felt the Saviour's grace know right well its matchless power. After their own conversion, they can never doubt its converting efficacy on any scale that may be required. The Spirit in the hand of Christ, and the Word in the hand of the Spirit, as they are the present agency for converting sinners, and perfecting saints, and advancing the Redeemer's kingdom in the world-so they are all that we are taught to ascribe the glories of the latter day to. And quite enough. That these spiritual glories are not now irradiating the world—that they have not long ago chased away the darkness with which the usurping "god of this world" has been permitted to cover it-is owing to no defect in the present resources of the Church, and of the economy under which it is placed. That more fidelity on the Church's part would have hastened the predicted consummation, is language which we are fully warranted in using. But He to whom "are known all his works from the beginning of the world," has ordered the "times and the seasons" in such mysterious correspondence with the faithlessness of his Church, as to bring out, in affecting relief, his own sole glory in the long-promised subjugation of the world to Christ, and the utter worthlessness of his people as the instruments of it. With a view to this, he suffers the Church to lie for ages in ignoble ease, in pitiful leanness, in a state of carnality which at once blights its fruits, poisons its streams, and rends it in pieces;—while the world, all unpitied, lies powerless in the enemy's hand, and its dark places are full of the habitations of cruelty. But when "the time to favour Zion comes, even the set time," it will be seen that it needed but the agencies of this present dispensation to be brought into full play to accomplish all that is promised; and then will it appear what a mine of wealth, and what a magazine of power for the spiritual recovery of a diseased world, ferior and infantile condition of the Church; while the absence not only of the manifestations themselves, but of all desire for them, is characteristic of the Church's manhood. were in possession of the Church's Head, and were all along the dowry of his people. The heart delights to dwell on this prospect. It desires to see what Christ can do by his Word and Spirit. When by these he does all they are competent to when they have exhausted their ability, and the work stands still for want of something else—then we may be reconciled to new methods, and may look out for a new dispensation. But while any such thought is infinitely disparaging to the blessed Spirit, and to the word of his power, there is a satisfaction unspeakable in anticipating the endless ways in which the Spirit may get himself renown, by what he will yet do in and by the Church:-how, under His mighty working, the instrumentalities for spreading the Gospel may be seen indefinitely multiplying; all the missionary principle and energy of a Church, quickened from the base torpor of ages previous, evolving themselves even to their own astonishment; majestic steps in Providence startling men from their stupid slumbers, awing their spirits, and constraining their attention to long-despised truths: these and other such things, in connection with direct and copious effusions of the Spirit, the heart delights to think of as destined to effect that universal submission to the sceptre of Christ which is to characterise the latter day. It feels this to be vastly more satisfactory and attractive as a prospect, and far more in accordance with the whole tenor of Scripture, than any rude interposition of visible manifestations-any interruption of the magnificent operation of God's ordinary laws of working, by immediate and short-hand methods of obtaining the result. CHAPTER II. NATURE OF THE MILLENNIUM-NOT A STATE OF UNMIXED RIGHTEOUSNESS. Ir may appear superfluous to devote a chapter to this point. But if I were asked on what head of our subject the confusion and inconsistency of the premillennial scheme are most manifest in the writings of its advocates, and their confidence in it, at the same time, the most unbounded, I should not hesitate to reply, on this head. Their starting-point is usually from the Parable of the Tares. (Matt. xiii.) All modern premillennialists hold these parables conclusive in favour of their views. You can hardly open one of their volumes without finding some reference to it in this light. tr "This," 'Let both tares and wheat grow together until the harvest? says Dr M'Neile, “is characteristic of the whole period of the Lord's absence. Now, I ask, is this phrase, 'Let both grow together,' equally characteristic of the millennium and of this dispensation? If it be answered, Yes; I cannot for a moment dispute that such a millennium will precede the coming of the Lord-we have it already. The millennium predicted by the Holy Ghost is not, however, so motley a concern as this would make it. Its characteristics are, 'The people shall be ALL righteous;* they shall all know the Lord, from the least of them unto the greatest of them; they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; the earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down *The capitals are the author's. of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in EVERY place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a PURE offering; for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts.' These and similar predictions manifestly describe a state of things contrasted with the present. That state is the millennium. The tares must be removed previous and preparatory to the millennium. The season of the removal of the tares is the harvest. The harvest is the period of the Lord's coming with the holy angels. Consequently, the Lord's coming must be previous and preparatory to the millennium. It may here be remarked how every sectarian effort to get what is called a pure Church, is a petty attempt to antedate the millennium, by the removal of the tares; 'Let both grow together until the harvest.' Then, indeed, 'the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.' In a recent lecture, already referred to, the same author thus describes the millennial state: "THERE SHALL BE NO MORE SIN. All the then inhabitants of the earth shall be holy. All shall love God, and serve God, so that his will shall then be done on earth as it is in heaven."+ 66 "On this parable of the tares," says the brother from whom I quoted in the foregoing chapter, we would submit the following remarks: 1. It spans the whole economy under which we are now living. It commences with his personal ministry on earth; it closes with his personal coming to judgment at the end of the world. It is therefore a brief extract, a kind of miniature view, of all that lies between these two extreme limits-between the first and the second coming of our Lord. 2. Between these two extreme limits we find no trace nor hint of any millennium. After and beyond the second coming of the Son of Man, and his gathering out of his kingdom' all things that offend, and casting them into a furnace of fire,' we do find some notice of that blessed state (the millennium): Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.' . . . . . Now, if a state of things so very peculiar and blessed in its nature as the millennium, and of such long duration, had been to occur between these two points, ..... *Sermons on the Second Advent, note, pp. 41, 42. would it have been entirely omitted in the picture? Suppose its place, in point of fact, to be there, would not its omission in this picture of the whole be somewhat like a history of our race without the fall, and of our recovery without the cross-the very capital feature omitted? 3. The best of the dispensation is first, not last. It begins well, grows worse, and ends worst of all. . . . . . 4. The dispensation thus becoming a mixture of good and evil, this mixture continues not for a while merely, but down to the very end. . . . It was to be a mixed economy down to its very close. The rectifying which comes at last is not by mercy but by judgment-not by the sowing of grace but the sickle of vengeance-not by an extension of the gospel, the labours of ministers, or any gracious instrumentality whatsoever now at work, but by the angels of God, who are to accompany the Son of Man at his second advent. It will consist, not in resowing, but in reaping the field. 5. The termination of this economy, therefore, is in judgment, not mercy; . . . mercy, however, not by an extension and enlargement of the economy of grace, but in a new economy altogether; for in it the evil shall be purged out by consummate judgment on the wicked. The present economy, according to this sketch of its course, does not terminate by an enlarged exercise of grace, in the common meaning of the word, nor by the use and success of any agency now in operation—the gospel—the ministry—the Spirit. It is ended by an agency, and an act entirely new and different-by the immediate intervention of the Son of Man, &c. 6. We may add, that the kingdom, in its PERFECT state-the reign of unMIXED GOOD, thus introduced by power and judgment--has its seat in the very same world where the evil existed, and whence it is now cast out. . . . . . . In this world is the kingdom, imperfect at first, and mixed with evil, afterwards made perfect by the Son of Man and his angels, and ENTIRELY UNMIXED. And it is in this kingdom . that the righteous, when the moral atmosphere has been cleared by the last act of judgment, shine out as the sun without a cloud." * "The tares and the wheat," says Mr Elliott, "6 were to grow together intermixed until the harvest (the end of the awv or age). Then at length (not before) the tares should be eradicated. . . . . . That * Present Dispensation-Its Course. (No. 2. of a Series on Prophecy.) Kennedy, Edinburgh. |