lack
concerning his promise;" and that "the day of the Lord _will come_."
This coming is to be "as a thief in the night," that is, when they least
expect it.[235:3]

No wonder there should have been scoffers--as this writer calls
them--the generation which was not to have passed away before his
coming, had passed away; all those who stood there had been dead many
years; the sun had not yet been darkened; the stars were still in the
heavens, and the moon still continued to reflect light. None of the
predictions had yet been fulfilled.

Some of the early Christian Fathers have tried to account for the words
of Jesus, where he says: "Verily I say unto you, there be some standing
here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming
in his kingdom," by saying that he referred to _John_ only, and that
that Apostle was not dead, but sleeping. This fictitious story is
related by Saint Augustin, "from the report," as he says, "of credible
persons," and is to the effect that:

"At Ephesus, where St. John the Apostle lay buried, he was not
believed to be dead, _but to be sleeping only in the grave_,
which he had provided for himself till our Saviour's second
coming: in proof of which, they affirm, that the earth, under
which he lay, was seen to heave up and down perpetually, in
conformity to the motion of his body, in the act of
breathing."[235:4]

This story clearly illustrates the stupid credulity and superstition of
the primitive age of the church, and the faculty of imposing any
fictions upon the people, which their leaders saw fit to inculcate.

The doctrine of the _millennium_ designates a certain period in the
history of the world, lasting for a long, indefinite space (vaguely a
_thousand years_, as the word "_millennium_" implies) during which the
kingdom of _Christ Jesus_ will be visibly established on the earth. The
idea undoubtedly originated proximately in the Messianic expectation of
the Jews (as Jesus _did not_ sit on the throne of David and become an
earthly ruler, it _must be_ that he is _coming again_ for this purpose),
but more remotely in the Pagan doctrine of the final triumph of the
several "Christs" over their adversaries.

In the first century of the Church, _millenarianism_ was a _whispered_
belief, to which the book of Daniel, and more particularly the
predictions of the _Apocalypse_[236:1] gave an apostolical authority,
but, when the church im