s a considerable
sect, called the Second Adventists, composed of the most
illiterate believers, and swelled by clergymen wrought up to the
fanatic pitch by an exclusive dogmatic drill, who lead an
eleemosynary life on mouldy scraps of Scripture, and anxiously
wait for the sound of the archangelic trump. Every earthquake,
pestilence, revolution, violent thunderstorm, comet, meteoric
shower, or extraordinary gleaming of the aurora borealis, startles
them as a possible avant courier of the crack of doom. Some of
them are said to keep their white robes in their closets all ready
for ascension. What a dismal thing it must be to live in such a
lurid and lugubrious dream; their best hope for the world the hope
that its end is at hand,

"Impatient of the stars that keep their course And make no pathway
for the coming Judge!"

But this excited and uneasy anticipation is now a rare exception.
In the minds of most intelligent Christians, even of those who
still cling to the old Orthodox dogmas, the day of judgment has
been put forward as far as the day of creation has been put
backward. Less and less do religious believers shudder before the
theatric trials depicted in heathen and Christian mythology; more
and more do they reverently recognize the intrinsic jurisdiction
in the structure of the soul, and in the organism of society. The
time is not far remote, let us trust, when the ancient spirit of
national separation, political antipathy, and sectarian hatred,
whose subjects identify themselves with the party of God, all
others with the party of the Devil, and cry, "How long, O Lord,
dost thou not judge and avenge us on our enemies," will give way
to that better spirit of philanthropy and true piety, which sees
brethren in all men, and prays to the common Father for the equal
salvation and blessedness of all. Then the faith of the self
righteous, who plume themselves on their sound creed, and so
relentlessly consign the heretics to perdition, gloating over the
idea of the time "when the kings of the earth, and the chief
captains, and the rich men, and the mighty men, and every bondman,
and every freeman, shall hide themselves in dens and caves, saying
to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the
face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the
Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be
able to stand?" then the temper of this faith will be seen to be
as wicked as its d