clad in painted caps and the
repulsive sanbenito; next the effigies of accused offenders who
had escaped by flight; then, the bones of dead culprits in black
coffins painted with flames and other hellish symbols; and,
finally, the train closing with a host of priests and monks. The
procession tediously winds to the great square in front of the
cathedral, where the accused stand before a crucifix with
extinguished torches in their hands. The king, with all his court
and the whole population of the city, exalt the solemnity by their
presence. The flames are kindled, and the poor victims perish in
long drawn agonies. Now can anything conceivable give one a more
vivid idea of the terrors embodied in the day of judgment than the
fact that it came to be thought of under the terrific image of an
Auto da Fe magnified to the scale of the human race and the earth,
Christ, the Grand Inquisitor, seated as judge; his familiars
standing by ready with their implements of torture to fulfil his
bidding; his fellow monks enthroned around him; his sign, the
crucifix, towering from hell to heaven in sight of the universe;
the whole heretical world, dressed in the sanbenito, helpless
before him, awaiting their doom? Who will not shudder at the
inexorable horrors of such a scheme of doctrine, and devoutly
thank God that he knows it to be a fiction as baseless as it is
cruel?

Since the cooling down of the great Anabaptist fanaticism, the
millennarian fever has raged less and less extensively. But if the
literature it has produced, in ignorant and declamatory books,
sermons, and tracts, were heaped together, they would make a pile
as big as one of the pyramids. The preaching of Miller, about a
quarter of a century ago, with his definite assignment of the time
for the appointed consummation, caused quite a violent panic in
the United States. Several prophets of a similar order in Germany
have also stirred transient commotions. In England, the celebrated
London preacher, Dr. Cumming, whose works entitled "The End," and
"The Great Tribulation," have been circulated in tens of thousands
of copies, is now the most prominent representative of this
catastrophic belief. He has, however, made himself so ridiculous
by his repeated postponements of the crisis, that he has become
more an object of laughter than of admiration. Mathematical
calculations, based on mystic numbers transmitted in apocalyptic
poetry, are at a heavy discount. And yet there i