e present time, and from this Derry
campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its
fulfilment.

How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of
the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious
statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of
the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the
blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with
waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords
and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once
the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster,
verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad
city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in
his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent
amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the
same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the
earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would
render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!

And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one? Shall to-morrow be as
to-day? Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore
forever? Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human
soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled? Who
shall say it may not be true? Nay, is not its truth proved by its
universality? The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That
which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the
martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's
light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious
ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and
defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with
the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute,
as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and
dead, cannot be in vain.

I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their
lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state. I
find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly,
green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse. It really does not
seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the
prophet's