CHAPTER XII. PART I.

On the Millennium, and the Scriptural Testimonies to the Doctrine of it.

IN questions relating to the truth or falsehood of

disputed matters of fact, it is observed by Aristotle in his treatise on the art of rhetoric, that the incredibility of an event may sometimes be advanced as a presumptive argument of its truth. The fact may be too extraordinary to be invented, the supposition of it too improbable to be preconceived; if there were no foundation for either. It is not usual to assert any thing as fact, which is not known to be so, or not considered capable of being so; falsehood would not impose on the understanding for a moment, unless by the appearance of truth; no matter of fact could be believed to be probable, which was not even possible, nor real, which was not even probable. If then a fact is asserted, which if true, would be the most extraordinary of all events, if a supposition is entertained which, of all preconceivable opinions, would be the least likely to occur to the mind of itself; it is a natural inference that the fact is asserted because it is true, the supposition is entertained because it could not be otherwise.

The principle on which this observation is founded, has been applied to illustrate the divine original of some of the most peculiar doctrines of Christianity: which though proposed as articles of faith, in revealing which the instruments were men, and in a II. xxiii. 22.

receiving and professing which the recipients and professors were men-yet as transcending the capacity of the human understanding to comprehend, it may reasonably be concluded, were too sublime and mysterious, for the human imagination to have conceived. That they are taught, therefore, in the books of the New Testament, plainly in the statement, however obscurely in the sense; that they are enjoined and required to be professed as articles of our faith, whether intelligible to our reason or not— is implicitly an argument, that they could not have been conceived by the unassisted human intellect; and therefore that the matter or substance of such truths was revealed.

The same kind of observation has been applied to the characteristic moral doctrines of the Gospel; which being so exquisitely pure and perfect—so much beyond what we can either attain to of ourselves in practice, or should have considered of ourselves the legitimate measure of our attainment in theory-yet being proposed as the positive standard of perfection, as what we must aspire at and endeavour to come up to, whether we can reach it or not; argue in like manner, that the first conception of a pattern of excellence so exalted and faultless, was no idea of the mere human imagination, but a direct transcript from infinite purity and perfection.

That principle of reasoning, which the writers on the evidences of Christianity, have thus applied to its most characteristic doctrines and precepts, may be rendered not less available in confirming, a priori, the claims to credibility, which the advocates of what is called the MILLENNIUM, advance in behalf of their peculiar doctrine and expectation.

We may define this doctrine and expectation generally, as the belief of a second personal advent or return of our Lord Jesus Christ, sometime before the end of the present state of things on the earth; a resurrection of a part of the dead in the body, concurrently with that return; the establishment of a kingdom, for a certain length of time, upon earth, of which Jesus Christ will be the sovereign head, and the good and holy men, who lived under the Mosaic dispensation before the Gospel æra, or have lived under the Christian, since, whether previously raised to life, or found alive in the flesh, at the time of the return, will be the subjects, and in some manner or other admitted to a share of its privileges.

This, I say, is what is meant by the doctrine of the millennium in general: the fact of a return of Jesus Christ in person, before the end of the world; of a first or particular resurrection of the dead; of a reign of Christ, with all saints, on the earth and all this, before the present state of things is at an end, and before time and sense, whose proper period of being is commensurate with the duration of the present state of things, have given place to spirit and eternity in heaven.

The statement of such a doctrine and such an expectation as this, is quite enough to shew that they are of a very extraordinary character; and not at all likely a priori, to have entered into the human imagination, without some suggestion or other from without. Nor is the antecedent improbability of the doctrine in general diminished by the particular circumstances, which are associated with the expectation of the facts themselves, as the attributes or accidents of what is expected: viz. that the kingdom

to be established, will be established in Judæa; that its appointed duration will be one thousand years; that during its continuance there will be neither physical nor moral evil; that rewards, distinctions, or privileges, will be awarded in it, proportioned to the degrees of goodness or desert, which those, who are permitted to partake of it, have previously exemplified in the flesh; and the like.

It will readily be acknowledged that the representation of a future scheme of things like this, is utterly dissimilar to any thing that we see in existence at present, or remember to have seen or heard of, as ever in existence before: and should it come to be realized on the earth, that it will no more resemble the state of things there at present, or any state of things in the world, of which human memory has perpetuated the recollection, than the golden age of the poets, or those pictures of primeval innocence and happiness, which our imaginations might perhaps delineate, as once appointed to be the constitution of paradise, resemble the actual scenes of sin, of misery, of physical and moral evil, in the midst of which human existence, so far as we can trace back its history, is known to have always been transacted.

Still, the doctrine of the millennium is not like that of the Trinity in Unity, or of any such article of faith as however plainly inculcated, must yet be incomprehensible, and therefore either implicitly to be received, or absolutely to be rejected. It is, after all, the doctrine of a fact; which however remarkable in itself, is not beyond the bounds of our comprehension; and therefore, though proposed as an article of future expectation, it may still be al

lowed to be abstractedly a possible event. Yet that even this event is too extraordinary, per se, too unlike any thing that man ever saw, or heard of, or would consider probable to be at any time witnessed upon this earth, to have been of mere human invention, and yet to be seriously proposed and seriously believed, must be admitted. The most ardent and enthusiastic imagination could scarcely have conceived an idea of such a scheme and dispensation of things, even in a vision; much less have not only conceived, but deliberately propounded the ideal delusions of its own dreams and reveries, as no fairy picture, nor shadowy delineation of a mere airy nothing, but the bodily substantial outline of a sober, though future, reality-the present anticipation of an actual matter of fact to come, the fulfilment of which in due time should not only confirm and verify, but infinitely transcend the self-created images of the fancy; eclipsing every effort of invention to describe such a state beforehand, by the more than correspondency of the simple truth, and casting into the shade the utmost graces and embellishments of the copy, by the inimitable beauties of the original. The mere conception, perhaps, of a state of innocence and of corresponding happiness upon earth, is possible; but what degree of human credulity, with no better assurance than its own glowing conceptions of such a state, was ever persuaded to expect it? The futurity, however, not merely of such a state in general, but of such a state as qualified and characterised by the circumstances of distinction which we have mentioned, has been contemplated, at all ages of the church, under the general expectation of a millennium, by many who were neither fools nor