unwillingly than at
present. Their costume added to the effect of their bodily presence,
as the old portraits illustrate for us, as those of us who remember the
last of the "fair, white, curly" wigs, as it graced the imposing figure
of the Reverend Dr. Marsh of Wethersfield, Connecticut, can testify.
They were not only learned in the history of the past, but they were
the interpreters of the prophecy, and announced coming events with a
confidence equal to that with which the weather-bureau warns us of a
coming storm. The numbers of the book of Daniel and the visions of the
Revelation were not too hard for them. In the commonplace book of the
Reverend Joel Benedict is to be found the following record, made, as
it appears, about the year 1773: "Conversing with Dr. Bellamy upon
the downfall of Antichrist, after many things had been said upon the
subject, the Doctor began to warm, and uttered himself after this
manner: 'Tell your children to tell their children that in the year 1866
something notable will happen in the church; tell them the old man says
so.'"

The "old man" came pretty near hitting the mark, as we shall see if we
consider what took place in the decade from 1860 to 1870. In 1864 the
Pope issued the "Syllabus of Errors," which "must be considered by
Romanists--as an infallible official document, and which arrays the
papacy in open war against modern civilization and civil and religious
freedom." The Vatican Council in 1870 declared the Pope to be the bishop
of bishops, and immediately after this began the decisive movement of
the party known as the "Old Catholics." In the exact year looked forward
to by the New England prophet, 1866, the evacuation of Rome by the
French and the publication of "Ecce Homo" appear to be the most
remarkable events having Special relation to the religious world.
Perhaps the National Council of the Congregationalists, held at Boston
in 1865, may be reckoned as one of the occurrences which the oracle just
missed.

The confidence, if not the spirit of prophecy, lasted down to a later
period. "In half a century," said the venerable Dr. Porter of Conway,
New Hampshire, in 1822, "there will be no Pagans, Jews, Mohammedans,
Unitarians, or Methodists." The half-century has more than elapsed, and
the prediction seems to stand in need of an extension, like many other
prophetic utterances.

The story is told of David Osgood, the shaggy-browed old minister of
Medford, that he had express