Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming.

It inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers.

In every age since the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long, O Lord, how long ?" down to the present time, and from this Derry campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its fulfilment.
How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster, verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence! And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one?
Shall to-morrow be as to-day?
Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore forever?
Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled?
Who shall say it may not be true?
Nay, is not its truth proved by its universality?
The hope of all earnest souls must be realized.

That which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and dead, cannot be in vain.
I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state.

I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly, green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse.