like to have the quiet of their faith disturbed by an insinuation of the weakness of the grounds upon which it rests. The ancient and accredited technicalities of religion, hallowed as they are by long usage, and wedded to the thoughts, if not to the affections, by early association, are clung to with the most unyielding tenacity. We shrink from the rude process of investigation. Inquiry strikes us as little short of profanation, and we shudder at it as at the lifting up of axes against the carved work of the sanctuary. Although we may be in fact unable to substantiate our belief fully to our own minds, yet the bare thought of a change, as the result of canvassing our opinions anew, fills us with alarm, and binding our established persuasions still closer to our hearts, we say with Job, 'I will die in my nest,' admitting no treacherous doubts within the precincts of our faith for fear of a mental insurrection. Thus the dreary bird of night -"does to the moon complain Of such as wandering near her secret bowers, But surely it will be conceded that truth is at all times to be preferred to error, though it should be supposed that the error were one of a comparatively slight and innoxious character. The rigid scrutiny of our opinions, therefore, is but the homage due to truth; and the man who aids us in disabusing ourselves even of an innocent error, may justly lay claim to some measure of the gratitude bestowed upon him who puts us in possession of a new truth. In fact, although in the work of the husbandman the eradication of tares is not the same with the production of wheat, yet in mental and moral tillage the deracination of error is in many cases but another name for the implantation of truth. The tenor of these remarks applies, if we mistake not, with peculiar pertinency to the subject of the prevailing impressions-opinions they can scarcely be called-respecting the Millennium; a term denoting, in its popular sense, a future felicitous state of the church and the world of a thousand years' duration, of which, while every one has some vague anticipation, almost no one has any clear and welldefined conception. No phraseology in prayer, in preaching, in the religious essay, or in the monthlyconcert address is more common than that of millennial state, millennial reign, millennial purity, millennial glory, &c; all betokening the expectation of a coming condition in the affairs of the church infinitely transcending, in peace, piety, and bliss, the most favoured epochs which have yet marked its annals. Now it may well be made a question, Upon what is this expectation founded? Has it unequivocally the warrant of any express declaration of holy writ? Or is it any thing more than a mere traditionary tenet, which from time immemorial has in some way obtained currency among the pious, and which, having received from our forefathers in childhood, has become with us a matter of mechanical repetition in after-life, when "The priest hath finished what the nurse begun." How few are there of the vast multitude of those who habitually have this kind of expression upon their lips, who are able to give a reason of the (millennial) hope that is in them?'-how few who really and truly, on this point, know what they say or whereof they affirm?' Let it be observed, however, that our interrogatory concerns not so much the belief, that a brighter and benigner period is yet to dawn upon our world-that an era of pre-eminent peace, purity, and prosperity, constituting what is frequently called 'the latter day glory,' is yet destined to bless the globe, succeeding and compensating 'the years wherein we have seen trouble;' for this is abundantly testified by the predictions of the former and the latter prophets, and shadowed forth under many a significant parable, type, and allegory; the point of our inquiry is this:-On what sufficient grounds has this period come to be limited, in the minds of Christians, to the precise term of a thousand years, after which it is supposed that a grand defection is to ensue, and the followers of Christ to be again reduced to a diminutive handful? Judging from other portions of the prophetic oracles, our conclusion would certainly be altogether the reverse. Dan. 7. 18, 27. "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." Again, Dan. 2. 44. "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all those kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." These annunciations would certainly seem to preclude the prospect of any mere secular empire ever acquiring that ascendancy which it is yet supposed will be acquired by the post-millennial Gog and Magog of the Apocalypse. To this we are aware it will be replied, that the 20th chapter of the Revelation, in announcing that 'the Dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, shall be bound and shut up in the bottomless pit a thousand years, and that the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and the word of God, should live and reign with Christ a thousand years, while the rest of the dead should not live again till the thousand years were finished,' affords a sufficient warrant for the general expectation of the Christian world on this subject. This, however, it will be observed, is alleged on the presumption, that the millennial period spoken of by John is yet future, the very point which we shall endeavour to show is gratuitously assumed. Upon this presumption the labours of nearly all preceding expositors have been unhesitatingly based, and the object which they have mainly set themselves to accomplish has been, to fix the period of the commencement of this golden age of Zion. With this view they have constructed various arrangements of the chronological eras of the seals, trumpets, and vials; of the reign of the beast, and the resurrection of the witnesses; while, for the leading characters of the period, they have had recourse to what they conceived to be the parallel announcements of Isaiah and other ancient prophets, not doubting that their sublime visions of ultimate glory to the church pointed to precisely the same epoch with the Millennium of the Apocalypse. Now in all this we are constrained to believe, that the tower has been begun to be erected before the foundation was properly laid. For with one who takes nothing for granted in the matter of biblical exposition the first inquiry would naturally be; What is to be understood by the Dragon or the Satan (the adversary) who is to be bound ?-what by his binding ?-and what by the Bottomless Pit (Abyss) in which he is represented as being shut up? For as the book of Revelation is couched throughout in a continuous series of symbols or hieroglyphics, the inference a priori is, that the Dragon is as truly a symbolic personage as the Beast with whom he acts in concert, or the Woman clothed in scarlet and purple, and drunk with the blood of the saints, portrayed as seated upon the beast and swaying his movements. If the Dragon be taken for the devil literally and personally, or the prince of fallen spirits, what, we ask, can possibly be intended by his being described with seven heads and ten horns? The truth is, this portion of the hieroglyphical scenery of the Revelation, on the common interpretation, never has been, and never can be, satisfactorily explained. The great point, therefore, which the reader will find laboured in the ensuing pages is to settle clearly and |