re called liberal opinions; nor by enabling the
whole of the lower classes to read the incentives to vice, impiety, and
rebellion which are prepared for them by an unlicensed press; nor by
Sunday schools, and religious tract societies; nor by the portentous
bibliolatry of the age! And if you adhere to the letter of the
Scriptures, methinks the thought of that consummation for which you look,
might serve rather for consolation under the prospect of impending evils,
than for a hope upon which the mind can rest in security with a calm and
contented delight.

_Montesinos_.--To this I must reply, that the fulfilment of those
calamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it
usually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of
Jerusalem. Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they
are, I speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my thoughts, as
more congenial to the fanatics of whom you have spoken than to me. And
for the coming of Antichrist, it is no longer a received opinion in these
days, whatever it may have been in yours. Your reasoning applies to the
enthusiastic millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and
calculate the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much
precision as the day and hour of an eclipse. But it leaves my hope
unshaken and untouched. I know that the world has improved; I see that
it is improving; and I believe that it will continue to improve in
natural and certain progress. Good and evil principles are widely at
work: a crisis is evidently approaching; it may be dreadful, but I can
have no doubts concerning the result. Black and ominous as the aspects
may appear, I regard them without dismay. The common exclamation of the
poor and helpless, when they feel themselves oppressed, conveys to my
mind the sum of the surest and safest philosophy. I say with them, "God
is above," and trust Him for the event.

_Sir Thomas More_.--God is above--but the devil is below. Evil
principles are, in their nature, more active than good. The harvest is
precarious, and must be prepared with labour, and cost, and care; weeds
spring up of themselves, and flourish and seed whatever may be the
season. Disease, vice, folly, and madness are contagious; while health
and understanding are incommunicable, and wisdom and virtue hardly to be
communicated! We have come, however, to some conclusion in our
discourse. Your notion of the impr