242:1] views. Among the Protestants it was during the
"Thirty Years' War" that the most enthusiastic and learned chiliasts
flourished. The awful suffering and wide-spread desolation of that time
led pious hearts to solace themselves with the hope of a peaceful and
glorious future. Since then the _penchant_ which has sprung up for
expounding the prophetical books of the Bible, and particularly the
_Apocalypse_, with a view to present events, has given the doctrine a
faint semi-theological life, very different, however, from the earnest
faith of the first Christians.

Among the foremost chiliastic teachers of modern centuries are to be
mentioned Ezechiel Meth, Paul Felgenhauer, Bishop Comenius, Professor
Jurien, Seraris, Poiret, J. Mede; while Thomas Burnet and William
Whiston endeavored to give chiliasm a geological foundation, but without
finding much favor. Latterly, especially since the rise and extension of
missionary enterprise, the opinion has obtained a wide currency, that
after the conversion of the whole world to Christianity, a blissful and
glorious era will ensue; but not much stress--except by extreme
literalists--is now laid on the nature or duration of this far-off
felicity.

Great eagerness, and not a little ingenuity have been exhibited by many
persons in fixing a _date_ for the commencement of the millennium. The
celebrated theologian, Johann Albrecht Bengel, who, in the eighteenth
century, revived an earnest interest in the subject amongst orthodox
Protestants, asserted from a study of the prophecies that the millennium
would begin in 1836. This date was long popular. Swedenborg held that
the last judgment _took place_ in 1757, and that the new church, or
"_Church of the New Jerusalem_," as his followers designate
themselves--in other words, the millennial era--_then began_.

In America, considerable agitation was excited by the preaching of one
William Miller, who fixed the second advent of Christ Jesus about 1843.
Of late years, the most noted English millenarian was Dr. John Cumming,
who placed the end of the _present dispensation_ in 1866 or 1867; but as
that time passed without any millennial symptoms, he modified his
original views considerably, before he died, and conjectured that the
beginning of the millennium would not differ so much after all from the
years immediately preceding it, as people commonly suppose.

FOOTNOTES:

[233:1] We say "is made to teach it," for the probability is th