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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



terrestrial order would at any rate come 

 to an end. 



A Second Advent Convention Ims 

 recently been held in New York, wliicli 

 was devoted to a modified form of this 

 old doctrine. A church was crowded 

 with its adherents, coming from all the 

 religious denominations in various parts 

 of the country, and the subject was 

 discussed for days with great fervor 

 and enthusiasm. Nothing was said in 

 the proceedings about the end of the 

 world, but they were redolent of the 

 expectation of great supernatural events 

 which it was supposed by many may 

 happen at any time. A great array of 

 theological talent was present, and 

 many learned disquisitions were read. 

 The conference was Pre-millenarian in 

 sentiment, and Dr. West, a Presbyte- 

 rian clergyman of Cincinnati, explained 

 the doctrine as follows : " Christian 

 Chiliasm, or Pre-millenarianisra, is the 

 doctrine of the personal reign of Christ 

 one thousand years after beast, false 

 prophet, and apostate Christendom, 

 have been judged and perished in a 

 common doom. It is the doctrine of a 

 visible and external sovereignty of 

 Christ upon earth as the outcome of 

 history, the redeemed church of all 

 ages rejoicing in the fullness of a resur- 

 rection-life, in the actual presence of 

 Him who is the ' Prince of the kings 

 of the earth ' — a kingdom of outward 

 glory established upon the ruin of the 

 polities of all nations wide as the can- 

 opy of heaven." 



Furthermore, " Pre-millennialism is 

 a protest against the doctrine of the 

 unbroken evolution of the kingdom of 

 God to absolute perfection on earth 

 apart from the visible and miraculous 

 intervention of Christ. It is an equal 

 protest against that vapid idealism 

 which volatilizes the perfect kingdom 

 into a spiritual abstraction apart from 

 the regenesis of the earth." 



"What Dr. West here understands by 

 " vapid idealism " and volatilizing the 

 kingdom into a " spiritual abstraction " 



is simply a protest against the enlarged 

 interpretation of Scripture passages in 

 which many modern theologians are 

 inclined to indulge. The convention 

 went unanimously for the literal mean- 

 ing of Biblical texts. " Outside of its 

 lids " (the Bible), said Dr. Tyng, Jr.. 

 " we decline to follow our disputants." 

 Again: "One verse in every twenty- 

 five or about three hundred verses of 

 the New Testament speak of this future 

 event." Dr. Goodwin planted himself 

 " on the self-sufficiency of the Script- 

 ures to explain themselves." The dis- 

 cussion throughout was filled with theo- 

 logical technicalities, the import of ad- 

 verbs and pronouns, the rendering of 

 Greek and Hebrew passages, and the 

 ransacking of Biblical books from the 

 Pentateuch to the Apocalypse for hints, 

 allusions, and declarations, that might 

 be made to sustain the hypothesis to 

 which the body was committed. 



AVe refer to all this merely as a cu- 

 rious and instructive phenomenon of 

 our times. There was but one refer- 

 ence, as we observe, to science in all 

 the proceedings. A distinguished cler- 

 gyman remarked: "Look at that audi- 

 ence ; you can't get such a gathering at 

 secular conferences. Why, at a scien- 

 tific convention a paper an hour long 

 nearly always succeeds in thinning the 

 audience down to the specialists in the 

 topic of which it treats." This obser- 

 vation seems to have exhausted the 

 entire interest of the convocation in 

 scientific matters. All the knowledge 

 that has been developed in the last five 

 hundred years regarding the order of 

 the world was as so much idle wind 

 to these Second Advent theologians. 

 Prof. Henry, as we have seen, began 

 his theology with the consideration of 

 Nature ; this conference neither began 

 with Nature nor ended with it, nor 

 made any more reference to it than as 

 if it had been composed of disembod- 

 ied beings who had never heard of 

 natural things. Though their theories 

 were maintained as taking effect upon 



