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authority they may be invested, will then no longer abuse their power, seek their own advancement, or injure religion by their wicked examples and iniquitous policy. Animated by the spirit of Christ, they will be his servants, and promote the glory of God, the honor of the Savior, and the happiness of mankind. - Crimes will be extinct in the same proportion that covetousness, pride, and revenge are subdued. The wickedness of the wicked will come to an end, when love, gentleness, goodness, and all the fruits of the Spirit abound. Peace will prevail, peace with God and peace with man. Wars will cease unto the ends of the earth. Then they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The effects of temperance will be health and great longevity. An active and useful life will be crowned with a serene and fruitful old age. Individuals, families, and nations, by believing in Jesus and obeying his word, will be exempted from the calamities produced by unsanctified passions, and the world will be blessed under the reign of Messiah.

2. When will the Millennium commence? This is the next inquiry. All the predictions concerning that happy period, refer it to the close of the New Testament dispensaiton. It is to be in the latter days, in the last times. The mountain is the last state or form, in which the stone cut out without hands, after destroying the image, is to appear. But, there are indications respecting the beginning of this period, from which we gather more than probably conjectures - 1. From the uninterrupted order of events, as arranged in the Prophecies. - What relates to the Millennium is introduced in the Apocalypse as immediately following the destruction of Babylon or antichrist. But this destruction we know, from the latest possible date, cannot be beyond the year 1999. The Millennium, therefore, which is the next event in succession, will commence in the year 2000. But - 2. The number seven, so often used in scripture, appears to have given rise to an ancient calculation, said to be familiar among the Jews long before the coming of Christ: - "Two thousand years before the law (or before Abraham); two thousand years under the law; two thousand years under the Messiah; then cometh the Sabbath." This, upon the strictest examination, may found to correspond with what we are authorized from scripture to expect will be realized.

The time employed in creation; the institution of the sabbath; the numerous sabbaths, not only of days, but of weeks and years; all measured by seven, have put a singular mark upon a seventh portion of time from the earliest period of the world. The same number is sanctioned in the Apocalypse, and

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rendered peculiarly distinct and remarkable. To this general observation we may apply the argument of Paul to the Hebrews, chap. iv. where he speaks of a great sabbath or rest, which remaineth for the people of God; and the words of Peter, 2 Epis. chap. iii. where he not only asserts that one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day with God; but reasons upon this calculation of time, to refute scoffers and establish believers in their expectation of the new heavens and a new earth. The most candid and critical exposition of these passages, especially when compared together, and both considered in connexion with the peculiar emphasis God has, throughout his whole world, and in every dispensation of his Church, put upon the number seven, lead us to conclude, that the seventh Millenary period will be as much superior in every thing respecting religion, to all the preceding periods, as the sabbath excels the ordinary days of labor: That therefore, the Church may hope that seventh portion of time will be the great sabbath of the world. With the opening of that period we expect the Millennium will commence.

3. The duration of the Millennium, and what from prophecy we learn is to follow that period, include the remaining inquiry upon this subject. From its name it is determined to be a thousand years. The only question upon this number is, whether years must be here taken symbolically or literally. If the first, a day for a year, it would amount to the prodigious term of 160,000 years. But it is not here a symbolical number. Smaller things are always used as symbols for greater. - Hence days for years. But years being the greatest periodical revolution known to the ancients, were expressed literally. - We are undoubtedly in the Apocalypse to take it thus, and to understand this number as expressing strictly one thousand years; a seventh portion of the great Millenuary week.

As the Millennium will be immediately preceded by a terrible conflict, which is the last struggle of Armageddon, so after the thousand years are expiried, Satan, who during that whole period had been bound, will be loosed out of his prison, and new and unexpected troubles will immediately arise in the world. - These are said to be conducted by an enemy called Gog and Magog. Ezekiel has plainly foretold and fully described this event. In the Apocalypse the time when it will happen is fixed. The discomfiture of this last adversary, the victory in this last battle in which the Church will ever be involved, closes the scenes of Revelation, as to the state of the Church in this world. It has pleased God not to inform his people what will be the subsequent train of events. It is enough to know that captivity will then be led captive, and all but the last enemy, Death,