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bright colors of the destruction of Jerusalem, or of great political convulsions. Such an interpretation betrays a great inattention to the history of ancient opinions, and is one of a thousand proofs to show how easily men find that only in the Bible, which they are predisposed to find.

The first impression, then, must have been one of mere mournfulness and alarm. It probably was. But it could not long remain so. Moral sentiments and a religious persuasion would soon mix with it. Was it not sin, that brought down on the world before the flood that devouring judgment, from which only a few righteous persons escaped? That future visitation, therefore, would come when iniquities should sufficiently abound and for their punishment. This is expressed in the Scriptural passage we have just quoted. But such a day of recompenses must have come to be regarded also as one of reward for the righteous, of joy and glory for those who had been unjustly oppressed, or laboriously deserving, or without fault unhappy. It would thus assume a less appalling character, and even an inviting one. Men would anticipate in that great consummation a display of the divine perfections and providence, the triumph of light and happiness, the end of all the evils here below, and the commencement of a new era, a nobler order of things. And all this did in fact happen, as will be shown more circumstantially as we go The Sybilline oracles, after describing the final conflagration, conclude with this remarkable exclamation; "O thrice blessed the man who reaches that time!" To the same effect the author of the Scripture already cited adds, that we should be "looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, expecting the new heavens and the new earth, in which shall dwell righteousness.

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We have said nothing, as yet, on the point why fire should have been designated as the instrument of this general ruin. It was not universally conceived to be so. The theolo

gy of the Hindoos, perhaps the oldest of which we have any record, represents the floods as the means of the destruction. Their Deity, they say, incarnate for the tenth time, will descend on a white horse, and the earth will be sunk by the first stroke of his hoofs. The opposite opinion, however, that of destruction by fire has been by far the

most prevalent. For this several conjectures may be very probably assigned. The principle of contrast alone might have led to it. It was natural also, that the mightiest of the elements should be chosen for the accomplishment of so tremendous an overthrow. There are besides many appearances on our planet and beyond it, calculated to inspire apprehension from this agent, rather than from the other. When we look upon the waters, we can scarcely believe that they should ever have lain like a shoreless sea over the fair creation. They have shrunk to their appointed place, and a decree seems set upon them that they shall return no more to destroy. The torrents that are sometimes poured out from the skies soon exhaust themselves; and the rainbow, that is refracted from their drops after the storm has passed by, has been of old interpreted into a promise of the Almighty, that the world shall not again be overwhelmed. But no such bounds have been fixed for that fiercer element. promise to spare upon the tongue of flame. are laboring, we know not how deep, in the heart of the earth. They break out in volcanoes. They show the marks of their action in numerous ways and on all sides. Lights are flashing up through our atmosphere, and meteors explode in it, of which even the improved philosophy of modern days has been able to give but inadequate account, and which were fearful portents to older times. At immeasurable distances over our heads the heavens are crowded with blazing orbs; and the very age, in which we live, has not wholly outgrown the panic, which the approach of a comet used once to spread over the nations.

There is no Internal fires

The origin of the idea, that the world is to be destroyed by fire, has thus been accounted for, and set forth as distinctly as our narrow limits will well allow.

We undertook next to trace an outline of its history. The doctrine of the dissolution of the world, and its reproduction in a more perfect form and under happier auspices, has been seen already to be extremely ancient. We cannot now enter minutely into its details. We have no time to follow it back to Phoenicia, Chaldea, Persia, and countries still farther east, among the obscure observances and doubtful mythologies of the earliest tribes of men. We will only present it in a few of its most striking and prominent forms. Even those will have comparatively but little interest for us, till we come

down to the notions entertained by the earliest Christians and their Jewish contemporaries.

We may begin this part of the subject with another glance at the religion of India. It foretells the sudden perishing of the present scene of things. But not as if all was to be thus ended. On the contrary, it declares that all is thus to be made new. One of its leading principles is, that nothing is utterly lost. There is change, but no annihilation. The Creator is also the Preserver and Regenerator of the substances that exist. Herein is the Trinity of that old form of belief. It holds out the promise of a golden period, in which every pollution shall have been washed off, and the sorrows of life swept away forever. From this religion, in some of its features so sublime, let us turn to another; one of the most opposite character, of the wildest and fiercest shape, that ever entered into the imagination of man. We allude to the faith of the Northern nations. They believed that the great powers of the universe were in conflict with one another, and that the malignant were even now with difficulty kept in subjection and confinement by the good. They believed that this subjection was not always to last, that this confinement would at length be violently broken. They looked for a destined day, when the frightful forms of evil should burst forth, ascend into the upper regions, and make war against heaven and earth. This period they called "the twilight of the gods; and it was to end in one general ruin. Thus far their terrible system seems to be all gloom. It apparently gives the final victory to what is bad and destructive; and we are ready to ascribe such a startling peculiarity to their stern climate and savage manners. But on looking farther, we find that a new and magnificent scene is unfolded afterwards. Those contending and perishing gods did but represent the elements of this visible world, and after their destruction the universal Father, (Alfadur,) was to take under his sole charge the remodelled creation. The system, thus completed, does not differ widely, except in its imagery, from that of the Hindoos just recited. We may also observe, that but in that same respect it approaches very near to the refined mythology of Greece, and the opinions of its most celebrated men. The disciples of Pythagoras, the first who assumed the name of philosopher among them, maintained the belief of a general conflagration. This was held also by

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many, who did not acknowledge themselves to be of that sect. It was particularly taught by Zeno, and always continued to be regarded as a leading doctrine among his followers, the Stoics. There seems thus some ground for the quaint remark of one of the old divines, that "we have heard as it were a cry of fire, through all antiquity, and among all the people of the earth." This consuming flame was thought destined to fall upon the gods as well as on mortals; for the classical deities, like those of ruder idolatry, were little more than personifications of the powers of nature.* All was to be overthrown together. All was to give place to a diviner administration.

Intimations of this kind are the clearest and most frequent in those classical writers, who lived just before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, or immediately after that momentous event. Virgil, who died a few years previous to it, sings in his fourth eclogue of "the last age predicted by the Cumæan Sybil ;" and then goes on to describe a period of perfect bliss, in which the most injurious things shall change their qualities, and there shall be nothing left to hurt or offend. Such a period was to be preceded, according to all tradition, by a mighty revolution. Ovid puts these words into the mouth of Jove; "He remembered that it was in the fates, that the time was coming, in which the sea and the earth and the very palace of heaven should be on fire." The poet Lucan writes, "when the world shall feel its last hour come, all things shall return to chaos; stars will clash with stars, and the blazing constellations will plunge into the deep." Again, speaking of the dead as they lay strown over a field of battle, he exclaims,|| "if there should now be found for them no funeral pile, they shall burn with the land, they shall burn with the ocean streams; their pile shall be that of nature itself, and the planets shall be mixed with their bones." The writings of Seneca, as we should expect from his Stoical philosophy, abound with pointed expressions of a similar belief.

We come now to consider this opinion in the most remark

* Senecæ Trag. Thyestes, Act. IV. Chorus, 828-843. Eschylus Prometh. 915-935.

† Ovid Metam. I. 256, &c.

Lucani Phars. lib. 1, 72-76.

§ Pharsal. lib. 7, 812-815.

able of its aspects; one, in which it entered the Christian Church, and for several centuries disturbed the good order of society. Towards the beginning of our Era, men's minds were seized with the apprehension that the end of all things was at hand. The world had stood, according to some obscure computation of theirs, six thousand years, and the seventh was to usher in the great consummation. The Jews read in the first book of their law, that the work of creation was finished in six days; and they read in the psalms of David that one day was with the Lord as a thousand years. They were thus confirmed in the expectation of mighty events about to take place with the opening of the seventh period. We learn from the letters of the apostles, that in their time there was a general alarm spread, as if the day of judgment was hastening on. As soon as we enter upon the history of the church, after the decease of those holy men, we find the notion of a millennium prevailing, and supported by the authority of many leading names. The doctrine was, that a visible reign of the Messiah in person was presently to be set up on earth, which should last a thousand years. During this interval the saints, by whom the Jews meant their nation and the Christians their sect, were to enjoy perfect felicity; and at its close nature was to be destroyed and reproduced. Amidst all this expectation and terror, this looking for of Christ's descent-whether to establish his earthly kingdom or to put an end to earthly things, the world went on in its usual order. Nothing threatened or promised a change. Still the imaginations of men, once agitated so deeply, could not rest. They sought out new dates, to which they might refer their prophecies. We are told by one of the Fathers of the church in the fourth century,* that the year 365 was designated by some as the fated season; a calculation suggested, no doubt, by the number of days in a year. It passed over, however, and left all safe and the same. The idea afterwards arose, that one thousand years must first be waited for, to complete the great week of the ages. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were thrown into consternation by hearing the approaching ruin everywhere proclaimed. The rich and the great were seen stripping themselves of their possessions and their power, that they might find mercy during that

VOL. XXXIV.

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