard—

“The white old man, seated upon the ground, Clad in his gown of age, the pale white gown, His wrinkled hands Clasping about his knees; old—very old.”

How would the facts and forms of forgotten history move before us in his ancient face! How must the great, deep voice astound us, ringing every counterpoint in the melo-drama of thirty generations!

Then suppose we were to see a man who was immortal. Let him be the great-grandfather of Noah, who never died—who cannot die—come among us in his supernal vigor, the seventh from Adam, to prophesy again of righteousness and judgment—with what a dumb gaze would we consider his stature, shape, and presence! How we would scrutinize his features and complexion! How we would long to question him, or even explore his pulse for the secret of such invulnerable vitality! What aching thoughts of the much he had seen and known must strike our bewildered minds! What a new, strange, overwhelming sense of longevity! We should almost fall down at his feet to worship as the sight of him swept us back

“O’er the broad ocean of the fateful past,”

and made us feel the contrast of our own ephemeral littleness.

It is in such a life-picture, be it of translated patriarch, or dying child, that we get some idea of the venerableness, the lasting fullness and luster of eternal life. No Methuselah, with all the grandeur of his ten centuries, could be so highly honored and brightly blessed as the saint of fewest earthly years whose life is hid with Christ in God, and who will have part in the first resurrection.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we first begun.” —T. B., in Advent Herald.

Abounding in Deeds of Charity

PRES. EDWARDS says: “God’s people ought especially to abound in deeds of charity or almsgiving. If God’s people in this land were once brought to abound in such deeds of love, as much as in praying, hearing, and singing, and religious meetings, and conference, it would be a most blessed omen. So amiable would be the sight in the eyes of our loving and exalted Redeemer, that it would soon, as it were, fetch him down from his throne in Heaven, to set up his tabernacle with men on the earth, and dwell with them.”

Fear Sin, and You Are Safe

SIN produces fear, fear leads into bondage, and bondage makes all our duties irksome. Fear sin, and you are safe.

Tears vs. the Pocket.

The last step in sanctification, we are inclined to think, is the conversion of the pocket. You may convert men from profanity, from intemperance, from the theater, from fashion and frivolity in their varied forms, to attending meetings, distributing tracts, exhorting, singing, and praying, the hand is still unclasped from its gains.

It is not sometimes very difficult to move audiences to tears while an earnest man pleads the cause of the poor and the needy. But, not unfrequently, the speaker is surprised to see the large amount of tears people will shed over the poor, and the small amount of money they will contribute to relieve them.

One of the most effective speakers in behalf of this Association, furnishes this striking illustration of the point:—

“On a Sabbath afternoon in the autumn of 1867, I presented our cause to a crowded house in the town of ——. In the course of my address I noticed, in front of me, a fine-looking, well-dressed man, bearing all the marks of wealth and high social position. His eyes, riveted on the speaker, were brimming with tears, rendering necessary the frequent use of his handkerchief. Indeed, he seemed so moved and interested that I almost forgot the great auditory around me, and talked and pleaded with him alone. When I reached the home of the good deacon with whom I stopped, I described my auditor, and found that he was what I expected, a leading citizen, wealthy, and of high social standing.

“The deacon, too, noticed his emotion, and said, ‘I know what he gave; how much do you think?’ “‘I replied, ‘I should not suppose that a man in his circumstances could afford to be moved as he was for less than ten dollars.’ “‘Ten dollars!’ was the reply, ‘he gave three cents!’

“Tears, I have since learned, oftimes flow from very shallow springs. But I still wonder how a man could weep so much for ‘three cents.’—C. L. W.”

We copy from the Congregationalist a similar story:—

“STIRRED TO THE BOTTOM.”

A pastor of a church in one of the pleasant country towns of New York has lived on a pinching salary for four years. Not many Sabbaths ago, when the chronic pinch had made the sore places too hard to bear any longer, he stated the case fully from the pulpit, compared his means of a livelihood with that of his average parishioners, and showed that he was working on little more than half pay, and was hampered in his work among them by poverty.

This fair statement indorsed by the known economy, and faithful, loving ministry of the pastor, had its effect, and bore fruits as follows:

A leading man in the church and the community, a well-to-do farmer, remarked to some friends, “What an eloquent sermon! There is no getting away from it. We have not done our duty. That sermon stirred me as I never was stirred before—stirred me to the bottom.”

It was suggested that a subscription be started, and the impressed brother be invited to head it. He took the paper, took time to weigh well what he was doing, and put down opposite his name—twenty cents! Starting out with this beginning, in the course of a few days, the deacons brought to the pastor, as compensation for the unpaid half service of four years, a purse of fifteen dollars!—Am. Missionary.

Continue reading: The Spices in God's Garden